They reached the foot of the hills and ducked at once into a brush-filled wash. Dade, riding in front of Roxie, rode straight on until a second cleft, cutting in at right angles, drew his notice. Immediately he wheeled the chestnut into it, and with the girl following closely, urged the horse up the steep grade.
Far back on the mesa men were yelling back and forth, and shortly a gunshot sounded—indication to all of Cushman’s party that their quarry had again been sighted. They would immediately answer the summons, racing to regroup at the base of the mountain and from there press the search. With the chestnut heaving mightily, Lockett gained a narrow ledge on the face of the slope, halted, waited until Roxie and the bay had moved in behind him. Lifting a hand for silence, he listened. At once the rapid tattoo of horses pounding across the mesa from the south reached them. It was the two riders they had seen earlier.
“Watched where we turned in,” he said. “More’n likely they’ll be trying now to head us off.”
Roxie laid her hand on the butt of the rifle slung from her saddle. “I’ve got bullets enough to take care of them,” she said in an emotionless voice.
Lockett studied the girl thoughtfully. She had spoken as if using a gun on a man meant nothing, that killing was the answer to any problem, and readily acceptable. But he reckoned she had a right to be feeling that way; it was only a state of mind, a groove of bitterness into which she had been plunged by the loss of her brother and their ranch holdings. It would pass, he was certain; Roxie was a fine, well brought-up girl with a good education. She would shake off the urgent need for vengeance that possessed her along with the idea that a bullet was the way to set all things right, and become her own self again—he was certain of it. Or was he? Such beliefs had been his, he realized; he had started out to exact revenge from the man who had wronged him and would have done so had not someone beaten him to it. How, then, could he be so sure that Roxie would not have those same instincts, that she would forget her need to kill Ed Cushman? Was it simply because she was a woman?
He shook his head, finding no answers to his own thoughts, and returned to the moment. “Can’t do it that way. One shot from that rifle and we’d draw them all.”
“Then what can we do?” she asked in a quick voice. “I don’t intend to let them get close enough—”
“We won’t,” Lockett broke in, a bit startled by the harshness of her tone. “Just keep following me, quiet as you can. And forget about using that gun.”
Roxie only shrugged, kicked her heels into the bay’s flanks, and started him forward in the wake of the big chestnut. The shelf led them across the slope for a time and then began to sink lower, make its way into a fairly wide arroyo that slashed down from the peaks and ridges far to their right and above them. Dade gave the higher regions consideration. If they could make it up to the area, which appeared extremely wild and broken as well as being thickly covered over with oak brush, mountain mahogany, and other tough growth, they would have their problem solved. But doing so without exposing themselves as they crossed the periodic breaks of open ground would be the drawback; at such times they would offer easy targets for the guns of Cushman’s riders.
“They’re coming.”
Lockett heard the click of a horse’s hoof against a rock at the same moment Roxie did. It would be the pair that had come up from the south end of the mesa; none of the others could have had time to move in so close. Dade looked around hurriedly. The trail across the slope they had followed turned sharply downward a few yards farther on, branching off at a fork, previously unseen, that struck for higher levels. Apparently the two raiders were climbing the lower trail with the thought in mind of continuing on up the mountain.
“They’re not sure where we went,” he said in a low voice, and put the gelding into motion on a course straight ahead.
Roxie moved in behind him and they walked their mounts hurriedly but quietly as possible, taking the turn to the right when they reached it that would eventually end at the towering peaks far above.
“They’ll see us,” the girl began uncertainly.
Lockett did not slow but pointed to a dense stand of cedars this side of a broad meadow through which the trail made its way. “Not if we’re in there.”
They pressed on, gained the cover with the thud of the raiders’ climbing horses a solid sound behind them. Motioning for Roxie to remain quiet in the saddle, Dade took up a position on the opposite side of the path.
“They’ll be tracking us,” he whispered. “When they come by, I’ll take care of them both. You keep back.”
Roxie said nothing, only moved the bay deeper into the brush that crowded the shoulders of the trail. Lockett, pistol in hand, listened intently. Far down the hillside he could hear Cushman and the others talking, but at such a distance the words were unintelligible. They were climbing the slope, he knew he could be certain of that. Leaning forward, Dade rested one hand on the chestnut’s neck, seeking to keep the horse quiet. The two men had reached the fork in the path, had halted to examine the tracks left by the bay and the gelding.
“Headed up,” one said. “Trying to reach them high rocks.”
“I can see that. Going to be hell chasing them out of there, was they to make it.”
The other rider swore. “Hell, they can’t be that far ahead of us! Come on, let’s keep moving.”
There were a few moments’ hesitation on the part of his companion, then: “Reckon we ought to wait for the boss and the boys?”
“Not me! You can if you want. I’m aiming to collect me that extra reward Cushman was talking about.”
At once the other said: “Dang nigh forgot! Goes for me, too.”
The thump of hoofs resumed along with the faint clatter of sliding gravel, the quiet swish of disturbed branches whipping back into place. Lockett glanced at the girl. She was hunched over her saddle, had drawn the Henry from its boot, and was holding it ready in both hands. He pulled the extra pistol he now carried from its place under his waistband, held both up for her to see, and shook his head warningly, signifying that he was well equipped to do the chore of halting the men and disarming them.
The sound of the approaching horses became loud. Tense, Dade raised one of the weapons butt first, prepared to use it as a club. The other he held in usual fashion, barrel pointed straight ahead. He would knock the first rider senseless with the one, still be in position to hold his partner at bay with the second.
Abruptly the riders were in view—two lean-faced individuals with eyes intent on the trail up which they were moving. The man in the lead was as he’d hoped he’d be—no more than an arm’s reach away. The other, however, was keeping to the opposite shoulder of the path. Lockett swore silently. Such complicated matters called for a change of plan; he’d have to knock out the man behind first. Poised, he let the pair draw abreast, pass. As the rear horse moved by, Lockett suddenly jammed spurs into the chestnut, sent him lunging forward. Both men hauled up in surprise, whirled to face him. Dade lashed out with the pistol in his right hand, caught the outlaw nearest on the side of the head. The man groaned, pitched sideways off the saddle. Instantly Lockett spun to meet the second rider. In that same fleeting moment he saw Roxie swing the Henry rifle by its barrel. It arced through the air. The stock of the weapon struck the man at the base of his skull and the crack of bone was like the snap of a dry twig. He rocked forward as his startled horse shied away, and then as his arms dropped limply, he fell to the ground.
Lockett was off the chestnut immediately. The rider he had knocked from the saddle was on his hands and knees beside the trail. Blood was dripping from a gash laid open along the side of his head by Dade’s pistol. Stepping up beside him, Dade plucked the man’s pistol from its holster, tossed it off into the brush. He turned then to the one felled by Roxie. She, too, had dismounted and, holding the broken stocked Henry in her hands, was looking down at the man, her features utterly devoid of expression. Lockett squatted, examined the limp figure briefly, and drew himself erect.
“Dead. Was quite a wallop you gave him.”
Roxie passed the rifle to him. “I’ve ruined your gun,” she said.
He stared at her wonderingly for a breath of time, and then glanced at the rifle. “No matter. It was getting old,” he said, and tossed it aside. Moving forward a few paces, he looked off down the slope. “Best we keep going. Won’t take Cushman long to catch up, find these two.”
Roxie nodded, turned to the horse the dead man had been riding, and crossed to where the animal, reins tangled in the brush, was waiting. Jerking the rifle from its boot, she took the belt of cartridges hanging from the saddle horn, and returned to Lockett. “These the bullets for this gun?” she asked, holding them close for his inspection.
Dade checked them, nodded, and watched her sling them over a shoulder as she dropped back to the bay. Sliding the Winchester into the scabbard once filled by the Henry, she swung onto her horse. “Which way?” she asked in a cool, businesslike way.
Lockett glanced again down the slope. There was still no sign of Cushman or any more of his men, only the faint, muted sounds of their progress as they worked their way uptrail carefully. He switched his attention to the rider he’d knocked cold. The man no longer was on hands and knees, but now lay sprawled full length at the edge of the brush.
“Reckon that depends on what we’re aiming to do,” Dade said, facing the girl. “We could go higher, find a place to hole up till dark, then get out of the country.”
Roxie met his eyes squarely. The hardness of her had grown more intense and there was a coldness that reminded him of a hired killer he’d once known. “I’m not leaving the country,” she said quietly. “Not until I’ve killed Ed Cushman.”