Part 8 (2/2)

Turning toward the ridge, Yakima picked out a narrow game trail angling up the side to the left, meandering around boulders.

He rocked forward, grinding his heels into the sorrel's flanks. ”Go, horse!”

The horse hit the slope on the run and dug its rear hooves into the sand and gravel along the trail, flinging its front feet out for purchase. Yakima crouched low and gripped the horn with both hands, batting his heels against the mount's ribs.

A shrill laugh rose from below, amid the grinding of hooves and squawk and rattle of tack. ”Boys, we got us a duck on a millpond! Aim and fire at will!”

Yakima jerked a glance down the slope. The posse, led by Speares and Patchen, was storming toward the base of the ridge. Speares flung himself out of the saddle and shucked the Yellowboy from the boot. Yakima was a long way from the ridge crest, and well within range of the posse's rifles.

The horse was moving so slowly, it made a good target. Without the horse, Yakima was doomed.

He slid his left foot from the stirrup and dropped down the horse's side. He was about to ram his rifle b.u.t.t against the horse's hip, hazing it up the ridge-he would catch up to it later, after he'd discouraged the posse-but a bullet fired from below did his work for him.

The sorrel leapt with a start and lunged up the trail, lifting dust and loosing gravel in its wake. At the same time, Yakima rammed a fresh sh.e.l.l in his carbine's breech and ducked behind a boulder.

Shots cracked from down the slope, one bullet slamming into the boulder, another ricocheting off a flat rock to Yakima's left. He doffed his hat and edged a look toward the riverbed. The posse had dismounted, one man leading their horses back down the canyon while the others spread out among the rocks.

Speares leapt a boulder, heading for another. As several rifles puffed at the ridge base, Yakima drilled a round into the boulder Speares had just ducked behind, then another at a man wedging himself between a cedar and an arrow-shaped rock on the right side of the gravelly gorge.

He pulled the rifle back behind his own cover and glanced up the trail weaving away to his right. The sorrel was a good sixty yards away, and not far from the ridge crest, but it had slowed to a walk, looking back down the ridge behind it.

Yakima drilled a round into the rocks near its rear hooves. The horse buck-kicked, whinnied, and galloped up the ridge, heading for the crest and, he hoped, down the other side to safety.

Bullets tore into the rock and gravel around him. He returned several shots, then looked around, choosing a path up the ridge. He returned several more shots, bounded out from behind his cover, and ran several yards up the ridge before ducking behind a petrified tree root, a slug blowing sand across his boots.

Someone yelled from below, the words unclear beneath the sporadic gunfire and ricocheting lead. He peered around the petrified root.

Speares was zigzagging up the slope on Yakima's left, holding the Yellowboy straight up and down before him. Patchen was lunging up the slope on his right, his tan face framed by his silver sideburns, sunlight winking off his rifle barrel. The other posse members remained at the ridge's base, covering the lawmen, slugs whining around Yakima's head or grinding into the root before him.

Yakima pressed his cheek against the root, brus.h.i.+ng sand from his right eye.

When he began hearing the clatter of running feet, he fired three rounds downslope, then bounded up toward the ridge. He zigzagged for thirty yards and, as a bullet nipped the heel of his right boot, dove into a hollow amid several wagon-sized boulders.

He rose to his knees, snaked his rifle barrel around the right side of the rock. Patchen was running toward him, breathing hard, holding his rifle across his chest. When he saw Yakima bearing his aim down on him, his eyes snapped wide.

Yakima's rifle exploded. The marshal gave a yelp as the bullet tore into his left thigh. Mustachioed lips stretched back from his white teeth, he pushed off his right foot and dove into a rock nest shrouded in p.r.i.c.kly pear and Mormon tea.

The rifle fire from downslope had ceased, as the other posse members couldn't see over the curve of the slope.

Hearing boots and spurs coming up the slope on his left, Yakima ejected the smoking sh.e.l.l from the carbine and sidestepped into a narrow gap between several large boulders. He continued through the gap, turned right around the back of one of the boulders, turned right again and worked up the side, circling back toward the front, intending to slip up behind Speares.

When he was nearly back to where he'd started, he saw the sheriff step into the large gap between the boulders, aiming the Yellowboy from his shoulder.

Yakima snugged his rifle against the back of the sheriff's sunburned neck.

Speares froze.

”I'll take my rifle, Sheriff.”

Holding the rifle he'd appropriated from the jailhouse in his left hand, he held his right hand out where Speares could see it.

Speares's back twitched, his head turning slightly to the right.

”Don't be stupid,” Yakima warned.

”You'll kill me anyway.”

”Maybe.” Yakima snapped his fingers. ”The rifle.”

Speares remained frozen for a few seconds, and then his shoulders slumped slightly. He held out the Winchester Yellowboy, and Yakima wrapped his hand around the rear stock. The smooth, familiar walnut and remembered weight of the bra.s.s receiver felt good in his palm.

He prodded Speares's back with both rifle barrels. ”Belly down. Nice and slow.”

Speares growled, ”What're you gonna do?”

”Belly down!”

Speares dropped to his knees, glanced over his left shoulder, his eyes dark with dread, then kicked his legs out and fell to his belly. Again he turned his head to peer over his shoulder. His s.h.a.ggy blond hair flopped over his forehead.

Yakima crouched to remove Speares's revolver from his holster. He tossed the Remington in the rocks, then aimed the Yellowboy at the back of the sheriff's neck. ”If you can't take me me down, how do you expect to take the down, how do you expect to take the gang gang down?” He angled the Yellowboy at a mole behind Speares's right ear. ”Face the dirt.” down?” He angled the Yellowboy at a mole behind Speares's right ear. ”Face the dirt.”

Speares winced, set his chin on the ground. ”Please . . . don't.” His heart thudded and all the blood in his body seemed to rush to his battered nose. He hated the pleading tone in his own voice. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I'm unarmed. Don't shoot me.”

He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his chin and knees to the ground, every muscle taut, waiting for the bullet.

A voice sounded along the slope before him. ”Where the h.e.l.l is he?”

Speares lifted his head sharply. Patchen lay twenty feet away, aiming his Henry rifle out from behind a rock and a stunted cedar, squinting down the barrel. His red face was pinched with pain and fury.

Speares turned to look over his left shoulder. Only sun-bathed rocks and brush behind him.

The breed was gone.

Chapter 11.

Thirty miles south of Yakima and the posse, the Thunder Riders rode in a long line, two abreast, up a winding mesa trail sheathed in creosote, sage, and ocotillo, with large boulders pus.h.i.+ng up around the lone oak or elm. Jack Considine sat astride Wolf, while Anjanette rode a claybank gelding off Considine's right stirrup.

She wore a fringed leather vest over a blue plaid s.h.i.+rt, and the small silver crucifix nestled in her cleavage winked occasionally in the crisp winter sunlight. Her man's Stetson was secured to her head by a horsehair thong swinging free beneath her chin, her rich hair flowing across her shoulders.

She'd appropriated the clothes from the saddlebags of the young outlaw she'd been forced to shoot. She had blood on her hands, but she'd been forced to kill before, when she and Old Antoine had been prospecting in bandito-infested mountains. The pleas of the young gunslick were little more than whispers.

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