Too Far Down

by Mary Connealy

  Emerging into the sunlight, Cole took a few seconds to breathe in the clean air and get the weight of the mountain off his shoulders. He saw Justin and Heath sprinting up the side of the mountain.

  Men digging looked up and saw them, and a cheer went up.

  The horses. The Cimarron Ranch. Sadie, Angie.

  Mel . . .

  Cole raced after them, praying he’d get there in time to stop a tragedy.

  Smoke billowed out of the broken windows of the ranch house.

  “What are you doing?” A scream of rage came from outside.

  “We’re burning it down!” Sadie’s voice lifted over the roar of the fire.

  Mel had sent Rosita and Angie to the window in the only bedroom downstairs. They could climb out the window and be gone as soon as it was safe to abandon the house.

  “I’ll destroy this house before I let you have it.”

  “No! It’s mine.” Hattie came charging out of the barn.

  Seth was ready. He fired steadily at her. The distance was enough that he missed, but he got close enough he stopped her from advancing. She hit the ground and scrambled back inside the barn.

  “I can’t get out, and you can’t get in,” Sadie shouted. “When this is done you’ll be living on an ash heap, and my pa will come home and bury you under the foundation of the new home he’ll build. You’ll get nothing.”

  “Let’s go, Sadie.” Seth tugged at her arm, but she resisted.

  Mel hesitated. “We still have time. I don’t want her getting in here in time to put the fire out.”

  “Well, I don’t want us still in here when the roof starts caving in.”

  “I thought she was supposed to give up when she saw the house burning down.”

  Seth gave Sadie a strange, confused look. “Uh, no, she’s supposed to give up after the house burns down.”

  “That’s the same thing,” Mel said.

  Shaking his head, Seth asked, “You didn’t think we were just going to pretend to burn it down, did you?”

  “I hoped there was a chance . . .”

  “It’s gonna burn, baby sister. Hattie won’t head out soon enough that we can put out the flames. I’m sorry if I left you any reason to hope.”

  “Yep, hope is just a waste of time today.” Sadie nodded, then looked back out the window.

  Mel saw the ceiling of the living room by the fireplace start to break up, sending sparks flying as the fire spread fast toward the kitchen.

  “Now, Sadie,” Seth called out. “Let’s go!”

  Mel looked around. Flames were everywhere. Smoke billowed from the rooms Rosita used. She stepped into the hallway that led to the office, the downstairs bedroom, and the stairs to the second floor. Choking smoke poured down from upstairs, and the bannister was on fire. Heat and fumes pressed against them as the flames consumed every section of the house.

  Sadie looked at Mel and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Mel had never seen her friend quite like this. The strength that came with the Boden name was alive and well in her. Mel felt her own upbringing lift her courage.

  Despite the fight and the fire and the sickening twist in Mel’s stomach to know she’d shot a man, she was still in the fight. But right now the fight meant retreat.

  The two women rushed to the bedroom with the window that led out the back. Seth was right behind them, with Angie and Rosita already gone.

  Mel went through the window, knowing Sadie wouldn’t go first.

  The dense woods came up close to the house, and Mel ran for cover.

  She saw the skirt of Angie’s dress vanish around a clump of aspens, heading straight north. Mel had never been in these woods before. They were too crowded with trees to make a proper playground when they were children. She paused, glanced back to see that Sadie was out of the window and Seth was swinging himself through, then turned and slammed into something like rock.

  It was Cole.

  “I’m going in on foot from here,” Chance shouted over the clatter of the racing wagon wheels. He’d been hearing shots for two miles and driving like a madman. He reined in the team, fighting the near-panicked horses to pull the wagon to a halt.

  One neighed and reared up so high that Chance thought the critter was going over backward. Instead the horse leapt forward, jerking the wagon nearly in half.

  Finn and his ma had stayed with Sister Margaret. Chance wasn’t taking a sick woman and a little boy to a gunfight.

  Nor his wife, who’d refused to stay in town.

  “Stay back.” Chance glared at Ronnie. Boy, was that ever an order not apt to work. Unless he moved so fast his feisty wife didn’t have time to think—and she was fast thinking.

  He jumped off the wagon before it’d rolled to a full stop. His leg sent a stab of pain up his spine all the way to his eyeballs.

  He paid it no mind. His rifle in hand, a six-shooter on his hip, he sprinted for home.

  He rounded a bend in the trail to see smoke billowing from his house, flames licking out of every window. He heard bullets whizzing from the barn to the house, with return fire being sent right back. His family had to be in the house, and it was burning down around their ears.

  “No!” Ronnie raced past him. He didn’t have time to wrestle her to the ground and haul her back. With his bum leg he might not even be able to catch her to try such a thing.

  He ran on. This was no time for yelling. He didn’t want whoever was attacking the ranch to know the cavalry was coming.

  There were men in the bunkhouse, and more in the barn. He saw a man lying motionless on the ground and recognized him as one of the CR hands. A wave of grief washed over him. How many others were dead? Were his children among them?

  Ronnie went to the back door of the barn and waited. He caught her and saw eyes that burned so bright with rage, his little wife might just set the varmints on fire rather than shoot them.

  “Ready?” She grasped the door handle, her pistol drawn and aimed straight up.

  “Three of them in the barn.” Chance held up three fingers, his voice low. “Two behind the big door on the right, one on the left. I’ll take the two on the right.”

  “The gunfire from the house has stopped.” Ronnie’s eyes narrowed, and they both considered what that might mean. “Even so, look out for bullets coming from the house.”

  Chance brought his rifle up. The barn was big; it would be wise to have the best aim possible to hit something on the far side of it, and that meant using the rifle.

  “Go!”

  “Go!” Cole jerked his head to indicate the east.

  Instead, Mel threw herself into his arms. “She said you’d died.”

  Cole’s arms came around her hard. The two staggered when Sadie hit him on the shoulder. “Cole, is Heath with you? What about Justin?”

  “We’re all fine. Walt too.” Cole’s eyes went past Sadie, and his brows arched.

  Seth walked right past them on his way to Heath. Sadie saw him, gasped, and abandoned Cole for her husband. Mel saw Rosita beaming to find her boys alive and well.

  “Hugging time’s over.” Cole kept his arm around Mel even after he’d said it.

  His arms, the life and strength of them, knowing he’d survived—Mel felt a surge of triumph. With Cole and Heath at their side, they were going to finish this thing right now. But where were Justin and Uncle Walt?

  Cole added, “We’re going to get behind the bunkhouse and clear out those varmints. Then we’ll take over the barn and—”

  “I just came that way,” Seth said, cutting him off. “There’s an open stretch and it was all I could do to slip across it on my belly, one inch at a time. We’re not all going to cross it unnoticed.”

  Seth had lost his place by Heath, who had an arm around Sadie. “I’m Seth Kincaid, by the way. It was my idea to burn your house down.”

  “What?” Cole turned toward the house, not visible through the dense woods. But the acrid smell of smoke hung thick in the air, unmistakable. “That’s our house
burning?” He glared at Seth, his eyes on fire.

  With an incredulous expression, Heath said, “You burned down the Boden house?” He punched Seth hard in the shoulder.

  Seth rubbed his shoulder without paying it much attention. “Yep. Figured that loco señora was going to kill everyone in the house just to get her hands on it. Burning it down denied her the house, stopped her from overrunning it and turning the place into a fort.”

  Cole shook his head as if to clear it of the desire to murder Seth where he stood. “I’m going to wait and kill you later. Right now I need your help stopping these varmints.”

  Seth grinned. “I’ll be around if you’ve a mind to try.”

  “We don’t need to sneak across.” Cole caught Mel by the arm and started heading north. “Justin and Walt are going to create a diversion. We’d better be in place. We can slip through the woods on past the house, then run to the cabin Heath and Sadie live in now. Best take advantage of these outlaws looking elsewhere.”

  Cole quit talking and snuck along the north side of the house. He ducked into the woods and kept moving. Mel did her best to keep up with him. Seth was on their heels, followed by Heath and Sadie, then Angie and Rosita. Within minutes they reached the end of the clearing, just fifty paces from the forest edge and the first structure.

  Heath grumbled, “We’re gonna be real close to my house, Seth. Should we pause and turn it into kindling while we’re at hand?”

  “Better not.” Seth didn’t sound one bit worried about what anyone thought—or maybe he missed Heath’s sarcasm. “The family might need a roof over their heads.”

  Cole stopped and turned. “Give Justin and Walt a chance to get into place. Rosita, you should stay here with Angie.”

  “I will fight at your family’s side, Cole.” Rosita hefted her rifle.

  “Yep, I know it, but I need someone here in case they spot us while we’re in the open. We’re gonna run flat out, and I don’t want to have to stop while we’re exposed and shoot back.”

  Rosita glanced at Angie. “We can watch their backs, can’t we?”

  Mel heaved a sigh of relief. Yep, Angie had gotten to be a good shot, so this was a job she could handle. And she’d been in the middle of the fight back at the house. Yet the sweet woman didn’t have a killer bone in her body. For a second she had, when she thought Justin was dead. Now that she saw he was alive, though, Angie seemed to have gone back to her sweet self.

  Which didn’t mean she couldn’t shoot straight.

  “Thanks, Rosita.” Cole looked from Mel to Heath, then Sadie to Seth. “We wait for the diversion.”

  They held when everything in Mel wanted to break from cover and run. She knew part of the urgency was the Boden house fire. She still hoped they could get to it and put the fire out, save at least part of it.

  Gunfire sounded from the west, from the direction of Skull Mesa.

  “That’s Justin’s Sharps rifle,” Cole said. “They’re rounding up the outlaws to the west.”

  More shooting rang out, this time coming from the barn and the bunkhouse but aiming away from the burning ranch house. Hopefully all their eyes were to the west as well as their guns.

  “Now move!”

  31

  Ronnie ripped the door open. Chance dodged around the corner, Ronnie only a pace behind him. They rushed the gunmen on the far side of the barn just as shooting started from the west.

  Chance slashed his pistol butt across the back of the outlaw’s head while Ronnie swung her rifle with all her strength to knock the man on the left of the doorway. A dull thud sounded and her man crumpled to the ground.

  “No!” a woman shouted. She was standing off to the side in the shadows. The woman rushed forward.

  Ronnie recognized her.

  Señora de Val’s rifle came around and fired.

  Cole reached the safety of the ramrod’s cabin and whirled around to see the rest of his crew gain cover one by one—Mel, Sadie, Heath, and Seth the house-burning polecat.

  “There’s open space between here and the foreman’s house, and more between that cabin and the bunkhouse.” Cole looked around the corner and didn’t see anyone aiming at him. “I think we got across the open stretch without being seen.”

  Suddenly the shooting picked up, coming from Justin and Walt. Right when Cole needed them to let up so he could get behind the bunkhouse.

  Mel grabbed his arm. “The shooting from the barn is aimed this way.”

  Chance dove past Ronnie and grabbed the rifle barrel.

  Ronnie dropped to the floor just as Lauressa fired. The bullet passed over her head. A second later, Chance jerked it up and aimed at the roof. The long gun fired and fired again while Chance wrestled for it.

  Lauressa de Val screamed and fired as one possessed.

  Ronnie saw it on the foul woman’s face. The condemned soul, the hatred, her inhuman strength—everything about her shouted that she was in league with Satan himself.

  Ronnie’s strong husband tore the gun free and disarmed her. Lauressa clawed at her holstered pistol, but Chance snatched it away and tossed it across the room. It skidded just inches from Ronnie, who promptly picked it up.

  Lauressa shrieked with every breath. Without a gun, she now turned her claws on Chance and raked them across his face.

  Ronnie knew her husband well, and hitting a woman, let alone shooting one, went against every fiber of his nature. He’d do it to save someone, but it’d hurt him all the days of his life. She glanced at the man she’d whacked, saw he was unconscious, then strode across the barn and slapped the devil woman across the face so hard it knocked her down.

  Ronnie had a feeling she wouldn’t be bothered by that for one minute.

  “The shooting from the barn has stopped.” Looking around, Cole tried to judge if Justin and Walt would be careful enough, their aim tight enough, that they’d be safe getting across about a twenty-foot space between the two buildings.

  That was when he saw John. He wanted to start shouting, but that would warn the outlaws he was close by. Pressing his back against the ramrod’s cabin, he looked at Mel, then Sadie. “John’s out there.”

  “We saw him,” Mel said. “He went down in the first assault. I came riding in from the mine to warn Sadie, and John ran to gather your cowhands while I went into the house. The gunfire started before he got out of the yard.”

  Cole swallowed hard. “You must’ve gotten to safety just a few steps ahead of the attack.”

  Mel gave a slow nod, her golden-brown eyes filled with sadness. “Then I had to go inside and tell Sadie and Angie that their husbands might be dead.”

  “Sorry you had to bear such hard news.”

  Mel patted Cole on the arm. “Glad I turned out to be wrong.”

  “So am I.”

  “I count five men in the bunkhouse.” Cole looked at Heath, who nodded his agreement. He noticed Mel and Seth had nodded, too.

  “There’s a back door,” Cole added, “and no one’s shooting that way. We’ll head through there and take care of these men, then go after the last of them in the barn.”

  At that moment a bloodcurdling scream came from the barn.

  The screaming grew louder.

  Lauressa lunged at Ronnie.

  Chance, still wrestling with her, said, “Was that necessary?”

  Ronnie shrugged. “How much angrier and noisier can the furiously mad woman get?”

  Chance pulled a kerchief from his pocket. “Gag her.”

  Ronnie enjoyed that. Even more, she enjoyed the silence. She found a length of rope, and soon they had all three outlaws trussed up.

  Chance went to the doorway to look at the house, leaning out an inch at a time. “Still shooting coming from the bunkhouse. And also from the west.”

  “They seem to be shooting at each other. So one of them is on our side and one the other.”

  “I think Loco Lauressa here was shooting toward the west, so I think that’s our family.”

  “And I think th
at’s Justin’s old Sharps rifle.” Chance looked again, going out a bit farther. He bellowed with rage. “John’s out there! Looks like he’s dead.”

  Ronnie leaned out and gasped. Clutching her stomach, she considered giving Lauressa a nice hard kick. How many more would they find? “We’ve got to get him out of there.” Despite the shootout, she couldn’t stop herself from looking again, this time more closely. “I think he’s breathing, Chance.”

  Chance studied his old friend. “It’s ten paces to get him, ten paces back.” Chance turned back to Ronnie. “Let’s swing the barn door open. That’ll cut the number of paces in half.”

  The barn had two large doors on this side, big enough to drive a covered wagon through.

  “So you’ll be in the middle of a gun battle only for a few paces?” Ronnie looked from John to Chance. “That’s the devil’s own choice to make.”

  “The gunfire from the west is aimed at the sky.” Cole glanced back, and Mel saw that it was time. “Justin knows I’m ready.”

  Mel judged the shooting from the bunkhouse. “Five men—that’s one apiece and one’s wounded. We’re ready. Go.”

  Cole darted across the open space, Mel hard on his heels. The rest were right behind them. Cole stopped at the back door to the bunkhouse, centered in the middle of the long, low building. His eyes met Mel’s. She nodded. They’d all made it across. She and Cole got on the far side of the door, with Sadie, Heath, and Seth across from them.

  Cole jerked open the door and went in to find five men all facing away from him. “Drop your guns now. We’ve got a gun on every one of you. One twitch and we fill you all full of lead.” His voice was harsh, the kind of tone that made a man freeze in his tracks. Mel had never heard Cole Boden speak that way before.

  The five men’s guns, all aimed in the wrong direction, dropped. Their hands flew up. There was rope aplenty in the bunkhouse, so Cole, Heath, and Seth got busy tying up the hands and feet of those who’d spend the rest of their lives in jail.

  Cole thought of John, turned and looked out the window at him, already grieving.