Part 18 (2/2)
He scrambled on down the bank to where Anjanette held fast to Wolf's reins, the stallion snorting and starting at the gunfire.
”Easy, boy, easy!” Yakima said, slinging the rifle over his shoulder again.
”You go on ahead,” Anjanette said, breathless, holding the stallion's reins in both hands, her wet hair hanging limp on her shoulders. ”They'll be after you now. I'll only slow you down.”
”Don't tempt me.” Yakima righted the saddle and reached under Wolf's belly to tighten the latigo strap. ”Now they'll kill you for sure.”
Thumbing cartridges from his belt loops into his Winchester's receiver, he climbed back up the bank and took a cautious look over the lip. The river gurgled between its fog-shrouded banks. None of the desperadoes were wading across. But yells and shouts rose from the direction of the horses, upstream about sixty yards.
They were saddling up, preparing to give chase. Three were just now galloping along the opposite sh.o.r.e- jostling shadows within the fog-riding downstream toward the ford.
Yakima slung his rifle behind his shoulder, then plucked his Colt from its holster and thumbed open the loading gate. Except for his finding out Anjanette's ugly secret, all was going according to plan. He just had to make sure the desperadoes stayed on his trail till it led them to Patchen's and Speares's ambush.
When he'd filled the Colt's six cylinders, he triggered two shots over the lip of the bank, in the direction of the three riders now splas.h.i.+ng across the river ford to his left, then turned and ran down the bank, grabbed the reins out of Anjanette's hands, and swung into the saddle.
”What were the shots for?” she asked as he slung her up behind him.
”Wouldn't want to lose your friends.”
She tightened her arms around his waist as he gigged the horse up the opposite hill and down the other side, racing into the gradually rising northern hills. Keeping the horse to a moderate gallop and glancing back to make sure the desperadoes' shadows were still behind him, he angled east, in the direction of the cathedral ruins.
He hoped he could follow his own back trail in the dark. The Thunder Riders were coiled up and rattling, and he'd need the lawmen's help to take them down.
Wolf wanted to run full out, but Yakima checked him down, not wanting to lose the horse to a chuckhole or rock or one of the many narrow, deep gullies that scarred this high Mexican desert. He also didn't want to lose the Thunder Riders, though several glances behind gave him no reason to worry. The bouncing shadows snaked out through the darkness about a hundred yards away, moving fast and showing no sign of slowing down. As the gang pa.s.sed before a pale rock wall below him, Yakima was able to count seven riders.
Staring down the ridge, Yakima said, ”Nabbing you p.i.s.s-burned him good. I don't think he even left anyone with the gold.”
Anjanette turned toward Yakima. ”Is that why you took me? For bait?”
It was only half the reason, but Yakima said, ”Why else?”
He turned the black away from the ridge crest and heeled him up a narrow pa.s.s between jagged rock walls sheathed in creosote and sycamores. The cloud cover had thinned, and the stars and a sickle moon cast a ghostly illumination onto the trail, which was probably an old Spanish smuggling route.
The better light allowed the gang to push their horses harder. When the jumbled cathedral ruins rose on the mesa ahead of Yakima, the desperadoes were probably only seventy yards behind him-close enough that he could hear their shouts and the occasional chuffs and blows of their mounts.
Yakima loped the horse on past the ruins, looking around but seeing no sign of Patchen or Spears-they were probably snugged down among the crumbling rock and adobe, waiting. Fifty yards beyond the ruins, Yakima turned Wolf off the trail and behind a steep shelf of sandstone rising like a s.h.i.+p's prow above the chaparral.
”Stay here,” he told Anjanette as he swung his right foot over the saddle horn and dropped to the ground, slinging the reins over a cedar. He slipped his rifle off his shoulder and rammed a sh.e.l.l into the chamber.
”Yakima,” she called as he climbed the steep, stone-scaled rise.
He paused to glance back at her. She'd moved up into his saddle and regarded him over her shoulder. Wolf was contentedly cropping galetta gra.s.s.
”Be careful,” Anjanette said softly.
He studied the rocky ledge before him, thoughtful. Shucking his revolver from its holster, he turned back. ”Catch.” He tossed the gun down to her, and she caught it with both hands in the air above her head. ”You might need that.”
He hoisted himself over the lip of the rise, gained his feet, and jogged back in the direction they'd come from, weaving through the cedars, creosote, and Spanish bayonet, staying left of the trail. When he saw the cathedral ruins cropping up ahead, he ducked into a boulder snag and wedged himself into the cracks, with a good view from forty yards away.
The trail pa.s.sed between him and the ruins.
He stared along his back trail, his own shod hoofprints limned by the light from the moon and stars. In an arch of the ruined church, he picked out a man-shaped shadow. Either Patchen or Speares, waiting.
Yakima turned back up the trail. The gang should have arrived at the church by now. Back in the direction of the canyon, nothing moved. A heavy silence weighed upon the desert. Not even the lonely yammer of a coyote or the sinewy flap of a bat's wings.
”Breed,” Speares called from the shadows of the ruins.
Yakima's gut tightened. ”Shhhh!” ”Shhhh!”
”They follow you?”
Somewhere behind Yakima a twig snapped.
As he turned to look, a horse whinnied on the far side of the cathedral. He turned back to the church as two rifles spoke, one after another, echoing inside the ruins.
Speares shouted, ”They're behind us!”
Three more rifle shots exploded across the night.
Men shouted. Horses screamed.
Chapter 22.
At the same time that rifles and revolvers barked in the direction of the hulking church ruins, hoof thuds rose in the dark scrub behind Yakima. He whipped around. Guns flashed in the scrub, bullets barking off the rocks around him, peppering his face with sand and gravel.
He scrambled onto his heels, dove right as two more slugs tore into the rocks where he'd been crouched. He brought the Winchester up as two riders burst out of the brush-a dun horse on his right, a cream on his left. Starlight reflected off trace chains and gun iron.
Yakima rolled onto his right shoulder and levered the Winchester until five smoking casings lay in the gravel behind him and both riders had tumbled back or sideways from the saddles of their screaming horses.
One horse bounded past Yakima, and the other swerved so sharply right that it fell in the loose gravel. It scrambled to its feet and galloped away. Behind it, dust sifted and gun smoke webbed. The fallen desperadoes thrashed and groaned. The nearest one heaved onto a knee and clawed a revolver from a shoulder holster.
Yakima stood and drilled a round through the man's chest, punching him back in the dust with a clipped grunt. He fired two more rounds into the other man, stilling him as well.
Hearing guns popping in the ruins behind him, Yakima dropped to a knee and began reloading the Winchester from his cartridge belt. He'd risen and turned toward the ruins when the rake of a sharp breath rose on his left.
As the clouds scudded away from the moon, casting a pale radiance across the night, he jerked his head around. A big man with long black hair leapt off a boulder, gritting his teeth as he plunged toward Yakima, a revolver in one hand, a wide-bladed bowie in the other. Knowing he had no time to bring the Yellowboy to bear, Yakima dropped the rifle and threw his hands up.
The revolver in the man's right fist barked. The slug tore across the top of Yakima's right shoulder. At the same time, Yakima grabbed the man's left wrist, jerking the knife wide.
Yakima fell straight back. The man-a half-breed by the look of him-fell on top of him. He released the revolver and hammered Yakima's face with his left fist, then wrenched his knife hand free of Yakima's grip. As he raised the knife for a killing stab, Yakima plunged his flattened hand, palm down, fingers out, wrist-deep into the man's gut. He angled it up toward the heart.
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