CHAPTER 27
Had the stalker smelled Slash’s cigarette?
Probably. That’s all right. If a man or men were near enough to smell cigarette smoke, they were near enough that they needed to die.
Keeping his eyes on the moving shadow, Slash raised the cigarette in his cupped hand. He took a deep drag, blew the smoke out ahead of him, down the slope and toward the shadow angling toward him. He dropped to one knee and flicked the cigarette out away from him.
The quirley hit the ground with a light thump, sparking.
Almost instantly, a rifle flashed and wailed. The flash and the wail came a second time, both bullets tearing up forest duff near where the cigarette had landed. Slash snapped his Winchester to his shoulder, dragged the hammer back, aimed at where he’d just seen the two flashes, and hurled three rounds quickly.
He thought he heard a grunt, but because of his own echoing blasts he couldn’t be sure. Instinctively, he threw himself to his left. He hit the ground and rolled twice. He rolled a third time when another rifle opened up, cleaving the air with two bullets where he’d knelt a moment before.
He rolled onto his belly, cocked the Winchester quickly, and aimed and fired from his prone position.
A man cursed. Unmistakable even against the rolling echoes of his own report.
Slash’s target fired again. The bullet hammered a tree to Slash’s left. Slash triggered two more rounds at the flash. Silence and darkness followed on the heels of the violent crashing sounds and the bright flashes that still flickered on Slash’s retinas—quieter, darker than before.
A man dropped to the ground with a crunching thud and a grunt of expelled air.
Again, Slash rolled to his left. He crabbed behind another pine and heaved himself onto his knees. He racked another cartridge into the Winchester’s action and peered out around the tree’s right side, waiting.
Running footsteps sounded up the hill behind him.
He whipped around quickly and said, “Name yourself!” The running stopped. “Don’t shoot, it’s Glenn!”
Slash thought he could see Larsen’s shadow. “Stay where you are.”
“What’s going on?” the young man asked, keeping his voice down. “Are they here?”
“Some. I don’t know how many. Do you have a gun?”
“Of course.”
“Go back to the teacher. Stay with her.”
“What about Pecos?”
“He won’t give away his position till light and we can see how many are out there. Now get back up that hill and keep your head down. Don’t leave Jenny!”
“All right, all right.”
Slash cursed and turned his attention back to the slope below him. At any moment he might hear movement or gunfire, and he had to be ready. He had to assume other killers were on the lurk out here and were just waiting for targets. He knew that’s what Pecos was thinking over on his end of the camp, to the southwest. He’d stayed where he was because he knew the killers might have the camp surrounded and were waiting to move in from the perimeter, shooting.
He and Slash would have to stay in place, holding their cautious vigils until the killers moved on them or until dawn, whichever came first. Silently, Slash cursed and settled in for the wait. The ground was cold and hard beneath his knees. He lowered himself to his butt and drew his knees up, keeping the Winchester low so starlight wouldn’t reflect off the barrel.
He was getting too old for this low-down, dirty business. He’d spent nights like this on the run from posses—long, slow, weary nights in lonely camps in the middle of nowhere, waiting for an ambush. He’d thought he’d left those days behind when he’d hung up his outlaw hat. Old Luther T. Bledsoe sure got the drop on him and Pecos. They could either ride for him or hang. Slash and Pecos might have been better off hanging. Bledsoe gave the two ex-cutthroats all the worst, most dangerous assignments. Why hang them when he could torture them slowly? Slash knew the old, pushchair-bound marshal was getting back at them in the best way he could come up with. Slash couldn’t really blame him. After all, it was Slash’s own bullet that had put him in that chair....
Bledsoe was probably right now having a good laugh in his sleep, imagining what was happening out here.
Starting out, the job had looked like a summer dance in an old barn by the river. But that was before Slash and Pecos had known the full extent of the situation. Before they’d ridden into a sacked town full of burned buildings and dead people....
Slash had to give a quiet chuckle at that, shaking his head.
He glanced over the shoulder of the hill to his left, where the three lobos likely slumped in the jail wagon, waiting and watching eagerly for their pards to spring them. Slash had known a lot of bad men in his time on the wild frontier, but he’d never met any as bad as those three. He had them cowed for now. They were quiet as church mice and didn’t even look at Jenny anymore. They knew Slash was watching, waiting for another excuse to open up the jail wagon door, pull one out, and kick the stuffing out of him.
The cowing wouldn’t last, though. When the situation turned dire, their true colors would resurface. Especially if their gang closed in. Especially if somehow they managed to bust out of the cage on wheels. If that happened . . . Well, it just couldn’t happen, that’s all. Maybe Larsen had a point. Maybe the young marshal should have shot them while they’d slept at Carlisle’s. Maybe Slash should just shoot all three right now. Why further endanger the lives of the young woman and Glenn Larsen? They’d been through enough.
On the other hand, killing Chaney, Beecher, and Black Pot would not clear the wolves from their trail. Right now, the wolves were taking it slow and easy, because they wanted to free their pards. Free them without getting them killed. If Slash shot them, they’d move in like lead-triggering lightning to avenge them.
Sure, they would. Slash knew how men like that thought. He and Pecos were in a whole heap of trouble, and there was no easy way out. And he had a feeling that things were going to get a whole lot nastier soon before they got better.
He sat in the shadow of the tree, scanning the tree-studded hillside dropping away before him. He kept his ears pricked so that he could, as the old saying went, hear a sleeping rabbit fart. All that he heard, however, were the occasional rustlings of the branches when a slight breeze rose. A couple of times through the night, coyote choirs kicked up a ruckus to the north and then to the east. The din sent cold witches’ fingers walking up Slash’s spine, reminding him as they did of a wild-assed Apache war ceremony he’d unfortunately been privy to down in Arizona some years ago, when it was still a bloody free-for-all down there. He and Pecos had been on the run, headed for Mexico, when they’d found themselves free of the posse that had been after them but caught in a whipsaw between two bands of bloodthirsty Chiricahua determined to scour the white eyes from their sun-scorched homeland—or to at least bake the pale-skinned interlopers in clay pots over low fires and smile as they screamed.
An owl hooted.
A nighthawk gave its signature cry.
Sometime near dawn there was the piercing cry of a rabbit that had met its bloody end in the talons of some night bird that had likely winged off with it to dine in the peace and quiet of some rocky promontory. There came the soft thumps of many running feet, but Slash didn’t even turn to gaze in the sounds’ direction, knowing from experience it was just a coyote pack scampering, quick and silent as furry gray ghosts, along the arroyo behind him.
He slept with his eyes open for a time and then the false dawn revealed itself in the east—a faint pearl glow silhouetting the bluffs before it. Birds began their morning songs, growing in volume until, compared to the silence of only a few minutes ago, it was almost deafening. A squirrel scampered up through the dirt and pine needles below Slash, gave Slash the wooly eyeball and then holy hell before dashing up a tree with its bushy tail curled in a snit.
There was enough light now that he could see he was alone out here. If the killers had been waiting for first light to make their move, they would have made it by now. Still, Slash rose and walked around, tracing a broad half circle around his position, just to be sure. He found the second man he’d shot lying on his side, limbs twisted. He was a black man with short hair and long sideburns. Slash recognized him—Creole Green from Louisiana. A former slave who’d taken up robbing Texas trains in the years following the Little Misunderstanding. A bad man. Slash had heard he’d killed passengers for fun, spraying passenger cars with lead while howling like a moon-crazed jackal. Slash had also heard he’d been sentenced to hang in New Mexico.
Obviously, that hadn’t happened.
Slash gave a little shudder of apprehension, realizing again just what breed of man was after him and his party.
A magpie told him where the other dead man lay. The long-tailed carrion-eater gave its shrill cries near some shrubs and a small boulder. Slash walked over, and the bird eyed him devilishly, standing atop the dead man’s shoulder, not wanting to give ground.
“Get away, you winged rat,” Slash growled as he continued forward.
Shrieking its indignance, the magpie with its ridiculously long black tail lighted from the body and swooped up through the pine branches, flashing black and iridescent blue and white in the intensifying dawn light. Slash kicked the dead man onto his back. Pale-blue eyes stared up at him without seeing him. Tight, curly red hair clung like a knit cap to the man’s broad head.
Slash didn’t recognize him.
“Red Charlie.”
Slash had heard Pecos moving toward him. He’d known it was Pecos. He’d recognize that lumbering tread anywhere. No killer would be moving toward him making the kind of noise Pecos was, which wasn’t overly loud but loud enough for Slash to know it wasn’t a bushwhacker.
“Who?” Slash asked.
“Red Charlie. His half brother was Alpine Billie. Red and Alpine used to ride with their cousins. Can’t remember their names. Dead now. Killed by a vigilance committee in Kansas. Red and Alpine got away but got sent to Yuma Pen in Arizona. Alpine died in the pen. Red escaped twice. Can you believe that?”
“Nobody escapes twice from Yuma.”
“Red did. The second time was right successful”—Pecos pointed his rifle at the lumpy body clad in broadcloth suit pants tucked into high-topped boots, and a linsey shirt—“as you can see for yourself.”
“Not all that successful,” Slash pointed out.
“Yeah, well . . .” Pecos looked at Slash. “Long night, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” Slash turned and headed toward their camp. “I got a feelin’ they’re gonna get longer.”
“Me too.”
Slash entered the camp and stopped. He stared down at Larsen and Jenny Claymore. Arching an incredulous brow, he glanced at Pecos. Pecos followed Slash’s gaze to where Glenn Larsen lay on his back and the pretty young schoolteacher lay snugged against him, one arm around him, her head on his chest. They slept entangled together like a couple of baby lambs.
Sound asleep.
Slash turned to Pecos again and pressed a finger to his lips. He thought he’d let the two younger folks sleep another few minutes while he built up the fire for coffee. But just as he stepped forward, Larsen woke with a start. Jenny did, too, both the young man and the young woman sitting up with a gasp and staring in wide-eyed fear at Slash and Pecos.
Larsen reached for his rifle but stayed the movement when Pecos said, “Just me an’ Slash is all.”
Larsen and Jenny looked from Slash to Pecos. Then they looked at each other sitting so close together, sharing the same two blankets.
“Uhhh,” the young man said, flushing deeply, fidgeting around in his blankets.
“Uhhh,” the young woman said, also flushing deeply and looking around as though for a burrow she could crawl into.
Slash and Pecos shared another awkward glance before Slash cleared his throat and said, “Uhhh, well . . . uhh . . . s-sorry to wake you . . .”
The moment was so inelegant that Slash was glad when one of the prisoners distracted them from the jail wagon with, “When the hell’s breakfast? We’re hungry over here, dammit, an’ we know you gotta feed us, so git to it!”