by Frank Leslie
The outlaw leader pulled back on his steeldust’s reins and started turning toward Miller when something in the rocks right of the trail caught his eye, and his right hand dropped to one of his revolvers.
The voice came again, louder this time. “Uh-uh. Nope. That’s the wrong thing to do, mister.”
Faith whipped her head around quickly, at first thinking they’d been stopped by bandits. But then the sun glinted dully off a badge, and her pulse quickened.
The Ranger she’d met behind the roadhouse, Winter, was aiming a rifle out from behind a scarp amongst the pines behind her and right of the trail, upslope a few yards. Another Ranger—the one called Grayson—stood beside a tree ahead and just to the left of the trail, slightly downslope. He aimed a Winchester straight out from his shoulder, while the third man, who had gray hair like Winter’s and an even more sun-darkened face, aimed his own rifle from the same scarp as did Winter, but ahead and to the right of the trail. A long weed stem protruded from between his teeth.
“What is this?” Temple grunted.
“Arizona Rangers. You fellas raise your hands, and do it fast. Any detours on the way to clawing air is gonna get you drilled deader’n hell.”
“Must be some mistake,” Manley laughed, swinging his head around. “We ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“Get your hands raised,” said Ranger Grayson, his rifle stock and low-canted black hat brim hiding his face. “Anyone tries to bolt, you’re dead.”
The cutthroats looked around at each other, and then, at the same time, Garza and Temple swung their heads toward Faith, their expressions both wry and accusing.
Dropping their reins, they and the others raised their hands above their shoulders. Temple dropped Faith’s lead line and the mare convulsed slightly, startled.
Miller chuckled dryly. “What the hell is this bullshit?”
Winter barked at Garza. “You! Mex! Real slow— I mean slow as chilled honey—take that knife of yours, ride over, and cut the lady free of her saddle. Any quick movements, and I’ll drill one through your brisket.”
“He’s a good shot,” Grayson said. “And I’m even better.”
Garza glanced from Grayson to Winter and back again, letting his eyes rake across the man hunkered between them. The Mexican’s hair blew out from his face like two shaggy blackbird wings, and his nostrils flared. He spat savagely and reached for the knife handle jutting high on his right hip, above his coat.
“Slowww,” the third Ranger warned, momentarily releasing his grip on his Henry’s forestock to flick a fly away with his fingers.
Garza wrapped his fingers around the big, bone-handled bowie and, scowling at the Ranger who’d just spoken, slowly lifted the blade free of its sheath. He gigged his horse over to Faith’s mare and leaned toward her.
“I’m drawing a bead between your shoulders, mister,” Winter warned. “Just so’s ya know. . . .”
Garza slowly extended the knife toward Faith’s saddle. The Mexican stared hard into her eyes, his own eyes black with mute fury, his bourbon-colored,broad-nosed features like granite. He set the curved blade tip between Faith’s wrists and against the rawhide, then flicked the blade back toward himself.
Faith jerked with a start, certain he would bury the blade in her belly. The rawhide fell away. Holding her gaze with his, Garza slowly pulled the knife back, straightening his back.
“It’s a hot potato,” Winter said, all three Rangers still bearing down with their rifles. “Throw it down.”
Garza snorted. “Hot-hot!” he said suddenly, causing the Rangers to jerk their rifle barrels with frightened starts. Chuckling, the Mex bounty hunter tossed the knife into the grass beside the trail.
“Miss, you ride on over here,” Winter ordered, lifting his head a little but continuing to squint down his Winchester’s barrel.
Faith reached down and grabbed her reins, then, glancing cautiously at the cutthroats, none of whom was looking at her now, turned the mare around. She gigged the mount over toward Winter. When she was back behind the man and the rock escarpment, she lowered herself from the saddle and, crouching, still wary of a lead swap, moved up beside him and dropped to a knee.
“You got my note.”
Winter nodded. “Didn’t want to let on. We had them pegged for trouble as soon as they walked in, but none of us remembered seein’ paper on ’em.”
Faith lifted her gaze to where the cutthroats were now, per Ranger Grayson’s orders, slowly tossing down a virtual armory of pistols, knives, and rifles. When they’d finished, they began, one by one, dismounting.
“Be careful,” Faith whispered to Winter, pressing her clenched hands to her chest, feeling her heart’s frenetic rhythm through her breastbone.
Winter glanced at Faith, his thick gray mustache rising slightly as he offered a reassuring smile. “You’re all right now, miss. Sit tight till I come back for you.”
Faith whispered again, beseeching the man to be careful. He stepped out from behind the scarp, lowering his rifle as he moved a few steps into the clearing where the only outlaw left mounted was Frank Miller, who’d begun singing “Oh, Susannah.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Winter told him, holding his Winchester straight out from his hip.
“I beg your pardon, Ranger,” Miller said. “But I always sing when I’m nervous.”
Faith watched from one knee, peering around the scarp, as Grayson ordered Miller out of the saddle. Then all five cutthroats were facedown in the middle of the trail, their horses milling slightly down the slope behind them, a couple of the mounts watching their masters curiously while others grazed and swished their tails, oblivious.
Grayson and the third Ranger, whom one of the others had called Hodges, had kicked the bounty hunters’ weapons out of reach.
Miller continued singing, one cheek pressed to the ground, as Winter and Hodges kept the cutthroats covered as Grayson approached the group, two pairs of handcuffs dangling from his left hand.
“Careful,” Winter warned as Grayson took his rifle under one arm and crouched over Lowry Temple.
The lead bounty hunter had said nothing since Faith had ridden over to Winter, but had stiffly, automatically followed the Rangers’ orders, a chilling look of serenity etched on his face.
She held her breath as Grayson dropped to a knee beside Temple. What happened next happened so quickly that Faith’s mind was about two seconds behind it, her stunned brain trying to make sense of the images her eyes were sending it.
A half second after Garza had lifted his head suddenly, gritting his teeth, and shouting, “Manley, quit elbowing me, you fat bastard!” Temple’s own head shot up. His right hand flicked up and out toward Grayson, who had jerked his head toward Manley.
Faith saw the sun flash off something shiny protruding from the underside of the outlaw leader’s wrist. Temple flicked his closed fist in front of Grayson’s throat, as though he were brushing away a fly.
Grayson’s head jerked back and, haltingly, he straightened and stumbled backward, his rifle falling from beneath his arm as he grabbed his throat.
At the same time, in a blur of movement, Miller rolled sideways, turning completely over, his right hand flicking toward his chest and then up and out toward Winter, squinting over his clenched fist.
Winter tensed, his head jerking right to left and back again, and Faith saw his lower jaw drop as though he were about to say something. But no words left his mouth before the small gun in Miller’s fist cracked, like the sound of a jawbreaker broken in a kid’s mouth, and smoke and flames stabbed.
“No!” Faith screamed as Winter jerked back and sideways with a startled grunt. He triggered his rifle, and Manley jerked his head down, cursing.
Ranger Hodges shouted something unintelligible and fired his own rifle, blowing up dirt and gravel in front of Miller, and then, hair flying wildly, Garza bolted up and forward and was pushing Grayson into Hodges as the third Ranger was trying to lever another round into his Henry’s breech.
Holding the Ranger’s smoking revolver in his hand, Garza howled demonically as both men fell in groaning heaps before him.
Faith raked her shocked gaze from them to Winter as the leather-faced Ranger stumbled over a rock and fell on his back ten feet in front of her. Blood pumped from the ragged hole in his upper left chest, coating his badge. His flat belly rose and fell heavily, and his gray-blue eyes sparked in the sunlight as he tipped his head back and wheezed, “Run!”
Faith realized she hadn’t drawn a breath in the five seconds that had elapsed since Garza’s first shout, and now, wheeling from the rocks, she sucked a shallow one and bolted into the pines. Her heart pumped and her arms scissored and she could hear her own small, anxious grunts and the grass and pine needles crunching beneath her boots as she ran blindly, aimlessly, trying to put as much distance between her and the cutthroats as she could.
Boots tapped faintly behind her.
She gasped, continued running along the base of a rimrock angling back away from the trail and into scrub brush and dwarf pines. The boot taps became thuds, growing louder until they were joined with the heavy rasps of labored breaths.
Faith was about to look behind her when her pursuer, closing on her fast, reached out to give her a violent shove. She stumbled and fell, the ground coming up hard against her hip and shoulder, and rolled.
Someone pulled her up brusquely by her hair, making her scalp burn. In her swimming vision, she saw Lowry Temple staring down at her, that stony, savage look again in his eyes, the small tattooed cross obscured by bulging skin in his forehead.
His arm swung back and forward, and he slapped her hard with an open palm. He slapped her again with the back of the same hand, and she flew backward, tripping over a rock, her head hammering and her vision dimming.
Slipping in and out of consciousness, her scalp and her cheeks burning, Faith was vaguely aware of being carried over someone’s shoulder. Then the movement stopped for a half second, and, slitting her eyes, she saw rocks and gravel and sage tufts fly up toward her to smack her head and shoulders. The fall—or the throw, rather, for she realized that Temple had tossed her like so much trash into the trail around which the three Rangers lay unmoving— somewhat braced her.
She lifted her head.
Temple, Benny Freeze, and Chulo Garza stood around Frank Miller, who lay writhing on the ground in their elongated shadows, grunting and showing his teeth while clutching both hands to his belly. Nearby, Kooch Manley squatted at the base of the scarp, pouring water from his canteen into the bloody gash at the top of his nearly bald skull.
There was a soft hissing to the right. Ranger Winterhad grabbed his Winchester and was trying to lift it off the ground while trying to work the cocking lever, his pain-racked, sweat-soaked face a mask of misery and rage.
Kooch Manley dropped his canteen, palmed his revolver, and fired.
The bullet took Winter through the middle of his forehead and threw him back hard. One up-raised knee jerked before slowly dropping and lying still.
Grumbling, Manley crouched to pluck his canteen out of the grass. He cursed and glanced at the others still hovering around the groaning Miller.
“Now look!” The middle-aged cutthroat held up his canteen. “On top of everything else, I spilled my water!”
Temple shoved Benny Freeze aside so he could get a better look at Miller. “How bad is it, Frank?”
“It’s bad,” Freeze answered for him. “Jackie Burnside took one like that when we was skinnin’ out of a bank in Tascosa, and he didn’t live more’n a couple hours. One hell of a painful way to go, too.”
“Looks like the lawman drilled him through the belly button,” Garza told Temple, shaking his head. “The bambino is right. Frank’s a goner.”
Miller kicked his boots in the dirt and lifted his head to peer over at Faith reclining on her elbows in the middle of the trail, her hair in her eyes. “Bitch! It’s all your damn fault. Chulo, kill that whore for me. Ease my passin’, and lop her damn head off!”
Garza swung toward Faith but stopped when Temple grabbed his arm. “I didn’t ride all this way for nothin’. Besides, you can’t blame her for tryin’ to get away. We should have been ready for this.”
“Only a pack of damn tinhorns would ride into that ambush.” Holding a neckerchief to his head, Manley swung his canteen over his shoulder and headed toward his horse. “Tinhorns! I say we’re lucky it’s only Miller that bought it.”
While Manley strode off into the loosely clumped horses down the slope behind Faith, Temple dropped to a knee before Miller. He gave the wounded bounty hunter a meaningful look. “You ain’t gonna make it, Frank.”
Miller lowered his pain-pinched eyes to his bloody middle. “Leave me my horse . . . my canteen. I’ll wait it out. If I think I can make it, I’ll try to ride back to the roadhouse.”
Temple nodded, stood, and walked over to his horse. The others followed him, glancing back at Miller, who lay slumped against a boulder beside the trail.
When Temple had led his horse and Faith’s into the trail, he brusquely hauled Faith into her saddle and tied her hands to her horn. He mounted up, rode over, and dropped Miller’s canteen between the stocky blond’s spread legs.
“There ya are, Frank. Benny tied your horse. See ya around maybe, huh?”
Miller just cursed and plucked out the canteen’s cork with his teeth.
Temple swung his horse around and jerked Faith’s mare off in the direction they’d been heading before the ambush. “Come on, fellas. Let’s lift some dirt. We got a train to catch!”
Chapter 15
Moving quickly, now riding the two mustangs they’d stolen from the Apache remuda, Yakima and Brody Harms pushed hard up the rocky Mogollon Mountain trail and into the shade of towering pines. Yakima led Wolf on a lead line while Harms led a second Apache mustang.
The Easterner had slapped his mule home, and the mule hadn’t hesitated.
Wolf nickered and shook his head, smelling something he didn’t like. Yakima looked closely over the horse’s twitching ears, then drew sharply back on the reins. Riding behind him, Harms followed suit, his leather squawking as he rose in his saddle to take his own gander.
Ahead, a man lay off to the right side of the trail, his head resting on his arm as though he were napping. Blood oozed from a couple of wounds in his chest and belly. On his vest, exposed by the open flaps of his fur coat, was an Arizona Rangers badge.
Harms’s voice rose sharply. “Yakima!”
The half-breed jerked his gaze to his right. Two more men lay unmoving nearby, but Yakima fixed his gaze on a man with short blond hair and a stout neck reclining against a boulder at the base of a stone dike, a canteen propped between his legs. Staring at Yakima and Harms and gritting his teeth, the blond was fumbling a revolver from the holster jutting on his right hip.
Bright red blood soaked his belly, staining the dirt beneath his crotch, between his spread legs.
“Goddamnit!” he grunted, finally jerking the revolver free of its holster.
“This way!” Yakima shouted, neck-reining the vinegar-dun Indian pony off the trail’s right side.
Harms cursed and followed suit, then cursed again as the blond’s revolver barked, sending a slug buzzing through the air before spanging off a rock. There was another pop but not before Yakima, Harms, and their trailing horses were moving back behind a scarp, then up the slope toward the rimrock.