Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  She probably wouldn’t be able to bring the runaway horses under control, Frank thought as he kicked his mount into a run and took off after the buggy. With his hands tied to the saddle horn, he couldn’t reach over and grab the harness to bring the horses to a stop, but he thought maybe he could get in front of them and crowd them into a turn that would eventually bring the buggy to a halt, as cowboys turned stampeding cattle to make them mill instead of run.

  He heard Astrid’s frightened cries as the buggy bounced and careened over the rough ground. Frank drew up behind the vehicle, then swung his horse to one side to gallop past it.

  As he came even with the buggy, orange flame jetted from the gun that Astrid still held. She must have thought he was chasing her with the intention of hurting her, rather than helping her.

  “Hold your fire!” he shouted. “I’ll try to stop the team!”

  But if she heard him, she didn’t believe him. The pistol cracked again, twice, and Frank leaned forward in the saddle as he felt the wind-rip of a bullet past his ear.

  A glance ahead of them filled him with sudden horror. One of the gullies that cut across the valley loomed no more than a hundred yards away. He had to stop the team before the buggy reached that slash in the earth. He urged his mount ahead and angled it toward the madly running horses hitched to the buggy.

  Astrid fired three more times, emptying her gun. None of the bullets found Frank, but one of them burned across the neck of his horse and made the animal scream in pain as it gave a leap and then started to sunfish. Frank clamped his knees to the horse’s side as hard as he could, knowing that if he was thrown, the horse would probably bolt like the others and he would be dragged to his death by his hands lashed to the saddle horn.

  It took him several seconds to bring the horse under control again, and in that time the buggy raced away from him. There was nothing he could do now except hope that the runaway team would see the gully and turn away from it in time.

  The horses spotted the gash in the earth all right, but not until they were almost on top of it. They shied away from the gully in a sharp turn, so sharp that the buggy swung out wide behind them. Frank heard Astrid’s terrified scream. Then the vehicle disappeared as it hurtled into the gully, snapping the harness traces, and landed with a huge, splintering crash.

  With grim lines etched onto his face, Frank galloped toward the scene of the wreck.

  When he came to the edge of the gully, he peered down into the shadows gathered there. It was about twelve feet deep. He could see one of the buggy wheels sticking up, still spinning.

  “Astrid!” he called. “Astrid, can you hear me?”

  No reply came back.

  Grimacing, Frank tugged angrily at the rawhide thongs holding his wrists to the saddle horn. He felt them scraping and tearing at his flesh, and blood began to flow and make the bonds slicker. Still, it was going to take him a while to get free, and the knowledge that Astrid might still be alive and need help gnawed at him.

  Despite the fact that she had thrown in with Jorge Sandoval and had even planned to murder her own brother, Frank couldn’t bring himself to just let her die if there was anything he could do to save her. If she survived this crash, the law could deal with her.

  The horse shied underneath him, and he looked around to see what had caused the reaction. Dog trotted up, tongue lolling from his mouth.

  He must have been finished with Sandoval.

  “Dog, come here!” Frank called. He clamped his knees tight on the horse’s flanks again to hold it steady even though it wanted to get away from the big cur, which it no doubt regarded instinctively as a predator. Frank went on. “Dog, chew!”

  Dog hesitated, then reared up on his hind legs and placed his front paws on Frank’s thigh. That brought him up high enough to reach the saddle horn. He went to work with his sharp teeth, gnawing and tugging on the rawhide thongs.

  Those teeth grazed Frank’s flesh more than once, and Dog wanted to pull away. Frank urged him to keep going, though, and he twisted and pulled on the bindings himself.

  After a few moments, they loosened enough for Dog to get his mouth around them, and he chewed through one of the thongs. Frank was able to slip a hand out then and untie his other wrist. Free again at last, he slipped out of the saddle and ran to the edge of the gully.

  Half-sliding, half-falling, he went down the bank and then hurried over to the wrecked buggy. “Astrid!” he called again. “Astrid!”

  The only reply was the squeaking of the wheel as it continued to turn slower and slower.

  Ignoring the pain in his wrists and the blood that coated them, Frank reached into his pocket and found a match. Snapping the lucifer to life with his thumbnail, he leaned forward into the buggy and held the match up so that its flickering light washed over the pale, still face of Astrid Magnusson.

  She lay crumpled between the buggy and the gully’s far bank, with the lower half of her body underneath what was left of the vehicle. Frank didn’t have to be able to see it to know that her legs and pelvis had to be crushed.

  But she hadn’t been forced to suffer the pain of that awful injury. The odd angle at which her head sat on her shoulders told him that much.

  Her neck was broken. She must have died instantly.

  He backed out of the wrecked buggy, dropped the match, ground it out under his boot heel. A long sigh of regret came from him . . . regret at the fate that had claimed Astrid, regret at the demons within her that had led her to betray her brother and ally herself with a vicious bastard like Jorge Sandoval.

  Thinking of Sandoval reminded him that the Montero ranch was still under attack. He could hear the guns in the night, still blasting out their murderous melody.

  Dolores must have reached Salida del Sol safely, Frank thought. Otherwise, the ranch hands wouldn’t have known that Sandoval’s hired killers were on their way and wouldn’t have been ready for them. He didn’t know how many men Dolores could muster after the battles of the past few days, but he hoped there would be enough to hold off the attack until Magnusson arrived with help.

  Assuming, of course, that Pete Linderman had been able to find the oilman and convince him to come to the aid of his former enemy.

  Since there was nothing he could do here, Frank scrambled up out of the gully and ran back to the horse, which had wandered off a short distance to get away from Dog. He swung up into the saddle and rode toward the spot where Sandoval had fallen. He intended to get the man’s gun and take a hand in the fight going on around the Montero hacienda.

  The only problem with that was that Sandoval was gone.

  Dark splashes of blood on the grass showed where he had been. Either someone had come along and taken his body, or he hadn’t been dead when Dog left him to come after Frank. Sandoval’s horse was still there, however, so Frank rode over to it and pulled the Winchester from the saddle boot strapped to the animal.

  He hoped the rifle was fully loaded, because he still had work to do. The sort of work he did best.

  Gun work.

  Chapter 34

  Deciding that Sandoval had probably crawled off somewhere to die from the injuries Dog had inflicted on him, Frank figured he could find the man later. Right now, he galloped toward the ranch house, Winchester in hand.

  As he headed down the hill, he watched the muzzle flashes and read the story they told. Sandoval’s men had surrounded the hacienda. The bunkhouse was on fire, and the defenders seemed to have forted up inside the main house.

  Using whatever cover they could, the killers were working their way closer and closer. The thick adobe walls of the hacienda would stop their bullets, but sooner or later the raiders would force their way inside, and then the defenders—including Dolores Montero—would be wiped out in a bloody slaughter.

  Frank didn’t know if he could turn the tide of this battle by himself, but he damn sure intended to try.

  Before he could reach the ranch headquarters, though, a couple of riders suddenly loomed up out of
the night to his left, followed by a wagon packed full of men. He veered toward them, knowing they could only be Linderman and Magnusson with reinforcements. All of Sandoval’s men were already down there around the ranch.

  “Pete!” Frank shouted as he approached the newcomers, who appeared to be about a dozen strong. “Pete!”

  “Morgan! Is that you?” Linderman galloped up to him and reined his mount to a sliding halt. “Where’s the señora?”

  “Down there,” Frank replied with a jerk of his head toward the hacienda. “She got away, but then Sandoval’s men surrounded the ranch.”

  “Sandoval!” That startled exclamation came from Victor Magnusson, who had ridden up with Linderman. “What the hell are you talking about, Morgan?”

  “Jorge Sandoval was behind all the trouble,” Frank said, not mentioning Astrid’s involvement for the moment, or the wreck that had taken her life. “It’s a long story, but he wanted both Salida del Sol and your oil drilling operation, Magnusson.”

  “Where is he?” Linderman raged. “Where is the son of a bitch?”

  “Dead, more than likely,” Frank replied. “He tangled with Dog a few minutes ago. But his men don’t know that, and they’ll keep shooting until everybody down there is dead—unless we stop them.”

  “Then what the hell are we waiting for?” Magnusson said. He used the rifle in his hand to wave on the men he had brought with him. “Let’s go!”

  Those men were oil drillers, not cowboys. But they were tough and well armed, and that was all that mattered. In grim silence except for the swift, thundering rataplan of hoofbeats, they swept down toward the hacienda.

  They held their fire until they were practically on top of Sandoval’s hired killers, who must not have heard the horses approaching over the continual boom of the guns . . . at least, not until it was too late. Suddenly, the drillers were among them, rifles cracking, muzzle flame spurting. Men leaped from the wagon and grappled hand to hand with the killers. Powder smoke clogged the air.

  Frank was in the thick of it, the Winchester bucking in his hands. He didn’t bother to count his shots. He just fired until it was empty as he swept past the burning bunkhouse and plunged right into a group of gunmen who had been using some wagons as cover as they fired toward the house.

  He kicked his feet out of the stirrups and leaped from the saddle, landing in the middle of a couple of gunnies. He slammed the butt of the rifle’s stock into one man’s head, rammed the barrel into the belly of another, and then brought it down on the back of the man’s neck when he doubled over in pain.

  It was a brutal, close-quarters fight. A bullet burned along the side of Frank’s neck. A second later, he smashed the rifle butt into the mouth of the man who had fired that near-fatal shot, shattering teeth and sending the man sprawling into unconsciousness.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Pete Linderman. The foreman had both hands filled with Colts that he had gotten somewhere. The guns roared and bucked as his bullets slashed at the killers.

  That looked like a pretty good idea to Frank. He stooped and picked up the revolver dropped by the man he had just knocked out, then looked around for another one. He snagged a Colt from the holster of a dead gunnie who had been using a Winchester, then started toward Linderman just as several of the hired killers charged the foreman.

  Frank reached Linderman’s side just as Victor Magnusson also loomed up out of the powder smoke carrying a rifle. Linderman dropped to one knee as Frank and Magnusson flanked him. Frank and Linderman blazed away with the pistols, while Magnusson jacked the Winchester’s lever and spewed lead from its barrel. The four men who had thought to jump Linderman were driven off their feet, their bodies shredded by the hail of bullets they ran into.

  The three men lowered their weapons slowly as they realized that the shooting was dying away to nothing. The eerie silence that always followed the end of a battle settled over the hacienda and the area around it.

  By the light of the burning bunkhouse, Frank looked around and saw that the cowboys who had been holed up inside the house had charged out once they realized reinforcements had arrived. Linderman got to his feet and called, “Jeff!” as he spotted his nephew.

  The young puncher limped over to them, grinning despite the blood that dripped down his face from a bullet scratch on his cheek. The left leg of his trousers was stained with blood, too.

  “One hell of a fight, wasn’t it, Pete?” he asked.

  “Where’s Dolores? Is she all right?”

  “You mean the señora? She was in the house the last time I saw her, but yeah, she was okay. She had a rifle and was taking potshots at those bastards along with the rest of us.”

  Linderman turned toward the house, evidently about to go look for Dolores, but before he could start, she came running out of the hacienda, calling, “Pete! Are you all right?”

  He dropped the empty six-guns and looked like he was about to lift his arms and step forward to meet her and draw her into an embrace.

  But then he stopped, the natural deference of a foreman for his boss cropping up, Frank thought as he looked at Linderman’s smoke-grimed, weary face.

  “I reckon if anyone’s earned it, Pete, you have,” he said softly.

  Linderman glanced at him as Dolores slowed, unsure what to do. After a second, Linderman nodded to Frank and said, “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  He turned back to Dolores, grinned, and reached for her.

  A bloody apparition came out of the darkness behind her just then, looped an arm around her neck, and jerked her back as the grisly figure’s other hand pressed a gun to her head.

  “Stay back!” Jorge Sandoval cried hoarsely. “My sister’s coming with me!”

  “Jorge!” Dolores gasped, barely able to get the name out past the arm he had clamped brutally around her throat. “Jorge, no! These are . . . our friends . . .”

  “You’ve got that wrong, Señora,” Frank told her as he stood there, taut and watchful. He had guns in his hands, and he didn’t need much room to make a shot... “I hate to tell you this, but none of us are friends with your brother. Not any more. Because he was the mastermind behind all the trouble.”

  Dolores’s eyes widened with shock and disbelief. She tried to shake her head.

  “It’s true, Señora,” Linderman said. “He wanted the whole shebang for himself. Both ranches and Magnusson’s oil wells. And he was willing to kill anybody, even you, to get ’em.”

  Sandoval began backing away, dragging Dolores with him. His face was covered with blood from the numerous gashes Dog’s teeth had left on it, and his clothes were dark with blood as well. He must have had the presence of mind to play dead during the big cur’s attack, and despite the wounds he had suffered, he’d been strong enough to get away and slip down here to the ranch.

  Frank didn’t know what Sandoval hoped to gain by threatening Dolores. From the look in the man’s eyes, he was more than half loco with hatred.

  “I’m going to kill you, Morgan,” Sandoval grated. “Then I’m getting out of here, and no one’s coming after me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, mister,” Linderman said. “If you hurt Dolores, I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself. I’ll do it anyway for all the hell you’ve put her through.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sandoval replied with a laugh that bordered on hysteria. “Step up here, Morgan. Take what you’ve got coming to you.”

  “The thing of it is,” Frank said slowly, “the second you take that gun away from your sister’s head, you’re a dead man. You may get me, but I’ll get lead in you, too. Or you can drop the gun and take your chances with the law.”

  “Go to Hell!” Sandoval had continued to back away from Frank, Linderman, Magnusson, and Jeff. Now he was within reach of one of the loose horses milling around. “Maybe I’ll just kill her first!”

  “No!” Linderman shouted. He leaped forward, his fear for Dolores making him stop thinking for a second. Suddenly, he was in the line of fire, blocking a
ny shot by Frank.

  Sandoval jerked the gun away from Dolores’s head and fired at Linderman, who grunted and staggered as the bullet tore into him. Then, Sandoval gave his sister a hard shove and sent her crashing into Linderman. Their legs tangled and both of them went down, nearly knocking Frank and Magnusson down in the process.

  That gave Sandoval time to leap onto the horse, whose reins he grabbed. Frank got around Dolores and Linderman in time to snap a shot at the fleeing man, but Sandoval jabbed his spurs into the horse’s flanks, and the animal’s frantic leap in response made Frank’s bullet miss.

  Magnusson and Jeff shot at Sandoval, too, but he kept going, bent low over the horse’s neck. Magnusson said, “He’s getting away!”

  Frank grabbed the reins of another riderless horse and grunted, “Not hardly.”

  A second later he was in the saddle, pounding through the night after Sandoval.

  Frank saw the muzzle flashes as Sandoval twisted around and fired back at him. Sandoval was taking the road toward the pass through the Santa Monica Mountains. Maybe he thought he could stay ahead of Frank all the way to Los Angeles and give him the slip once he got to town. Frank didn’t intend to let that happen.

  But the horse underneath him seemed pretty played out, he realized, and Sandoval was gradually pulling away. Frank didn’t know if Magnusson or anyone else had followed them from Salida del Sol. He wasn’t going to count on any help. He wanted to settle the score with Sandoval himself.

  That might not happen, though, he realized as the lights of the ranch headquarters fell behind them. It was a desperate, two-man race through the night now as the trail curved and twisted into the foothills and Frank’s mount continued to struggle.

  He had to do something to slow down Sandoval, or the man might get away. As one of Magnusson’s drilling rigs loomed to the right of the trail up ahead, silent and abandoned at the moment because Magnusson had taken its crew with him to Salida del Sol, Frank lifted the Colt in his hand and drew a bead on Sandoval’s horse.