He splashed across the creek in a couple of steps and paused next to the corral. A dozen horses milled around inside it, already disturbed slightly by the scent of a strange human being approaching them. Matt reached out to grab some of the branches that had been woven together to form an enclosure. In a matter of minutes, the barrier would be down and he could fire off a shot, yell at the top of his lungs, and send the horses bolting out of the corral.
Before he could do any of those things, the sound of a gun being cocked came from behind him, and a voice warned, “I wouldn’t do that if I was you, mister.”
Matt froze. He didn’t know what was more shocking: that someone had sneaked up on him without him knowing it . . .
Or that judging by the voice, the person who had the drop on him was a little girl.
Chapter 18
“Move away from that corral right now,” the voice went on. “I’ll shoot you if I have to.”
“Now, take it easy with that gun, miss—” Matt began.
“Don’t call me miss! I’m not afraid of you.”
“Didn’t say you were. I just don’t want you doing anything that both of us will regret later.”
That brought a chuckle from the unseen girl.
“Mister, I promise you, if I have to shoot you I won’t regret it later . . . and you won’t be around to regret it.”
She sounded mighty sure of herself, Matt thought, and he supposed that since she had a gun on him, she could afford to be. With a sigh, he raised his hands into plain sight and stepped back from the brush barrier.
“You’re making a mistake here,” he said.
“No, you made it.” She lifted her voice suddenly and called, “Davey! Pete! Josie!”
Light came from a couple of the jacals as their doors were thrown open. Several figures came out hurriedly, one with a rifle, the other two carrying pistols. As they strode quickly toward the corral, the doors of the other huts opened as well. More figures began to appear.
Matt hoped Salty would hold his fire since the horses hadn’t been stampeded yet. That should have been enough to warn the old-timer that things weren’t going according to plan. Salty could probably hear the voices, too, even if he couldn’t make out all the words.
If Salty opened fire, there was a good chance that somebody down here would be killed. Matt didn’t want that, at least until he found out exactly what was going on here. And if he was right about what he thought, he still didn’t want any killing if it could be avoided.
“SueAnn, what the hell’s goin’ on out here? What are you yellin’ about?”
The question came from one of the newcomers, a young man this time, judging by his voice. Not too young, though. He was almost as tall as Matt. Starlight reflected from the barrel of the gun he held in his hand.
“I caught this varmint sneakin’ around the corral, Davey,” the girl called SueAnn replied. “I don’t know who he is, but he’s bound to be up to no good.”
“Somebody strike a light,” Davey ordered. “Let’s have a look at him.”
A lucifer flared up. The boy who held it thrust the match toward Matt’s face so that the garish light revealed his features.
The light made him squint as its glare half-blinded him, but his eyes adjusted quickly. His captors hadn’t stopped to think that while the light allowed them to see who he was, it provided him with a look at them, too, although some of them hung back instead of clustering around him, so he couldn’t see them as well.
As he’d suspected, they were young. In some cases, no more than fourteen or fifteen, he guessed. When SueAnn moved around in front of him, still holding the revolver, he saw that she was even younger, maybe twelve. The gun seemed almost as big as she was, but it was plenty steady in her grip.
Davey and a couple of the other boys were older, maybe eighteen. The others were all in their middle teens. Matt counted eight boys and four girls. They had shed the dusters and Stetsons but still wore range clothes, including the bandannas they had used as masks while they were holding up the stagecoach.
When he’d realized that the robbers weren’t speaking, the obvious conclusion was that they were silent because they were afraid their voices would reveal something about them. Their age seemed a likely possibility.
The fact that none of the shots struck him and Salty, despite the fact that they didn’t have very good cover, also supported that idea. Thinking back on it, the bullets really hadn’t even come that close. Salty had told him the same thing had happened during the other holdups.
That indicated to Matt that the outlaws didn’t want to kill anybody.
One of the older boys said, “I recognize this fella. He was the shotgun guard on the coach we stopped today.”
“Yeah, I knew I’d seen him before,” Davey said. “How’d you follow us, mister?”
The other boy who had spoken said, “I’ll tell you how he followed us. He cut one of the horses loose from the team. I’ve been warnin’ you somebody would think of that, Davey.”
“They never did before,” Davey replied sullenly. “But I guess I should have listened to you, Pete.”
“Too late now,” the boy called Pete snapped. “He’s here, he’s seen our faces, and he’s heard some of our names. If we let him go, he’s likely to find out who we are. Worse yet, he knows where this place is. He can bring the law right back down on our heads.” Pete squared his shoulders and lifted the gun in his hand. “No, we got to kill him.”
Davey reached over, clamped a hand around the cylinder of Pete’s gun, and forced the weapon back down.
“No! We said there wouldn’t be any killin’ unless we had to, to save one of us.”
“Well, now we have to,” Pete said tightly, “to save all of us.”
For a moment, tension hung thickly in the air. Then a pretty, dark-haired girl stepped up to Pete and put a hand on his other arm.
“Why don’t we wait and talk to Roman?” she suggested. “He always knows the best thing to do.”
“That’s a good idea,” Davey said. “Roman’s supposed to be here in a little while. We’ll put this fella in one of the huts and stand guard over him until then. He’s not going anywhere.”
Pete still looked like he wanted to put a bullet in Matt, but after a moment he shrugged and said, “All right, we’ll leave it up to Roman. But you know what he’s gonna say. He’ll agree with me that this man’s got to die.”
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” Davey said.
Pete said, “You better take his gun and knife before he tries something, though.”
Davey looked like he wished he had thought of that. He pointed his gun at Matt and said, “All right, a couple of you get those weapons. Don’t get between us and him, though.”
Briefly, Matt considered the possibility of grabbing one of the kids when they came close enough to disarm him and using the youngster as a hostage. He discarded the idea almost immediately. He didn’t want to put any of them in harm’s way.
They were doing a good enough job of that themselves by deciding to be outlaws.
Anyway, the two boys who took his Colt and knife were careful, as Davey had warned them to be. Matt wouldn’t have had a chance to grab either of them. If he had tried, he was sure Pete would have put a bullet in him.
He didn’t know who Roman was, but it looked like he was going to have to bide his time and wait for a better moment to make his move.
He had a grizzled ace in the hole in Salty that none of these kids knew about.
They marched him toward one of the huts and prodded him inside at gunpoint. The place was sparsely furnished with a couple of sleeping pallets, a rickety-looking table with a candle burning on it, and a couple of rough-hewn chairs. Two saddles were piled in a corner. A pair of younger boys picked them up and carried them out. Matt figured they were the ones he was displacing from their usual quarters.
“I’ll stand watch over him,” Pete volunteered.
Davey’s eyes narrowed as if he
thought that might not be a good idea. Matt thought the same thing. As eager as Pete had been to kill him a few minutes earlier, the youngster might decide to go ahead and put a bullet in him, then claim that he’d tried to escape.
“No, Josie and I will guard him,” Davey said. “The rest of you go back to your cabins. Tom, you and Hank can bunk with me for the time being. I won’t be there anyway.”
The two boys who had carried out the saddles nodded.
“All right, clear out,” Davey went on. “Get some rest if you can. It may be a while before Roman gets here. You’ll know it when he does.”
The other youngsters filed out of the jacal. Pete went reluctantly. SueAnn was the last one through the door, and she warned Davey and Josie, “I captured him. He’s my prisoner. Don’t you let him get away.”
“We won’t,” Josie promised her. When SueAnn was gone, she closed the door.
Davey gestured toward one of the chairs with his gun and told Matt, “Sit down.”
Matt took off his hat and dropped it on the table. He sat and cocked his right ankle on his left knee. The pose was more casual than he really felt. His captors might be little more than children, most of them, but he knew he was in danger anyway.
He looked at Davey and Josie and realized that he saw a family resemblance between them. They were brother and sister, he decided. He didn’t know if that information would help any, but it didn’t hurt to know it.
“Why don’t the two of you tell me what’s going on here?” he suggested. “How do a bunch of kids wind up robbing stagecoaches?”
“We’re not kids,” Davey snapped. “Well, not all of us, anyway. I’m a grown man. A fella grows up fast on the frontier.”
Matt had to admit that there was some truth to that. He thought back to the days when he had been Matt Cavanaugh, the only survivor of a massacre in which outlaws had murdered the rest of his family. He’d had to do whatever was necessary to survive during that grim period of his life, before he’d met Smoke and Preacher. Life on the frontier was indeed a hard teacher.
“Maybe so, but most of those others are just youngsters,” he said. “They ought to be in school somewhere instead of wearing masks and shooting off guns.”
Josie said, “They would be, if they still had families.”
“Ah,” Matt said as understanding dawned. “You’re all orphans.”
“That’s right,” Davey said. “We all grew up together in an orphanage, until Pete and I got old enough that they kicked us out. And then it wasn’t long after that the place closed down and everybody who hadn’t been adopted was tossed out without a place to live. By then Pete and I had met Roman, and he offered to help us. He knew about this place, and he told us how the stage line runs not too far south of here.”
“Davey, you’re talkin’ too much,” his sister warned him.
Davey ignored her. Once the words started flowing from him, clearly he wanted to talk. He must have been keeping things bottled up inside him ever since leaving the orphanage.
“Roman said if we’d work for him for a while, he’d stake us to supplies and clothes and everything we needed.”
“Everything you needed to become outlaws,” Matt said quietly.
Davey shrugged.
“The world never cared about the likes of us, mister,” he said. “Why should we care about the law?”
“You think you’re the only kids who ever had it tough? I was on my own when I was twelve years old. My folks had been gunned down right in front of me.”
“That’s terrible,” Josie said. “What did you do?”
“I met a couple of hombres who helped me out.”
“See?” Davey said. “Your story’s not that much different from ours, is it?”
“I never turned desperado,” Matt said.
“You made your choices, we made ours.” Davey frowned. “What’s your name, anyway, mister?”
“It’s Matt.” He started to add his last name, then decided against it. These kids probably wouldn’t recognize the name Matt Jensen, but Roman might, when he showed up.
The situation was pretty clear now. This fella Roman was an outlaw himself, Matt thought, and he had taken advantage of the trouble that had befallen Davey, Josie, and the others to recruit them into doing his dirty work for him. Matt had no doubt that when Roman showed up—probably to collect the Wells Fargo express pouch stolen from the stagecoach—he would agree with Pete and decree that Matt had to die.
That meant Matt had to find some allies of his own before that happened.
“When Roman set this deal up, did he promise you that you wouldn’t have to kill anybody?”
“That’s right,” Josie said. “And we haven’t.”
“You reckon that’s going to be true by the time this night is over?”
Davey said, “We all promised each other we’d do whatever we had to in order to survive and stay together. We’re all the family any of us has.”
“It won’t always be that way. You two are old enough to go out and make lives for yourselves now. So’s Pete. And the younger ones will be soon. They can grow up, get married, have families, and be decent citizens. They can be happy.” Matt paused. “But they can’t if they’re running from the law with a murder charge hanging over their heads.”
“They won’t be wanted for murder.” Davey took a deep breath. “If there’s killin’ to be done, I can do it.”
“Davey, no!” Josie cried. “I won’t let you—”
“You don’t have any say in it, sis.”
Davey’s voice was hard and flat. Matt didn’t doubt that the young man would do what he thought he needed to do.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have any more time to win them over, because Pete stuck his head in the door and said, “Roman’s comin’. Now we’ll settle this.”
Chapter 19
Davey jerked his gun in a sharp gesture and ordered Matt, “All right, mister, on your feet. Let’s get out there.”
“Davey, I don’t like this,” Josie said. “If we kill this man, things will never be the same.”
“If we let him live, they won’t be the same, either. But we’ll let Roman decide.” Davey shrugged. “He may want to take Matt here with him when he leaves and handle things himself.”
“Handle killing me, you mean,” Matt said. “You’ll still bear some responsibility for that, Davey. All of you will. Even little SueAnn.”
Pete laughed and said, “Hell, mister, SueAnn would pull the trigger on you herself if she needed to. She’s one tough little gal.”
Again, Davey ordered, “Let’s go.”
With three guns on him, Matt had no choice but to cooperate. He stood up and walked out of the hut while they covered him.
The others had all gathered to await Roman’s arrival. One of the boys held a lantern that lit up the area along the creek.
Matt heard hoofbeats, and a moment later a buggy rolled into view, followed by a couple of men on horseback. He was a little surprised to see a buggy out here in these badlands. Obviously, there was a trail leading into the hideout that he and Salty hadn’t discovered.
The man holding the reins in the buggy drove it up to the group of youngsters and their prisoner. In the light from the lantern, his smooth-shaven face was surprised and angry at the sight of Matt. He was something of a dandy, wearing a dapper brown suit and brown hat and sporting a neatly trimmed mustache. Dark hair curled out from under his hat. As he brought the vehicle to a stop, he asked in a southern accent, “Well, what have we here?”
“This fella was snooping around, Roman,” Davey said. “He was the shotgun guard on the coach we held up this afternoon. He followed us.”
“I’d say that’s rather self-evident, my young friend,” Roman drawled. “The question now is, why is he still alive?”
“That’s what I told them, Roman,” Pete said. Matt got the impression that Pete wouldn’t be unhappy if Roman decided to replace Davey as the head of the gang with him. “I said we had to get rid of
him.”
“Indeed,” Roman muttered.
He wasn’t exactly what Matt had expected. He had figured Roman would be an outlaw, but he looked and sounded more like a lawyer. Of course, there wasn’t usually that much difference between the two.
The two men on horseback who had accompanied Roman here were more of the sort that Matt had expected: hardcases who would be good with the guns on their hips and willing to do just about anything if the payoff was good enough.
So the odds were pretty steep, and things didn’t look good, Matt thought. But he wasn’t going to give up hope. Smoke and Preacher had taught him better than that.
Besides, Salty was still out there in the dark somewhere.
Josie said, “We’ll just turn him over to you, Roman. We figured you’d know what to do.”
“Of course, I do, my dear,” Roman said. “I always know what to do. My advice had paid off handsomely for you so far, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t know about that,” Davey said. “We’re still stuck out here, and you take all the money.”
Roman frowned and said, “Your work isn’t over yet. And as for the money, you know our arrangement. I put some of it away for you, and the rest goes to pay me back for my legal services.”
Yep, a lawyer, Matt thought. In this case, just another word for crook. He had no doubt that these youngsters would never see a penny of the loot they had turned over to Roman. When he decided that he had milked them enough, he would take all the money and disappear.
He might even tip off the law as to where to find the young outlaws.
“Sorry,” Davey muttered as Roman glared at him. “I didn’t mean anything by it. But Josie’s right; it’d be better if you and your men just took Matt away with you.” He leaned his head toward the others. “These kids, they don’t need to be involved in this.”
“On the contrary,” Roman said, “this is a very fortuitous circumstance that has arisen. When dealing with children, one must be on the lookout for . . . educational opportunities, shall we say? We can all learn something from this.” The smooth voice hardened. “We can learn who actually deserves a place of leadership in our little group.”
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