Even with the bandanna over her face, coughs wracked her with every step. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. The world was gray around her, closing in, nothing left, nothing but smoke . . .
Rosaleen realized suddenly that she was on the ground. She had fallen without even being aware of it. The only thing working slightly in her favor was the smoke wasn’t quite as thick down low. She was able to breathe a little easier, and that helped clear her head for a moment.
She wished she had taken the time to soak the bandanna in water from her canteen before she ran from where her pony had fallen, but fear of the fire had been so great she hadn’t thought of it. Like it was, the bandanna probably didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing.
The heat from the blaze washed over her. Staggering to her feet, she lurched forward again, weaving back and forth as she tried to run.
It was no use. The smoke was too bad. She slipped to her knees again, then pitched forward. The roar of the flames filled her ears. She seemed to hear something else, some sort of pounding, but the sudden hope she felt evaporated when she realized it was the wild, frenzied beating of her heart. Most of her strength had deserted her, leaving her coughs feeble.
She didn’t want to burn to death. Better to die from the smoke before the fire reached her. She took a deep breath, drawing death into her body, and then knew no more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Vance rode harder than he ever had in his life. The horse he was mounted on was a big, sturdy one, built for hard work and stamina but not for speed. He wished he had one of the lighter, more nimble-footed cow ponies under him as he raced toward Eagle Flats.
Something seemed unnatural about that fire, he thought as he leaned forward in the saddle. Just a short time earlier, the sky had been clear, no smoke in sight anywhere. The blaze wouldn’t have spread out that much, that fast, under normal conditions.
Someone must have set it, and they had to have done something to make it spread like that, too.
Coolidge.
Starting a fire seemed like the sort of reckless, vicious thing he would do.
Vance wondered if Rosaleen had had time to get past the fire’s point of origin before it broke out. That seemed unlikely. Probably, she was between him and the flames, trying to get away from them.
He thundered onto Eagle Flats and scanned the ground in front of him, looking for any sign of her. Smoke blew in his face and stung his eyes, making it hard to see. “Rosaleen!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Rosaleen!”
To his right and left, several hundred yards away, flames leaped along the ground with breathtaking speed. The fire was on three sides of him, and the only way out was back the way he had come.
The smoke was getting thicker with each passing second. He pulled his bandanna up over his nose as impenetrable clouds of the choking stuff rolled across the flats.
Through a gap between the clouds, Vance suddenly caught sight of something dark against the sage. He rode in what he hoped was the right direction and then had to haul back hard on the reins to keep the horse from trampling the senseless form lying on the ground.
He dropped from the saddle and cried again, “Rosaleen!” Kneeling beside her, he gripped her shoulders and rolled her onto her back. Her face was pale and still. For a horrible moment, he thought she was already dead. Then she coughed as her body rebelled against the smoke, and he knew she was alive. He pulled her up into his arms.
The swift rataplan of hoofbeats made him look around. Frightened for Rosaleen, he had dropped the reins when he flung himself from the saddle, and his horse was fleeing instinctively from the advancing flames.
“No!” Vance shouted. “Come back here!”
The terrified horse ignored him, of course, and kept going.
Vance fought down the panic welling up inside him. He got one arm around Rosaleen’s shoulders, the other under her knees, and scooped her up against him. He lurched to his feet. She was a slender girl, but even so, the weight was considerable as he broke into a run after the horse. Their only hope of salvation was for him to carry her out of the danger zone.
He cradled her against his chest as he stumbled away from the fire. Her head hung loosely, drawing her throat taut, and he could see the pulse beating under her smooth skin. As long as he could see that tiny, vital movement, he figured he could keep his legs moving.
The smoke curling around them stung his nose, made his eyes water, and caused fits of coughing. The air was so hot it seemed to sear his lungs with every deep, ragged breath he drew in. Soon, he didn’t have any conscious thought in his brain. He was just a mechanism, arms clamped tight around Rosaleen, legs moving one in front of the other, over and over, as he fled from the roaring conflagration behind them.
In such bad shape, he didn’t realize he had lost his footing until it was almost too late. At the last second he twisted so he wouldn’t land on Rosaleen. They crashed to the ground with her lying on top of him. He’d cushioned her fall but wasn’t sure it mattered. He didn’t think he could get back up again.
Her face was only inches from his. He was surprised to see her eyelids flutter, and then they stayed open so he could look into those green eyes that looked like a deep, bottomless lake.
“Vance . . .” she whispered.
“I’m here. I’ve got you, Rosaleen.” He managed to get the words out without coughing, but then another fit of it struck him.
She started to cough, too, as she pushed herself up a little and looked around them. “We’re not . . . getting out of here . . . alive . . . are we?”
“It doesn’t . . . look like it. I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t have . . . tried to save me.”
“I had to.”
She coughed hard again for a moment, then said, “It was Coolidge. I saw him . . . talked to him. He did this.”
“He’ll pay. Somehow . . . sooner or later . . . he’ll pay.”
She dropped her head against his shoulder. Even with the smoke all around them, he smelled the clean fragrance of her hair. His arms tightened around her, and she gripped him as well. They were going to die, but they would leave this world together . . .
Vance felt the ground tremble underneath him and watched gigantic figures loom up out of the smoke. They weren’t the monsters they seemed at first glance, but turned into men on horseback who quickly dismounted. Strong arms went around Rosaleen and lifted her away from him.
“Wilbur!” Stovepipe Stewart shouted over the roar of the fire. “Give Vance a hand!”
“Save her!” Vance called as the lanky cowboy swung around toward his horse with Rosaleen in his arms.
Stovepipe lifted her onto the horse’s back just ahead of the saddle, then climbed on behind her and looped an arm tightly around her waist to hang on to her.
At the same time, Wilbur clasped Vance’s uplifted hand and pulled him upright. The stocky redhead was quite strong. Shaky but filled with newfound hope, Vance climbed onto Wilbur’s roan and Wilbur swung up behind him.
They pounded after Stovepipe’s paint.
The flames had come very close, but the two swift horses soon left them behind. The smoke was still thick around them, but after a couple blinding, choking minutes, they burst out abruptly into clear air. Vance drew in a deep breath and had never experienced anything more intoxicating in his life.
Another coughing spell hit him, and he knew it would take a while for his lungs and throat to get back to normal.
They all kept moving until they were well clear of the smoke. Only then did Stovepipe slow and turn his mount so he could look back toward the fire. Wilbur did likewise.
“That was a mighty near thing,” Stovepipe said. “The two o’ you were pert near roasted.”
“What happened?” Wilbur asked.
“Coo—Coolidge,” Rosaleen said around a cough.
“You sure about that?” Stovepipe said.
“I talked to him. There’s no doubt.”
Stovepipe’s crag
gy face was grim as he said, “I had a hunch he didn’t pull up stakes like he said he was gonna. Probably been hangin’ around for the past week just waitin’ for another chance to get up to some mischief.”
“Starting a blaze like that is more than just mischief,” Wilbur said.
“He wanted to . . . kill me,” Rosaleen said. “He offered to switch sides . . . and work for the Three Rivers . . . but I had to . . . give myself to him . . . if he did.”
“The bastard!” Vance couldn’t contain his anger.
“I turned him down . . . Didn’t believe him anyway.”
“Yeah, chances are it was a trick,” Stovepipe agreed.
“I think he’s still . . . working for Cabot.”
Stovepipe didn’t say anything in response to that.
He pointed at the blaze. “That fire’s gonna keep on spreadin’, as strong as it’s burnin’. We’d better get back and let Mr. Malone and the rest of the crew know. Ain’t likely it’d make it all the way to headquarters, but you never know. Anyway, we need to stop it before it burns up too much of the range and kills some cattle.”
They rode as hard as they could with the horses carrying double but didn’t have to go all the way back to headquarters. After a couple miles they ran into a large group of cowboys led by Keenan Malone. They had spotted the smoke and come to fight the fire. Every man had a shovel.
“Good Lord!” Malone said as he reined in and saw his daughter and Vance riding with Stovepipe and Wilbur. “Rosaleen, are you all right?”
“Thanks to these three I am.” She wasn’t coughing as badly. “Vance saved me from the fire, and then Stovepipe and Wilbur saved both of us.”
“What the hell started it?”
“Not what,” Stovepipe said, grim again. “Who. Dax Coolidge.”
“Damn it! I knew that devil was still around! Mort Cabot’s gonna answer for this! It’s war now!”
Andy Callahan said, “We’d better get up there and start diggin’ some firebreaks, boss, and worry about the war later.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Stewart, Coleman, take those two back to the ranch. The rest o’ you boys, come on!”
They thundered off toward the fire. Stovepipe, Wilbur, and their two passengers headed toward the ranch house. Their pace wasn’t breakneck any longer, but they didn’t dawdle since the fire wasn’t a great distance behind them.
As they rode, Rosaleen said, “Stovepipe, you and Wilbur showed up at just the right time again. How is it you have such a knack for doing that?”
“Just lucky, I reckon,” Stovepipe said.
“And the fact trouble seems to attract us like a lodestone,” Wilbur added.
“Well, I’m glad it does,” Vance said. “We’d be in bad shape if it didn’t.”
He was confident Stovepipe and Wilbur hadn’t been far off when the trouble started, even though he hadn’t seen them. His father was paying them to keep an eye on his son, and they were sure earning their wages. Vance wasn’t going to say anything about that to Rosaleen. It was up to the two range detectives when they would reveal who they really were.
Of course, Vance had a hunch Stovepipe and Wilbur would turn up whenever trouble broke out anyway.
As Rosaleen had said, they had a knack for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Knowing Malone and the other men had ridden off in a hurry to check out the giant cloud of smoke, Aunt Sinead was waiting anxiously for news. She was on the porch when Stovepipe and Wilbur rode up with the two young people. She could hear them coughing quite a bit.
“Land’s sake!” she said, hurrying down the steps. “What in the world happened?”
“These two got caught in a range fire over on Eagle Flats,” Stovepipe said as the older woman lifted her hands to help Rosaleen down from the horse. “As it was, they swallowed a heap o’ smoke.”
“I can tell,” Aunt Sinead said as Rosaleen and Vance coughed again. “I’ll brew up some hot tea with honey. That will help, but I’m afraid it will take a while for the damage to heal.”
“I know, Aunt Sinead,” Rosaleen said. “Thank you.” Vance slid down from Wilbur’s roan and put a hand on Rosaleen’s arm to steady her as another fit of coughing nearly overcame her.
Aunt Sinead took her other arm and said, “Come on, dear. Let’s get both of you in the house.”
As they went inside, Stovepipe and Wilbur remained mounted.
Stovepipe thumbed his hat back and grinned. “That was a mighty near thing. Lucky that boy’s got hisself a couple o’ guardian angels.”
Wilbur grunted. “You and me are about as far from angels as you can get, Stovepipe. I’d say we were all lucky. What are we gonna do now?”
“I reckon we can ride back out to the flats and see if Mr. Malone and the rest o’ the fellas need any help fightin’ that fire.”
“Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that. We breathed some smoke, too, you know. I could do with a cup of that tea Aunt Sinead was talking about.”
“Later,” Stovepipe said as he lifted his reins. “Come on.”
As they rode toward Eagle Flats, the smoke rising in that direction diminished. By the time they reached the flats, only a few tendrils curled up here and there from the charred expanse. Malone and the Three Rivers hands stood around, grimy with soot and obviously weary as they leaned on the shovels they had used to beat out the flames and dig firebreaks.
Malone looked up at the newcomers. “Did you get those two young’uns back to the house all right?”
“Yeah, and I expect they’ll be fine,” Stovepipe said. “Aunt Sinead took charge of ’em. She’ll fix ’em right up if anybody can.” He looked around. “Appears you got the fire out.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t easy, spread over as big an area as it was. We had to hustle to get ahead of it and contain it. Cabot’s got a hell of a lot to answer for.”
Again, Stovepipe made no response to someone blaming Mort Cabot for what had happened.
“I was thinkin’ Wilbur and me might have a look and see if we can track Coolidge. He must’ve been holed up somewhere for the past week. If we can find his hidin’ place it could come in handy.”
“He’s probably been holed up in the Rafter M bunkhouse, if you ask me,” Malone said. “But yeah, see if you can pick up his trail if you want. It can’t hurt anything.”
Stovepipe nodded. He and Wilbur guided their horses around the huge burned area. With plenty of hot embers out there, crossing it would likely hurt their horses’ hooves.
As they rode, Wilbur said, “I’ve noticed every time somebody says anything about Cabot and Rafter M being behind some new trouble, you don’t have much to say, Stovepipe. Why is that?”
“It’s hard to put anything past you, ain’t it, Wilbur?” Stovepipe said with a chuckle.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Stovepipe looked thoughtful. “I ain’t convinced Mort Cabot’s as bad as Malone makes him out to be. Maybe they ain’t always been friends, but it’s hard for two fellas to wind up as mortal enemies unless there’s some big blowup to cause it. Things like that just don’t happen gradual-like.”
“There’s bad blood between those two old codgers, though. No doubt about that.”
Stovepipe pursed his lips and nodded. “Like you say, no doubt. But is it because somebody else has been pushin’ ’em into that bad blood?”
“Who’d do a thing like that, and why?”
“Findin’ out is part of the reason we’re here. And of course, there’s always the chance I’m wrong.”
“Sure there is.” Wilbur sounded pretty skeptical about that idea.
It took the better part of an hour to make it around to the spot where the fire had started. Spotting the curvature of the burned area, Stovepipe held up a hand to stop Wilbur before they reached the place, then both men dismounted and went forward on foot.
Stovepipe scanned the ground thoroughly until he found what he was looking for. He pointed and said, “Those hoofprints are pretty fresh,
and you can tell from lookin’ at ’em the fella was facin’ where Miss Rosaleen woulda been.”
“So it had to be Coolidge. That sort of backs up her story, doesn’t it?”
“I didn’t have any real doubt about it to start with, but yeah, she would’ve been close enough to tell who he was, for sure.” Stovepipe hunkered on his heels to study the hoofprints more closely then he grunted and pointed again. “Couple empty rifle shells lyin’ over yonder. Miss Rosaleen said Coolidge shot her pony out from under her.”
“Yeah. The skunk. That’s even more proof she was telling the truth.”
Stovepipe straightened. “Let’s see if we can backtrack the varmint.”
Coolidge’s trail led east, toward the hills that lay beyond Eagle Flats.
As the two range detectives entered that rougher terrain, Wilbur said, “The Rafter M is southeast of here, right?”
“Yep. Handy enough Coolidge could’ve slipped on and off the ranch without bein’ seen to get his orders from Cabot . . . if Cabot is the one givin’ ’em.”
Tracking the gunfighter was more difficult up in the hills, but Stovepipe’s keen eyes were able to pick up enough sign to keep them on the trail for a couple miles. They reached a steep-walled canyon with a rock floor.
“The tracks lead in there,” Stovepipe said as he reined in and nodded toward the canyon mouth.
“Aren’t we gonna follow them?” Wilbur asked.
Stovepipe shook his head. “We might be ridin’ right into an ambush if we did. My hunch is that Coolidge’s hideout is somewhere up that canyon. He’ll have picked a spot where he can see anybody who’s comin’ and throw down on ’em.”
The lanky cowboy gazed up at the higher ground on both sides of the canyon. “What we need to do is get up there and work our way around, maybe find some trail where we can come in above wherever Coolidge is holed up. It’s too late in the day to do that now, though.”
“What if he takes off?”
“He ain’t gonna do that,” Stovepipe said. “He ain’t through raisin’ hell around here. Things ain’t blowed up all the way yet between the Three Rivers and the Rafter M.”
Hang Them Slowly Page 18
