Blaze! Western Series: Six Adult Western Novels

by Stephen Mertz

  "Uh, Mr. Blaze, I feel kinda nekkid." He looked behind. The buttons on his flap had long since fallen off, leaving his hind quarters exposed. "It's embarrassing bein' with your wife. She's a lady and all."

  "She won't look. I promise."

  "Really?"

  J.D. laughed all the way downhill to where Kate struggled to stuff the undergrowth into Jesse's shirt and pants. She held up her poor effort.

  "This isn't going to work. And I need his hat to cover up the shoulders. This scarecrow's not fooling anyone if there isn't a head."

  J.D. rubbed his lips, then walked around as he studied the problem. As usual, his wife was right. The dummy tied into Jesse's saddle wouldn't fool a blind man.

  "Get the bushes yanked out. I'll be the decoy."

  "You're out of your head. You been smoking loco weed again?"

  "Only when I want to think of you." J.D. tossed the last twigs away and slipped into Jesse's shirt. It was too small for his broad shoulders.

  With a couple quick rips, he opened the seams so he could slide it on over his coat. He stretched. More cloth tore, but from a distance he might fool the gang into believing he was Jesse Blackmun.

  "Take him his jeans. He was all het up about a lady seeing him in his drawers."

  "I am sure you told him there weren't any ladies here," Kate said.

  "You can tell him. And throw down his hat. He'll think that's a fair enough swap, his hat for his pants." J.D. handed his own hat to her. "You look after the horses."

  He went to the stallion Kate had taken for Jesse from the Blackmun remuda. The spirited horse tried to buck. He worked with it while his wife led their horses around to a hidden spot behind the rocks, then climbed to join Jesse. He looked up to see Jesse's hat spinning through the air. With a jump, he snared it in the air. One day he had to try playing baseball. He had seen several different companies of cavalry playing, and it looked like an amusing game. Hitting the ball with a stick and running around trying to pick up the ball had to be more fun than sitting in a smoky saloon and playing cards.

  Or maybe not. All J.D. wanted was the chance to find out.

  He pulled Jesse's hat down around his ears, then stepped up onto the stallion. The stirrups were a mite short for him, but he wanted to get this over with. Wasting even a minute galled him. He rode back and forth along the trail, judging where the boulder would come tumbling down. From the way rocks on the other side of the trail had piled up, the boulder would roll down and come to rest blocking the path.

  He mentally marked the spot, took one last look uphill, then trotted down the canyon in the direction of the ambush. When he got within sight of the sentries, he lowered his head and patted the horse's neck.

  "Sorry to do this to you, boy, but it's better you than all of us."

  He let out a yelp of surprise to draw attention, wheeled about and galloped away. J.D. slowed when pursuit wasn't immediate. Only when three outlaws found their mounts and came for him did he ride faster. They had to be close enough to see but not so close they could see everything.

  "Dammit, Jesse, you come back here!"

  At the command, J.D. bent over and rode faster. He was fooling them. So far. He had no idea if this was Jesse's brother pounding hard after him. It didn't matter. The horse under him began to strain. Running it into the ground wasn't something he cared to do, but it no longer mattered. The horse was bait for a trap. And bait always came to a bad end.

  He rounded the curve in the trail, then left the saddle. He hit the ground hard and rolled. For a moment, he was dazed. He fell forward and hid in a ditch as the three outlaws thundered past. In spite of the need to remain hidden, J.D. had to lift his head and watch the trail. Everything depended on good timing.

  For a heartbeat he worried that Kate and Jesse together weren't strong enough to move the boulder. Then he saw it slip and begin to roll down the hillside. Gathering speed, it collected dirt and smaller rocks to join it in the deadly plunge.

  He closed his eyes when the boulder smashed into the trail—and the stallion. The horse's hideous cries echoed down the canyon. Then came utter silence. J.D. took the chance to slip farther off the trail.

  He only caught snippets of the conversation between the outlaws, but it was everything he could have hoped for.

  "Dang, Uly, that rock smooshed him good and proper. The major's not going to like it that he was on his favorite horse."

  "You idiot. Ben's not going to like it that his only living brother got himself killed."

  "Oh, yeah."

  J.D. kept his laughter to himself. Then he froze when he heard Blackmun's right-hand man say, "We got to dig out the body to give it a burial. Ben'd want that done."

  If they poked around and saw only the riderless horse had died, the plan would turn against them and the horse's death go for nothing. He reached for his six-gun. Shooting their way out of this had just become their only escape.

  Chapter 7

  A thousand wild thoughts flashed through his head. J.D. strained to see if Kate and Jesse had remained under cover. If either of them showed themselves to the outlaws, the gunfight would end badly. Even with J.D. coming up from behind the three, the shots would draw the rest of Blackmun's men. He—and Kate and Jesse—would be caught between the two groups. Worse, the stallion would have been sacrificed for nothing.

  With two horses and three riders, they could never hope to outrun the outlaws.

  J.D. slid his six-shooter from its holster and edged closer to the fallen rock. He caught his breath when he saw a single horse's leg sticking out from under the boulder. That alone should have convinced Uly and the other two that the rider was dead, too. No one, no matter how expert a horseman, could have gotten free of the falling rock. His heart sank when he saw what drove the outlaws now. Instead of believing their eyes, they wanted proof because their leader wouldn't give up on his only surviving brother that easily.

  Proof. The word rang in J.D.'s head. It was time for desperation. He ripped off Jesse's shirt and smeared it with as much blood from various minor cuts and scrapes as he could. Then he removed the hat and bloodied it up, too. With this new evidence, he slithered like a snake toward the road. The three outlaws worked to move the boulder, but it wouldn't budge.

  J.D. whipped the shirt around and around over his head and let it fly. It didn't go where he expected. He did better with the hat, landing it near a pile of newly fallen rock. He hoped they didn't wonder how the hat came to be on top of the rock rather than under it. From their desperation to please Ben Blackmun, he doubted any of them would question the hat not being crushed. Working his way back into a ditch, he peered over the edge and waited to see if the men searching for any sign of Jesse Blackmun found it.

  If not, he had six shots to take out three men before he, Kate and Jesse had to hightail it. With luck, he might grab one of the outlaws' horses and give them three mounts for three riders again. None of these scrawny nags matched the stallion mashed under the rock.

  "Hey, Uly, lookee here."

  J.D. caught his breath. One of the outlaws had stepped away from the impossible chore of moving the heavy boulder and had spotted the shirt. Uly looked past the shirt to the hat.

  "That there's Jesse's hat. I remember him wearing it."

  "This gotta be his shirt, too."

  "I don't remember, but you're right. Look how tore up it is."

  "Bloody, too." The outlaw wiped his hand on his coat to get the smeared blood off his skin. "The Major's not gonna like this one bit."

  "There's no sense digging out the body, is there, Uly? It'll take us a day to move that rock. It's bad enough it's blocking the trail to camp."

  "We won't be going back to the camp," Uly said. He pushed his hat back and swiped at his sweaty forehead. "Ben's gonna be madder 'n hell about this."

  "You think we ought to get out of here, Uly? Remember what he did when he found out Big Bob had died."

  "He didn't shoot any of us."

  J.D. hunkered down, barely bre
athing as the three mounted and rode off to give the bad news to their leader. Uly Borman carried both the bloody shirt and battered hat as proof. That would convince most men, but Ben Blackmun might demand to see the spot where his only brother had died. That mean the entire gang would move the rock and discover a crushed horse but no human body.

  When the outlaws rounded the bend in the trail, J.D. climbed the steep hillside. Kate waited with her rifle resting across her knees. She heaved a deep sigh when she saw him.

  "That was a close shave," he said. "They'll be back as soon as Blackmun calms down a mite."

  "Ben'll never calm down. He gets mad, he lashes out. Wilderness might get shot up."

  "All the more reason for us to get back," Kate said. "We need to warn the marshal." She hesitated, watching Jesse closely. "You need to tell Abigail what you're going to do, too."

  Jesse returned to his desolate silence, head hanging and not responding to anything more that Kate said to him. She looked over at J.D. and mouthed, "Let's ride."

  He nodded. Together they went to where the horses had been tethered. He considered how to allocate the horses and came up with the way most delightful to him.

  "Jesse, take her horse. She can ride with me."

  "Oh, really now. I get to ride in front of you, your arms around me? Do I have to worry about you getting fresh?" Kate smiled and added in a whisper, "I hope so."

  They mounted, then J.D. realized one last detail had to be decided. The gang blocked the trail. Working their way deeper into the mountains might take long days to find the proper alternate path back to town.

  "Jesse," he called. "You know your brother. When his lieutenant tells him you're dead, what's he going to do? Come recover your body or something else?"

  "He will give me a decent burial. It won't matter if all his men die trying to recover the body."

  "That means his entire gang has to work moving the rock. We hide and wait for them to ride past, then we get on down the trail past them. By the time Blackmun gets that boulder pushed aside and finds Jesse's not dead, we'll have put miles between us and him."

  "Risky," Kate said, "but I don't know what else we can do. Without a guide, we can wander through these canyons for weeks before finding another way back to Wilderness."

  "I don't know how many men are riding with him. Do you know, Jesse?"

  "Not exactly. You killed two back at camp. Two rode with Uly. Ben must have a couple men with him guarding the trail since he wouldn't know I was supposed to be dead."

  "Six." J.D. didn't like the odds. Shooting it out gave less a chance of surviving than stealth. "We can always trade lead if it comes to that, but our best hope is to sneak past them."

  They rode past still-brimming arroyos, unable to ford them to ride closer to the canyon wall. Finally J.D. found a spot he liked. It wasn't the best possible hiding spot but gave them a view of the trail while affording some safeguard against casual inspection. They dismounted and let the horses graze, then drink from a pool of water. J.D. moved closer to the trail and settled down behind some rocks.

  He perked up a half hour later when he heard horses approaching. Peering around the rock, he caught sight of the lead rider. He smiled. His plan was working. He started to retreat, to get the others ready to ride, then sank down. His smile vanished.

  He slipped back and shook his head.

  "What's wrong now?" Jesse's voice was dull. He had given up all hope.

  "Blackmun rode up with his gang. Some of them. He's got four men with him."

  "That might be all that're left," Kate said.

  "I didn't see Uly with him. That means his right-hand man is still farther back down the trail, maybe with one other."

  "If we get on that trail now, we'll be caught between Ben and Uly." Jesse sat on a rock and pulled up his knees. He shook all over as if he had the ague. "We'll die. If we fight them, we'll die." He looked up. His expression was what J.D. expected to see on a condemned man's face as he climbed up to the gallows. "You stay. I'll go fess up. I'll tell Ben it was all my doing. You can get away."

  "It's all or nothing," J.D. said. "We all get back to town or none of us does."

  "There's no call for you both to get shot up. Ben's gonna be furious." He took a deep breath. "He'll whump up good on me, but he won't hurt me too bad. You? He'll belly shoot both of you and enjoy watching you bleed to death real slow."

  Kate snorted in contempt. J.D. knew what ran through her mind. A man like Ben Blackmun wasn't likely to kill a good-looking woman out of hand. He'd use her first. This got J.D.'s dander up.

  "All of us or none," he repeated. When Kate touched his arm, he covered her hand with his own in reassurance.

  "With Blackmun and most of the gang working to move the rock, we only have a couple of the gang to sneak past," she said.

  "We'll have to shoot our way past them. They're not going to let us go on our way. That's why Blackmun left his best men back there."

  "You're right, dear," she said. "We need to give ourselves some more time. If we run off Blackmun's horses, that will give us a while longer to get away."

  "It's better not to warn him," J.D. decided. "We take the horses, he knows he's in a fight. If he spends all his time trying to move the rock, we might have an hour's head start."

  "Mount up, Jesse," Kate said. "We go now. The quicker we find Uly and the other man guarding the trail to town, the quicker we get out of this trap."

  "We're not gonna make it," Jesse said. His listless voice sucked all energy from them.

  J.D. glanced at Kate. She understood his concern that Jesse would try to surrender to his brother. She mouthed, "I'll watch him."

  "Why don't you ride with Kate?" J.D. saw that Jesse recoiled at this, reinforcing the notion that he intended to give up. "You two go on. I'll bring up the rear if Blackmun and the others take it into their heads to return."

  "I'll keep a sharp eye out for Uly," Kate said. "When he spots us, you come running fast. The lead's going to fly."

  J.D. knew this was going to be the hardest part of their escape. Kate rode behind Jesse, so the young man was a shield. It also meant Kate had to shoot around him. She was a damned good shot, but on horseback with a reluctant passenger astride her horse, no one was likely to hit the target.

  He waited for them to get a ways down the trail, then edged back to look around the bend. Blackmun and his men strained to move the boulder. They got it rocking but it had dug itself down into a hole when it fell. This small success kept Blackmun haranguing his men to work harder. The longer it took, the more distance J.D. could put between himself and the outlaws. With a snap of the reins, he got moving to follow Kate.

  He overtook her less than a hundred yards away.

  "Keep going," he said quietly. "This isn't anywhere to get caught."

  The trail had opened on either side, with towering rocks ahead where a sniper could command the entire area. Being caught out here was certain death because, other than ditches filled with water and some rocks hardly reaching to a man's waist, they were exposed.

  "Something's going on ahead," Kate said. "There're two horses."

  "We take the horses, we strand them."

  "Wait," she said. "I heard another horse neighing. Out of sight in the rocks. We need to know how many we're facing."

  J.D. cursed under his breath, dropped to the ground and hurried forward. The outlaws' horses shied from him. He considered untying them. Put Uly and his partner on foot. Then he knew such a commotion would alert them. The horses only fought their tethers. Anything more and they would put up such a ruckus a deaf man could hear.

  He drew his six-shooter and walked down the side of the trail. He felt exposed, and the hair rose on the back of his neck. Every step might be his last. A single shot from hiding could kill him. Then he reached a narrowing in the trail with rock rising on either side. In this notch the sounds from ahead were magnified.

  Darting forth and peering around like a snake checking its prey, he got a full view of
what happened and ducked back. J.D. caught his breath. Just when he thought things couldn't get worse, they did. A quick spin of his Colt's cylinder showed he had all chambers loaded. He wished he had his Winchester. The extra firepower would come in handy going after Uly and his partner. Then he sagged, feeling the way Jesse looked—drained and dejected.

  Knowing his limits and recognizing that the danger ahead on the trail had soared beyond his handling, he eased back, found his horse and swung up. He had some mighty disturbing news to pass along to the others.

  "What's going on?" Kate rushed out to stand at his knee. He looked up and saw Jesse alert and listening to their every word.

  "We need a new plan to get out of here. All four of us."

  "What do you mean?" Jesse ran over and clutched at J.D. "Four?"

  "Abigail came after you, and Uly's caught her."

  Silence fell. Then came a woman's shriek. Abigail Hurst cried in fear because the Blackmun gang had caught her.

  Chapter 8

  "Whoa, hold your horses." J.D. pushed Jesse back as he started to run down the trail to Abigail's rescue. "You'll only make everything worse if they spot you."

  "I won't let them lay their filthy hands on her!"

  "Are you still planning on riding away, not even saying goodbye to her?" Jesse swung at J.D., who ducked the punch, stepped up, and wrapped his powerful arms around Jesse's struggling body. He had to squeeze a mite more than he liked to drive the wind from Jesse's lungs, but the fighting stopped. J.D. dropped him and stepped back. "Why don't you cool off enough to think? You'd get her and yourself killed bulling your way in there."

  "Ambush. I can shoot them from ambush. Uly's no friend." Jesse panted harshly as he regained his breath. He looked daggers at J.D. "Don't keep me from her."

  "Like it or not, we're all in this kettle paddling around together. And the heat's being stoked under us."

  "He's right, Jesse. Your brother is going to discover you're not pinned under that rock any time now. When he comes back, he'll meet up with Uly and they'll get to comparing ideas about what went on. It won't take men that smart long to figure out they've been snookered." Kate put her hand on his shoulder to calm him. He roughly shoved it away.