CHAPTER 24
Slash galloped over a rise and down the north side.
Ahead, the jail wagon remained where they’d left it on the shaggy two-track trail. His heart lightened. Since he’d left the canyon and young Larsen, he’d imagined any number of horrific events, all involving the young schoolteacher and the gang that had come to spring their partners.
Thankfully, that hadn’t happened.
Pecos was there now, standing with the teacher a hundred feet west of the wagon.
Wait. Something was wrong.
Slash reined his Appy to a halt, scrutinized Pecos and the young teacher. They were standing close together, and Pecos had his hand around Jenny’s waist, lending comfort. The three killers sat slouched in the jail wagon, staring at the pair. Jenny stood with her head down. She appeared to be sobbing.
What the hell . . . ?
Slash booted the Appaloosa into a hard gallop.
“What’s wrong,” he said, checking the mount down near the girl and Pecos. “What the hell happened?”
Pecos looked sheepish as he patted the girl’s back. Jenny turned sharply to Slash and said, “Nothing. I just let them get to me, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?” Slash asked from the saddle.
“It’s my fault,” Pecos said, looking up at Slash. “I never should have ridden off like that. I’m the reason the whole thing happened. Why the kid left and then you had to leave her alone.”
“What whole thing, dammit?”
Jenny looked at Slash. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again. Her face was drawn and pale behind the bruises they’d given to her when they so violently ravaged her. A cold stone dropped in Slash’s belly.
“What’d they say to you?” he asked through a growl. “When you were alone with them, they said something. What was it?”
Pecos looked sharply at his partner. “Don’t cheat the hangman, Slash!”
Slash kept his eyes on Jenny. “What’d they say?”
She sobbed, brushed tears from her cheeks, and said, “They . . . they told me what they were going to do to me once you and Pecos and Marshal Larsen were dead,” she said, wiping a fresh batch of tears from her cheeks. “And that’s all I’m going to say about it. I will not repeat what they said they were going to do.”
“Who? Which one? Or all three?”
“Chaney, mostly,” Pecos said, drawing the horrified girl close against him.
Slash turned the Appy and slapped the rein ends against its right hip. “Hi-yahh, beast—go!”
“Slash, dammit!” Pecos yelled behind him. “Let it go. It’s my fault! What did you think was gonna happen when you left her alone, you damned idiot!”
Slash only distantly heard his partner’s castigating words. Rage overwhelmed him. He reined the Appy to a skidding halt beside the wagon and swung down from the saddle. He released the keeper thong over his right-hand Colt and turned to the wagon.
Resting back against the bars on the opposite side of the wagon, the three prisoners stared back at him with their customary silent mockery, faint sneers on their mouths.
“What’s the matter?” Hell-Raisin’ Frank Beecher asked with feigned concern. “You lose the young marshal? If so, I’m sorry to hear that. It’s always sad to lose one so young.”
“Shut up, Beecher.”
“Oh, all right.”
Slash glared through the iron bands at Chaney. “I warned you, you devil.”
Chaney snapped his eyes wide in astonishment. “Now what I do?”
Slash fumbled the keys out of his pants pocket. He walked over to the rear of the wagon.
“Don’t do it, Slash!” Pecos said as he walked toward the wagon from the west, Jenny right behind him.
Slash leaned his shotgun against the wagon, then poked his key in the door’s lock and turned the key until he heard the bolt slide back into the door. Leaving the key in the lock, he shucked the right-hand Colt from its holster, cocked it, and aimed it into the wagon as he drew the door open with his left hand.
“Out, Chaney.”
“What’s this all about?” the outlaw said innocently.
“Out, Chaney. Out now!”
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing wide-eyed at his two partners. There was still mockery in his eyes, though he was feeling the bite of apprehension, as well. Slash could tell, though the man desperately tried to cover it. “I think I’d best stay right here. You’re runnin’ off your leash, Slash!”
“Slash, dammit!” Pecos yelled, stopping by Slash’s horse and resting his fists on his hips.
Slash raised the Colt shoulder-high, narrowed one eye as he aimed down the barrel at Chaney’s right leg. “Let’s see if I can get both legs to match.”
“No, no, no, no, no!” Genuine fear flashed in the man’s eyes now. “No call for that! I’m comin’! I’m comin’! Just movin’ a little slow now, as I’m sure you can under—wait, now . . . ah-ohhahhhh-geeeeshhhhh!”
He’d been half out of the wagon, dragging his tender leg, when Slash grabbed the back of his shirt collar and pulled him through the door.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Pecos said, appearing resigned to just stand by the Appaloosa and watch.
Chaney hit the ground and rolled, cursing, dust rising around him. Both Beecher and Black Pot lunged toward the door. Slash grinned and slammed the door in their faces. He locked it, pulled the key out, and tossed it to Pecos, who caught it against his chest. He turned to Chaney, who was howling like a stuck pig, half sitting up and clutching his wounded leg.
“What’d I tell you?” Slash barked at him.
“I misremember,” Chaney said, sucking a sharp breath through clenched teeth. “What’d you tell me?”
“By the time I’m done with you, you’ll remember!” Slash said, burying the toe of his right boot in the killer’s stomach.
Chaney grunted and flew back against the ground.
“Owww! Oh, stop!” bellowed Black Pot in amused exasperation from the jail wagon. Both he and Beecher watched in bright-eyed fascination through the door.
Chaney sat up again, gasping for breath, holding his hands out in surrender.
Slash walked up to him and thrust his right boot through both hands, burying the toe once again in Chaney’s belly.
Chaney fell back, wailing. Slash stayed with him, kicking him in his belly, in his side. When the man was on his belly, Slash kicked him over onto his back again and continued to work on the man’s gut and ribs.
“Slash!”
The former cutthroat ignored the girl’s pleading cry behind him.
He kicked Chaney over a prickly pear, rammed his boot into his side . . .
“Slash!”
Slash stepped toward Chaney again, drew his foot back, but before he could hammer it forward again, the girl leaped onto his back. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Slash’s knees buckled, and grunting fiercely, she drove him to the ground.
Slash cursed and looked at her where she’d fallen ahead of him, just then lifting her head and tossing her dusty hair back from her face. He scowled at her, angry.
He’d fully intended to kick the man to death. The executioner would still have two more to hang. He’d get his pay.
“Slash!” she cried again, hardening her jaws. Her eyes were bright with trepidation.
“What is it?” he said.
“To the west, partner,” Pecos said behind him, his voice mild but fateful.
Slash held his gaze on Jenny for another count. She jerked her head to indicate west. Slash turned to see four men sitting four horses atop a knoll maybe a quarter mile away. He rose slowly, wincing against the creak in his knees. Both ex-cutthroats turned to gaze toward the western knoll.
The four horseback riders were silhouetted against the bright western sky.
They sat there for maybe twenty more seconds. Just sitting there. Not moving. One of the horses lowered its head to graze, but the rider pulled its head back up by its reins.
All at once, they neck-reined their horses around and slowly, casually rode down the opposite side of the rise, the horses dropping out of sight first followed by the men, the crowns of their hats disappearing last. A tendril of dust rose above the knoll and quickly faded.
Then the riders were gone and an eerie silence hung over the sun-washed desert.
Slash turned to Pecos. “Where’s Larsen?”
“I don’t . . .”
Jenny gasped and pushed to her feet, looking around.
Slash strode quickly toward his Appaloosa, preparing to mount again and ride off to look once more for the young marshal, fearing the four gang members—who else could they have been?—had captured him while he’d been kicking the stuffing out of both ends of Talon Chaney.
“No, no,” Pecos said, holding up a waylaying hand to Slash. He stared toward the southwest. “Here he comes.”
Slash saw the horse and rider then, too, moving slowly toward the jail wagon. The young marshal likely felt worse after the spill he’d taken.
“Thank God,” Jenny said, standing beside Slash. Slash sighed in relief. He and Jenny shared a look. “Sorry, darlin’,” he said.
She shook her head, offered a wan smile. “I came willingly. I knew what I was likely in for.”
Slash kissed her cheek, said, “We’ll try to do better next time.”
He and Pecos got Chaney back in the wagon. The man was only half-conscious and blubbering, cursing, calling Slash, “Crazy . . . crazy . . . crazy as two coots in a lightnin’ storm . . .”
They closed the door and locked it. The other two prisoners merely stared at their jailers in sullen silence.
Slash turned to Pecos with a sheepish sigh, brushing his hands off on his pants. “All right, that was stupid. We both did somethin’ stupid. So we’re even.”
“What you did was dumber than what I did,” Pecos said.
By now, Larsen had made it back to the wagon. From his saddle, he said, “I’m the stupid one. Pecos expected me to stay with the wagon. If I had . . .”
“Pecos would’ve still ridden into their ambush,” Slash said.
Pecos whipped an angry look at Slash and opened his mouth for a harsh retort, but Jenny stepped up and held the back of her hand up over his mouth.
“Gentlemen,” she said firmly, “what’s done is done. Perhaps we’d best get moving before we waste any more time out here . . . ?”
“The teacher’s right, you big idiot,” Slash snapped, walking around Pecos toward his horse.
Pecos slapped him with his hat.
* * *
Late in the afternoon, Slash watched Pecos gallop toward him from the east.
The wagon rocked and rattled, and the geldings’ shoes kicked up dust—so much of it that Jenny, sitting beside Slash on the driver’s seat—had tied a bandanna over her mouth and nose. Slash held the harness ribbons loosely in his gloved hands. The horses didn’t need steering. They knew to follow the trail, and there weren’t so many trails out here that they got confused. In fact, this single, two-track trail was the only trail Slash had seen since they’d left Dry Fork that morning. No others except a couple of old Indian hunting trails and buffalo trails had so far intersected it.
A vast lonely landscape out here. A menacing one, under the circumstances.
“Any sign of ’em?” Slash asked as Pecos drew his buckskin up beside the wagon, to Slash’s left, and followed along even with the driver’s seat.
“Nope.”
Slash looked at him with sharp surprise. “What?”
“No sign. Not a print. Not a single apple.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged.”
“What’s the matter, Slash? Why do you look so glum? That’s good news, not bad news.”
Slash scratched the beard stubble on his cheek as he looked warily around. The young marshal rode point now, roughly fifty yards up the trail. “I don’t believe it.”
“Well, I didn’t see nothin’, and I rode a half mile out in all directions.”
“Well, then, they’re three-quarters to a mile out. They’re doggin’ us, all right.”
“What makes you think so, Slash?” Jenny asked him, sitting to his right.
“That spider crawling around under my right ear is talkin’ to me.”
“I don’t see any spider under your ear,” Jenny said.
“You may not see it, but it’s there, all right. Whenever I feel that spider crawling around, I know I got wolves on my trail.” He looked to the east, beyond Pecos, to the south, which was straight ahead, and then to the west. He wagged his head and scratched behind his ear. “They’re out they’re doggin’ us. I know they are.”
“Maybe those four we seen on the knoll weren’t part of the gang.” Pecos was building a quirley while he rode loosely in his saddle. “Maybe they was ranch hands just givin’ a quick scout. No doubt curious about the jail wagon an’ all.”
Slash glanced into the cage behind him, through the closely woven iron mesh that fronted the bars so the prisoners couldn’t poke their arms through and strangle the driver, or grab a weapon from the driver’s box. “Chaney, did you recognize them four on the hill earlier?”
Chaney gave only a guttural curse. He lay on his side on a straw pallet, curled in the fetal position, clutching his battered ribs.
Black Pot and Beecher sat reclining against the cage’s rear door, ankles crossed before them. The half-breed was chewing a weed he’d plucked through the side bars from along the trail. “Talon ain’t at his best right now. Not after the stompin’ you gave him, old ma—er, I mean, Mr. Slash.”
Black Pot grinned.
“How ’bout you two,” Pecos asked them, hipped around in the saddle to see into the cage. “Did you recognize ’em?”
“Nah,” Beecher said, shaking his shaggy head and blowing cigarette smoke out his nostrils. “They were too far away.”
“You can bet they were our boys, though.” Black Pot drew his thick lips back from his ragged teeth in a seedy smile, his black eyes glinting in the waning sunlight. One long, blueblack braid hung down over his chest while the other one trailed out through the bars behind him. “You can bet your last dollar on that. And I do believe you’re right, Slash. They’re stayin’ just far enough back to keep you guessin’, just like you’re doin’. Probably just waiting for all the others to join ’em before they make their move.”
“If I were you two gentlemen,” Beecher said, “I would stop this cart right now and let us out. You let us go, we’ll let you go . . . as a gesture of our endless appreciation. No harm won’t come to any of you. You can just be on your way unfettered . . . get the pretty teacher and the young marshal to Denver all safe and sound.”
“Don’t go feelin’ too smug,” Slash warned the killer. “If it looks like they’re getting close enough to spring you, I’m gonna shoot all three of you devils through the bars, toss your carcasses to the coyotes. You’d best hope they stay back. Far back!”
“Say, now—that ain’t fair!” Black Pot yelled, glowering at Slash through the iron mesh.
“Shut up!” Slash said. He turned to Pecos. “They’re out there. Guaranteed.”
Pecos drew deeply on his quirley, blew the smoke into the wind, and nodded grimly.