A few scrubby bushes grew here and there, as well as clumps of grass, but for the most part the ground was bare. Ace’s steps were silent on the rocky surface. He tested each place carefully before he put his full weight on it.
He hadn’t gone very far before he spotted some dark shapes ahead of him. From their size, he knew he was looking at the Indian ponies. Off to the left were other, smaller shapes, two of them standing upright. Those would be the two renegades he had heard talking.
Near them were other dark patches on the ground. People sleeping, renegades and prisoners alike. The ladies had to be exhausted after their ordeal.
With any luck, soon they would be free. Ace lifted the rifle to his shoulder and waited. The tranquility of the scene told him no one had discovered that the guard who had fallen from the mesa was no longer at his post.
Chance ought to be in position, and any minute he would put their plan into action.
That thought had just gone through Ace’s mind when the crack of a shot split the night’s stillness and orange flame spurted from a rifle barrel on the other side of the mesa.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Chance had felt the tension growing inside him as he crouched beside a rock just below the head of the trail and waited for Ace’s signal to be relayed by Agnes. It was probably where the guard had been hiding earlier, when Chance came slipping up the trail the first time.
His second foray to the top of the mesa had gone a lot smoother. He hadn’t run into any more sentries. The renegade camp was quiet. He’d heard horses moving around a little, as horses did at night, but that was all. He didn’t take a look because he didn’t want to risk exposing himself, and also because he had to wait for the sudden flare of a match down below, telling him to start the ball.
He didn’t even want to blink, for fear he would miss the signal. Minutes dragged past while he thought about Ace trying to climb the mesa’s rugged face on the opposite side.
In the shadows below, a miniature red star was born and moved back and forth three times. Chance’s hands tightened on the Winchester he held. That was the sign he’d been waiting for. It meant Ace was at the top of the mesa and would be stealing up on the Comanche camp.
Chance began to count silently in his head, keeping a steady rhythm. Counting to five hundred would give Ace time to move into position and get ready.
Assuming, of course, that nothing went wrong . . .
Four ninety-seven, four ninety-eight, four ninety-nine.
Chance drew in a deep breath, let it out quietly.
Five hundred.
He straightened, moved four steps to the head of the trail, dropped to a knee behind another rock, and brought the rifle to his shoulder. He had already worked the lever to put a cartridge in the firing chamber before he ever went up there. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger, aiming a little high just to make sure he didn’t hit Ace or one of the prisoners.
The whipcrack as the Winchester went off was startlingly loud.
As he worked the lever, Chance shouted, “Come on, boys! Bugler, blow the charge!” He threw that in just to make any of the renegades who spoke English think the cavalry was there. He wanted to spook them and make them charge right toward him. Yeah, a dozen kill-crazy Comanches against one man.
Maybe he was the loco Jensen brother after all.
He fired three more times as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever, spraying lead across the mesa as he whooped and hollered. Shots blasted back at him, blooming redly in the darkness. A slug whined off the boulder next to him. Angry screeches came from the renegades.
Chance hoped that Ace would be getting into action soon, because he had a whole heap of hell bearing down on him.
* * *
As gun-thunder filled the night, Ace raced toward the camp. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but there was enough starlight for him see men leaping to their feet as the shots jolted them out of their sleep. They ran toward the muzzle blasts from Chance’s Winchester and started shooting back at him.
With that much racket going on, Ace thought they might not notice a few more shots coming from behind them. He just had to be sure that none of the women were in the way. As he came up to the area where everyone had been sleeping, he saw four figures still on the ground, writhing around as if they were tied up and trying to free themselves.
“Stay down, ladies!” he called to them, then opened fire. He swept the rifle from left to right, cranking off half a dozen rounds, then tracked the Winchester back the other way, firing four more shots.
The lead tore into the renegades like a scythe mowing down wheat. Several of them went down right away, the slugs hammering them off their feet, while others stumbled but remained upright. A few of them even managed to turn around and try to meet the unexpected threat.
Chance had lowered his sights, and the renegades were close enough to the edge where he knelt behind the boulder that they were good targets. Ace heard the cracks from his brother’s rifle and saw more of the Indians fall.
But some of the renegades hadn’t been hit, and they weren’t giving up without a fight. Ace emptied the rifle as two of the warriors charged at him. One man went down with a couple bullets in his chest, but the other bounded on without slowing. Either Ace had missed him, or his battle frenzy allowed him to ignore his wounds.
Ace dropped the Winchester and drew his Colt. He got off one shot before the Comanche launched himself into the air with a shrill war cry and crashed into the young man.
The collision drove Ace over backwards. The Indian’s weight came down on him, driving all the air from his lungs and putting a painful strain on his ribs. The man tried to thrust a knee into Ace’s groin, but Ace twisted aside and smashed his gun against the man’s head.
That should have knocked the renegade out cold or even fractured his skull and killed him, but somehow he kept fighting. His fingers closed around Ace’s throat and squeezed. Ace was already caught without much breath, and he couldn’t get any more as the man’s brutal grip closed off his windpipe.
A red haze swam up from the bottom of Ace’s vision and threatened to swallow him whole. On the verge of passing out, he had no doubt the Indian would choke him to death if he lost consciousness.
Ace thrust the Colt’s barrel underneath the renegade’s chin and pulled the trigger again. The gun’s boom was muffled, but he felt the hot shower of gore on his face as the top of the man’s head blew off. Gagging, Ace shoved the corpse to the side and rolled the other way.
As he came up on his knees, he heard a scream from where he had seen the women a few moments earlier. In the dim starlight it was difficult to be sure, but he thought he saw one of the renegades looming over a figure lying on the ground. The man raised his arm as starlight winked on a knife blade.
Ace shot him, the Colt roaring again. The figure groaned and toppled sideways. Ace breathed a swift prayer that he had not made a mistake and shot one of the prisoners.
That worry was soon put to rest.
The intended victim reached over to the fallen man and picked up the knife. She sat up and started sawing at the bindings around her ankles. “Ace! Ace, is that you?”
He recognized Lorena’s voice. Springing to his feet, he dashed over to her as she finished cutting her feet free. He holstered the gun, knelt beside her, and took the knife from her hands, which were tied in front of her. A few quick slashes of the blade, and the bonds fell away.
“Is everybody all right?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” Lorena said. “Give me that knife, and I’ll cut the others loose. Is that Chance over there on the other side of the mesa?”
“Yeah.”
Shots still rang out from that area.
“It sounds like they have him pinned down.”
“Not for long. When you get the others free, all of you stay here. We’ll be back for you.” Ace jumped up and hurried toward the battle that was still going on. Working by feel, he thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt’s empty cha
mbers. The darkness didn’t matter. He could load a gun in his sleep.
He couldn’t tell exactly where the trail came out on top of the mesa, but when he saw a couple muzzle flashes he knew where Chance was. Three tongues of flame licked out from the rifles wielded by the renegades as they returned Chance’s fire. Ace headed for the nearest one.
Spotting a figure crouching behind one of the small bushes that dotted the top of the mesa, he called, “Hey!”
The renegade spun toward him. Ace fired first. The Comanche’s rifle went off harmlessly into the air as he toppled over backwards with Ace’s bullet in his chest.
The exchange drew the attention of one of the other surviving members of the war party. A rifle cracked and sent a bullet whipping past Ace’s ear. He dived forward and landed on his belly. The Colt roared and bucked in his hand as he triggered twice. The renegade howled in pain, spun around, and pitched to the ground.
That left just one. As Ace leaped to his feet again, the Comanche ran toward him, screeching in insane hatred as he charged.
Chance’s rifle cracked again. The renegade arched his back as lead smashed into it. He stumbled a few more steps and then fell face-first, almost at Ace’s feet.
Echoes from the gunshots rolled across the flatland around the mesa and gradually faded, leaving hollow silence in their place.
“Ace?” Chance called into that hush. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Ace replied. “How about you?”
“I’m fine.” Chance stood up from behind the rock where he had taken cover and trotted toward his brother. “Where are the women?”
“We’re over here,” Lorena called.
Together, the Jensen brothers hurried to join them.
The ladies were getting shakily to their feet. Their tight bonds and awkward positions had caused their feet and legs to go to sleep. Despite that, they stumbled forward to meet Ace and Chance and hug them in relief and gratitude. Jamie was sobbing, but Lorena, Isabel, and Molly were all dry-eyed.
“Are any of you hurt?” Ace asked when the happy reunion had calmed down a little.
“Not enough to worry about,” Lorena replied. “We got roughed up some during the fight at the wagon, but nothing serious.”
“And they hadn’t gotten around to doing anything since we camped,” Isabel added.
Lorena went on. “The boss man—the one called Swift Pony, I guess—he seemed to give them orders to stay away from us. I reckon he didn’t want to try to divvy us up until they got to where they were going. Figured it might cause too much jealousy and friction.”
“You were lucky,” Chance said.
“I know. Where’s Agnes?”
The others echoed that question, worried over the fifth member of their group now that they had been freed from captivity.
“She’s down below,” Ace said.
“You brought her with you to chase those renegades?” Lorena sounded surprised.
Chance laughed. “You didn’t think she’d willingly be left behind, did you?”
“We didn’t think it would be safe to leave her with the wagon, either,” Ace added.
Isabel said, “She is a very strong-willed girl. It will be good to see her again.”
“No reason you can’t do that right now,” Chance said. “You’ll just need to be careful going down that trail in the dark. You wouldn’t want to slip and fall.”
“You go ahead and take the ladies on down,” Ace told his brother.
“What about you?” Lorena asked.
“I have something to do up here,” Ace said.
Chance nodded, knowing that Ace meant he needed to check the bodies of the renegades and make sure all of them were dead. He had been keeping a close eye on them, even during the reunion with the ladies, to make sure none of them were stirring.
Chance herded the ladies over to the trail and started them down single file. Lorena led the way, then Jamie, Molly, and Isabel. Chance brought up the rear. Ace reloaded his Colt again and began the grim chore of looking over the bodies. He had to light matches to make sure some of them were dead.
A couple of the lifeless faces revealed by the glare of a lucifer were so young that Ace’s jaw tightened. Two members of the war party had been little more than kids, only a few years younger than him and Chance. But despite their youth, they had decided to go on the war path, probably because they dreamed of glory following their chief, Swift Pony.
They had taken part in slaughtering a number of innocent settlers, Ace recalled. He wasn’t going to lose any sleep over his part in putting an end to their murderous rampage.
Satisfied that they didn’t have to worry about any of the renegades posing a threat in the future, he turned his attention to the ponies. He and Chance could lead them down off the mesa in the morning, Ace decided. He didn’t want to risk doing it in the dark.
He was about to start down from the mesa, ready to rejoin his brother and the ladies, when a figure appeared in front of him at the top of the trail.
“Chance? Something wrong?”
A harsh voice said, “Something’s wrong, all right, Jensen. You’re about to die.”
The shape split into two as one person was pushed to the ground by the other. Ace recognized the one who had stumbled and fallen to her knees as Agnes.
Stepping up behind her, putting a gun to her head, was the man who had spoken.
Lew Shelby.
CHAPTER FORTY
Ace’s hand started toward his gun, but Shelby went on. “Don’t do it, Jensen. I’ll blow this bitch’s head off if you touch that Colt.”
Ace lifted both hands slightly. “Take it easy, Shelby. Don’t get nervous and pull that trigger.”
“I won’t unless you give me a reason to. Believe me, I don’t mind killing a woman, but I’d just as soon not have to. Now back up and don’t try anything funny.”
With no other choice for the moment, Ace backed away from the trail. Shelby reached down with his free hand, caught hold of Agnes’s shoulder, and dragged her roughly to her feet again.
Keeping a tight grip on her, he forced her forward. More shapes appeared at the top of the trail behind him and filed onto the mesa. Ace didn’t know who was with Shelby, since most of his allies had been killed or captured back in Cross Plains, but it was obvious the gunman wasn’t working alone.
“I’m sorry, Ace,” Agnes said. “I guess I’m not cut out to be a frontier woman after all. I didn’t hear them sneaking up on me.”
“That’s all right,” he told her. “We’ll figure this out.”
Shelby laughed. “There’s nothing to figure out. I’m gonna kill you two Jensen boys, and my new friends are going to get what they want, too.”
One of the newcomers said, “We need some light. Cooper, get afire started.”
The voice was vaguely familiar to Ace, and when he heard the man mention the name Cooper, he knew why. It was one of the men who had kidnapped Molly, way back there on the other side of that escarpment west of Weatherford. That explained who three of the men were.
The others would be Hawthorne, Ripley Kirkwood, and his man Leon. The groups had joined forces.
All Ace needed to make things complete was for the Fairweathers to show up.
The renegades might have had a fire back in the center of the mesa where they had camped, but the man called Cooper didn’t try to stir up its embers and rekindle the blaze. He gathered some dry brush near the edge, piled it up, and lit it. As the flames caught and began to grow, the flickering yellow light they cast spread over the thirteen people clustered near it.
Ace saw that his guess about the identities of their enemies was correct. The six men all had guns out. Some of them covered the women, who were huddled together, while the others kept their revolvers pointed at Ace and Chance.
Shelby told Ace, “Get over there with your brother, you little bastard.”
Chance appeared to have been disarmed. His face was pale, not from fear but from anger. “I’m sorry. They
met us when we weren’t even halfway down the trail. Shelby had a gun to Agnes’s head, so there was nothing I could do.”
“I know. He had me in the same fix.”
Shelby said, “All right, Jensen . . . you, Ace . . . take that gun out with your left hand and toss it down.”
Ace’s jaw tightened. He hated to give up his gun. But if he forced a fight, outnumbered as they were, he and Chance would almost certainly wind up dead, and the ladies would be in the hands of these varmints. Still, he hesitated.
Molly provided a distraction by saying, “Have you told your new friends what you’re really after, Earl?”
“Shut up, you little—”
“Fifty thousand dollars!” Molly’s voice rose as she interrupted him. “That’s what he wants. He’s just a no-good outlaw, and he wants his loot.”
“Loot that you stole from me!” Brock roared at her.
Lew Shelby glanced over at him. “What the hell? Fifty grand?”
“All the money my gang and I had cached,” Brock said as he glared at Molly. “And she stole it and ran away, the hussy!”
Tight-lipped, Molly said, “I reckon I earned it, being married to you.”
So it hadn’t been a random kidnapping after all, Ace thought. Brock and his companions had a reason for what they had done. But they hadn’t shared that with Shelby, Kirkwood, and Leon, probably because they were worried about a double cross.
From the look of avarice that had appeared suddenly on Shelby’s face, that concern was justified. Molly was trying to drive a wedge between their captors, and she might just succeed.
Kirkwood had eyes only for Isabel, though, and Leon was as impassive as always.
“Where’s the money?” Brock went on.
Molly shook her head and laughed coldly. “Miles from here. You’ll never find it.”
“I’ll make you tell me. I’ve heard about how the redskins torture their prisoners. I’ll make you wish those damn Comanches still had you, girl.”
“Go to hell,” Molly snarled at him.
In a voice sharp with impatience, Ripley Kirkwood said, “I’ve had enough of this. Brock, you and the others can settle your own affairs. Fifty thousand dollars means nothing to me. I came for Isabel. I’m taking her and leaving.”
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