“You heard the man,” Johnny said, wagging his rifle barrel.
“You fellas just move in? I feel like I should have brought a bottle of wine or something,” Sartain said, striding toward the door, wishing like hell Johnny hadn’t found the hideout gun in his vest pocket.
Sartain stepped into the doorway, and stopped, looking around. He couldn’t see much, for his eyes were accustomed to the bright mountain light outdoors.
“Get in there!” Hagan snarled, ramming his rifle’s butt against Sartain’s back.
The Cajun went stumbling into the shack, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dingy shadows. Beacham lay on a lone cot against the far wall, back propped against his saddle. His good foot was on the floor. The one Sartain had pumped a round through rested on a pillow at the end of the cot.
Several empty bottles were strewn around the cot, along with some odds and ends of gear. Otherwise, the shack was empty save for a dilapidated eating table and a sheet-iron stove that ticked and let blue smoke escape through cracks around its doors.
“Did you diddle that bitch?” Beacham wanted to know, poking an angry finger at his visitor.
Sartain laughed silently to himself. He’d blown a hole through the man’s foot, but what Beacham seemed the most concerned about was whether he’d been cuckolded—if you could call cuckolding making love to a woman who considered herself unattached.
Sartain doffed his hat, then twirled it on his finger. “Out of respect for the lady’s honor, that ain’t a question I feel at liberty to answer.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“My answer stands.”
Beacham’s face darkened in the shadows as he leaned forward, jerking his arm and extended finger furiously at the big man before him. “I’m gonna blow both your feet off, you son of a buck! I’m gonna blow both of ’em off so’s you know how it feels. And when your screams start dyin’, I’m gonna pump one through your belly and leave you to die slow and hard!”
Chapter 9
The Cajun felt the burn of fury spread up from his bowels. “You just gonna whistle Dixie or dance? I can’t stand a man who’s all talk!”
Flanking Sartain on his left, Hagan shook his head. “Boy, he’s really got it comin’, Chick.”
Beacham sank back against his saddle. “Yeah, he does. And he’ll get it, just as soon as we get our loot back.” He glowered at Sartain. “You know where it’s at, don’t you?”
The Cajun didn’t say anything. That was the second or third time since he’d ridden into Hard Winter that someone had alluded to hidden treasure.
“He does,” Chick said. “I know he does. Hadley told you, didn’t he? That’s why you’re here. You musta been out after it this mornin’ but seen us trailing you, so you decided to do some fishin’ instead.” Beacham slapped his thigh and winced slightly at the pain it evoked in his tender foot. “I knew it! You got a look about you. Owlhoot. Somehow, you’ve done thrown in with Hadley, and he sent you out here to get the loot for a cut of it!”
“Where is it?” That was the first time Sartain had heard the Mexican, Dominguez, speak. He was crouched in the doorway behind the Cajun, Johnny, and Hagan. “Maybe if we gut-shoot him, he’ll spill it.”
“Where is it?” Beacham demanded. “That money belongs to us. Where is it, dammit?”
Sartain turned his mouth-corners down, feigning chagrin. “You fellas done put me in a bad spot.”
Johnny stomped up beside Sartain and thrust his broad, freckled face at the Cajun. “You’re gonna be in a hell of a worse spot if you don’t tell us where the loot’s at!”
“I can’t tell you,” Sartain said. “I can only show you.”
“He didn’t draw you a map?” asked Hagan skeptically.
“No, he didn’t draw no map. He didn’t want it fallin’ into the wrong hands.”
Beacham drew the Colt on his hip, aimed, and cocked it. “You tell us or I’ll gut-shoot you right here and now!”
“You’re not gonna get your loot back that way.”
“Damn,” Hagan snarled. “He ain’t gonna tell us. He ain’t gonna show us neither. He knows what Hadley’ll do to him if he lets us get the loot back.”
“He’ll show us,” Beacham said. “He’ll show us, or he’ll die slow.” He jerked his chin toward the door. “Get him out of here. You fellas ride with him. If you don’t have the loot in the next couple of hours, if he sends you off on a wild goose chase, bring him back here so I can blow holes in his feet and pop one in his belly.”
“You ain’t comin’?” Johnny asked the outlaw leader.
Beacham blinked slowly, then pointed at his foot wrapped in blood-speckled bandages. “Do I look like I’m comin’? Do I look like I can ride?”
“Sorry, Chick,” Johnny said.
“You’re always sorry.”
“You feel better, now, ya hear?” Johnny said, truckling.
“I’ll feel a whole lot better once I got my hands on that loot again.”
“Out!” Hagan bellowed at Sartain, pointing toward the doorway.
The Revenger swung around . “I ain’t deaf,” he said as he ducked through the door. “You don’t have to yell.”
* * *
“He’s leadin’ us on a wild goose chase,” Hagen said to Johnny and Dominguez. “Hell, we’re ridin’ in circles!”
“Don’t get your neck in a hump,” Sartain said. “We’re not riding in circles.”
No, they weren’t riding in circles, but for the past hour, they had been riding aimlessly. Of course, the Cajun had no idea where the loot was. He was just trying to buy himself time.
For what, he had no idea. While his hands were no longer tied to his saddle horn, and he had command of his own horse, the three men flanking him all held their carbines on him. If he tried to make a break for it, they’d gun him down before he’d ridden more than twenty yards.
Tension was drawing the muscles between his shoulder blades taut as piano wire.
“By God, he’s hornswogglin’ us,” Hagan said as they followed a winding horse trail along the crest of a windy ridge. “That’s what he’s doin’, boys. He’s hornswogglin’ us!”
“Yeah, I agree,” Johnny said. “I say we take him back to Beacham, let Chick get his satisfaction.”
Dominguez said. “I say we hang the son of Satan right here. No point in takin’ him all the way back to—”
“Fellas, it’s right over this ridge,” Sartain said, nerve sweat trickling down his back. “We got about a hundred yards more, so hold your water, and you’ll all be richer than your wildest dreams.”
The Cajun reined Boss up and over the crest of the ridge. The cool wind blew against him, whipping the ends of his neckerchief. He placed a hand on his hat to keep it from blowing off and then released it as he rode down into the shelter below the ridge.
There were rocks and fire-charred pines all around, as well as the thin, wiry grass that grew at higher elevations. Picas peeped and darted among the rocks and charred, fallen timber. He rode to the base of a granite outcropping protruding from the mountain slope and jutting two hundred feet in the air. There appeared to be a hollow area inside the outcropping, which probably made some wildcat a home.
“Well?” Hagan asked doubtfully. “Where is it?”
“See that little cave in the rock up there?”
“I see it,” Johnny said.
“It’s in there.”
Dominguez rode his dappled gray up close to Sartain and grinned with menace, showing his yellow teeth beneath his black mustache. He aimed the carbine at the Cajun’s heart. “Fetch it.”
Sartain glanced at each man in turn. They were boring holes in him with their stares as well as with the barrels of their rifles, all of which were aimed at The Revenger’s heart.
“All right,” Sartain said, swinging down from the saddle. “Hadley sure ain’t gonna like this, and I reckon I’m not gonna get the cut he promised me, neither, for fetching it.”
The Cajun walked slowly up
the steep slope, his boots slipping on the short grass. He glanced behind him. The three men remained on their horses, rifles trained on his back.
He glanced around, looking for possible escape routes. There were none. He was boxed in against the outcropping. Of course, he could try to run, but it wouldn’t do him much good. There was nowhere to go where the outlaws’ bullets wouldn’t shred him before he got there.
He was sweating hard by the time he reached the cavern that had been carved into the outcrop. It was about two feet wide and five feet deep. Its sandy floor was littered with rabbit bones to which a few tufts of bloody fur clung. Sure enough, a wildcat called the place home.
That was all that was in there.
Just the rabbit bones.
Heart thudding heavily, Sartain grinned sheepishly as he turned back to the three mounted gunmen. Dominguez’s head exploded like a ripe melon, blood and brains spraying across his dappled gray’s mane. A quarter-second later, the rifle report flatted out across the hollow.
Sartain saw smoke billow from atop the ridge behind the three outlaws.
Another gun flashed from near the same spot. Johnny screamed and grabbed his shoulder. As his horse reared and half-turned, loosing a shrill whinny, another bullet plunged into Johnny’s chest. Johnny screamed again and flew off his horse’s right hip, the horse kicking his head before he landed.
Sartain had been so taken aback by the sudden gunfire, he’d stumbled back against the outcropping, watching in shock as all three outlaws were blown out of their saddles.
As Hagan flew ass over teakettle off his lunging grullo’s rump, Sartain regained his wits and bounded down the slope. He saw his Henry repeater lying on the ground between the nearly headless Dominguez and Johnny. He grabbed the rifle and then ran toward Boss.
Too late.
The screaming stallion galloped off down the slope toward a fringe of pines at the bottom, shaking his head in disdain at the flying lead.
Sartain cursed sharply though he couldn’t really blame the horse. He’d have done the same thing if he could.
Two bullets blew up dirt and grass around him. Another barked off the escarpment behind him.
Confused by the ambuscade, Dominguez’s dappled gray was wheeling right and left as though trying to find a safe direction to flee. Fortunately, it then bounded straight toward Sartain, who managed to grab the reins with one hand. Unfortunately, while reaching for the apple, he dropped the Henry.
Before he was fully mounted, the dappled gray took off at a dead run up the slope along the left side of the outcropping. Sartain hadn’t been prepared for the uphill lunge. That was likely just as well. Because as he fell back down the side of the horse, he heard the tooth-gnashing zing of a bullet slicing the air where his head had been a moment before.
“Get him!” someone shouted from the opposite ridge, the voice not completely drowned by the gunfire. “For Christ’s sakes, get that son of Lucifer!”
The Revenger cursed loudly as his left boot got hung up in the stirrup and the dapple dragged him up the slope. The Cajun’s head and shoulders bounced over the uneven ground, each blow feeling as though he were being slammed with an anvil covered in sandpaper.
More shouts from the ridge where the shooters were desperately trying to beef him. Several bullets plumed dust around him, but then the horse crested the ridge above the escarpment and bounded down the other side, Sartain’s boot wedged so firmly in the stirrup that he couldn’t jerk it free even though he wasn’t in the best position to do so.
At least he now had the outcropping between him and the shooters, which meant they, at least, wouldn’t kill him. But the wildly fleeing gray seemed bound and determined to finish the job they’d started.
Halfway down the slope, Sartain felt the back of his shirt rip.
He struggled to free his boot.
The ground kept hammering him, although the decline was relatively grassy and not as gravelly as the slope around the escarpment. Gritting his teeth against his misery, he glanced up and around the stirrup that held his foot like a bear trap to see the forest at the bottom of the gulch growing closer.
The horse would likely kill him when it hit the trees. It would bash his head against a bole...
He gritted his teeth and thought momentarily of his dead lover, Jewel.
“Here I come, honey!” he bellowed.
There was a sharp pain in his left ankle.
Then he was in the timber and rolling, and darkness snatched him from the jaws of agony.
Chapter 10
“Mike?”
It was Jewel’s voice. She was calling to him from far away.
“Honey?” he called back to her. “I’m here. Can you see me?”
“Mike?” Someone was shaking him.
“Jewel, honey, I’m here.” Oh, God, what if we couldn’t recognize each other in Heaven because we were just spirits? He heard his voice pitched with hysteria. “Can’t you see me?”
He’d been waiting for this day. He’d been anticipating their reunion for so long, but what if he couldn’t see her or hold her?
His heart lurched in horror at such a vile cosmic joke. He opened his eyes to find himself staring up at Dixie McKee. She stared down at him, frowning, puzzled. She wore a red bandanna around the top of her head, beneath her Stetson, and a red and white checked shirt under a black vest. Her wavy, chocolate hair was splayed across her shoulders.
Sartain’s head was propped on her thigh. She had one arm wrapped around him. In the other, gloved hand she held a canteen.
Sartain blinked. Tears oozed out of his eyes to dribble down his cheeks.
“It’s Dixie,” she said. “Here—take a drink, Mike.”
She shook the canteen, causing water to slosh over the rim.
He looked around, his heart slowing. His dream about Jewel, about possibly not being able to see her and hold her, had been so real and horrifying that he thought he could smell her remembered aroma. Fear had been a wild animal in him, only now taking its leave. He looked around again, half-expecting to see her pushing through the pines surrounding him.
But she wasn’t here, of course. As the cobwebs cleared from his aching head, he realized that judging by the play of the light and the shadows, not much time had passed since the horse had dragged him into the gulch. Maybe a half-hour at the most.
He heard what sounded like a switching tail and he could smell horse. He glanced over his shoulder.
Boss stood at the edge of the trees, maybe ten feet away, with Dixie’s cream. Both horses stared toward the pair in the woods as though wondering what in hell they were doing in there.
“Mike?” Dixie said softly but firmly. “You’d best take a drink. Looks like you could use it.”
“I could use somethin’ stronger than water, but it’ll do for now.” Sartain took the canteen. His arm felt heavy. The back of it was burning. Then it occurred to him that his back, especially up around his shoulders, was burning, as well. He could feel blood oozing from scrapes and abrasions. He felt as though his left hip had been pulled out of its socket.
Maybe it had.
He winced at his various burning, throbbing pains and took a long drink. The water was cold. Almost too cold—it aggravated the throbbing in his head.
“What the hell happened, Mike? I thought you’d been shot, but I couldn’t find any bullet wounds.” She looked down his back. “It looks like you were dragged.”
Dixie added, “I heard the shooting. From the ridge yonder, I saw Chick’s three boys lying dead.”
“You got any idea who them ambushers were?”
“I didn’t see ’em, just heard ‘em. By the time I got to the ridge, they were gone.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I started kicking around up there looking for you, and then I saw Boss standing right where he is now.”
Sartain glanced again at the stallion and drawled, “Better late than never, old son.”
The horse shook his head, rattling
the bit.
“Anything broke?” Dixie asked.
“Feels like everything,” he said with a grunt, sitting up.
Dixie sucked air through her teeth. “Your back looks like freshly ground beef, Mike. At least, the upper half does.”
“Feels like it.”
“Looks like I have another patient. You think you can ride?”
Sartain turned to her, frowning. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“I saw those three come into town earlier, just after you left. They saw you riding to the north and headed in the same direction. I decided to try to warn you, but I lost your trail. I can pan for gold with the best prospectors in the business, but I’m not much for tracking, I’m afraid.”
“Takes practice,” he said, heaving himself to his feet.
He felt his bones grinding and barking, as were the muscles in his left leg, but he didn’t think he’d broken anything.
“Let me take a look.”
Dixie walked up behind him. “Well, you’re missing most of your shirt, and those cuts need a good cleaning, but I reckon that can wait till we get back to the saloon.”
“Sorry to be a bother. I know you got a busy night ahead.”
“After last night, Mike,” she said, wrapping an arm around his waist and rising on the toes of her boots to peck his cheek, “you could never be a bother. But I might require payment of more of the same.” She winked. “Just so you know.”
“Just what the doctor ordered,” the Cajun said, walking stiffly toward his horse. “I need to make a side trip to fetch my guns. Those bastards sure aren’t going to be needing them.”
As he climbed heavily onto Boss’s back, Dixie stepped up onto her own horse. “Where’s Chick?”
“His foot was hurting,” Sartain said when he’d gotten seated and was rolling his shoulders around, trying to ease the kinks in his sinews. “So he sat this one out.”
* * *
The Revenger Page 68
