Hobie saw the men through his field glasses, too. “Do you reckon those hombres are outlaws?”
“More than likely. I can’t think of any other reason they would waylay that coach.” Luke moved the spyglass back to the overturned vehicle and frowned as he noticed something odd. Dust kept flying from the mesa as bullets struck the side of it behind the coach.
For some reason, the riflemen were aiming high. They were trying to keep the people behind the coach pinned down there, instead of picking them off.
Someone who had been riding in that coach was important to the attackers, Luke realized. They wanted to keep whoever it was alive. That put a slightly different slant on things.
And it made Luke more curious than ever.
“I don’t think this is a simple holdup after all,” he told Hobie. He explained what he had noticed and the conclusions he’d drawn from it. “They’ll keep the driver, the guard, and the passengers pinned down until nightfall, and then they’ll sneak in under cover of darkness and grab whoever they’re after.”
“We can’t let ’em do that, can we?” Hobie asked.
“Again, it’s not really any of our business.”
“No, but they have to be planning something pretty bad, or they wouldn’t have stopped the stagecoach and started all that shooting.”
“It’s possible the people with the coach don’t have any rifles, either,” Luke mused. “Just handguns and the guard’s shotgun—which means they’re wasting bullets. The riders are out of range.”
“Not for us,” Hobie said. “Not if we get closer.”
Luke frowned at the young man. “You don’t seem to grasp the concept of our job, Hobie. We go after wanted fugitives and bring them in, dead or alive, so we can collect the rewards for them. We don’t ride around the countryside doing good deeds, like knights from some storybook.”
“But those people are in trouble. Some of ’em are likely to get killed before this is over, if they haven’t already.”
Luke tried not to sigh. His own impulse was to pitch in and give those folks with the stagecoach a hand. If Hobie hadn’t been there, he might have been able to resist that temptation. With the young man around to goad him into doing the right thing, there was no chance of turning and riding away.
“All right,” Luke said as he put the spyglass away. He pointed to the north. “See that little knob over there? We’ll circle around behind it. That’ll give us some cover and also the high ground. From up there we ought to have a pretty good shot at those riflemen.”
Hobie nodded eagerly and turned his horse toward the knob.
With the attackers concentrating their attention on the wrecked stagecoach, Luke figured it was unlikely they would be looking behind them. He and Hobie moved fast, galloping behind the rocky elevation and then reining to a halt when it was between them and the riflemen. Each tied his horse to a stunted mesquite and pulled his Winchester from the saddle boot.
The knob was about twenty feet high, its sides sloping gently enough that they were able to scramble to the top without any trouble. At the crest, Luke took his hat off and stretched out on his belly to peer at the landscape in front of them. Hobie did likewise, stretching out beside him.
The stagecoach’s attackers were about fifty yards away, in easy range for a rifle.
Hobie swallowed hard and asked, “Do we shoot to kill?”
“Most of the time when you use a gun, you don’t want to leave any doubt about the outcome.”
“But we don’t really know who those men are or what’s going on here,” Hobie argued. “Maybe they’re a posse of lawmen. Outlaws could have stolen that stagecoach, and they’re just trying to get it back.”
That seemed like a pretty far-fetched idea to Luke, but he supposed they couldn’t rule it out. Hobie was right that they didn’t know the whole story.
Luke sighed. “Kid, you’re going to be the death of me yet. But I guess you’ve earned that right since you saved my life.” He nestled his cheek against the smooth wood of the Winchester’s stock as he squinted over the barrel. “All right, let’s see if we can spook them enough to make them run.”
CHAPTER 14
Luke aimed for a spot about ten feet to the right of one of the attackers and squeezed the trigger. The rifle cracked and kicked against his shoulder, and dirt spurted into the air at the spot he had targeted.
The man jumped, obviously startled, made a motion like he was going to get up, and then pressed himself to the ground again as he looked around wildly for the source of the shot. Clearly, he didn’t think it had come from the stagecoach.
Beside Luke, Hobie’s rifle blasted. Another of the attackers flinched as the bullet hit close enough to spray grit in his face.
“Damn it,” Hobie said. “I almost hit him. I was aiming to miss by more than that.”
Luke had already levered his Winchester. He fired again and sent another man’s hat flying through the air. “Yeah, I came a little closer than I intended there, too,” he said dryly.
The attackers were stirred up and on the verge of panic. Several leaped frantically to their feet as Luke and Hobie continued to pepper the ground around them with slugs.
With no place to take cover, the riflemen broke off the assault and raced for their mounts being held by a man well back from the others.
“I just thought of something,” Hobie said nervously as he paused in his firing. “What if they come after us now?”
“That’s a risk you run when you stick your nose in somebody else’s business,” Luke said. “There’s always the chance they’ll try to cut it off.”
As a matter of fact, some of the men were already throwing lead at the knob, having figured out where the shots were coming from. None of the bullets were coming close to Luke and Hobie yet, but that might not remain true for long.
It was time to send the attackers a message. Luke tracked his sights on one of the running men and squeezed off another round. The man tumbled off his feet as the bullet ripped through his thigh. His pained yell was clearly audible from where Luke and Hobie lay on top of the knob.
“I want them to know we missed those first shots on purpose,” Luke said as he levered the Winchester and shifted his aim. His next shot hit a man in the shoulder and spun him around. He managed to stay on his feet and continued stumbling toward the horses.
One of the riflemen went back to help the first hombre Luke had shot. He got the wounded man up and helped him onto a horse. In a matter of seconds, all of the attackers were mounted. Instead of trying to circle around the knob and go after Luke and Hobie, they lit out to the south, causing a big cloud of dust to boil into the air again.
Hobie took off his hat and sleeved sweat from his forehead. He blew out a nervous breath and then laughed. “I thought we might have a real fight on our hands there.”
“We were outnumbered, but we had the superior position,” Luke explained. “And after I winged a couple, they knew they’d have to pay a pretty high price to roust us off the top of this hill.”
Despite what he’d told Hobie, Luke kept a close eye on the gunmen until they had vanished in the distance. Then he stood up and said, “Let’s go see what’s so all-fired important about that stagecoach. Some of those folks could be hurt and need our help, too.”
They got their horses and rode toward the overturned vehicle. Luke approached it warily. If the defenders had been paying attention, they would know that he and Hobie were responsible for running off those other men. People who had recently been fighting for their lives sometimes didn’t really think straight, though, especially if they weren’t used to such danger.
“Hold on,” Luke told Hobie when they were still about fifty yards away. “Let’s give them a minute to get it through their heads that we’re friends.”
He hadn’t seen anyone moving around behind the coach, but knew somebody was still alive back there because they’d been shooting only a few minutes earlier. He took his hat off and waved it back and forth above his
head. “Hello, the coach! Hold your fire! My partner and I are coming in! We mean you no harm!”
Luke put his hat on and nudged his horse forward at a slow walk. Hobie rode alongside him and asked quietly, “Are we really partners, Luke?”
“For now we are. Don’t get used to it, though. I normally work alone, and once we’ve corralled Kelly and the Apache, I’m sure I will again.”
“Sure. This is just a one-time deal.”
Luke thought Hobie sounded a little disappointed. Maybe he had figured they would be trail partners from here on out. If that was the case, it was good that he learned the truth right away.
A man stepped out from behind the stagecoach. He wore a brown hat with a high, round crown. He took it off and returned Luke’s wave. “Come on in!” he called.
Luke didn’t miss the shotgun in the man’s other hand. That and the long duster the man wore told Luke he was probably the driver or the guard.
As they came closer, the man lifted a hand in greeting. He was middle-aged, with a close-cropped, gray-shot beard. “Howdy! Sure am glad to see you fellas.”
Luke and Hobie reined in. Without dismounting, Luke leaned forward in the saddle. “It may be stating the obvious, but it looks like you’ve had some trouble here.”
“We dang sure have. I’m Jim Pierce, jehu of this here stagecoach.”
“Luke Jensen,” Luke introduced himself. “My young friend is Hobie McCullough.”
“I’m mighty pleased to meet you, Jensen. Reckon you saved us from those road agents. It was you takin’ those potshots at ’em from the knob over yonder, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.” Luke disagreed with Pierce’s contention that the attackers were outlaws, or at least that their primary intention was to rob the stage, but he didn’t see any reason to go into that. “They jumped you a ways back, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, and I done my dead-level best to outrun ’em, but that’s hard to do with a team of horses pullin’ a coach, especially one with four passengers in it. Still, we were stayin’ ahead of the varmints until one of the leaders shied at something and made the whole team veer too sharp to the side. The coach went over, busted the singletree, and the harness snapped. We were stuck here.”
“That’s about the way I had it figured,” Luke said. “Four passengers, you say? Any of them hurt?”
“I don’t think so, but the fella who was ridin’ guard has a busted leg. Maybe you can give me a hand fixin’ him up.”
“I’d be glad to try.” Luke swung down from the saddle and handed his reins to Hobie. He told the young man, “Stay mounted and keep your eyes open. Those hombres can’t double back at us without raising some dust. If you see anything suspicious, sing out.”
“I sure will, Luke,” Hobie promised.
“Looked like you were putting up the best fight you could,” Luke said to Pierce as they walked around the coach.
“I been drivin’ a stagecoach for near on to thirty years. Been held up before, but I don’t like it. Any lowlife tries to stop my coach, he’s gonna have a fight on his hands.”
Another duster-clad man was propped up with his back against the roof of the coach, which was upright with the vehicle lying on its side. His legs were stretched out in front of him, but the right one had an odd bend in it. Luke could tell that it was broken between the thigh and the hip.
The man was awake, but his blocky face was pale and haggard from pain. He asked in a voice that also revealed the strain he was under, “Are they gone, Jim?”
“Yeah, and this is one of the fellas who chased ’em off,” Pierce replied. “Jensen, this here is Ben Wallace.”
Luke nodded to the shotgun guard. “Wish it was under better circumstances, Wallace.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Wallace’s hat was off, revealing a thatch of sandy hair.
The four passengers—two men and two women—were also behind the stage. One of the women knelt beside Wallace. She had a wet handkerchief in her hand, and Luke supposed she had been wiping the injured man’s face with it, trying to keep him comfortable.
She looked up at Luke. “Someone needs to set this man’s leg.”
The thick layer of dust that covered her clothes and face didn’t keep her from being beautiful, Luke realized. Her vivid green eyes went perfectly with her fair skin and the bright red hair pulled into a bun on the back of her head. She wore a bottle green traveling outfit tight enough to reveal the lines of her slender but well-shaped body, and a matching hat with a little feather in it sat on that red hair. Luke figured she was around twenty years old.
The other woman was at least twenty years older, and from the way she huddled against one of the male passengers about the same age as he kept a comforting arm around her shoulders, the two of them probably were married, Luke thought. The second male passenger was in his thirties, reasonably well dressed in tight trousers, a frock coat, and a vest over a white shirt. He had a fancy stickpin in his cravat. His black hat was perfectly shaped. Luke took him to be a gambler.
He still had a pistol in his hand. He’d been one of the defenders firing from behind the coach, along with Pierce and possibly the other male passenger. He nodded a curt greeting to Luke.
“First things first,” Luke said. “We need some splints for Ben’s broken leg.”
“We can bust some pieces out of the coach’s door,” Pierce suggested.
“That’s a good idea,” Luke agreed. He climbed onto the overturned stagecoach and used the butt of one of the Remingtons to knock several pieces of wood out of the door on the side that was up. With his knife, he shaped them into makeshift splints that would hold Wallace’s broken leg in place once it was set.
Setting it would be a whole other story and might prove difficult, depending on how bad the break was. It wouldn’t be the first broken bone Luke had tended to, however.
“Hobie, come around here and bring my horse,” he called. There were some strips of rawhide in Luke’s saddlebags that he could use to bind the splints into place.
Hobie rode around the coach and reined in sharply.
Luke wondered about the abruptness of the young man’s action until he saw that Hobie was staring at the redhead kneeling next to Wallace. That wasn’t a surprise. She was close to Hobie’s age and definitely worth staring at, whether it was polite to do so or not.
The woman met Hobie’s fascinated gaze for a second, then looked away. A flush spread over her face.
Hobie noticed and realized he was embarrassing her. He gave a little jerk of his head and turned to look at Luke. “What do you need me to do?”
“Keep watching to make sure those men don’t come back,” Luke said as he dug around in the saddlebags for the rawhide strips. When he found them, he took them and the splints over to Wallace and knelt on the injured man’s other side.
“Do you happen to have a bottle of whiskey, Jim?” he asked Pierce.
The driver shook his head. “Naw, it’s against stagecoach comp’ny regulations. I ain’t sayin I never bent a rule in my life, but the district manager’s mighty partic’lar about this one.”
“I have some whiskey.” The older male passenger took his arm from around his wife’s shoulders and reached under his coat to take out a flask. As he handed it to Luke, he added, “Mr. Wallace can have as much of it as he needs.”
Luke uncapped the flask and handed it to Wallace. “I’d advise drinking the whole thing. It’s going to hurt like blazes when I put that leg back the way it’s supposed to be.”
“I know that, mister. But it’s got to be done, and I appreciate you doin’ it.” The guard tilted the flask up and took a long swallow. The whiskey gurgled inside the vessel.
“Have you ever done anything like this before, Mr. Jensen?” the redhead asked.
“As a matter of fact, I have, Miss . . . ?”
“Wheeler. Jessica Wheeler.”
Luke nodded and touched a finger to his hat brim. “You’ll need to move back, Miss Wheeler, so these gentlemen can hold M
r. Wallace down.”
“I can stand the pain.” Wallace’s voice already seemed a little thicker. He took another slug from the flask.
“I know you think so, but we don’t want to do any more damage than has already been done. Now, if you fellas will give me a hand . . .”
Jessica Wheeler stood up and moved back to join the older woman. The gambler took her place, telling Luke, “I’m Aaron Kemp.”
“And my name is Stephen Langston,” the older man put in.
Luke moved around to kneel beside the broken leg while the other three men arranged themselves around Wallace. Pierce and Kemp held the guard’s shoulders while Langston took a firm grip on his left leg.
“Hang on just a minute,” Wallace said. “Let me finish this first.” He tipped his head back and emptied the flask with a final gurgle. Then he blew his breath out, closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the coach roof. “Go ahead.”
Luke grasped the guard’s right leg, one hand below the break and the other above it. It would be a process of trial and error, fitting the broken bone back together, and until he got it right, the jagged ends would grind together and cause excruciating pain for Wallace.
But delaying things wouldn’t make them any better. With a sharp tug, Luke straightened the guard’s leg.
Wallace’s howl of agony rolled across the hot, flat land and echoed from the walls of the mesa.
CHAPTER 15
Between the liquor and the pain, Ben Wallace passed out before Luke finished setting the broken leg. That was a good thing, Luke thought.
He got the bone back the way it was supposed to be, as far as he could tell, and bound the four splints in place on the front, back, and both sides of Wallace’s thigh. That would keep the bone from shifting around.
He stood up. “If I’d known he was going to pass out, I might have told him to save a little of that Who-hit-John. I could use a drink.”
“I’ll buy you as many as you want when we get to Harkerville,” Pierce said. “That’s the next stop on the route.”
Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter Dead Shot Page 11