CHAPTER 48
Brice could tell that Denny was making a valiant effort to hold herself together and keep her emotions under control as they rode hard toward the canyon mouth. Steve Markham’s body lay behind them where it had fallen. There was nothing they could do about it now. Denny had seen the outlaw’s true colors, but she had considered him a friend and maybe more, and his death had some effect on her.
She was as coolheaded in times of danger as anyone Brice had ever met, though, man or woman, so he knew, whatever those feelings were, she would put them aside . . . until the fight ahead of them was over, one way or another.
Side by side, they burst out of the canyon and galloped toward the herd, which was close to a mile farther north. As they rode, Denny pulled her Winchester from its saddle sheath, and Brice did likewise.
They could hear the shooting over the pounding hoofbeats. It sounded like a small war was going on. That came as no surprise to Brice. Calvin Woods and the other cowboys from the Sugarloaf weren’t the sort of men who rolled over and died. They would battle to the last breath and fight with every bit of heart, soul, and guts they possessed, no matter how much they were surprised or how badly outnumbered.
Brice saw riderless, unsaddled horses running around ahead of them. The herd must have scattered when the shooting started, he thought. Originally, while he was traveling to Montana as quickly as he could, he had believed the outlaws were after the horses, although that really wouldn’t have been much of a payoff for a plan elaborate enough to require an inside man.
Judging from what Markham had blurted out while he was dying, he’d been involved in a much more ambitious scheme than that, one that involved kidnapping Louis Jensen. Possibly Denny, too, although Brice was fuzzy on the details.
Maybe they would find out if they were able to capture one or more of the men attacking the Sugarloaf crew.
Before they got any closer and blundered right into some of the enemy, Brice reined in and signaled for Denny to stop.
She slowed her mount and then brought it to a halt, but she didn’t look happy about it. “We’ve got to go help Cal!” she protested.
“Getting ourselves killed won’t do him any good. Listen. You saw the horses from the herd running wild. That means Cal and the other hands turned them loose. They must have gone to ground somewhere to put up a fight against Markham’s gang.”
“It wasn’t his gang,” said Denny. “You heard him. Two of his father’s old partners dragged him into it. What did you say his father was called? The Santa Rosa Kid?”
The two outlaws—Rome and Brant, Brice recalled—probably hadn’t had to do too much convincing to get Markham involved, but that didn’t matter. None of it did. “I can explain all that later. Do you happen to know this country?”
Denny shook her head. “Not one bit. I’ve never been here until today.”
“Neither have I. None of my assignments ever brought me this far.” He turned his horse a little and gestured with the rifle he held. “We’d better circle around and get the lay of the land.”
“Brice, there’s no time—”
“We can’t just rush in blind.” Brice knew it would rile her, but he went on. “I’m the one with the badge, Denny, so I’m in charge here.”
Anger flared in her eyes, as he expected it would. “Maybe one of these days, I’ll have a badge, too,” she shot back at him.
“Maybe so,” he said, although he didn’t see how that could ever happen when her goal was to run the Sugarloaf. “But for now, come on. We’re going this way.”
He heeled his horse into motion and headed west, back toward the foothills that bulged into the basin. He didn’t look back to see if she was following him, but after a moment he heard the swift clatter of her horse’s hooves and then she drew alongside him.
“You’re not always going to be able to boss me around this way, you know,” she called over to him.
“I don’t recollect ever bossing you around before.”
“And you’re not now! I just happened to decide you were right for a change, that’s all.”
Brice managed not to grin at her deeply ingrained stubbornness. He nodded and said, “Let’s find out just what sort of trouble Cal and the rest of the hands are in.”
It didn’t take them long to discover how the battle had shaped up. They stopped just below the crest of a long ridge and dismounted, then took their hats off and on foot eased up high enough to peer over it. About two hundred yards away lay an old buffalo wallow, a wide depression about five feet deep with fairly steep walls. Cal and the other Sugarloaf cowboys had taken cover in it and were shooting up at the higher ground surrounding it. Puffs of powder smoke came from those lopsided knolls as the ambushers returned the fire.
It was a standoff, but it wouldn’t continue indefinitely. The advantage definitely belonged to the attackers. The Sugarloaf hands had dismounted and sent their horses galloping out of danger, so they had no way to escape. They had limited supplies of ammunition and probably didn’t have any water down there, so as the afternoon heat continued to build, they would start to bake and thirst would torment them.
Before the day was over, the defenders wouldn’t be able to put up a fight anymore, and the outlaws would roll over the buffalo wallow and wipe them out. Brice saw that immediately, and judging by the grim expression on Denny’s face, so did she.
“Look at that powder smoke,” she said quietly. “There must be fifteen or twenty of them.”
“More than likely,” agreed Brice. “Too many for a couple of us to make much difference.”
Denny bristled. “We can’t just go off and abandon Cal and the boys!”
“I never said we were going to. But if we just gallop up and start shooting, we won’t last thirty seconds.”
She wasn’t able to argue with that. She nodded and asked, “What did you have in mind, then?”
“We’ll have to whittle down the odds a few at a time.” He looked intently at her. “That’s going to mean some close work. Are you up to that, Denny?”
“What the hell do you think?”
Brice motioned her back down the slope. When they were out of sight of any of the attackers, he put his hat back on and said, “I think we’ll work around there a little farther to the north and then start closing in from behind them.”
* * *
Denny had done her share of gunfighting since returning to the West to live. More than her share, considering that she was a young woman and young women didn’t do such things to start with. But she had smelled powder smoke and felt it sting her eyes. She had experienced the deafening roar of gunfire and the jolt of a revolver bucking in her hand as she squeezed the trigger. She had heard bullets singing their deadly song close beside her ears.
Most important, she had killed. She had seen men crumple and die before her gun, had known the terrible gravity of what it was to end a human life. Remorse hadn’t haunted her dreams—all the men she’d killed had had it coming to them, to be honest—but it wasn’t something she took lightly.
With her friends’ lives in danger, she was more than willing to shoulder that responsibility again.
She and Brice left their horses where they were and moved ahead on foot, staying low and using every bit of cover they could find. Few trees grew in the basin, although the slopes not far away were heavily timbered. There were clumps of brush and clusters of boulders, though, and the two of them took advantage of that.
The shooting from the outlaws continued. Shots still blasted from the defenders in the buffalo wallow, too, but it seemed to Denny that the return fire was more sporadic than before.
“They must be running low on ammunition,” she said in a half-whisper to Brice. “Sounds like they’re trying to make it last as long as possible.”
“Yeah. Let’s just hope it lasts ’em a little while longer, until we’re in a position to do some damage and maybe change the odds.”
A few minutes later they bellied down and crawled through brush until they reached a spot where they could peer out through gaps in the growth. Ten yards away, two outlaws knelt behind a slab of rock and fired rifles down at Cal and the other men from the Sugarloaf.
Denny glanced over at Brice and saw him grimace. “You let me handle this, Denny,” he told her in a whisper. “You don’t need to do what’s got to be done here.”
“Shoot them in the back, you mean? You’re a lawman, Brice. That’s got to rub you the wrong way.”
“But you’re a—”
“A woman?” She shook her head. “Right now, I’m just a Sugarloaf hand like Cal and those other boys down there. That means I ride for the brand. The Jensen brand. And I’ll be damned if you or anybody else stops me from helping my trail partners.”
Brice sighed but nodded. “All right.” He settled his rifle against his shoulder and peered over its barrel. Both of them had already levered rounds into the Winchesters’ firing chambers when they began their deadly stalk. “We’ll try to time it so we fire when they do. The rest of the bunch will be less likely to notice that way.”
“I understand,” Denny breathed. She had the butt of her rifle snugged up against her shoulder. She lay her cheek against the smooth wood of the stock and lined her sights on one of the outlaws. “I’ve got the one on the right.”
“I’ll take the one on the left, then. They’ve been raising up and shooting together. As soon as they do it again . . .”
Denny was ready. As the two owlhoots lifted themselves above the boulder and raised their rifles, she slipped her finger inside the Winchester’s trigger guard. The finger curled around the trigger . . .
A second later, as the outlaws’ rifles roared, Denny squeezed.