CHAPTER 6
Behind Hunter, Annabelle dropped to a knee and fired a couple of rounds up toward the rocky ridge atop which Hunter assumed their assailants were cowering.
He had no idea who they were, but he assumed they were your average trail devils after his and Anna’s horses and possibly Anna herself—but he aimed to find out and to show them the error of their ways. The problem, he realized now, hunkering behind a rock and gazing up the long slope, was that there was little cover between him and them.
The top of the ridge was roughly a hundred yards away. That was a long, open run. He’d never make it. Another problem he had was that he was armed with only his LeMat, a gift from a Confederate general whose life he’d saved during the War of Northern Aggression. Great for close range work, but darn near useless in this situation.
Scrutinizing the country from this vantage, however, he saw a ravine running up the ridge, just ahead and to his right. It was broad and shallow, but if he kept his head down, he should be able to make it to the top of the ridge and over to a nest of rocks on top of it, where he assumed his assailants were firing from, without getting himself perforated.
It was his only chance.
He glanced behind. Anna knelt behind the boulder, holding her Winchester, ready.
“All right!”
He bounded up and out from behind his covering rock. He’d taken only one long, running stride before a bullet plumed dirt just in front of him. The shooters had anticipated his ploy. Nothing he could do but keep running, which he did—hard, scissoring his arms and legs. Behind him, Anna’s carbine spoke. It stopped speaking, likely having fired its last round, just as he dove forward the last few yards, flying over the lip of the ravine and landing on the floor of the cut below, cursing as nails of pain bit his joints already sore from his earlier unceremonious unseating.
Two rounds landed just beyond him, the rifles echoing a second later.
Hunter heaved himself to his feet, grunting, again shaking the cobwebs from his vision. His LeMat in hand, keeping his head just beneath the lip of the arroyo, he ran up the ravine that cut down the long slope of the ridge. After ten or so strides, he stopped, pressed a shoulder against the ravine wall on his left, and edged a look over the top, toward the ridge crest.
They knew he was in the ravine, so he had to assume they’d come to meet him at some point.
Not yet.
He continued running.
After another forty feet, he stopped again. Breathing hard, he gazed up toward the ridge crest again. Still nothing. They’d stopped shooting because they didn’t have a target.
They were waiting for him.
He looked at the LeMat in his gloved right hand, shook his head. He sure wished he had his Henry.
He pulled his head back down beneath the ravine’s lip and continued running, breathing hard against the climb. When he’d been running guerilla missions behind Union lines during the war, he’d gone barefoot just as he had when he’d been a kid, running wild through the north Georgia hills, sometimes armed with only a slingshot. He could run like the wind in those days. The boots he wore now were not made for running, but he was afraid to take them off. His feet were far more tender than they were back in those gay olden times . . .
The ridge crest was now a hundred feet beyond.
He stopped and dropped to a knee. The ravine played out at the crest, opening like the main part of a bottle, the ravine banks dropping to ground level.
“See him?”
Hunter dropped still lower and thrust his shoulder against the ravine wall on his left. The man’s query had not come from far away.
“No,” said another man’s voice, a little farther away than the first. “He’s in there, though. I seen him.”
Hunter waited.
Footsteps sounded—the crunch of boot soles on grass.
When he could hear both men breathing nervously, he lifted his head as well as the LeMat, clicking the hammer back.
“Right here, fellas!”
They swung their heads toward him and froze—both clad in motley trail gear, pistols wedged behind their belts. Petty road agents, most likely. The stockier of the two was nearest Hunter. He had a hound dog look beneath the round brim of his Stetson. The taller of the two was also the youngest, with longish blond hair hanging down from a ragged bowler hat to the collar of his sack shirt. He stood about ten yards upslope of the stocky gent.
Hunter slid the LeMat from left to right, keeping them both in his sights.
“What’re you after?”
“Uh . . . uh . . .” said the stocky gent. He held an old Springfield rifle held together with baling wire in his right hand. He held up his left hand, palm out. “Now, uh . . . now, uh . . .”
“What’re you after?” Hunter asked again, more sharply.
The younger man smiled seedily and said, “You know what we’re after.” His look told Hunter he and the other man knew he and Annabelle had sold the horses. They’d likely followed them from a distance, waiting for them to return without the horses but with a packet full of money. They were likely just bright enough to know such fine horse flesh would bring in a sizeable cache.
The skinny blond swung his Spencer repeater toward Hunter, spreading his feet and crouching.
Hunter’s LeMat bucked and roared. The bullet took the kid through the dead center of his chest and knocked him straight backward, throwing the Spencer out away from him.
The stocky gent brought his Springfield to bear and fired, the bullet flying wide as Hunter’s own bullet drilled a puckered purple hole in his forehead, just above his right eye. The second man hadn’t stopped groaning, dying hard, when Hunter sprang up out of the ravine, holstered his LeMat, grabbed the kid’s Spencer, and ran toward the rocks scattered atop the ridge crest.
He ran crouching, holding the cocked Spencer .56 straight out before him. From the trail below, he thought he’d spied three or four shooters in the rocks, which meant there was at least one more. The rocks were twenty feet away from him now.
Ten...
He ran around them, swinging the Spencer around and tightening his finger on the trigger.
Nothing but spent cartridges and a single cigarette butt still smoldering in a patch of sand.
Hoof thuds sounded. Annabelle was riding her calico up the shoulder of the ridge, straight ahead of Hunter. “Found Ruthie,” she said, holding her carbine across her saddle-bows. “You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m all right. No sign of Nasty Pe—?”
Hunter stopped. He’d spied movement in the corner of his right eye.
“What is it?” Annabelle asked.
“Think I just found him.”
He squinted at two riders leading one saddled horse up a low, distant ridge. Bobby Lee was hot on their trail but when one of the riders twisted around in his saddle to send three rounds pluming dirt around Bobby’s scissoring legs, the coyote gave a yip and swerved off into the brush.
“I just found him,” Hunter said as the riders crested the ridge and then disappeared down its opposite side.
Hunter thrust his right hand up at his wife. “Hop down, Anna. We’re gonna have to ride double.”
Anna leaped down then Hunter toed a stirrup and swung up into the leather. He extended a hand to Anna again and pulled her up behind him. He swung the calico around and booted her on down the backside of the ridge.
“Go easy, now, Hunter,” Anna admonished behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Remember, she’s carrying double, and you are no little man.”
“I know, I know—damn the luck!”
* * *
It wasn’t easy, but Hunter didn’t push the calico.
Anna was right. Ruthie was carrying more than double her usual weight. Killing the mare wouldn’t get them to the men who’d stolen Nasty Pete as well as Hunter’s rifle—which had belonged to his now-deceased brother, Shep—and the money in his saddlebags. The money he and Anna needed to continue running the ranch in the wake of last year’s costly bear killings.
Speed wasn’t all that necessary, anyway. The two riders had left plenty of sign and only after a mile or so of tracking them, Hunter thought he knew where they were headed. As they were moving northeast, they were likely headed for the Buffalo Gulch Roadhouse. Save a few raggedy-heeled shotgun ranches, that was about all that lay between here and North Platte, Nebraska.
Bobby Lee caught up to them but held back, wary of more lead being hurled his way. That was all right. Bobby was good in a fight but he was no match for lead.
They rested Ruthie every half hour, giving her water from Anna’s canteen. Hunter and Anna themselves drank sparingly, saving the water for the horse. It was late in the day, almost evening, when they heard the off-key patter of a distant piano issuing from maybe half a mile ahead on the nearly featureless prairie. They dipped down into a ravine and when they bounded up through willows on the other side, the roadhouse lay ahead—a sprawling, ramshackle, adobe brick affair with a rusted tin roof.
The trail split the yard down the middle. A log barn with connecting corral and a windmill lay to the right. The roadhouse with a large, brush-roofed ramada lay to the left. Several horses milled in the corral. Five or six more stood at the hitchrack beneath the ramada. An old, beat-up wagon sat there, too, a mule standing hang-headed in the traces.
A large, shaggy dog was skirmishing with a small, brown, short-haired dog in the yard. They were fighting over a stick, the little dog following the large dog and barking angrily. The shaggy dog trotted around proudly, as though he’d found the bone of all bones, and wouldn’t the little dog just love to get its teeth on it?
The yard had turned a deep copper, as the sun was hovering just above the western horizon, behind Hunter and Anna as they rode into the yard astride the calico. Seeing them, the big dog dropped the stick and came running, wagging his tail as though the roadhouse hadn’t seen a visitor in weeks. The little dog yipped and grabbed the stick. The dogs kept Bobby Lee at the edge of the yard. The coyote had no time for dogs. Hunter swung his right leg over the saddle horn, dropped to the ground, gave the shaggy dog a pat, and glanced at one of the horses tied to the hitchrack beneath the ramada. Yakima had seen Nasty Pete, too. She gave Hunter a dark look then leaped straight back over the calico’s tail to the ground.
She slid her carbine from the boot, cocked it, and said, “How do you want to play it?”
Hunter walked over to Nasty Pete, who had already craned his neck to regard his rider, delightedly switching his tail.
“Hey, boy,” Hunter said, patting the horse’s rump. “Hey, there, old fella. Hope they treated you right.”
The grullo whickered.
The tinny piano clatter still issued from inside the tumble-down place.
Hunter reached into the saddlebag pouch, felt around. The envelope containing the money from the broncs was gone.
He looked at Anna. She read his expression, pursed her lips, and nodded.
He looked at his scabbard. Empty.
“They really cleaned me out,” he said. “Not for long.”
“I doubt they had time to spend much money.”
“Never know,” Hunter said. “They’re about to find out how expensive that money came. Be ready to back me if I need it.”
“You’re not going to just walk right in there?”
“I doubt they got a good look at either of us.”
“How will you know who they are?”
“I’ll know.”
Anna placed her hand on his arm. “Be careful. Like I said . . .”
“I know.” Hunter grinned. “But I don’t want you in fishnet stockings again, neither. At least, not in no saloon.” He winked, turned, and mounted the steps of the small porch fronting the place.
He peered over the batwings. Twenty or so men were patronizing the humble hole, five standing at the bar running along the right wall, the rest sitting at tables before Hunter and to his left. A staircase ran up the room’s rear wall, on the opposite side of the room from the batwings.
There were two girls—a thin blond in bloomers and not much else except a few feathers in her hair playing the piano at the far end of the bar as though she knew what she was doing. Hunter was surprised she hadn’t run all the drinkers out of the place or gotten herself shot. He noticed there were three bullet holes in the side of the piano and one in the bench she was sitting on. He’d have thought she’d have learned her lesson. She was working the peddles barefoot.
The other girl appeared a half-breed. She sat on the knee of a cow puncher—one of five playing poker at a table in the middle of the room. One of the punchers appeared a midget. He sat on cushions piled high on his chair, and he was smoking a fat stogie and laughing as he cajoled the others, who appeared none too pleased with the haranguing. The girl was dressed in a simple nightgown; her near-black hair hung long, and she had a knife scar on her cheek. She appeared bored with the proceedings.
Another quick survey of the room, and Hunter found his men.
They were standing at the bar side by side, to the left of a man in a long, canvas coat and canvas hat—likely a prospector who belonged to the wagon parked outside. The two men to his left, standing maybe six feet away from him, leaned forward, elbows on the bar. In the back bar mirror, Hunter could see they were drinking from a labeled bottle. Neither appeared the type to drink from a bottle with a label on it. Both wore a combination of sack clothes and time-worn broadcloth. Hunter’s Henry rested atop the bar to the right of the man standing to the right of the other man.
Outside, the little dog was yipping again, angrily. Apparently, his skirmish with the shaggy dog had resumed. Hunter could just barely hear above the thunder of that consarned piano.
If the two gents at the bar hadn’t stolen a sizeable, badly needed stake from him, he would have turned around and walked away, believing his ears deserved better.
Instead, he strode to his right and bellied up to the bar to the right of the man who had his Henry resting on the bar beside him.
The barman, a tall thin man with dead eyes and a pencil-line mustache, walked over and said, “What’s your pleasure?”
“Not that piano. That’s for sure.”
He and the two men standing to Hunter’s left laughed. Then the two to his left continued drinking and staring dully at the bar before them. In the backbar mirror Hunter could see they were much like the two he’d dispatched—dull-witted, pennyante road agents and, most likely, stock thieves. They’d spied Hunter and Annabelle and their two fine horses from a distance and, knowing they’d sold the ten horses, decided they could line their pockets for the rest of the year and, if they played it right, a good part of the winter.
“You’re welcome,” Hunter said.
Both men looked at him. The man nearest him frowned and said, “What?”
“For the drinks,” Hunter said. “I bought ’em.”
Understanding grew slowly in their gazes.
Hunter reached under the coat of the man standing nearest him and pulled the manilla envelope out of his back pocket. He slapped the envelope down on the bar. Both men jerked with starts and reached for the hoglegs tied low on their thighs. Hunter grabbed the Henry off the bar and smashed the butt plate into the face of the man nearest him then cocked the rifle and shot the other man, who was just then bringing up an old-model Schofield.
The other man was staggering backward, screaming, blood oozing from his smashed lips. As he did, he raised his own .44 and got a shot off, flames lapping from the barrel, the bullet plunking into the bar to Hunter’s left, a half-second before Hunter recocked the Henry and fired a round into the man’s chest.
As both men piled up on the floor at the base of the bar, the infernal piano fell silent. The girl who’d been playing it turned toward Hunter and the two dead men with a gasp, covering her mouth with her hand.
One of the other customers raked out a shocked curse, and then silence fell over the room.
“Good Lord, man,” said the bartender.
“Sorry about the disturbance,” Hunter said, stuffing the envelope into his shirt pocket then scooping the Henry up off the bar and resting it on his shoulder. He smiled and pinched his hat brim to the apron. “I’ll be gettin’ outta your hair straightaway.”
The barman glanced at the labeled bottle on the bar. “They haven’t paid for that yet.”
“And they never will.”
Hunter swung around and began walking toward the batwings. He stopped when one of the customers rose from a table ahead and to his right, and said, “Hunter Buchanon . . . rebel vermin from Tigerville!”
Hunter stopped and turned to the man—a big, broad-shouldered man with black eyes and a thick, curly black beard. “You ran me outta Tigerville a few years ago, when you was playin’ town marshal.”
Hunter grinned. “Oh, I wasn’t just playin’. I landed the job, all right. Didn’t like it much . . . less’n I was runnin’ filth like you outta town, Boyd Simms.” Hunter hardened his gaze. “Still slappin’ up soiled doves just for fun, Boyd?”
“Why you . . . !”
Simms drew the revolver hanging low on his right thigh but not before the LeMat was in Hunter’s hand, blasting. Simms fired his own gun into the floor and flew back into the table he’d been sitting at. That caused the five men he’d been playing poker with to make a similar play, leaping to their feet and slapping leather. Hunter shot one, and Annabelle went to work with her Winchester and in seconds all five men were down, obscured by a cloud of pale gun smoke.
The rest of the room tensed. Hands went to pistols or rifles lying across tables, but the guns remained where they were. For both Hunter and Annabelle were covering the room with their own smoking weapons.
“Why, thank you, darlin’,” Hunter said.
“Don’t mention it, darling,” Annabelle returned.
To the room, Hunter said, “Everybody just stay put now, hear? Been enough killin’ here tonight, I think you will agree.”
As he spoke, he backed slowly to the door. Annabelle joined him. Once outside, they mounted their horses, turned them away from the hitchrack and put the steel to them, riding out of the road ranch yard at hard gallops, casting cautious glances behind them. They rode into a narrow canyon and checked their blowing mounts down. They made a hasty, rudimentary camp and brewed a pot of coffee, leaning back against their saddles to sip it.
Bobby Lee slunk into the camp and cured up between Hunter’s spread legs, instantly asleep.
“Close one,” Hunter said and took another sip.
“You can say that again. We almost lost that stake, Hunt.”
Hunter removed his hat and ran a big hand through his shaggy, blond hair. “Don’t I know it. Lots of bad folks out here.”
Annabelle gazed darkly into the night. “Yeah . . . and I fear there’s more where those came from.”