The Thunder Riders

by Frank Leslie

  He kept his voice low, pitched with caution. “You alone, amigo?”

  Yakima grinned. “Only a fool would come alone, amigo.”

  “Where’s your friends?”

  Just then, a horse whinnied somewhere off in the darkness. It was a shrill call, a plea. The man turned his head toward it. Yakima leapt toward him, nudged the rifle wide, and slammed his right fist into the man’s jaw—a savage blow that knocked the man straight back, off his feet, with a groan.

  He landed on his back, cracking branches. Lifting his head, he brought the rifle back around, but Yakima pinned his arm to the ground with his bare left foot, then bent down and drove his fist into the man’s face. When the man’s head bounced off the ground, Yakima punched him again, then again, until he’d smashed his face to a bloody pulp and the man lay limp at the base of a cottonwood.

  Wheeling, Yakima grabbed the Henry and dropped to a knee, holding the Henry straight up and down in his hands as he snapped his head around, peering into the darkness, listening. Behind him, the horse snorted and whinnied softly.

  Wolf.

  Deciding that none of the outlaws were headed this way, Yakima rose and strode back into the darkness. He stopped. Before him stood the black stallion, two ropes looped around his neck, tying him taut to a tree on each side.

  “Easy, boy, it’s me.” Yakima moved slowly forward, noting the rawhide hobbles on the horse’s feet. “Shh. That’s it. Quiet.”

  He ran his hand along the horse’s back as he walked up beside him. Moving toward his head, he saw the gunnysack draped over Wolf’s snout. No holes had been cut for his nostrils. The burlap dimpled as the stallion breathed, sucking air through the tightly woven fabric.

  Tied, hobbled, and blinded! Yakima set his rifle down, reached up, and slowly peeled the sack down over the horse’s long, fine snout. “You must have raised holy hob with those bastards!”

  The black’s molasses eyes stared back at Yakima, the pupils expanding and contracting quickly as he bobbed his head with joy, snorting happily.

  “Easy, easy,” Yakima said, running his hands down the horse’s snout, feeling the six- or seven-inch gashes. They’d partially healed over, but some of the cuts still oozed blood and pus. When he probed one such spot with his fingers, Wolf jerked his head up sharply.

  “It’s all right, boy. Easy. I’m not gonna hurt you. What’d those bastards do to you, anyway? They’ll soon wish they hadn’t tangled with either—”

  A voice rose behind him. “Yakima?” He spun around, snagging his .44 from its holster and thumbing the hammer back.

  But the voice had been familiar. And a familiar figure stood before him now, ten feet away.

  Anjanette stared at him through the darkness, her long black hair framing her face, the silver crucifix winking softly between her high, proud breasts.

  Chapter 21

  Yakima’s finger closed over the trigger, and the gun quivered slightly in his clenched fist. Anjanette stared at the gun pointed at her chest, then at him. She held his saddle by the horn, his blanket, bridle, and saddlebags draped over it. Her breathing was ragged.

  She slung the gear forward, dropped it in the dust at Yakima’s feet. “Figured you’d need these.”

  Yakima looked around. “Where’s Considine?”

  “He headed off to powwow with Mad Dog.”

  Yakima kept the .44 aimed at her. “Any of your compadres know I’m here?”

  She stared at him coolly, then, unable to hold his gaze, looked down. “Only me. When I heard Wolf, I figured you’d come.” She looked up at him. “How did you know—”

  “I saw you with Considine.”

  Absently, she lifted a hand to one of the many bruises on her face. “I made a mistake. It wasn’t the first one. Probably won’t be the last.” She stepped forward, placed her hand on his forearm. “Take me with you.”

  Before he knew what he’d done, he’d slapped her with the back of his right hand. Her head flew sideways, and her hat tumbled off her shoulder.

  Yakima’s voice was tight. “Between here and Saber Creek, there’s anywhere between twenty and thirty men dead because of you and them.”

  She shook her hair back from her face and stared up at Yakima, her dark eyes bright with tears. “I didn’t know what he was like. I didn’t know what any of it would be like!”

  “So, now you know, and you want to run home to your grandfather, just like nothing happened?” Yakima grabbed the bridle and turned to Wolf. “Well, I’m not your ticket. If you want to go home, you’ll have to find your own damn way.”

  “Please!” She sobbed as Yakima slipped the bridle bit through Wolf’s teeth, then draped the harness straps over his ears. “I’m scared, Yakima. Considine’s crazy. They’re all crazy!”

  Yakima spread the blanket over Wolf’s back, followed it with the saddle. “Killers usually are.”

  When he’d cinched the latigo under Wolf’s belly and slung his saddlebags over the horse’s rear, Anjanette wrapped her arms around Yakima’s waist, pressed her head against his back.

  “We shared a night together, Yakima,” she whispered. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  Yakima spun around, his jaw taut, and grabbed her by one arm and the back of her neck. He ran her into the willows and was about to heave her into the river when a voice sounded up the bank behind him—clear and conversational in the quiet night.

  “I’m relievin’ ya, Jimbo. Go on and . . .”

  Yakima froze, then whipped his head to see a shadow standing atop the dark bank on the other side of Wolf. The shadow jerked suddenly, bringing a rifle up. “Who’s there?”

  Yakima released Anjanette’s arm and slipped his revolver from its holster. He loosed two quick shots over Wolf’s back. Bounding forward, he leapt into the stallion’s saddle. A rifle cracked to his right, the slug curling the air along the back of his neck.

  Holding the black’s reins taut with his left hand, Yakima loosed two more shots up the bank. He gigged the horse toward Anjanette, then reined the horse in a tight circle.

  “Climb up, goddamn it!” He fired two more rounds into the inky darkness.

  Anjanette leapt forward, grabbed Yakima’s hand, and swung up behind him as the rifle on the hill flashed and boomed twice, the slugs plunking into the willows behind Yakima.

  “Hold on!” Yakima shouted, reining the sure-footed stallion in another tight circle, then giving him his head. They galloped downstream, the black stallion chewing up the damp shoreline with his long, plunging stride. The horse laid his ears flat against his head, snorting with every breath, leaping driftwood logs and dodging boulders.

  Behind, the man on the bank squeezed off two more shots, both rounds plunking into the river to the left and behind Yakima and Anjanette. Shouts rose from the ruins.

  The man behind yelled, “Rider headed downstream with the girl! Cut him off!”

  As if on command, a gun flashed ahead and to the right, from just above a rocky knob. The boom made Wolf tense his shoulder muscles. The slug whistled over Yakima’s head and splashed into the river.

  Yakima tightened his jaw. He’d wanted to reach a shallow ford another thirty yards downstream, but the shooter on his right stood above the rocky knob, aiming a Winchester. Yakima swung the black into the river at the same time the desperado triggered another shot. The slug plunked into the water just off Wolf’s right shoulder.

  The horse whinnied. Her arms wrapped tightly around Yakima’s belly, Anjanette cursed.

  Yakima hunkered low and batted his heels against the stallion’s flanks, urging him into the fog. “Move, boy!”

  Rifles and revolvers clattered behind them, punctuated by angry shouts and the scuff of heels on rock.

  Someone shouted, “He’s straight out in the water, fer chrissakes! Shoot the bastard!”

  A slug barked into a rock just right of the long-striding stallion. Wolf gave a start, and there was the angry scrape and splash of a shod hoof slipping on a half-submerged rock. The
horse leaned sharply right, his head swinging left. Yakima reached for the saddle horn too late. He and Anjanette slid down Wolf’s right side, taking the saddle with them.

  Anjanette screamed as she followed Yakima into the river, the horse plunging onto his side and trapping Yakima’s right leg underneath. Yakima winced against the sharp pain of a half ton of horse grinding his leg into the rocks and sand under three feet of water. But before he’d fully realized what had happened, Wolf was pulling his hooves back beneath him, slipping and sliding on the slick rocks, lifting a wild whinny.

  Heedless of the sharp pain in his right hip and knee, Yakima rose, pulled Anjanette up by one arm, and swung her back behind him. Guns flashed and popped on the opposite shore, the slugs whistling around Yakima’s head, splashing into the river.

  As Wolf gained his feet, the saddle hanging down his right side, Yakima grabbed his Winchester from where it had fallen between two rocks and quickly raked a fresh shell into the chamber.

  “Lead the horse to shore!” he shouted to Anjanette, spreading his legs and firing the Yellowboy from his right hip.

  He continued peppering the desperadoes’ shoreline, hot cartridges arcing and sizzling into the river behind him, until the Winchester clicked empty. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and, stepping straight back in the water, grabbed his revolver from its holster and fired two more rounds. He’d try to hold as many shooters at bay as he could until Anjanette and Wolf had made the opposite shore.

  He stumbled backward, shooting at darting shadows, flinching at occasional gunfire on the bank before him. Glancing behind, he saw the girl and Wolf topping the brow of a hill on the opposite shore.

  Yakima fired the last two rounds in his six-shooter as two slugs ripped into the river around his ankles, then turned and ran to the opposite bank. Water sluicing down his denims and sand clinging to his bare, wet feet, he bulled through willows and ironwood shrubs, climbing the bank and diving over the ridge just before three slugs tore up gravel and sand behind him.

  He scrambled on down the bank to where Anjanette held fast to Wolf’s reins, the stallion snorting and starting at the gunfire.

  “Easy, boy, easy!” Yakima said, slinging the rifle over his shoulder again.

  “You go on ahead,” Anjanette said, breathless, holding the stallion’s reins in both hands, her wet hair hanging limp on her shoulders. “They’ll be after you now. I’ll only slow you down.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Yakima righted the saddle and reached under Wolf’s belly to tighten the latigo strap. “Now they’ll kill you for sure.”

  Thumbing cartridges from his belt loops into his Winchester’s receiver, he climbed back up the bank and took a cautious look over the lip. The river gurgled between its fog-shrouded banks. None of the desperadoes were wading across. But yells and shouts rose from the direction of the horses, upstream about sixty yards.

  They were saddling up, preparing to give chase. Three were just now galloping along the opposite shore— jostling shadows within the fog—riding downstream toward the ford.

  Yakima slung his rifle behind his shoulder, then plucked his Colt from its holster and thumbed open the loading gate. Except for his finding out Anjanette’s ugly secret, all was going according to plan. He just had to make sure the desperadoes stayed on his trail till it led them to Patchen’s and Speares’s ambush.

  When he’d filled the Colt’s six cylinders, he triggered two shots over the lip of the bank, in the direction of the three riders now splashing across the river ford to his left, then turned and ran down the bank, grabbed the reins out of Anjanette’s hands, and swung into the saddle.

  “What were the shots for?” she asked as he slung her up behind him.

  “Wouldn’t want to lose your friends.”

  She tightened her arms around his waist as he gigged the horse up the opposite hill and down the other side, racing into the gradually rising northern hills. Keeping the horse to a moderate gallop and glancing back to make sure the desperadoes’ shadows were still behind him, he angled east, in the direction of the cathedral ruins.

  He hoped he could follow his own back trail in the dark. The Thunder Riders were coiled up and rattling, and he’d need the lawmen’s help to take them down.

  Wolf wanted to run full out, but Yakima checked him down, not wanting to lose the horse to a chuckhole or rock or one of the many narrow, deep gullies that scarred this high Mexican desert. He also didn’t want to lose the Thunder Riders, though several glances behind gave him no reason to worry. The bouncing shadows snaked out through the darkness about a hundred yards away, moving fast and showing no sign of slowing down. As the gang passed before a pale rock wall below him, Yakima was able to count seven riders.

  Staring down the ridge, Yakima said, “Nabbing you piss-burned him good. I don’t think he even left anyone with the gold.”

  Anjanette turned toward Yakima. “Is that why you took me? For bait?”

  It was only half the reason, but Yakima said, “Why else?”

  He turned the black away from the ridge crest and heeled him up a narrow pass between jagged rock walls sheathed in creosote and sycamores. The cloud cover had thinned, and the stars and a sickle moon cast a ghostly illumination onto the trail, which was probably an old Spanish smuggling route.

  The better light allowed the gang to push their horses harder. When the jumbled cathedral ruins rose on the mesa ahead of Yakima, the desperadoes were probably only seventy yards behind him—close enough that he could hear their shouts and the occasional chuffs and blows of their mounts.

  Yakima loped the horse on past the ruins, looking around but seeing no sign of Patchen or Spears—they were probably snugged down among the crumbling rock and adobe, waiting. Fifty yards beyond the ruins, Yakima turned Wolf off the trail and behind a steep shelf of sandstone rising like a ship’s prow above the chaparral.

  “Stay here,” he told Anjanette as he swung his right foot over the saddle horn and dropped to the ground, slinging the reins over a cedar. He slipped his rifle off his shoulder and rammed a shell into the chamber.

  “Yakima,” she called as he climbed the steep, stone-scaled rise.

  He paused to glance back at her. She’d moved up into his saddle and regarded him over her shoulder. Wolf was contentedly cropping galetta grass.

  “Be careful,” Anjanette said softly.

  He studied the rocky ledge before him, thoughtful. Shucking his revolver from its holster, he turned back. “Catch.” He tossed the gun down to her, and she caught it with both hands in the air above her head. “You might need that.”

  He hoisted himself over the lip of the rise, gained his feet, and jogged back in the direction they’d come from, weaving through the cedars, creosote, and Spanish bayonet, staying left of the trail. When he saw the cathedral ruins cropping up ahead, he ducked into a boulder snag and wedged himself into the cracks, with a good view from forty yards away.

  The trail passed between him and the ruins.

  He stared along his back trail, his own shod hoofprints limned by the light from the moon and stars. In an arch of the ruined church, he picked out a man-shaped shadow. Either Patchen or Speares, waiting.

  Yakima turned back up the trail. The gang should have arrived at the church by now. Back in the direction of the canyon, nothing moved. A heavy silence weighed upon the desert. Not even the lonely yammer of a coyote or the sinewy flap of a bat’s wings.

  “Breed,” Speares called from the shadows of the ruins.

  Yakima’s gut tightened. “Shhhh!”

  “They follow you?”

  Somewhere behind Yakima a twig snapped.

  As he turned to look, a horse whinnied on the far side of the cathedral. He turned back to the church as two rifles spoke, one after another, echoing inside the ruins.

  Speares shouted, “They’re behind us!”

  Three more rifle shots exploded across the night.

  Men shouted. Horses screamed.

  Chapter 22

&n
bsp; At the same time that rifles and revolvers barked in the direction of the hulking church ruins, hoof thuds rose in the dark scrub behind Yakima. He whipped around. Guns flashed in the scrub, bullets barking off the rocks around him, peppering his face with sand and gravel.

  He scrambled onto his heels, dove right as two more slugs tore into the rocks where he’d been crouched. He brought the Winchester up as two riders burst out of the brush—a dun horse on his right, a cream on his left. Starlight reflected off trace chains and gun iron.

  Yakima rolled onto his right shoulder and levered the Winchester until five smoking casings lay in the gravel behind him and both riders had tumbled back or sideways from the saddles of their screaming horses.