That was when he heard the sharp cracks of rifle fire in the distance ahead of him.
Three Horses brought Abner to a stop and frowned. He could tell that at least two guns were going off, but Braddock hadn't caught up to the whole gang or else the sounds of battle would have been much greater. Still, Three Horses had no doubt that the Ranger was involved in the violent altercation going on somewhere up ahead.
He leaned forward and squinted. Perhaps a quarter of a mile away, he saw some large slabs of rock along the rim. That would be a good place for an ambush, he thought, remembering the days when he had lain in wait in just such a situation, ready to kill any white men unlucky enough to ride by.
Some of the outlaws could have ambushed Ranger Braddock, Three Horses decided. He had no idea where Braddock had taken cover, but the lawman had to be alive or else the shooting would have stopped.
He turned the mule toward the rim. It was time for stealth—and no one was stealthier than a Comanche war chief.
He found a cut that led down into the valley at a fairly gentle angle and rode Abner along it for a hundred yards. Then he stopped and tied the mule's reins to a bush. Taking the Sharps with him, Three Horses started walking along the sloping face of the escarpment, detouring to avoid areas that were too rocky or steep.
He wasn't exactly nimble-footed anymore and almost slipped and fell several times. But he made fairly good progress as the guns continued to blast above him. When he judged that he was almost even with them, he turned and started to climb back toward the rim.
He reached it not far from the rocks he had seen earlier. Staying low, he lifted his head just enough to see two men hidden behind the slabs. One of them had a bloody rag tied around his left thigh as a bandage. Three Horses smiled a little. Braddock had wounded one of the men trying to kill him.
Three Horses studied the pair for a long moment. They looked familiar, and when he was convinced they had been with Clete and Riggs and the other outlaws in Dinsmore that morning, he reached into his pocket and took out one of the long cartridges the Sharps used. These men were cold-blooded killers, and whatever happened to them, they had it coming.
He opened the breech and slid in the cartridge, then closed it and lifted the Sharps to his shoulder. It was heavy, and his hands and arms shook from the weight. He had to rest the barrel on a rock to steady the weapon.
Once he had done that, it was easier. He had a good view of both men, so he cocked the rifle and settled the sights on the one who wasn't wounded, figuring he was probably more of a threat because he was uninjured. When he was satisfied with his aim, Three Horses drew in a breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger.
The Sharps boomed and kicked back against his shoulder so hard it knocked him off his feet. He tumbled down the slope behind him, ass over teakettle, as the white men would say.
He had no idea whether or not the .50 caliber round had hit its target. All he could do was try to stop himself from falling and hope his head didn't hit a rock on the way down and bust wide open.
Chapter 9
When Braddock heard the buffalo gun go off, followed instantly by a shout that might have been pain or surprise or both, his instincts told him this was the only chance he would have to turn the tables on the bushwhackers. One of the rifles started to crack again, fast, as if the man using it was firing as fast as he could work the weapon's lever, and that made up Braddock's mind for him.
One of the bushwhackers was out of action, and the other was going after whoever was responsible for that.
Braddock leaped to his feet and raced toward the rocks, zigzagging a little to make himself a more difficult target as his boots pounded the hard ground.
As far as he could tell, nobody shot at him. He had the Winchester held at a slant across his chest with a round in the chamber, ready to go. As he reached the rocks, he darted between two of the big stone slabs and looked around, instantly spotting a man lying on his back with a bloody, fist-sized hole in his chest.
Not much doubt about where the bullet from that buffalo gun had gone, or that the man it had struck was dead.
Shots came from Braddock's right. He looked in that direction, saw a man standing there firing a rifle down the slope at something. The man's instincts must have alerted him to Braddock's presence, because he twisted around and tried to bring his rifle to bear on the Ranger.
Braddock's Winchester came up first and cracked as flame spurted from its muzzle. A puff of dust rose from the man's shirt as the bullet punched through the breast pocket and on into his chest. The slug's impact knocked the man back a step, and as he staggered, he lost his footing and fell backwards over the rim.
Braddock rushed over in time to see the man he had shot rolling down the slope. The loose-limbed way the man fell with his arms and legs flopping this way and that told Braddock he was dead.
Braddock didn't see anybody else, and he wondered what the bushwhacker had been shooting at back here—and who had killed the other man. Then he heard a weak voice call, "Ranger!" and spotted movement behind one of the stunted bushes that grew here and there on the escarpment's face.
The old Indian, Three Horses, pulled himself into view and struggled to stand. He propped himself up with an old Sharps carbine, holding on to the barrel with both hands as he rested the stock on the ground. Braddock hoped that antique wasn't loaded now, although he had a pretty good hunch Three Horses had used it to blow that hole in the first bushwhacker.
"Three Horses, what in blazes are you doing here?" Braddock asked.
The Indian grunted and said, "Saving your white hide, Ranger. I could use...a little help."
The old man was breathing hard, but as far as Braddock could see, he was only winded, not wounded. There were no blood stains on the ragged work clothes.
Braddock moved down the slope, sliding a little in places, and reached Three Horses' side. He grasped the old-timer's upper right arm and steadied him. They began to climb, with Three Horses holding the Sharps barrel in his left hand and using the carbine like a walking stick.
"I reckon that buffalo gun's what I heard go off a few minutes ago," Braddock said.
"Did I hit the man?"
"You blew a big hole right through one of them. And I killed the other one."
"We make a good team," Three Horses said.
Braddock wanted to tell the old Indian they weren't any kind of a team, good or otherwise, but he also knew that Three Horses had helped him out quite a bit. It would be a stretch to say that Three Horses had saved his life, because Braddock thought he could have held out until nightfall and dealt with the outlaws then, but this way he wouldn't have to waste the rest of the day holed up in those rocks. He could go ahead and get after Fenner and the others.
They had reached the top. Braddock still held Three Horses' arm as he nodded toward the dead man and asked, "Did you get a look at them? Were they part of the same bunch that raided Dinsmore?"
"I am certain of it," Three Horses said.
"Then we just whittled them down by twenty-five per cent."
"Yes. The odds against us are better now, although we are still outnumbered."
Braddock shook his head and said, "Not us. I don't know how you got here, but you're turning around and going back to Dinsmore."
"My honor is still not satisfied," Three Horses said as he lifted his chin defiantly.
"This isn't about honor. It's about the law. Bringing those men to justice is my job."
"Is it?"
Braddock stiffened. There was no way Three Horses could know that officially he wasn't a Texas Ranger anymore. The old-timer seemed to be pretty canny, though, despite his reputation back in town as a drunkard.
"Look, this is too dangerous for somebody your age—"
"I was not the one who was pinned down," Three Horses said as he looked coolly at Braddock.
"I would have gotten out of that spot."
"Perhaps."
"No maybe about it," Braddock snapped. "Do you have a hor
se?"
Three Horses hesitated, then said, "A mule."
"Go get it, and head back to Dinsmore."
"I will not."
"Then, damn it, if I have to arrest you—"
"Will you take me back yourself and lock me up?" Three Horses smiled. "If you do, the rest of those men will get away from you. You know that."
The worst part about it was that Braddock did know that. Three Horses had given him a gift, and he was wasting it by standing around here jawing.
"All right," he said. "I guess I can't stop you from going wherever you want to. But I'll be damned if I'm going to wait around for you. You can keep up or not. And if there's more shooting, I won't be looking out for you, either. You'll be on your own and have to keep yourself alive."
"I am not worried. I am the—"
"The last war chief of the Comanches, I know," Braddock said.
He left the rocks and started to walk quickly toward his dun, which was still grazing in the distance. This ambush had already slowed him down enough.
Somewhere up ahead, Clete Fenner and five more outlaws were still on the loose, and heaven help anybody whose path happened to cross theirs.
Chapter 10
Dave Metcalf never got tired of looking at his wife Sheila. His favorite way to look at her, of course, was when she was undressed, like when she was rising out of the big galvanized bathtub with her creamy skin wet and gleaming, or gazing up at her when she was riding him, leaning forward slightly with an intent look on her face and her lower lip caught between her teeth and her thick blond hair hanging down, tickling his chest.
At moments like that, his first thought was about how much he loved her, and his second was to wonder how in the world a hardscrabble rancher who admittedly wasn't much to look at had ever talked a gorgeous woman like her into marrying him.
But he liked to look at her when she had her clothes on, too, like now when she came in with the apron she wore over a blue dress lifted and gathered to make a basket for the potatoes and beans and squash she had just gathered from their garden. Through the open door behind her, Dave could see the barn where his two hands, Luis and Clint, were leading in their horses after the day's work.
Dave had been out on the range with them earlier, but he had come on in to the house to finish up a letter he was writing so he could take it to Dinsmore and mail it the next day. He was buying some cattle from a rancher over by Callesburg, and the letter would finalize the deal.
Also, he had hoped that maybe he and Sheila could go in the bedroom for a spell, but she'd been too busy with her own chores, she said, and swatted him away...but with a smile that promised maybe next time it would be different.
"Gonna put those vegetables in the stew?" Dave asked his wife as she walked over to the stove where a big iron pot of water was already simmering.
"That's right. Did you finish what you were doing?"
"Got it right here," Dave said as he put his hand on the letter that sat on the rolltop desk in front of him. That desk had belonged to his late father, who'd been a professor of natural history at one of the universities back east. Dave hadn't followed him into teaching. He preferred being out living in nature, rather than lecturing about it in some stuffy old building.
He was glad he still had the desk to remind him of his father, though, who had been a kindly man at heart. Hauling it all the way out here by wagon hadn't been easy.
Dave stood up and moved toward Sheila, coming up behind her at the stove. Without looking around, she said, "Don't you go getting any ideas in your head. I'm busy, and Luis and Clint will be coming in here in just a few minutes."
"I can't help getting ideas," Dave said. "I just can't do anything about—"
A shot blasted somewhere outside.
The sound made both Dave and Sheila jump a little. Sheila's blue eyes were wide as she looked around and said, "What in the world?"
"One of the boys probably killed a snake," Dave said. "You know how many rattlers there are around here."
A little shudder went through Sheila at the reminder. She said, "I know. I always watch for them."
"I'll go see what happened," Dave said as he started toward the door. He glanced at the rifle and the shotgun hanging on hooks on the other side of the room but decided he wouldn't need either of them. Both of his riders carried belt guns for killing snakes.
He had just stepped through the door when somebody yelled and a gun went off again, then twice more, fast. A scream came from the barn. It sounded like Luis, Dave thought as fear suddenly burst inside him.
"Dave, what—" Sheila exclaimed as he whirled and lunged back into the house toward the weapons. Before he could get there, somebody kicked the back door open and a man rushed in and leveled a revolver at him. Dave skidded to a halt, terribly sure that he was about to die in the next heartbeat.
The man with the gun didn't pull the trigger, though. He just grinned at Dave and said, "Hold it right there, friend. No need for anybody else to get hurt." His eyes flicked toward Sheila for a second, and his grin widened as he looked back at Dave. "Your wife?"
"Y-yes," he forced out. "Please, don't shoot. Whatever you want, food, horses, whatever, just take it and leave." He thought about those cattle he'd been planning to buy and went on, "We...we even have some money saved up..."
"Well, ain't that enterprisin' of you. Don't worry, friend. We'll take it." The intruder looked at Sheila again and added, "We'll take it all."
Despair welled up inside Dave. He knew his pleas meant nothing, and so did the man's promise not to hurt them. The man wasn't alone. There were others out in the barn, and they had probably killed Luis and Clint by now. They would kill him, too, and they would take what they wanted from Sheila, all of them more than likely, before they killed her and burned the place to the ground. In that instant, Dave saw it all happen inside his head in horrifying detail, the unfolding images so terrible and ugly that he wanted to look away but couldn't.
So if he was doomed anyway, he might as well die fighting, he realized, and if there was even the slightest, tiniest chance that he and Sheila could survive...
All that flashed through his brain in the blink of an eye, and then his muscles tensed for a desperate leap. Before he could move, a step sounded behind him and something crashed against the back of his head.
The blow was enough to knock him to his knees. He felt like his brain was exploding inside his skull. He fell forward, twisting as he collapsed, and it seemed to take forever for him to land on his side on the rough plank floor.
As he did, he saw a man looming over him, gun in hand, and knew he'd been pistol-whipped from behind. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, with an angular, lantern-jawed face under his hat and not even a single ounce of mercy in his cold gray eyes.
Sheila screamed and bolted toward Dave. The man who had come in the back door hurriedly jammed his gun back in its holster and caught her, pulling her away as he wrapped his arms around her, pinning them to her sides. She kicked at him, but he swung her off the floor so that her struggles were futile.
"This fella was getting ready to jump you, Riggs," the second man said. "You were too busy looking at the woman to notice, weren't you? You're lucky I came in when I did."
"Ah, hell, Clete, you worry too much. I had the drop on him. If he'd come at me, I'd have shot him. It's better this way, though. He ain't dead, is he?"
Dave barely felt it as a boot toe prodded his side, but it was enough to make him moan.
"He's alive."
"Good. That way he can watch what we do to his pretty little wife. That'll be a show, won't it?"
"Later," Clete said. "After she's fixed some supper for us. I don't know about you, but I'm hungry."
"Yeah," Riggs said as he buried his face in Sheila's hair and laughed. "I'm damn near starvin'."
Chapter 11
A thin thread of smoke, almost invisible against the fading light in the sky, was the first indication something was ahead of them. Braddock had pul
led the dun back to a walk to rest the horse when he spotted the smoke. He turned his head to look over his shoulder at Three Horses, who was about twenty feet behind him on the mule.
"I see it, too," the Indian said, somehow knowing what Braddock had been about to point out. "I saw it before you did, Ranger."
"Fine," Braddock said. "It doesn't matter who saw it first. Do you know where it's coming from?"
Three Horses said, "There are ranches up here. The people who live on them come into Dinsmore sometimes. But I do not know their names. They never had anything to do with me, except to look at me with pity or disgust as they passed on the street."
Braddock grunted. The old-timer sure liked to wallow in his misery. But he didn't have the right to make any judgments, Braddock told himself. He had done some wallowing, too, back in the days after Captain Hughes had told him he wasn't a Ranger anymore. Before he'd decided that it didn't matter what anybody else said: he would always be a Ranger.
Braddock stopped and waited for Three Horses to catch up to him. He said, "That's chimney smoke. Got to be from a ranch house. Fenner and his bunch likely saw it, too."
"Perhaps they went around, to avoid being spotted."
"Maybe...but it's more likely they stopped to loot the place."
And kill whoever lives there, Braddock added to himself.
Three Horses seemed to be thinking the same thing. He said, "The rancher and his family are in danger."
"Yeah. If they're still alive. But if they are, and we go busting in there without knowing the situation, it's liable to just make things worse for them."
"You need a scout," Three Horses said.
"I need to have a look-see for myself. You're going to stay here."
"You agreed to let me help."
"I did no such thing," Braddock said. "I told you I couldn't stop you from riding wherever you wanted to. But now I'm going to. You go stumbling around that bunch, you'll ruin everything."
The Last War Chief (Outlaw Ranger Book 4) Page 4