Sartain frowned, shook his head. “You’d best stay with your ma. There’s nothing you can do out here, girl.”
Mrs. Van der Deutsch placed her hand on her daughter’s thigh, signaling her agreement with what The Revenger had said.
Mercy shook her head once, hard, then flipped the reins over the backs of the two horses in the wagon’s harness. “I’ll be back,” she stated firmly, defiantly, as the wagon rattled away.
Sartain watched her and sighed.
“She has a right,” said young Deputy Summerfield.
“I ain’t denyin’ that.” Sartain swung down from his saddle. “But I’d hate to see her get killed.” He looked at the deputy. “And you realized that’s probably what’s going to happen to you, if you go after that bunch, don’t you?”
Summerfield frowned. “What about you? I sorta got the idea that you...”
“Were goin’ after ‘em? I am. But I don’t expect to survive it.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
“Because it’s what I do.” Sartain lifted his saddle and saddle blanket from Boss’s back, and set it on the ground, under a sprawling cottonwood.
Summerfield stepped down from his horse with the stiff awkwardness of a much older man. “Sartain. I heard that name before. Mike Sartain.” He paused as he stood staring at the Cajun leading his horse off toward where a creek murmured and flashed darkly in the starlight. “The Revenger.”
Sartain threw up an acknowledging arm.
“Holy Hannah.”
Giving an ironic chuckle, Summerfield unsaddled his horse and led it off to where the Cajun tethered his stallion near the creek. A few minutes later they’d gathered wood, and The Revenger had a small fire going.
The hills and trees between this makeshift camp and the hollow would hide the light from the marauders when they visited the ranchstead, which Sartain didn’t doubt they would.
When the coffee came to a boil, Sartain removed the pot with a leather swatch and filled cups for himself and the deputy.
Taking his smoking cup in his gloved hands, Summerfield said with a contrite air, “Sorry.”
“About what?”
“What I said back at the ranch...about you not knowin’ what’s like to hold your dead girl in your arms. I read in the newspapers about...your trouble.” The deputy blew ripples on the surface of his coffee and sipped.
“Then you probably also know I have a two-thousand-dollar federal bounty on my head. It pretty much adds up to a death warrant.”
“I did know that. I think Bill Mitchell’s got the circular hanging in the office. What about them soldiers who...doesn’t the government think they shoulda been punished?”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Sartain said, reaching into his saddlebag pouch for a bottle of Sam Clay. “But Uncle Sam wanted to punish them himself. He charged me with murder. Of the vigilante variety.”
He extended the bottle to the young deputy.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Abner said and splashed bourbon into his coffee. He sniffed the steam and closed his eyes, savoring the aroma.
Sartain splashed the liquor into his java and sloshed it around. “I always make sure who knows that. About the bounty, I mean.” He winked at the young deputy. “It’s always good to know who your friends...and enemies...are.”
“You can count me as a friend, Mr. Sartain. Since you’re going after them killers, that is.” Fieldhouse looked toward the north. “Say, why’d we camp so far away from the ranch? How’re we gonna know if the gang strikes?”
“We’ll know.”
“By the sounds?”
“Or by the light in the sky.”
The young deputy frowned, then nodded. “Oh. You think they’ll burn the place.”
“After they find their dead, you bet they will. But even if we’d have dragged the bodies off, they’d have seen the bloody mud and all the cartridge casings. Not to mention all the tracks leading into the place.”
Fieldhouse shook his head. “Poor Mercy and her mother. They’ll lose everything.”
“Hell, they already have,” Sartain said and took another sip of his spiced coffee.
They didn’t say anything for a time. They both sat with their rifles across their laps, staring toward the north where stars shimmered beyond the silhouettes of barren trees.
Mercy returned after she’d been gone an hour. She wasn’t driving the wagon but riding one of the two horses from the harness. A pale grub sack swung down from her saddle as she trotted the gelding up to the fire. The flames flickered shadows across her face. “Any sign of ‘em?”
Sartain set his coffee down and rose, shaking his head. “Not yet.”
“Maybe they won’t come.”
“Sooner or later they’ll come, I’m sorry to say, sweetheart.” The Cajun reached up to help Mercy down from her saddle. He knew she didn’t need the help. He just wanted to be close to her. “And when they do, I got a feelin’ you and your ma ain’t gonna have a home to go back to.”
He bunched his lips, scowling sympathetically.
“Figured that,” Mercy said. She looked at the big man before her and then sighed, wrapped her arms around him, and pressed her cheek to his chest. “Oh, Mike...”
“Mercy, I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t warn you that if you join me and Deputy Fieldhouse in goin’ after that bunch, if they don’t come after us, that is, there’s a good chance you won’t survive it.”
She looked at him with her verdant green eyes. “I know that.”
“What about your ma?”
“I can only think about Pa right now. I saw how casually that Ramon Lazaro killed him. I want a shot at Lazaro. If no one else, I want Lazaro.”
“All right,” Sartain said, his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll do everything we can to get you that chance.”
“If we can just get him—get him hard—I’ll be satisfied.”
Sartain nodded. “I’d like to get a few more, but I understand. We’ll go for the head of the snake, cut it off, and see what we can do about the tail.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
When they sat down around the fire near young Fieldhouse, and Sartain had poured the girl a cup of coffee laced with Sam Clay, she frowned at him. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me when we’re up against so many?” She glanced at Fieldhouse. “I can understand Abner. But...why you, Mike? This isn’t your fight.”
“Oh, yes, it is, girl.” Sartain dipped his chin and winked. “When it became your fight, it became my fight. We Cajuns are funny that way. Friends mean a whole lot to us. Not as much as family, but, then, I don’t have any family.”
He grinned, cut a glance at Fieldhouse, and sat back against the tree he’d been resting against before. Mercy frowned at Fieldhouse. The young deputy flushed and turned away.
“Say, there, Deputy,” Mercy said. “I brought some fresh cotton from the Ryans’ place. We need to get those bandages changed before your wounds start to putrefy.”
Fieldhouse glowered, boy-like. “You really think it’s necessary, Miss Mercy.”
“I do.”
“All right, then.”
He leaned back and pulled his shirt out of his pants. As he did, Mercy fetched a spool of fresh cotton from her saddlebags. She took her time cleaning the wounds with a sponge soaked in creek water and a bottle of cheap whiskey she’d also brought from the Ryan’s.
As she worked, scowling with concern, several times she glanced meaningfully, darkly at Sartain.
He could smell it, too. The young man’s wounds were beginning to fester.
As she finished wrapping the severest of the many wounds, she whipped her head around to stare north. “Oh, my God,” she said half under her breath.
Sartain had heard it, too. The distance-muffled whoops and howls of many men and the barks of many rifles. Lazaro had arrived at the Van der Deutsch ranch.
They’d found their dead brethren, and they were shooting up the place.
Sartain, Mercy, and Abner
stared to the north, tense and speechless.
Chapter 10
“Oh, God,” Mercy said after a while. “There it is.”
She meant the dull umber glow of fire rising just above the horizon.
“There it is,” Sartain agreed, nodding grimly. “We could have stayed and fought for it, but I don’t reckon that would have done any of us any good.”
“Nope,” Mercy said, shaking her head slowly, bunching her lips.
“I’m sorry, girl.”
She just continued shaking her head and staring toward the north. She did not break down sobbing. She just shook her head.
“What now?” Abner asked Sartain, deferring to the older man’s experience.
The Revenger gained his feet, removed the coffee pot from the fire, and kicked out the flames.
“Now I’m gonna go have a look, see which direction they ride. You two stay here and saddle your horses, just in case we have to make a run for it. I doubt we will. They have no chance of finding us in the dark, but you never know. Saddle ole Boss for me, too, will you?”
He picked up his rifle, drew Mercy to him, and kissed her cheek.
Then he stomped away from the fire, heading north, deadheading on the umber glow in the dark sky above the horizon. The shooting and the whooping and hollering had stopped. Now there was only the menacing red light in the sky, shifting around as he’d once seen the Northern Lights do.
He climbed the hill through oaks and scattered cottonwoods. When he reached the brow, he could see the ridge beneath which the burning cabin lay. He kept walking, tramping through thick brush and scattered forest, descending another hill and climbing one more, until he lay at the crest of the ridge overlooking the Van der Deutsch place.
They’d burned everything—the cabin, barn, and every outbuilding. Flames licked at the sky, sparks sweeping around like falling stars.
Shadows moved among the red bundles of burning buildings. Jostling shadows. Then the Cajun saw the shadowy line of riders galloping up the hill to the north. He waited until the last rider had crested the hill and disappeared.
Then he gained his feet, doffed his hat, and ran his coat sleeve across his forehead.
“You bastards,” he growled, his heart constricting in his chest and the colossal destruction he was witnessing. Mercy’s father dead. Now her entire ranchstead burned. “You’re gonna pay for that.”
Then he swung around and walked back in the direction from which he’d come.
He stopped suddenly. Three man-shaped shadows stood before him, in a slight arc about ten feet away. They all wore hats and coats, and they were cradling rifles. The man in the middle canted his head to one side, and said, “Now, who have we here?”
He raised his rifle, aimed at the sky, and fired three fast rounds.
Sartain’s heart fluttered.
Those shots were a signal. The rest of the gang would turn around and gallop back here in no time.
Chapter 11
Sartain had suddenly found himself between a rock and a hell of a stout wall.
Three killers faced him. Forty more were galloping toward him from the other side of the burning valley. He could hear the drumming of their horses’ hooves.
He had no choice but to move quickly. The man in the middle of the threesome facing him must have sensed his decision. Just as the Cajun was about to snap the Henry to his shoulder and begin firing, the man before him pumped a cartridge into his rifle’s breach, snapped the rifle up, and pressed his cheek against the stock.
Keeping the rifle aimed at The Revenger’s head, he strode quickly up to Sartain and stopped six feet away. “Drop it.”
The others raised their rifles now, too.
“You got no call to aim guns at me,” Sartain said, affecting the wheedling voice of a simple-minded cowpuncher. “I just heard the shootin’ and seen the fire, and rode over to—”
“Shut up!” snapped the man before him. “Toss that Henry aside or I’ll blow your head off!”
Sartain stared at the man incredulously, gave a defeated sigh, and bent his knees. “If you don’t mind, I don’t like to throw my weapons around. Fouls the action and scratches the stock. I’d like to just set it down nice and gentle like...like this here.”
The man before him stepped back, wary of a trick, slanting the barrel down as Sartain set the Henry on the ground beside him.
“Now the hogleg,” the man said. “Slow!”
The galloping hooves were growing louder. The rest of the gang was halfway across the valley now and was still coming hard and fast despite the darkness. Sartain’s heart was tattooing a hearty rhythm against his breastbone.
Still squatting, he grinned self-effacingly as he looked at the man before him. He was too far away for Sartain to make a move on him. Before he could get the rifle out of the man’s hands, the other two would shred him.
As he straightened, he unsnapped the keeper thong from over the LeMat’s hammer and slowly slid the big popper from its holster. Again, he bent down and set the gun on the grass beside the Henry.
“While you’re down there, you can unload that Bowie knife, too. And anything else you got hid away.”
Sartain sighed and did what he’d been told.
As he straightened, feeling way too light, the bile of dread filled his belly. He was no longer between a rock and a hard place. He was sitting on a powder keg and the fuse was lit.
The drumming of the hooves was growing louder. The gang was on the near hill, climbing toward him.
“Anything else?”
“Nope, that’s it.”
The man reached forward, and, keeping his rifle aimed with one hand at Sartain’s head, patted the Cajun down quickly. His hand stopped on Sartain’s mackinaw over the right pocket of his pinto vest. The man pulled his hand away from Sartain’s belly, snapped his fingers, and turned his palm up.
Sartain reached into his coat, slipped the double-barrel derringer out of his vest, detached it from the old Waterbury that resided in the opposite pocket, and set it on the ground with his other weapons.
Now he felt as light as a feather about to be blown to nothing in the powder keg’s blast.
“There, now you got ‘em all,” he said, holding his hands up, palm out. “I would’ve given you the derringer, but I forgot about it. Hell, I never use the damn thing, don’t even know why I carry it around!”
“You don’t, huh?”
“Sure don’t.”
“How many others were with you?”
Sartain frowned. “What others?”
The ground beneath his boots reverberated with the thuds of the approaching gang. The man in front of Sartain didn’t bother questioning him further. He stepped back and turned to where the first riders were jerking their blowing, stomping mounts to halts a few yards away. One man separated himself from the pack, curveting his horse, and saying in a thick Spanish accent, “Found one, eh, Sam? Where are the others?” Holding his reins high against his chest, he looked around. “More than one man ambushed Keller, Selby, and the others.”
“This is the only one we found. Walked around the whole ranch, but this big drink of water’s the only one. The other must’ve run off.”
The man who was undoubtedly the gang’s leader, Ramon Lazaro, snapped his face toward Sartain. “Where are the others?”
Still holding his hands high, The Revenger said, “Just like I told this feller here, Mister...I mean, señor...I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. What others? There’s just me. I was just passin’ through when I heard the shootin’ and seen the fire. Figurin’ someone was in bad trouble and might need a hand, I rode over.”
“Mierda,” cursed Lazaro. “I don’t believe it.”
“No mierda about it.”
Lazaro swung lithely down from his saddle and stood uncomfortably close to Sartain. The outlaw leader was several inches shorter, so he had to look up at him. Close up, he didn’t look Mexican, but his accent was as thick as they came. It was too dark for The R
evenger to see for sure, but the outlaw leader’s eyes appeared blue.
“You’re saying you were just passing through here. You’re just a drifter?”
“That’s right. I done worked roundup on a ranch a few counties west of here, and I’m on my way south. Just passin’ through, amigo. I swear!”
Sam had crouched to pick up the Cajun’s guns. He showed the Henry, LeMat, and pearl-gripped derringer to Lazaro. “How many cow punchers ride around with such stylish irons as these, boss? Look at that Henry. Look at this LeMat! How many cow punchers you see packin’ a purty little popper like this derringer?”
He held the hideout pistol up in front of his boss’s face.
He glanced at Sartain’s cartridge belt. “Look there. Nearly every loop is empty. He shot up all his ammunition, and we know where it went, too!” He gritted his teeth in fury at Sartain. “Cal Wallace was a good friend of mine, you murderin’ bastard!”
“I don’t know who that is,” Sartain said, keeping his hands raised and a fearful, exasperated look on his face. He didn’t have to fake the fear. He knew he was only a second or two from death. While he didn’t normally fear it, he wanted no part of it just yet.
He really wanted to take at least one of these sons of bitches along for the ride to wherever vigilantes and murdering bastards went when they gave up their ghosts.
Sam slapped his gloved hand across Sartain’s left cheek. He brought the back of the same hand against his right cheek. “You’re a damn liar!” He pressed the barrel of his Winchester against Sartain’s gut. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“Hold on.” Lazaro shoved Sam back and stepped up before Sartain again, looking up at the taller man. “You’re one of Carson’s men, no?”
Sartain sighed. He’d kept his hands raised even when he’d been slapped. He tried to keep the burn of fury from his eyes. He now wanted to kill at least two men here. Lazaro and Sam.
“Who’s Carson?”
“You know who Bill Carson is.” Lazaro moved even closer. “Where is he?”
“Oh, boy. This is just really not my night,” Sartain said thinly. “I sure wish I’d just ignored the gunfire and the light from them fires. I’m always sayin’, ‘Mike Sonnet, you really gotta keep your nose out of other folks business.’ Well, I think I done learned my lesson here tonight!”
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