Stone grated against earth, and suddenly the boulder was moving. With their feet dug in, Sam and the others continued to shove. The boulder tipped over ...
And was gone, plummeting through the air to land with a huge, shattering crash in the back of the wagon below.
The abrupt lack of resistance made Sam, Matt, Stovepipe, and Wilbur sprawl at the edge of the bluff. Wilbur might have toppled over himself if Stovepipe’s hand hadn’t shot out to snag his collar and haul him back.
As they scrambled to their feet, Matt saw several of the white men recover quickly from their surprise and start to raise the rifles they held. Matt’s hands dipped to his own twin Colts.
Wounded though he might be, Matt Bodine’s draw was swift and a thing of beauty. The guns seemed to leap into his hands like magic. Less than a heartbeat later, Colt flame bloomed in the darkness as shots roared out from both revolvers.
A couple of the outlaws grunted and toppled out of their saddles as Matt’s slugs ripped into their bodies.
Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur had their guns out and blasting by now, too. Sam snapped a shot at the boss of the gang, who had been knocked clear of the wagon when the boulder came crashing down on it.
The man scrambled to the side and avoided Sam’s bullet. He had managed to hang on to his rifle. Working the lever with blinding speed, he sprayed lead toward the top of the bluff as he ran toward one of the suddenly riderless mounts.
That forced Matt, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur to pull back and cease fire for a moment, and as they did, Juan Pablo kicked his horse forward and raced over to one of the shattered crates that had fallen out of the wagon. He reached into it and began pulling out rifles, which he tossed to his men as they followed him.
The men on the bluff continued to trade shots with the outlaws, and because they were occupied with that, they couldn’t stop the handful of Navajo from looting the broken crate. Matt saw Juan Pablo grab a box of ammunition and leap back onto his pony. Matt snapped a shot at the warrior, but the bullet whined past Juan Pablo’s head harmlessly.
“They’re gettin’ away with some of those rifles!” Matt called to Sam.
“I know!” his blood brother replied. “And the boss is getting away, too!”
Indeed, the leader of the gang had made it to one of the horses and swung up into the saddle. He kicked the animal into a run that carried him out of the circle of light cast by the lantern, which was still burning even though it had half-fallen against the rail at the side of the wagon seat.
With their boss deserting them, the rest of the gun smugglers lost their enthusiasm for the fight. Three of them were down. The others wheeled their horses and galloped off into the night, taking a different direction than the fleeing Navajo.
Matt lowered his guns and asked, “Now what do we do?”
The scream that cut through the night answered the question. The men’s heads jerked toward the sound.
That scream came from Elizabeth Fleming, and as the cry was abruptly silenced, Matt knew that Juan Pablo must have stumbled over her.
Chapter 36
“That’s Elizabeth!” Matt yelled. “Come on!”
Sam caught his arm. “She had our horses with her, and Juan Pablo’s probably scattered them by now.”
“But we’ve got to go after them!”
“There are a couple of horses down there,” Sam said, nodding toward the mounts whose riders had been shot off of them. “Stovepipe and I will take them. You and Wilbur stay here and guard those rifles.”
“Blast it, Sam—”
“The two of you are wounded,” Sam cut in. “Stovepipe and I aren’t. Anyway, somebody’s got to guard those rifles, otherwise Juan Pablo is liable to circle back around and try to grab some more of them. So he may come to you.”
“I hope so,” Matt said as he reached for fresh cartridges in the loops on his shell belt. “I surely do.”
Wilbur protested, “I ain’t hurt that bad. I told you it was just a scratch, Stovepipe.”
“I know that,” the lanky range detective said as he rested a hand on his partner’s shoulder for a second, “but like Sam says, somebody’s got to look after them guns, and I don’t know anybody I’d trust more’n you to do it, pard.”
“All right, all right,” Wilbur grumbled. “Don’t go butterin’ me up. Just get after those varmints and help that girl.”
“Plan to,” Stovepipe said as he finished reloading his revolver and snapped it closed.
He and Sam made their way down the narrow trail to the base of the bluff, followed by Matt and Wilbur. The first thing Sam did when he reached the wrecked wagon was blow out the stubbornly burning lantern. The light just made them better targets.
During that brief moment when he’d gotten a good look at the wagon, he had seen that it would never go anywhere again, not without a lot of work, anyway. Both axles had snapped under the sudden weight of the boulder.
All twelve of the crates containing the rifles had broken open. Some of the weapons no doubt were ruined.
Most of them were still usable, though, and it would be up to Matt and Wilbur to make sure none of them wound up in the wrong hands, along with that ammunition.
Sam and Stovepipe caught the two remaining horses and swung up into the saddles they had emptied. Before they could ride off, Wilbur said, “Hey, we could unhitch a couple of horses from the wagon team—”
“No time,” Sam said. “We’ve got to find Elizabeth.”
He heeled his mount into a run toward the spot where they had left the redheaded teacher. Stovepipe was right beside him. Although Sam was trying to stay calm, worry gnawed at his guts.
As enraged as Juan Pablo was bound to be at having his plans ruined like this, there was no telling what he might do to Elizabeth to vent his anger.
Back at the wagon, Matt asked, “Did you get a good look at the hombre who was giving orders, Wilbur?”
“Pretty good, I reckon. Why?”
“You’ve been hangin’ around the settlement for a while, according to what Sam said. Did you recognize that fella?”
“I don’t know his name,” Wilbur said, “but I recollect seein’ him in the Buckingham a few times. You know, the way you see anybody in a saloon, drinkin’ and playin’ cards.”
Matt nodded.
“Then we’ll probably be able to find him in Flat Rock later. We’ve got some settlin’ up to do with that hombre.”
Wilbur snorted and said, “We’ll be lucky to find him. He’s probably takin’ off for the tall and uncut right now. Won’t stop until he gets to Denver or Santa Fe or El Paso.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Matt said. “He’s put a lot of time and effort into this scheme. He’ll try to figure out some way to salvage it. If he could cause some trouble that he could blame on the Navajo ... like maybe burning down the saloon or something ... he might try it.”
“You really think he’d do that?”
“Somebody who would steal a bunch of army rifles and try to turn them over to a troublemaker like Juan Pablo ... I wouldn’t put much of anything past him,” Matt said.
The flame of rage burned so brightly inside Zack Jardine that it threatened to consume him. He had been close, so close, to achieving his goal ...
And then like judgment striking literally from the heavens, that boulder had come crashing down and ruined everything.
He hadn’t gotten a good look at the men who’d been shooting at him, but he was certain one of them was Sam Two Wolves. That blasted half-breed had been a thorn in his side ever since Two Wolves had shown up in Flat Rock.
Joe Hutto and Dave Snyder galloped up alongside Jardine. All the others had fallen to the volley of gunshots from the top of the bluff, including Doyle Hilliard. Jardine had seen him go down with blood spouting from a bullet hole in his chest.
“Zack, what are we gonna do now?” Hutto yelled over the pounding hoofbeats.
“It’s all ruined!” Snyder added, echoing Jardine’s thoughts.
But Jardine wouldn’t
let himself give up. He had come too far, invested too much in this scheme. As he cudgeled his brain, an idea came to him.
“Head for Flat Rock!” he told the two men. “We’re gonna grab that Englishwoman from the Buckingham Palace!”
“What good will that do?” Hutto wanted to know.
“Plenty, when Noah Reilly tells everybody that Indians carried her off! Everybody in town knows Reilly, and they’ll believe him!”
The more Jardine thought about it, the more he believed the hastily formed plan stood a chance of working. Nothing stirred up frontiersmen quicker than a threat to a woman.
If the men of Flat Rock and the nearby ranches believed that Lady Augusta had been kidnapped by the Navajo, they would mount a rescue effort and go charging recklessly out to the canyon where the Navajo lived.
Juan Pablo would meet that attack with all the ferocity he and his followers could muster, even without those army rifles, and blood would be spilled on both sides.
That was all it would take, Jardine told himself.
The blood was the key to everything.
And that key would unlock the fortune that could still make Zack Jardine a rich man.
When Sam and Stovepipe reached the spot where they had left Elizabeth, they found her gone and the horses scattered, just as Sam expected.
“That was pure bad luck,” he said as he brought his mount to a halt. “Juan Pablo and the others must have ridden right into her while they were trying to get away.”
“You reckon they headed back to the canyon?” Stovepipe asked.
“I don’t know where else they would go.” Sam lifted the reins and urged the horse into a run again. Stovepipe followed suit.
The time it took to reach the canyon where Caballo Rojo’s clan lived was torture to Sam. He hadn’t gotten to know Elizabeth all that well before he left to search for the bushwhackers, but from what he had seen of her, she was a fine young woman.
And she had taken good care of Matt, which meant a lot, too. Sam didn’t want anything bad happening to her. He doubted that Juan Pablo would kill her outright—he had expressed his intention to take her as his second wife, after all—but there was no telling what else he might do.
The eastern sky was starting to turn a faint shade of gray from the approach of dawn when Sam and Stovepipe came in sight of the cliffs where the canyon was located. They reined in to talk about their plan of action.
“If we just ride straight in,” Stovepipe said, “Juan Pablo’s probably left guards with a couple of those Springfields he grabbed at the mouth of the canyon to shoot anybody who shows up.”
“That’s the only way in there,” Sam said. “We don’t have any choice.”
“What we need is a distraction. I’ll go chargin’ in to draw their fire, and you come along behind me and pick ’em off.”
“That’s a good way to get yourself killed,” Sam protested.
“You got a better way to get in there?”
Sam had to admit that he didn’t. But he said, “Why don’t I go first and let you pick them off?”
Stovepipe didn’t answer him. Instead, the range detective kicked his horse into a run and galloped straight at the mouth of the canyon.
Sam drew his revolver and followed. Stovepipe had a good lead on him. Sam might have been able to cut into that gap, but he knew this was their best chance of getting into the canyon.
At least one of them might make it through, he thought grimly.
As if warned by some instinct, Stovepipe abruptly pulled his horse to the right, then back to the left. Muzzle flame spurted from both sides of the canyon mouth.
That gave Sam the location of the guards, assuming that there were only two of them. The Springfields were single-shot rifles, and although someone trained in their use could reload very quickly, the Navajo would be far from expert at that.
Sam was counting on that to give him a slight advantage. While the guards were fumbling to get fresh shells into their weapons, he reached the mouth of the canyon himself. He triggered two shots toward the place where he had seen a muzzle flash on the right, then twisted in the saddle and sent two more rounds toward the guard on the left.
He didn’t know if any of his bullets had found their targets, but he was in the canyon now and he could still hear the pounding hoofbeats of Stovepipe’s horse, so he hoped the range detective had made it through all right, too.
What happened from here on out depended on things that were largely out of Sam’s control. How many of the Navajo would support Juan Pablo now that the rifles he had promised them wouldn’t be delivered after all? Would Caballo Rojo continue to step aside, or would he try to take control of the clan again?
A shape loomed up out of the darkness. Sam was reloading his Colt as he rode. He thumbed the sixth cartridge into the wheel, snapped the cylinder closed, and lifted the gun.
“Hold on,” Stovepipe said. “It’s just me. Were you hit, son?”
“No, I made it through all right,” Sam said. “How about you?”
“Nary a scratch.” Stovepipe chuckled. “I’m pretty good at ziggin’ when folks think I’m gonna zag.”
“Now that we’re in, the guards may come after us. And the shots may have warned Juan Pablo that we’re on our way.”
“We best move fast, then, before the varmint has too much time to get ready for us.”
They rode swiftly along the creek. When they came to the first hogan, Sam expected shots to come from it, but the dwelling remained dark and silent.
That was a good sign, he told himself. It could mean that Juan Pablo didn’t have as much support among the other Navajo as he claimed to. Maybe most of them were going to stay out of this clash.
Sam and Stovepipe left that hogan behind and headed for the next one, a couple of hundred yards along the creek. The Navajo liked their privacy and didn’t live clustered up like some of the other tribes. Juan Pablo’s hogan was about three-fourths of a mile into the canyon, and Caballo Rojo’s was another half-mile beyond that.
After they passed two more hogans, they slowed as they approached the one belonging to Juan Pablo.
“He’s gonna be waitin’ for us, or for somebody to come after him, anyway,” Stovepipe warned.
Sam brought his horse to a halt and swung down from the saddle.
“I’m going ahead on foot.”
Stovepipe dismounted as well.
“Good idea,” the range detective said. “I’ll back your play, Sam, whatever it is.”
“We’ll need to draw him out. I know one way to do that: walk right up and challenge him.”
“The ol’ paint a target on your back trick, eh?”
“That’s right,” Sam said. “Only this time it’ll be on my front. And you’re going to come in from behind and get into that hogan so you can free Elizabeth while I’m dealing with Juan Pablo.”
“Mighty risky tactics ... but I don’t have any better idea.”
They split up, Sam going toward the front of the hogan and Stovepipe circling to the rear. Sam looked for possible cover as he approached but didn’t see any. The only things he saw were the stake where Matt had been tied and the burned-out ashes of the fire nearby.
Gun in hand, he called, “Juan Pablo! Come out and face me!”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam leaped to the side. The direction he chose was a gamble. He might be jumping right into the path of a bullet.
But as one of the Springfields cracked from just inside the hogan’s door, the slug whined harmlessly through the air to Sam’s left. He couldn’t return the fire for fear of hitting Elizabeth or Juan Pablo’s wife, so he continued sprinting to the side, hoping that would draw Juan Pablo out of the earthen dwelling.
Instead the renegade called, “Leave this place, half-breed, and I will allow you to live!”
“It’s over, Juan Pablo! There won’t be any uprising against the whites!”
“This is Diné land! It will always be Diné land!”
�
�No one will take it away from you,” Sam said as he crouched, out of a direct line of fire from the hogan’s entrance.
“Already the white men build towns and run their cattle on it! Soon their railroad will come! The Diné will be forced to leave our homes again!”
“Don’t you see that’s exactly what the men who tried to give you those rifles want? They know your people can’t win a war against the army. Rising up against the whites will have just the opposite effect to what you really want.”
“Lies!” Juan Pablo cried. “All lies! You might as well be white!”
Sam tried another tack.
“Let Miss Fleming come out of there,” he urged. “You’re alone now, Juan Pablo.” Sam made that guess based on the fact that no one seemed to be helping the would-be renegade anymore. “Let her go, and things don’t have to get any worse than they already are.”
“No! The woman is mine! I—”
Sam heard a loud thud from inside the hogan and recognized it as the unmistakable sound of something hard hitting flesh and bone. The thud was followed by a groan, and then Elizabeth called, “Sam! Sam, get in here!”
Sam dashed for the doorway. He saw Stovepipe coming around the hogan in a hurry, too, as the range detective responded to Elizabeth’s summons.
Holding his Colt ready, Sam stepped into the dwelling’s shadowy interior.
“I’m over here, tied up,” Elizabeth went on. “Get me loose, Sam, please.”
Sam could make out Juan Pablo’s crumpled form lying on the ground. The man’s wife stood over him, a chunk of firewood in her hand. Sam realized that the woman had clouted Juan Pablo with the wood and knocked him out.
Stooping, Sam took hold of the Springfield rifle that lay next to Juan Pablo’s unconscious form and handed the weapon to Stovepipe, who had followed him into the hogan.
Then he holstered his Colt and pulled the Bowie knife from its sheath.
“Josefina saved me again,” Elizabeth said as Sam knelt next to her to cut the bonds around her wrists. “Of course, she did it out of jealousy, not any great affection for me. In fact, I think she’d be pleased if I left the canyon and never came back.”
Blood Bond: Arizona Ambush Page 21
