Ace didn’t like being grabbed that way. He shrugged off Rufe’s hand. Chance did likewise.
Ace kept his voice neutral as he asked, “What do you want, Rufe?”
“I seen the way both o’ you were lookin’ at Miss Laura earlier. You think she’s a pretty gal, don’t you?”
“Of course we do,” Chance replied. “Any man with eyes in his head would think that.”
“Well, don’t you get any notions about her. She’s my gal, you understand. I won’t take it kindly if either of you fellas starts tryin’ to court her.”
Ace said, “We may not even see her again after the wagon train reaches Rimfire tomorrow. We were grateful to her and her grandfather for their hospitality, that’s all. So you don’t have anything to worry about, Rufe . . . except convincing Laura that she’s your girl.”
“Oh, she’s convinced of it, all right!”
Chance grinned. “Although, if I was to take it into my mind to let her know just how admirable I find her . . .”
That was Chance, thought Ace. Unable to resist a challenge, even when he didn’t actually care about the objective.
Rufe balled his hands into fists and stepped closer to Chance. “You better just forget about—”
A startled yell from somewhere else in the circle broke into the warning. All three young men looked around. Their eyes widened in surprise as they saw a ball of fire arcing through the sky toward the camp. It plummeted down, struck the canvas cover on one of the wagons, and instantly the flames began to spread.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
More flaming arrows swooped down toward the wagons, lighting up the sky. Fortunately, they weren’t aimed as well as the first one. One of the arrows struck another wagon and set it afire, but the others either fell short or landed inside the circle.
Those misses created dangers of their own, however, catching the grass on fire from the arrows that landed outside the wagon train.
Inside the circle, not far from where Ace, Chance, and Rufe Wingate stood, one of the falling arrows struck a man in the shoulder, lodging there and setting his shirt on fire. He screamed as the flames began to spread.
Ace acted instantly, lunging at the man and tackling him from behind. Ace knew he might be making the arrow wound worse as he rolled the man in the dirt, but putting out the burning shirt was more important at the moment.
A couple blazing arrows landed inside the gathering of livestock, spooking the animals and making them mill around nervously. The oxen surged against wagons and made them rock back and fort. The horses were skittish and threatened to push down the rope corral.
In a matter of seconds, the rain of fire from the sky had thrown the camp into complete chaos. The immigrants ran around, screaming and shouting, and then the sudden boom of guns added to the racket.
“Those outlaws are back!” Chance yelled as he jerked his gun from its holster and whirled toward the outside of the circle. He saw a muzzle flash from the prairie beyond the wagons and triggered two swift shots at it. Then he shoved Rufe toward the nearest wagon and snapped, “Take cover!”
A few yards away, Ace slapped out the last of the flames leaping from the shirt of the man he had tackled. The man groaned in pain from the burns and the arrow stuck in his shoulder, but those injuries would have to be dealt with later.
Ace leaped to his feet and drew his Colt. He glanced around, spotted Chance crouched at the corner of a wagon as he fired at the attackers, and hurried to join his brother. “Must be Mitchell’s bunch again!” Ace said as he dropped to a knee behind the wagon tongue and leveled his revolver at the darkness.
“Can’t be Indians!” Chance squeezed off another shot. “They wouldn’t have missed with so many of those arrows!”
Ace triggered the Colt at a muzzle flash. The fires started by the arrows that landed outside the circle were spreading, but luck was with the immigrants. The wind was from the south, so it blew the flames away from the wagons and back toward the men who had launched the arrows.
That tactic had backfired on them, literally, thought Ace.
As the fire spread, so did the glaring light it cast over the plains. They began to see the outlaws crouching out there, and once they had targets at which to aim, their rapid fire became even more deadly. Their bullets scythed through the raiders, spinning them off their feet.
At the front end of the wagon, Rufe Wingate emptied his revolver at the outlaws, then knelt to reload. His eyes were wide as he snapped his revolver’s cylinder closed. “I gotta find Laura and make sure she’s all right!”
“Go ahead,” Chance told him.
Rufe loped away into the confusion. Most of the immigrants had taken cover. Some of the men had recovered enough from the shock of the attack to start putting up a fight. Rifles cracked and shotguns boomed from various places around the camp.
Suddenly, Ace heard a new sound—the drumming of rapid hoofbeats growing louder. He thumbed fresh cartridges into his gun and called to his brother, “Here they come! They’re charging the camp!”
Horses loomed up out of the darkness. The firelight behind them cast monstrous shadows as they closed in on the wagons. Outlaws bent forward in the saddles and slammed shots toward the defenders. Ace had to throw himself desperately to the side as one of the horses leaped over the wagon tongue he had been using for cover.
The horse landed inside the circle. The man on its back hauled on the reins and pulled the animal around in a tight spin. Ace rolled over and came up on one knee in time to see the outlaw’s gun swinging toward him.
Both irons roared at the same time. Ace felt the wind-rip of a slug’s passage close beside his ear. His shot was more accurate, striking the raider in the throat and angling up into his brain. The impact flipped the man off his horse. Blood sprayed in a grisly arc from a severed artery.
Another of the mounted outlaws reached the gap between wagons where the Jensen brothers had stationed themselves. He leaped from the saddle, landed with one foot on a wagon tongue, and pushed off from it to crash into Chance and drive him to the ground. The collision jolted Chance’s gun from his hand.
The outlaw tried to bring his revolver to bear, but Chance grabbed his wrist and thrust it up as the man pulled the trigger. The bullet went harmlessly into the air as the gun exploded deafeningly. The outlaw’s weight pinned Chance to the ground, but his arms were still free. He hung on to the man’s gun wrist with his left hand and rocketed his right fist up in a short but powerful punch to the outlaw’s chin.
Chance’s head was spinning. The impact had knocked the air out of his lungs, and he struggled to draw in a breath. At the same time, he was fighting off the man who wanted to kill him. He hit the raider twice more and finally knocked the man off to the side. Chance rolled away from him, scooped his gun from the ground, and came up firing just as the outlaw caught his balance and triggered a shot of his own.
The raider’s bullet plowed into the ground only inches from Chance. Chance’s slug lanced into the man’s chest and knocked him over backward. The outlaw’s revolver boomed again as his finger jerked the trigger spasmodically. His back arched and then he slumped as he died.
Ace got to his feet, hurried over to his brother’s side, and reached down to grasp Chance’s arm. He helped Chance up and they both turned toward the gap where the attackers had breached the wagon train’s circle. Ace expected to find more of the outlaws trying to get through, but he saw only the fire burning across the prairie. A few shots still rang out here and there. For the most part, however, the fight seemed to be over.
The rope corral had held, and the livestock were starting to settle down. Ace spotted Rufe Wingate’s tall figure and started in that direction. Chance went with him, still breathing heavily as he caught his breath.
As the brothers came up to the Fairfield wagon, they saw that Rufe, Dave Wingate, Edward Fairfield, and Laura all appeared to be unharmed.
Fairfield asked, “Are the outlaws gone?”
“They ain’t shootin’
at us anymore,” Wingate said. “I reckon that’s all that matters.”
“They must have gotten more of a fight than they expected,” said Ace.
“And that prairie fire blowing right back in their faces didn’t help matters for them,” added Chance.
Wingate said, “Reckon we must’ve killed another half dozen of the varmints, at least. We’re whittlin’ ’em down. Maybe they’ll give up and go away.”
“I need to see how many of our people were hurt,” said Fairfield.
“I’ll come with you,” Wingate volunteered.
As the two older men walked off, Rufe put his hands on Laura’s shoulders and gazed intently down at her. “You’re sure you ain’t hurt?”
“I’m fine, Rufe. How could I be anything else, the way you hovered over me and shielded me with your own body?”
He shook his head. “I don’t reckon I could’ve stood it if anything ever happened to you, Miss Laura.”
She put her arms around his waist, rested her head against his chest, and hugged him. “You’re sweet.”
Rufe looked a little surprised and embarrassed, but he managed to put his arms around her and awkwardly embrace her.
Ace chuckled and said quietly to his brother, “Looks like things weren’t quite as settled between those two as Rufe made them out to be.”
“Yeah, I’d say this is the first time he’s hugged her like that,” Chance agreed. “Probably won’t be the last, though.”
“No, probably not.”
Edward Fairfield and Dave Wingate returned a short time later to report that another of the immigrants had been killed in the attack. The party had suffered several more injuries, as well, including the man who’d been struck by the flaming arrow.
But once again, Clade Mitchell and his band of outlaws definitely had come out second-best in the clash. Four of the raiders had made it into the circle, only to be killed. It was unknown how many of them had fallen out on the prairie, fatally wounded.
“We’ll keep them four horses,” Dave Wingate declared. “Rufe, get some other fellas and drag the bodies of those dead owlhoots outta camp. We don’t want ’em in here with us overnight.”
“We’ll have to bury them in the morning,” said Fairfield. “I didn’t feel right about dumping those other men in that gully and leaving them there.”
Wingate spat. “Better ’n what they deserved.”
“That may well be true, but I won’t leave them for the scavengers.”
“Suit yourself,” Wingate replied with a shrug. “If we’re as close to Rimfire as these Jensen boys say, takin’ the time to bury those skunks won’t keep us from reachin’ the settlement tomorrow.”
Once the bodies had been carried out of the camp, Wingate and Fairfield set up extra guard shifts for the night. It didn’t seem likely that the remaining outlaws would return, but they couldn’t be sure of that.
Out on the prairie, the fire had burned itself out, but the smell of smoke still hung in the air, mixing with the acrid tang of burned powder. It was a vivid reminder of just how dangerous life out on the frontier could be.
* * *
Ace and Chance took one of the extra turns at standing guard, but nothing else happened. By morning the smell from the charred prairie wasn’t as bad, but it hadn’t gone away completely.
There would be no service for the dead outlaws, only a quick burial as soon as a single large grave could be dug. Ace thought Edward Fairfield didn’t like that much and would have preferred individual graves, but the wagon train captain didn’t make any objection.
When that grim chore had been taken care of, everyone got busy preparing to pull out for the last stretch of the trip to Rimfire.
Whether the immigrants would proceed immediately on to the range where they planned to settle was still unknown. Ace supposed it would depend on how long it took the wagons to reach the settlement.
The creek was shallow enough, with a rocky bed, that they had no trouble fording it and pushing on south. At Wingate’s request, Ace and Chance rode up front with him, Rufe, and Fairfield.
Rufe kept glancing back over his shoulder, looking at Laura as she handled the team of oxen hitched to the lead wagon.
“Rufe, watch where we’re goin’,” his uncle scolded him. “If you want to look at what’s behind us, you can drop back and ride drag with them other fellas I put back there.”
“Sorry, Uncle Dave,” Rufe muttered. He tried to keep his eyes pointed ahead of the wagon train, but it wasn’t easy for him.
A range of low but rugged peaks rose to the east. Those were the Highwood Mountains, Ace recalled. Another range, the Little Belts, was visible to the south. Between them lay a broad, fertile valley evidently watered by numerous streams, judging by how green it was as the wagon train entered it. He could see why cattlemen had been drawn to it. It was good range for grazing. The small hills that rolled across the valley would make farming more difficult, but certainly not impossible. There were a number of wide, level stretches where fields could be plowed and planted.
In the vast country with its huge, arching sky, it seemed like there ought to be plenty of room for everybody.
Unfortunately, some people didn’t see it that way.
By midday, the wagons had penetrated several miles into the valley and had passed hundreds of grazing cattle. Angus McPhee’s Tartan Ranch was south of Rimfire, Ace recalled, so those cows probably didn’t belong to him. He didn’t ride close enough to check their brands.
Edward Fairfield pointed and said excitedly, “Look up there! I think I see some buildings.”
“Yep, you do,” drawled Wingate. “I spotted ’em a couple minutes ago. Reckon that’s Rimfire. See that line o’ trees this side of it? That’s where a creek’s runnin’. Anybody with any sense who starts a town is gonna put it where there’s water.”
“Do you think we can reach our homesteads today as well?”
Wingate shook his head. “Don’t know about that, but there’s a chance, unless you decide you want to spend the night in town and then push on. Ought to get there tomorrow if we do, for sure.”
Fairfield frowned in thought. “I’m not sure what to do. If we stop, it will be a chance for our people to stock up on supplies and rest a bit. But we’re so close!”
“Reckon you could put it up to a vote.”
“No, the people elected me captain. I’ll make the decision. But let’s wait until we’ve reached the settlement.”
“Seems fair enough,” Wingate said with a slow nod.
There was no real road between Fort Benton and Rimfire, but the wagons had been following a rough trail. It curved to the southeast and led to a bridge over the creek that ran beside the settlement. The bridge appeared to be wide enough for the wagons, Ace thought as they approached, but not by much. The drivers would have to be careful not to let the vehicles stray too far to one side or the other. If that happened, a wheel might drop off the side, and then the wagon would be stuck there, blocking the bridge.
“Come on, fellas,” Wingate said to Rufe, Ace, and Chance. “Let’s ride on ahead and make sure everything’s all right before we let those wagons start across.”
They nudged their horses into a quicker gait that carried them out ahead of the wagons. As they neared the bridge, Ace spotted a large number of men on horseback coming from the other direction.
Chance saw the riders, too, and said to his brother, “I don’t like the looks of that.”
“Neither do I,” Ace agreed. “That big fella in front, isn’t that Angus McPhee?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
The two groups reached the opposite ends of the bridge at the same time. The bunch on the south side reined in, blocking the trail that turned into Rimfire’s main street about fifty yards farther on. Angus McPhee was out in front, right in the center of the group and their obvious leader. Ace and Chance could see him clearly.
“Hold it right there!” shouted McPhee. He had approximately twenty men with him, all of th
em armed. Beside him was a man with a dark, narrow mustache.
As Ace, Chance, and the Wingates reined in at the north end of the bridge, Dave Wingate muttered, “Damn.”
“What is it?” asked Ace.
“See that mean-lookin’ hombre next to the big blowhard who just hollered for us to stop? That’s Clade Mitchell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Angus McPhee walked his horse a few feet out onto the bridge. The iron shoes rang like gunshots on the thick planks. “Those wagons aren’t coming across this bridge,” he called as he reined his mount to a halt. “You might as well turn ’em around and take ’em back where you came from.”
“How dare the man act like that?” exclaimed Edward Fairfield, who rode up to join them. “This isn’t his private kingdom.”
Ace said, “From what we’ve heard about McPhee, he probably feels like it is.”
“That’s Angus McPhee?” asked Wingate.
“Yeah,” said Chance. “We saw him in Fort Benton, acting all high and mighty with the sheriff. It didn’t get him anywhere there . . .”
“But McPhee pretty much owns Rimfire,” Ace concluded.
“Good Lord!” Fairfield exclaimed. “That’s Clade Mitchell with him!”
“Yeah,” Wingate said dryly. “I was just explainin’ that to Ace and Chance.”
“What’s Mitchell doing here? He’s an outlaw.”
“McPhee may not know that.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is a public bridge,” Fairfield insisted. “He can’t deny us the use of it.”
“Reckon he thinks he can,” said Wingate.
“Wonder what his connection is with Mitchell,” mused Ace.
McPhee’s already florid face flushed even darker with impatience and irritation as the men talked. He yelled, “Quit yammering amongst yourselves and get those wagons out of here! You’re not welcome in Rimfire!”
“This is absurd,” Fairfield said. “I’m going to talk to the man. Surely he can be reasoned with.”
Ace wouldn’t have bet on that, and he was about to say as much when Fairfield nudged his horse forward and rode out onto the bridge. Instantly, Clade Mitchell’s hand hovered over the butt of the gun on his hip.
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