Sidewinders:#3: Cutthroat Canyon

by Johnstone, William W.

  He wasn’t sure how they would escape on foot from men on horseback, but they had to give it a try. Staying where they were wasn’t an option. Davidson would just have Lancaster blast the hut to small pieces around them. Sooner or later, bullets would find them.

  “There they are!” Davidson yelled as Scratch dived through the window in Evangelina’s bedroom. “Kill them!”

  Bo sprayed bullets toward the gunmen as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever. He didn’t particularly care if he hit any of them; he just wanted to make them dive for cover. He succeeded in that, and then as Scratch opened fire from the rear corner of the hut, that gave Bo the cover he needed to scramble out the window himself. They would have to fall back, each covering the other, and try to reach the hills before Davidson’s men caught up to them. It was a slim chance, but the only one they had.

  Or maybe not, because Bo suddenly heard hoofbeats and looked around to see Teresa and Luz galloping toward them while Pepe rode off to one side, firing a rifle toward Davidson’s men. The women hauled back on the reins and slowed their horses as they came even with the Texans.

  “Get on!” Teresa cried.

  Bo vaulted up behind her, desperation giving him the agility of a much younger man. Scratch grabbed the arm that Luz reached down toward him and swung up behind her. The women jabbed their heels into the horses’ flanks and sent the animals leaping into a run again as bullets whined around them.

  “Get that damned thing going!” Davidson bellowed, and Bo knew he had to be shouting at Lancaster. That was the problem with contraptions as complicated as the Gardner gun—they had a tendency to jam or get fouled in some other way just when you needed them the most.

  The riders tore around a hut, putting the adobe structure between them and the hot lead searching for them. Luz lined out toward the hills, followed by Teresa and Pepe.

  But then Bo shouted over the thundering hoofbeats, “We’ve got to go back!”

  Teresa jerked her head around. “Are you loco? They’ll kill us!”

  “Davidson will kill Evangelina for hiding us out!”

  Teresa grimaced, obviously recognizing the truth of what Bo said. “We can’t help her!” she said. “It’s too late!”

  “We can’t abandon her!” Bo insisted. “Luz, you and Scratch keep going! Teresa and Pepe and I will circle around and try to get to Evangelina before Davidson can hurt her!”

  “The hell with that!” Scratch roared. “You’re not gonna have that much fun without me!”

  “You’re all loco!” Luz cried. But she veered her horse, just like Teresa and Pepe did.

  They looked back, saw dust boiling into the sky behind them, and knew that Davidson’s men had mounted up and were following them. Charging right back into danger like this was a little crazy, Bo thought. More than a little really.

  But he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if they abandoned Evangelina to her certain fate, and he knew Scratch wouldn’t be either.

  Circling wide, keeping up a running fight as they went, the riders galloped back into San Ramon. Bo wasn’t surprised to see that the wagon was still there in the plaza. Davidson was with it, but Lancaster had joined the chase.

  Davidson had Evangelina, too. His left hand was clamped around her arm as he smashed his right fist back and forth across her face. He hadn’t noticed yet that the riders coming toward him were the fugitives, not his own men.

  Instinct must have warned him before they got there, because he jerked his head around and his eyes widened in shock. He recovered quickly, though, thrusting Evangelina away from him with such force that she tripped and sprawled on the dusty ground. Bo saw Davidson scramble toward the machine gun in the back of the wagon, and loosed a round at him from the Winchester, but the bullet went high.

  Davidson dived into the wagon bed and came up behind the Gardner gun, which appeared to be loaded again. As he grabbed the handles, Evangelina struggled to her feet and ran to meet the riders. Behind her, Davidson swung the twin barrels toward her.

  Suddenly, Enrique appeared once again, seemingly out of nowhere, and ran toward the wagon, waving his arms and shouting. Bo heard him cry, “Run, Evangelina, run!” before the machine gun opened up.

  Enrique had swerved into the line of fire just as Davidson pulled the trigger. The machine gun’s pounding roar rolled out. Davidson knew how to fire the gun, but wasn’t experienced in handling it. The barrels jittered back and forth.

  That caused the slugs spewing from the gun to stitch several bloody lines across Enrique’s body as the bullet storm caught him. The machine gun literally carved him into pieces as Evangelina glanced back, stopped, and screamed, “Enrique!”

  Before she could do anything else, Pepe’s horse was beside her and the big man reached down to scoop her up in the circle of one long arm. He flung her over the horse’s back in front of him and held tight to her as he wheeled the animal around. Bullets kicked up dust just behind the horse’s hooves.

  Bo could tell that Davidson was starting to get the hang of handling the machine gun. He brought the Winchester to his shoulder and cranked off a couple of rounds. One of them spanged off the upper barrel of the Gardner gun. Davidson went over backward, falling out of the wagon. Bo didn’t think the mine owner was hit, but the bullet coming so close to him had caused Davidson to leap backward and then tumble out of the vehicle.

  From behind Luz, Scratch gave them covering fire as the pursuit began to catch up. Bo waved Pepe toward the hills. Evangelina’s arms and legs were flopping wildly as Pepe held her on the horse. He didn’t seem to be in any danger of letting her go, though.

  Through the rolling clouds of dust and powder smoke that clogged the air in and around San Ramon, Bo caught a glimpse of Jim Skinner’s skull-like face. The gunman’s features were flushed dark with fury. Bo snapped a shot at him, but the dust obscured Skinner again before Bo could tell if his bullet found the killer or not.

  Teresa leaned forward, and so did Bo. It was a race to the hills now. They were strung out, Pepe and Evangelina well in front, Luz and Scratch trailing them by a hundred yards or so, and Teresa and Bo about fifty yards behind them. If they made it to the hills before the pursuit caught up to them, they stood at least some chance of being able to give Davidson’s men the slip in the rugged terrain. Right now, though, that was a big if.

  Bo felt as much as heard a bullet sizzle through the air near his head. He looked back over his shoulder, but couldn’t see anything because of the dust. If he couldn’t see the pursuers, then the pursuers couldn’t see him and Teresa. They were just firing blindly.

  But a lucky shot could be just as fatal as a well-aimed one, he reminded himself.

  Almost before it seemed possible, they found themselves in the hills. Teresa sent the horse plunging into a brush-choked gully. Branches whipped at Bo’s face, and brambles clawed his arms and legs.

  Teresa turned her head and told Bo, “We’re going to rendezvous at the place where Luz and Pepe and I have been hiding out!”

  “How’d you show up just in time to pull us out of that tight spot?” Bo asked.

  “We saw Davidson and the other men heading toward the village from the canyon and thought it might be a good idea to be close by in case of trouble. Sure enough, by the time we got there—”

  “All hell had broken loose,” Bo finished for her.

  A grim laugh came from her tight-set lips. “That’s right. I understand now why people call weapons like that devil guns.”

  “They’re pretty bad, all right,” Bo agreed. “At least, they are in the hands of men like Davidson.”

  He looked behind him again, but couldn’t see anything except the brush. He hadn’t thought that Teresa would be able to lose the pursuit this quickly, but she knew the country around here a lot better than Davidson’s men did. And Bo certainly wasn’t going to complain about a stroke of luck, not when a mere twenty minutes ago it looked like he and Scratch were about to be shot full of holes.

  Like Enriq
ue had been.

  That sobering thought brought a frown to Bo’s face. He didn’t know what had possessed the old man to jump in front of the machine gun like that, but then, as soon as the thought went through his head, of course he did know. Enrique had sacrificed himself to save Evangelina’s life. That went a long way toward evening the score for allowing his panic to make him give away the Texans’ hiding place.

  But no matter what Enrique had done, Bo wouldn’t have wished that fate on him. At least he had died quickly, with what Bo hoped was a minimum of pain. Enrique had faced his fear and gone out like a man, and in the end that was just about all any hombre could hope to do.

  The horse emerged from the gully. Teresa guided it on a twisting course that led higher and higher into the mountains that bordered the valley. She was careful to avoid ridges or other places where she and Bo might be skylighted.

  “You’re pretty good at dodging trouble,” Bo told her. “A while back, Scratch and I ran into another gal who packed iron and rode like a man. Name of Rawhide Abbott. She was even a deputy marshal.”

  Teresa laughed wearily. “I have no wish to be a man, Señor Creel. It’s true that I like to ride the high country around the valley, but it would have been fine with me if I had never had to pick up a gun.”

  “Life doesn’t always give us much choice when it comes to that, especially out here on the frontier. Sometimes it’s a matter of using a gun…or dying.”

  “Sí. And I don’t intend to die.” Her lips drew back from her teeth in a grimace of rage. “At least, not until I have seen Señor Porter Davidson die. And if the Blessed Virgin is willing…his death will be at my hand.”

  CHAPTER 24

  By midday, Bo was willing to admit that they had lost Davidson’s men. He had been watching their back trail all morning, and there was no sign of the pursuers. The varmints must have given up and headed back to San Ramon.

  He wouldn’t have wanted to be them when they reported their failure to Davidson. That loco hombre was capable of just about anything when rage gripped him.

  The twisting trails finally brought Bo and Teresa to an isolated spring tucked away in a pocket formed by sheer, rocky walls. They had to follow a cleft in one of those walls to get there. From the outside, the opening wasn’t visible even twenty yards away, but Teresa had known it was there, of course. This was where she and Luz and Pepe had been hiding out for the past several days.

  Grass grew around the spring, as well as a couple of scrubby trees. The other two horses were tethered to those trees when Bo and Teresa rode up. The animals looked worn out from carrying double. Their heads hung low, and they barely cropped at the grass, as if they were too tired to graze. The horse Bo and Teresa were riding was played out, too.

  Scratch, Evangelina, Luz, and Pepe waited by the spring as well. Evangelina’s face was scraped, battered, and bruised from the beating Davidson had been giving her when he was interrupted. One of the barely healed scars had broken open under the punishment, causing a trickle of bright crimson blood to worm its way down her cheek and jaw. She looked a sight, and the fact that her eyes were red and swollen from crying didn’t help matters.

  “Did you see Enrique?” she called out to Bo as Teresa reined their horse to a stop. “Could you tell how badly he was hurt?”

  “Señorita…” Bo didn’t know what to say. He stopped and sighed. “Evangelina, the old man is dead. Davidson killed him. I’m sorry there’s no better way to tell you.”

  “I figured as much,” Scratch said. “But you were closer, and we were holdin’ out a little hope…”

  Evangelina began to cry again as Bo shook his head. “He…he should not have done it,” she said in a voice choked with grief. “He should not have told Davidson where you were hiding, and he should not have given up his life to save me. I do not deserve it.”

  “I reckon that was his choice to make,” Bo told her.

  Luz asked, “What do we do now? Head back to El Paso?”

  “No!” Teresa cried. “We have to save the people of the valley from Davidson.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Luz wanted to know. “There are only six of us. We have limited supplies and only a few guns. Davidson has more than a dozen men and that…that machine gun! In a fight it’s worth a hundred men, maybe even two hundred!”

  “What about the gold?” Teresa asked. “You came down here in the first place because you wanted a share in the mine.”

  Luz grimaced and made a slashing motion with her hand. “What good is gold if you are dead? I was willing to help as long as I thought there was a chance we might succeed. Now, after I have seen what we are up against, I realize it’s foolish to think we can defeat Davidson. All we’re going to do is get ourselves killed!”

  “Then run away, if that’s what you want!” Teresa blazed back at her. “But you’ll never get your hands on any of that gold.”

  Bo and Scratch left the two women glaring at each other as they walked over to the other side of the spring. Quietly, Scratch said, “You know, Davidson’s gonna send Skinner and some of those other boys into the mountains to look for us. He ain’t gonna let ’em rest until they bring back our heads in a tow sack.”

  “You’re right about that,” Bo agreed. “Unless we go back to El Paso like Luz suggested.”

  “You mean run away?”

  “Yeah.”

  The Texans looked at each other for a second, then shook their heads in unison.

  “When hell freezes over,” Scratch said.

  “Not even then,” Bo said.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Let me think on it.” Bo tugged at his earlobe. “There’s got to be some way to get at Davidson besides trying to steal his ore the way Teresa and her friends were doing.”

  “Yeah, that was never gonna work in the long run,” Scratch said. “And now that he’s got that machine gun, he’ll send Lancaster along with it the next time the gold wagons head for the border.”

  “We need to hit him closer to home,” Bo said. A smile began to spread slowly across his face. “And I reckon maybe I’ve got an idea how we can do that.”

  A rocky pinnacle that thrust up above the spring provided a place where Scratch could keep watch on the approaches to the hideout. He climbed up there, taking one of the Winchesters with him, and settled down on a ledge behind some small boulders where no one could see him.

  Meanwhile, Bo talked to Teresa, asking her about the trails around Cutthroat Canyon. He told her what his idea was, and she said, “It would be easier if I went with you. I could show you the best place to carry out your plan, instead of just telling you.”

  Bo shook his head. “Scratch and I will handle this chore by ourselves. The rest of you stay here and keep an eye out for Davidson’s men. He’s going to send hunting parties into the mountains after us. Scratch and I are sure of that.”

  “I hope he does,” Teresa said. “That will give us a chance to kill them!”

  “That won’t be easy. Jim Skinner’s a mighty dangerous hombre, and I reckon the kid and Lancaster aren’t far behind him. Those other men who work for Davidson aren’t much better than hardcases themselves.”

  Teresa looked stubborn for a moment, but then she sighed and hunkered on her heels. She began drawing lines in the dirt with her finger. “Let me make a map for you,” she told Bo. “That way you can be sure to get where you need to be.”

  Once Bo was certain of the route he and Scratch would follow, he turned to the other preparations that they needed to make. He found a couple of limber branches on one of the trees and hacked them off with a rusty old machete. He shaped their ends properly, then plucked hairs from the horses’ tails and began braiding them together. Some sort of animal gut would have worked better, but he had to make do with what was available. Once he had fashioned a couple of thin, strong cords from the horsehair, he strung them on the makeshift bows. Then he found some thinner branches he could shape into arrows.

  They didn’
t have anything he could use for arrowheads, but luckily, he didn’t need any. He wrapped the ends of the arrows in strips of fabric torn from a spare shirt instead. Then he daubed them with a paste made from gunpowder, which he took from several cartridges after he pried out the slugs, mixed with water from the spring. When he was done, he had four fairly straight arrows and bows capable of firing them. Almost any Indian could have done a better job of it, but Bo hoped the weapons would be good enough to accomplish their goal.

  As dusk began to settle over the rugged landscape, Scratch climbed down from the rock pinnacle and reported that he hadn’t seen any of Davidson’s men searching for them.

  “That don’t mean they ain’t out there somewhere,” he went on. “But they ain’t got here yet.”

  “We will keep watch tonight,” Teresa said, “although I doubt that the men will continue looking after dark. They will be too afraid that one of us will sneak up on them in the night and cut their throats.”

  Bo said, “We can hope they’ll be worried about that anyway.”

  “Are you taking the horses?” Luz asked. For the time being anyway, she seemed willing to stay, rather than heading back to El Paso and the business she had there. Bo knew that one more setback probably would be enough to make her abandon their cause, though.

  He answered her question by saying, “No, we’ll go on foot. Cutthroat Canyon is only a couple of miles from here, as the crow flies, and Teresa has told me which trails to take where horses can’t follow us. Stealth is going to be more important than speed tonight.”

  “When will you leave?” Evangelina asked.

  Bo glanced at the sky. The sun had dropped behind the mountains, but a red glow remained in the heavens. “We’ll let it get a little darker,” he said. “Then we’ll head out, and it ought to be good and dark by the time we get to the canyon.”

  “You should eat something first.”

  “You mean like a last meal for the condemned men?” Scratch asked with a grin.