Blocker shrugged and said, “I reckon Seamus will have to forfeit on his contract with the stage line. It’ll be a bitter blow for him and Emily both. I’d hate to see it happen.”
“So would I.”
“How come?” Blocker asked. “Seamus was pretty rough on you yesterday when you came into town.”
“He had a lot on his mind,” Matt said. “Besides, he’s in the habit of chasing off any young men who come around Emily, like we talked about in the saloon. Put those two things together, and of course he didn’t cotton much to me right off.”
“And yet you’re out here trying to help him.”
“I don’t cotton much to outlaws,” Matt said.
They rode on toward the hills, drawing closer until Matt could see the pass between them clearly. It was about three hundred yards long, but quite narrow, no more than about forty feet at its widest point. Matt studied the twin hills, which were dotted with boulders, scrub pines, and clumps of brush, and commented, “You know, if it wasn’t for the rocks and trees, those would look like . . .”
“Yeah,” Blocker agreed with a grin, “we’d be calling them the Grand Tetons instead of those mountains up in the northwest part of the territory. As it is, they’re called North and South Tomahawk Peak, but don’t ask me how they got the names. It’s been that way as long as I’ve been around these parts.”
Rugged ridges stretched away from the hills on both sides, making Tomahawk Pass the best route through here. Matt could see why the road ran where it did.
As they approached a couple of large boulders in the trail, he pointed at them and said, “Those are the rocks the bandits rolled down the hill to stop the stage?”
“That’s right. Seamus was able to get around them, but he said it was pretty tricky. Old Wes never had time to, I reckon. There was probably plenty of shooting going on by then.” Blocker waved a hand toward the hillsides. “They were hidden up there, I’m guessin’, on one side, maybe both. Must have opened fire right after they started those rocks rolling. Wes and Tobe never really had a chance, the poor varmints.”
“Hanrahan said they busted open the strongbox. Let’s take a look and see if we can find any boot prints. Sometimes that’s as good for identifying somebody as a picture of them.”
“Good idea,” Blocker agreed. He reined in and dismounted. Matt did likewise. Leading their horses, they walked over to where the stagecoach had been stopped. They could tell the location from the boulders still in the trail and the welter of hoofprints where the team had come to a sudden halt.
Blocker rested a hand on one of the big rocks and said, “I’m gonna have to come back out here with a team of mules and haul these out of the road.”
“Did Hanrahan tell you exactly where he found the strongbox?” Matt asked.
“He said it was about ten feet north of the trail, empty, with the lid busted open. Probably somewhere around there,” Block said, pointing.
Matt handed his reins to the sheriff and went over to the spot. He hunkered on his heel to take a closer look at the ground. The surface was pretty hard here, but after a moment he saw a faint impression in the dirt, an irregular shape that might have been part of a boot heel. It had an odd, half-moon mark in it where a piece had been gouged out of the heel, almost like the mark on an outhouse door. . . .
Matt had just leaned forward to take a closer look when something whined past his ear like a giant bee and smashed into the ground in front of him, throwing up dirt.
“Bushwhack!” the sheriff yelled.
Chapter 20
Matt flung himself to the side as he heard the whipcrack of another rifle shot. He didn’t know where that bullet landed, but it didn’t hit him. He hit the ground on his shoulder and rolled quickly toward the nearest boulder blocking the trail. The shots were coming from the hill on the south side of the road. The big rock would give him some cover.
As he came to a stop, he glanced over and saw Sheriff Blocker crouched behind the other boulder. The lawman had his gun in his hand, but he wasn’t trying to return the fire. Matt understood why. The shots sounded like they came from a pretty good distance up the hillside, which put the bushwhacker out of effective handgun range.
“You all right, Sheriff?” Matt called as he climbed to his feet but stayed low behind the rock.
Before Blocker could answer, a slug spanged off one of the boulders and ricocheted with a high-pitched whine. It was a nerve-wracking sound that Matt had heard all too many times in the past. This was hardly the first time he’d been ambushed.
“Yeah, I’m not hit,” Blocker answered. “But we’re pinned down.”
It was true. Blocker had let go of the horses’ reins when the shooting started, and both animals had run off down the road. Matt’s horse was accustomed to gunfire, so he hadn’t spooked as badly, coming to a stop about fifty yards away to crop at the grass growing along the side of the trail.
Matt looked at his Winchester sticking up from the saddle sheath and wished he could get his hands on it. That would have helped even the odds.
“At least they’re not on both sides of us,” he told the sheriff. “If they had us in a crossfire, we’d be in a bad fix.”
“Yeah, but whoever it is can sit up there all day, and if we take a step out from behind these rocks, he’s got us.”
Blocker was right. Matt knew that if he hadn’t leaned forward just when he did, that first shot might well have blown his brains out. It hadn’t missed by much.
Matt lifted his hand and placed a couple of fingers in his mouth. He gave a piercing whistle that made his horse jerk its head up. The horse turned to look toward him, and Matt whistled again.
With a shrill whinny, the horse tossed its head, then broke into a gallop and headed back up the road toward them.
The hidden rifleman changed his aim and started shooting at the horse. Bullets kicked up dust around the animal’s flashing hooves.
Matt burst out from behind the rock and dashed as fast as he could toward the slope. The bushwhacker must have realized that the horse was just a distraction, because he opened up on Matt again. Matt felt as much as heard a slug rip past his ear, and then he left his feet in a dive that carried him into a small stand of scrubby pines.
The tree trunks gave him enough cover that the odds of the bushwhacker hitting him were low. Also, he was at a slightly worse angle now for the hidden rifleman to draw a bead on.
That didn’t stop the bushwhacker from trying. Bullets thudded into the trees near Matt.
The duller boom of a six-gun came from the road, telling Matt that Sheriff Blocker was getting in on the fight, even though the odds of him hitting anything were small. The shots served as another distraction, though, as Matt began working his way up the slope.
He used every bit of cover he could find, including trees, rocks, and clumps of brush. After a few minutes, during which time he climbed probably a hundred feet, he paused and looked back down. He could see the boulders in the trail and realized with a slight shock of surprise that Blocker was looking around the side of one of them at him. The sheriff motioned toward Matt’s right.
Matt took that to mean the bushwhacker’s location was more to his right. He nodded and angled in that direction as he started moving again.
The pace of the rifleman’s shots had slowed considerably, although a slug still ripped through the brush on the hillside now and then. The man was firing blindly, Matt thought. Not only that, but the shots also gave him something to steer by. He could tell that he was getting closer and closer to the gunman.
He came to an open stretch where there wasn’t any cover. As he knelt at the edge of the brush, he heard another shot and saw powder smoke rising from behind a jagged upthrust of rock about twenty yards above him. He was within revolver range now but couldn’t see his enemy from where he was.
Forcing himself to remain patient, Matt waited. After a few minutes he saw movement as a rifle barrel was thrust over the top of the rock. It tracked toward him and h
e crouched lower, thinking that the bushwhacker had spotted him.
The rifle stopped. Flame erupted from the muzzle as another shot cracked. Matt knew then that the bushwhacker hadn’t seen him. The man was still firing blindly, sweeping the slope with lead in the hope of hitting something.
Matt calculated the odds of leaping from cover and charging up the slope before the rifleman saw him and adjusted his aim. They weren’t very good, he decided. He needed something to buy himself more time.
After a moment of looking around, he found a broken piece of pine branch about as long as his arm from the elbow to the wrist. It was fairly thick and heavy. He balanced it in his hand for a moment and decided it would do. Straightening quickly, he drew back his arm and threw it. The broken branch spun through the air, rising above the rocks where the bushwhacker was hidden before it dropped back down among them with a loud clatter.
Matt launched into a run while the branch was still in the air. He heard the racket as it landed, and then a sudden flurry of shots broke out. None of them came toward him, though. He could tell that from their sound. The bushwhacker had heard the branch fall and jumped to the conclusion that someone had snuck up behind him, which was exactly what Matt hoped would happen.
But that bought him only a couple of seconds. He counted them off in his head as he bounded up the slope, then jerked to the side and kept running. Another shot cracked. Matt weaved the other direction. Another leap brought him to the side of the rock. He caught a glimpse of a man’s leg and fired on the run.
The bushwhacker yelped in pain. Gravel clattered as he moved hurriedly. Matt angled in toward the rocks. The rifle barrel jabbed into view, but he was ready and fired twice more, sending the slugs sizzling past the Winchester. The rifle flew into the air as its owner pitched backwards.
The man landed on the far side of the upthrust and rolled down the slope. Matt dropped to a knee and covered him, but he had a pretty good idea that the bushwhacker was no longer a threat from the loose-limbed way the man’s body was moving.
When the bushwhacker came to a stop and didn’t move again, Matt circled behind the rocks where the man had been hidden, just to make sure no one else was back there. The hillside was empty except for the empty shell casings that littered the ground. The bushwhacker had fired more than fifty rounds without scoring a hit. Some of that was due to Matt’s skill and experience, but good luck had been on his side, too.
“Matt!” Sheriff Blocker called from the road below. “Matt, are you all right?”
“Yeah, this fella’s done for, Sheriff!” Matt shouted back. But just in case that wasn’t true, he kept his Colt trained on the sprawled bushwhacker as he carefully approached the man.
The rifleman had come to rest lying on his back. Matt was close enough now to see the pair of bloodstains on the man’s shirt, as well as the one on his leg where Matt’s first shot had struck him in the thigh. The man’s eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly at the morning sky.
Matt had never seen him before.
He recognized the type, though, from the hard-planed, beard-stubbled features. He had swapped lead with enough owlhoots to know one when he saw him.
Blocker came puffing up the hill, still holding his gun. When he reached Matt and the dead man, he stopped to catch his breath.
“You know this varmint, Sheriff?” Matt asked.
Blocker studied the man for a moment, then said, “I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around the settlement.”
“Any particular place?”
Blocker shook his head.
“Not that I recall. In the saloons, more than likely, maybe in the hash house. But I couldn’t say that he hung around any one place. You think he’s a member of the gang that’s been holding up those stagecoaches?”
“That’s the most likely explanation,” Matt said. “Could be that the gang left a man here to keep an eye on the scene of the latest robbery to discourage anybody from trailing them.”
Blocker grunted and said, “He was tryin’ to discourage us pretty permanent like, seemed to me.” He looked around. “We’d better find his horse and take him back to town.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Matt said. “We ought to see if we can pick up the trail of the rest of them.”
“You mean leave him here for the buzzards and the wolves?”
“Only until we’re on our way back to town anyway.” Matt’s voice had a hard edge to it as he added, “When somebody tries as hard to kill me as this fella did, I don’t worry too much about what happens to him.”
“No, that makes sense, all right,” Blocker agreed. “We’ll see if we can find the signs left by the rest of the gang.”
That proved to be a futile effort. Matt and the sheriff ranged all over the pass and the area around it but failed to find any tracks they were sure had been left by the gang’s mounts. The road was just too well-traveled, and the surrounding countryside was too rocky.
Not only that, but the first shot that had gone past Matt’s ear had struck the ground right where that partial bootprint he had seen was located, obliterating it.
That didn’t really matter, he told himself. The way that print looked was etched in his mind, and he would know it if he saw it again. Of course, there was no way to be sure the boot that had left it belonged to one of the stagecoach robbers, but at least there was a chance.
Other than surviving the ambush, they hadn’t really accomplished a thing. The incident had stiffened Matt’s resolve, though, and by the time they got back to Buffalo Crossing at midday, leading the bushwhacker’s horse they had found tied at the top of the hill, Matt’s mind was made up.
The bushwhacker’s body was lashed facedown over the saddle, and Matt left the sheriff to take the dead man to the undertaker’s while he rode toward the stagecoach station. Bringing in a corpse like that caused quite a sensation in town, but the crowd followed Sheriff Blocker and left Matt alone.
Emily Hanrahan was behind the desk in the office when Matt walked in. She must have heard the commotion in the street outside, but she had ignored it. Several ledgers were open on the desk in front of her, so Matt figured she had been going over the station’s accounts and didn’t want to be distracted from the task.
He distracted her anyway, his entrance causing her to look up from the ledgers. A long lock of auburn hair fell appealingly in front of her face. She brushed it back and asked with a note of impatience in her voice, “What can I do for you, Mr. Jensen?”
“If that job offer’s still open,” he said, “I’m ready to ride shotgun on that stagecoach of yours.”
Chapter 21
Emily set aside the pencil she’d been using. Matt could tell she was surprised by his decision, but she controlled that reaction and sounded only mildly interested as she asked, “What made you change your mind?”
“I rode out to Tomahawk Pass with the sheriff this morning.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Just to take a look around and see if we could pick up the trail of those robbers,” Matt said. “We didn’t . . . but we did get ambushed.”
Emily couldn’t keep a look of concern off her face. She asked, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Matt told her.
“What about Sheriff Blocker?”
“He wasn’t hit, either. We got the bushwhacker, though. The sheriff’s taking him down to the undertaking parlor.”
“Then that was the commotion I heard a few minutes ago.” Emily leaned back in her chair. “The man’s dead, I suppose, or he wouldn’t be going to the undertaker’s.”
“I would have preferred capturing him so we could ask him some questions,” Matt said with a shrug, “but there wasn’t really time to worry about that while he was trying to kill us.”
“Did the sheriff recognize him?”
“Only as somebody he’d seen around town a few times.”
“You mean the outlaws have been coming right into town? That’s pretty brazen.”
&nb
sp; “I reckon they figured it was safe enough.”
Emily nodded slowly and said, “Several of the survivors from the holdups mentioned that the bandits wore masks and had their hats pulled low. They knew it was unlikely anybody would recognize them. I ought to go down to the undertaker’s and have a look for myself, though.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I’ve seen dead men before,” she snapped. “A couple of them just yesterday who were friends of mine, remember?”
Matt nodded and said, “It won’t hurt to take a look, but I don’t expect you’ll recognize the fella.”
He didn’t say anything about the boot print he had seen. He wanted to keep that to himself for the time being. Besides, at this point he didn’t know if it really meant anything.
“So that ambush is what made you decide to accept my offer?” Emily asked.
“I don’t like it when somebody starts shooting at me,” Matt said. “That bushwhacker won’t ever do it again, but I’d like the chance to meet up with some of his pards. I reckon riding shotgun will give me that chance.”
“Well, I don’t know what to hope for. I don’t want them holding up any more of our stagecoaches, but at the same time I’d like to see them brought to justice for what they’ve already done. I think you’re the best chance for that to happen, Mr. Jensen.”
“Call me Matt,” he told her with a smile.
“All right, Matt. And I suppose you can call me Emily, as long as it doesn’t give you any ideas.”
“You’ve made it pretty plain that I’d be wasting my time if I did get any ideas.”
“Yes, you would.” She stood up. “Come on. Let’s go tell my father. It looks like he’s going to be driving the stage.”
“I’m not sure how he’ll take the news,” Matt said. “He doesn’t like me very much.”
“He’ll like you better once you’re sitting on that driver’s seat next to him with a shotgun.”
As Matt predicted, Seamus Hanrahan was cool to the idea of him going along on the stagecoach’s next eastbound run, but Emily said, “You put me in charge of running things, Seamus, and I’m hiring Matt.”
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