The battle for Big Rock was over in a surprisingly short amount of time. Sheriff Carson and his deputies were knocked out of action early on, and although the townspeople tried to put up a fight, with no one to rally them, the effort was doomed. Scores of savage, well-armed attackers swept into the settlement from all directions at once and routed the would-be defenders.
Within an hour, Big Rock was like a town conquered by an invading army, solidly under the control of Jonas Trask and his men.
Trask strode along the street and calmly surveyed the death and destruction. He said to the man who walked beside him, “How many men did we lose, Major Pike?”
“Two men killed, two seriously wounded,” Pike replied. He wore a brown tweed suit instead of a uniform, but he carried himself with a military bearing. He had a slight limp that didn’t seem to trouble him much. “A few more assorted nicks and scratches. Nothing to worry about.”
“Very good,” Trask said as he nodded in satisfaction. “And the civilian casualties?”
“Hard to say for sure. I’ve still got men going through town building by building, cleaning them out. I’d guess maybe a dozen killed, fifteen or twenty wounded.”
“The sheriff and his men were all taken alive?”
“Yes, sir, along with the mayor and the men who serve on the town council. We have them all locked up in the jail.”
“Excellent. They’re all friends of Smoke Jensen. With their lives at risk, he’ll think twice about anything he does.”
“I hope you’re right, Doctor.”
Trask gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I’m not in the habit of being wrong, Major.”
“No, sir, of course not,” Pike agreed hastily.
“What about the other prisoners?”
“We’re herding most of them into the church,” Pike explained. “We’ll likely have to put some of them in the town hall, too, but we have enough men to guard both places.” The major hesitated. “There’s one man you told us to look for that we haven’t located yet. Louis Longmont.”
Trask frowned. “The gambler. Jensen’s closest friend in Big Rock other than Sheriff Carson.”
“Yes, sir. We took over his saloon, just like we did every other business in town. According to the bartenders and the girls who work there, Longmont is out of town. He rode to Denver to sit in on a big poker game there.”
“Yes, well, one man really shouldn’t make much difference, I suppose. I’d hoped to have Longmont to use as a hostage, too, but with everyone else in town, we’ll have plenty. Then, of course, there’s the pièce de résistance.”
“Sir?”
“Sally Jensen. With her fate in our hands—as well as the fate of nearly everyone else Smoke Jensen cares about—he’ll have no choice but to surrender and do exactly as we say.” Trask took a deep, triumphant breath. “Finish things up here as quickly and efficiently as you can, Major. Tonight we’re riding to the Sugarloaf!”
Chapter 19
Monte Carson felt like a hundred Indians were jumping up and down on his head and walloping it with tomahawks. The sensation got even worse when he tried to lift his head and open his eyes. He groaned and let his head slump down against whatever he was lying on.
“Sheriff? Sheriff, you awake?”
Carson winced as somebody shouted in his ear. Then he realized whoever had spoken wasn’t yelling. It just sounded that way because his head was in such bad shape.
“Blast it, Sheriff, I wish you’d wake up. I don’t know what to do here.”
Carson recognized the voice. It belonged to Deputy Curley. The realization made other memories lurch by fits and starts into his brain. The strangers riding into Big Rock . . . the well-dressed but somehow sinister man who had introduced himself as Dr. Jonas Trask . . . being buffaloed by Trask and then kicked in the jaw . . .
Carson forced his eyes all the way open, despite the fresh wave of pain inside his skull caused by the light hitting them. He blinked a couple times and tried to focus on the blurred face that swam into view above him.
“C-Curley . . . ?” he rasped through lips that felt like dried-out corn husks.
“Yeah. Lemme help you sit up, boss.”
Carson wanted to tell him not to do that, but it was too late. Curley looped an arm around the sheriff’s shoulders and lifted him into a sitting position.
The world spun madly in the wrong direction for what seemed like an eternity. When it settled down a few seconds later, Carson looked around and saw that he was in a jail cell.
One of the cells in his own jail, no doubt.
He sat with his back propped against the stone wall. He and Curley weren’t by themselves in the cell. Four other men were crowded in there with them, including Eli Dawes from the general store and Stan Virdon, the butcher.
The three other cells behind the sheriff’s office were full of prisoners, too, all of them leading citizens and businessmen of Big Rock.
“What the . . . hell is goin’ on here?” Carson muttered.
Curley’s face was grim. He had a bloody gash on his forehead where somebody had hit him, probably with a gun. “They’ve taken over the town, Sheriff.”
“Who?”
“Damned if I know. A bunch of outlaws, from what I could tell. Must’ve been a hundred or more of ’em. They came from every which way. I blew one of ’em out of his saddle, but then another one pistol-whipped me and knocked me out. I come to as they was draggin’ me in here.”
“There was a man named . . . Trask . . .”
“Handsome but mean-lookin’ fella in a black suit?” Curley asked.
“That’s . . . him.”
“Yeah, he came in here a while ago to take a look at us. Actually, it was more like he was gloatin’. He was talkin’ to a fella who was with him. Trask called him Major Pike, but he wasn’t wearin’ no uniform. The major was tellin’ Trask that he had assigned patrols to ride around the town and grab anybody who tries to get in or out.”
“What about . . . the railroad?”
Curley shook his head dispiritedly. “They blew up the rails with dynamite a few miles away on one side of us, and they caused an avalanche and blocked the tracks in one of the passes the other way. Won’t be no trains comin’ to Big Rock for a week or more. It’ll take that long to fix all the damage.”
The pain in Carson’s head was beginning to fade to a dull, throbbing ache. He could live with that if he had to. He could even focus his thoughts a little better. “Why? Who in the Sam Hill are they, and why attack Big Rock?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure . . . but judgin’ by some of the things that fella Trask said to the major, I think it’s got somethin’ to do with Smoke Jensen.”
“Smoke?” Carson repeated. That made sense, he supposed. Smoke had made plenty of enemies over the years. He had spoiled the plans of numerous outlaws and put an uncountable number of them under the ground. Not just run-of-the-mill owlhoots, either. Plenty of men in high places—politicians and business tycoons, even European aristocracy—had sworn vengeance on Smoke Jensen.
As far as the sheriff knew, Smoke was nowhere around. He had gone off to Arizona on a desperate mission to rescue his brother Luke. That had gone well, according to what Sally had told him the last time she was in town, but Smoke wasn’t expected back for a while yet.
Carson sighed. He couldn’t fathom the invaders’ motivations, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. He, Curley, and most of the town’s leading citizens were locked up. The sheriff knew better than most that breaking out of the solidly constructed jail was well nigh impossible.
All they could do for the moment was wait and hope for a break in the situation.
“You reckon they’re gonna attack Sugarloaf next?” Curley asked.
“Could be,” Carson said. “But if they do, even with Smoke not there . . . they won’t have an easy time of it.”
Chapter 20
According to the members of the crew who had known him the best, Ben Hardy had no close family in Color
ado. Some cousins in Missouri were his closest relatives. So it had made sense to lay him to rest in the cemetery on Sugarloaf.
Following that, Sally had told Pearlie to increase the number of men riding the range, especially in the area of Lone Pine Ridge. She thought it was unlikely that the three intruders would come back, especially considering the damage that had been done to them, but no one could rule it out. The crew would need to be extra vigilant for a while.
Almost a week had passed with no sign of any more trouble. Despite that, she thought it was best not to let down their guard. Smoke would be home soon, and he could decide what to do. He might want to try trailing the three men, although too much time might have passed for that to be feasible.
She was in the study in the big ranch house, reading by lamplight. She had always been an avid reader, mostly of the classics, although now and then she indulged herself with a lurid, yellow-backed dime novel, mostly just to see how ridiculous it could be. Smoke had been featured in a number of those tales. He liked to make fun of them, saying that they were all written by Hudson River cowboys, since none of the authors seemed to have been any farther west than that in their lives.
Wrapped in a thick robe, she sat in a comfortable armchair and read a novel by a Frenchman named Jules Verne. It was a fantastic story about a ship that could travel under the sea, as well as the insane genius who captained it. Sally had an adventurous streak in her—she had to in order to have married a man like Smoke Jensen—and as she read she thought how exciting it would be to travel in a vessel like that.
Out in the bunkhouse, a poker game was going on among several of the hands. Payday was a ways off yet, so they were using matches as the stakes. Some men were cleaning their guns or awkwardly darning socks. One plucked idly at the strings of a guitar. A few had already turned in and were snoring in their bunks even though the lamps hadn’t been blown out yet.
Pearlie was trimming his toenails with a bowie knife.
Cal watched him and grinned. “Better be careful. One slip and you’ll lop a toe clean off.”
Pearlie grunted. “It’s been a long time since I lopped off anything I didn’t intend to.”
“I’m just saying that knife’s mighty sharp.”
“A dull knife ain’t much good for anything, is it?”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
“All right, then, hush up. This is delicate work. A man don’t need to be distracted while he’s doin’ it.”
Cal threw his hands in the air and exclaimed, “That’s what I was just saying!”
Pearlie grinned and went on with what he was doing.
Out on the range, half a dozen men rode nighthawk, watching over the herds and keeping an eye out for trouble. One of them, a cowboy named Walt Miller, was riding near a stand of trees when he though he heard something. He reined his horse in that direction and put his hand on the butt of the gun at his hip as he called, “Hey, is somebody over there?”
A three-quarter moon floated in the Colorado sky. Its silvery illumination flickered on something. Miller barely saw it before he felt an impact against his chest as if someone had lightly punched him.
He looked down to see the handle of a knife sticking out from his shirt front. As pain erupted inside him, he realized that almost the entire length of the blade attached to that bone handle was buried in his chest.
The crippling agony made him hunch over in the saddle. He clawed at his gun, desperate to get it out and start pulling the trigger. He had no illusions that such an act would save his life. He already knew he was a dead man. But a burst of gunfire would warn the other nighthawks that something was wrong.
A rope settled around Miller’s shoulders, closed tight, and jerked him out of the saddle. He hit the ground before he could draw his gun and died seconds later without raising the alarm.
Around Sugarloaf, similar scenes were being repeated. One guard was knifed in the back; another had his throat cut. As one of the nighthawks rode under a thick tree limb, the man hidden in shadow on top of it dropped a loop around the cowboy’s neck and hauled hard on the rope, lifting the luckless man out of the saddle and choking him to death before he could make a sound.
In the wake of these killings came men on horseback, closing in relentlessly on the ranch headquarters.
The poker game in the bunkhouse broke up with a cowboy named Cunningham the big winner. He looked at the pile of matchsticks in front of him and grinned. He would probably lose most of them back to his pards before payday rolled around, but for tonight he was triumphant.
On the other side of the long room, a puncher threw a boot at the man with the guitar. “Quit pluckin’ on that twanger, you dang frog-faced galoot!”
The man with the guitar took offense, naturally enough, and heaved the boot back at its owner. A fight likely would have ensued if Pearlie hadn’t stepped in. He had finished trimming his toenails, but he still held the bowie knife. No man with a lick of sense would have argued with him.
A few minutes later, the lamps were all blown out, and peace descended on the bunkhouse along with darkness.
That lasted for ten minutes, just about long enough for most of the men to doze off, before hell broke loose outside.
Pearlie bolted up off his bunk as shots roared. He wore only his long underwear and a pair of socks, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing his rifle and racing toward the bunkhouse door.
It wasn’t just a few isolated shots shattering the peaceful night. A nearly continuous rolling wave of gunfire swept over the Sugarloaf’s headquarters.
Pearlie’s first thoughts were of Sally Jensen. She was alone in the house. Whatever was going on out there, he needed to reach her side and make sure she was safe.
The bunkhouse had only a few windows. Before he could reach the door, each of those windows shattered as a rock was thrown through it. Hard on the heels of those rocks came balls of fire that sailed through the broken windows and landed on bunks or rolled across the floor, spreading their flames.
Pearlie had seen such things before and knew they had to be balls of pitch-soaked cloth wrapped around rocks and set ablaze just before they were heaved through the windows. They caused instant chaos in the bunkhouse as startled cowboys tried to put out the fires. A few of the men were on fire, or at least their clothes were. They hopped around, yelling frantically.
Pearlie bellowed, “Grab guns, you ranahans! Some of you fight them fires, and the rest come with me!” He didn’t wait to see if the others did as he said. He flung the door open and started to dash out.
At the last second, he realized that was just what the attackers wanted him and the rest of the crew to do. Rifles were already trained on that door, and as it flew back they opened fire. Pearlie skidded to a halt and threw himself backwards and down as fast as he could.
Slugs whistled through the air around him as he hit the rough floor. Somewhere behind him a man yelled in pain. Pearlie knew at least some of that flying lead had found a target. He sprayed three shots out at the night, levering the Winchester as fast as he could between shots, then rolled to the side, lifted a leg, and kicked the door shut. “Somebody drop that bar!” he shouted.
Cal grunted with effort as he lifted the thick beam that leaned against the wall beside the door. He dropped the beam in the brackets built for it on either side of the entrance. It would take a battering ram to get that door open until the bar was removed.
The bunkhouse was built sturdy on purpose, so it could resist an attack. The log walls would stop most bullets. The windows represented a danger. As soon as the door was closed and barred, the attackers began concentrating their fire on the broken windows.
“Keep your heads down!” Pearlie called. He knelt beside one of the windows, thrust the rifle barrel past the jagged glass, and triggered several rounds at the muzzle flashes he saw winking in the darkness like deadly fireflies.
At the other windows, men began mounting a defense. The air quickly filled not only with smoke from the little fi
res scattered around the room but with powder smoke, as well.
“Get those fires put out!” Pearlie yelled over his shoulder. He saw that the men were getting the blazes under control, slapping them out with blankets from the bunks. “Cal!”
“I’m here, Pearlie,” the youngster said as he appeared at Pearlie’s side.
“This repeater of mine is about to run dry. Stay low and get that box of .44-40s from my war bag.”
Cal nodded. Crouching, he ran across the room to Pearlie’s bunk and reached underneath it to get the box of cartridges.
He came back with the ammunition and his own Winchester. He set the open box of bullets between them and took up a post on the other side of the window. While Pearlie reloaded, Cal leaned out and cranked off five rounds as fast as he could before return fire forced him to duck back out of sight.
“They’ve got us pinned down,” Cal said as he panted a little.
“Yeah,” Pearlie agreed grimly. “They sure do.”
Things didn’t look good for him and the rest of the crew—however, that wasn’t his main worry.
Sally was still alone in the house.
Or maybe she wasn’t—and that thought was even worse.
Chapter 21
Sally was still engrossed in the story of the Nautilus, Captain Nemo, and Professor Aronnax, when she heard the dull boom of gunshots outside, interspersed with the sharper cracking of rifle fire. Reacting instantly, she bolted up from the comfortable chair. The leather-bound volume fell to the floor at her feet, already forgotten. She lunged across the room to a gun rack mounted on the wall.
The rack held several different types of long arms: shotguns, Winchester repeaters, an old Henry, an even older Sharps .50 caliber buffalo rifle, and a couple shorter-barreled Winchester carbines she always carried with her as a saddle gun whenever she went riding.
The weapons were all loaded, although the Winchesters and the Henry usually didn’t have a round in the chamber. She remedied that in the carbine she took down and worked the lever with practiced ease. The carbine was ready to fire.
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