“You been pokin’ your nose into things that’re none of your business,” the other man said. “And I’m gonna enjoy shootin’ it off.”
“In that case, what you should have done,” Jackson said, “was shoot me without taking the time to gloat about it.”
“You son of a bitch! Ventilate him!”
Jackson had already slipped his boots out of the stirrups without the gunmen noticing. Now he went out of the saddle in a fast dive to his left. That kept his gun arm on the high side.
One of the men yelled in alarm. Both of them fired. Jackson didn’t know how close the shots came to him, but neither hit him and that was what mattered. His gun was in his hand by the time he hit the ground. He fired while the men were levering fresh rounds into their rifles. The bullet punched into the belly of the man on the right, doubling him over. He dropped his Winchester. It skittered down the front side of the boulder, followed a second later by the man’s body.
The shot was luck as much as anything, Jackson knew. He was damned good with a gun, no point in denying it, but at night, firing upward at a steep angle like that . . . well, everybody needed a little luck sometimes. He swung the Colt to the left and triggered again, at the same instant as the second man’s rifle cracked and flame gouted from the muzzle.
The Winchester’s bullet smacked into the ground close enough to Jackson to fling grit in his face and make him wince and blink. Pawing at his eyes, he scrambled to his feet and lunged behind his horse, hating to use the animal for cover but knowing he had no choice. Another shot blasted from the rifle, telling Jackson that the man was still in the fight. Chances were, Jackson’s shot hadn’t even touched him.
But Jackson wasn’t hit either. He grabbed the horse’s reins and dragged the animal with him as he ran at an angle toward the boulders. He snapped another shot at the man on top of the boulder, who was kneeling now. The high-pitched whine told Jackson his bullet had ricocheted off the rock.
With the hoofbeats sounding like thunder close beside him, Jackson rounded the right-hand boulder. The remaining gunman couldn’t see him now. He let the horse go and gave it a slap on the rump to keep it moving. The hoofbeats receded into the darkness.
The rifleman wouldn’t know if Jackson had gone with the horse, or if he was still close by, waiting.
Jackson pressed his back against the rock, which was almost uncomfortably warm because it retained quite a bit of the heat from the day. He listening intently, thinking that for the second night in a row he had found himself being shot at and then playing a cat-and-mouse game with his would-be killer. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, but it wasn’t all that unusual, either.
The bushwhacker had himself in a predicament too. Being on top of that boulder had given him the advantage of the high ground, but now he couldn’t get down from it without Jackson hearing him. Jackson waited patiently, and after a few minutes, he heard the scrape of boot leather on rock. The man was trying to climb down as quietly as he could, but he couldn’t manage it in complete silence.
A soft thud told Jackson that the man had slid the rest of the way and hit the ground. Instantly, while the man would still be off balance, Jackson whipped around the boulder where he waited and opened fire, squeezing off two fast shots toward the moving patch of darkness he saw beside the other boulder. Colt flame bloomed redly in the shadows as the man returned the fire, this time with a handgun, aiming at Jackson’s muzzle flashes.
Jackson was already belly-down on the ground, though, having thrown himself forward as soon as he squeezed off the shots. The slugs whistled harmlessly over his head. With a better target now, he fired again, a single shot. He heard the man grunt in pain.
With his Colt empty for the moment, Jackson rolled up against the slight overhang of the boulder, hoping that no snakes had curled up there. He shook out the empties and started thumbing in fresh cartridges from his shell belt. He didn’t know how badly the man was hurt, but he was pretty sure his last shot had scored a hit.
Suddenly he heard the thud of running footsteps, and then a horse nickered. Son of a bitch, Jackson thought as he snapped the Colt’s cylinder closed and came up on his knees. The bastard had a mount tied up somewhere close by, of course, and now he was trying to get away.
As hoofbeats pounded, Jackson emptied the Colt into the darkness, aiming at the sound of the running horse. The horse kept moving. Jackson bit back a curse as he pushed himself to his feet and quickly started to reload again. He didn’t know where his horse was. He whistled, but the animal didn’t come.
With his gun still in his hand, Jackson went around to the front of the boulder he had used for cover. Using his other hand, he found a match in his shirt pocket. He couldn’t hear the running horse anymore, so he figured it was safe to light the lucifer. He snapped it into life with his thumbnail. The sudden glare of flame showed him the crumpled body of the man he had shot, lying on the ground in front of the boulder, a dark pool of blood underneath him.
Jackson hooked a boot toe under the man’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The man wore a duster, the front of which was sodden with blood. Nobody could lose that much blood and remain conscious. Jackson holstered his gun and reached down to grasp the flour-sack hood that still concealed the man’s face. He pulled it off.
The match flame burned down to the point that Jackson had to shake it out before it singed his fingers. But he had gotten a good enough look under that hood to see that the man’s eyes were glazed over in death. He recognized the face as well, and now he knew why the voices of the two men had been familiar. They were the hardcases who had confronted him in the saloon right after he met Everett for the first time. The men who had been friends with the three hombres he had killed for torturing old Julio. The ones he had handled with such humiliating ease.
Had they been waiting to settle that score with him ever since? Biding their time until they were ready to bushwhack him?
Jackson might have believed that was all it amounted to if it had not been for two things. One was the fact that they had been wearing hoods. If this had been an attempt at a simple revenge killing, there would have been no need for that. The other thing was the way one of the man had said that Jackson was sticking his nose into things that were none of his business.
They had been acting on orders from someone else, Jackson realized. Sure, they had probably been glad to take on the job of killing him, but it hadn’t been entirely their idea. Somebody had given them that task.
The Hand of God.
A small, grim smile tugged at the corners of Jackson’s mouth. His efforts had borne fruit. The killer calling himself the Hand of God was scared of him. Maybe Jackson was even closer than he had thought.
He turned as he heard a horse approaching. The gun in his hand came up. It was only his own mount, though, he saw as the animal came closer. He holstered his gun as the horse bumped its nose against his shoulder.
“Took your own sweet time about answering that whistle,” he said as he swung up into the saddle. The horse tossed its head as if in apology. “Don’t reckon I can blame you, though,” Jackson went on. “You keep getting shot at.”
Leaving the dead man where he lay, Jackson rode in the direction the other bushwhacker had fled. Actually tracking somebody at night was next thing to impossible, but sometimes if you started in the right direction you got lucky.
Not only that, but Jackson was aware that the headquarters of the Winged T lay in the direction he was going. The bushwhacker was wounded, and a hurt animal tended to head for its den. That was one more thing pointing to Benjamin Tillman as the twisted mind behind the killings.
After he had ridden along for a while, Jackson spotted something on a stretch of open, sandy ground. He reined in and looked down at the dark blotch on the earth, then dismounted and touched a finger to it. Sticky. He picked up some of the dirt and rubbed it between his fingers. That was a splash of blood on the ground. The man he had wounded must have fallen off his horse here before mounting up a
gain and riding on. Jackson was convinced he was still going in the right direction.
He urged his horse to a faster pace, heading straight for the Winged T now and moving as quickly as he could. He thought it was unlikely that he would catch up to the bushwhacker before the man reached the ranch, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to try.
A short time later, lights appeared in the distance. Not mysterious floating balls of witchfire, but rather yellow rectangles of illumination. Those would be lights in the windows of the buildings at the Winged T headquarters, he knew. And as he closed in on them, he saw movement between him and the lights. The wounded bushwhacker approaching the ranch? It was certainly possible. Like a wolf on the scent of prey, Jackson arrowed toward the spot.
But if he had actually been a wolf, he might have sensed the other predators around him. As it was, he had no warning before the lasso settled over his shoulders and jerked tight, pinning his arms to his side. Jackson lurched in the saddle and tried to get his hand on his gun anyway, but before he could do that another rope caught him. The loops were so taut around his chest that he couldn’t even draw a deep breath to yell a curse. He barely managed to pull his feet free of the stirrups so they wouldn’t catch as he was hauled out of the saddle. If they had, he might have suffered a broken ankle or leg.
Not that it was likely to matter, he thought as he slammed to the ground with the ropes still pinning him. Another loop snagged his neck, cutting off his air even more. The only question now was what the manner of his death would be.
He didn’t have time to ponder it. Bulky, shadowy figures loomed around him, and a gun butt smashed against his head, driving the last vestiges of consciousness from his brain.
Chapter 24
Rosalie Graham was alone in the newspaper office when Everett opened the door and stepped inside a couple of minutes before seven o’clock that evening. She greeted him with a smile, and he thought again how pretty she was with that blond hair and those cornflower-blue eyes.
“Hello, Everett. I hope you’re hungry.”
“Famished,” he said. “Where’s Malcolm?”
“Something came up, and Malcolm won’t be able to join us,” she said.
Everett didn’t know whether to be disappointed or elated. He had looked forward to talking more with his fellow newspaperman, but on the other hand, the prospect of having dinner alone with Rosalie . . . having her all to himself for an hour or two . . . was certainly intriguing.
“Nothing major, I hope?”
“What? Oh, you mean the problem requiring Mal’s attention.” Still smiling, she shook her head. “Nothing major at all. He got word that there’d been a fire at one of the ranches south of town, so he rode out to talk to the rancher and find out how bad it was. That’s news, you know.”
Everett nodded. “Yes, of course. All the local tragedies, as well as the triumphs, have to be covered, I would think.”
She came through the gate in the railing and offered him her arm. “In the meantime, we’ll go down to the café and have a nice dinner. They fry up a fairly good steak there.”
Everett slipped his arm through hers and enjoyed the feel of her closeness, just as he had the night before. He smelled the fresh scent of her hair and felt a little giddy from it.
As they strolled along the street toward the café, Rosalie asked, “Did you ever get a chance to ask Mr. Jackson about doing an interview for the paper?”
Everett didn’t tell her that he wasn’t even sure whether he and Jackson were still on good terms. Instead, he gave an honest answer. “Yes, I talked to him, and he agreed to do the interview.”
“Excellent. I’ll tell Malcolm. I take it your dispatches for the Universe have been well received?”
“I don’t really know,” Everett admitted. “I’ve only had a chance to send in a few of them, and I haven’t heard anything back from my editor. I’m not sure the first story has even run yet.”
“Well, I’m sure that when it does, your readers in New York will be fascinated.”
When they reached the café with its tables covered by blue-checked cloths, Everett ordered steak dinners with all the trimmings for both of them. While they sipped coffee and waited for their food, Rosalie asked him more questions about life in New York and his work on the newspaper there. Even though Everett was a little ashamed to be doing it, he embellished his role at the Universe a bit, making it sound like he was more important there than he actually was. But surely that exaggeration was forgivable, he told himself, because what man wouldn’t exaggerate a bit to impress a pretty girl?
When he asked her about her and her brother’s life in Death Head Crossing and in Dallas before that, she deflected the questions, insisting that there was nothing remarkable or interesting about their lives. Everett might have pressed the point, but he was enjoying talking about himself too much. He was aware of that, but couldn’t seem to stop it. That was how powerful the spell cast by Rosalie’s smile was.
The plump, white-aproned waitress brought platters of food from the kitchen and placed them on the table. Everett already knew from his experiences at Mrs. Morton’s boardinghouse that Westerners were hearty eaters, but even so the size of the steak surprised him a little, as did the mound of hash brown potatoes. There were biscuits and gravy too, along with corn and greens and then deep-dish apple pie for dessert. He tried to do justice to the meal, washing down the food with gulps of strong black coffee, but he was afraid he failed.
“Don’t worry,” Rosalie assured him with a soft laugh when he made a comment about there being enough food to provision an army. “You just haven’t been out here long enough to develop a true Western appetite yet. If you stay in Texas, you’ll learn to eat like a Texan.”
Everett started to say that he would stay in Texas or go elsewhere depending on what Jackson wanted to do, but he stopped himself. He didn’t know if Jackson would even allow him to come along when he left Death Head Crossing. So he just returned her smile and said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
When they were finished with their supper, Everett paid for it and told Rosalie, “I still owe your brother a meal.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’ve shown me a fine time this evening, so I’m sure Malcolm will be glad to call everything even.”
“The pleasure has been all mine,” Everett assured her.
As they walked back to the house where Rosalie and her brother lived, Everett’s mind was racing. Would she invite him in when they got there? Was it possible she would allow him to kiss her? His thoughts might have gone beyond even that, but he wouldn’t allow them to do so. If he did, his brain would become so inflamed that his head might explode.
What actually happened was that Rosalie paused, turned to him, extended her hand, and said, “Thank you, Everett. It was a perfectly lovely evening.”
The implication was obvious. It had been a lovely evening, and he shouldn’t try to ruin it by making it into anything else. He smiled, hoping that his expression didn’t look too pained, and took her hand.
“Thank you for being such charming company,” he told her.
As he walked away from the house, he took some solace from the fact that her handshake had been warm and had lingered a second or two longer than it had to. He resolved then and there to ask her to have dinner with him again while he was in Death Head Crossing.
The pleasant possibilities of such a rendezvous were going through his mind when someone suddenly grabbed him violently from behind.
Jackson couldn’t get his breath, couldn’t see anything, and for a terrifying moment after his senses returned to him, he thought he had been buried alive. Shut up in a wooden box under the ground. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
That was because a gag had been shoved into his mouth and tied in place, he realized. Would his captors have bothered to gag him if he was buried alive? That seemed unlikely, since no one would be able to hear him if that were the case. His madly hammering pulse slowed a bit, and nerves stretche
d almost to the breaking point eased slightly. He was alive, he told himself. Alive.
That meant he still had a chance.
The swaying motion told him he was on horseback. He tried to move his hands and lift his arms, but all he succeeded in doing was hunching his shoulders slightly. His wrists were tied to the saddle horn. He tested his leg muscles, and determined that a rope had been passed under his horse’s belly and used to tie his feet together. Whoever had taken him prisoner had done a good job of lashing him onto the horse so that he couldn’t fall off.
They might not know yet that he was awake, so he continued to slump forward as if unconscious. He hoped they hadn’t noticed that small movement of his shoulders.
He couldn’t see anything, but he could still hear, although the sounds were muffled for some reason. Several other horses were moving nearby. He had already known that more than one man was responsible for his capture, since at least three lassos had come sailing out of the darkness to settle around him. From the sounds he heard now, he judged that there were seven or eight riders around him. They had him surrounded so that if he came to, he couldn’t try to make a break for freedom.
He didn’t want to escape, Jackson realized, at least not just yet. What he wanted was to know who these men were.
One of the riders had to be holding his horse’s reins and leading the animal. The man pulled back on them and said, “Whoa,” bringing Jackson’s mount to a halt. They must have reached their destination. The man’s voice was thick, disguised somehow, as he went on. “Get him down from there.” Jackson didn’t recall ever hearing it before, but it was hard to be sure under the circumstances.
He felt a knife slice through the bonds on his wrists and ankles, parting the ropes with a jerk. Hands grasped him. Keeping his body limp, he let himself be dragged out of the saddle and dropped on the ground.
“Get the hood off of him,” the leader ordered.
Jackson had already noticed a faint smell of flour, and figured out that his vision was obscured by one of those flour-sack hoods like the ones worn by the men who’d ambushed him earlier tonight. It was pulled off of his head now. Light hit his eyes.
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