To be sure, he moved closer and worked the toe of his boot under the shoulder of the nearest man, who lay facedown. Luke rolled him onto his back.
Wide, sightless eyes that didn’t flinch from the match’s glare stared up at him. They were in the weathered face of a balding, middle-aged man whose cheeks were covered with silvery beard stubble. He had been of fairly small stature in life. Luke knew he was looking at the body of Banty Sinclair.
The other two men were just as dead. They were young, in their twenties, and despite their much greater size bore a distinct family resemblance to Sinclair. Luke would have guessed that they were the man’s sons even if Pierce hadn’t mentioned that fact.
All three had been shot numerous times at close range.
Luke had a pretty good idea what had happened. Dietrich’s men had ridden up, Sinclair and his sons had gone out to see what they wanted, and the killers had opened fire with no warning. It had been an act of wanton, cold-blooded murder.
Of course, any man who would sign on to kidnap a young woman and force her to marry a ruthless man more than twice her age wouldn’t be the sort to think twice about murder.
Luke went outside to look around. Half a dozen horses were still in the corral. In the normal course of events, they would have been hitched to the stagecoach when it stopped there, and the worn-out team would be allowed to rest until the next stagecoach came along. The four saddle mounts he had seen earlier were gone.
Luke didn’t like leaving the bodies unattended, but it would take him all night to dig three graves and he wanted to get back to the canyon where he had left Hobie, Jessica, and the others. He would tell the stationmaster at Moss City what had happened and he could send someone out to tend to the horses and bring back the bodies of Banty Sinclair and his sons.
Luke went back into the station, hunted up some blankets, and used them to wrap the bodies. When he left, he made sure the door and the shutters were closed to keep scavengers out. For now, that was all he could do for the dead men.
He rode away, wishing that when he and Hobie had first encountered Dietrich’s men attacking the stagecoach, they had taken advantage of the opportunity to kill a few. At the time, though, they hadn’t known what was going on.
Luke certainly wouldn’t hesitate to send more of them to hell in the future. They had it coming.
The moon was just about to set by the time he neared the canyon again. He could see the black slash in the cliff face that marked its location. In another minute or two he would be close enough to call out to Hobie.
Suddenly, a burst of gunfire ripped out, muzzle flame blooming in the darkness of the canyon’s mouth.
CHAPTER 20
Luke’s first impulse was to gallop straight ahead, right into the thick of the fracas. His natural caution made him suppress that urge.
He hurriedly drew rein and tried to figure out what was going on. Maybe Hobie, Pierce, and Langston had heard him coming and gotten nervous, despite being warned not to get trigger-happy.
The shots weren’t being directed at him, though, Luke realized a moment later as more guns opened up from outside the canyon. Men were shooting toward the dark slash in the cliff. It was pretty easy to come up with an explanation for why they were doing that.
Dietrich’s men had found the hiding place and were attacking again, attempting to root out the defenders.
If they didn’t know he was out there, away from the canyon, it could make a difference. Luke sat still on his horse, hiding in the darkness.
“Hold your fire!” a man bellowed. “By God, hold your fire!”
Something about the voice struck Luke as odd. After a moment, he realized the words had a broad, flat intonation to them, marking the speaker as being from Boston.
Luke would not have known that if he hadn’t run into several sea captains from that Massachusetts city during his visits to San Francisco. He had spent an entire evening sitting across from such a man in a marathon poker game in one of the Barbary Coast saloons.
That thought flashed through his mind as he recalled Jessica saying that she was from Boston, as was Milton Dietrich. He wondered if Dietrich had come all the way out to New Mexico Territory in pursuit of the woman he intended to marry.
Whoever had yelled the order to stop shooting got results. The attackers’ guns fell silent first, and then the shots from the canyon’s defenders trailed off. An uneasy hush descended on the landscape as the echoes rolled away.
Luke stayed where he was, listening.
After a few moments, the man with the Boston accent shouted, “Jessica! Jessica, darling, can you hear me?”
Several long seconds ticked past, and Luke began to wonder if she was going to answer.
Then she said, “Go away, Mr. Dietrich. I’m not going to marry you. I’ll never marry you, no matter what you do.”
That confirmed Luke’s hunch about the man’s identity. Dietrich hadn’t been content to send his hired killers after Jessica. He had come west himself to ramrod the effort to find her.
“Jessica, thank God you’re alive!” Dietrich said. “I was deathly afraid that something had happened to you.”
“It’s no thanks to you that it hasn’t! I’ve nearly been killed by your men several times.”
“You have my abject apologies. My men were . . . overzealous . . . in their efforts to find you.” He paused. “But that’s all over now that we have a chance to talk to each other again. I’m sure we can work out our problems—”
“The problem is that I’m not going to marry you!” Jessica broke in. “And that you’re insane!”
If that accusation bothered Dietrich, his calm, carefully controlled voice didn’t show any sign of it. “My dear, I just want to help you—”
“I know what you want!” Jessica cried raggedly. “My poor father was barely in his grave when you came slobbering after me like a dog after a bone! You’re a horrible, horrible man!”
“That’s not true,” Dietrich protested. “Your father was an old friend of mine. Before he passed away I promised him that I’d see to it you were taken care of. He was worried about what might happen to you after he was gone.”
A new voice broke into the conversation as Hobie yelled, “Reckon he had good reason to be worried, you old lecher, if he knew what kind of lowdown snake you are!”
Dietrich didn’t say anything for a moment. When he spoke again, his lips pursed with disapproval. “Is that ill-mannered young frontiersman your new suitor, Jessica?” he demanded. “Can he give you all the things I can? I’ve offered you a fine, comfortable life with me back home in Boston. What sort of life can you have out here in this drab, godforsaken wilderness?”
“I’ll be free!” Jessica cried. A sob wracked her voice. “I’ll be free . . .”
More shots roared from the canyon.
Luke figured that was Hobie losing his temper and blazing away at Dietrich and the hired gunmen. Pierce and Langston joined in. Luke saw multiple muzzle flashes winking like fireflies in the dark mouth of the canyon.
“Hold your fire!” Dietrich shouted again to his men. He didn’t want to risk a stray shot hitting Jessica. “Everyone stay down! They’ll run out of ammunition eventually.”
That was true. Hobie had quite a few rounds for his rifle and pistol, but they wouldn’t last forever. Langston probably didn’t have more than a dozen or so extra cartridges for his pistol. Luke didn’t know how much extra ammunition Pierce had for his revolver and shotgun, but not enough to hold off the attackers indefinitely.
Luke didn’t know whether there was any water to be had in that canyon, either. A small water barrel stood in the boot on the back of the coach, and Hobie had a couple canteens on his saddle, but once the sun came up the heat would come with it, and that water wouldn’t be enough to last more than a day.
The long-term prospects for defending the canyon didn’t look good, Luke thought. A siege would end badly for the defenders.
But they had one advantage. Luke was behind
Dietrich’s men, and evidently they didn’t know he was back there.
He swung down from the saddle and reached for his rifle, then stopped with his hand resting on the smooth wood of the stock. He didn’t know how many men Dietrich had or where they all were. If he opened fire on them, he would take them by surprise and no doubt would account for a few of them.
But doing so would reveal his presence, and the element of surprise would last only a few seconds. Once it was gone, he would be outnumbered and outgunned.
The challenge called for a stealthier response, he realized.
He left the rifle in the saddle boot and let the horse’s reins dangle. Well trained, the animal wouldn’t stray very far, ground-hitched like that.
Reaching into one of his saddlebags, he took out a chunk of charcoal wrapped in a piece of soft leather. He always kept some of the black, sooty stuff with him for nighttime work. He wiped it on his hands and face, covering his skin with dark streaks that would help him blend in with the night. Years of man hunting had taught him plenty of such tricks.
He wrapped up the charcoal and slipped it back in the saddlebag. Leaving his revolvers in their holsters, he moved warily on foot toward the area where he had seen the flash of rifles from Dietrich’s men.
As he crept closer, Luke remembered a story Smoke had told him about the old mountain man Preacher.
As a young fur trapper in the Rockies, some fifty years earlier, Preacher had had a long-running feud with the Blackfoot Indians. Several times he had been pursued by large war parties. In order to demoralize his enemies, Preacher would wait until nightfall, slip into the Blackfoot camp, cut the throats of several warriors as they slept, and slip back out again without anyone knowing he had been there until the bodies were discovered in the morning. The gruesome practice had led the Indians to give Preacher the nickname “Ghost Killer.”
Luke was about to attempt something similar, although he wasn’t interested in demoralizing Dietrich’s men. He just wanted to kill as many of them as he could in order to whittle down the odds against him and his companions.
While the shooting was still going on, he had tried to pin down the location of as many gunmen as he could. He had memorized those spots, another habit his years of experience had taught him, so he headed for the nearest one. When he judged that he was getting pretty close, he dropped to hands and knees and crawled forward.
A low cough sounded no more than ten feet in front of him. Luke froze. His keen eyes scanned the darkness ahead of him. After a moment, he made out an irregular shape that had to be the hired killer. The man was stretched out behind a small hummock of earth that served as cover for him during the assault on the canyon.
It didn’t offer any protection from the deadly danger coming up behind him, though. He seemed completely unaware of that as Luke closed in on him, inch by inch, in utter silence.
The blade of Luke’s knife made only the faintest whisper of steel on leather as the bounty hunter drew it from its sheath. As far as he could tell, none of the other gunmen were close by. Luke gripped the knife tightly, came up in a crouch, and dived forward.
He landed with his knee in the small of the man’s back, pinning him to the ground. His left hand went around the man’s head and clamped over his mouth, stifling any outcry as the blade in his other hand flashed forward. The eight inches of cold steel drove into the hired killer’s back, rasping through the ribs and penetrating his heart. Luke hung on tight as the man’s body bucked in its death spasm.
After seeing how mercilessly Dietrich’s hardcases had gunned down Banty Sinclair and his sons back at the way station, Luke wasn’t going to lose any sleep about killing any of them. He waited until he was sure the hombre was dead, then withdrew his knife and wiped it on the back of the corpse’s shirt.
That was wasted effort, he told himself grimly. The blade was just going to get more blood on it before the night was over.
The scent of tobacco smoke drifted to his nose, coming from somewhere to his right. Luke started crawling again, following the smell. A couple minutes later, he spotted the tiny orange glow of a quirly’s tip as the smoker drew in on it.
The distance to the canyon mouth was too great for any of the defenders to see that glow and aim at it. It served as a beacon for Luke, though, as he closed in on the man kneeling in a little hollow.
In the dark, Luke couldn’t tell if the formation was a natural one or if the gunman had scooped it out of the dirt. Either way, it was going to serve as the location of the man’s last stand; he just didn’t know it yet.
Luke attacked, his left arm looping around the enemy’s neck, forcing his head up and back, and drawing his throat taut. Pressure on the man’s jaw kept him from crying out as Luke brought the knife across his throat in a deep slash that cut almost all the way to the spine. Blood gushed out onto the sand, a black fountain in the starlight.
The dying man’s struggles lasted only a couple seconds before he went limp. Luke lowered the body to the ground.
He didn’t bother cleaning the knife.
He stretched out on the ground again as he heard two men talking in soft tones not far off. He tried to remember how many men had been in the group of hired killers when he and Hobie first ran into them. About a dozen, he thought. Maybe fourteen.
At least six were dead. That left Dietrich with eight gun wolves, at most . . . unless Dietrich had had more men in reserve that Luke didn’t know about.
He couldn’t worry too much about that possibility. No matter how many men Dietrich had, the more of them Luke killed, the better.
He crawled away from the spot where he heard the two men talking. He might have been able to dispose of both of them, but not without making enough racket to alert the rest of the bunch. He continued his stealthy stalking until he found another man kneeling behind a slab of rock.
That one died quietly, too, with his blood gurgling out of the gaping wound in his throat that Luke’s knife opened up. The sandy soil was drinking deeply.
Dietrich had been quiet for a while. He tried again, calling to Jessica. “My dear, think about the people who are with you. If you’ve befriended them at all, you don’t want anything to happen to them, do you? Surely you understand that if this keeps up, someone could get badly hurt.”
“Like the people you’ve already killed?” Jessica shouted back at him.
“My orders were that no one should be harmed! But bad things happen sometimes. You should understand that.”
“I do. The day I first laid eyes on you was a very bad thing. I just didn’t know it yet.”
Dietrich’s control was slipping. He yelled, “You damned little tease! You always enjoyed making me want you! You may have thought I didn’t know what you were doing, but I did! And now you have to pay the piper!”
By that time, Luke was close enough to tell Dietrich’s voice was coming from a cluster of boulders about fifty yards to his right. If he could get into those rocks and capture Dietrich, it might end the fight. Without Dietrich to pay them, the hired killers might be less likely to continue risking their lives.
With that thought in his head, Luke began working his way carefully toward the boulders.
It was doubtful that Dietrich would be alone. The man from Boston would have at least one of the gun wolves with him. Luke wouldn’t be able to take them without raising a ruckus.
But if he got his hands on Dietrich, that wouldn’t matter. With the man who had hired them taken as a hostage, the gun wolves would have to let those in the stagecoach go.
Luke slipped across the ground, keeping to the shadows cast by scrubby mesquite bushes and using shallow gullies to conceal himself. He had covered about half the distance to the boulders where Dietrich had made his headquarters when hurried footsteps suddenly sounded, practically on top of him.
One of Dietrich’s men must have decided to change position, Luke realized, but the varmint had done it at the worst possible time. Before Luke could get out of the way, one of the man’
s feet struck his thigh, and with a startled grunt the hardcase lost his balance and fell sprawling to the ground, landing half on top of the bounty hunter.
Luke still had the knife in his hand. He twisted out from under the man and his free hand shot upward. His fingers hit the man’s face and slid over his mouth, clamping down with a grip of iron. At the same time, Luke struck with the knife and felt it rip into his opponent’s midsection.
The razor-sharp blade went into the man’s belly like a hot knife into butter. Luke ripped it to the side and felt a hot flood spill over his hand. The wound was a mortal one, but Luke wasn’t going to wait for the man to die. He pulled the knife free and plunged it into the hardcase’s chest, again and again.
The man went limp.
As Luke rolled him to the side, a grimace of distaste tugged at his mouth. He had done plenty of grim, ugly work in the past, but had never grown completely hardened to the killing, even when the men who died richly deserved their fate.
But when you got right down to it, he told himself, the man was one less he’d have to kill later.
One less man who might kill him.
Luke started after Dietrich again.
CHAPTER 21
Luke hadn’t seen any horses so far, and the reason for that became apparent as he closed in on the boulders where Dietrich was holed up. He heard several whinnies and the stamping of hooves as the mounts shifted around among the big slabs and chunks of rock. The gunmen had brought their horses into cover to keep them safe from any stray slugs.
At least one of the hired killers . . . and maybe one or two others . . . would be posted with Dietrich to tend to the horses. The businessman could have as few as five or six men left overall, Luke realized. He might be able to get the drop on half of them at once. He wasn’t going to count on being that fortunate, however. In a deadly struggle, it was always smart to expect the worst.
Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter Dead Shot Page 16