Most Western men, even the most hardened outlaws, wouldn’t harm a decent woman on purpose—but a bullet had no mind of its own, and a hell of a lot of them were flying around.
Even over the gun thunder filling the air, Pearlie heard hoofbeats pounding toward him. He pivoted to his right, dropped to one knee, and fired the Winchester at the man trying to ride him down.
Unfortunately, the man’s horse chose that moment to rear up. Pearlie’s shot caught it in the throat. Mortally wounded, the horse collapsed. Its rider kicked his feet free of the stirrups, sailed over the dying animal’s head, and crashed into Pearlie. The impact drove him over onto his back, jolted the rifle out of his hands, and knocked the breath out of his lungs.
The hardcase who’d rammed into him wasn’t in much better shape. He lost the six-shooter he’d been holding, so he stuck a knee into Pearlie’s belly and grabbed for his throat. The outlaw’s fingers locked around Pearlie’s windpipe and tightened ruthlessly.
Caught without much breath in his body to start with, the lack of air quickly began to affect the foreman. A red haze settled over his eyes and his muscles seemed to have lost most of their strength. He tried to buck upward and throw the attacker off, but he couldn’t manage it.
He felt consciousness start to slip away and knew that if he passed out, chances were good he’d never wake up again. He was about to make a last-ditch effort to break free when the man suddenly let go of his throat and toppled to the side.
Cal stood over Pearlie and urged, “Come on! Let’s see if we can make it to the barn!”
As Pearlie sat up, he glanced over and saw that the back of the attacker’s head was bloody and misshapen. Cal held the Winchester he’d brought from the bunkhouse. Pearlie knew the youngster had used the rifle’s butt to stove in the hombre’s skull.
“I’m . . . obliged to you . . . kid,” he panted as he got to his feet. “Reckon you . . . saved my life.”
“Shoot, you’ve saved my life plenty of times,” Cal said. “I’m glad I got a chance to return the favor.”
Pearlie picked up the Winchester he had dropped and dashed toward the barn again with Cal at his side.
Another of the invaders on horseback tried to cut them off. Both rifles cracked at the same time, and the bullets hammered the man out of the saddle and dropped him limp and lifeless to the ground. Pearlie and Cal made it to the barn, where Pearlie pulled one of the big double doors open and they slipped inside. He didn’t know if any more of the outlaws had noticed them.
“Let’s head for the back,” he told Cal. “I want to get around behind the house.”
“I’m worried about Miss Sally, too. I don’t reckon we can get there by going straight across, though.”
“Naw, it’s the next thing to hell out there,” Pearlie said.
The barn’s interior was in utter darkness, but having spent so much time in there, the two of them were able to make their way around. Horses in the stalls were making a racket. The shooting and yelling outside had spooked them.
Pearlie found the small rear door and started to open it, then hesitated. Gunmen could be waiting to open up on them as soon as they stepped out.
But they couldn’t stay in the barn. Pearlie was under no illusions that the crew of the Sugarloaf would win the battle. They had done a lot of damage to the invaders, but in the end, those on the ranch were simply too outnumbered to prevail. Eventually, the victors would send men to search the barn and all the other buildings and root out any survivors. Pearlie didn’t want him and Cal to be there when that happened.
He took a deep breath, then pulled the latch string and opened the door.
No shots blasted. Pearlie and Cal stepped out, and the only gunfire continued to come from the front of the big building.
“Head for the trees,” Pearlie rasped. He took off at a run for those sheltering shadows with Cal right beside him.
Chapter 24
On the other side of the main house, Sally had stopped struggling against the man who held her. She was just wasting her strength. Better to conserve it and bide her time until she had more of a chance to get away.
Her captor rode to the back of the house where several men waited. One of them held a lantern.
The light revealed a lean, handsome man in a dark suit and string tie standing slightly in front of his companions as if he were in charge. He had an unmistakable air of command about him, in fact. “Ah, Major Pike!” he said in a resonant voice as the man rode up with her. “I see you obtained our main objective.”
So the man who had grabbed her was a major, or at least had been at one time, Sally thought. That agreed with her impression that the attack had seemed like a military operation. The men weren’t soldiers, though, she decided. None of them were in uniform. They looked like the same sort of hardcases Smoke had battled many times in the past.
“Whatever you’re up to, you’re going to regret it, mister,” she said coldly to the man in the black suit. “You can’t use me against my husband. He’ll see to it that you pay for what you’ve done, all of you.”
“On the contrary, Mrs. Jensen—and by the way, thank you for not bothering to deny who you are. I’ve seen pictures of you, and I would never fail to recognize such a beautiful woman, but as I was saying, despite your bravado, your husband will do exactly as he’s told or I won’t be able to guarantee the safety of you, the members of your crew who survive this battle, or the citizens of Big Rock. Surely Smoke Jensen wouldn’t want the blood of so many people on his hands.”
“It won’t be on his hands,” Sally snapped. “It’ll be on yours. Who are you, anyway?”
The man didn’t answer the question right away, gesturing instead. “Put the lady down, Major. There’s nowhere she can run. She’s intelligent enough to know how futile that would be.”
Pike lowered Sally to the ground. “You’d better listen to the doctor, ma’am. Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it has to be.”
Sally straightened her robe, pulled it a little tighter around herself, and ignored how much her bare feet hurt from running on the ground. She lifted her head defiantly as she glared at the man in the black suit. “So you’re the mysterious doctor.”
“Indeed,” he said with a self-satisfied smile as he lifted a slender, supple finger to the brim of his hat. “Dr. Jonas Trask, at your service.”
“If you were really at my service, you’d take that fancy gun you’re wearing and blow your own brains out.”
“I assure you, that’s not going to happen. Now that I’m finally so close to the object of my quest, I won’t allow anything to keep me from it.”
His quest? What in blazes did that mean? In the past, evil men had gone after Smoke because they wanted vengeance or out of greed when he stood in the way of some lawless scheme of theirs, but she wasn’t sure she had ever heard such fervor in the voice of an enemy.
Trask’s motivations didn’t really matter, only his actions, which were already bad enough to have earned him a bullet a dozen times over. He wasn’t finished. He snapped his fingers and ordered, “Take her back into the house and make her comfortable. From the sound of it, the resistance is almost finished.”
Sally’s heart sank when she realized that was true. The shooting was a lot more sporadic, and that could only mean that most of the Sugarloaf hands had been killed, wounded, or captured. The enemies’ overwhelming numbers, as well as their ruthless nature, had been enough to carry them to a bloody victory.
There isn’t going to be any last-minute rescue....
Just as that thought went through her head, shots rang out from the nearby trees, the ones Sally had been trying to reach when she fled from the house earlier. Pike yelled in pain and slumped forward in his saddle. As his startled horse reared, he hung on and shouted, “Get the doctor inside!”
A rider burst from the woods, firing a pistol as he charged toward the house. He bent low to make himself a smaller target. Rifle fire continued from the trees. One of the hardcases
doubled over and collapsed as a slug punched into his guts. The others had to scramble for cover as bullets kicked up dirt around them.
One of the men grabbed Trask’s arm and hauled him toward the back door of the house.
No one had hold of Sally. Her captors had been so confident of their triumph that they hadn’t bothered to restrain her. She turned and sprinted toward the onrushing horseman. Pike cursed, fought his spooked mount back under control, and wheeled the horse around to gallop after her. Sally glanced over her shoulder at him. He might be wounded, but he wasn’t giving up. She knew he would be able to catch her before her rescuer—whoever he was—arrived.
Another shot came from the trees and Pike’s horse screamed as its forelegs buckled. The major went down with the horse and didn’t move. Sally hated to see animals harmed, but in this case, it couldn’t be avoided.
“Miss Sally!”
The shout came from the man racing toward her. Pearlie! She recognized his voice. He slowed the horse, leaned toward her, and held out his hand. They grabbed each other, clasping wrists, and he swung her up in front of him as he whirled the horse, shielding her with his own body as they galloped toward the trees.
With expert control, Pearlie guided the lunging horse between the trunks of the pines. He called, “Head down!” as low-hanging branches threatened to sweep them from the animal’s back. They reached a clearing, and another rider fell in alongside them. Sally couldn’t see him, but she had a pretty good idea who he was.
“Cal!” she gasped.
“Right here, Miss Sally,” the young man confirmed. “Are you all right?”
“I am now. Let’s light a shuck out of here!”
“That’s just what I reckoned we’d do,” Pearlie said.
Dark fury filled Jonas Trask as he stood in the parlor of the ranch and watched one of the men clean and bandage the deep bullet graze in Pike’s upper left arm. Trask could have done a better job of the medical attention, of course, but he was too angry at the moment to deal with such trivial details.
Outside, an ominous quiet lay over the ranch. The survivors from the Sugarloaf’s crew, most of them wounded, were back in the bunkhouse and under heavy guard.
One of the gunmen came in and talked quietly to Pike for a few minutes, then left. Pike’s deeply tanned face was bleak from more than the pain of his wounded arm.
“What was that about?” Trask snapped.
“Casualty report,” Pike said. “Eleven of our men were killed. More than a dozen wounded, and some of them probably won’t make it.”
“I would say that the losses were worth it,” Trask replied with an angry, bitter edge in his voice, “if not for the fact that the person we were really after got away!” He shook his head and blew out his breath. “How could they snatch her out of our grasp, when we were so close to total victory?”
“I thought they were all done for,” Pike said. “But that’s no excuse. I know that, Doctor.” With his arm bandaged, he shrugged back into his coat, wincing a little. “We’ll get her back. They can’t have gotten very far. I’ve already sent out search parties. You’ll have Mrs. Jensen in your hands again before you know it.”
“I had better,” Trask said. “I had damn well better.”
The men in the room were all hard-bitten killers, but every one of them paled a bit at the threat in the doctor’s voice.
Chapter 25
Fleeing from the ranch with Pearlie and Cal, Sally found herself climbing higher and higher into the mountains. She rode double with Pearlie, perched behind him on the horse’s back with her arms around his waist. Riding that way was a little easier on both of them.
“These aren’t Sugarloaf horses, are they?” she asked. “Where did you get them?”
“We ran into a couple of those fellas and, uh, borrowed ’em,” Pearlie replied.
She figured the borrowing had involved some gunplay and didn’t press him on the matter. When you were fighting for your life and the lives of your friends, you did whatever was necessary to survive.
“Where are we going?” She was very aware that she was unarmed and not exactly dressed for life as a fugitive.
“Headed for a line shack I know of, up in the high country,” Pearlie explained. “It’s as far away from ranch headquarters as you can get and still be on Sugarloaf range. Seems like a good place to lay low for a spell.”
She was more than happy to trust him about that. Other than Smoke, he knew the ranch better than anyone else. If he said a line shack was up there, it would be up there.
They had ridden on for a few minutes, before she summoned up her courage and asked, “Were we . . . were we the only ones who got out?”
“As far as I could tell, we were,” Pearlie answered solemnly. “Of course, it was pretty doggone hectic. Might be some of the other fellas slipped away without me noticin’.”
“I didn’t see anybody else get away, either,” Cal added in a glum voice.
Sally frowned. “So as far as we know, it’s just the three of us. Three people against a small army.”
“You got any idea who those varmints are and why they attacked the Sugarloaf?” Pearlie asked.
“The man who captured me was called Major Pike. I don’t think he was an actual major, though. Maybe once.” She paused. “He wasn’t really in charge, though. He answers to a man named Jonas Trask. I was talking to him when you showed up to get me out of there, Pearlie. Trask calls himself a doctor.”
Pearlie glanced back over his shoulder. “You don’t reckon he’s a real doctor?”
“He may well be, for all I know, but if he is, he’s like no doctor I’ve ever seen. He seems devoted to taking lives, rather than saving them.”
“A doctor of death,” Pearlie said with a grunt.
“Yes. That’s a very good description of him.”
They rode on. The night grew colder. The first snows of the season wouldn’t be blowing in for a good while yet, but at that elevation the nights were almost always chilly.
The terrain was more rugged, too. The horses had to labor up steep slopes. Sally wasn’t sure she had ever been on that part of their range before. The Sugarloaf was vast, and while Smoke knew every foot of it, she didn’t. “Do we graze cattle up this high?”
“Yes, ma’am, in the summer we do,” Pearlie replied. “Lately we’ve started movin’ ’em back down to the winter range.” His voice hardened. “That job may not get done, with those no-good polecats takin’ over the ranch.”
“They may have control of Sugarloaf right now,” Sally said, “but they won’t keep it. We’ll see to that.” It was a bold claim, but she intended to follow through on it. She had been born with a fighting spirit, and her time as Smoke Jensen’s wife had only increased her natural resolve.
Of course, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered, she reminded herself, and had only a few guns between them. But they could worry about that later, once they had reached the line shack, started a fire, and warmed up a little.
She had to do something about clothes, too. She couldn’t fight outlaws in a nightdress and robe. That just wouldn’t be ladylike at all, she thought with a grim smile.
A short time later, the slope leveled out. A broad, grassy meadow stretched in front of them, visible in the light from the moon and stars. A rugged ridge lay on the other side of the meadow.
“Line shack’s over at the foot of that ridge,” Pearlie explained as he and Cal reined in. “If you want to slide down, Miss Sally, I’ll ride over there and check it out. Should be empty this time o’ year, but I don’t reckon we ought to ride up bold as brass without makin’ sure of that.”
Sally let go of him and dropped off the horse to the ground. Cal dismounted, too, and stood beside her as Pearlie heeled his mount into motion again.
“Be careful,” Cal called after him.
“I intend to be,” Pearlie said over his shoulder. He rode with the reins in his left hand and the Winchester in the right.
Sally said worriedly, �
�Those men who attacked the ranch shouldn’t know anything about this line shack, should they?”
“I sure wouldn’t think so,” Cal replied. “Who knows how long they were sneaking around, though, before they made their move? I think those three fellas we ran off, the ones who killed Ben Hardy, must’ve been some of the same bunch.”
Sally nodded. “The same thing occurred to me.”
They fell into a tense silence as they watched Pearlie cross the meadow. The light was bright enough for them to follow his progress, but they couldn’t make out any details.
Pearlie didn’t get in any hurry. Sally expected at any moment to see the flash from a gun’s muzzle or hear the crash of a shot.
Neither happened. He made it to the line shack without incident, dismounted, and moved toward the shack with the rifle held ready
Sally couldn’t see him anymore. “Did he go inside?”
“I reckon he must have.” Cal’s voice was edged with worry.
A few moments later, light flared on the other side of the meadow, but it wasn’t a muzzle flash. After a second’s glare, it settled down to a steady yellow glow.
“He must’ve lit a lamp or a candle,” Cal said. “That must mean everything’s all right.”
A shadow crossed in front of the light, and then they heard the distant sound of hoofbeats. Pearlie was returning, moving at a brisk pace instead of his earlier deliberate approach.
He drew rein and reported, “The place is empty. I had a good look around. Nobody’s been there for weeks. Found something that’s gonna come in handy, too.”
“A Gatling gun?” Cal guessed.
“What? No. What in tarnation makes you think there’s a Gatling gun in that line shack?”
“I didn’t think there was,” Cal said with a shrug. “But you’ve got to admit, it would have come in handy.”
Pearlie muttered something under his breath that Sally couldn’t make out, then said, “One of the fellas who was up here over the summer left a change o’ clothes behind. It’s just a pair o’ pants and an old shirt and some socks, but that’s better than nothin’, I reckon.”
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