There was no point in thinking about that. Quickly, so that he could get out of sight before the rifleman spotted him, he wriggled backwards, deeper into the darkness, and then climbed up and over the roof ’s peak.
When he was safely out of sight, he paused to consider his next move. A memory of that little balcony shaped like a widow’s walk came into his mind. With Elston’s background as a sea captain, it was likely he was the one who’d had the balcony built onto the house. That meant it was probably outside the room where he slept. Luke thought the chances were good enough that it was worth checking out, anyway.
He made his way along the roofline, checking over the peak now and then, until he was even with the place where the balcony was. Even though the delay chafed at him, he knew it would be better to wait until the house had settled down and everyone had gone to sleep before he acted on the plan that was forming in his mind.
He hoped Glory wasn’t going crazy with worry. There hadn’t been any shouts or gunfire, so she probably figured that he was still all right and on the loose.
The lamps on the porch were still burning. That was actually a good thing for him, Luke thought. The light down below made the roof above the porch seem even darker. When an hour or so had passed and he hadn’t heard any sounds from below for a while, he eased over the roof peak and started down toward the widow’s walk.
He moved slowly, an inch or so at a time. The room where Glory was being held captive was at the other end of the house, so that helped his chances of reaching the balcony without being seen. The guard, who had resumed his chair by the bunkhouse, would have his attention focused on that other window. As long as his movements didn’t catch the rifleman’s eye, Luke knew he was safe from discovery.
Eventually, he reached the little cupola above the widow’s walk. He leaned over the edge and studied what lay below it. The window that had been there originally had been replaced by a door. If it was locked, that might be trouble . . . but what would be the point of locking a door like that? Here in his own stronghold, Elston would be so confident of his safety that such a thing might never occur to him.
Luke twisted around, let his legs hang off the cupola’s roof, then lowered himself and dangled from his hands for a second before he let go and dropped lightly to the balcony. His landing made enough noise that someone inside the room who was awake might have heard it, but there was a good chance it wouldn’t disturb the slumber of anyone who was asleep.
As Luke leaned closer to the door, he knew the room’s inhabitant was asleep. He heard loud snoring on the other side of the panel. He reached down to the doorknob, grasped it, twisted it.
It turned. With a faint click, the door came open.
The snoring continued as Luke stepped into the darkened room. He couldn’t be sure the man sleeping here was Harry Elston, but he still thought that was a good bet. As silent as an Apache, Luke let the snores guide him toward the bed.
His leg bumped against the mattress, and the snoring abruptly stopped. Luke didn’t wait any longer to make his move. He struck fast and hard, slamming a fist into the spot where he judged the sleeper’s head to be.
That was only partially successful. His fist glanced off the man’s head. Luke lunged on top of him and shot out his left hand. It found and closed around the man’s throat, stifling a shout as it tried to escape.
The man wasn’t going to give up easily. He bucked up from the bed in an attempt to throw off Luke’s weight. A wildly thrown fist painfully scraped Luke’s left ear. He tightened his grip on the man’s throat and tried to choke him into submission.
That wasn’t going to work. The man was strong and evidently had experience at brawling, another indication that he was Harry Elston. He jerked a leg up, hooked a calf across Luke’s throat, and levered him to the side.
Luke hung on to Elston’s neck, though, and dragged the rancher with him. Both men rolled off the bed and thudded to the floor beside it. Luke landed on the bottom. Anticipating Elston’s next move, he twisted to the side so that the knee Elston tried to drive into his groin struck him on the thigh instead.
Even so, the impact was painful, and Luke’s leg refused to work for a moment. He clung to Elston’s throat with one hand, which wasn’t easy because it was so thick and Elston’s head was set low on his shoulders. With his other first, Luke hammered at his opponent’s face.
Elston’s hands were free, so he was able to strike at Luke with both of them. Sensing the blows more than seeing them, Luke jerked his head out of the way, but there were too many to keep dodging them. One of Elston’s fists crashed into his jaw and made red rockets explode across his vision.
Luke knew that his life depended on winning this fight. Not just his life, either, but Glory’s as well. He heaved himself up, rolled, and threw Elston to the side. Luke risked letting go for a second as he scrambled to get behind the rancher. His left arm looped around Elston’s throat and he clamped down with it, grabbing that wrist with his right hand and adding even more strength to the grip.
Elston bucked and rolled, jabbed at Luke with his elbows, clawed at the forearm locked across his throat like an iron bar. But as the seconds ticked past, his struggles grew weaker. Luke kept the pressure on him anyway, just in case Elston was trying to trick him.
Finally, Elston stopped fighting. All his muscles went limp. Luke hung on, easing up just a bit so Elston could breathe but ready to apply the crushing pressure again if he needed to.
After several more minutes, Luke knew Elston was unconscious. He let go, pushed himself up on his knees.
Either nobody had heard the racket as they fell out of the bed or else hadn’t thought anything about it. Working by feel, Luke reached out, found the sheet, and tore several strips off of it. He used them to bind Elston’s hands and feet, then crammed a wad of fabric into Elston’s mouth as a gag and tied it in place. Only when that was finished did he sit back and lean against the wall to catch his breath.
He and Glory were far from being out of trouble, Luke thought, but at least they had a bargaining chip of their own now in Elston. Assuming, of course, that’s who the prisoner was, Luke realized suddenly. He figured he had better check to be certain.
He stood up, felt around, found a bedside table with a lamp and some matches on it. He made sure the door to the widow’s walk was closed, then lit the lamp. Its yellow glow washed over the bound figure on the floor, revealing Harry Elston in a pair of long underwear.
Elston was starting to stir as consciousness returned to him. Luke rolled the rancher onto his back. In the light from the lamp, Elston saw and recognized him. Hate flared up and burned brightly in the man’s eyes. He made angry, muffled sounds through the gag in his mouth.
“You might as well take it easy, Elston,” Luke told him. “We’re going to be here the rest of the night . . . and it’s a long time until morning.”
CHAPTER 24
With Elston as his prisoner and Glory relatively safe for the moment—unless Finn or one of the other gunmen decided to check that other room and found Luke gone—he had time to look around the large, comfortably furnished bedroom. The bed where Elston slept was a four-poster with a thick mattress. Woven rugs covered most of the open floor space. A massive cedar wardrobe took up almost an entire wall.
Of much more interest to Luke was the gun cabinet on another wall.
A number of revolvers of various makes and models hung on pegs inside the cabinet. Luke even saw several single-shot flintlock pistols, old enough to have been carried by his brother’s friend Preacher back in the mountain man days.
Racks of rifles and shotguns flanked the pistols. They tempted Luke, but he knew any gun work he had to do likely would be at close range. He found boxes of .45 ammunition in a drawer, so he loaded four Colts, even the chambers that rested under the hammers, and filled his pockets with more cartridges.
Feeling Elston’s hate-filled eyes watching him, Luke hefted one of the Colts and quoted, “‘I feel an army in my fist.’ You kn
ow who said that, Elston? A German poet and playwright named Friedrich Schiller. And right now I know exactly what he meant.”
Luke walked over to Elston and hunkered beside him. He let the muzzle of the gun in his right hand dangle in front of Elston’s face.
“Come morning, you and I will be riding away from here,” Luke went on. “Glory and Sheriff Whittaker are coming with us. And if your men want you to stay alive and keep paying them, they won’t do a thing about it.”
Again, Elston made furious noises through the gag.
“Actually, you’d be smart to go along with it,” Luke told him. “You’ve made a lot of threats, and you and I know you’re guilty as hell of ordering your men to try to kill Glory and me, but as you pointed out, what can the law prove against you? In fact, if you turned Whitey Singletary over to Whittaker and let the sheriff arrest him for murdering Sam MacCrae, you might be able to get away with everything else you’ve done. Of course, you’d have to back off and leave Mrs. MacCrae and her ranch alone from now on, but you’ve already got a good spread. You could learn to be satisfied with it.”
Elston still scowled darkly at him, but Luke also saw something in the man’s eyes that told him Elston was thinking seriously about everything he’d just said.
Luke still wouldn’t trust him, no matter what deal they made, but as long as he had a gun to Elston’s head, he thought he could get Glory and Whittaker out of here alive, which was a lot better than things had looked a few hours earlier.
Luke straightened, went over to a chair, and sat down. He still had three Colts tucked into his waistband and the gun in his right hand.
He didn’t intend to let go of it until he and Glory and the sheriff were off of Harry Elston’s range.
Elston was tied securely enough that Luke was comfortable with dozing off now and then, but he never went sound asleep and his senses remained keenly alert. When the sky began to turn gray in the east with the approach of dawn, he stood up from the chair and went over to the door that led out to the widow’s walk. He opened it and looked out at the early morning, and as he did, he realized what day of the week it was.
“Sunday,” he murmured, more to himself than Elston. “Sunday morning in Sabbath Valley. Appropriate for a day that’ll be someone’s salvation.”
It remained to be seen, of course, exactly who would be saved . . . and who wouldn’t be.
Just because it was Sunday, that didn’t mean the work of the ranch would stop. Not all the members of Elston’s crew were hired killers like Verne Finn. He had to have a number of actual cowhands working for him, too, and they would be up and about soon to take care of their morning chores.
A line of clouds hung over the eastern horizon. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was high enough now to turn those clouds red, as if they were billows of blood looming over the West Texas landscape.
Luke told himself not to think such grim thoughts as he turned back into the room where Harry Elston lay on the floor as his prisoner.
“All right, Elston,” Luke said as he bent to take hold of the rancher. He grunted with the effort as he lifted Elston’s solid, thickset form. “We’re going out onto the widow’s walk.”
Luke had to untie Elston’s ankles so he could shuffle out onto the little balcony. Elston didn’t try anything, but Luke was ready if he had.
Once they were outside, Luke pulled the gag loose. Elston spat angrily to clear his mouth and throat, then loosed a stream of bitter curses before he finally paused and asked, “How did you know this was made to look like a widow’s walk?”
“I’ve read about them,” Luke replied. “Not that I’ve ever seen one, but you mentioned that you used to be a sea captain.” A quizzical frown creased his forehead. “Do you have a wife, Elston?”
“I did,” the man said through gritted teeth. “She died. And I wasn’t there for her. The sea, the damned sea, kept me away from her. And that was when I decided to get as far away from it as I could.”
Elston’s words had the ring of tortured truth, and for a second Luke felt something. Not sympathy, no. A lot of people dealt with tragedy in their lives without turning into murderous, power-crazed madmen. But Elston’s hatred was a window of sorts into a dark corner of the human condition, and Luke recognized that.
Down below, somebody shouted, “Hey! Hey, is that the boss?”
Luke put one of the Colts to Elston’s head and told him, “All right, I want Glory and Sheriff Whittaker brought out here and horses saddled for all of us. And a fourth horse for you, since you’re coming with us.”
“I can’t go anywhere like this!”
“It may be a bit humiliating, but you’re decent enough in those long underwear.”
The cowboy who had spotted them had turned and run back into the bunkhouse. Now more men emerged, Whitey Singletary among them. Luke didn’t see Verne Finn. He wondered if the leader of the gun-wolf pack slept somewhere here in the house.
Luke prodded Elston with the Colt and said, “You know what to tell them.”
Elston growled wordlessly, then raised his voice and called, “You men listen to me down there! Fetch out Mrs. MacCrae and the sheriff! Saddle four horses and bring them to the front of the house!”
One of the men ran into the main house. Luke heard the front door slam.
Singletary shouted, “Get out of the way, boss! We’ll fill that bastard full o’ lead!’
Luke eared back the Colt’s hammer.
“My thumb is the only thing between you and eternity, Elston,” he said. “If I die, so do you.”
“Damn it, just do what I said!” Elston bellowed at Singletary and the other men. “Bring out the prisoners, and get those horses ready!”
The men still hesitated. The front door banged again, and Verne Finn strode into view, wearing only a pair of jeans and carrying a revolver. He turned to look up at the widow’s walk. In this bloody Sunday morning, the pale skin of his torso was red, making him look like Satan.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Elston,” Finn said. “I don’t know how Jensen got loose.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Elston snapped. “Just see to it that my orders are carried out.”
“That’s what you really want?”
“Yes, by God!”
Finn turned to the other men and jerked his head in a nod. They began to scurry around. Some of them headed into the barn to saddle the horses. Others headed for the smokehouse to get Sheriff Whittaker. Finn himself stalked back into the house, presumably to bring out Glory MacCrae.
“You won’t be able to pull this off, you know,” Elston said to Luke. “Something will go wrong. You’ll wind up dead, and so will Mrs. MacCrae and the sheriff. Then we’ll bury the three of you someplace you’ll never be found. Whitey will take over as sheriff. I have enough influence among the county commissioners to make sure that happens. There might be a little stink . . . but it’ll go away in time. It always does.”
“Not this time, Elston. But like I told you, you haven’t done anything that’ll get you strung up, or even sent to prison for any amount of time. The best thing you can do is cooperate.”
Elston just grunted and didn’t say anything else. Luke could still feel the hatred radiating from him, though, like the shafts of crimson light that now shot up into the sky as the sun got ready to peek above the horizon.
The men returned from the smokehouse prodding a stumbling, hatless Sheriff Whittaker in front of them. Whittaker’s hands were tied, but they were in front of him rather than behind his back as Luke’s had been when he was in the smokehouse.
Other men led saddled horses from the barn. Then the front door of the main house opened and Verne Finn brought Glory out. He had hold of her arm, but her hands and feet were free.
“Luke!” she cried when she looked up and saw Luke and Elston on the widow’s walk. “Luke, are you all right?”
“I will be once we get out of here,” he told her. “Go turn the sheriff loose. Then the two of you get on a couple of those horse
s and get out of here.”
“What about you?”
“Elston and I will be coming along directly,” Luke said with a smile. “I want you and Whittaker clear first, though.”
Even from where he was, he could see the familiar stubborn jut of Glory’s chin as she said, “I’m not leaving without you.”
“That’s the only way this is going to work.”
Glory hesitated, obviously wavering about what she should do next. Up on the widow’s walk, Elston said, “That’s pretty smart, Jensen. That’s the one way you might be able to get the two of them out of here.” With a sneer, he added, “I never thought a damned bounty hunter would be so blasted noble.”
“People are usually capable of more than men like you give them credit for,” Luke said.
“Yeah . . . that’s why I can’t let you get away with it.”
Elston moved faster than Luke expected. He ducked his head and threw himself sideways, slamming against Luke and driving him into the railing around the widow’s walk. The Colt went off as the impact jolted Luke’s thumb off the hammer, but the bullet narrowly missed Elston’s balding head.
With a sharp crack of boards breaking, the railing gave way as the weight of both men hit it. Luke and Elston toppled through it and crashed down on the porch roof. The fall wasn’t very far, and the roof was sturdy enough that it didn’t give. Both men rolled out of control to the edge and plummeted off.
Somehow Luke managed to hang on to the revolver as the ground came up and smashed into him. His brain and body were both stunned, but he forced them to work. He rolled over and lifted his head as guns began to roar. He had lost track of Elston, but he saw Jared Whittaker whirl and drive his clubbed fists into the jaw of the gunman next to him. As the man fell, Whittaker plucked his Colt from its holster and opened fire on Elston’s gunnies clustered in the ranch yard.
From the corner of his other eye, Luke saw Glory struggling with Verne Finn. She hooked the fingers of her right hand into claws and dragged them across his face. Finn yelled in pain as she almost succeeded in gouging out his eyes. He backhanded her and knocked her away from him.
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