Part 19 (2/2)

Patchen looked down at Yakima. ”How is it you always make it out o' these sc.r.a.pes clean as a whistle?”

”Not this time.” Yakima closed his hand over the throbbing wound in his upper right arm. He had several more burns-one along his side, another along his neck- but the shoulder wound needed tending first or he'd bleed to death.

Wincing and squeezing the wound, he looked around, listening, wondering if any desperadoes were still alive and lurking.

As if in reply to his silent question, a horse whinnied shrilly somewhere off in the darkness. Yakima whipped his head around, trying to get his bearings. As he did, another scream lifted. A girl's scream.

Anjanette.

Yakima wheeled, stumbled over a gravestone. Shoving the pain in his arm to the back of his mind, he hobbled and skipped over the graves, making his way toward the adobe wall. As he leapt the wall, a revolver popped in the distant hills, and the horse screamed shrilly.

His gut tightening, Yakima sprinted west around the cathedral, striding through the chaparral, heading back toward the shelf where he'd left the horse and the girl. As he ran, he levered the Winchester, but the magazine was empty. He dropped his hand to his cartridge belt, but all the loops were empty as well.

He paused to set the rifle down against a boulder, then, grabbing his revolver from his holster, continued to sprint through the chaparral, leaping cacti and rocks and deadfall branches. When he came to the shelf where Anjanette and Wolf had been, he stopped and aimed the revolver straight out from his shoulder.

Only rocks and gravel and the several gnarled pinons.

A horse snorted to his left. Yakima bounded that way, leaping an ocotillo. He stopped suddenly. A long black shape lay in the galleta gra.s.s before him. Yakima felt as though a lance had pierced his ribs.

Wolf was down, his sleek black coat glistening in the starlight. The horse was on his side, breathing hard, the right stirrup rising and falling rapidly. As Wolf's eyes rolled back toward Yakima, Yakima spied the dark fluid gleaming behind the horse's ear.

Yakima moved forward slowly, suddenly feeling as though his moccasins were filled with lead. The horse snorted again, jerked his head as though trying to lift it. Blood gushed from the wound behind his ear.

”Easy, boy,” Yakima whispered.

The horse stared up at Yakima, beseeching, sliding one hoof forward, but slowly the lids began to fall.

Yakima held out his hand, knees trembling as he crouched down beside the black. A revolver popped ahead, the flash puncturing the darkness about fifty yards away and up a slight rise. A girl groaned.

A man yelled, ”Sorry about the horse, but he's been trouble since the day we met! I don't know how you ever put up with such a contrary beast!” The mocking laugh died suddenly. ”If you want the girl, you're gonna have to come and get her.”

Anjanette gave a clipped, anguished cry.

Yakima straightened and peered up the rise. Two shadows stood side by side against the stars. As Yakima strode toward them, leaving the dying horse behind him, unable to put Wolf out of his misery, rage fueled a strange calm inside him. Keeping his eyes on the pair at the top of the rise-Anjanette and a man in a funnel-brimmed Stetson decorated with silver conchos-he picked his way through the brush.

In his right hand he squeezed the stag grips of his .44, keeping the barrel aimed at the ground.

Anjanette's voice trembled. ”Don't come any closer, Yakima. He'll kill you.”

Yakima moved slowly up the slope, the two figures growing and sharpening before him. One arm crooked around the girl's neck, aiming a revolver at her temple, the man was grinning, white teeth gleaming beneath his mustache.

A handsome, dimple-cheeked devil in a string tie, checked vest, and gaudily st.i.tched deerskin coat: Jack Considine.

As Yakima topped the rise and closed the gap between himself and the desperado and Anjanette, the man's eyes narrowed nervously. He shuffled straight back, pulling Anjanette along with him. Her boot clipped a stone, and she stumbled, but Considine held her tight against him, pressing the barrel of his revolver against her right temple.

She stared at Yakima, her eyes bright, teeth gritted. The silver crucifix nestled in her cleavage winked in the starlight.

As Yakima stopped ten feet from Considine and the girl, the desperado's smile grew cold. He looked Yakima up and down, spat to one side. ”So you're the b.a.s.t.a.r.d after my gold and my woman.”

Yakima gripped the Colt so hard his knuckles throbbed. He no longer felt the wound in his left arm. ”The woman and the horse. I have no use for the gold.”

Considine's right eye narrowed slightly, then both eyes dropped to the gun in Yakima's fist. ”Drop the gun and I'll turn her loose. Don't Don't drop the gun and I'll kill her.” drop the gun and I'll kill her.”

”Her life for mine?”

”That's right. Hold on to that gun, and you'll both both die.” die.”

Anjanette snarled a curse as she struggled against Considine's arm, curled taut around her neck. Tears welled from her eyes, dribbled down her bruised, dusty cheeks. ”Don't do it, Yakima.”

Yakima held Considine's gaze with an implacable one of his own. He squeezed the Colt's grips, slid his index finger back and forth across the trigger. Hot blood coursed through him. Several times, standing there, he felt his hand begin to lift the revolver, and in his mind's eye he aimed at Considine's head and pulled the trigger.

He looked at Anjanette, her chest heaving as she stared back at him.

Considine slowly uncoiled his left arm from around her neck and shoved her out in front of him, holding the revolver behind her back. He extended his left hand toward Yakima, palm up, and dipped his chin slightly. The corners of his mouth lifted, the dimples in his cheeks deepening.

Yakima wanted to lift his hand and turn over the gun. But he kept seeing Wolf lying dead in the gra.s.s behind him. His grip on the revolver wouldn't loosen. Before he knew what he was doing, he'd jerked the Colt up. He aimed straight at Considine's head, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger.

Click!

He glanced at the aimed Colt in horror.

He'd fired all six shots. His eyes flicked back toward Considine. The desperado's lips bunched with fury, eyes blazing.

There was a bark, and as the revolver flashed and smoked behind Anjanette, she jerked as though struck by lightning, her eyes snapping wide. The bullet opened her s.h.i.+rt and flung the crucifix straight up in the air as it hammered out of her chest and nipped Yakima's right arm before careening into the darkness behind him.

”No!” Yakima shouted. Yakima shouted.

As the girl was punched forward and off to Yakima's right, crumpling, Yakima leapt toward Considine. He grabbed the wrist of the desperado's gun hand, shoved the revolver out to his left as Considine tripped the trigger. The pistol's bark was still echoing as Yakima bulled the outlaw straight back and down, ramming his fists blindly at the desperado's face.

The hill dropped sharply behind them, and Yakima found himself, his own limbs entangled with Considine's, rolling down the hill through sand, gravel, and sage, cacti nipping at his arms and legs and shoulders. Halfway down the hill they bounced off a boulder, separated, and continued rolling down side by side until both piled up at the bottom, at the edge of a dry creek bed.

Blood oozing from cuts and sc.r.a.pes, his head swimming from the fall, Yakima gained a knee and peered along the bank. Considine struggled to his own knees, grunting and wheezing. He reached down toward his right boot, straightened with a pistol in his hand.

There was a ratcheting click as he thumbed the hammer back.

Considine's shoulders rose and fell as he caught his breath, and his lips stretched, perfect teeth flas.h.i.+ng. He straightened and turned to face Yakima, raising his gun hand heavily.

Hoofbeats sounded suddenly, quickly growing louder. The ground trembled beneath Yakima's knees. He and Considine glanced toward the hill. An enormous ink-black figure plunged off the side of the hill like a tidal wave.

Considine screamed and raised an arm above his head. With a bone-chilling shriek, the black stallion bulled into Considine, lifting the outlaw two feet straight up and then punching him back into the riverbed, hat and revolver flying in opposite directions.

”Aaghhhhh!” Considine groaned as he smacked the dry creek bed's rocks with a thunderous thump, then rolled as the horse's scissoring hooves kicked and dragged the outlaw into the middle of the wash. Considine groaned as he smacked the dry creek bed's rocks with a thunderous thump, then rolled as the horse's scissoring hooves kicked and dragged the outlaw into the middle of the wash.

”No!” the outlaw screamed as Wolf galloped toward the opposite bank, then spun and headed back toward the writhing desperado.

Considine lifted his head and ground his heels into the rocks, trying to crab backward on his b.u.t.t. ”Call him off! Call him off off !” !”

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