In fact, the ride had calmed her down to the point that when she heard shots up ahead, it took her a couple of seconds to realize what they were.
Then the booming reports of handguns finally penetrated her brain, causing her eyes to widen and her jaw to tighten. It sounded like somebody was fighting a small-scale war up there, and even though she was no longer on Sugarloaf range and technically the ruckus was none of her business, she couldn’t just ignore it.
Not and call herself Smoke Jensen’s daughter.
She leaned forward, grabbed the carbine, pulled it out of its scabbard, and levered a round into the Winchester’s chamber.
Then she held the carbine in her right hand, the reins in her left, and heeled the horse into a gallop, straight toward the sounds of battle.
* * *
“Go! Go!” Brice shouted to Arturo as he reined in and fell behind the buggy. “Fast as you can! Stay on the road!”
There might be some cover up ahead, but Arturo would have to leave the trail to reach it, and Brice didn’t know if he could handle the buggy well enough for that.
Arturo responded instantly, slashing the horse’s rump with the reins and calling out to the animal. The horse leaped ahead so abruptly that Malatesta was thrown back hard against the rear seat. Brice heard his alarmed shout.
Then the buggy was racing along the road, and the group of attackers changed course slightly, angling to their right in an attempt to cut it off as they continued firing.
Brice drew his gun and rode hard, staying at the buggy’s right-rear corner as he opened fire on the bushwhackers. The range was too great for any real accuracy with a handgun, but the attackers were sweeping closer with each passing second. Brice figured if he hit any of them or their horses, it would be sheer luck. He just wanted to come close enough to spook them and blunt their charge.
That didn’t appear to be happening. The riders thundered closer with powder smoke and flames spewing from their gun muzzles.
Brice became aware that shots were coming from the buggy as well. He knew Arturo couldn’t be firing them; the servant would be too busy handling the buggy and the lunging horse hitched to it. That meant Malatesta was armed and putting up a fight, too, something he hadn’t done that day back at the train station when he had gone diving for cover.
Maybe he hadn’t had a gun then. Maybe the attempt on his life was what had prompted him to buy one.
It didn’t really matter. What was important was that they were under attack now.
The hammer of Brice’s Colt fell on an empty chamber. He slowed his horse slightly, fell behind the buggy again, and then swung around to the other side so he wouldn’t be in Malatesta’s line of fire as he drew alongside the careening vehicle. He guided the horse with his knees and began reloading, dumping the empty brass from the cylinder and thumbing in fresh cartridges from the loops in his shell belt.
Those actions were automatic, so his attention was elsewhere. He spotted a clump of large boulders up ahead, close beside the road, and knew Arturo could get behind them if the buggy could reach the rocks before the attackers intercepted it.
That was their best chance, so they had to give it a try. He urged his horse ahead a little more, yelled over the pounding hoofbeats, “Arturo!”
When the man glanced over at him, Brice waved his free hand toward the boulders.
“Head for those rocks!”
Arturo jerked his head in a nod of understanding.
Brice dropped back again and angled to the right as the buggy hugged the left side of the trail. Malatesta leaned forward on the rear seat, thrust a pistol out of the buggy, and continued firing toward the ambushers. His shots didn’t appear to be having any more of an effect than Brice’s. But at least they were putting up a fight. That had to count for something.
Although it wouldn’t, Brice supposed as he triggered the Colt again, if all three of them wound up dead...
Just then, one of the attackers’ horses fell, its front legs folding up abruptly underneath it. As the unfortunate animal plowed into the ground, its rider sailed out of the saddle. The man had kicked his feet free of the stirrups in time to avoid having the horse roll on him, but he wasn’t out of danger. His arms and legs flailed wildly. He wasn’t able to control his fall. He crashed to the ground and rolled over and over. Luckily, none of the other horses trampled him.
He didn’t get up when his momentum came to a stop, though. Instead he just lay there, sprawled awkwardly. Whether he was unconscious, badly injured, or even dead, he seemed to be out of the fight.
That cut down the odds a little, but not enough to do any real good.
The buggy came even with the rocks, but Arturo didn’t head behind them, instead whipping the horse on. For a second, Brice didn’t understand, but then he saw how deeply rutted the ground was on this side of the rocks. If Arturo had left the road and tried to drive over that, he would have busted an axle or overturned the buggy.
Instead, he swung around the far side of the boulders, even as bullets began kicking up dust in the trail near the buggy’s wheels. Brice followed, trying not to think about how close the shots were coming now. He felt as much as heard the wind-rip of a slug as it passed through the air near his head.
Then he and his horse were behind the rocks and had some cover at last. Nearby, the buggy still swayed slightly from the abruptness of its halt. Frothy sweat covered the flanks of the horse hitched to it. A cloud of dust swirled around rocks, horses, and men.
Brice had already holstered his Colt. He threw himself from the saddle and dragged his Winchester out of its scabbard. He wedged into a narrow opening between the boulders as he worked the rifle’s lever.
The attackers were still coming, despite the loss of the man who’d been unhorsed. Brice settled his sights on one of them and squeezed the trigger.
The man jerked but remained mounted and even continued firing the gun he clutched in his fist. Brice felt like he had hit the hombre, but probably only a nick. That wasn’t going to stop the attack. He levered the Winchester and fired again, grimacing as his shot missed. It was difficult to hit fast-moving targets like that, and the bushwhackers had started to split up and weave slightly to make themselves even harder to hit.
More shots blasted not far away. Brice glanced right and left and saw that both Malatesta and Arturo were getting in on the fight. The small-caliber pistols they were using didn’t pack much punch, though, and weren’t noted for their accuracy beyond a few feet. Brice’s rifle was the only real threat to the bushwhackers.
They had scattered out enough that he knew what their next move would be. They would circle the rocks and try to surround their quarry, maybe even catch them in a cross fire. The plan stood a good chance of working, too, if Brice couldn’t pick off a couple of them and persuade them that this ambush was going to come with a higher price than they were prepared to pay.
With all the dust and powder smoke floating in the air, he hadn’t gotten a good look at the men yet, but he felt like there was a good chance that some of them were the same men who had tried to kill Malatesta at the train station. If that was true, it ruined the count’s theory that the attack had been an attempted robbery—not that Brice had ever put much stock in that idea. He knew a would-be killing when he saw one, and those men had wanted Giovanni Malatesta dead.
It appeared that they still did—and if he and Arturo bit the dust, too, that would be just fine with the attackers.
“I’ll watch the flanks!” he shouted to Malatesta and Arturo as he levered the Winchester again and turned. “Protect the front!”
He spotted a rider through the haze and triggered the rifle. The man fired at the same time. That shot hit the boulder beside Brice, coming too close for comfort and whining off wickedly. Brice jacked the Winchester’s lever to try for another shot.
The sharp cracks of another rifle suddenly intruded on his awareness. He jerked his head to the right, peered along the road to the Sugarloaf, and saw another rider comi
ng from that direction.
Coming fast and blazing away with a carbine . . .
The newcomer’s hat hung by its chin strap, and blond hair streamed in the wind. That could mean only one thing.
Denny Jensen was joining the fight.
CHAPTER 21
As Denny galloped east along the road, she spotted a cloud of dust rising ahead of her. That probably came from a vehicle moving fast, or else a large group of riders. Stagecoaches no longer used this road and hadn’t since the railroad had arrived in Big Rock many years earlier, but wagons, buckboards, and buggies traveled it on a regular basis.
The number of gunshots made her wonder if outlaws had ambushed someone on the road. That explanation made more sense to her than anything else.
Many people believed that the day of the outlaw had come to a close with the turn of the century, and it was true that lawlessness wasn’t as widespread as it had been when her parents were young.
But Denny knew from experience that there were still plenty of desperadoes around, and if a gang of them had gone after some unfortunate pilgrim, they were about to get a surprise.
She rounded a bend in the trail where it dropped down to a level stretch through which the road ran straight as a string. A buggy rolled along at breakneck speed with a lone man on horseback accompanying it. More riders swept in from Denny’s left, obviously trying to cut off the fleeing buggy. They were all shooting. Denny could see the smoke and muzzle flames.
Return fire came from the buggy and the rider with it. They were outnumbered, and the closest place to take cover was a cluster of boulders next to the road ahead of them. The buggy might make it in time, but it would be a close race.
Denny thought maybe she could give them a little more breathing room. She brought the carbine to her shoulder and tried a long shot, aiming instinctively as she squeezed the trigger.
One of the attackers’ horses went down hard, throwing the rider. Denny made a face as she lowered the carbine and worked the lever. She hated that she had hit the horse instead of the man, but when he didn’t get up, she thought she might have done some good anyway. One less attacker that way.
She sent the chestnut charging along the road while she worked the carbine’s lever. Ahead of her, the attackers began to spread out while the buggy reached the rocks and wheeled crazily behind them. The rider followed, and Denny’s breath caught in her throat as she realized the man looked familiar. She couldn’t be sure because of all the dust in the air, but she thought he might be Brice Rogers.
Her heart had started pounding harder because of the excitement of the fight, she told herself. The thought that Brice might be in danger had nothing to do with it.
The attackers were trying to circle around the rocks and get behind the defenders. One of them veered in Denny’s direction, and as he did, he must have spotted her. He swung his gun toward her. Even in the bright sunshine, Denny saw flame gush from the gun’s muzzle. The bullet kicked up dirt in the trail a good twenty yards in front of her.
That handgun might not have the necessary range, but her carbine did. She whipped it back to her shoulder and cranked off three rounds as fast as she could work the lever. The chestnut gelding was used to the sound of gunfire and the smell of powder smoke and continued running straight and steady as Denny fired.
The man went backward out of the saddle like a giant hand had slapped him off the horse. That was the second of the varmints Denny had accounted for. The odds were getting closer to even now.
The attackers weren’t giving up, though. They continued firing at the men in the rocks even though Denny was galloping closer and spraying lead in their direction. Evidently they were determined to wipe out whoever it was they were after.
Denny realized her carbine was going to run dry if she kept up this barrage. She needed to make her shots count, because she might not have a chance to reload. She hauled back on the reins, brought her mount to a halt, and settled the carbine against her shoulder to take aim. She drew a bead on one of the circling riders, just like Smoke had taught her to, and squeezed the trigger.
Just as she did, however, her target threw his arms in the air and pitched off his horse to land in a limp heap on the ground. Denny knew one of the defenders in the rocks had drilled the man. Her shot had missed because the man had fallen off his horse a split second before the bullet got there.
Well, there were still three more of the varmints, she told herself as she worked the carbine’s lever.
Except losing three out of the six of them appeared to be enough for the surviving attackers. They jerked their horses around and took off for the tall and uncut, galloping away in three different directions. Denny lifted the carbine and took aim at one of them, and she was pretty sure she could hit the broad back that presented itself to her as a target.
Then she muttered a curse that would have made her mother turn pale and lowered the Winchester. Carefully, she let the hammer down off cock. Shooting a man in the back to protect the life of someone else was one thing, but gunning him down from behind when he was fleeing was too much like murder as far as Denny was concerned. And more important, she figured Smoke wouldn’t have done it. When he absolutely had to kill, it was always from the front.
Denny stayed where she was, watching alertly until all three of the gunmen disappeared in the distance. Then she nudged her horse into motion and walked the animal toward the rocks. A man stepped out from behind one of the boulders and waved his hat in the air above his head in a signal that it was all right for her to come on in.
She was certain now that man was Brice Rogers. He went back into the cluster of rocks.
Denny rode up a few minutes later but didn’t dismount. She could see the buggy now and thought it looked like one from Patterson’s Livery Stable in Big Rock. The vehicle partially obscured her view of a man sitting on a rock slab on the other side of it. He had his coat off, and Brice was wrapping a makeshift bandage around the bloodstained right sleeve of his shirt.
Denny recognized Arturo Vincenzo, and that was enough to tell her who else was here. She supposed that in the back of her mind, that suspicion had been there all along. She knew Malatesta was still in the area, and he was plenty stubborn enough to believe that he could ride out to the Sugarloaf and plead his case to her, whatever it was.
The next moment, her hunch was confirmed as Malatesta himself stepped around the rear of the buggy and said, “Cara mia! I should have known it was you riding to our rescue!”
Denny didn’t think about what she was doing. She just lifted the carbine to her shoulder and eared back the hammer in one smooth motion. At the same time, the cocky grin disappeared from Malatesta’s face and his hand came up with a pistol in it. In the blink of an eye, the two of them were staring at each other over the barrels of their guns.
* * *
Brice had turned his head to look over his shoulder as Denny rode up. Arturo had lost some blood and was pale from the pain he was in, but he wasn’t badly wounded, just a bullet graze on the arm. Brice was trying to stop the bleeding. Arturo would be fine once they got back to Big Rock and he could get some actual medical attention.
Brice figured that Denny wouldn’t be happy to see Giovanni Malatesta. He had thought that ever since he’d left the settlement with Malatesta and Arturo. But he hadn’t expected them to point guns at each other. He exclaimed, “Hold it, you two! Put those guns down before somebody gets hurt.”
“Please listen to the marshal, cara mia,” Malatesta said. “I would hate more than anything else in the world to have to shoot you. I would hate it more than you can possibly know.”
“Stop calling me that,” Denny snapped. “And I don’t believe you. You enjoy hurting people.”
“You are wrong—” Malatesta stopped short, causing Brice to figure that he was about to use the endearment again, out of habit. The count went on, “I am going to lower my gun now. I apologize for pointing it at you to start with. It was merely a reflex action, that’s all.” S
lowly, he lowered his arm. “Now, if you still wish to shoot me, I can do nothing to prevent you from doing so. And if that will soothe your troubled heart, I understand.”
“You . . . you dad-blasted . . . I ought to . . . Oh!” Denny shook her head in what seemed like self-disgust and pointed her carbine at the ground next to her horse. “You’re a heck of a lot luckier than you deserve, mister.”
“To know you, I am fortunate indeed,” Malatesta said. His grin was trying to come back.
Denny glared at him a couple of seconds longer, then turned her head to look at Brice. “How bad is Signor Vincenzo hurt?”
Arturo replied for himself, saying, “Not terribly badly, Signorina Jensen. A bullet cut my arm. It could have been much worse.”
“I reckon so,” Denny said.
She still held the Winchester, and Malatesta still had the pistol in his hand, so Brice said, “Why don’t both of you put those guns away, so I can get back to patching up Arturo? I’m not sure I trust either of you enough to turn my back on you while you’ve got irons in your hands.”
Denny glared at him, but she shoved the carbine back in its saddle sheath. Malatesta reached under his coat and replaced his pistol in the shoulder rig where he had gotten it.
“I was on my way to your father’s ranch to see you,” he said to Denny. “Dare I hope that you were on your way to town to see me?”
Denny snorted and said, “Not hardly. I was just out for a ride, that’s all.”
“Then we were quite fortunate you came along when you did.”
“That’s the truth,” Brice added as he knotted one of the strips of cloth he had wrapped around Arturo’s arm. “We had pretty good cover in these rocks, but I’m not sure we could have held off two-to-one odds for very long.”
“Who were those hombres shooting at you, anyway?” Denny asked. An odd look came over her face as she added, “Maybe I should have found that out before I started shooting at them. I didn’t know who I was blowing out of the saddle. I still don’t.”
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