by Jerry Ahern
The reins to her mount gripped tightly in her left fist, drawing a revolver with her right hand, Ellen screamed, “All right, you motherfuckers, let’s see what you’re made of!” And she dug her heels into her horse’s flanks.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Jack heard the words but couldn’t believe his ears. There was no time for doubting his eyes. He’d caught a fleeting glimpse of his wife riding down from the rocks on the opposite side of the depression, her horse streaking toward where the ambushers waited.
“Shit,” Jack snarled, squinting his eyes shut for a microsecond, then catching his breath as he opened his eyes and retook his sight picture on the most alert-seeming of the desperados. Three things happened simultaneously: the resounding crack of the .45-70 cartridge launching its bullet toward the target, the butt of the rifle punching his shoulder and the Marlin’s muzzle rising slightly.
His ears still rang from the sound of the shot; despite that, Jack could hear pistol fire. That had to be Ellen firing at the ambushers. He didn’t take time to look, a fresh cartridge already levered into the Marlin’s chamber, his right eye picking up a target through the peep aperture of the tang sight. When he had a man’s center of mass floating over the front sight, Jack fired again.
This time, as soon as he verified he’d hit his mark, Jack looked to his right and down into the depression. Ellen was swapping revolvers, still riding toward the ambushers.
It was almost a relief when the long-gun-armed men sheltered in the rocks at last returned fire. The first fusillade of gunfire poured down toward Ellen, clumps of earth and large pieces of gravel exploding on all sides of her, but neither she nor her mount seemed to be struck by a bullet.
While he’d watched the scene unfold, Jack had crammed two more rounds through his rifle’s loading gate. Levering the action, he fired again. He caught one of the ambushers as the man stood, bringing a Winchester ‘73 to his shoulder. The impact of Jack’s shot sent the wannabe murderer flying back against another of his fellows. That man’s rifle discharged into the air. As it did, Jack levered another round into his own rifle’s chamber and fired. He struck the second man somewhere in the chest.
Jack scanned the terrain to his right. Ellen was taking heavy fire from the remaining ambushers. Her horse, struck, collapsed under her. She jumped clear, landing hard, it looked like, as her horse raised its head once, then died.
Four of the ambushers were either dead or, at least, out of the fight; four remained.
It was time to draw their fire away from Ellen. Jack broke from cover, packing two more rounds into the rifle as he ran toward the next suitable spot where he could take shelter from enemy fire. He fired a wasted shot toward his enemies, baiting them to return fire. They did. The rocks just ahead of him seemed to explode with bullet impacts, but the range was still too much of a reach for anything but a lucky shot or a fine marksman.
Jack caught a glimpse of Ellen. She was slowly rolling onto her back. One of the outlaws was on his horse, racing down out of the rocks toward her, a revolver in his hand, firing.
Jack snapped off a shot, missed.
A man was riding down on her, his six-gun blazing. Ellen could barely breathe. Every bone in her body ached, but nothing felt broken. The revolver still holstered on her gun belt was empty, but the one she’d dropped as she fell from her horse had three rounds left in it. Her eyes swept over the ground, searching for it.
Ellen spotted the Colt Single Action Army half obscured under her dead horse, near where the cinch strap crossed the animal’s belly.
By dint of willpower more than strength, she scrambled to her feet, half hurtling, half falling toward her dead horse, her right arm at maximum extension, grasping for the revolver. Her hand closed around it. Jerking it free, Ellen looked up.
The mounted killer was so close she could see the front sight of his six-gun and the flecks of yellow in his squinted green eyes. A bullet impacted the right hind leg of her dead horse, inches from her own left leg. Ellen stabbed the revolver toward her assailant and did the only thing that made sense: shot at the largest and easiest target, firing the Colt’s remaining three rounds into the chest of the killer’s oncoming mount.
The horse pitched forward, its knees buckling. As the animal rolled into an awkward-looking somersault, the green-eyed killer launched over his mount’s neck and head.
Ellen scrabbled for cartridges from her gun belt, knowing that there wouldn’t be time to reload if the fall hadn’t killed or injured the man.
As she glanced toward him, a sick feeling chilled her stomach. He was unsteady, but he was on his feet, his right arm fully extended, the first finger of his right hand drawing back to trigger a round. Ellen snarled, “Fuck you!”
There was a click. The revolver’s hammer fell, but no round discharged.
“Damn bitch,” the man hissed. He let the revolver drop from his hand, then reached for the one holstered crossdraw. He drew it, cocked the hammer. Ellen threw the empty revolver at him, missing him but making him dodge.
There was a loud shot, then another. The killer’s body twitched, then lurched back, falling spread-eagled to the ground.
Ellen raced toward him, picked up the still-cocked single action, which had fallen from his hand, then spun around.
“Jack!”
“Get down, kid! Behind the horse, just like in the movies!”
There were still more men in the rocks above them.
Bullets tore into her horse’s body as she flung herself behind it. Jack was beside her in the next instant. He rolled onto his back, smiling at her as he reloaded his big rifle, pulling the cartridges out of a belt slung crossbody from his right shoulder to left hip.
As if reading her mind, Jack told her, “Three of them. All with rifles and revolvers. And horses. Hopefully, they’ll use them—the horses—and ride off.”
“What about Helen, Jack?” Ellen Naile saw the Bledsoe girl rolled up almost into a ball less than what she judged to be a quarter of a city block away from them. “If one of those guys up there decides to be a real schmuck, they’ll shoot her just for spite.”
“I’ve got plenty of .45-70s left, Ellen. If you can do this fast enough, we can make it.” He took off his Stetson and shrugged out of the bandolier, then replaced the black hat, pulling it down low over his eyes. There was a spare revolver stuffed in his trouser belt; he drew it, rolled it in his hand and offered it to her butt first. “You keep them busy, like they used to say in the old westerns. Keep ‘em pinned down. I’m going to go get the girl to cover.”
Ellen warned him, “She’s tied up in barbed wire.”
“It won’t cut up my hands so badly that I can’t shoot.”
“You bringing her back here?”
“Only place that’s close enough. Fire the rifle once, then throw a few pistol shots at them while I run toward her. Save the rest of what’s in the rifle until I’m on my way back with her. Only four shots total in the magazine. And remember, keep the butt of that rifle tucked tight into your shoulder or you’ll hurt yourself.” He drew the one remaining of her original revolvers from its holster and loaded it as he said, “This may also flush them out, which means they may rush us.”
“Why did you leave me the cartridge belt with the rifle ammunition in it?”
Her husband smiled. “Just in case.”
“You are not going to get yourself killed. Do I make myself clear, Jack!?”
Jack tipped his hat as he responded, “Yes, ma’am. But I wasn’t exactly planning on doing that anyway.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“When this is all over, are you going to make some profound literary reference, some quote, like Richard Boone always did on TV?”
Jack laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.” He kissed her, scrunched his hat down tight and low, drew his special long barreled Colt and ordered, “Fire that rifle shot now!”
Ellen brought the rifle to her shoulder, worked the lever and fi
red. The recoil slammed into her, and the rifle barrel rocked upward from where she’d rested it across the body of her dead horse. Why would anybody want to shoot something that hurt so much? she asked herself.
She looked behind her.
Jack had already started to run, keeping to a low crouch. He turned around once and snapped a shot toward the three bad guys in the rocks above them as he skidded to his knees beside the Bledsoe girl. He fired another shot, holstered his revolver and swept the girl up into his arms, running with her. Ellen fired out one of the revolvers, put it down, brought the rifle to her shoulder and fired, fired again.
As she prepared to fire a fourth shot, Jack was beside her, Helen Bledsoe between them. “Chamber a round yet?”
“No.”
Jack grabbed the rifle from her hands, worked the lever and fired. Ellen Naile heard something that sounded like a man’s scream of pain.
“Two left,” Jack said flatly. It was when Jack turned around to reload the rifle that Ellen noticed his hands, covered in blood. His shirt was cut, blood oozing through in spots. “Lucky we’ve all had tetanus shots recently. She’ll need one.”
Jack seemed about to say something else, but a flurry of shots from the two men still up in the rocks interrupted him. Blood splattered them both as bullets thwacked into the body of her dead horse.
“Stay down!” Jack commanded.
Ellen did as she was told, but was able to peek around the neck of the dead animal. She spied two riders, barreling down from the rocks above, revolvers firing wildly toward Jack and her. Ellen looked to her left as Jack’s rifle boomed, then boomed again, then again.
One of the riders tumbled from his saddle. Jack’s rifle fired a fourth time. The last of the desperados fell from his saddle, but sprang to his feet like some sort of Hollywood stuntman. He reached for the pistol worn crossdraw at his left side. “Jack! Look out!” Ellen Naile shouted.
There were two shots, almost simultaneous.
The bad guy’s knees just seemed to buckle, and he fell backward in a heap.
Ellen looked at her husband, his gleaming long-barreled Colt revolver held at full extension of his right arm.
As he holstered the gun, in his best deep voice, Jack intoned, “A wet bird never flies at night’—da-da-dadum.”
For a moment, Ellen Naile just stared at her husband, and then she started to laugh so hard that she almost pissed.
“Load your guns,” Jack told Ellen, already loading his. He set his rifle down and, without missing a beat, set to work freeing Helen. Ellen joined in a moment or so later. “So, you guys were able to repel them when they came against you at the house?” Jack asked Ellen in a measured, conversational tone. The Bledsoe girl was whimpering with every movement as they began to free her of the barbed wire with which she was bound.
“Who? Who came against the house? Nobody—”
“Oh, my God,” Jack whispered, looking suddenly frightened, visibly shivering, overwhelmed.
“Lizzie? And Clarence’s wife? More guys like these that tried killing us? They were going to attack the house?”
“Blake told me before he died. Take care of her, of Helen, as quickly as you can, Ellen. Tell me what I can do to help.” He cut away the last of the barbed wire with the Leatherman tool he carried in his saddlebags, then sat down and covered his face with his bloodied hands for a moment.
“I’ll help you round up some horses. You take a couple of them. You can leave us out here alone. There is no choice but to do that. I’ll get Helen back by myself.”
Jack looked up from his hands. His eyes looked as if he were holding back tears. Some of the Bledsoe girl’s blood was smeared on his face. “We’ll pick up the best of the guns these guys lost, so you and Helen have plenty of firepower if you need it.” The Bledsoe girl seemed somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness, had made no sound but those associated with pain. “Can you make it back with her?”
“She’s not comatose, just really hurting. I can make some of that better, get her back to the house so Clarence’s wife can take care of her. We’ll be fine. We can load a spare horse with all the rifles and handguns we can carry. With my hair stuffed under my hat, from a distance I’ll look like a guy. We’ll be fine,” Ellen volunteered again.
Jack nodded, mumbling something about getting his own horse as he jogged off.
The room was cold, kept that way, perhaps, to keep the computers—banks of them—running at peak efficiency. Alan Naile was freezing, but wasn’t numb. Almost every inch of his body hurt. When he’d awakened tied to a straight back chair as a captive of Bethany Kaminsky’s thugs, Lester Matthews had ordered, “Hurt him a lot, but not anything permanent yet. No bones or teeth. We’re not a hundred percent sure of how we’ll play this.”
Expertly, two of Matthews’ men began following their boss’s orders with egregious zeal, their blows leveled at muscle groups, at the abdomen, the groin, Alan sinking beneath the waves of pain, awakening and, in the next instant, the administration of pain beginning anew. It went on like that—the brutalization—for what seemed to him an eternity. Pain, unconsciousness, more pain. The only way to judge the passing of time was by the faces of his tormenters. They had both had average five o’clock shadows in their hollow cheeks when the pain began. When at last it ceased, their faces showed at least another full day’s growth.
They freed him from the chair and hauled him, still otherwise bound to his feet. He wet himself as he stood, but had done that already after they’d first started beating him in the stomach and groin. Matthews remarked, “You stink, Naile.” Then Matthews ordered his men, “Clean him up a little before you bring him along. But be quick about it.”
Cold water from a scrub bucket was thrown on him. His feet free, his hands—those were numb—still bound behind him and his arms bound at his sides with a rope tight around his chest, he was led off toward the door of the room in which he had been beaten. Before the door was opened, a dark blue pillowcase was pulled down over his head. One of his tormenters threatened, “Let out a fuckin’ word, and I’ll haul your ass back in here and put your nuts in a bench vise. When the pain gets too bad and you pass out, you’ll fall, but your balls’ll still be locked in that vise. You might even tear ‘em off.”
Alan said nothing, only nodded his head within the pillowcase. It was clear that the identity of the tortured prisoner was something to be kept secret. Why?
He was shoved along, walking for what seemed blocks, the pillowcase hood removed only after he’d been tied into another chair in this room filled with computers and high tech electronics.
Bethany Kaminsky’s face had smiled down at him.
After she walked away, joining Matthews, Alan had begun his assessment of the room. A dozen computerwork stations, another room beyond with what was likely a supercomputer. But other equipment looked at once strange and familiar. As seconds dragged on into minutes, recognition slowly returned. What he was looking at—at least some of it—were upgraded versions of certain of the monitoring systems devised to duplicate the time-travel phenomenon.
Why was such equipment here? As he nearly verbalized the question aloud, Alan’s consciousness was flooded over by a wave of bitterly cold realization. If the time base to which both Mort Hardesty and Kaminsky had alluded was, in fact, in the mountains in Nevada, then this equipment was for farther research. If Lakewood Industries’ minions could travel back and forth into the past from one location, other locations could be established. Not in an office building in some Chicago suburb, he told himself. No, such equipment had to be for something else.
Kaminsky interrupted his thoughts as she called to him from across the room, then began walking toward him, Matthews—the left side of Matthews’ face bruised from where Alan had punched him—at her side. “You’re wondering what all this stuff is for? Right?”
“Research into time-travel?”
“In a way. The supercomputer in the next room is running permutations, as Mort calls them. If such and
such event took place or such and such person ceased to exist or never existed, how would the present be affected? Like that. This is complex stuff, my soon-to-be-ex-rival. The actual time-travel stuff that we have is for plotting coordinates and polishing our technique.
“I always just loathe it in movies when the bad guy tells the good guy his plans before killing him, don’t you? But,” Bethany went on, “in this case, it’s a sure bet you’re going to die. And if for some reason you escaped at the last second before death, you’ll be almost a hundred years in the past. Who would you tell? What good would it do? Besides your damn relatives, everybody’d think you’re crazy.
“So,” she continued, obviously enjoying herself, “here’s a kind of overview of the business plan, Naile. I want to control the world, but from behind the scenes. Women do it best that way—control things. For that, I need the cooperation of a country. Now, I’m as patriotic as the next gal—well, not really, but anyway—so, we’ll give the good old USA a shot at things. And Germany and England. I left out the French, but I don’t think they’d work out. They’d rather do everything for themselves.”
“You’re leaving out places like the Sudan, Iceland, Columbia, too? Gee! Need an industrial base at the turn of the century?”
“Now, isn’t he clever, Lester!” Bethany Kaminsky enthused, throwing up her hands. “You can see why Alan Naile’s a captain of industry! Right you are, Alan! Very good boy! At the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, there were only four countries that could ramp up for the kind of technology I’m offering. But here’s why I sort of figure the United States wouldn’t be interested, and probably not the Brits, but, they might surprise us. Who knows? Right? Better yet, you guess, bright boy.”
Alan didn’t have to guess. “You’re going to offer latetwentieth-century war-related technology to the highest bidder, enabling that nation to take over the world. Aerial dogfights with F-16s pitted against Sopwith Camels? Ground battles with modern tanks against horse-mounted cavalry, M-16 rifles against old bolt-action infantry weapons? You filthy bitch!”