“Hold it. Hold it!” He moaned and swallowed and tried to sit up but fell back into the trickling water. Rain hissed down on the group, drummed on the taut canvas of the Conestoga’s hood. “Under the floorboards. You—you’ll have to move all the furniture first.”
Jordan looked coldly at him. He didn’t say anything but there was enough promise of torture and death in that look to make the rest of the blood drain from the driver’s face. The Major turned to Julio and Eagles.
“Start throwin’ out that gear in back of the wagon.” He glanced round. “Where the hell’s Salty? The kid can lend a hand.” He raised his voice abruptly. “Salty! Come on out, damn it! Lend a hand here, you lazy damn dimwit!”
But Salty remained hidden in the brush. He was frightened. He had been with the outlaws for quite a spell but this was the first actual hold-up he had had a hand in. His teeth began to chatter as the rain trickled down out of his tow hair and under his collarless shirt.
Jordan swore. “Loco kid must’ve run off.” He hipped slightly in the saddle and watched as Eagles and the Mexican ’breed flung out the battered and crude furniture from the back of the wagon. “Hurry it up!”
It didn’t take long to empty the wagon and then the men began looking for a place to tear up the floorboards.
“Can’t find the trap, Mace,” called Eagles.
Jordan walked his horse forward, right above the wounded driver still lying in the shallows. The Major leaned down and raked him across the face with the foresight of the rifle, laying open the cheek. He said nothing, merely cocked back the rifle hammer and stared down at the frightened man.
“Third board in from the—left,” the driver stammered. “At the joint. Nailhead comes out and releases a—a spring.”
“Hear that?” Jordan called to Eagles and the bearded man waved, ducked back into the Conestoga.
Counselor huddled in his worn coat and adjusted his stovepipe hat that was leaking at the many cracks and creases in it. He looked around a trifle apprehensively.
“We’re takin’ too long, Mace,” he said in his mellow voice.
Jordan nodded curtly. He knew and he, too, was anxious to get away from there. It was a trail that while not actually well-travelled, was also not as remote as he would have liked.
He stiffened suddenly at a wild yell from inside the wagon and then Julio’s grinning face appeared from under the canvas hood.
“It ees here, Major! We ’ave eet!”
Jordan allowed himself a faint smile and nodded briefly at the Counselor, then walked his horse back to the wagon. Eagles and the ’breed jumped down and lifted out a wide, shallow iron-bound chest. Eagles drew his six-gun and blew off the heavy padlock with three fast shots. Julio knelt and flung the twisted remains of the lock away, eased the distorted hasp over the ringbolt and threw back the lid of the chest.
Eagles whistled softly. Jordan’s smile widened. The Counselor rode over to look and Julio put his fingertips to his lips and made a hissing motion.
“Bueno!” he said.
They stared down at the lumps of almost pure gold ore. There was some quartz mixed with it, but mainly these were large nuggets of extremely rich ore, ranging in size from that of a walnut to almost apple-size. One was as big as Julio’s fist with only a little crumbling quartz around the edges.
“Well, that señorita of yours was right, Julio,” Jordan said, sounding pleased. “The damn mines were tryin’ to smuggle out the rich stuff to the railhead at Longbow, usin’ decoy wagons with all the trappin’s of extra guards and so on from the Albany end, and just trustin’ all this yeller stuff to four of their best men.” He laughed harshly. “Who just didn’t happen to be good enough!”
He hipped suddenly in saddle and his rifle blasted. The bloody-faced driver, sitting up in the stream shallows, was lifted clear of the streambed and flung back in an untidy heap to sprawl amongst the water-washed rocks. Eagles fired his last two shots from his Colt into the man’s body to make sure, each bullet jerking the driver like a puppet.
In the brush, Salty covered his horrified face with his shaking hands and dropped to his knees, gagging quietly. He was too terrified to move, too terrified to stay, frozen to the spot, watching this nightmare being enacted only yards from him ...
He snapped his head up suddenly as he saw movement to his left. From where he was, he could see this part of the ridge better than the four men below. But they likely wouldn’t have noticed anything, anyway. They were all kneeling now around the chest, fingering the gold.
Two slicker-clad riders came quietly over the ridge and made their way down into the hollow across the soft, sandy slope, their mounts not making any sound at all that could be heard above the soft hush of the rain.
Salty swallowed the bile that had risen into his throat and started to his feet, wanting to call out a warning to Jordan and the others. But his throat was still constricted and he couldn’t make a sound and he was too frightened to run out. By the time he felt able to really call out, it was too late.
The two slicker-clad riders held a rifle and a shotgun trained on the four men around the chest from five yards away.
“Just stand back easy, gents,” ordered the taller rider on the dust-streaked roan that was running rivulets of red mud down its legs in the rain.
As the startled men rounded fast, instinctively reaching for their guns, the second rider lifted his double-barreled shotgun into the air and fired, swiftly lowering the weapon and covering the outlaws with the remaining barrel. He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
Jordan and his men, grimfaced, dropped their guns and lifted their hands shoulder-high.
Salty realized for the first time that the two slicker-clad riders wore masks, soggy bandannas covering the lower halves of their faces. He was more frightened than ever. At first he had thought these two new arrivals must have been rear guards following behind the wagon. Now he realized they, too, must be killers or, at least, thieves, after the gold ore ...
“Step away from that chest!” commanded the rider on the roan and there was the impression that he was making his voice deliberately deeper than it actually was. He jerked the muzzle of his rifle impatiently.
Jordan’s mouth was tight and water trickled down his face, working inside his hat crown through the frayed bullet-hole, ran across his compressed lips and dripped unheeded from his chin. His eyes were murderous as he stared up at the speaker but made no move to step away from the box. The others remained where they were, too.
“Move!” snapped the man on the roan and there was an edge of tension, maybe nervousness, in his voice.
The second rider with the shotgun glanced at him sharply, brown eyes narrowing above the bandanna top. Then the man on the roan fired his rifle and levered a fresh shell into the breech before the bullet had spurted mud right beside Jordan’s left boot. The outlaw leader jumped involuntarily. The rifle roared again and Julio’s sombrero spun away into the gusting rain. A third shot took the Counselor’s stovepipe hat from his head and he stumbled back so violently that he stepped right onto it, mashing it down into the mud. He stared down at the ruined headgear angrily, then lifted blazing eyes to the gunman.
“My friend, we shall have a reckoning over this. I promise you.”
“And I promise you a bullet smack between the eyes if you hombres don’t do what I say!” snapped the rider, jerking the smoking rifle barrel, eyes now on the bearded Eagles.
They looked to Jordan for a lead but the man deliberately stepped forward in front of the chest again. There was a tension that could be cut with a knife. The outlaws stared challengingly at the masked riders. The one with the shotgun moved uneasily in the saddle and looked at the man on the roan.
His rifle barrel angled down slightly and roared abruptly. Jordan’s left leg was kicked out from under him as if jerked by a wire. The big man fell heavily, groaning, snatching at his thigh as blood spurted from the wound, his face grimacing in pain.
He lay there, gasping, biting b
ack moans of pain, trying to work up enough breath to cuss-out the masked man.
“Next one goes right into your belly!” promised the rider. “And that goes for all of you. Now—step back, goddamn it!”
They didn’t hesitate. They stepped right away from the chest of gold, their hands raised. No one made a move to help Jordan. Mouth grimacing, left hand clutching his bleeding thigh, Jordan dragged himself clear, blazing eyes raking the masked riders.
The man on the roan nodded to the other and he dismounted, paused to reload the empty barrel in the shotgun, then took down a pair of saddlebags. Carrying the shotgun in one hand, the shapeless figure moved to the chest, laid down the gun carefully and knelt in the mud. Gloved hands picked up the gold nuggets and placed them in the saddlebags.
“Spread the load,” called the mounted man and he flung his own saddlebags down beside the chest.
The man on the ground nodded and stuffed these bags with nuggets, too, emptying the chest. The four outlaws watched silently, eyes deadly. The dead wagon guards and driver lay sprawled in the rain. Salty, still shaking violently, crouched in the brush.
Both sets of saddlebags now filled, the man with the shotgun stood up and carried one set to the man on the roan. Then he went back and picked up his own set and draped them over his mount before stepping up into the saddle.
Jordan’s face was contorted with rage and pain.
“You’re dead men!” he yelled savagely. “You hear? Dead!”
The man on the roan jerked his rifle barrel.
“Get him up on his feet,” he commanded and when they hesitated he thumbed back the hammer again, pointed the barrel at Eagles. “You know what it’s like to be gut shot?”
Eagles said nothing, but he bent and heaved Jordan to his feet. The Major roared with pain as Eagles ducked under his left arm and gave him some support for his wounded leg.
“Now what?” Eagles growled.
The man on the roan pointed upstream with his rifle barrel. “Start walkin’ upstream, all of you.”
“What the hell!” demanded Jordan, gray-faced, sagging against Eagles.
They all winced as a rifle bullet spanged off the ironbound chest now lying open and empty in the drizzle.
“Move!”
The man on the roan nodded to his companion and the second rider gathered up the reins of the outlaws’ horses. He followed as the rifleman walked his horse into the stream, following the outlaws who were slogging their way upstream.
Salty crouched, shaking, watching intently, not realizing that his own horse had run off after the last gunshot, trotting away over the deep, loose sand, away downstream amongst the trees and brush.
Even after the others were out of sight, Salty didn’t move for a long, long time and when he did, he was surprised to find his horse gone.
He ran back through the trees, calling softly, afraid that the masked riders might hear him. Then he stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes bulging out of his head as, from upstream, came the thunderous sounds of gunfire from a shotgun, almost drowning out the fast twin rifle shots that followed.
Salty dropped to his knees and hurriedly crawled under a bush, pressing flat into the soft sandy soil, trembling from head to foot.
Chapter Five – Sanctuary
All morning, Yancey Bannerman had been seeing signs of civilization in the hills.
He had won his race against the sun and reached the foothills before dawn, near exhaustion. He had crawled into the trees and flopped down onto his back, using his saddle for a pillow. He took no precautions, either against marauding animals or pursuit that might come out of the badlands.
The Enforcer was far too exhausted to care about such things. He slept until midmorning and then a small bird hopping onto his chest had awakened him, so that he started up, reaching for his Colt, frightening the bird away.
It took him a spell to remember where he was and how he had gotten here. Then he drank the remaining spoonful of water in his canteen and staggered to his feet.
Scouting around, he found edible plants and their roots were juicy, helping to further slake his thirst. He saw a jackrabbit and several squirrels but was reluctant to shoot at them; gunshots carried a long way in rangeland and he didn’t want to bring in anyone who might be searching for him. It had been pure luck that had allowed him to get this far ...
He shouldered his saddle and started off up the slope of the range, angling across, thinking he heard the distant bellowing of cattle.
But he didn’t see any until nearly noon and they were on a cleared slope way over to the right and he only picked them up in his field-glasses. A little further on, he came across dried dung and knew cows roamed here at some time or other. Maybe the same ones he had seen on the range for spreads tended to be large in this part of the country.
He found barbed wire fencing an hour later, with tufts of hair on the barbs and more dried cowpats on the far side. Yancey dumped his saddle over the top strand and clambered through, ripping his shirt and leaving a strip of material caught on a barb.
Early afternoon, he came across a drift fence and followed it down-slope through thick timber.
He stopped dead when he emerged from this timber, recoiling from the stench, hand dropping to his gun butt by pure reflex action as close on fifty crows and buzzards lifted in a whirring, squawking cluster from the partly-eaten, charred carcasses of about thirty cattle, lying in a blackened, burned out pasture.
Yancey whistled softly as he thumbed back his hat and stared at the carnage. Judging by the whiff of corruption, he would say the carcasses had been lying there three or four days. The state of decomposition seemed to confirm this and the birds that still wheeled seemed lethargic and bloated, sated almost with the carrion flesh they had been devouring apparently undisturbed.
The weary, bearded Enforcer climbed up on a nearby boulder. There was a ranch house in the distance. He caught the flash of sunlight off glass in a window. That meant it was fairly well established if it had window-panes. There had been a tragedy of some sort here but, with luck, he might find sanctuary and help in the ranch house.
Yancey almost fell down from the rock and wearily heaved his saddle up onto his shoulders and staggered forward again, feeling the throbbing ache from his wound beginning to course through his tortured body again.
He figured it would be mid-afternoon before he could reach the house.
Salty was afraid of what he was going to find around the next bend.
He was following the stream banks, splashing through the water’s edge, pushing back the bushes that grew right down to the water. His clothes were ripped and his belly was a tight knot. Ever since he had heard the shotgun and the rifle shots, he had felt sick, sicker than when he had watched Jordan and the others murder the wagon guards.
Only once in his life before had he seen what a shotgun blast could do to a man and he retched at the thought of what awaited him around the bend. He kept looking at the stream, half-expecting to see it discolored red with blood or even a shattered body floating by. But there was nothing like that. Only the silence of the hollow, and the trickling of the water. It had rained very hard for maybe fifteen minutes after he had heard the gunfire but it had stopped now.
He paused as he came to the last heavy screen of brush, placing a shaking hand on the branches, and then, gulping down a deep breath, he pushed it aside and stepped around.
Salty’s knees seemed to turn to water as he saw the four men he had spent so much time with, doing their chores, sleeping and riding with them, amusing them, the butt of their sometimes cruel jokes. But he didn’t mind. He knew he was somehow different from other people and folk seemed to find some humor in this. But they had fed him and given him a blanket to sleep on so he hadn’t minded.
And he was vastly relieved now to find that they were still alive, roped to a cone-shaped rock in mid-stream, struggling futilely against their bonds as the water surged around them. Julio saw him first and stared as if he was looking at a
ghost. “Madre de Dios! It ees the muchacho! Aiee, Salty! Come cut us free, amigo!”
The others stared as Salty stood there, open-mouthed, nose running, hair plastered wetly over his eyes, clothes in tatters.
“Judas! Don’t just stand there, you loony!” bellowed Jordan. “Get me out of here! I’m goddamn freezin’ my ass off here and my leg’s bleeding like a stuck pig!”
The Major’s harsh voice stirred Salty and got him moving. He waded out to the rock and fumbled out the old broken-bladed pocket knife he carried.
He was almost crying as he said, “I—I thought you was dead. I heard the shotgun and—and the rifle ...”
He began to saw at the water-toughened green hide that had been used to tie them to the rock.
“The Counselor made a try at runnin’,” growled Eagles. “They fired a few shots to discourage him—and the rest of us. Hurry up, damn you, kid!”
“No use hurrying,” the Counselor said. “They took our horses and they’ll be long gone.”
“Don’t matter if they get as far as the gates of hell,” snarled Jordan, sobbing with pain as the water battered his wounded leg against the boulder. “I’ll get ’em! I’ll track down them two rannies and shoot ’em to pieces a little at a time! No one does this to Mace Jordan and gets away with it.”
Salty sat back as the green hide suddenly parted and he helped Jordan struggle to his feet.
“One was a woman, Mace,” he said and the others froze in their movements back towards the bank, staring at him. Frightened again, Salty swallowed and sniffed and nodded emphatically. “That’s right, Mace. The one with a shotgun that never said nothin’. It was a woman.”
It was just after dark when the Jarretts reached their ranch.
Their mounts were weary and so were they, swaying a little in their saddles, saying nothing, as they put the horses down the hogback and into the ranch yard. They were greeted by some of the horses in the corrals as they dismounted and off-saddled, draping the rigs over the top rails of the corral.
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