CHAPTER 22
Glenn Larsen booted his roan into a ground-eating gallop straight south across the Wyoming desert.
The man he was chasing had swung his own mount from the west to the south, and Larsen felt himself and the roan closing on him gradually. Larsen hunkered low in the saddle. He’d lost his hat in the chase, and his hair blew around his head in the hot wind. His ribs cried out against his crouched position and against the jarring of the hard ride, but the young marshal only gritted his teeth and endured it. The man he was chasing was among the gang of the three killers in the jail wagon. He’d helped rob the stage, rape the female passengers, murdered the men, and driven the stage and team off a cliff and into a canyon.
He was one of them. He was here to spring his kill-crazy partners. For that the man would either be taken to Denver for trial, or he would die. Larsen would not allow those killers of his wife and of Henry and of the entire town of Dry Fork to be set free so they could continue their plundering, pillaging, and raping like a band of savage, sword-wielding barbarians from the Dark Ages.
Ahead, Larsen’s quarry suddenly dropped out of sight. It was as though the ground had swallowed him. Larsen saw only the man’s sifting tan dust. The young marshal stared straight out over the horse’s poll, looking for the man ahead of him. Doing so, he didn’t see the sudden drop-off until too late. The horse gave a shrill whinny as the ground suddenly disappeared beneath it, and the horse and rider were tumbling down into a canyon.
Larsen cursed and kicked free of his stirrups.
The horse gave another terrified scream as it and Larsen plunged toward the incline ten feet beneath them. The horse struck first and rolled, kicking up the chalky alkali dust that rose like a clinging white blanket. Larsen hit the incline a quarter second later and rolled down the steep hill. He was vaguely aware of the horse rolling to his right. He was more aware of the crackle of guns, of bullets striking the slope around him.
Trap, he thought. I rode right into their trap like some shaggy-headed, bucktoothed army recruit fresh out of Jefferson Barracks.
He and the roan struck the bottom of a sandy wash at the same time. Giving another exasperated whinny, the horse rose, dust and sand streaming off it and billowing around it. The saddle now hung beneath it, as did Larsen’s sheathed carbine, well out of reach. As the horse ran off down the wash to the west, seemingly unhurt but only frightened, Larsen rolled up against a hummock in the wash’s center. He’d taken a brief glance ahead of him, had seen at least three shooters triggering rifles at him from the bank on the wash’s far side, maybe fifty yards away.
Too close. Too damn close.
On the other hand, since he had only his revolver now, they were too far away for him to be able to return fire with much accuracy.
And his ribs were barking at him loudly, causing him to grind his back molars and suck sharp, painful breaths through gritted teeth.
“Damn fool move, Glenn,” he berated himself, keeping his head down as more bullets hammered the top of the hummock. “Damn fool move! You’re not thinking clearly!”
His physical pain and his mental agony had clouded his mind. He could not get Tiffanie’s screams out of his head. For Chrissakes, they’d just started a life together! They’d intended to raise a big family and grow old together! And they would have, too, if not for those savages, just like the ones throwing lead at him now!
He fumbled Henry’s Colt from the holster on his right leg, glad that it hadn’t fallen out during his tumble. Pressing his back against the hummock, he cocked the revolver and waited for a gap in the shooting so he could return fire. If he could take out one of his ambushers, possibly two, he might have a chance of getting out of the mess he’d gotten himself into.
When the gap he was looking for came, he half turned, leveled the Colt over the top of the hummock, picked out a target, and fired. He saw through his billowing powder smoke that he’d missed cleanly, for the man had seen his move and pulled his head back behind some brush fringing the lip of the wash. Besides, Larsen’s ribs ached too badly for him to adequately steady his shooting hand.
They resumed triggering lead at him. As they did, he crabbed to the northeast side of the hummock and dared a look around the edge. He winced when he saw the ambushers spreading out. One dropped quickly down the ravine’s bank, landed flat-footed on the bed of the wash, and before Larsen could draw a bead on him, dove behind a rock about six feet out from the wash’s bank. The man was to Larsen’s left. Glenn could tell now from the sounds of the continuing gunfire from the other two men that they were moving to the southwest. Soon, they too would drop into the wash and continue firing, pinning him down, until they’d surrounded him and turned him into a sieve.
He pressed his back against the side of the hummock, rested the Colt in his lap.
Odd how he felt no fear. In fact, what was he feeling exactly as the bullets kept coming toward him, spanging off rocks, plowing into the top of the hummock within inches of his head, blowing sand in his hair?
Relief?
His torment would soon be over. He hadn’t gotten the three killers to Denver, but that was all right. Maybe the two former outlaws, Braddock and Baker, would. They’d have to beat tall odds, but maybe they could do it. If not, well . . . Larsen would no longer care because he’d be dead. If there really was a Heaven, like all the sky pilots talked about, he’d join his beloved Tiffanie there. Maybe Henry, too. He could apologize to both of them for the stupid, tragic mistake he’d made, hauling the three killers alive to his jail when he could so easily have shot them all as they’d slept and saved the lives of most of the town....
Larsen frowned curiously as the gunfire tapered off. At least, the near shots did. They were replaced by the reports of more distant rifles. A man on the wash’s bank howled. There was the thud of a man dropping to the ground.
“Benji, we got trouble—pull out!” another man shouted from the lip of the wash somewhere to the west.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” came Benji’s reply. Benji must be the ambusher who’d dropped into the wash with Larsen and was hunkered behind the rock.
“Two are shootin’ from the northern ridge!” the first man shouted. “Fall back! Fall back!”
Larsen had seen it by then—puffs of smoke rising from the ridge behind him—the ridge over which he’d ridden the roan so carelessly, so stupidly, right into the killers’ trap. The bullets weren’t landing near him. The shooters up there had to be Braddock and Baker. In fact, squinting his swollen eyes, he could see Braddock’s black hat just above the barrel of the rifle on the ridge to Larsen’s left, and the high-crowned cream Stetson over the barrel of Baker’s Colt’s revolving rifle to the young marshal’s right. The two men were spaced about fifty yards apart and really giving Larsen’s attackers hell.
“Hold up, Duke!” Benji yelled. “Cover me, dammit!”
Larsen turned his head to peer around the left side of his covering hummock. Benji just then bounded up from behind his boulder and ran back toward the ravine’s bank. He was a short, stocky man with dark skin and shaggy black hair. He’d just reached the bank when Larsen angled his Colt around the hummock, cocked the piece, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
The Colt barked and bucked.
Benji howled a curse and, half turning toward Larsen, grabbed his right leg. The young marshal’s bullet had plowed into the back of it. Gritting his teeth, revealing several gaps in his smile, Benji started to raise the Henry rifle in his hands. Larsen clicked back the Colt’s hammer, aimed again, and triggered that second round through Benji’s chest, just above the open, skin-exposing V of his partly unbuttoned, pin-striped shirt.
Benji flew backward against the bank. He grunted and groaned as he slid down the face of the bank to sit on his butt at the bottom of the sandy wash. He stared wide-eyed at Larsen, his dark brown eyes glazed with shock. He looked down at the blood bubbling up from the hole in his chest. He brushed at it with one gloved hand. That hand flopped down to his side.
The shooting had stopped. Larsen could hear the fast thuds of a galloping horse dwindling quickly to the south. One of the three shooters had gotten away.
Larsen glowered against his misery as he heaved himself to his feet. He stumbled over to where Benji sat, dying.
“How many of you are there?” Larsen asked, raising the Colt and aiming it at the dying man’s forehead. “How many have come?”
Benji’s eyes were slow to focus on the young man aiming the Colt at him. A faintly mocking smile pulled at the corners of his wide, thick-lipped mouth inside a dusty, shaggy black beard. “Oh,” he wheezed out. “Oh . . . they’ll all be here . . . soon. We protect . . . our . . . own s-see?”
He broadened his jeering smile at Larsen.
“G-good . . . luck,” the man added.
The young marshal drilled a finishing round through the man’s forehead.
He lowered the gun and turned to stare at the opposite ridge. He could see neither of his two benefactors. As he began making his slow way back across the ravine, heading for the other side, hoof thuds rose on his left. Slash was trotting up the wash on his Appaloosa, trailing Larsen’s roan. Slash had reset the saddle and scabbard. He rode up to the young lawman and glared down at him.
“That was some kind of a damn tinhorn move!”
“I know,” Larsen said weakly, already feeling the fool. “I know it was.”
“If you want to kill yourself—that’s one thing. But I had to leave the wagon to help bail you out of this jam you were in. I had to leave Jenny alone with the wagon and those killers. There was a good chance that other killers were waiting for just that to happen, so they’d have a clear path to the wagon . . . and Jenny.”
Slash snapped the words out angrily, lashing Larsen with them.
The young marshal felt doubly stupid and guilty.
Slash fairly leaped out of his saddle, unsheathed one of his pretty stag-butted Colts, pressed the barrel to Larsen’s forehead, and cocked it. “If you don’t want to live, kid, just give me the word and I’ll remedy the situation for you!”
Larsen stared back at the man’s enraged, dark eyes. He moved his lips but couldn’t form words. He wasn’t sure what to say.
“Do you want to live?” Slash asked him.
“Huh?”
“Do you want to live? Simple enough question.”
Larsen thought about it. He remembered how relieved he’d felt only a few minutes ago when the killers had been closing in on him. Oddly, that feeling was gone. He’d been happy to see Slash and Pecos sending lead down on his attackers. While he’d been prepared to die, he realized now that he was happy to still be alive.
How could that be? She was gone. Their house and their future . . . their town . . . were gone. Henry was gone. But he, Glenn Larsen, was happy to be alive.
“Yes,” he said with some chagrin now, staring back at Slash, nodding. “Yes . . . I want to live.”
“All right.” Slash pulled the gun away from Larsen’s head, depressed the hammer. “Whenever you feel like giving up the ghost again, let me know and we’ll cut you loose. No more risking my life or his or the girl’s or our chances of getting those killers to Cheyenne. All right?”
Larsen drew a breath. “All right.”
“All right.” Slash shoved the roan’s reins at Larsen and swung up onto his Appaloosa’s back. “I sent Pecos back to the wagon, to make sure that wasn’t part of the trap. Believe me, he’s gonna get his own tongue-lashing. He shouldn’t have taken that bait, either. I’m gonna hustle back there to make sure everything’s all right. I don’t hear gunfire, so that makes me feel better.”
Before he could put the steel to the Appy’s flanks, Larsen said, “Slash?”
The former outlaw turned back to him, frowning impatiently.
“Thanks for saving my fool hide.”
Slash stared back at him. The old outlaw’s gaze softened. Finally, a faint smile drew up his mouth corners. He winked, then turned forward and spurred the Appaloosa up the ridge.