A few miles outside the Double C, Wassin cut the faint sign of a trail. He stopped. The three men riding behind him stopped too. They knew his reputation.
This was what Wassin had been searching for. For miles, he had kept a slow pace, always keeping the three other riders far enough behind him so they couldn’t disturb any tracks he might find. And now he had discovered a recently made trail that someone had tried very hard to conceal. In fact, the trail was so well covered that it could have only been found by an expert tracker like Wassin.
Cort Lacey had counted on that.
The early afternoon sun was burning its pinkish-red mark into Wassin’s pallid face, but now it didn’t matter. Now nothing mattered except collecting a ten thousand dollar fee for the pleasure of killing Cort Lacey.
Wassin, smiling, twisted in his saddle to tell the three other men their new orders. “Wait here for thirty minutes,” he told them, “then follow my trail. If you hear any gunfire, race after me with your guns ready.”
One of the men balked, at least tentatively, and he blurted out, “We wasn’t sent by Mr. Cliffords to do any shootin’. He just wanted us to get you, and bring you back to the Double C.”
“Your boss wants me back at the ranch because he’s yellow, and you know it. He doesn’t care where I am just so long as I get Lacey. And that’s just what I’m gonna do ... and you’re gonna help me,” Wassin said sternly, his black eyes boring holes in the three men. They were too scared to disagree. The mutiny was over before it began. But just to sweeten the deal, Wassin said offhandedly, “Probably be a big bonus for the men who help me kill Cort Lacey.” With those words, he turned three unhappy men into three unwilling, if uneasy, accomplices. Satisfied that they would follow his orders, Wassin left them behind.
Following Cort Lacey’s trail was no easy thing to do. Many an Indian would have been fooled by Lacey’s tricks, but Wassin, doggedly, kept on coming. There were times when Wassin thought he lost the scent, times when the tracks disappeared in a creek and no sign could be found of where Lacey had come out of the water, and times when the hunted man had taken his horse over hard rock and hadn’t left so much as a scratch on the surface of the stone ... yet each time Wassin was ready to give up, he would cut across a faint, almost insignificant sign of Lacey’s hidden trail.
It was slow work. Very slow. Wassin knew the three Double C men would soon be catching up to him despite his thirty minute head start.
“Those damn two-bit gunnies,” Wassin muttered to himself, “They’ll make a lot of noise and ruin everything. I’ve got to get a bead on Lacey before they come up my backtrail.”
So Wassin pushed on as fast as he reasonably could, keeping tight to Lacey’s trail, and, like a silent, stalking panther, never giving his prey cause for alarm.
Afternoon shadows were just beginning to lengthen when, from across the space of a large clearing, Wassin found what he was looking for—a target as perfect as he could ever hope to find ... Cort Lacey’s back.
The range was a bit long, and the figure of the man was not entirely clear—his lower body seemed to be hidden behind some rocks. But that back. Oh, that back. Even at a distance of over one hundred yards, it looked like the broad side of the biggest barn in Nebraska.
“This is going to be a whole lot easier than I thought,” Wassin whispered to himself. Ever so quietly he lifted his Winchester, took careful aim at Cort Lacey’s faded blue shirt, and pulled the trigger.
Wassin’s bullet screamed across the clearing, tearing air, ’til it tore through the cloth of Lacey’s shirt. A perfect hit—right between the shoulder blades. Only instead of killing a man named Cort Lacey, Wassin had just murdered a well-dressed tree trunk.
A split-second after the booming explosion of Wassin’s rifle shot, Cort Lacey emerged from the brush. He stood just fifty feet to Wassin’s left. His six-gun was out. Clear and cold was Lacey’s voice as he said bitterly, “You didn’t get me. I’m not as easy to kill as those two old ladies you—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Wassin was already whirling his Winchester toward the sound of Cort’s voice. Wassin hoped to save his bacon by firing the first bullet. It would make all the difference, because he rarely missed.
Only this time, Wassin didn’t get a chance to miss. He was too slow. Cort Lacey, shooting twice from the hip, put a pair of bullets in Wassin’s chest, one piercing a lung.
For one inexpressible second, the pasty-faced killer rocked on his feet and looked with disbelief at the man who had just shot him. A moment later he fell, sprawling onto his chest.
Walking slowly, Cort came up alongside the fallen figure of the hired killer. He could see, by the shallow movement in his sides, that the man who had murdered Ella Frank and Alice Dunbar was still alive. The end, however, was only minutes away. With each breath Wassin took, he exhaled his own life’s blood.
Cort was about to walk back toward his horse, when he heard Wassin mumble, “You ... my richest kill ...”
“How much did you get for murderin’ those old ladies?”
Wassin managed a laugh and then wheezed, “Killed ’em for pleasure.” He started choking on his own blood. When he was able to speak again, he grinned hellishly at Cort and said, “Your death ... a greater pleasure ... ten thousand pleasures.”
Cort dug into one of his pants pockets and pulled out a coin. He tossed it into the dust in front of Wassin’s face. The hired killer pulled himself up to it. It was a twenty five cent piece. When he looked up at Cort for an explanation, Cort just shrugged and said, “Your death, just like your life, is worth about two bits. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
Wassin’s blood covered the coin, and then the shroud of death covered Wassin. His head came to its final rest in a pool of crimson.
There was no question in Cort’s mind that the recent gunfire would draw Double C riders from the ranch down below. Nonetheless, he figured he had plenty of time to pull out before they’d get anywhere near him. That was certainly true if the riders were coming from the Double C—but they weren’t.
Cort was walking across the open field to get his horse when the three men who had been backtracking Wassin suddenly burst into the clearing. Cort, concentrating on Wassin, had forgotten all about them, and was now caught completely flat-footed. There wasn’t so much as an ant hill to hide behind, but it was too late to run for cover anyway. The only thing he could do was hold his ground.
Their guns blazing, the three Double C men came charging toward Cort at a gallop. Cort, a full one hundred yards away, palmed his .44, dropped to one knee to present a smaller target to the onrushing horsemen, and then waited, motionless, for them to come within accurate pistol range. This would be his one chance to reload. He would only get six shots. There was little room for error, and a damned big need for luck.
Bullets whipped past Cort, slamming into the ground behind him. As the riders galloped across the clearing, their aim steadily improved. Still, Cort kept himself from squeezing the trigger of his Colt. Closer and closer they came ’til they were less than fifty yards away, charging forward in the hope of either shooting or trampling him. Finally, one of their bullets nicked the heel of Cort’s right boot. That was close enough. If he waited any longer, they’d be nicking his heart. It was time to fight back.
Lead messengers of death poured out the muzzle of Cort’s six-gun. His first bullet grazed the lead rider’s temple, sending him tumbling off his horse to the ground, unconscious.
Cort’s second and third shots ripped holes in the air, but nothing else. He was shooting too quickly. After taking more careful aim, and just about to let fire once again, a slug, with the impact of a mule’s kick, smashed into his right shoulder.
Rocked back out of his kneeling position and momentarily stunned, Cort fought to regain his balance while struggling to keep a tight grip on his Colt. The two remaining riders were almost on top of him.
With bullets whistling through the air and the ground trembling from the galloping horses that were only a dozen yards from trampling him, Cort raised his bloody arm and blasted away with his .44. He hit one high up in the gut, the bullet burning its way into the man’s chest cavity, making a pulpy mess of the rider’s insides.
Cort swiveled his aim to the last Double C man, and just in time. They both fired simultaneously at point blank range.
Life and death are often a matter of inches. It was the difference between Cort’s life and the Double C man’s death. A bullet creased the right side of Cort’s neck. An inch or two to the left and Cort would have had to find another way of breathing. The slug from Cort’s .44 found a more permanent home. It ripped into the skull of the last of the three Double C riders.
He toppled from the saddle after both his horse and the horse of the gut shot man galloped by on either side of Cort.
In the aftermath of all this blood and thunder, Cort Lacey was still alive ... barely. Or so it felt.
Blood trickled from the crease on his throat, but it gushed from the hole in his shoulder. He slowed the bleeding, only not enough to stay alive ’til morning. Cort was weak. This wound, so soon after the last one could be enough to kill him. He had to have help. And the only place he could go for that was the Five Fingers.
Cort dragged himself to his horse. He thought of how long a ride it would be across the valley, how long a ride across the twelve-year-old gulf between himself and the Five Fingers. But mostly he thought about trying to stay alive—to see his brother, to see Clare.
Cliffords’ men would be coming soon. There was no time to lose. He pulled himself up into the saddle, then tied himself so he wouldn’t fall if he blacked out. At last, he was on his way to the Five Fingers, a desperate bloody, maybe dying man.