Sam summoned up a smile. “He sounds like a wise man, all right.” From what the girl had just told him, the situation might not be as dire as he had believed at first. There was at least a chance that the ranch’s defenders had been able to hold out. “How far away is it, and can you take us there?”
Her head bobbed eagerly as she waved to the west. “Five miles, perhaps six or seven. I can show you the way.”
Sam patted her arm. “All right. We will go and see if we can help your family. You have to be prepared, though, for the possibility that we may be too late.”
She swallowed and said, “I know. I have thought of nothing else since I left there.”
Sam turned to the men and said, “Saddle up. We’re riding west to see if this girl’s family is still holding out against the Apaches.”
“Wait just a damned minute,” one of the men from the Double C protested. “We came down here to get the boss’s daughter back, along with the Paxton girl and those other two ladies. Nobody said anything about fightin’ any Apaches.”
“You knew we might run into some renegades.”
“But we didn’t run into ’em,” the cowboy said. “We’re goin’ out of our way to get into a ruckus with ’em.”
“That’s right,” another man said, this one from Pax. “We can’t risk those gals’ lives on account o’ some greasers who’re probably dead and scalped already.”
The girl must have understood the word “scalped.” Her eyes widened in horror.
“We won’t be risking the lives of the prisoners,” Sam insisted. “The ranch isn’t far off. We can be there in less than an hour.”
“Maybe so, but that’ll put us that much farther behind the bunch with the chest. What if we get to Villa Rojo too late because o’ this wild-goose chase?”
The same question had already occurred to Sam, but he had pushed that worry aside. He had confidence in Matt to handle whatever needed handling until the rest of them could get there. And the simple fact of the matter was that he couldn’t just ride off and abandon this scared, scratched-up little girl to her plight.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said, putting some steel into his voice. “You know that Colton and Paxton told you men to follow my orders. I say get ready to ride. We’re going to see if we can help this girl’s family.”
For a tense moment, he thought he might have a mutiny on his hands. Then Cole Halliday spoke up, saying to the ranch hands, “What the hell is wrong with you boys? I never knew a Texan who’d turn his back on a Indian fight!”
Several of the cowboys muttered grudging agreement with that, and the tide turned. The men scattered to finish saddling their horses. Within minutes, they were ready to ride.
“I hope you’re right about this, Sam,” Seymour said as he grasped his horse’s reins. “I can’t help but think about Maggie . . . Miss O’Ryan.”
Sam swung up into the saddle. “I know, Seymour. But some things you just can’t ride around. We’ll get back on the trail to Villa Rojo just as fast as we can, I promise you.” He extended a hand to the girl and helped her climb up onto the paint in front of him. He asked her, “What’s your name?”
“Maria,” she told him, no surprise since half the girls in Mexico seemed to have that name.
“Well, Maria,” Sam said, “let’s go see if we can help your family.”
Chapter 22
They had ridden several miles when Sam thought he heard a faint popping sound in the distance. He signaled a halt so that he could hear better. Sure enough, his ears hadn’t been playing tricks on him.
“Listen,” he told Seymour as his pulse quickened. “Gunshots.”
“That means Maria’s family is still holding out against the Apaches?”
“Got to be,” Sam said with a nod. He waved the posse forward and called, “Let’s ride!” The men sent their horses racing over the level landscape.
A short time later, they came in sight of a patch of green at the base of a hill. That vegetation marked the course of a stream, Sam knew, and the probable location of the ranch. Maria confirmed that with a pointing hand and a cry of “My father’s rancho!”
Sam saw an adobe hacienda nestled in the cottonwoods and aspens that lined the creek. Several outbuildings were scattered beyond it, and flames and smoke rose from their thatched roofs. The house itself was roofed with tile, so the Apaches hadn’t been able to fire it.
A haze of powder smoke drifted through the air around the hacienda, though. Puffs of gray smoke spurted from the walls, and Sam knew the defenders were making good use of those rifle slits Maria had mentioned. If everyone had managed to get inside the house when the Apaches attacked, they stood a good chance of survival, at least for a while.
Unfortunately, they were outnumbered and wouldn’t be able to hold out forever. As Sam and the rest of the posse drew closer, he estimated the number of Apaches as between twenty and thirty, a good-sized war party. Using wagons, trees, rocks, and some of the outbuildings for cover, they fired steadily at the house. The crack-crack-crack of Winchesters filled the air. Some of those shots had to be finding the rifle slits. Eventually, enough slugs would ricochet around inside the house to take down some of the defenders. That sort of attrition would wear them out. Sooner or later, the Apaches would breach a window or a door, and then the savages would pour into the house and kill everyone inside.
Unless Sam and his companions could stop them.
He raised a hand to signal a halt while they were still about five hundred yards away. The Apaches didn’t seem to have noticed them yet. Sam took hold of Maria’s arm and helped her slide down from the horse.
“Stay here,” he told her. “We’ll come back for you when the Apaches are gone.”
She clutched his leg for a second. “Be careful, Señor.”
Sam gave her a confident smile and told her, “Don’t worry. You’ll be reunited with your family soon.”
Then he turned to the other men and began to issue orders.
“Spread out in a line as we charge. Those Apaches are pretty well scattered around the ranch house, so we’ll have to split up, too. If we can drive them out of their cover, the riflemen in the house can pick them off. We’ll have to mop up the ones that the folks in the house don’t get.”
Nods of understanding came from most of the men. Standish and his three companions looked noticeably nervous. They had come along hoping for a chance to kill Seymour, Sam knew. They hadn’t signed on to do any actual fighting, and certainly not against the Apaches.
Sam arranged his forces so that Standish, Welch, McCracken, and Stover were at the other end of the line from Seymour. They didn’t want to go, but they didn’t have much choice if they didn’t want to reveal their true motives in being there. As the group trotted forward, spreading out into a long line of riders, Sam kept Seymour close to him.
“You all right?” he called over the growing sound of hoofbeats.
Seymour managed a nod. “It’s always something new out here in the West, isn’t it?” he said. “Some fresh danger you haven’t faced before.”
“I’ve fought Apaches in the past, and after today, you will have, too, Seymour. You’ll do just fine.”
“Yes,” Seymour said. “I think I will.”
After that, there was no more time for talking, because the horses broke into a gallop and the posse swept toward the ranch.
Sam had told the men to hold their fire as long as they could. They didn’t want to warn the Apaches that they were coming. He would fire the first shot and trigger the assault when he felt that the moment was right. He knew the Apaches would see them coming sooner or later, but he wanted to get as close as possible before that happened.
Sam spotted a couple of the Indians in their dark blue shirts and bright red headbands as they darted from behind a building and dashed over to several more Apaches who were clustered behind an overturned wagon. When he saw the way they gestured frantically and turned toward the onrushing possemen, he knew the time
had come. Guiding the savvy, experienced paint beneath him with his knees, he brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired.
The hurricane deck of a galloping horse was no platform for accurate shooting, but luck and instinct guided Sam’s bullet as the Winchester cracked and bucked against his shoulder. One of the Apaches slammed back against the wagon as if he had just been slapped by a giant hand. He bounced off and pitched forward onto his face and didn’t move again.
In the heartbeat following Sam’s shot, a ragged volley rang out from the line of charging possemen. From the corner of his eye, Sam saw Seymour crank off a round, then awkwardly work the rifle’s lever while he held on to his mount’s reins. Seymour might not be smooth about it yet, but he got the job done, raising the rifle for another shot. If he had stayed back in New Jersey, chances were he never would have discovered that within him beat the heart of a fighting man.
A grin plucked at Sam’s mouth for a second as that thought crossed his mind. Most folks were capable of a lot more than they ever dreamed. A hero lived inside nearly every man, emerging only in the right circumstances. The moments of heroism allotted to each individual might be limited . . . but they were there.
No time for philosophy now, though, Sam told himself as he triggered another round toward the Apaches, who were now scurrying for new cover as they became the attacked instead of the attackers. He was rewarded by the sight of one of the warriors tumbling to the ground, leg shattered by Sam’s bullet.
The hot air was filled with the roar of gunfire. The shots coming from the house increased as the posse’s assault forced the Apaches to show themselves. Caught between two fires, more and more of them stumbled and fell. Sam was close enough now to use his Colt, so he slid the rifle back into its sheath and drew the revolver. He turned in the saddle as a bullet whistled past his ear, spotted the warrior who had fired it, and put a .45 slug in the Apache’s chest. The Indian went over backward, his stolen rifle flying into the air as he collapsed.
Seymour started using his six-gun, too, spraying lead toward some trees where several Apaches lurked. His hat flew off his head, plucked into the air by a bullet. Seymour grimaced and emptied his Colt into the Apaches. Two of them went down, while the third man, wounded by one of Seymour’s shots, tried to limp away. He made it a few steps before a shot fired from the house exploded his head and dropped him like a rock.
Most of the Apaches were gunned down in a matter of moments, taken by surprise as they were. A few managed to escape into the desert. Sam didn’t expect them to come back any time soon. They would retreat to their hiding places in the mountains and spend quite a while licking their wounds before venturing out on another raid. And they would think twice about coming back here at all, Sam figured. As fierce as the Apaches were, they were also pragmatic and chose their battles carefully.
As the shooting died away, the posse regrouped. A few of the men had been nicked, but none of them were seriously wounded. Hitting hard and fast as they had, they hadn’t given the Apaches a chance to put up much of a fight.
Sam heard someone calling, “Señor! Señor!” and turned his head to see Maria running toward the rancho from the spot where he had left her. She was smiling broadly with relief. Sam dismounted as she came up to him, and she threw her arms around him, pressing herself tightly to him.
He felt a warm flush spreading over his face. He knew Maria was grateful to him for his help in saving her family, but she was a mite too young to be hugging him this way . . . especially considering the fact that people were starting to emerge from the house now, among them surely Maria’s father and mother. Gently, he disengaged himself from her embrace, held her off with a hand on her shoulder, and said to her, “You’d better go see if your folks are all right.”
She nodded and ran over to the defenders who had come out of the house. A stocky, middle-aged man hugged her, and then a woman who was crying tears of joy did the same. These parents had probably been convinced that they would never see their daughter again.
Seymour swung down from the saddle and smiled as he stood next to Sam and watched the joyful reunion. “I think this moment is worth the extra time and risk,” he said.
Sam nodded. “That’s the way I had it figured, too. I hope this won’t have any effect on our real job, but I couldn’t turn my back on these folks once I’d heard Maria’s story.”
“Nor could I have. But now that they’re safe, we shouldn’t delay any longer than necessary.”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” Sam said.
Maria’s father came over, expressing his gratitude effusively. He would have welcomed all of the posse members to stay at the rancho as long as they liked, but Sam explained politely that they had to be moving on, that they had a job to do.
He didn’t explain what that job was, though. Even though it was unlikely there was any connection between the people on this ranch and the bandidos led by Diego Alcazarrio, he didn’t want to take a chance on revealing their true purpose. It was risky enough that these folks knew a large group of gringos was riding through the area, heading south.
But there was nothing he could do about that now, Sam told himself as he got the men mounted up again and waved for them to head out. Some risks had to be run. Nothing in life was guaranteed.
And if it had been, Matt Bodine would have said if he’d been there, then that wouldn’t be any fun at all.
Matt wasn’t the sort of man to get nervous, at least for himself. He had long since learned that if he didn’t like what life threw at him, he would just fight like hell to change it. And if he failed . . . well, at least he would go down battling to the end—although he never really considered failure to be an option.
But in this case, more was riding on him than just his own life, or even that of his blood brother Sam. Four young women were counting on him to rescue them from the clutches of as foul a bunch of hombres as Matt had ever run across.
They were down there somewhere, Matt thought as he reined in at the crest of a small ridge and looked at the huddled, slate-roofed buildings of Villa Rojo, about a mile away. Those roofs shone red in the late afternoon sunlight, which must have been what gave the village its name.
Matt glanced over at Shad Colton and Esau Paxton, who had brought their horses to a stop alongside him. Strain pulled taut the ranchers’ faces. No doubt each of them was thinking about his daughter.
“Take it easy,” Matt told them in a quiet voice. “I know you want to go chargin’ in there with all guns blazin’, but that won’t get your girls free. We’ve got to pretend to play along with Alcazarrio a little while longer.”
“How do you suggest we go about that?” Paxton asked.
“The rest of you are going to stay here while I ride into the village and parley with Alcazarrio. We’ll set up a swap—the girls for those chests full of gold.”
“Which aren’t actually full of gold,” Paxton pointed out.
Matt shook his head. “Alcazarrio won’t know that until it’s too late. He won’t get his hands on the chests until we have Jessie and Sandy and Miss O’Ryan and Miss Jimmerson.”
“How you gonna make sure of that, Bodine?” Colton said.
“That’s the only deal I’ll agree to.”
Colton grunted. “What if Alcazarrio just shoots you and then we have to deal with him?”
“He won’t shoot me,” Matt said, “because he’ll know that if he does, he’ll die, too. Even if he has sharpshooters with rifles lined up on me, they can’t pull trigger fast enough to keep me from getting lead in him.”
“You’re mighty confident about that.”
Matt shrugged and said, “Man who’s got no confidence in himself’s got no business doin’ what I do.”
Colton and Paxton couldn’t argue with that. Paxton said, “You’ll be riding into a lion’s den, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Matt grinned. “Maybe it ought to be Colton here who goes, since he’s named Shadrach. Don’t have any punchers named M
eshach and Abednego, do you?”
“Get on down there before we lose the light,” Colton growled.
Still grinning, Matt hitched the gray into motion. He rode toward Villa Rojo without looking back.
On the way, he mulled over the plan, which was pretty simple. Make the swap for the prisoners. Then protect them when Alcazarrio discovered he’d been tricked, which he was bound to do. Then fight their way out of the village, while Sam and the rest of the posse swooped down, took the bandidos by surprise, and wiped them out, or at least hurt them bad enough so that there wouldn’t be any pursuit as everybody from Sweet Apple lit a shuck for the border. Matt was confident it would work, but first he had to get those young women away from Alcazarrio.
He felt a crawling sensation on the back of his neck as he approached the village, and knew that hostile eyes were watching him. He didn’t let it bother him. When he reached the buildings, he rode openly down the broad, dusty street between them. The foothills of the mountains loomed above him, cloaked in green pines that filled the air with their sweet scent, even down here below.
No one was in sight, which came as no surprise to Matt. Alcazarrio must have ordered all his men to stay inside. But a glimpse of a corral full of horses as the other end of town confirmed for Matt that the bandidos were here. He brought his own horse to a halt in the middle of the street and called, “Alcazarrio! Come on out and let’s talk!”
A man appeared in the doorway of a building. The word CANTINA was painted over the arched opening in faded letters that were barely discernible now, after years of neglect. A gust of wind whipped up a little plume of dust that danced in front of the man for a second as he strode forward a few feet and then stopped.
Matt recognized the burly, bearded form of Diego Alcazarrio. And he knew from the hatred burning in Alcazarrio’s eyes that the bandit chieftain knew him, too. Matt waited, and after a moment Alcazarrio said, “There is nothing to talk about, hombre. You have the ransom?”
Matt smiled thinly. “Not on me, but it’s close by. You have those four young women?”
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