Lola rode hard, but her heart wasn’t in it. Gunfire cracked behind her. She was so worried about Prophet that she felt as though each crack sent a bullet through her spine.
After about a mile, she halted her horse along the stream she’d followed onto a grassy saddle bordered by buttes. She turned her horse around and stared tensely back the way she’d come, hoping she’d see Prophet riding toward her. Against her better judgment, she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with the strapping Southerner, and she shuddered at the thought of Brown’s gunslicks killing him.
Finally, she saw someone galloping toward her along the stream. Her heart lifted expectantly, and her gaze intensified. When the rider was a hundred yards away, a shudder ran through her. Her heart grew heavy, her stomach cold. The rider was not Prophet. His short stature, wide shoulders, watch fob, and gray head—apparently, he’d lost his hat in the fracas—bespoke Billy Brown!
Lola gave an involuntary scream and jerked her horse around, then spurred him into a gallop up the trail. She went fifty yards, until the stream curved into a foliage-choked gorge. Halting, she swung her frantic gaze around, then took a game trail into a narrow valley. Looking behind, she saw the rider closing in, head lowered against the wind, arm winging as he slapped his horse’s rump.
“No!” Lola screamed, turning her head back to the trail.
Leaves and branches swiped at her from both sides. She had no idea where she was or where she had gotten off the trail Prophet had told her to take. At the moment, she only cared that she stay ahead of Billy Brown.
Turning a corner in the trail, she got an idea. She looked behind her and heard the hooves of Brown’s mount. Quickly, she twisted the reins to the left and urged the horse up the wooded mountain slope. She hoped to lose Billy here, in the dense brush and fallen logs. The going was slow, however—much slower than she’d anticipated. The horse was winded and the blow-down trees brought it to complete stops before it bounded half-heartedly over each, blowing raucously, spittle stringing from its nostrils.
On the open ridge, she stopped to rest the horse. Looking back the way she’d come, she saw and heard nothing until a pistol cracked. She gave a start, her face turning gray, eyes widening with fear. The gun cracked again, the slug clipping a branch only two feet from her head. The horse whinnied, and, tired as it was, reared several feet in the air, turning away from the noise.
Heart beating an Indian war dance in her chest, Lola gave the horse its head, and the animal plunged down a steep mountain grade covered with talus. The horse went down on its knees several times, Lola hanging for dear life to the horn, gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes closed. Just before bottoming out on the valley floor, she swept her gaze back up the mountain and turned deathly chill at the sight of Billy Brown sitting his stationary mount, aiming a pistol at her.
She heard the bullet zing past her ear a half second before the report.
“No!” she cried as the horse came to the bottom of the grade. “Go, go!” she urged.
The horse clopped and splashed across a stream, a weathered-gray cabin appearing on her right. Wasn’t this the cabin Prophet had shown her earlier in the morning, when they’d been planning their attack and escape routes?
It was a fleeting consideration, since it did nothing to help her escape Brown now, who was thundering down the mountain and gaining several feet on her with every lunge of his stallion. Lola ducked under an aspen bough, aimed her horse down the trail hugging the stream, and heeled it hard, slapping its rump with her left hand. She tossed a look over her shoulder and was not surprised to see the stout, suited man behind her, watch chain flopping across his vested belly, gaining enough ground that Lola could see the fiendish grin stretching his lips.
He extended his pistol toward her and squeezed off another shot. Instinctively, Lola ducked her head and turned back to the trail streaming beneath her, feeling her heart shrink and her pulse slow as she neared the end. Prophet was no doubt dead, and soon she would be, as well....
Behind her, Brown slapped his horse’s rump with one hand and squeezed his gun and reins with the other. He grinned as he watched the horse and girl grow closer, getting larger and larger as his stout stallion shrank the ground between them. He only had one bullet left in his gun, so he wanted to make sure he sent it home—either into the horse or the girl herself. Either way, the girl would die ...
As he neared the left rear of the girl’s horse, he eased his gun arm out before him, carefully aiming the pistol. He thought he could plug the girl through her head at this range—the trail was fairly straight, his gun hand moving with his horse’s stride.
Thumbing back the hammer, he started increasing the tension on the trigger. He stopped, frowning with surprise, when a man suddenly appeared along the trail, to Brown’s left. He was holding something out from his body, like a club. Billy didn’t have time to identify the object before it smacked his face so hard he felt his lips and teeth break. Before he knew what had happened, he was sailing ass-over-head backwards off his saddle.
Owen McCreedy stood holding his rifle by the barrel and gazing down at the half-conscious Brown. Billy lay face down in the grass along the trail, moaning as he rolled slightly from side to side, his face in his hands. Even though his wounded arm throbbed mercilessly, McCreedy grinned. He had the son of a bitch. He finally had him. He knew it wasn’t a very professional sentiment, but boy had smacking that man in the mug felt good!
Hooves thumped behind him. He turned to watch the girl ride toward him, a cautious set to her face. He raised a placating hand. “It’s all right, miss. I’m Owen McCreedy, sheriff of Johnson City.”
“How,” she said, shaking her head, “how did you find us here?”
McCreedy winced from the pain in his arm. Before he could reply, Lola shook her head again, as though to nullify her question. “Lou needs help,” she said urgently. “They have him pinned down back there, about two miles!”
“Shit,” McCreedy said, exhaling and staring down at Brown, a pained expression on his face. “Okay, I tell you what we do,” he told her. “You stay here with him. You have a gun?”
She nodded and patted the rifle boot housing the Sharp’s on the other side of her Appaloosa.
“All right—I’ll get my horse,” he said, turning and starting for the aspen grove behind him.
He hadn’t walked more than ten feet, when Lola said sharply. “Wait!”
McCreedy turned to her. “What is it?”
She pointed back the way she’d come. “Someone’s coming.”
McCreedy turned. Sure enough, a lone rider was approaching at a gallop. McCreedy brought the rifle to his chest, but checked himself. The man came on, but seeing them, he slowed to a canter.
“It’s him!” Lola fairly screamed. “It’s Lou!”
She gigged her horse out to meet him. McCreedy watched as the two came together, the girl throwing herself around Prophet’s neck and Prophet doing nothing to discourage the attention. McCreedy gave his head a shake.
That dog ...
At length, the girl turned her horse around and followed Prophet, who approached McCreedy with his trademark shit-eating grin, cantering his horse sideways and checking him down when he was about ten feet away. “Howdy, Owen,” he said, noticing the sheriff’s bloody arm and frowning. “What in the hell are you doing out here?”
“I followed Billy and his thugs out from town,” the sheriff said, lowering his gaze to Brown, who had crawled onto his hands and knees, spitting blood and teeth in the grass. “They bushwacked me about three miles back.”
“I see that,” Prophet said. “You’re gonna need some attention there.”
“So’s he,” McCreedy said, regarding the thug with a grin. To Prophet, he said, “What about the others?”
“Dead.”
McCreedy was incredulous. “All?”
Prophet turned to Lola and smiled. “Never turn your back on a girl and a Sharp’s Big Fifty, Owen.”
Brown lifted his enraged eyes to Prophet and cursed. The bounty hunter could only tell from the tone it was a curse, for the man’s mouth was so full of broken teeth and blood, his speech was garbled.
Brown jabbed a finger at McCreedy and gummed several more unintelligible phrases. “Save it, Billy,” McCreedy said, reaching down with his one good hand and jerking the man to his feet. “Save it for the trial.” He looked at Lola. “You’ll testify?”
Lola gave an unequivocal nod, glaring hot hate at the crime boss, who returned her stare. Her voice was steel. “‘Sheriff, I’ll testify to him slashing Hoyt Farley’s throat while his gunslicks held the poor man’s arms”—she swung her confident gaze to McCreedy—”and to a whole lot more.”
“Okay,” McCreedy said, nodding. He turned to Prophet. “Let’s get this son of a bitch on a horse and haul him off to the hoosegow ... and a hangman’s noose.”