The stench of burned powder filled the air. A ragged exchange of gunshots volleyed back and forth between the opposing parties. Bullets ripped at crumbling adobe, chewed rotted slivers from weathered wood. Geysers of dirt erupted into the dusty air. Horses shrilled, hooves pounded. Men shouted, voices mingled in English and guttural Apache.
And as suddenly as it had begun the first attack was over. The Apache fell back, well out of rifle-range. Rifles were reloaded and wounds were tended to.
Behind the mission walls the small band of whites sat back and breathed for the first time since the conflict had begun. There were minor bullet-grazes, powder-burns and jangled nerves.
A horse was down, thrashing wildly as its blood pumped thickly from a severed artery. Matthew Cord walked over and put it out of its misery with a single shot.
He noticed that the women were grouped around a still form on the hard ground. Kate glanced up at his silent approach. Her face, grimed, and red-eyed from burned powder, was blank, vacant. Tears streaked her cheeks. She moved aside and Cord was able to see the crumpled form of a young girl sprawled loosely on the ground. There was a jagged bullet-wound over her left breast and her pale face still held the expression of shock that must have come with the impact of the bullet.
‘Her name was Louise Grant,’ Kate said, an odd defiance in her voice. ‘And she was nineteen years old.’ She stood up and stared at him angrily. ‘Damn this country.’
Morgan LeGrand wandered over. He was reloading the rifle he carried.
‘Pity, that,’ he said. ‘She’d have made one of them Indians a damn good squaw!’
Cord raised his eyes to LeGrand’s face. Without effort he smashed the butt of his own rifle across LeGrand’s jaw, driving the big man to the ground. LeGrand hit hard, stunned, and he had the wisdom to stay where he was, though the hate showed clearly in his eyes. A bright stream of blood coursed down his face and soaked into the collar of his dirty shirt.
‘Hey!’ Isha Cooley snatched up his loaded revolver and swung it at Cord.
‘Isha, leave it.’ Ben Shelby’s voice cut across the mission’s dusty plaza with a whip crack sharpness. He placed himself between Cooley and Matthew Cord. ‘We got enough on fighting those damn Apaches. Ain’t nothing but pure foolishness to go round blowing holes in each other.’
‘That bastard just dropped Morg,’ Cooley protested.
It was LeGrand himself who spoke next, climbing unsteadily to his feet. He touched the tender spot on his jaw and glared across at Cord. ‘Any settlin’ to be done I’ll do it myself,’ he said. ‘You be sure, mister, I’ll do it too. Ain’t no man lays to Morgan LeGrand and gets away with it.’
Matthew Cord let a slow, cold smile touch his lips. ‘You talk tough, LeGrand, but I been somewhere a man like you wouldn’t last out the first day.’
‘Hell, I knew I recognized that big son-of-a-bitch,’ Eli Colton said suddenly. ‘Shit, Ben, ain’t you figured it? He’s Matt Cord. That U.S. Marshal who did for Roan Chantry. Hell, it was in all the damn papers. They trussed him up like a turkey and put him in Yuma Pen.’
Shelby stared at Cord intently. ‘Well I’ll be. You’re right, Eli. It is Cord.’ He moved closer, stroking his unshaven jaw. ‘So what the hell are you doing out here chasin’ us like some avengin’ angel? You bust out, Cord?’
Matthew Cord laughed softly. ‘No, Shelby, they let me out. Figured I’d got the right idea after all. Set a killer to catch a killer—or a pack in your case.’
Eli Colton yelled angrily. ‘He killed Sam. He’s the one done it back in the horseshit town.’
‘They must pay you pretty well,’ Shelby remarked.
‘Higher by the bunch,’ Cord answered and saw Morgan LeGrand tense.
They had no more time to pursue the matter. One of the girls let out a scared yell. Heads turned in time to see the Apaches making their second run.
‘Let ’em get in close.’ Cord shouted. ‘Don’t waste any shots.’
‘Who the hell put you in charge?’ Eli Colton snarled.
Ben Shelby cut him short. ‘He’s talkin’ sense, Eli. We haven’t got a damn wagonload of ammunition back there. Let the bastards see the end of the bullet before you fire it.’
The Apaches cut across the dusty ground in a ragged bunch. They were wider-spaced this time and they too held their fire until they were almost up to the mission wall.
Both sides seemed to fire at once. A solid wall of gunfire erupted. The sound was terrible. The crash of guns. The screams of frightened horses. The heavy stench of burned powder. Brass shell-cases littered the ground. Dust boiled up in choking clouds, mixed with powdered adobe that exploded in sharp splinters each time a bullet struck.
Two Apaches breached the wall, ponies clearing the defenders’ heads by inches. Out of the corner of his eye Cord saw Morgan LeGrand calmly turn and shoot one of them off his mount. LeGrand’s bullets took the screaming buck between the shoulder-blades, ripping bloody holes as they emerged from his naked chest.
The second Apache slid from his pony the moment it touched the ground and spun on his heels, coming face to face with a terrified Kate Hanna. As the Apache drove at her with his long lance Kate leveled her Colt, held in both hands, and blasted the Indian’s face away with a single shot, flinching as a bloody spray splattered her dress.
The attack seemed to go on forever. The Apaches rode back and forth across the ground before the mission and the defenders returned the deafening rattle of gunfire.
And then, as with the first attack, this one stopped. Almost as if by some secret, prearranged signal. The Apaches fell back, the firing ceased, and both sides counted the cost.
The Apaches had lost four. The two who had got over the wall and two more who lay some distance from the mission wall.
Inside the plaza there had been no more loss of life. There were some minor wounds. Eli Colton had a bullet-graze across one side of his face. Irve Dunker had a deep cut across the back of his left hand where flying adobe had cut him.
It was only when he relaxed that Cord felt the stinging pain from a graze along his left shoulder. Blood had soaked through his shirt. It was more of an irritant than anything else and he ignored it.
He had more pressing problems on his mind and so it seemed had Ben Shelby as he crossed the plaza to join Cord.
For a moment the two men faced each other silently, weighing the other up. Both knew the other man’s reputation and they would treat each other accordingly.
‘I don’t figure this sits any better with you than it does with me,’ Shelby said suddenly.
‘Ain’t the way I’d have dealt the hand.’
Shelby grinned. ‘Hell of a deal, though.’
‘You figuring on the same as me?’ Cord asked.
‘A truce until this is settled?’
Cord glanced out across to where the Apaches were grouped. ‘Might not be anything to pick up when it’s over.’
‘Yeah? Well, we’ll sort that out come the time. Look, Cord, I got no liking for you, and I don’t aim to give you a chance to take me in, so you watch your back once this deal’s over.’
‘I aim to.’
‘We’ll leave it at that then.’
‘One thing,’ Cord said.
‘Say it.’
‘Leave the women alone,’ he said and there was no mistaking the threat in his tone. ‘I see any of your bunch so much as look the wrong way I’ll blow a hole right through him!’
Shelby tried to look grieved. ‘They’ll behave like virgins.’
‘I’d like the women to stay that way too,’ Cord said.
Shelby grinned. ‘Hell, man, that all depends on how they started out.’
As he watched the outlaw walk away a wry grin touched Cord’s lips as he thought of Kate Hanna. He had to admit that Shelby had a point!
He got Kate and the other two women to collect all the foodstuffs from various saddlebags and to take it inside the mission building. He made them collect all the canteens as well and instructed Kate to get a fire going. It wasn’t long before the aroma of brewing coffee wafted out across the dusty plaza.
Kate brought a mug out to Cord. ‘I’d say there’s enough food for three days at the most if we go easy,’ she said.
Cord didn’t answer straightaway. He was watching the two other women passing out mugs of coffee to Shelby’s men. It was a hell of a situation. Damned explosive. It would have been bad enough just having to deal with the Apaches but to have Shelby and his bunch as partners in the fight, plus the need to keep his eyes on the women, that was almost too much to handle. Cord tasted his coffee. It wasn’t bad -he somehow knew that Kate had made it. A thought struck him. Murdoch was getting his money’s worth out of the deal. Cord wondered for a moment whether he’d made the right decision. Maybe he’d have been better off back in Yuma; but the second the thought entered his head he knew the answer. A thousand Ben Shelby’s types, or even wild Apaches, were a damn sight more favorable than even one day in the hell hole called Yuma Pen.
‘Is it true what they said about you?’ Kate asked suddenly.
He remembered the way she’d looked at him at the time it had been revealed but she’d held her silence then. Since then he had been expecting her to ask but events hadn’t given them much of a chance to talk.
‘I was a lawman,’ he said. ‘And I did kill a man for personal reasons. And they put me in Yuma for it.’
Kate touched his arm. ‘I’ve heard say it’s a bad place.’
Matthew Cord smiled, memory adding bitterness to his expression. ‘You believe it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’ He handed her the empty mug.
‘You must have gone through a lot in that place.’
‘According to the law I deserved it.’
She smiled. ‘I haven’t known you long, Matthew Cord, but I’ve learned enough to realize you’re not like them,’ and she glanced across at Ben Shelby’s bunch. ‘You’re a hard man. Violent, too, and you scare the hell out of me most of the time, but I’d stand off those Apaches with just you rather than Ben Shelby and his pack of dogs.’
Her hatred of Ben Shelby showed in every word and Cord figured that if those words could have killed his job would be over by now.
‘How are we going to get out of this?’ she asked and Cord thought she expected him to provide an instant solution.
‘Just before dark we’re all going to sprout wings and fly off,’ he said sarcastically.
The familiar angry gleam flashed in her eyes. ‘Smart mouth.’
Cord took her arm and led her to the mission. Inside the shadowed building he put down his mug, then drew her to him firmly. He kissed her hard, feeling the quick response from her. Breathless she drew back from him and stared at him for a long time, her head slightly on one side as if she were pondering some problem.
‘I get the feeling you don’t want to answer that question,’ she said. She’d realized, as he had, that there was no easy solution. The Apaches had them boxed in neatly, and could most probably out-wait them. There was the chance, too, that the Apaches might send for reinforcements.
Kate Hanna knew a bad situation when she saw one. They were trapped here, with little food or water, limited ammunition, and the one way out blocked off. She’d figured that her life back in Gray’s Creek had been reaching a dead end. Right now it seemed like all that life could offer would be the same. Then she looked at Matthew Cord, and his lean, brown face, so hard, yet somehow dependable, and wiped away her fears. Kate sighed and reached up to kiss him quickly.
‘Oh, what the hell, Matthew Cord, if we do have to go we’ll give those damned Apaches the dusting of their miserable lives.’