Buckhorn nodded and said, “That’s a good idea.”
“We’ll leave first thing in the morning,” Thornton said.
Buckhorn shook his head.
“No. Tonight. There’s no time to waste.”
Thornton thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
“You’re right. Amos, see about saddling some fresh horses for us.”
“I sure will.” The old-timer started out, then paused and chuckled. “Conroy and Madison have sure got one hell of a surprise waitin’ for them.”
“Only if we can deliver it,” Buckhorn said.
* * *
While Woodrow was seeing to the horses, a knock sounded on the door of Thornton’s headquarters. Buckhorn had just donned his regular clothes again, with the exception of his bowler hat, which had been lost during one of the hectic battles of the past few days. He settled for the brown hat he had worn to Crater City tonight and was putting it on when Thornton went to answer the summons.
Mac McHaney stood on the porch. The gunman had his wounded arm in a sling now, but he wore a fierce expression on his face as he said, “The boys and I heard that you’re headed for Fletcher’s Crossing with evidence that’ll hang those bastards Conroy and Madison.”
“Well, maybe not hang them,” Thornton said, “but it ought to put them behind bars for a long time. And I certainly haven’t given up on fitting them for a noose.”
“We’re comin’ with you, then,” McHaney declared. “You can’t afford to risk runnin’ into trouble, just the three of you.”
Thornton said, “I thought maybe three men could move faster than a larger group. Anyway, I need you men to stay here and protect the mine, as well as Mr. Garrett.”
“Well, then, we’ll split up,” McHaney suggested. “Some of us can stay here to keep an eye on things, and the others can go with you, boss. We won’t slow you down, I can guar-an-damn-tee that.”
Buckhorn said, “That’s not a bad idea. We’ll take five or six men with us, and the rest can stay here—including you, Mac.”
McHaney’s rugged face creased in a scowl.
“I was countin’ on comin’ along,” he said.
Buckhorn grinned and said, “You’re just looking for a chance to swap lead with Madison and that bunch again.”
“I ain’t gonna deny it.”
“You’re wounded, though,” Thornton said. “We’ll be riding too hard and fast. You might wind up doing more damage to your arm, Mac. Buckhorn’s right; it’s better if you stay here. You’ll be in charge of defending the place if Conroy tries anything.”
“Well . . . all right,” McHaney answered with obvious reluctance. “I got a hunch you fellas are gonna have all the fun, though.”
* * *
It was the darkest part of the night, a few hours before dawn, when Buckhorn, Thornton, and Woodrow rode away from the Jim Dandy, followed by six men on horseback. Buckhorn knew them by name: Dunn, Calder, Perry, Merrill, Price, and Lawson. All of them had reputations as tough, competent men. They had probably found themselves on the wrong side of the law now and then, but the same could be said of him, thought Buckhorn as they rode out.
In a pocket inside his coat was the little leather-bound volume of poetry that contained the evidence of Dennis Conroy’s lawbreaking. Buckhorn was determined to place that evidence in the hands of the authorities if it was the last thing he did.
After the life he’d led, relying on the law felt mighty odd to him, but that was the only way the Calverts, as well as Lorna McChesney and her father and all the other ranchers south of the Mesteños, stood a chance of regaining their spreads.
The riders took the main trail because the well-traveled path allowed them to move faster. They kept their horses at a ground-eating lope. When they made it through the foothills and reached the flats, they would follow a smaller trail that ran east of the big crater. That would take them well away from the settlement. Then it would be a swift run to Gunsight Canyon, since that was the fastest way to the railroad.
By now, Neal Drake and his surveying crew were probably through the canyon and working their way toward Crater City. Their camp would be on this side of the canyon. Buckhorn hoped to avoid the surveyors, but he wasn’t really worried about them. He knew from his previous conversations with Drake that the man wouldn’t try to stop them. Drake wasn’t just about to fight Dennis Conroy’s battles for him.
Buckhorn didn’t want to let those thoughts get too far ahead of him, though. First they had to get out of the mountains without running into any trouble.
They were in the foothills when they heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats somewhere in front of them. All nine of the men tensed and moved their hands toward their guns as they reined in, then Buckhorn said, “Wait a minute. That’s just one rider, and whoever he is, he’s moving away from us.”
“He’s in a gol-dang hurry, too,” Woodrow said. “Who do you reckon—”
“Might have been a scout,” Buckhorn said. His jaw tightened. “Maybe some folks are on their way up to the Jim Dandy and sent a man ahead to see if the trail was clear.”
Thornton said, “You’re talking about Conroy’s men.”
“Madison might think it was a good idea to raid the mine not long before dawn. He’s after me, and he and Conroy know I was with Amos last night. We’d better get off the trail—”
Before they could do that, a large group of men on horseback suddenly boiled around a bend up ahead and thundered toward them. The lone rider had raced back down the trail to fetch help. Tongues of orange flame leaped from the muzzles of a dozen or more guns as the newcomers opened fire.
Buckhorn knew that Conroy wanted him dead because of what had happened to Alexis. Madison wanted him dead because Buckhorn was a threat to his own plans. Neither of them were aware of the evidence snugged away inside Buckhorn’s coat. He couldn’t allow them to kill him and recover that evidence. If Conroy succeeded in burying it, he would tighten his grip on this part of the territory until no one could ever break it . . .
Buckhorn pulled his gun from its holster, jabbed his boot heels into his mount’s flanks to send the horse leaping forward, and called, “Hit ’em hard and fast!”
The attackers probably expected their quarry to turn and run. Instead Buckhorn and his companions surged down the trail, guns out and spitting fire and lead. They were outnumbered, but the speed and sheer ferocity of their counterattack carried them among their enemies in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
Buckhorn searched for the familiar sneering face of Yancy Madison, but the shrouding darkness made it difficult to recognize anyone. He had to aim at muzzle flashes, but his shots were rewarded with a couple of yells of pain. He saw one man topple off his horse and another sag forward over the saddle horn.
For a moment the trail was a whirlwind of action, a blur of lunging horses, swearing men, and flaming guns. More than once, Buckhorn felt the wind-rip of a bullet passing close by his face.
Then, abruptly, he and the men with him burst through the riders who had blocked the trail. Their guns had blasted an opening, and now they seized the opportunity.
Not all of them, however. When Buckhorn glanced around, he saw that Thornton and Woodrow were beside him, with four of the gunmen close behind. That meant two men had fallen back there in the brief battle. Buckhorn didn’t know which ones they were, but he hoped their sacrifice wouldn’t prove to be in vain.
The fight wasn’t over, though, by any means. Now it had turned into a running battle. Conroy’s men had to take a few moments to regroup as their horses milled around in the trail, and that delay allowed Buckhorn and his companions to take a slight lead. The others charged after them, shooting again. The men bringing up the rear in Buckhorn’s group twisted in their saddles and returned the fire, triggering wildly in the direction of the pursuers.
The hurricane deck of a galloping horse was no place for accuracy. Buckhorn knew that. It would take a lucky shot on either side to find its target, but a
man killed by a lucky shot was just as dead as one ventilated by a sharpshooter. Buckhorn knew they couldn’t afford to slow down, either. If they did, the enemy would overrun them from behind.
Unfortunately, there was no way the horses could gallop at this pace all the way to Fletcher’s Crossing. They would give out long before they reached the railroad stop.
Of course, the pursuers couldn’t maintain that pace, either. They would have to slow down, too, or risk their horses collapsing underneath them.
That made it more a contest of wills than anything else. It was a question of who would falter first.
Something else occurred to Buckhorn. If he and his companions could reach Gunsight Canyon, they could make a stand there. The canyon was the only way through the mountains in this area, and a few men might be able to hold it while the others pressed on.
He called over to Woodrow, “Get us to Gunsight Canyon the fastest way you can! Stealth doesn’t matter anymore!”
The old-timer nodded to show that he understood.
Buckhorn realized that he could see a little better now. The eastern sky was turning gray. Dawn was still a ways off, but when Buckhorn looked back at the other men, he was able to tell that Larry Dunn and Ed Price weren’t among them. They were the ones who had been lost in the battle with Conroy’s men. He didn’t know if they were dead, wounded, or just set a-foot, and he wasn’t a praying man, but he hoped that somebody, somewhere, would put in a good word for them with El Señor Dios.
The two groups of riders swept out of the foothills and onto the flats. Woodrow led the way straight to the main trail that ran from Crater City to Gunsight Canyon and on down to Fletcher’s Crossing.
One of the hired guns let out a whoop and shouted, “They’re falling back a mite! Their horses must be giving out!”
Buckhorn looked over his shoulder and saw that the man was right. The gap between the two groups of riders had increased to a couple of hundred yards. In fact, a few of the pursuers were reining their mounts to a halt before the animals gave out completely and collapsed.
“We can’t afford to slow down yet!” Buckhorn called. “Keep up the pace! We have to gain some more on them before we can let the horses rest!”
They thundered on, but Buckhorn could tell that his own mount was straining to keep going now. Another few minutes, he thought. He looked back, saw that the dust cloud raised by the pursuers had dwindled even farther into the distance. More than a quarter of a mile separated the two bunches now.
Even so, he and his companions couldn’t stop and really let the horses rest. The best they could do was slow the animals to a fast walk, then maybe halt for thirty seconds or so to let them blow. In the end, if they won this race, it was probably going to cost these gallant animals their lives.
“Son of a lop-eared horn toad!” Woodrow suddenly exclaimed.
“What is it?” Buckhorn asked.
The old-timer lifted an arm, pointed, and yelled, “Look over yonder!”
He was pointing toward Crater City, Buckhorn saw, and when he turned his gaze in that direction, he saw what had startled the exclamation out of Woodrow.
Another dust cloud was rising over there and coming toward them.
That meant another group of riders, and Buckhorn knew in his gut they were more of Dennis Conroy’s men. No wonder the men who had chased them out of the foothills had started to fall back.
They knew that yet another group of kill-crazy gun-wolves was angling toward Buckhorn and his friends, aiming to sweep them off the face of the earth with hot lead!
CHAPTER 40
Buckhorn wasn’t the sort of man to feel despair, but if he had been, this would be the time. They had fought a good fight, run a good race, and they stood a chance of winning through.
Now that chance was dashed in a cloud of dust.
But they couldn’t give up. They had to keep moving, hoping for a miracle.
Deep down, Buckhorn knew better than to believe in such things. Battles were won not by miracles, but by steely muscles, icy nerves, and blazing guns.
And fresh horses, he thought. That was something in mighty short supply right now.
The gunman named Merrill called, “You fellas keep on, Mr. Thornton! Me and the boys will veer off and get in the way of those varmints!”
“You can’t do that, Lew!” Thornton shouted over the thundering hoofbeats. “It’s certain death!”
“We ride for you!” another of the men said. “Hell, we know how things always end for hombres like us!”
“Settle the score with Conroy and Madison!” Merrill added. “That’s all we ask!”
Then he turned his horse, angling away from the course followed by Buckhorn, Thornton, and Woodrow. The other three gunmen went with him.
“Damn it!” Thornton cried. “They’re throwing their lives away!”
“No,” Buckhorn said, “they’re spending them.”
Shots began to bang in the predawn gloom as the two dust clouds converged, the smaller one marking the location of Merrill and the others. Muzzle flashes were visible in the distance, winking like fireflies.
Buckhorn, Thornton, and Woodrow pressed on, but they had gone less than another mile before they had to slow down. Their horses simply couldn’t keep running that fast pace any longer.
Eventually they slowed the animals to a walk. Buckhorn looked back and saw that the dust cloud was still following them, but the pursuers didn’t seem to have gained much.
“Let them blow for a minute,” he said as he reined his horse to a halt.
Thornton and Woodrow followed suit. The three men dismounted and stood there next to the sweat-covered horses. They watched the group from Crater City slowly drawing closer.
“All right, let’s go,” Buckhorn said. He swung up into the saddle. “Take it slow for a while.”
“If we go slow for very long, they’ll be right on top of us,” Thornton warned.
“I know that. I’ll keep an eye on them. These horses have to recover a little, though, before we can ask them to run again.”
The orange ball of the sun appeared at the eastern horizon, slowly looming larger and larger as it spread its garish light over the landscape. Buckhorn felt impatience gnawing at him as he and his companions moved southward toward Gunsight Canyon. The men who were after them steadily drew closer.
Finally, when Buckhorn could make out the black dots that were the individual riders at the base of the dust cloud, he said sharply, “Now!” and dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. The horse lurched forward into a run, a little unsteady at first but soon settling down into a smooth gallop. Thornton and Woodrow flanked him, the mine owner to Buckhorn’s left, the old-timer to his right.
This was the last they could ask out of the horses, Buckhorn knew. Win or lose, the last run.
The Mesteños were visible up ahead, and as the three riders came closer, Buckhorn was able to see the gap that marked the location of Gunsight Canyon. He raised an arm, pointed, and called, “There!”
“If we can make it,” Hugh Thornton said, “Amos and I will fort up in the canyon mouth and hold off Conroy’s men while you go on, Joe! You’ve got to get that book to the law!”
Buckhorn opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and nodded. They had come this far, sacrificed as much as they had, in order to bring Dennis Conroy and Yancy Madison to justice. Anything less would be a failure—and Buckhorn didn’t want to fail.
Typical of these western landscapes, in the clear air and the morning sunlight the mountains appeared close enough to reach out and touch, but they seemed to recede into the distance and stay just as far away as they had been starting out. Slowly but surely, though, the gap closed. The peaks loomed higher.
Buckhorn spotted tents up ahead. That would be the survey crew’s camp. It was empty at the moment, as Buckhorn and his two companions flashed past. Drake and the other surveyors would have gone back to pick up their work where they had left off the day before.
A few minute
s later, Buckhorn saw the wagon and the men scattered around with their instruments. Neal Drake waved an arm as Buckhorn, Thornton, and Woodrow galloped by. Drake was smart enough to see the riders following them and know that they were in trouble, but the survey chief was also smart enough to stay out of it.
A glance over his shoulder told Buckhorn that the pursuers were only a quarter of a mile behind now. He could easily make out the individual riders.
But the mouth of Gunsight Canyon was only half a mile away, and even though the horses were slowing as they reached the end of their strength, Buckhorn figured there was a good chance they would make it.
Amos Woodrow’s mount collapsed a hundred feet later.
The old-timer felt the horse going and kicked his feet free of the stirrups. He sailed from the saddle, hit the ground, and rolled over and over as dust billowed around him.
By the time Woodrow came to a stop, Buckhorn had already hauled his horse around and was doubling back.
“Amos!” he called. “Amos, are you hurt?”
Woodrow scrambled to his feet with surprising spryness and grabbed his battered old hat, which had fallen off when he was thrown from the saddle. He said, “Feels like all my innards are jumbled around, but I reckon I’m all right. Get outta here, damn it!”
Thornton had turned back, too. He extended a hand to Woodrow and said, “Climb up behind me.”
“That cayuse is already played out,” Woodrow protested. “It can’t carry double!” He pulled his revolver, which had stayed in his holster during his fall because it was thonged down. “Go on! I’ll give ’em a warm welcome!”
“Get up here!” Thornton said. “I’m giving you an order, Amos. If you don’t do what I say, you’re fired!”
“You’d fire me, you dadblasted—”
Buckhorn frowned as he heard something hum over his head. A second later he heard a dull boom from the canyon mouth.
He knew that sound.
“Get up behind Thornton, Amos,” Buckhorn snapped. “We’ve got a guardian angel up there at the canyon.”
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