The Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  “What did you have in mind, Baron?” Matt asked.

  “One more surprise waiting for them,” von Hoffman said with a smile. “And when the wagon is burning, it will give us light to shoot by, will it not?”

  “It sure will,” Matt replied with a grin of his own.

  He might have said more, but at that moment he heard what he’d been listening for. It was a faint rumble at first, like the sound of distant drums, but then it grew louder and all three men knew it was the hoofbeats of many horses.

  “Get inside,” he told von Hoffman and Dieter. “Everybody needs to hold their fire until that powder blows. I told the men in the bunkhouse and the barn not to shoot until the men in the house opened the ball, so pass that along to them, Baron.”

  “I must light the fuse,” von Hoffman said, nodding toward the wagon.

  “I’ll do that,” Matt said. “You and Dieter get in there and shut the door. We want those varmints to ride in thinking that we’re not expecting them.”

  The baron looked like he wanted to argue, but then he nodded and said to Dieter, “Come.” They hurried into the house and closed the door.

  Matt trotted over to the wagon. He reached inside and found the keg of blasting powder the baron had placed just inside the tailgate. The fuse was cut short. It wouldn’t burn more than ten or fifteen seconds, Matt estimated.

  That was fine. He didn’t want to give the attackers any more warning than necessary. He fished a lucifer from his pocket and stood waiting with it.

  The thunder of hoofbeats was loud now. Riders swept down from the hill overlooking the ranch and charged toward the main house. If there was any doubt about their intentions, it vanished as they started shooting.

  Matt snapped the lucifer to life and held the flame to the end of the fuse. It caught instantly and threw off sparks as it burned toward the keg. It moved even faster than he expected. Matt turned, charged toward the house as bullets whined over his head....

  For the second time in little more than a week, the world blew up behind him.

  Chapter Forty

  The force of the blast knocked Matt off his feet and sent him tumbling across the ground. He came to a stop against the porch, on his belly, and lifted his head to look across the ranch yard. Several horses and men were down, but the explosion would have done more damage to the attackers if it had come a couple of seconds later.

  Too late to worry about that, Matt thought as he came up on one knee and drew his Colt, which had stayed in its holster despite his being tossed around by the powder keg’s detonation. Riders crowded into the area in front of the house, shooting steadily at the house, the bunkhouse, and the barn. Return fire from those buildings ripped into them.

  Flames shot up from the burning wagon, casting a flickering, hellish glare over the scene. That part of the plan had worked as von Hoffman intended, anyway. Aiming by that light, Matt drew a bead on one of the raiders and triggered a shot. The dull boom of his revolver sounded muffled and distant to him, telling him that the explosion had partially deafened him again. At this rate he would be lucky to have any hearing left, he thought.

  Assuming he even lived through the next few minutes, he added grimly to himself as he watched the man he had just shot topple off his horse.

  Twisting, Matt found another target and fired again, and again he was rewarded by the sight of a raider doubling over and then pitching from the saddle. Some of the raiders had noticed Matt, though, and bullets began to kick up dirt around him.

  They would have closed in on him and shot him to pieces, he knew, but at that moment the front door slammed open and the baron and Dieter charged out onto the porch. The rifles in their hands spat fire and lead as Dieter called, “Come on, Matt, we’ll cover you!”

  Matt ducked under the porch railing and rolled across the planks. He came up on a knee again and added some shots from his Colt to the withering fire being poured out by von Hoffman and Dieter. A couple of horses went down directly in front of them, spilling their bullet-riddled riders.

  The three men pulled back into the house then, still firing as they retreated. Matt pulled the door closed behind them.

  “Thanks,” he told the baron and Dieter. His voice sounded a little tinny to him, but his hearing was coming back.

  Outside, the shooting died away.

  “Are they leaving?” Dieter asked. “Did we win?”

  “Not hardly,” Matt said. “They’re just catching their breath.”

  As if to prove his point, guns began to roar once more, and now the Colt thunder was louder than ever.

  “Here they come again!” Matt called as he crouched at one of the windows, thumbing fresh rounds into his revolver.

  Smoke and Preacher closed to within a quarter of a mile of the army of gunmen, then gradually got even closer as the riders neared the Rafter 9. The hired killers had their attention focused in front of them and weren’t really paying much attention to what was behind them.

  Not only that, but with so many men it was difficult to keep track of where everyone was. If anyone glanced back and saw them riding there, they would likely think the two of them were just lagging behind a little.

  So when the horsemen topped the hill and started charging down toward the ranch headquarters, Smoke and Preacher were in perfect position. As guns began to go off, they urged their horses forward and drew even with the men in the rear ranks of the attackers.

  Preacher drew both pistols, stuck them out to the sides, and started firing as he careened forward. He blew men out of their saddles without them ever knowing what had happened.

  Smoke was more selective in his assault, twisting in the saddle to fire right and left. He wanted to find Kane and Berger, figuring that if he could cut off both heads of this monster, the rest of it might die.

  The attackers had almost reached the ranch house before they realized that they had enemies among them, cutting them down. Smoke and Preacher had killed probably a dozen of the gunmen when an explosion rocked the night and sent fire shooting up into the darkness.

  That was their cue to pull back. They had dealt out a lot of damage, but now they needed to join the Rafter 9’s defenders.

  “Come on, Preacher!” Smoke called as he wheeled his horse. The old mountain man followed him as Smoke galloped toward the barn. They leaned forward in their saddles as bullets whistled around their heads.

  One of the barn doors swung open. Preacher rode through it, but Smoke reached up to grab the rope that dangled from a beam sticking out above the hayloft opening. The rope was attached to a block and tackle that was used to lift bales into the loft. Smoke scrambled up it hand over hand until he could grasp the beam and swing himself through the opening. Men were there to grab him and help him in.

  They babbled at him in German. Smoke grinned at them and said, “I’m not sure what you’re saying, fellas, but I reckon I agree. Grab your guns, because here come those varmints again!”

  After a lull of a few seconds, the chaos of battle rose to fill the night. Shots, curses, and screams blended to form an unholy melody. Clouds of dust and powder smoke rolled through the air and mingled into a sharp reek that stung the nose. The blown-up wagon continued to burn and cast its garish light over the ranch yard, although the flames were starting to die down a little now.

  Just as Smoke expected, the baron’s men fought valiantly in the defense of their new home. He wished he knew how Matt and Dieter and von Hoffman himself were doing, but that would have to wait. At least half the gunmen were down, and the others had to be thinking about bolting.

  A bellowing voice urged them on, and Smoke followed the sound of it until he spotted Jethro Kane. The Easterner had lost his derby, and his bald dome glinted in the firelight. He was having trouble controlling his horse as it leaped around, maddened by the smoke and noise. The animal’s spinning, jumping course carried it toward the barn.

  Smoke holstered his gun and jumped up to grab the protruding beam again. He heard startled cries from the
defenders in the hayloft as he swung himself out and let go.

  His momentum carried him toward Kane. The man looked up and saw him coming at the last second. Kane’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and then Smoke slammed into him and drove him out of the saddle.

  Both men crashed to the ground. Smoke rolled away and came up on his feet. Kane was almost as fast to recover, though, and he charged forward like a maddened bull before Smoke could get himself set. Kane rammed into him and knocked him backwards against the barn wall.

  The man might be from the East, but he was tough. Muscles bulged under his coat as he drove punch after punch into Smoke’s body. Smoke’s belly was still sore from getting kicked there several days earlier. He hunched forward a little to protect it and smashed a punch of his own into Kane’s solar plexus. It was like hitting a rock wall.

  Kane had come up against a man whose strength more than matched his own, though. Smoke hammered a right uppercut into Kane’s jaw that rocked the man’s head far back on his neck. That gave Smoke room to hook a left into Kane’s face.

  Whipping more punches into Kane’s face and body, Smoke drove him back. Now that he wasn’t pinned against the barn wall by Kane’s weight, Smoke had room to really put some power behind his blows. In a matter of seconds, Kane’s features were smeared with blood that had leaked from his flattened nose, and both eyes were swollen almost shut.

  Kane kept on flailing punches of his own, but most of them missed. His strength was deserting him now. The blows that landed didn’t have enough power behind them to hurt Smoke. Chopping punch after punch into Kane’s ruined face, Smoke wondered why the man didn’t just go down and stay down. Kane was just too damned stubborn for that, Smoke supposed.

  Even the strongest man would eventually crumple before an onslaught like that, however. Kane slipped to one knee, then forced himself back up onto his feet only to have Smoke crash another hard right to the middle of his face. Flinging his arms out, Kane went over backwards. Dust puffed up around him as he crashed to the ground, out cold.

  Smoke didn’t have time to celebrate his triumph. A bullet ripped across his right side, plowing a bloody furrow in his flesh and spinning him halfway around with its impact. Fighting against the pain of the wound, Smoke saw one of the riders charging toward him. Long, pale hair flew out behind the man’s head, and his agate eyes burned with hatred.

  “We meet at last, Herr Jensen!” Klaus Berger cried as he drew a bead on Smoke and got ready to shoot him again.

  The world had gone insane, Greta Schiller thought as she huddled at the top of the stairs and watched the men firing out the windows at the attackers. She had never been in the middle of a battle like this. She didn’t know if she was going to survive.

  And it was all Friedrich von Hoffman’s fault, she told herself. If he had not been such a fool, he could be back in Germany, living the life of a pampered aristocrat, and she would be his wife by now, plotting how to best get rid of him and take over his estate.

  Instead they were in this godforsaken wilderness with crazy men yelling and shooting everywhere.

  But if she lived, von Hoffman still had to die, she thought. Her masters back in Germany would reward her for his death. And there was a way... .

  She had fetched the little pistol from her trunk. If she could lure him upstairs, she could shoot him, and no one would ever know that he hadn’t been killed by a bullet fired by one of the raiders. For a second, she curled her fingers around the butt of the gun in the pocket of her dressing gown and gathered her courage. The weapon was small. She would have to be close to him in order to shoot him and be sure that he died.

  She hurried down the stairs and went to his side.

  “Friedrich!” she cried as she grabbed his shoulder. “Friedrich, there’s a man upstairs! I think he’s one of them!”

  Von Hoffman jerked around. His face was grimy from powder smoke.

  “Where?” he demanded. “Show me!”

  That was exactly what she wanted, Greta thought exultantly. Grasping his arm, she tugged him toward the stairs.

  “I’m so afraid,” she babbled. “Friedrich, you have to stop him. He was going toward Erica’s room.”

  Fear for his cousin’s life would make the fool even less suspicious, Greta knew. As they reached the landing, von Hoffman jerked away from her and bounded ahead.

  Greta pulled the pistol from her pocket and ran after him. Before she could stop him, he reached the door of Erica’s room and pounded on it with his free hand, shouting, “Erica! Erica, are you all right?”

  Greta jammed the pistol against his back and pulled the trigger.

  Von Hoffman cried out in pain and arched his back. Greta fired again and sent another bullet ripping into his body. He dropped his rifle and sagged against the wall, slapping his hands against it as he tried to hold himself up. He twisted his head around to stare at her in disbelief.

  “You made too many enemies, Friedrich,” she told him.

  “You ... you work for ... them!” he gasped out.

  “Of course,” she said. She lifted the pistol to shoot him in the head and finish him off.

  Before she could do that, he swung an arm and smashed the back of his hand across her face. The blow sent her staggering backwards.

  At the same time, Erica opened the door and screamed as she saw her cousin’s bloody form swaying there. The last of von Hoffman’s strength finally deserted him, and he crumpled to the floor.

  Greta caught her balance and lifted the pistol again. Now she would finish wiping the slate clean by killing Erica, and no one would ever know the part she had played in their deaths except the men back in Germany who would be in her debt.

  Erica dived to the floor as Greta fired. Greta watched in amazement as Erica scooped up the rifle her cousin had dropped. She tried to lower the pistol and fire again, but she was too late. Flame lanced from the Winchester’s muzzle.

  The .44-40 slug punched into Greta’s soft belly and blew her spine out her back.

  She collapsed, filled with the most incredible pain she had ever experienced in her life. The world spun crazily around her as the pistol slipped from her fingers. She was barely aware of Erica standing up and stalking along the corridor toward her.

  “You killed him!” Erica cried as tears coursed down her face. “You killed him, you bitch!”

  “And you’ve killed ... me... .” Greta whispered.

  Those were her last words as Erica worked the rifle’s lever and began to fire again and again. The roar of the shots washed Greta Schiller away like a black river.

  Matt heard the shots upstairs and could tell there was something different about them. Defenders were manning some of the windows up there to fire down at the raiders, but these shots sounded closer somehow.

  That could only mean there was trouble up there.

  “Dieter!” Matt called to the young man who crouched at one of the other windows. “Where’s the baron?”

  Dieter looked around the room, his eyes widening.

  “I don’t know!”

  Neither of them had seen von Hoffman leave the room, but the baron must have gone upstairs, Matt thought. He surged to his feet and said, “Come on!”

  They ran to the stairs and started up, and as they did, more shots blasted. As they reached the landing and peered down the hall, both men were shocked to see Erica standing over what had been a woman. She had a Winchester in her hands, pointing down at the gruesome remains.

  “Erica!” Dieter cried.

  She looked up at them, her face wet with tears.

  “She ... she killed Friedrich! Frau Schiller killed Friedrich ... and tried to kill me!”

  Matt didn’t know what was going on here, but he saw the sprawled shape on the floor of the hallway beyond Erica. He rushed past her and dropped to a knee beside the bloody form of the baron.

  Von Hoffman was still alive, but he was shot to pieces, Matt saw. He probably didn’t have long. Matt lifted the baron’s head.

&nbs
p; “Erica ...” von Hoffman said weakly. “Erica ...”

  “Dieter!” Matt called to the young man who had put his arms around Erica to comfort her. “Bring her over here! Her cousin’s still alive!”

  “Erica, come!” Dieter said as he urged her along the corridor. “The baron still lives.”

  Erica knelt beside von Hoffman and hugged him, heedless of the blood she was getting all over her.

  “Friedrich!” she cried. “Friedrich, you must not die!”

  “It is ... too late,” he managed to say. “I am sorry ... sorry for the harsh things I did ... sorry for the way I treated you... .”

  “All you ever did was love me and try to protect me,” she told him through her sobs.

  “Dieter ...”

  The young man was kneeling, too. He leaned forward and said, “Yes, Your Excellency?”

  A faint smile tugged at von Hoffman’s mouth.

  “I would rather now ... that you called me friend,” he whispered. “And you must promise me ... you will take care of ... of Erica... .”

  “Forever, Your Excellency,” Dieter choked out.

  Von Hoffman lifted a shaking hand. Dieter grasped it. Erica had hold of his other hand.

  Matt saw the life go out of the baron’s eyes.

  He left the two of them there to mourn the loss. Von Hoffman might be dead, but the gunfire continued outside.

  The defenders of the Rafter 9 still had a war to win.

  Smoke’s Colt was still in its holster, but the bullet wound in his side had deadened that arm and shoulder for the moment. He willed the muscles to work, to draw the gun and blow a hole in the fish-belly hide of Klaus Berger, but his right arm refused to budge.

  The left one worked just fine, though, as he whipped his Bowie knife from its sheath and threw it underhanded at Berger.

  The blade buried itself in Berger’s body and caused his second shot to go wild. He didn’t get a chance for a third one because Preacher burst out of the barn just then with both guns blazing. The old mountain man’s shots slammed into Berger’s body, rocking him back and forth in the saddle. Berger dropped his gun and grabbed frantically for the saddlehorn instead, managing to stay mounted as his horse plunged around in panic.