The mule turned an unblinking brown eye toward its owner. Since evacuating the burlap, things had been just fine. Pressing on, even after a full day of plodding along, was part and parcel of a mule’s life.
If England Dan spotted the gunman ahead of them along the trail, he had to act. He was the one with the bullet. The single bullet. He tried to keep a sharp eye on the tracks, and fifteen minutes into their hunt, he halted and pointed.
“Another rider,” he said. “This is a road that goes straight to Bisbee.”
“We’ll face an army,” Cooley said, his courage fading again. “Let them keep the map. We can make a living off the Trafalgar.”
“Enough to woo Mandy?” That was all England Dan had to say to get Cooley thinking again. He wanted to get rich off the Lost Banshee Mine, but taunting Cooley was as much fun. His partner swiveled about in the saddle, as if he had been caught in a dust devil, swirled around, back and forth until he came to a halt, facing forward again. He gestured for Dan to keep on the trail.
England Dan rested his hand on the pistol, even if he wasn’t going to do much damage. If he got off a shot, bluffing any opposition was easier. Running them off was all he hoped for, even if they took the map with them.
“There. Go check. There’s a horse tethered to a tree limb.” He heard the horse yanking hard, trying to get free. While Cooley checked, he dropped to the ground and studied the tracks.
The confusion of tracks told him nothing. Several horses had come through this spot, possibly milling about before riding on. He looked up when Cooley led the horse back.
“It’s little more than a pony. That’s the second horse, the one between us and whoever stole the map.”
“From what’s in the saddlebags, it belongs to Gonzales.” Cooley held up a sheaf of papers. “Arrest warrants for Lars Jensen and a couple other road agents I never heard a whisper about. They’re all dated a couple days ago.”
“The telegraph had to hum to get the arrest warrants before he set out. He must have bought the horse back in Oasis and then hit the trail. But why here?” The deputy had had to buy a horse barely saddle-broken, maybe because he hadn’t had much money or, more likely, it had been all there was to be purchased in town. Too many citizens had left with all their belongings and gone to find fame and fortune in Bisbee.
“Was he the gunman making all the fuss? Where’d he get off to?”
“Stay here,” England Dan ordered. He drew his six-gun and started down the road. Here and there he saw the deputy’s footprints along the path. When the stride shortened, he slowed. Only a few yards farther, he found a grassy patch where Gonzales had stopped. He took the deputy’s cue and stood on tiptoe to look ahead past a tangle of brush.
He caught his breath at the sight. Dropping back flat-footed, he steeled himself to advance. Once he was through the undergrowth, nothing stood between him and the lawman’s body. He strained every sense to be sure he was alone—or as alone as you can be with a corpse. A quick sniff of the air betrayed lingering gun smoke, but he heard nothing around him that sounded out of place. The gunshots had quieted the forest creatures. After a few minutes, they resumed their business of being animals, hunting and eating and being eaten.
Circling, he came up to Gonzales’ body from the far side. The lawman lay facedown. The six holes in his back showed how he had died—and the source of the gunshots England Dan had heard back down the trail. He rolled Gonzales over. A look of surprise had been permanently frozen on his face. England Dan looked up and worked out what mistake the lawman had made. He had approached from the tangled undergrowth, only to have the killer come up behind him.
“Six shots. That’s a powerful lot of hate.”
“The gunman? Is he gone?” Cooley stood with the deputy’s horse and Mabel. His voice quavered just a mite.
“Two men rode off.”
“Chances are good it’s somebody named in the warrants from his saddlebags. At least we know it’s not Lars Jensen. Mandy shot him dead. She’s one crack shot.”
England Dan started to ask about that. Cooley had boasted of gunning down the outlaw. He pushed the question aside. It hardly mattered who had murdered the deputy, though being shot in the back screamed that Lars Jensen was responsible. The man was a stone killer. England Dan began stripping the deputy of anything useful. The gun belt and the ammo were the most valuable. He plucked one cartridge out and held it up, examining it closely.
“I don’t know if I can use this. Gonzales used a forty-five and my Webley takes a four fifty-five.” He broke open the Webley and ejected all the rounds. He snagged the one unspent cartridge and rested it over his right ear. With some trepidation, he slid six of the lawman’s cartridges into the cylinder. There was a small amount of play around each cartridge. He worried that firing the smaller round would jam his barrel due to the slight mismatch in brass sizes sending the slug down the barrel in a crooked path.
“Will they shoot?” Cooley looked skeptical.
England Dan shared his suspicion that they might not fire properly. He considered trying it, then stopped before he pulled the trigger. Two killers weren’t more than a few miles down the road, heading deeper into the mountains. Why alert them?
“I’ll keep his six-gun. I know the rounds work there. The rounds will fire in my gun,” he decided, “but ejecting them might be a problem.”
“So you traded a gun with a single shot for one with six? That’s some improvement,” Cooley said. “Give me some of the bullets for my gun.”
“What else did you find in his saddlebags? He wasn’t the kind of man to ride off with only a couple dozen rounds.”
Cooley fished around in the saddlebags. A huge grin came to his lips. He held up a box of spare cartridges.
“We’re better off because of him. The least we can do is give him a decent burial.” England Dan chewed a bit on his lower lip as he struggled with the feeling that time was running away from them like stampeding cattle. Wasting even a second now let Jensen get that much more of a head start on them. But . . . but burying this varmint was the right thing to do.
“We don’t have a spade. How are we going to dig the grave?”
England Dan held up his hands, then pointed to Cooley’s. His partner balked, but a little persuasion got him rooting about, using a stick. England Dan found a broad, flat stone to scoop dirt. It took the better part of an hour to make the grave deep enough. A final search of his body for anything useful gave them nothing more, but England Dan unpinned the star on Alberto Gonzales’ vest.
“I’ll see that it’s sent back to Mesilla so they’ll know what happened to him.”
Cooley mumbled something his partner didn’t hear. He asked him to repeat it.
“I said I hope we get the chance to return the star. We have to take the map away from men willing to shoot a US deputy marshal in the back.”
“Keep that in mind, John. It may come to us to do to them what they did to Gonzales.” The look of fright on Cooley’s face worried England Dan. How much good he’d be in a real gunfight was going to be a real problem.
Cooley dropped the last rock on the deputy’s grave and stepped away, wiping his hands off on his vest. His lips moved. England Dan hoped he was saying a prayer, but more likely he was cursing his own fate. To be sure things were all proper, Rutledge said a few words, then pointed to the deputy’s horse.
“You get to ride in style.”
“No offense, Mabel, but you have been reduced to a pack animal again.” Cooley thought a moment, then laughed. “Only we don’t have anything to lash onto your back. You’re the one with the most luck of all of us.”
That idea sobered him again. England Dan led the way. The sun was working its way up over the peak to the east, making travel difficult. He pulled down his bowler and used what brim he had to block the blinding sun as he rode, but it was Cooley who saved his life with a frantic wa
rning.
“Duck! Guns!”
England Dan lunged forward and tumbled off the stallion. He hit the ground hard, rolled and came to his knees, the deputy’s six-gun clutched in his fist. For a second, he missed what Cooley had noticed. Then the long tongues of orange flame spitting from the gun muzzles showed him where to fire.
He fanned off a couple rounds, driving the ambushers back. His next couple shots were better aimed. He appreciated the gun’s balance in his hand. Alberto Gonzales had gone with the best weapon available.
“Take cover!” England Dan need not have shouted the warning. Cooley had already scrambled for cover behind a thick-boled mountain mahogany tree. England Dan followed his own advice and rolled away. He flopped bellydown a dozen paces from his partner. He hunted for a tree like Cooley had found, but all he had was a low rock. More than one bullet whined off the top, forcing him to keep his head down. He reloaded, took a breath and popped up to fire a couple rounds. He identified the two at the same instant his partner did.
“It’s Jensen. And I swear he’s got a twin with him.” Cooley sprayed lead around wildly enough to drive the Jensen brothers back.
England Dan cursed his partner and Mandy. They’d claimed Lars Jensen was dead. Now he faced not only a known murderer but probably his brother, too. He fired into the bushes, trying to end the fight. A new fusillade came in response, forcing him to take cover behind a low pile of rocks. With bullets ricocheting off the rocks, he reloaded and worried over a plan to get out of this trap alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ENGLAND DAN SETTLED down and let the Jensen brothers expend ammo, trying to hit him. They chipped away at the rock shielding him, but blasting through it would require a mountain howitzer. In spite of their murderous attitude, he doubted they had one. He took a stick and balanced his bowler on the end. He carefully raised it so just the crown popped above the rock. The more bullets they expended, the fewer they had to actually shoot him or Cooley.
To his dismay, they didn’t take the bait. He lowered the stick and put the bowler back on. He chanced a quick look around the side. The rising sun shone directly on the stand of trees where the two outlaws had taken refuge. He caught a glint of light off a pistol but wasn’t in position to shoot.
“Dan, what are we going to do? They got you pinned down!” Cooley waved to him.
“Thanks for letting them know,” England Dan grumbled. They didn’t have to be geniuses to have figured that out, but even a small doubt on their part would have given him an advantage. Cowering behind the rock, an easy target if he tried to escape, stacked the deck in favor of the Jensens.
“I see where one of them’s hiding. You want me to shoot him?”
England Dan hardly believed his partner. They’d end up a pound heavier from the lead if they exposed themselves, and Cooley wondered about shooting back. He motioned that he was going to decoy them out by making himself a target and that Cooley should take advantage of it. If the signal got confused, he was going to be ventilated.
He took a deep breath, then stood and started firing. One of the outlaws stepped out from behind a tree to get a better shot at him. For a brief instant, they stared at each other, taking the other’s measure. This had to be Poke Jensen. He was taller, stockier and, if England Dan was any judge, uglier. Both had the same color hair and broad, wide faces, but Poke’s intensity burned into him like a branding iron.
They trained their guns on each other and opened fire. They stood fifteen yards apart, a distance requiring some skill with a handgun. England Dan began firing methodically. The deputy’s gun came up empty. He dropped it and slapped leather. He whipped up his Webley. To his surprise, Poke Jensen had emptied his pistol, too, and drew another six-shooter at his side. His reflexes were amazing. England Dan had always heard of lightning-fast draws but had never really seen one.
Until now.
But he had a small advantage. His Webley was far more accurate, and he had trained endlessly to stand in the middle of a hailstorm of bullets. Stiff upper lip, never retreat, for queen and country—all had been drilled into him for years. It had been a decade since he had served, but the training had etched itself into his mind and body. Poke Jensen fired. A bullet winged Rutledge, but he hardly noticed. His return fire was more accurate. When the Webley clicked on a spent chamber, he had driven the outlaw back to cover.
He dropped down behind the rock and panted harshly as he reloaded. As he had feared, the deputy’s rounds did not quite fit his Webley. Bits of metal clogged the cylinder. He ejected the shells and saw shiny lead debris on the edge of the barrel. Carefully using the tip of his knife, he peeled away the lead. It wasn’t useful to do this every time he reloaded, but he wanted the pistol to fire reliably for what he had in mind.
Waving to Cooley to lay down covering fire, he gathered his feet under him, then exploded outward. He pounded hard for the woods where Cooley wildly sprayed lead in all directions. He had almost reached the trees when a bullet hit his heel. He tumbled forward and landed flat on his back, staring up at the sky, stunned.
From some hidden reservoir of strength, he jerked himself around and rolled sideways until he fetched up hard behind a rotted log. The lead singing in his direction tore away huge chunks of the decayed wood. He felt the sharp sting as one slug tore all the way through the log and lightly caressed his cheek. Blood began oozing down to his chin. There wasn’t time to stanch the flow. Getting to safety behind something that stopped the bullets was paramount.
To his surprise, Cooley ran from the woods, firing in the general direction of the outlaws. This took the Jensens as much by storm as it did England Dan. He rose, pumped his legs hard and threw his arms around Cooley, tackling him. The air above them sizzled with lead. They landed hard and crawled to safety behind a scrub oak.
“You stole my map, you miserable back-shooting sons of—”
England Dan pulled Cooley down. His outburst had drawn the fire of both gunmen.
“Settle down. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“Me? Who was it that ran from behind a perfectly good rock and made a target of his backside? You—”
“Never mind. We’re stalemated.”
“What’s that?”
“Neither of us can gain advantage. We’ll swap lead until someone runs out of ammo and the other side wins.”
“You mean,” said Cooley, “a side kills the other. I don’t want that to be me. How much ammunition’s left?” He checked his pistol and the box he’d taken from the deputy’s saddlebags. Cooley looked up. “I’ve got a couple dozen rounds.”
“I’ve got two full cylinders. One dozen.”
Cooley turned pale. He started to speak, but no words came out. He sank down with the tree trunk behind him. “What are we going to do, Dan?”
“A flanking maneuver is our only chance. You stay here but only shoot if they stick out an arm or head. Conserve your ammo. I’ll circle and try to attack them from the side.”
“That’d put them in a cross fire,” Cooley said.
“If it works, we’ve got them. I’ll try not to put holes in the map.” He saw that his joke fell on frightened, deaf ears. Cooley wasn’t in any mood to appreciate levity. “Get ready. I’ll run for the trees over there in a couple minutes.”
“Why wait?”
“The sun’s coming up and will be above the trees. That’s the spot that’ll blind them. I hope it’ll blind them.” He took a deep breath and watched the bright line caused by the rising sun drop lower and lower. When it got to eye level for the Jensens, he lit out like someone had given him a hotfoot.
He hadn’t gone ten feet when Cooley opened fire. He cursed his partner. There wasn’t any chance Cooley had that good a target, but England Dan had no choice but to keep running. He reached a tight knot of trees and slid between them. They were hardly more than saplings but enough of them offered some small protectio
n. He lowered his sights and braced his gun against one trunk. He expected one of the brothers to show himself. There wasn’t even movement in the bushes where he thought they hid.
A twig snapped behind him. He dropped like a stone, rolled over and scanned the forest behind him. A flash of a blond-haired head a dozen yards away made him curse. Poke Jensen had had the same idea he had. Worse, both of them had chosen the same section of forest for their flanking maneuver. If he didn’t stop Jensen, Cooley would find himself under fire and probably shot in the back.
He emptied his gun in Jensen’s direction. How Poke Jensen reacted was hidden by the trees, but he guessed the outlaw’s advance was stymied. With a quick motion, he opened the top-break Webley and ejected all the shells. He bobbled the cartridges, settled and then carefully loaded. He was almost out of ammo, but he still had the .455 cartridge lodged above his ear as a backup.
He got to his feet and worked his way back into the forest, hunting for any trace of Poke Jensen. A flash of movement set him off. Firing steadily, he chopped a bush to ribbons. Another quick move ejected the spent brass. He hunted for more ammo, then grabbed the one resting atop his ear and slid it home. The Webley snapped shut. With one round. As he faced Poke Jensen.
“I wanted to see who I was going to gun down,” the outlaw said. He came from behind a tree to the left of the bush England Dan had “killed.” With a contemptuous move, he holstered his piece. He began walking forward. His hand hovered over his pistol, ready to draw.
England Dan had no doubt the man’s draw was spectacular. Not a hint of fear showed on Jensen’s face. If anything, he was enjoying himself as he anticipated making another kill. If he had notched the handle of his six-gun, it’d look like a colony of termites had enjoyed a buffet.
“Come on out and let’s shoot it out. You and me. Like men. Or is that asking too much of you?” Poke Jensen stopped when he came within ten yards.
England Dan backed away. Any showdown with Jensen would end badly for him. Worse, he had a single round in his gun, not that he’d need more. Jensen had to have been fast and accurate to have survived as long as he had.
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