Mrs. McGarritt landed with a dull thud, flat on her back, behind her horse’s heels, a bloom of red spreading in the center of her chest. She bounced once, kicking up a puff of dust, then lay still, her open eyes staring sightlessly at the sun.
Sally raged at the fine lady’s death and focused on an outcropping of rocks hiding one of the outlaws. Her rifle fired almost as if it had a will of its own. The rock hiding the assailants was in front of other, larger rocks, and Sally consciously aimed for a ricochet shot, hoping to get around the stone.
A barrage of gunfire kept coming at her.
She dragged bullets from her gun belt as she emptied her weapon then reloaded as bullets whizzed by her head close enough she felt the heat of them.
They came from a different spot. She aimed in the direction of the shot and pulled the trigger as a second member of the colonel’s party was shot off his horse, then a third.
Her horse staggered toward the cliff side, hit. Sally dived to the ground, throwing herself to the cliff side of the narrow trail, with only inches to spare between her and the edge. Her horse went down under the withering fire and fell toward her, screaming in pain.
Gunfire poured down like deadly rain.
Sally was now sure there were three of them. They’d lain in wait like rattlesnakes, attacked from the front, rear, and directly overhead, and were picking them off with vicious precision. Coldblooded murderers.
Rolling even closer to the cliff, Sally avoided the collapsing horse. Raging at the senseless killing, she used her mount’s thrashing body for meager shelter.
Fighting her terrified, dying horse, Sally rolled to her left just enough to twirl her rifle in her right hand, cock it, aim, and fire. She’d yet to see any of the coyotes who were attacking them, but aim was instinctive and she trusted it.
The men around her, the ones who hadn’t died in the first hail of bullets, battled with her against the dry-gulchers shooting from cover. Sally saw Colonel McGarritt take one agonized look at his wife lying dead and turn back to the assault from overhead. He had a rifle in his right hand and a Colt six-shooter in the left. A constant roll of fire came from him as if his rage and grief were blazing lead.
A quick look told Sally only four men had survived the first shots. The cover was bad. Another man jerked backward, struck the ground hard, and collapsed on his back.
A cry from overhead told Sally somebody’s bullet had found its mark. There were three shooters. With the cry, one of them quit firing.
Another of her companions collapsed to the ground. There just was no shelter. The horses weren’t enough. Sally’s horse neighed in pain and made a valiant lurching effort to regain its feet. The movement sent the horse—and Sally—dangerously close to the cliff. Bullets whizzed like furious bees from two directions. Sally aimed at the source of that vicious raining lead and fired as fast as she could jack another bullet into her Winchester.
Another yell from overhead and another of the three rifles fell silent. One was still in full action and she aimed in that direction.
A shout from behind told her Colonel McGarritt was hit, but his gun kept firing.
A bullet hit the trail inches from her head and kicked dirt into her eyes, blinding her. It didn’t even slow her down because she was aiming as much with her ears and gut as with her vision.
The remaining shooter switched between Sally and Colonel McGarritt with a steady roll of gunfire.
Sally clawed at her eyes to clear her vision in time to see Colonel McGarritt drop his gun and fall limp on his back. She was the last one of their party firing. Everyone was either dead or out of action.
God, have mercy on all of us. Have mercy on me. God, have mercy. God, have mercy.
Her trigger clicked on an empty chamber and she shifted to reload her Winchester. A bullet struck hard low on her belly. Her arms kept working so she refused to think of what a gut shot meant.
Praying steadily for mercy, for safety, for strength to survive the horrible wound, she squinted through her pained eyes to see her horse, riddled with bullets, kick its legs and make a hopeless effort to rise. Furious at the death and destruction around her, Sally was too disoriented to know left from right.
The dying horse staggered up then fell toward her. Sally rolled aside but not far enough. The horse slammed her backward. Clawing at the rock-strewn trail, she felt the ground go out from under her.
She pitched over the edge of the cliff and screamed as she plunged into nothingness.
“We got ’em,” Fergus Reynolds yelled and laughed when the last one went down. He pushed back his coonskin cap and scratched his hair, enjoying the triumph. “We earned our pay today. Let’s go collect.”
He rose from the rocks he’d chosen for their vantage point on the trail and headed for his horse. Swinging up, he thrust his rifle in his scabbard and kicked his chestnut gelding into motion.
That’s when he saw his brother. Dead. Curly Ike, with that same weird streak of white in his hair that Fergus and Pa both had. He lay sprawled in the dirt, his chest soaked in blood.
Fergus tasted rage. No one killed one of the Reynolds clan without punishment.
He, Tulsa, and Curly had a habit of keeping their ears open in town. This bunch had gotten off the train and talked of the trail they’d take, straight out in the wilderness. There was some sight out the way these folks were riding that drew a small but steady stream of sightseers, so Fergus knew right where to lie in wait.
Fergus and his gang had gotten to their vantage point and been ready. Only after they opened up on them did Fergus realize that they’d taken on a salty bunch. Most of the folks that rode this trail were easy pickings. But not this crowd. They’d fought back hard, thrown themselves off their horses and scrambled for shelter, their guns in action almost instantly.
“That cowpoke who went over the cliff shot me!” Tulsa came down the trail toward the horses, raging. “Creased my shootin’ arm.”
Fergus looked at his saddle partner and wondered bitterly why Tulsa was alive while his brother was dead. Fergus remembered from his youth that his family had been one for feuding and fighting for family. It burned him now that his brother was dead. But those who had killed him were beyond paying for that. The family sticks together.
Fergus even thought of his name. His real name. One he’d left behind long ago. “Curly’s dead.”
Tulsa fumbled at his blood-soaked arm, trying to stop the bleeding. He barely spared a glance at Curly, and that made Fergus killing mad. “I put a bullet in the gut of the one who went over the side. He was still aiming and shooting when he was gut shot. He was dead while he was still fightin’. He was just too stupid to know it.”
Fergus could taste the rage and the need for revenge. But how did a man avenge himself against someone who was dead?
“He got off a lucky shot.” Tulsa flexed his hand as he rolled up his shirtsleeve.
No luck, nohow. Skill. Cold-blooded warriors. Fergus and his saddle partners had never had much trouble finding a few travelers who could be separated from their money. They’d loiter around town, watch for people heading out into the back country, then ride ahead and lie in wait. They picked folks who were passing through so no one noticed when they didn’t come back to town, and wherever they were going, if people there missed them, they didn’t know where to start hunting.
But today they’d bought into the wrong fight and it had cost his brother’s life.
Tulsa’s arm worked, and no bones looked broken. But a shot like that would keep Tulsa laid up for a few days. He wouldn’t be any good for shooting for a while. And Tulsa was a crack shot. With Curly dead, they were out of action for a while.
“The one you’re talking about, that went over the cliff, had himself a mighty nice Winchester,” Tulsa muttered. “We won’t get to strip nothin’ offa him.”
“He screamed like a girl when he fell.” It fed a hungry place in Fergus’s gut to listen to a grown man scream.
“I don’t like him gettin
g away with his gun, even if he did die for his trouble.” Tulsa pulled out a handkerchief and tried to tie it around his bleeding arm, his eyes blazed with hate.
Fergus thought of his brother. They’d been riding the outlaw trail together for near twenty years. “I want to go down there and make sure he’s got nothing left. Not a dime in his pocket and not a bullet in his belt.” Fergus ran his hand over the bandolier belts he strapped across his chest and kept filled with bullets. There were empty spaces now, but Fergus would refill them soon. He liked having a lot of firepower close to hand.
Fergus turned from the people they’d killed, sprawled on the ground, including a woman, and looked at the cliff. They haunted this area and they’d turned the bottom of that cliff into a graveyard. If they wanted that sharpshooting cowpoke’s rifle and money, they’d have to climb down to get it. A chill rushed up Fergus’s back when he thought of going down there. Death wasn’t something Fergus worried about much. Not his and not anyone else’s. But he didn’t want to wade into a graveyard where nobody’d bothered to dig holes.
A graveyard he’d created. They’d been throwing their victims over that cliff for three years.
The sick fear made Fergus feel like a yellow belly, and that didn’t sit well. So maybe he ought to go down and see his handiwork. “We’ll have to go a roundabout way to get down there then hope we find the cowpoke’s body. Some of that drop is sheer, but there are enough trees his body could have snagged anywhere.”
They made their way down to where their day’s work lay bleeding into the dirt. The three of them had made a good living on the fools who passed this way. Now there were only two of them.
There was talk about sending armed men into Yellowstone to protect the visitors, and that would settle the whole area. But nothing had come of it so far. And while they dithered, Fergus lived mighty high on the hog.
But he’d just paid one ugly price for his easy living. His brother was dead.
Two
Sally slapped into a branch. It scraped her belly and she clawed, but the branch snapped.
On. Falling.
Down. Slowed by the tree but not stopped, just beaten and dropped. Slapped and let go. Battered and bleeding and falling, hurdling, plunging.
That cliff had been sky high. Now she’d return to earth. Trees grew parallel to the cliff. She skidded between tree and stone, slashing through the skinny top branches, slamming into thicker ones, only to hit the top of the next trees and their frail upper reaches.
Twigs stabbed at her face and neck. She clawed at the trees, trying to find a way to stop, save herself. The branches she managed to grab broke, not even slowing her down as she plummeted toward the rocky ground far below. Another hard blow, this time to her back, as she tumbled. Then another and another.
She rolled and slammed her stomach into a thicker branch. For a second she stopped. A pine tree—tougher than the aspens—snagged on a buckle. She fought for a hold. The branch tilted. The needles tore at her flesh. The sheer cliff was within her grasp, but too smooth to find a handhold.
Sliding toward the rock wall, for a second she was pinned. Solid, sheer rock on one side, bristling pine bowed but unbroken.
Her head swung down as she hung from her belly. Her hands scrambled for a solid hold on the tree or the granite. Fingernails ripped at unforgiving rock. Her flesh shredded on prickly pine.
As she dangled, her eyes blinked open and she looked straight into the startled face of a man. A man perched in a nearby tree like a two-hundred-pound squirrel.
The horror on his face told her, even in an instant, that he’d seen her fall. He knew he was watching someone die. He shouted and reached for her. But he might as well have been a mile away. There was too much distance between them.
Sally had one heartbeat to know he wasn’t part of the shooting from overhead. Her second heartbeat held pity for him. He was watching something ugly. Something no rational human being would want any part of.
She knew she didn’t want any part of it.
“God, have mercy,” she cried out to the Lord and also to this man. It was almost as if their souls touched in that single look.
In those fleeting seconds she let herself be completely alive. Looking into the man’s eyes, probably the last human being she’d ever see, was as powerful as any moment of her life.
Even as she clawed at the branch, it slipped through her buckle. She knew unless she got ahold of something solid, she was going to be with God this very day in heaven, because she still had a long way to fall and a hard meeting with the ground.
With her eyes, she told that man good-bye, told the whole world good-bye. She regretted knowing how her family would grieve. Pa would blame himself. Ma would hurt nearly to death. Mandy would have no one to take care of her. Beth would relive this and want so desperately to help. Laurie would cry. Her little brothers would want to.
Her weight tore her loose from the ponderosa pine and she plunged. She hit sturdier branches with a sickening thud, face down. The air slammed out of her lungs. The tree gave again and she fell, hit and fell, hit and fell. The rock on her right grated her skin. The tree on her left seemed to take pleasure in its slapping leaves, occasional sharp needles, and harsh, scraping bark. The world set out to do every bit of harm it knew.
She had no idea how far she fell, if it was for a long time or if the world had just slowed down as she plunged to her death. And then the ground, rushing toward her. Nowhere left to fall.
A sudden blow wiped it all away.
Logan McKenzie slapped one hand to his Colt six-shooter when he heard the gunfire.
Of course it was gone. Left on his horse rather than climb a tree with it. Nothing much to shoot in a tree.
He looked up, not sure what he’d do with the gun from here anyway.
The shooting went on and on. He was no hand at such things, but he knew there were a lot of guns. Something terrible was happening up there.
A sudden, terrible crack of branches drew his eyes still above him but lower. Something coming straight for him.
He caught the branch of his tree and swung himself aside only seconds before a huge form hit right where he’d been sitting.
As it plunged past, he recognized it. A horse.
Dear Lord God, what is happening?
More shattering branches. More gunfire.
This time, whatever fell wasn’t so close. He turned to face whatever was next.
Another horse. It whinnied, terrified. Horrified.
The sight of that huge brown body plunging past him was sickening, shocking. A sight burned in his brain he would be forced to live with for the rest of his life.
Logan’s prayers grew and spread.
The gunfire went on.
No way to go up without going down first. Logan dropped his sketchbook and pencil and rushed, hand over hand, to the ground far, far below. He’d descended no more than a dozen feet when he heard something else falling toward him and turned to see, to dodge.
A woman slammed into a branch of a tree next to him. Only a few yards away. Her belt snagged on something and she hung, stopped in her fall for a precarious second. The space between them wasn’t far … just too far. There was no way to reach her.
Logan cried out in anguish, and she looked right into his eyes.
A terrified, beautiful woman. Long blond hair trailed and tangled with the branches. All of her terror passed between them.
The world stopped spinning. She let him into her soul through her eyes. Shared her pain, terror, regret.
The connection was unlike anything Logan had known. She handed her life to him in that frozen moment. Endowed him with her beating heart and her gasping lungs. Left them to him like an inheritance as if she knew, seconds from now, she’d no longer need them.
She even somehow let him know she was sorry. Sorry to be dying and sorry he’d been forced to witness it.
He moved to get to her, save her—though the space between the trees made it impossible. He knew
it. She knew it.
Farther down maybe. If she hung for a few more minutes he could get across.
The limb that held her snapped and she fell.
“No!” Dropping hand over hand, he raced down the tree. It cut at his hands and tore at his clothes as if the tree itself was trying to stop him. He tried to follow the woman with his eyes.
She’d vanished after the horses.
The tree clawed his hands. Like all of nature, it could punish someone who wasn’t careful, and he wasn’t at all. The urgency was too huge.
His prayers weren’t words anymore, just groans too deep for words. Screams of regret that he didn’t utter aloud. Desperate longing that he could get to her. Save her. But it was too late, far too late.
He tore a layer of skin off his right forearm as he went down and down and down. The branches got wider and sturdier. He noticed but ignored the fire in his hands from the scraping bark.
When he hit the ground, he skidded along the steep ground, mostly on his backside, descending, slamming into the tall, slender aspens that covered this mountainside. Looking everywhere for the woman.
Because he skidded right past it, he grabbed at the sketchbook he’d dropped, barely aware that his hand had closed over it.
There she was! Covered in blood. Lying motionless—certainly dead—against a pile of talus rock gathered by avalanches over centuries.
Swallowing hard, shocked by an urge to cry, mourn her, Logan kept moving, the sight of her terrified eyes burning in his head like a red-hot iron. He felt bound to her, even in her death. Their eyes meeting was the most intimate thing Logan had ever shared with another human being. He’d be haunted by that unspoken scream for help—help he hadn’t given—for the rest of his life.
He needed to see to her burial. As he slid and ran toward her, he planned to see if she carried anything with a name on it. He could tell her people what had become of her. Try to explain what had happened to her, though he had no idea.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 32