Ambush Valley

by Johnstone, William W.

  Assuming, of course, that he survived this ruckus, he reminded himself as he drilled the next Apache in line.

  The killing was swift and merciless. Frank needed only one shot for each of the renegades he downed. He venti lated all the ones he could see, then started in on the ones whose position was marked only by puffs of powder smoke. He knocked down a couple who were hidden in some brush, then sent some slugs bouncing into a nest of rocks where another Apache was concealed. The nco chets caused the man to leap to his feet, and when he did, that put him in clear sight of the men trapped below. The bounty hunters were good shots, too, and the renegade’s head exploded as at least two slugs smashed through it. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Frank wondered if the Indians hidden on the south slope had noticed what was going on. He got his answer as bullets began to whistle around him. The first Win chester was empty, so he tossed it aside and snatched up the second one. Hunkering down in better cover, he opened fire on the warriors across the valley mouth. The air around him was filled with sparks and flying chips of stone and the whine of slugs as they ricocheted from the rocks.

  This wasn’t murder. Far from it, in fact. This was a showdown battle with an enemy who outnumbered him more than a dozen to one.

  But Frank wasn’t fighting alone. As he saw several of the Apaches suddenly stand up, double over, and slide headlong down the ridge because his bullets had found them, the bounty hunters kept up their deadly accurate fire and took a toll of their own. Every time Frank’s shots forced a renegade out of cover, Hoyt or one of the other men drilled him. After five minutes of intense firing, Frank estimated that there were only three or four of the Apaches on the south slope who were still alive.

  The warriors on horseback realized that, too. They had been content for a while to sit back and let the riflemen hidden on the slopes kill the whites. But it hadn’t worked out that way. The trap had been sprung, but somehow its intended victims were still alive.

  Seeing that, the infuriated Apaches charged toward the scattering of boulders where Abner Hoyt and his men had taken cover.

  Frank saw them coming and shifted his aim in that di rection, emptying the rest of the Winchester’s bullets into the howling, yipping mob of renegades. The bounty hunters blasted slugs at them, as well. So much powder had been burned over the past quarter of an hour that the air was thick with smoke everywhere. The dust kicked up by galloping hooves added to the obscuring clouds.

  Some of the horses in the forefront of the attack went down, causing other horses to trip over them. Shrill animal screams tore through the midday heat. Renegades disappeared into a welter of flailing, shattering limbs.

  The grisly collisions failed to break the back of the charge, though. At least two dozen Apaches still thun dered toward the bounty hunters, and the surviving rene gades on the south slope were still a threat, too.

  Frank knew there was no time to reload the rifles. He dropped the Winchester he had just emptied, drew his Colt from its holster, and jerked the gun he had taken from McCoy from where he had tucked it behind his belt. With his hands full of six-gun, he stood up and started down the slope, bounding from rock to rock, slid ing on his heels in places, and doing his best not to start tumbling out of control.

  Twice he felt bullets pluck at his shirt, and countless times they whispered to him as they went past his ears. But somehow he reached the bottom of the ridge un scathed. The Apaches were almost on top of the bounty hunters by now. Frank saw Abner Hoyt desperately emp tying a revolver at the renegades. The other men were fighting just as doggedly. Frank’s revolvers began to boom and buck in his hands as he opened fire with them, squeezing off shots, right, left, right, left, with deadly, cool-headed accuracy. Apaches flew off their horses as The Drifter’s bullets ripped through them.

  Then the renegades overran the defenders, and the fighting was hand-to-hand, mano a mano.

  One of the Apaches dove off his horse and tackled Frank. They slammed to the ground and rolled over and over. Frank lost one of his guns, but both Colts were empty anyway. He used the one he still held to block the downward sweep of a knife as his enemy tried to gut him. Driving a fist into the Apache’s face, Frank knocked the warrior backward. He crashed the barrel of the pistol against the Indian’s head and felt the man’s skull crunch and shatter under the blow. The Apache spasmed and lay still.

  Frank scrambled up in time to see three of the mounted renegades closing in on him. They were no more than forty feet away, and the only weapon he had was an empty gun.

  Then, suddenly, a figure flashed between Frank and the Apaches. The man held a rifle, and it spouted flame as he opened fire on the renegades. The Apaches re turned that fire, and the man who had intervened to save Frank’s life, at least for the moment, jerked as bullets slammed into his body. He kept shooting, though, emp tying the rifle, and two of the Indians toppled off their horses, blood gushing from mortal wounds.

  That respite gave Frank time to grab the knife that had been dropped by the Apache whose skull he had crushed. He wasn’t an expert with a blade, but the same uncanny coordination between hand and eye and muscles that made him one of the deadliest gunfighters to ever roam the West guided his throw as his arm went back and then whipped forward. The knife was a silver streak as it flew through the air and then embedded itself with a thud in the chest of the last Indian who was charging at Frank. The Indian cried out, dropped his rifle, clutched at the knife that had penetrated all the way to his heart, and then pitched off the horse, dead before he hit the ground.

  Frank ran to the man who had saved him. He had seen the thick white hair and recognized it and the clothes, but he could hardly believe his eyes. He had left Cicero McCoy tied up, well out of harm’s way. How in blazes had the bank robber gotten here, in the thick of the fighting?

  And why had he saved Frank’s life?

  Frank dropped to a knee beside McCoy and rolled the man onto his back. The front of McCoy’s shirt was sodden with blood. He had been hit at least four times. But he was still breathing, and as the gunfire began to die out around them, Frank said, “McCoy! Damn it! McCoy!”

  The outlaw’s eyelids flickered, and then rose to reveal the pale blue, pain-wracked eyes. “M-Morgan!” he gasped. “I … I’m shot to hell!”

  “Yeah, you are,” Frank agreed. He didn’t see any point in trying to give McCoy any false hope.

  To his surprise, McCoy chuckled. “Told you … I wouldn’t go back … to Yuma.”

  “That’s why you did it? That’s why you saved me?”

  McCoy frowned. “Saved … you? I didn’t even see you … too much … gun smoke and dust I just wanted to … get in some licks … on those damn red skins.”

  Frank couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I’d likely be dead now if it wasn’t for you, McCoy. I’m much obliged.”

  “You’re not welcome, you … son of a bitch … you stole my … money … I got loose … came here to find you … and kill you.” McCoy grimaced as a fresh wave of agony rippled through him. “Now you tell me I saved your life …. Things just … never work out . do … “

  He didn’t finish the question. Instead, he shuddered and blood welled from his mouth, and the glassy sheen of death slid over his eyes. He was gone.

  But, like he’d said before, at least he hadn’t gone back to Yuma.

  Frank used a couple of fingers to press McCoy’s eyes closed again, then lifted his head and looked around. He was aware that the shooting had stopped now, and he wasn’t surprised to see Abner Hoyt and several more of the bounty hunters standing there watching him. All of them had bloodstains on their clothes, and some of them were leaning on their rifles, using them as makeshift crutches. But as more of the men limped up, Frank counted them and got seven. Hoyt’s whole group had made it through the fight. Not without injury, of course, but at least they were alive.

  “McCoy’s dead?” Hoyt asked in a harsh voice.

  Frank nodded. “That’s right. Reckon he won’t serv
e

  out his sentence after all.”

  “What about the money?”

  “I’ve got it,” Frank said.

  “That’s what we need for the reward,” Hoyt said. “More than McCoy himself.” He grunted. “Can’t help but think that the bastard got off easy, though. He should’ve spent the next twenty years behind bars in that prison.”

  Frank pushed himself to his feet and said, “Justice has a way of working itself out. We may not always like the way it happens, but sometimes it’s out of our hands.” He looked around. “What about the Apaches?”

  The ground in the valley mouth was littered with bodies. Hoyt said, “Weren’t but three or four of them left alive. They lit a shuck out of here.” He joined Frank in gazing around at the corpses and then shook his head. “There was a heap of killing here today.”

  “Enough to last a long time,” Frank agreed. He turned and started limping toward the place he had left the horse with that slicker-wrapped bundle of loot tied to the saddle ….

  The reason they had all come here to Ambush Valley, which today had certainly lived up to its name.

  Chapter 22

  Over the years, Frank had seen dozens of border towns like Hinkley, Arizona Territory. Maybe more. It was an ugly, squalid little place.

  But today, in some ways, Hinkley looked a mite like heaven.

  Old Cyrus Hinkley, the owner of the general store and the founder of the town, also had some medical training in his background. He patched up all the bullet holes and creases the bounty hunters had suffered during the battle with the Apaches. Hoyt and his men could have tended to that themselves, having some experience with such things, but Hinkley had whiskey on hand to douse the wounds before he bandaged them up—and for the bounty hunters to take a drink or two of, as well.

  While Hinkley was busy with the injuries, the settle ment’s citizens crowded into the store. They had heard all the shooting in the distance and were full of ques tions, wanting to know what was going on. Several of them guessed that another Indian fight had taken place over at Ambush Valley, which was correct, of course. The outcome had been different, however. The Apaches had lost this time.

  There was nothing anybody could do for Cicero McCoy except bury him. And in this heat, his body cer tainly couldn’t be taken back to Yuma just to be put in the ground. So the Mexican undertaker and his sons got busy digging a grave in the small cemetery behind the church.

  Frank was content to sit in the shade on the porch of the general store … once he had locked the bundle of stolen loot securely in Cyrus Hinkley’s big iron safe, which was the only one of its kind for a hundred miles or more.

  Abner Hoyt came out of the store and sank down in the cane-bottomed chair next to the one in which Frank was sitting. “You’re the one who actually recovered the money,” he said without preamble. “I reckon when you come right down to it, Morgan, you’re the one who’s got the reward coming.”

  Frank shook his head. “I’d be paying it to myself. Conrad Browning is my son, remember? I own a share in that bank and most of his other business holdings.”

  “And here I always thought you were just a drifting gunhand.”

  Frank thought about his job as marshal in Buckskin and all the folks who lived there, and he said, “There was a time that’s all I was. But no more.”

  “Well, if you ever want to get into the bounty hunting business … “

  Frank shook his head without the least bit of’hesita tion. “No offense, Hoyt,” he said, “but I’ve been on the other side of that fence too many times to ever cross it on a permanent basis.”

  Hoyt grunted and fished a black cigarillo out of the pocket of his buckskin shirt. He put it in his mouth and left it unlit, chewing it for a moment before he said, “I hope nobody ever puts a big price on your head again, Morgan. I’d hate to have to go hunting you.”

  Frank smiled and asked, “But you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

  “If the reward was high enough?” Hoyt’s teeth clenched on the cigarillo. “Damn right.”

  Other than the undertaker and his sons, and the priest from the church, Frank was the only one on hand late that afternoon for McCoy’s burial. Hoyt and the other bounty hunters were at the cantina, celebrating in ad vance the reward they would collect when they got back to Tucson.

  The plain pine coffin had already been lowered into the grave with ropes as Frank stood there beside the hole in the ground, his hat in his hand. The priest said a few words commending McCoy’s spirit to the Lord, then in toned a prayer in Latin. He looked up at Frank with a solemn expression on his kindly, nut-brown face, and asked, “Would you like to say anything, Senor?”

  Frank started to shake his head no, then reconsidered. “I don’t reckon anybody could call you a good man, McCoy,” he said. “But you had courage, and you fought well. I hope that’s worth something on the other side. And you saved my life, whether you meant to or not. For that I thank you, and I ask that El Senor Dios have mercy on your soul. But I reckon that’ll be up to Him.” Frank nodded, stepped back, and put his hat on.

  “Amen,” the priest muttered. He motioned to the under taker’s sons, who started forward with shovels.

  Frank turned and started around the big adobe church with its bell tower that dominated this end of town. Dusk had begun to settle down, and it was quiet in Hinkley, so quiet that Frank had no trouble hearing the guitar music and the laughter that drifted from the cantina at the other end of the settlement.

  The priest fell in step beside him. “You are a religious man, my son?”

  “Not really, Padre,” Frank replied. “I don’t make it to services too often, and haven’t for a long time. But I’ve seen the mountains and the desert, and right now I see those beautiful colors in the sky from the sunset.”

  “Ah. You see the hand of God in His creations, and that is your way of worshiping.”

  Frank shrugged. “Call it that if you will. I’ve seen men kill each other, too. I’ve seen all the cruelties, big and small, they indulge in.”

  “But that … that is the hand of the Devil at work, not Our Lord.”

  “Can’t be one without the other, can there?”

  The priest obviously didn’t know how to respond to that, so he just stopped in front of the church and said, “I will pray for you, my son.”

  “I appreciate that, Padre,” Frank said as he lifted a hand in farewell. “I reckon I can use all the help I can get.” As he walked away, he added under his breath, “We all can.”

  Abner Hoyt leaned back in his chair and rubbed the hip of the pretty senorita sitting on his lap. She giggled and turned so that the valley of her ample breasts was visible in the low-cut neckline of the blouse she wore. Now there was a valley where a man could pure-dee enjoy being ambushed, he thought.

  He’d had enough tequila to feel it, but he wasn’t drunk. He knew his capacity quite well, and he hadn’t reached it yet. He intended to, though. The job was over, and since McCoy was dead, they didn’t even have a prisoner to worry about. They had spent the evening in the cantina, enjoying the tequila and the young women, filling their bellies with beans and tortillas and cabrito. On the other side of the room, Bartholomew Leaf was trying to learn how to play the guitar from the old man who usually strummed on the strings of the instrument. At a nearby table, Bob Bardwell was flirting with a senorita of his own. Joaquin Escobar had already vanished with one of the girls who worked here in tow. The Coleman brothers and Deke Mantee were gone, too. Hoyt hadn’t noticed them leave, but they’d either slipped out with some women or gone in search of a poker game, he thought.

  Hoyt didn’t know where Frank Morgan was, either. He assumed that when they rode out for Tucson in the morn ing, Morgan would be riding with them. Hoyt didn’t figure that Morgan would want to let that bank money out of his sight for very long, especially not after all the trouble he had gone to and suffering he had endured to recover it.

  A sudden frown made Hoyt’s bushy eyebrows draw down.
That loot was locked up in old man Hinkley’s safe, but just how secure was that safe? Hoyt had to admit that he didn’t know. The iron box had looked pretty sturdy, but there might be somebody in Hinkley who could bust the lock. Hell, a stick of dynamite could blow the door right off the safe, Hoyt thought. And it wasn’t so big the whole thing couldn’t be picked up by several men and put in the back of a wagon, so that it could be hauled off and opened at leisure.

  Maybe it would be a good idea to post guards in the store overnight, he told himself. He realized he should have thought of that earlier.

  “What is wrong, Senor?” the girl on his lap asked as she traced the creases on his forehead with a fingertip. “You no like Juanita?”

  Hoyt pushed her hand away, causing her to pout. “I like you just fine, honey,” he said, “but all of a sudden I’ve got other things on my mind.”

  She turned even more so that she could press the soft mounds of her breasts against him. “Juanita will make you forget everything but her,” she promised.

  Hoyt shook his head and snapped, “Not now.” He stood up, causing Juanita to leap to her feet so that she wouldn’t get dumped in the floor of the cantina. Her dark eyes flashed with anger.

  Hoyt didn’t care whether she was mad or not. He was about to motion to Bardwell and Leaf and tell them to follow him over to Hinkley’s store, when he saw Deke Mantee stride swiftly into the room. Hoyt could tell from the expression on Mantee’s dark, lean face that some thing was wrong

  Shit! he thought. There was a problem with that loot. Had to be.

  Mantee spotted him and hurried over to him. In a low, urgent voice, Mantee said, “There’s something going on over at that store where the money’s locked up, Abner.”

  “I knew it! What’s wrong?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Mantee replied with a shake of his head, “but Jack and Ben and I were on our way back down here when we spotted some hombres skulkin’ around the back of the building. Looked like they were taking a wagon back there or something.”