“How about you, Chesterfield?”
Pike’s great chest rose and fell like the ground heaving in an earthquake. “Yeah,” he said. “Just lemme…catch my breath.”
Bo picked up the rope and looked at the end of it where the bullet had sliced through it. “That was a mighty lucky shot,” he said. “Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it. Neither piece of rope is long enough now to reach from up here to down there.”
“Yeah,” Scratch agreed grimly. “North and his boys are stuck.”
Bo climbed back up to the top of the rock. The shooting had fallen off once Scratch reached safety. “North!” Bo called down. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you, Creel!” the rancher replied. Bo couldn’t see him from here, but North sounded as strong as ever. “You hombres all right up there?”
“Fine,” Bo said, “but we’ve got a problem.”
“You mean we’ve got a problem. We’re still stuck here.”
“I’m afraid so, unless you’ve got another rope long enough to reach up here.”
“Let me check,” North said. A couple of minutes later, he called up with the bad news. “Nope! Jack’s lariat was the longest one we had. You fellas go on and get the hell out of here! We’ll keep those damned rustlers occupied!”
“We’re not going to abandon you, North,” Bo insisted. “We’ll find some way of pulling you out of there.”
“Forget it! Just get back to Whiskey Flats and tell the marshal about finding those rustlers’ hideout. Clean up that rat’s nest, boys. That’ll square accounts for us.”
Scratch had climbed up beside Bo while North was talking. He shook his head and said to Bo, “If we leave those fellas here for those bastards to kill, it’ll stick in my craw from now on.”
“Mine, too,” Bo agreed. “That’s why we’re not going to do it.” He called down again to the men below. “North! Don’t give up. Save your ammunition as much as you can, and make your food and water last! We’ll turn the tables on those varmints somehow!”
“Damn it, Creel—”
“So long,” Bo called, cutting into North’s protest. “We’ll see you later.”
Then he slid down the rock and motioned for Scratch and Pike to follow him.
They were up pretty high here, high enough to look down and see the lava flows snaking through the breaks. “Can you get us down from up here, Chesterfield?” Bo asked.
“I reckon,” Pike said with a nod. “You got to understand, though, I never been up here in this particular place before. I only seen Hornpipe Rock from down below. But I reckon I can find a trail for us.”
“A trail fit for a damn mountain goat more’n likely,” Scratch put in.
Pike grinned. “I been accused o’ smellin’ like a goat a time or two in my life. Reckon now it’s time to see whether or not I can climb like one.”
CHAPTER 26
For the next hour, the three men made their way down from the heights, carefully testing each foothold and handhold before they trusted their weight to it. As they descended through the rugged landscape, they could hear the shots coming from the vicinity of Hornpipe Rock as Steve North and his men continued to swap lead with the rustlers. That was a good sign, because it meant that North and the Star Ranch punchers were still alive.
Pike led Bo and Scratch around a large boulder, and then stopped so short that the Texans almost ran into his broad back. “That don’t look good,” he said as he leaned to one side so they could see past him.
A ledge little more than a foot wide ran for nearly a hundred yards along a cliff face above a fifty-foot drop. Just as dangerous as the distance, though, was the fact that at the bottom lay one of the lava flows. Those razor-sharp black rocks could slice a man into ribbons if he fell into them, especially from such a height. No one would survive a tumble like that.
“Any way around it?” Scratch asked.
Pike shook his head. “Not that I can see.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to be careful,” Bo said. “Let’s rest a minute and catch our breath before we start across.”
But even as they paused, the distant sounds of gunfire seemed to be trying to prod them into motion again. None of them could bear to stand there for very long doing nothing while North and his men were still under siege.
“All right,” Bo said when little more than a minute had passed. “Let’s give it a try. I’ll go first.”
“Nope,” Pike said, “better let me. I weigh the most, so if that ledge is gonna crumble, it’ll do it under me. If it holds me up, you know it’ll hold you fellas, too.”
That made sense, so Bo motioned for Pike to go ahead. The giant shuffled out onto the ledge, facing the cliff and pressing his big hands against the rock. He moved sideways, sliding each foot in turn, and soon had covered twenty or thirty feet without mishap.
Pike paused and started to turn his head, but Bo called to him, “Don’t look down, Chesterfield. You’re really not that high, but it might be enough to throw you off balance anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s smart,” Pike said with a nod. He started moving again, sliding his feet along the ledge.
After a moment, Bo said, “He’s gone far enough. I’m starting out there, too.”
“Be careful,” Scratch told him. “I’ll bring up the rear, I reckon.”
Bo followed Pike’s example, facing the cliff and shuttling along the ledge. The ledge itself seemed sturdy and was fairly level, so if a fella could make his mind forget the big drop that was at his back, then making his way along here wasn’t really that difficult. Seeing movement from the corner of his eye, Bo turned his head and saw Scratch starting out onto the ledge as well.
It took a good ten minutes for all three of them to reach the other end of the ledge, but they all made it safely. After that going became a little easier, and Bo noticed after a while that the shots were louder now.
“You’re leading us around behind the rustlers, aren’t you, Chesterfield?” he asked.
“That’s what you wanted, ain’t it?”
Bo nodded. “That’s exactly what I wanted. If we can take them by surprise, maybe we can get North and the others out of that trap.”
A few minutes later, they emerged from a long, narrow ravine and found themselves at the base of the flat-topped spire from which the rustlers had been firing at the defenders of Hornpipe Rock. Bo, Scratch, and Pike all went belly-down as they spotted a couple of men holding some horses.
“Looks like the whole gang is up there trying to root out North,” Bo said quietly, “except for those two they left with the horses.”
Pike pointed. “You can see the trail windin’ back and forth up the rock. That’s how they got to the top.”
Scratch said, “If we can get past those hombres without them givin’ the alarm, the rest o’ the bunch won’t have any idea we’re behind ’em until it’s too late.”
“Yes, but first we’ve got to get past those two,” Bo said. He thought about it and then asked, “Chesterfield, how do you feel about being a Trojan horse?”
“I dunno. Is that anything like bein’ mule-headed?”
Bo chuckled. “Not exactly. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
A couple of minutes later, the two men holding the gang’s horses and standing guard at the base of the rock reached for their guns in surprise as they saw a giant form striding toward them. They drew the weapons, but held their fire as they noted that Pike was carrying two limp, apparently either lifeless or unconscious forms, one under each arm. One of the rustlers called out, “Hold it right there, mister!”
Pike kept coming. He rumbled, “These are two o’ the fellas you’re lookin’ for. I’ll trade ’em to you.”
The second rustler laughed harshly. “Who the hell says we’re interested in a trade?”
“They don’t mean nothin’ to me,” Pike insisted. “Hell, they locked me up. They’re deputies from Whiskey Flats. They made me come along and help ’em find the trail through the brea
ks, but as far as I’m concerned you can have ’em.”
The two rustlers frowned and looked at each other. “You reckon he’s tellin’ the truth?” one of them asked the other. “I know this fella. He’s always been a troublemaker, not the sort to help the law unless he had to.”
“Then maybe he really did turn on ’em.” The second rustler motioned to Pike, who hadn’t slowed down but had strode steadily closer. “Let’s see those deputies, Pike. Are they dead?”
“Not hardly,” Pike said. Suddenly, he let go of Bo and Scratch, who dropped to the ground and caught themselves on their hands and feet as they landed. Pike sprang ahead, moving with speed surprising in such a big man, sort of like the deceptive speed of a charging grizzly bear. He grabbed both rustlers and slammed them together. The collision jolted the guns out of their hands but didn’t knock them out. They writhed in Pike’s grip and swung frantic fists at his head.
Bo brought the butt of his Colt down on the head of one rustler, who went limp and slid out of Pike’s hand. At the same time, Scratch slammed the barrel of a Remington against the other man’s head, knocking him out cold. Pike dropped him as well.
Then he looked down at the two unconscious rustlers with a somewhat sorrowful expression and said, “That one fella was right. I always been a troublemaker. I always lost my temper and raised hell ever’ time I came into the settlement, like tossin’ that tinhorn gambler through Dodge Emerson’s window.”
“That’s in the past, Chesterfield,” Bo told him. “You’ve been a lot of help to us.”
“Hell, without you we wouldn’t even be here,” Scratch added.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’ve more than justified being made a temporary deputy.” An idea occurred to Bo. “Maybe if you talked to Marshal Braddock about it, you might convince him to make it permanent.”
Pike’s eyes widened. “Really? I never had no real, respectable job like that. Folks might look at me different if I was a real deputy. They wouldn’t think I was such a monster.”
“You’re no monster, Chesterfield,” Bo assured him. “Let’s tie these hombres up and then see about getting the drop on their friends.”
When the two rustlers had their hands and feet lashed together, Pike started toward the trail that led up to the top of the spire. Bo stopped him, saying, “Better let me and Scratch go first this time.”
“Yeah,” Scratch said, “this is liable to be gun work.”
Pike nodded reluctantly. “I’ll be right behind you, though.”
The firing was intermittent now. Bo said, “North and his boys must be running short on ammunition by now.”
“Not to mention gettin’ hungry and thirsty,” Scratch said.
They slowed as they neared the top of the trail. Bo took off his hat and risked a look. No trees grew on top of the spire, but it was dotted with boulders and brush. The rustlers were crouched behind rocks as they fired toward North and his men. Confident that no danger lurked behind them, they didn’t even glance in Bo’s direction.
Scratch edged up alongside Bo and joined him in studying the layout. After a moment, the silver-haired Texan said, “I make it an even dozen of the varmints. We gonna give ’em a chance to surrender?”
“I’ve never been one to shoot a man without giving him a fair break,” Bo said with a solemn expression on his face.
“But you’ll consider it now, won’t you?”
Bo frowned. “I don’t reckon we’ve got much choice in the matter. There are just too blasted many of them.”
“That’s sorta the way I look at it, too.” Scratch’s hands tightened on the ivory grips of the Remingtons as he lifted them. “Make every shot count, old hoss.”
“Yeah,” Bo said as he nodded. “Every shot.”
Crouching, the Texans moved up from the trail onto the flat top of the spire itself. They walked forward, getting as close to the rustlers as they could before opening fire. No shots at all were coming now from the men holed up under Hornpipe Rock. Either North and his cowboys had run out of cartridges, or they had spotted Bo and Scratch closing in on the rustlers and were holding their fire so the Texans wouldn’t be threatened by any stray slugs.
Scratch and Bo were within thirty feet of the nearest rustler when the man’s instincts must have warned him. He twisted around, got a good look at them, and opened his mouth to shout a warning. Scratch fired his right-hand Remington before the man could make a sound, and the shot was lost in the other gun blasts coming from the rustlers. The man who had tried to warn his companions was driven backward by Scratch’s bullet slamming into his chest. He flopped under some brush.
Bo drew a bead on another man and fired. His slug broke the hombre’s gun arm between the shoulder and elbow and sent him spinning to the ground, howling in pain. That got the attention of the others, right enough, and yelling in anger and alarm, they whirled around to confront this new threat.
Bo seemed to hear the strains of “Come to the Bower” playing in his head as he and Scratch strode forward steadily, the guns in their hands roaring. A couple of pipers had been playing that song on the spring afternoon in 1836 when a few hundred men of the Texas Army had advanced across a grassy field toward the camp where thousands of Mexicans, the soldiers of Santa Anna, were enjoying their daily siesta. That restful interlude had ended a few moments later in blood and death and confusion as the chaos of battle ensued…and before the day was over, Texas had won its freedom.
The stakes weren’t that high here…just the lives of Bo, Scratch, Chesterfield Pike, Steve North, and the rest of the Star Ranch crew. But the pounding of the heart was the same, and the smell of gun smoke in a man’s nose, and the way the roar of the shots slammed against his ears.
Bo squeezed off a shot, saw a man fall, shifted his aim, fired again. A bullet tugged at his shirt, and he heard another whistle past his head. He pivoted and saw smoke spurt from the barrel of a gun just as he drew a bead on the man holding that gun and triggered his own shot. He waited that awful split second for the sledgehammer blow of the bullet striking his body, and when it didn’t come he knew his time hadn’t come. He would go on living…for another few heartbeats anyway.
Beside him, Scratch had both of the long-barreled smokepoles working. He was almost as good with his left hand as he was with his right. Suddenly, there was a hitch in his stride, and his left leg threatened to fold up underneath him. He stiffened it and kept going, ignoring the fiery pain from the bullet burn on his thigh.
Eight of the twelve rustlers were down, either lying motionless in death or writhing in pain. But that still left four of them, so Bo and Scratch were still outnumbered. And the hammers of their guns were about to fall on empty chambers.
That was when Chesterfield Pike rushed past them, roaring like the grizzly bear he resembled as his long legs carried him right into the midst of the rustlers. They were too startled by the brazen attack to get out of his way, and he grabbed up two of them like sacks of flour and ran toward the edge of the spire, which was less than twenty feet away.
It looked like Pike was going to run right off the brink with the two men still in his grip, but he threw on the brakes just before he ran out of room and slung the luckless rustlers ahead of him. Screaming, they sailed over the edge and dropped out of sight as they plummeted toward the ground far below. Those cries ended abruptly in a pair of soggy thuds.
Pike’s assault was so shocking that the other two rustlers had forgotten about Bo and Scratch. When they realized their mistake and tried to swing their guns up again, the Texans’ weapons blasted a split second faster. The final pair of wideloopers crumpled as lead ripped through them.
“It’s a good thing that’s the last of ’em,” Scratch said as he lowered his Remingtons. “I’m plumb empty.”
“Me, too,” Bo said, checking the cylinder of his Colt. He took a handful of fresh cartridges from his shell belt and began thumbing them into the revolver. “Better reload. Some of those other hombres could still have some fight in them
.”
That proved not to be the case. In fact, all twelve of the rustlers were dead. The ones who hadn’t been killed immediately had bled to death.
Bo shook his head when he saw that and said, “At least we’ve got the two we took prisoner down below. I want to question them and find out who they’re working for. Chesterfield, do you recognize any of these men?”
Pike studied the hard-bitten faces of the corpses, then shook his head. “I don’t recollect ever seein’ any of ’em before.”
“Not in any of the saloons in Whiskey Flats?” Scratch asked. “Especially Emerson’s place?”
“Nope, I’m sure of that,” Pike declared emphatically. “I never saw any of ’em in Mr. Emerson’s saloon.”
Scratch rasped a thumb along his jaw. “Well, now, that don’t hardly make sense. I had Emerson figured as the fella who was behind the rustlin’.”
Bo said, “So did I, but it’s starting to look like we were wrong.” He turned to Pike again. “Chesterfield, I hate to ask it of you, but do you reckon you can carry these fellas down to their horses? We ought to take them back to town.”
Pike nodded. “Sure. I reckon I’ve carried worse things in my life.” He bent and picked up two of the corpses, carrying them like he had carried Bo and Scratch earlier when they had fooled the rustlers holding the horses.
When they got to the bottom of the trail, they stopped short and Scratch let out a curse. “Gone!” he said. “Dadgum it, we tied those fellas up good! They shouldn’t’a been able to get loose.”
“One of them must have had a knife and was able to get his hands on it,” Bo said, feeling the sharp sting of disappointment. “We didn’t really take the time to search them. Reckon we should have.”
“How are we gonna find out who they were workin’ for?”
“Maybe somebody in town will recognize one of them,” Bo said. “We might get a lead that way.”
Even as he said it, though, he wasn’t very hopeful that would turn out to be the case. He had a feeling that the ringleader of this gang had a knack for covering his trail.
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