Shrugging off the effects, Clay rose onto one knee and turned. The horse was on its side, wheezing and coughing blood, while the cowboys were angling wide to flank him, both reloading at a full gallop.
Clay took a hasty bead on the beefy man to his right and fired. The rifleman threw both hands into the air, then oozed from the saddle as if his bones had been rendered mush.
A quick swivel to the left and Clay had the other puncher in his sights. But not for long. The second man knew a trick often practiced by Indians, and as Clay aimed, the man slid onto the opposite side of his mount. All Clay could see was the cowboy’s boot and forearm.
The cowboy intended to move in closer, then shoot at Clay from under the neck of his horse. It was a tactic that would have worked on most white men. Clay Taggart, however, knew Indian ways better than most. In some respects, he had become more Indian than white. So, when confronted by the puncher’s clever ploy, he did as an Apache would do: he shot the man in the foot.
There was a shriek of agony as the man lost his hold and thudded onto the hard earth. The horse kept on going, leaving its rider lying out in the open, unprotected.
Clay went to finish off his enemy, but the hand had plenty of fight left. A bullet nearly clipped off part of Clay’s ear. Diving, Clay squirmed behind the solitary mesquite and squirmed past it since its slender branches wouldn’t stop a rain of lead. A wise move, as it turned out, since the cowboy peppered the mesquite the very next second.
Jumping erect, Clay imitated a roadrunner, weaving toward the haven offered by nearby saguaros. Slugs bored into the soil on either side of him, several missing by the width of a cat’s whiskers. The puncher’s rifle went empty as Clay flung himself flat.
Since a man could never know how many shots he’d need at any given time, Clay availed himself of the brief respite to reload. The Box D hand was no longer where Clay had last seen him. Thanks to a thin trail of blood that led into a growth of wispy grass, figuring out where he’d gone wasn’t difficult.
~*~
Clay edged through the cactus, never exposing himself, waiting for the cowboy to make the first mistake. From out of the blue a bullet smacked into a cactus next to him, sending bits flying. Going prone, he searched the plain and caught glimpses of the third gunman and the one who had fallen on the saguaro. Both were stealthily moving toward him from different directions.
Now Clay had three enemies to worry about. To make matters worse, the stand he was in measured no more than ten feet in diameter, which did not give him much room to maneuver. Much as he wanted to, he couldn’t make a break for it; they’d cut him down before he went five yards.
From behind a thick cactus, Clay settled the Winchester’s front sight on one of the stalking punchers, a tall man sporting a bushy beard. When the cowboy darted into the open, Clay stroked the trigger. The man went down but was still alive seeking cover behind a small boulder.
In angry response, the three Box D men cut loose, blasting shot after shot, raking the stand from top to bottom and side to side.
Clay could only kiss the ground, his hands protectively shielding his head. Pieces of cactus sprayed down on him. Slugs bit into the dirt. Something stung his elbow. Moments later, all three punchers had emptied their rifles, and Clay seized the opportunity to sling the Winchester over his back, draw both Colts, and rise, bursting from cover.
The wounded man in the grass was caught in the act of feeding cartridges into his gun. He glanced up in surprise and tossed the rifle down to make a play for his six-shooter.
Both of Clay’s pistols boomed. The wounded man melted, his face blank as a slate. Pivoting, Clay saw the other two, one upright and firing as he advanced, the other behind the boulder, working a rifle lever.
Clay planted both legs and took them on in a stand-up gunfight, shooting calmly, coolly. The first rule of a shootout: shots must never be rushed. It was akin to committing suicide. The man who came out on top was invariably the man who had kept his head while all those around him had lost theirs.
These cowboys proved the rule. They blazed away indiscriminately, relying on the volume of their gunfire to accomplish what the quality of their marksmanship could not.
Clay dropped the bearded hombre with a dead center shot to the man’s left eye. He felled the second cowboy with a pair of shots to the chest. Then, he strode over to insure they were wolf meat. The second hand moved feebly and stared at him through slitted eyes.
“Bastard!” The growl was barely audible.
“You made your bed,” Clay said.
“They’ll get you,” breathed the cowboy. “Pretty soon the whole territory will be after your mangy hide. You won’t last out the year, traitor.”
“You won’t last five minutes.”
Turning scarlet, the man lashed out with a leg, trying to rake Clay with a spur. The attempt was more than his punctured body could take. Gurgling deep in his throat, he stiffened, clawed at his chest, then died.
“Adios,” Clay said. He stooped to collect the man’s guns but stiffened on hearing an approaching horse. In the distance, a single rider galloped from the west. Another cowboy, Clay mused. Another fool letting greed get the better of him.
Clay stepped to a prickly pear and squatted. Resting the tip of the barrel on one of the arms, he mentally measured the range and tested the wind. The stock was warm to his cheek, the trigger cool to the touch. He aimed with marked deliberation, and when he felt confident, he fired. His intent was to bring down the rider, but at that range any error, however slight, was enough to throw a bullet well wide of the mark. In this case, the horse crashed down, and neither the animal nor the man moved again.
Where there was one, there might be others, and Clay had no wish to tangle with more Box D hands. Forgetting about the guns, he moved slowly toward the sole horse still in the vicinity. Its reins were caught in a jumping cactus, otherwise it would have hightailed it toward the ranch like the rest.
Clay gingerly pried the reins free and vaulted into the saddle. The horse made a halfhearted attempt to throw him, but Clay showed it who was boss, and it calmed down. Gazing once at the bodies sprawled on the baking plain, Clay Taggart rode to the southeast, his bronzed figure gradually shrinking in size until it vanished in the shimmering haze.
~*~
Hours later, miles away, another man saw a figure coming toward him from out of the haze, and his right hand swooped to one of his ivory-handled Colts. On studying the toiling form, the rider smirked and galloped to intercept him.
Surgio Vasquez, a heavy saddle over his left shoulder, a rifle in his right hand, slowed and squinted, his face beaded with perspiration, his shirt soaked. He licked his dry lips and frowned. “Come to gloat, Santee?”
Billy Santee chuckled. “Who, me? Hell no, pard,” he answered. “I thought you might need a helpin’ hand.”
“From you, no.”
“Tetchy, ain’t we?” Santee rose in the stirrups and put on a great show of scanning every which way. “Lose that cayuse of yours?”
“Not that it is any business of yours, but he was shot out from under me,” Vasquez said, shuffling on.
“The White Apache?”
“The White Apache.”
The young gunman let his mount fall into step beside the tracker. “And Denton’s men?”
“Dead. All dead.”
“The White Apache bed them down too?”
Vasquez nodded. “And some Maricopas I found.”
“Injuns too?” Santee cackled and slapped his thigh. “Damn, if this Taggart isn’t a man after my own heart! He must like to kill almost as much as I do!” A thought struck him and he sobered, afraid his thunder had been stolen. “He is still alive, I take it?”
“Si.”
Santee’s face creased in a contented grin. “All’s well that ends well, I reckon.”
Although Vasquez was too tired from having lugged his saddle for over an hour to expend more breath talking, he had to ask, “Has the sun fried your brain? O
ur boss will be very upset with us, and you know how he can be.”‘
“’T’ain’t our fault. Denton planned the ambush, not us. He’ll have to account for everything.” Santee removed his hat to mop his brow with a sleeve. “You tried your best. I tried mine. Mr. Gillett won’t hold it against us.”
“I wish I had your faith in human nature,” Vasquez said sourly.
“There’s only one thing in this whole world I put faith in,” Santee said, and he gave his pistols a pat. “These. They ain’t never failed me yet.”
“One day you will meet someone faster. Everyone does, sooner or later.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Life is for livin’.” Santee nodded at the tracker’s saddle. “Are you sure I can’t fetch you a new horse? Must be all of ten miles to the ranch yet.”
Vasquez stopped. “You would do that for me?”
“Hell, I’m in such a good mood, I’d help anybody,” Santee replied. Laughing gaily, he trotted northward.
~*~
At that same moment in time, elsewhere, another person was in comparable spirits, which in itself was not remarkable except that this other person was a stoic Apache.
Delgadito the Chiricahua sat on a flat rock beside a tranquil spring and munched on a piece of rabbit meat. Many sleeps had passed since last he felt so good about things. And he owed it all to Clay Taggart. Or, rather, to the white-eye’s death. With the White Apache gone, Delgadito was now free to take up the leadership of his band again. He must first convince them he was worthy, but he was confident a way would present itself.
From across the small spring, Ponce broke the silence. “What will we do when we reach the Dragoons? Go on as before?”
“There is no other path for us,” Cuchillo Negro said. “Palacio will not let us mingle with our people.”
“He cannot stop us!” Fiero said.
“The army can. And I would not put it past Palacio to whisper in the right ears that we are back on the reservation,” Cuchillo Negro remarked.
“We should have let Lickoyee-shis-inday kill him,” Fiero declared, bestowing a meaningful look on Delgadito.
In too fine a fettle to let himself be bothered by the implication, Delgadito commented cryptically, “There were other chiefs before Palacio. There will be other chiefs after him.”
“Do you intend to challenge him?” Ponce asked.
“He is too clever to give me cause,” Delgadito said. “To give any of us cause.” He noticed one of their horses staring at the undergrowth, and he did the same but saw only a sparrow perched on a limb. “No, to dispose of Palacio we must be as clever as he is.”
“You plan to kill him, then?” Ponce pressed.
“Who is to say how Yusn will guide our steps?” Delgadito hedged. “I only know that the backs of our people are bent by the yoke of the whites. I know they must be freed and allowed to roam this land as in days of old. We are the Shis-Inday, Men of the Woods, not Men of the Desert.”
“You always talk well,” Fiero said, “but the time is past for talk.” Pausing, he looked at each of them in turn. “No band can be effective unless it has a leader. Who will lead us now that White Apache is gone?”
Here was the opportunity Delgadito had waited for. He opened his mouth to say that of them all he had the most leadership experience, and as such, he should be given another chance to prove himself, when suddenly the alert horse nickered and out of the vegetation came a lone rider whose lake-blue eyes lit with warmth on seeing them.
“White Apache!” Cuchillo Negro said. “We believed you were dead.”
“The white-eyes are poor shots,” Clay Taggart said, dismounting. He was glad to be among them again but did not show it, according to their way. His happiness was tempered, though, by the loss of Amarillo, which he feared they would hold against him.
Predictably, the four warriors gave no hint of their feelings.
Cuchillo Negro was secretly pleased at the turn of events. Of late he had grown to respect the white man, and the more he did, the more he disliked seeing the unsuspecting Taggart manipulated by Delgadito.
Fiero was elated for all of five seconds, until he remembered the fate Amarillo had suffered and recalled Delgadito’s words concerning the treacherous nature of all white-eyes. And to think he had helped Taggart against Pedro Azul!
Ponce was the only one who did not care much one way or the other. He liked the white-eye, but he would not display his affection in public. And since learning Delgadito was distrustful of the American he had twice the reason to remain aloof.
Of all the Apaches, only Delgadito burned with passion, but not that of friendship. He pulsed with burning resentment at being thwarted again, and it required all his self-control to stop from leaping up and burying his knife in Taggart’s heart. Since it would not do to have the white man suspect his true feelings, he said, “Welcome back, Lickoyee-shis-inday.”
“Thank you,” Clay said, stepping to the spring. The lack of friendly overtures upset him, confirming, in his mind, that they were angered by the loss of Amarillo. To gauge their feelings he prompted, “Glad to see me again?”
Delgadito the Chiricahua looked White Apache straight in the eye and said earnestly, “You have no idea how much this means to me.” He beckoned. “Come. Join us. We have a future to plan.”
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