Luke turned to the dun. He wasn’t a cowboy by any stretch of the imagination, but he carried a rope on his saddle anyway. Sometimes he had to tie up prisoners, and he’d been known to tether them behind his horse and make them walk when he was bringing them in to the law. He untied the loop holding the coiled rope in place and then swung the rope hard against the dun’s rump as he shouted at the horse. The dun bolted away, heading toward the canyon mouth.
The flames hadn’t completely blocked the opening yet, so the dun had a chance of stampeding through there and reaching safety. It was a longshot, but not as long as the one facing Luke and Glory.
Glory tied the bandanna over the lower half of her face. Ignoring his own discomfort, Luke grabbed her hand and led her toward the back of the canyon.
There was enough grass in here for cattle to graze, enough to make a good-sized fire as it burned. It might not be enough for the flames to kill them, Luke thought, but the conflagration would generate enough heat and smoke to choke them to death.
The smoke was already thick enough to be a danger. The canyon’s walls, which were about forty feet high, funneled it toward the two trapped people. As Luke and Glory broke into a run, they left the worst of the smoke behind them for the moment and gratefully dragged in lungfuls of cooler, clearer air.
The canyon was three hundred yards deep. The walls climbed higher the deeper they penetrated. Then they came to exactly what Luke had expected, a blank wall of stone. It wasn’t completely smooth—the elements had pitted it here and there over the years, forming irregularities that might be useful as handholds and footholds—but it would take time to climb out of the canyon, time they didn’t have, even if Glory was capable of it.
“Luke, we’re trapped!” she wailed. She was on the verge of losing her usual strength and composure, and Luke couldn’t blame her for that. They had a terrible death staring them in the face.
Not only that, their deaths meant that Harry Elston would win. That just wasn’t acceptable, Luke thought.
He peered up at the rock wall looming above them and realized there was one slim chance, but they had to act on it now. They didn’t have any time to waste.
He had brought the rope with them on a hunch, and he was glad that he had. He started to shake out a loop.
“What are you doing?” Glory asked.
“If I can catch this rope on something up there, we might be able to climb out,” he said.
“Luke, there’s no time!”
“There’s nowhere else to go,” he said, and she couldn’t argue with that grim truth.
He swung the rope, took aim with his eyes, and let fly.
CHAPTER 19
The first two tries didn’t snag anything. The rope rose, hit, and then slithered back down in maddening fashion. Glory cried out in despair.
Luke didn’t let it get to him. It was hard to stay cool-nerved when waves of heat washed over you and brought with them clouds of stinging, choking smoke, but right now he needed ice in his blood.
He coiled the rope, shook out a loop, and threw it again.
This time it caught on something. A rocky protuberance, a root, Luke didn’t know. His eyes were watering and he couldn’t see very well. But he knew the rope didn’t fall back at his feet. He took a firm grip and leaned as much of his weight as he could on it, testing to see if it would hold.
When the rope didn’t give, he told Glory, “Grab it and start climbing!”
“What’s up there?” she asked between coughs.
“Don’t know, but it’s got to be better than down here!”
He held the rope while she took hold of it. She asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured her.
Just because the rope had held his weight didn’t mean it would support both of them. But again, there was no time for anything else. They had to risk it.
“I never climbed a rope before.”
“Put your feet against the rock,” he said. “That way not all your weight is on your hands. You’re going to walk up the wall, understand?”
“Oh, Luke, this is crazy!”
“No, it’s not. You can do it.”
She gave him a wild-eyed look that said she couldn’t, but she shifted her grip on the rope, lifted a foot, planted the sole of her boot against the rock wall, and pulled herself up. Once she started she had no choice but to raise the other foot and keep climbing.
She grunted with effort but managed to climb several feet. Luke didn’t want to wait too long before he followed her. If the rope was going to give as soon as he put his weight on it, he wanted that to be when she wouldn’t fall too far.
Although it didn’t really matter, he thought. Killed by a fall, killed by the smoke, they were just as dead either way.
The rope held . . . at least for now.
“I’m with you,” he called to Glory. “Just keep going, nice and easy. Don’t stop. If you stop you won’t be able to hold yourself in place.”
“Luke, I’m scared!”
“Damn right! So am I. Just keep climbing.”
He wasn’t sure how high this rock wall was. They had to get completely out of the canyon. They couldn’t just climb above the smoke because it was rising, too, getting thicker around them with every minute that passed.
But then he noticed something odd as he tried to keep his mind off the burning pain in his arm and shoulder and back muscles. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it seemed to him that the smoke had started thinning instead of getting worse.
It was true, he realized after a moment. The canyon widened some at the top, and that gave the smoke more room to dissipate. That meant they were getting closer to safety.
“Keep going,” he urged Glory. His voice was hoarse and painful now. “We’re almost there.”
“Luke!” That note of panic was back in her voice. “Luke, I’m at the end of the rope!”
“How far is it to the top? Can you see?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Five or six feet?”
“Handholds. Can you find any handholds?”
“Let me—oh!”
Her startled, fearful cry made him think she had lost her grip and was about to come crashing down on top of him. He set himself, hoping against hope that he might be able to catch her.
She didn’t hurtle down on him, though, and after a second he called, “Glory, are you all right?”
“I . . . I slipped.” Her voice was more strained than ever now. “My feet slipped. But I was able to . . . hang on to the rope. There’s a little crack in the rock . . . I got my toe in it.”
“Good! Find something like that to use as a handhold.”
That five or six feet might prove to be insurmountable. Even though the smoke wasn’t quite as bad, it still choked them and Luke felt dizzy from breathing so much of it. If he passed out, it was all over. That was probably true if Glory lost consciousness, too.
“I . . . I’ve got a hold,” Glory panted. “Let me see if . . . I can pull myself up.”
“One step at a time,” Luke told her. “Steady, steady. Make sure you’ve got a good hold before you try going on.”
He tilted his head back so he could watch her. His eyes streamed tears, so she was only a vague shape to him, a few feet above where he clung to the rope. She inched her way higher and higher. He moved up with careful steps until he was at the top of the rope, too.
“I’m almost there,” Glory said. “Just a little bit . . . farther.”
Luke heard her groan with effort as she pulled herself up again. Suddenly, he couldn’t see her anymore, and he didn’t know if the smoke was blinding him or if she had reached the rim.
A second later she called down excitedly, “Luke, I made it! There’s a trail that runs on up into the hills. If you can make it, we can get out of here.”
“I can make it,” Luke told her. He stretched his arm above his head, found a rough spot where he could get a good enough grip to support himself, wedged a toe
into a crack in the rock, and started climbing.
A couple of minutes later he rolled over the rim and lay on his back as his chest heaved and his muscles trembled. Glory stretched out on top of him, caught his face between her hands, and kissed him. Both of them tasted like smoke, but that didn’t make the kiss any less urgent as his arms went around her and held on tightly.
The air was still thick with smoke around them. When Glory finally lifted her mouth from his, Luke rasped, “We need to get moving. Do you know these hills?”
“Some.”
“As long as we’re going away from the fire, that’s all that really matters.”
They climbed wearily to their feet and started up the trail. The terrain was rugged and they had to clamber over rocks and squeeze through gaps between boulders, but the important thing was that as they kept going higher, the smoke thinned more and more until the air around them was clear again. It tasted mighty sweet as Luke breathed deeply of it. He and Glory still coughed some, and it would likely take a few days for the damage to fade, but Luke knew they would be all right.
When they paused at a high point and looked back down, the smoke clogging the canyon looked deceptively like fog rising in a cool early morning. Luke hoped his horse had made it out of that hellish place. If the dun hadn’t, that was one more score he would have to settle with Harry Elston, Verne Finn, and anybody else who was involved in this diabolical attempt on his and Glory’s lives.
“How far is your ranch house from here?” he asked her.
“Five or six miles.”
“We can walk it,” Luke said with a nod. “We’ll have sore feet when we get there, but they’ll heal up.”
She put her arms around his waist and leaned against him.
“You saved my life, Luke,” she murmured. “I never would have gotten out of there without you. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll let you turn me in to the law so you can collect that bounty. I’ll go back to Baltimore and face those charges.”
“Let’s don’t worry about that now,” he said gruffly.
“I told you the truth about what happened. We almost died back there. I don’t want to leave this world with you thinking that I’m a murderer.”
He cupped a hand under her chin and looked down into her eyes as he asked, “Why is it so important to you what I think?”
“Because you’ve risked your life for me and my ranch again and again. You’re a good man, Luke Jensen. Your opinion matters to me.”
“Well, for what it’s worth . . . I believe you.”
He actually did, he realized. Glory MacCrae might be a lot of things, but he didn’t believe she was a killer.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get moving again.”
As they started trudging through the hills, Glory said, “Lord, we smell awful. Will I ever get the smell of smoke out of my nose?”
“It’ll take a while,” Luke told her.
“What about my hair?”
He laughed.
“What?” she asked with a frown. “It’s not funny. I really stink.”
“There are worse things in the world than smelling bad.”
“To you, maybe.”
A short time later, another canyon opened in front of them. Glory paused when she saw it and exclaimed in delight. Luke thought it was a pretty place, too. A creek bubbled along the steep slope on one side of the canyon, cascaded over some rocks, and dropped down in a sparkling sheet of water into a small pool surrounded by junipers.
“It’s beautiful,” Glory said.
“It certainly is,” Luke agreed.
“And more importantly, it’s a chance to wash some of this awful smoke smell off of me.”
Glory strode toward the pool, reaching for the buttons of her shirt as she did so.
Luke started to call out to her and tell her to stop, but then he reconsidered. They hadn’t seen any sign of Elston’s men since they escaped from the canyon that was now far below them. The killers probably thought their bodies were lying in there, choked to death by the smoke. It wouldn’t hurt anything if they paused here for a short spell and cleaned up a little.
Besides, Glory already had her vest and shirt off and had sat down on a rock to remove her boots. With a smile, Luke went to help her.
Later, after they had scrubbed themselves and each other as clean as they could in the cold, crystal clear water of the pool, they washed their clothes and spread them out on rocks to dry in the afternoon sun. The warm rays dried Luke and Glory, too, as they stretched out on a grassy patch next to the pool.
With her eyes closed, Glory murmured, “After everything we’ve gone through, I think I could just lie here in the sun and sleep for a week.”
“You’d be pretty blistered if you did that,” Luke pointed out.
“I could move into the shade every now and then.”
“Now you’re talking.”
They lay there in contented silence for a while longer. Luke felt drowsy, but a part of his brain remained alert all the time, along with his senses. Sooner or later Elston’s gunmen would discover that they hadn’t perished in the canyon after all, if they hadn’t already, and when that happened the hired killers would come looking for them. Luke hadn’t forgotten that he and Glory were afoot.
They didn’t have his rifle or her carbine anymore, either. Glory’s carbine was still in its saddle sheath on her horse, and Luke had left the Winchester below when he climbed out of the canyon.
But he had both Remingtons and a decent supply of ammunition in his pockets, plus his knife and the two derringers. Glory had a derringer, too, he reminded himself. They weren’t exactly helpless.
She rolled onto her side and propped herself on an elbow. Luke saw her through his narrowly slitted eyes. As she looked at him, she asked, “What are you going to do, Luke?”
“Hmmm? What am I going to do about what?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. The reward that’s posted for me. The murder charge.”
He grinned and said, “Five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
She reached over and punched him on his bare shoulder.
“You said you believed me about what happened back in Baltimore!”
“Oh, I do, I do . . . but still, five thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
Glory laughed, but then she grew more solemn as she said, “I’m serious, Luke. Should I let you turn me in? Should I go back and face whatever’s going to happen?”
“Do you think you could prove your innocence at a trial?”
“With all the circumstantial evidence against me, and with the power and influence Hugh Jennings can wield now that his father is dead?” Glory shook her head. “I’d say the chances of that are pretty slim.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too. Taking your chances is one thing. Playing against a stacked deck—when the stakes are life and death—is something else entirely.”
“I can’t just keep hiding out for the rest of my life, though, looking over my shoulder all the time and never knowing when disaster is going to be right behind me.”
“That’s true,” Luke said. “For one thing, to be blunt about it, you haven’t done that good a job of hiding out. I found you, and if I can, so can other bounty hunters. Maybe more importantly, those detectives your stepson hired can.”
A little shudder went through her.
“I hate hearing Hugh referred to as my stepson,” she said. “I can’t bring myself to think of him that way. He was always leering at me and making comments when Alfred wasn’t around. He wanted us to, well, you know. And all the time I was married to his father.”
“He sounds like a real piece of work, all right. And we know he’s dangerous, especially when he’s crossed.” Luke shook his head. “You seem to be in one of those situations where there just isn’t a good answer.”
“Maybe I should sell the ranch,” she mused. “I could take the money and use it to start a new life somewhere. In Mexico, maybe.”
�
�Elston might make you an offer,” Luke suggested dryly.
“Elston! By God, I’ll go back to Baltimore and put the noose around my own neck before I’ll sell out to him. He made this personal when he attacked the MC. In fact, I’ve always thought he was responsible for Sam’s death. Finn or one of those other gunmen bushwhacked him.”
“I don’t know,” Luke said. “I’m thinking that maybe Whitey Singletary has been working for Elston all along without Sheriff Whittaker knowing about it. Singletary’s a backshooter. I’m convinced of that.”
Glory nodded and said, “I can see that. The man’s a monster.”
Luke would have agreed, but at that moment he heard something that made him sit up straight and reach out a hand to the coiled gun belt and holstered Remingtons at his side.
“What is it?” Glory asked. She was smart enough to whisper the question.
“I heard what sounded like a horseshoe hitting rock somewhere not far from here,” Luke replied, equally quietly. “I knew they might come to look for us, and I think they’re here.”
CHAPTER 20
He was acutely aware of his state of undress as he drew one of the revolvers and leaped to his feet. Up here in these hills, with ravines and rock spires and rugged bluffs all around, it was difficult to be sure where sounds were coming from, but Luke thought the warning noise he had heard had originated somewhere down the slope toward the canyon where he and Glory had almost died.
That would make sense, he thought. He told Glory, “Get dressed. We may have to move fast.”
They should have been moving before now. He knew that, but he had allowed his own weariness, the idyllic surroundings, and Glory’s loveliness to lull him into letting his guard down. It had been a stupid move, he told himself as he set the Remington on a rock in easy reach and started pulling on his clothes, which were still slightly damp.
When he was dressed, he buckled on the gun belt and jammed his hat on his head. He had been listening intently and hadn’t heard anything else, but he knew he hadn’t been mistaken about the earlier sound. Someone on horseback was definitely in the vicinity.
The rider might be one of Glory’s ranch hands. This was MC range, after all. But they couldn’t bet on that. The man might just as easily be one of Elston’s hired gun-wolves.
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