“That’s better,” Horn said. “No need for us to get feisty with each other. Happens I believe your story, Morgan. I don’t think you killed Flynn.”
“You may be the only one in this part of the territory who feels that way. How come you don’t think the worst of me, too?”
Horn shrugged. “I know a little about the sort o’ man who kills for pay. You ain’t like that, Morgan. Now, what say we go back up in them rocks where I trailed you to, build us a fire, and cook up a little breakfast while we figure out what the hell we’re gonna do about this range war?”
Chapter Twenty-five
As they rode back to the boulder-topped hill where Frank had camped the night before, he said, “If we build a fire, the smoke is liable to draw trouble to us.”
Horn laughed. “Now, just what sort o’ trouble do you think that Frank Morgan and Tom Horn can’t handle, eh?”
Frank supposed he had a point.
“Fact of the matter is,” Horn went on, “you and me would make a good team, Morgan. I can drop a fella at a thousand yards with this long gun o’ mine, and you can take care o’ all the closeup chores with a Colt. There are gents who’d pay handsomely to have the two of us workin’ for them. What do you say?”
“I ride alone most of the time.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t really figure you’d take me up on it,” Horn said casually, “but I figured the offer was worth makin’.”
They reached the knoll and rode up the slope to the clump of boulders. Both men dismounted. Horn walked a short distance down the hill to gather some wood for the fire and came back with an armful of broken branches. Frank kept a close eye on Horn as he got to work building the fire. Frank still wasn’t sure if he completely trusted the so-called special deputy. Horn was probably telling the truth, but Frank would be betting his life on that.
Once the fire was going, Horn broke out his frying pan and sliced some bacon into it. The aroma that soon rose from the sizzling strips made Frank’s mouth water. “I’ve got some biscuits,” Frank said. “They’re getting a little stale by now, but they’re not too bad.”
“Bring ’em out,” Horn said as he hunkered by the fire. “Reckon they’ll go right fine with this bacon. Got a coffeepot?”
“I do,” Frank said. “And some Arbuckle’s, too.”
Horn licked his lips. “We’re gonna be eatin’ like kings in a few minutes.”
When the food was ready, they sat on opposite sides of the fire and ate. Maybe it wasn’t fit for royalty, despite Horn’s comment, but it wasn’t bad.
Horn asked Frank for his version of everything that had happened over the past several days, and Frank complied, leaving out none of the details and filling Horn in on his theory about Sandeen’s plans, too. Although Horn wasn’t an educated man, Frank sensed that he had plenty of natural cunning, especially when it came to the shady side of life on the frontier.
When Frank was finished, Horn sipped his coffee and nodded. “Sounds to me like you’re right about this fella Sandeen,” he said. “You think he used to ride the hoot-owl trail?”
“I’d take odds on it. That was Buckston’s impression, and he seemed like a good judge of character.” Frank smiled. “Well, up until the time he decided that I’d killed Howard Flynn, anyway.”
“Everybody makes a few mistakes. Don’t mean they’re wrong about everything.” Horn took another sip of Arbuckle’s. “What were you plannin’ on doin’ next?”
“I want to get my hands on one of Sandeen’s men. I think that under the right circumstances, one of them might confess that Sandeen is behind all the trouble. If he made that confession to you, you could go back to Buckey O’Neill with the story and get plenty of law in here, enough to round up Sandeen and his gun-throwers.”
“That might be a war in itself,” Horn observed.
Frank shrugged. “Yes, but it would keep the Lazy F from being wiped out.”
“You have anybody in mind to grab?”
“I was thinking of Vern Riley,” Frank said.
Horn frowned. “I’ve heard of Riley. Don’t think we’ve ever met. He’s supposed to be pretty tough, though. Why’d you pick him?”
“Because he’s Sandeen’s segundo and probably knows more about his plans than anybody except Sandeen himself. And I think I can convince him to talk.”
“I might be able to help out a mite there,” Horn mused. “I been around the Apaches quite a bit. Ain’t nobody knows more about torture than those red devils.”
Frank drank his coffee and didn’t comment. He didn’t plan to actually torture anybody—but if whichever of Sandeen’s men he captured wanted to believe that was going to happen, then so much the better.
“We might ought to move pretty fast on this,” Horn went on. “If Sandeen thinks that he’s got the upper hand now because Flynn’s dead and that niece o’ his is on her own, he won’t wait very long to strike.”
“That’s what I thought,” Frank agreed. “We’ll clean up here and then head for Saber. The sooner we lay our hands on Riley, the better.”
“If everything I’ve heard about Vern Riley is true, we won’t get him without a fight,” Horn warned.
Frank nodded, his expression hard as rock. “Riley won’t do us any good if he’s dead, so we can’t kill him. But there’s nothing that says we have to treat him gentle as a baby, either.”
Horn grinned and said, “I like the way you think, Frank Morgan.”
* * *
Caleb Glover flicked the reins against the backs of the horses pulling the Lazy F’s ranch wagon. Behind him in the bed of the vehicle, as he was all too aware, lay the blanket-wrapped bodies of Hiram Smalley and Wilbur Catlett, the two hands who had been killed in the raid on the ranch the night before. Miss Laura had given Glover the grim task of taking the bodies into the settlement so that Jasper Culverhouse could see to the burying.
Some big ranches had their own cemeteries, but Howard Flynn had always laid his riders to rest in the graveyard in San Remo when something happened to them. And of course, Flynn himself was buried there now, along with his wife and sons.
Miss Laura was the last of the Flynns. As such, she had all of Glover’s loyalty. He had ridden for the Lazy F for most of his adult life, and the boss had never been bothered in the least by the fact that Glover’s skin was black. Howard Flynn hadn’t believed in punishing a man for something that was beyond his control—but neither had he believed in giving that man any special rights and privileges because of it. All that had ever mattered to Flynn was whether or not a fella made a good hand.
So Glover wasn’t just about to desert Miss Laura. In fact, he would have rather been out at the spread now, keeping an eye on things. But she said she trusted him to see to it that Smalley and Catlett were buried fittin’ and proper, so he had gone along with what she wanted. She had split the crew, sending about half the men to town with Glover while the other half stayed at the ranch in case of more trouble. She herself remained at the Lazy F, of course, to watch over the wounded Jeff Buckston.
Worry gnawed at Glover’s brain over that very issue. He thought Miss Laura should have kept more of the men close to home, to protect her. If Sandeen attacked with all of his gunslingers, the dozen or so able-bodied men at the ranch might not be able to fight them off. She had wanted the Lazy F to be well represented at the funeral, though, so she had sent ten men with Glover and the wagon. Four rode on either side of the vehicle and a couple behind it.
The trail started down a hill between a pair of fifteen-foot-tall banks. At the bottom of the slope was a wide stretch of grassy flatland that reached all the way to the Verde River and San Remo just beyond.
As the trail entered the cut, it narrowed so that the flanking riders had to drop back and join the ones behind the wagon. Glover had been over this route hundreds of times before, so he didn’t think anything about it.
Until the first shots rang out and one of the men trailing behind the wagon grunted in pain and toppled out of his saddle
in the loose sprawl of death.
Glover’s instincts betrayed him then. He hauled back on the reins and brought the team to a stop, rather than whipping them into a gallop as he should have. He snatched his rifle from the floorboards at his feet and twisted on the seat, looking around to see what was happening.
Shots came from the banks on both sides of the trail. Pistols cracked, rifles blasted, and there was even the roar of a shotgun. It was instantly obvious to Glover that bushwhackers had been hidden up there, waiting for the group from the Lazy F to come along. The cowboys were trying to fight back, but the ambush was brutally effective. In the opening seconds of the fighting, two more Lazy F punchers were blasted out of their saddles by the storm of lead, one of them practically blown in half by a load of buckshot.
And even as Glover brought the rifle to his shoulder and snapped a couple of shots at one of the spots where powder smoke spurted at the edge of the bank, he realized that his companions didn’t have anywhere to flee as long as the wagon was blocking the trail.
He acted as fast as he could, turning around again and dropping the rifle at his feet. But as he reached for the reins, a bullet slammed into his right shoulder and drove him forward, off the seat. More slugs chewed into the wagon body as Glover landed on the floorboards. He heard grisly thuds, too, that told him some of the bullets were striking the bodies of Smalley and Catlett.
At least the dead men couldn’t feel any more pain. Glover was filled with a vast sea of agony that washed from one end of his being to the other. He gritted his teeth and sweat popped out on his face as he struggled to push himself upright and reach for the reins. He knew he still had to get the wagon moving, before all of his friends were massacred.
His strength deserted him, though, as he slumped down again, gasping in pain from his bullet-shattered shoulder. The reins he had dropped were right before his eyes, but he was too weak to reach out and grasp them.
However, the continuing roar of gunfire, the screams of wounded men and horses, and the smell of blood and powder smoke in the air did what Glover had failed to do. The horses hitched to the wagon danced around skittishly for a moment, spooked by the violence all around them, and then suddenly bolted, stampeding down the trail with the wagon careening along behind them.
Glover bounced around on the floor of the driver’s box, and each jolt sent even more agony smashing through him. He felt his grip on consciousness slipping. But at least the wagon was moving again, he thought, and maybe some of the men could get out of that bottleneck and escape from the ambush. It was beyond his power now to do anything except hope that was so, and even that was fading.
Once the horses stampeded, they had no place to go except straight down the sloping trail toward the flat. When they reached the end of the cut, instinct kept them on the trail. Glover roused a little when he realized the wagon was traveling over level ground. The trail was rough, though, and it still bounced wildly. He lifted his head and peered blearily over the footboard, over the backs of the lunging, straining, scared-out-of-their-heads horses. He saw a bend coming up and knew the team was moving too fast for the wagon to take the turn safely. If the horses left the trail and took off across the open country, that would probably be better, although such a course held its own dangers. But if they followed the accustomed path, the wagon might not be able to handle the speed it was moving at now. Grimacing in pain, Glover reached again for the dangling reins. His fingers touched them, tried to gather them in....
Then the wagon jolted again and the long strips of leather slipped over the footboard to drop out of Glover’s reach. The horses were truly running wild now, and there was nothing he could do to stop them or even slow them down. He fell back with a groan of despair.
At least his wounded shoulder was numb now. In fact, his whole side had lost its feeling. Despite the morning sun, Glover was cold. He was dying, he thought wildly.
But he was too stubborn to give up without a fight, and as his pain-wracked gaze happened to fall on the wagon’s brake lever, he summoned up what little strength he had left and tried to lift his leg. If he could get his foot against the lever and knock it back, that might slow the runaway horses a little. He gasped from the effort as he strained to get his foot up to the brake lever.
He was too late. The fear-maddened horses swept around the sharp bend at a full gallop. They were able to make that turn, but the wagon swung far out to the side behind them. The wheels on the left side drifted off the trail and slid down the slight embankment at its edge. The wagon leaned precariously in that direction.
For a second Glover thought the vehicle was going to make it, was going to right itself and pull back onto the trail. But then he felt the jolt and heard the sharp sound as the front axle cracked and the left front wheel folded up, shattering from the impact with the ground. Glover opened his mouth to scream, but there was such a huge grinding crash as the wagon tipped over and began to roll that he couldn’t even hear himself yell. Earth and sky changed places, and the wounded cowboy felt himself flying through the air.
Then the whole world seemed to crash down on top of him with a crushing weight that drove all the awareness out of Glover’s mind and body.
Chapter Twenty-six
Frank and Horn reined in as the sound of gunshots drifted to their ears—a lot of gunshots, in fact.
Horn grunted. “Sounds like a big fracas. Think we ought to go have a look?”
Frank was already turning Stormy’s head. As he heeled the Appaloosa into motion again, he said, “I damn sure do.”
The shots were a long way off, well up the valley of the Verde River, in fact. Frank had intended to reconnoiter around the headquarters of Sandeen’s ranch and hope for a chance to grab Vern Riley. But in order to check out the sounds of battle, they would have to swing wide around Sandeen’s place and ride hard toward the Lazy F.
Frank wondered if Sandeen was already making his move against Laura Flynn. Would the man be brazen enough to simply ride in with his hired gunmen and try to take over the Flynn ranch?
Frank didn’t know Sandeen well enough to rule out the possibility entirely. Sandeen might feel that he could do whatever he wanted to with impunity, now that Howard Flynn was dead and Jeff Buckston might well be, too. Frank had seen the overarching arrogance in the man’s eyes. When an hombre like that kept getting away with things, sooner or later he came to believe that he was above the law, above even any restraints of common decency. That was when he was the most dangerous, because he thought he was untouchable.
Because of his worry about Laura Flynn’s safety, Frank was willing to postpone his attempt to capture one of Sandeen’s men. He and Horn could always come back to that later, after they had determined the cause of all the shooting.
The gunfire continued long enough for Frank to pretty well determine that it wasn’t coming from the vicinity of the Lazy F ranch house. The directions were wrong for that. The battle was taking place somewhere between there and San Remo, though, and for all Frank knew Laura could have started toward the settlement with some of her men and been jumped along the way by Sandeen’s killers. The tense lines of his face became even more taut when the shooting suddenly stopped and an ominous silence fell.
“Don’t much like the sound o’ that,” Horn said.
“Neither do I,” Frank agreed. He pushed Stormy to an even faster pace, and soon both men were galloping over the wooded hills and across the lush pastures.
The frontiersman’s instincts that they possessed led them unerringly to the spot they sought. They struck a trail that Frank knew was the main route between the Lazy F and San Remo and turned toward the settlement. Moments later they approached a long cut that slanted down between high banks to the flats along the river. Frank let out a curse as he pulled Stormy to a halt. Beside him, Horn reined in, too, and whistled softly in surprise.
“Ain’t seen anything quite this bad since the Apaches gave up,” the special deputy said.
The trail inside the cut wa
s littered with bodies, mostly those of men, but a few horses were down, too. Several other mounts wandered around aimlessly, their saddles splashed with blood. The scene told Frank plainly what had happened. Killers had been hidden up there on the banks, and as this group of men had ridden unknowingly into the ambush, they had been cut down brutally and mercilessly by the gunfire from above. What happened here had been cold-blooded murder, not really a fight at all.
“Cover me just in case any of the bastards are still skulking around,” Frank said to Horn. He swung down from the saddle and let Stormy’s reins drop to the ground as he started forward on foot. Behind him, Horn pulled his rifle from the saddle boot and let his keen eyes swivel back and forth from bank to bank, watching closely for any sign of a further ambush.
Frank reached the first body, that of a young cowboy who lay on his back, staring sightlessly up at the blue sky. Judging by the bloodstains on his shirt, he had been shot through the chest three times. At least he had probably died quickly, Frank thought, but that was a grim comfort at best.
Frank was reasonably sure that he remembered seeing the young puncher on the Lazy F. When the face of the next dead man looked familiar, too, he was more certain of it than ever. Then he came to a horse that had fallen so that the brand on its hindquarters was visible, and the letter F lying on its side was unmistakable. For some reason, this group of Lazy F punchers had come riding along here, only to meet their deaths in the craven ambush.
Sandeen, Frank thought. The boss of Saber had sent his hired killers out to do their deadly work, and these bloody corpses scattered along the trail were the result.
It was just possible that some of the men were still alive. Frank moved quickly from body to body, checking each one, knowing the chances that any of them had survived were mighty slim but unwilling to give up hope until he was sure they were all dead.
He saw more faces he recognized and others he didn’t, but he had never been around all of Howard Flynn’s crew so the unfamiliar ones didn’t surprise him. Unfortunately, all of the men were dead. As Frank straightened from where he had been kneeling beside the last one, he counted quickly. Ten bodies. Ten men who would never again defend the brand they rode for.
The Devil's Legion Page 20