The last of the sunlight was gone now. The sky was black from horizon to horizon, but millions of stars dotted the blackness and cast a faint silvery illumination down on the earth. In that dim light, Bill made out two dark shapes that had to be the horses.
More important, he heard a rock clatter down the spire. Tilting his head back, he looked up and saw another shape, this one man-sized, moving against the lighter face of the rock.
“Careful,” the other man said from the top of the spire.
“I know what I’m doin’.”
He was moving down too quickly to be descending by way of handholds and footholds, Bill realized. Those outlaws were canny. Sometime in the past, a man had climbed to the top of the spire with a rope and attached it somehow, so they could get up and down easier. Even with a rope, the descent had to be nerve-wracking, and a man would still have to be pretty careful.
Clearly they didn’t trust the rope to take the weight of more than one man at a time, because the second man didn’t start down until the first one was on the ground. Bill knew there were only two outlaws because he could see two horses.
With his back pressed against the rock, just around the curve of the spire, he waited while the second man climbed down as well. The outlaw heaved an audible sigh of relief when his boots were on the ground again.
“I don’t know about you,” he said to his companion, “but I’d be happy if Caleb never sent me up on that damn rock again.”
Caleb, Bill thought. That had to be the leader of the gang. Bill wondered if this Caleb was the man who had grabbed Eden off the street.
The other man laughed and said, “It’s your own damned fault for bein’ such a good shot with a rifle.”
The second man let out a disgusted snort.
“You wouldn’t know it by what we accomplished today. I can’t believe we didn’t kill a damned one of those possemen.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t believe they’re really turnin’ tail, so you may get another chance at ’em.”
“I doubt it. They’ll never find the hideout.”
Bill stepped around the rock, brought the rifle smoothly to his shoulder, and said, “How about if I give you another chance right now?”
Chapter 31
He didn’t wait for the men to react, although in his anger he hadn’t been able to keep from throwing out that challenge. His finger squeezed the trigger as soon as the last word was out of his mouth. He kept firing, aiming low and shooting fast as he worked the Henry’s lever. Muzzle flashes lit up the face of the rock formation.
The hail of lead tore through the legs of the outlaws as they tried to turn and claw the guns from their holsters. Bill didn’t give them a chance. He shot their legs right out from under them, his bullets ripping through flesh and smashing bones. Screaming, both men pitched to the ground.
Bill held his fire and rushed forward. One of the men tried to stand up and thrust a pistol toward Bill. Still moving fast, Bill used the Henry’s barrel to knock the gun out of the man’s hand and then backhanded him on the side of the head with it.
The other outlaw howled in pain, but he managed to get his gun out, too. Bill twisted away as the gun roared. He thought he felt the slug pluck at the side of his shirt, but that could have been his imagination.
He didn’t have time to be fancy, so before the man could squeeze off a second shot, Bill finished swinging the Henry around and fired it one-handed. The muzzle was so close to the man’s chest that sparks from the shot landed on his shirt and started it smoldering as the bullet drove him back to the ground.
Firing a rifle one-handed like that was a good way to break a wrist, or at least sprain it, but Bill hadn’t had any choice. And at point-blank range like that, accuracy didn’t matter a whole hell of a lot, either. The outlaw was down and out of the fight, and that was all Bill cared about at the moment.
Another worry reasserted itself a second later. He whirled toward the first man and then backed off so he could cover both of them. He had no way of knowing how badly wounded the first man was. The outlaw might bleed to death, and Bill couldn’t have that. He moved around so that the first man lay between him and the body of the second one, then approached carefully. He set the rifle aside and drew his Colt as he knelt beside the outlaw.
Bill found a pulse in the man’s neck and felt relief at that. In the middle of a desperate fight like that, it was usually easier to kill a man than it was to wound him and take him alive. He picked up the pistol and rifle the man had dropped and slung both of them well out of reach, then rolled the man onto his back. He was still out cold.
Both pants legs were dark with blood. Bill holstered his gun and drew his knife from its sheath. He cut strips from the man’s shirt and tied them around his upper thighs, pulling them as tight as he could. That would slow down the bleeding, anyway, and maybe keep the man alive for a while.
A while might be all he needed, Bill thought.
He rolled the senseless outlaw onto his belly and cut another strip from the man’s shirt, then used it to tie the man’s hands behind his back. Once that was done, he cautiously checked on the second outlaw and found that the man was dead, just as Bill had thought he would be.
With those grim chores taken care of, Bill picked up his rifle again and fired three evenly spaced shots into the air. He was pretty sure Hartnett, Overstreet, and the other members of the posse had started in this direction as soon as they heard all the shooting, but that signal would tell them that he was all right and it was safe for them to come on in.
By the time the posse rode up with a flurry of hoofbeats, Bill had dragged the unconscious outlaw over to the rock and propped him up against it.
“Bill, are you all right?” Hartnett asked anxiously.
“Fine, Josiah.” Bill didn’t waste any time on explanations or platitudes. He said, “I need some light. Somebody gather up some brush and make a torch out of it.”
One of the men came up a moment later and lit the makeshift torch with a lucifer. By the light of the flames, Bill knelt and cut away the outlaw’s trousers to examine his wounds. It looked like the man’s left thigh bone was broken, but his right thigh was just badly grazed. All the bullet holes were still oozing blood, but it wasn’t flowing freely anymore.
“That fella looks like he’s half dead,” Hartnett said.
“Half is fine as long as he doesn’t up and die the rest of the way,” Bill said.
“I don’t savvy,” Overstreet said. “Why do you care if this varmint lives or dies?”
Bill glanced up and said, “Because he’s got to live long enough to tell us how to find the hole where the rest of ’em are hiding.”
Night had fallen by the time the outlaws reached their hideout. Gloom had closed in almost as soon as they entered the sharp-ridged canyons with their prisoner, and as the sun set, darkness clamped down hard and fast on the rugged terrain. Eden couldn’t even see where she was going, but it didn’t matter because her captors seemed to know, and one of them led her horse.
They entered a narrow defile where the shadows were even thicker, so thick that moving forward was almost like pushing through black fog. Eden couldn’t see the rock walls on either side of her, but she could sense them. She thought that if her hands were free, she could have reached out and touched both of them. The outlaws were riding single file now. The trail through these badlands was too narrow to do anything else.
Hannah rode right behind her. The redhead laughed and said, “You’d never find your way out of here even if you got loose now. And these rocks are sharp. They’d cut your shoes to ribbons and slice the flesh off your feet right down to the bone!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Eden said quietly.
“Damned right you’re not.”
After what seemed like an hour or more of riding through that slash in the earth, the path opened up abruptly. Eden could see more than a slice of starlit sky again. They had come out into a bowl shaped like an irregular circle. It
was about two hundred yards across at its widest point. The rough walls surrounding it were steep enough that while a man could probably climb them, a horse couldn’t.
The starlight was bright enough that Eden could also see several crude cabins with stone walls. Nearby was something that might be a brush corral; she couldn’t be sure about that.
“We’ll stand our usual guard shifts,” Caleb said as he reined to a halt in front of the largest cabin. It figured that one would be his, Eden thought. He went on, “Hannah, bring the prisoner in.”
“You’re gonna keep her in there with us?” Hannah demanded, not bothering to hide her irritation.
“That’s right. I want her where I can keep an eye on her.”
Hannah snorted and said, “You want to keep something else on her. You’re not foolin’ me, Caleb Tatum.”
So that was his full name. Caleb Tatum. Eden had never heard of him. Maybe she should have, she told herself. Maybe as a lawman’s wife, she ought to keep up with such things as wanted bandits.
Caleb dismounted and snapped, “Just take her inside.”
“And put her in your bunk?”
For a second Eden thought Tatum was going to answer in the affirmative. But then he said, “You know better than that. Make a pallet on the floor for her, and see to it that she’s tied so she can’t get away.”
That didn’t sound appealing, but right now Eden was going to be grateful for any small favor she could get, like another night without being molested. That run of good luck was probably coming to an end soon, but any respite was better than none.
Tatum’s head came up sharply as the sound of distant gunshots drifted into the bowl. On their way deeper into these badlands, they had heard scattered shots several times, as well as one prolonged volley. Every shot Eden heard sent pain jabbing into her heart, because she knew the outlaws who’d been left behind at Castle Rock were engaged in battle with the posse. Bill might have been killed already…
She didn’t believe that, though. She was confident that if he died, she would know it, even at a distance of several miles. And every instinct in her body told her that he was still alive.
Now, after the shooting had been over for a while, suddenly there was another flurry of gunfire, and Eden had no idea what that might mean. It probably wasn’t anything good for her, though.
Tatum laughed and said, “That posse probably tried to slip past our boys in the dark. I reckon they found out that can’t be done. There’s enough starlight that they can see everything from the top of Castle Rock.”
Hannah untied Eden’s hands from the saddle horn and hauled her down from the horse. Eden didn’t put up a fight. She still refused to believe that Bill was dead, but this new outbreak of gunshots didn’t bode well.
Hannah prodded her in the back with the rifle barrel.
“Get in there,” the redhead ordered. “It’s been a long ride, and I’m tired, damn it. I want some shut-eye, and the sooner I got you trussed up like a pig on its way to market, the sooner I can get it!”
Chapter 32
Bill held the flask to the wounded outlaw’s mouth and forced some whiskey between his lips. The man gagged and coughed, but he swallowed some of the fiery liquor, too, and it roused him from his stupor. He lifted his head and looked around, blinking bleary eyes against the glare from another torch made from dry brush.
His eyes widened as they fastened on the blade of the knife Bill held right in front of his face. Torchlight flickered red on the steel.
“That was my wife you sons of bitches carried off from Redemption,” Bill said.
The outlaw pressed his head back against the rock as if trying to get it farther away from the knife, but there was nowhere for him to go. He swallowed hard, licked his lips, but didn’t say anything. His gaze flicked from side to side. He seemed to be looking for some reason to hope, but if so, he didn’t find it in the grim expressions of the men gathered around him.
“What’s your name?” Bill asked softly. The hard planes of his face reflected the torchlight almost as much as the knife blade.
“M-my name?” the outlaw husked.
“That’s right.”
“It’s D-Dave. Dave Belton.” A moan escaped the man’s lips. “You shot the hell out of me! My legs are ruined.”
“Well, Dave, that won’t be the only thing ruined if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
Bill lowered the knife away from Belton’s face. The man tried to look down and follow the blade’s motion, but Bill used his other hand to grip the outlaw’s chin and wrench his head back up.
“Better if you don’t look,” Bill told him. “That way maybe it won’t hurt as much when I start carvin’ on you.”
“Look, mister, I…I,” the prisoner babbled. “It wasn’t my idea to grab your wife! That was all Tatum’s doin’!”
“Tatum?”
“Caleb Tatum! He’s the boss of our bunch, plans all the jobs.”
“Why did he take my wife?”
“He said…he said she might come in handy.” As Bill’s expression hardened, the outlaw hurried on, “As a hostage, you know, in case a posse caught up to us! That’s all he ever said about doin’ with her, mister, I swear it!”
Overstreet said, “He’s a mite more talkative than I thought he might be, Marshal. I figured you’d have to cut at least one of his balls off to get him to talk. This ain’t much fun so far.”
“Oh, it’ll be fun,” Bill said with a smile. “Tell me, Dave…you know how to get to the hideout the rest of the bunch was headed for, don’t you?”
“I…I don’t,” the outlaw answered. “I really don’t.”
Still smiling, Bill said, “You’re lyin’ to me, Dave. I know it, you know it, and the rest of these fellas know it.”
“Now this is gonna be entertainin’,” Overstreet said.
“Josiah, come hold his head.”
Hartnett said, “Bill, I don’t know if I want—”
“I’ll do it,” Overstreet said. He stepped forward quickly and took hold of the outlaw’s chin, forcing his head back even more than Bill had. “Go ahead, Marshal. He can’t see what you’re about to do now.”
“All right.”
Belton whimpered, but tied up like he was, there was nothing he could do.
Bill unfastened the man’s trousers. A moment later, the prisoner gasped as he felt the touch of cold steel against his skin. Then he shrieked as that steel bit into flesh.
“I’ll tell you!” he screamed. “I’ll tell you how to get to the hideout!”
“You’ll do more than that,” Bill told him. “You’ll take us there, and you’ll show us the best way in.”
“I…I can’t! I can’t ride! I’m hurt!”
He screamed again as Bill moved the knife.
Overstreet’s eyes bugged out a little, too, as he watched.
“Wh-whatever you say!” the outlaw gasped. “I’ll help you, I swear! Just don’t do it, mister! Don’t do it!”
“That’s more like it,” Bill told him. He wiped the blade on the prisoner’s shirt and slid it back into its sheath. As he stood up, he looked at a couple of the possemen and added, “Keep an eye on him.”
He turned and walked out of the circle of light at the base of Castle Rock. As soon as he was sure the other men couldn’t see him, he lifted his hand. He could feel it trembling.
Hartnett followed him. He asked quietly, “Bill, are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bill said. He clenched that trembling hand into a fist.
Overstreet came up to them and said, “You know, Bill, for a second there I thought you were really gonna cut his balls off. You just barely nicked his belly with that knife and he sure screamed like you were doin’ it, though.”
“I think that’s what Bill wanted him to think,” Hartnett said.
“Yeah,” Bill said. “That’s what I wanted him to think.”
He didn’t know if the other two men could hear the hollow note in his voice, bu
t he certainly could.
Earlier, Bill had bound up the wounds in Dave Belton’s legs. Now he gave the man another drink of whiskey and some bacon one of the posse members had fried up before they returned to Castle Rock. Belton was more interested in the liquor.
“You reckon I’ll ever walk again?” he asked.
“Damned if I know,” Bill told him. “I’ve got a bad leg, and I get around pretty good most of the time. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, considerin’ that you’re probably gonna hang.”
The outlaw shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said. “I robbed quite a few banks and held up a few stagecoaches, but I never killed anybody in my life. Maybe not for lack of tryin’ now and then, but the fact of the matter is, I never did. They can put me in prison, but I hadn’t ought to swing.”
“That’s for a judge and jury to decide. But if you help us out, like you said you would…well, I’d be more inclined to stand up in court and say that maybe you shouldn’t hang after all.”
“I’ll help you, but there’s something else you got to do for me.”
Bill smiled and said, “You’re not in very good shape to be dictating terms.”
“No, I mean it. When you fight it out with the gang, you’ve got to kill Caleb Tatum. It don’t really matter that much about any of the others, but Tatum’s got to die. Otherwise, he’ll know that I told you how to find the hideout, and he’ll come after me. If he thought somebody double-crossed him, he’d track ’em to hell and gone to settle the score with ’em.”
“Tatum’s the one who grabbed my wife, you said?”
“That’s right, Marshal.”
Bill shook his head.
“I can’t promise you I’ll kill him. I’m sworn to uphold the law.”
The prisoner heaved a sigh and said, “Well, it probably don’t matter all that much, anyway. Tatum won’t be taken alive.”
Bill talked with the man for a good hour, getting him to go over the route they would take into the badlands. According to Dave Belton, the gang’s hideout was in a bowl closed in by high, steep walls, and the only good way in or out was a trail through the surrounding ridges that was only wide enough for one man on horseback at a time.
Trackdown (9781101619384) Page 16