CHAPTER 49
By the time another quarter of an hour had passed, the gunfire from the defenders in the buffalo wallow had dwindled almost to nothing, just an occasional shot to keep the ambushers honest. Denny had a feeling Cal had ordered the others to stop shooting in order to save some of the bullets for the inevitable last-ditch fight.
But in that quarter of an hour, Denny and Brice had stalked and killed four more outlaws, planting Winchester rounds squarely in their backs. What they were doing was cold-blooded murder, Denny knew . . . but she also knew that under the circumstances, her father would have done the same thing. So would her uncles, Luke and Matt, and her cousins, Ace and Chance. Jensens were, by nature, honorable men, but that didn’t stop them from being practical, especially when some devil was trying to hurt them or their friends.
“You reckon they’re starting to notice that no more shots are coming from this side?” she quietly asked Brice. With so many guns going off, by timing their own shots to blend in the way they had, they’d hoped their efforts would go undetected for a while.
“I don’t know,” Brice replied. “If they have, they’re liable to try to sneak up on us.”
The same thought had occurred to Denny. For that reason, she had been casting frequent glances over her shoulder. So far she hadn’t detected any threats, but she wasn’t going to let down her guard.
They moved on in search of more outlaws to deal with. The gun blasts made it easy to track them by sound. They crawled up into a scattering of smaller boulders and found themselves with clear lines of fire at three rough-looking men.
Propped on her elbows, Denny took a breath to settle her strained nerves and then started to draw a bead on one of the outlaws. Since there were three of them instead of two this time, even if she and Brice shot perfectly, one of the outlaws ought to have time to whirl around and get a shot off at them. That was a risk they had to take.
Before either of them could squeeze the trigger, a rock clattered somewhere behind them. It was only a small sound, but as taut as Denny’s nerves were, it sounded like an avalanche. Brice heard it, too, and lunged up off the ground. He flung himself to the side, and Denny realized just before he landed on her that he was throwing himself into the line of fire, shielding her body with his own.
Shots roared. Brice grunted, and at the same time, a slug whined wickedly off one of the rocks only inches from the two of them. Denny squirmed halfway out from under him and twisted toward the gunfire. A bullet sizzled through the air next to her cheek. Part of her brain clamored with alarm, but she remained cool enough to realize the Winchester was too awkward for close work. She dropped the rifle and palmed out the Lightning instead as a pair of outlaws rushed toward them, firing revolvers.
The Lightning barked, drilling a .38 slug into the forehead of one man. He continued running, but aimlessly now since it was only momentum that kept him moving. He was already dead on his feet. His legs tangled up after a couple of steps and he tumbled to the ground.
Brice’s Colt blasted close enough to Denny’s ear that she flinched. The sound was like a giant fist hammering her. She saw the bullet punch into the second man’s guts and double him over. He went down, too.
They weren’t out of trouble yet. More shots slammed through the air and ricocheted from the rocks around them. Denny rolled over as bullets struck the ground near her head and sprayed dirt in her eyes. She gasped and blinked, and through watery vision she saw the three outlaws she and Brice had been aiming at a few moments earlier. Hearing the shots behind them, the men had whirled around and opened fire.
Denny came to a stop behind a rock that was less than a foot tall, so it didn’t provide much cover. Even so, she tried not to hurry her shot as she thrust the Lightning over the rock and fired. She was aiming for an outlaw’s chest, but the bullet went a few inches high and tore into his throat—even more effective. The man dropped his gun and clapped both hands to his throat, but he couldn’t stop the crimson fountain spurting from it. Denny knew her bullet had ripped through an artery. The man stumbled a couple of steps and then pitched forward onto his face.
Two men were still doing their damnedest to kill Denny and Brice.
The lawman’s .45 boomed and one of the outlaws reeled to the side clutching at a shattered shoulder. That brought him into the line of fire just as the third owlhoot triggered his rifle. The close-range shot caught the wounded man in the back of the head and sent half his skull flying into the air, accompanied by a gruesome spray of blood and brain matter.
Just one man left, and he staggered back as Denny and Brice fired at the same time and their bullets hammered into his chest. He flopped onto his butt and then went over onto his back with his arms spread out. He gave a couple of spasmodic kicks and was motionless after that.
Without holstering the Lightning, Denny scrambled over to Brice, who lay among the rocks on his side, propped on his left elbow. “Are you all right? I know you got hit!”
He pushed himself into a sitting position and nodded down at his left thigh. A bloody circle about the size of a fist stained his jeans. “Just barely nicked me. It kind of stings, that’s all.”
The taut chin strap of Denny’s Stetson had kept the hat on her head the whole time. She yanked it off and swatted him with it, making him flinch in surprise. “You damned fool!” she raged at him. “What the hell were you thinking, jumping on top of me like that? You could have gotten yourself killed trying to protect me!”
“It would have been worth it,” he said simply.
Denny just stared at him for a moment, seeing the sincerity on his face. There was no way to argue with a sentiment like that. In fact, she felt a little ashamed of herself . . . and even a bit awed that someone would feel that way about her.
The attack on the Sugarloaf crew continued, leaving no time for such things. Even worse from their perspective, angry shouts sounded as more men approached their position.
“Those bushwhackers finally realized they’re under attack, too,” said Brice. “And some of them are charging around here to see what all the commotion’s about.”
“We’ll be outnumbered,” said Denny, “even with the ones we’ve already killed.” An idea occurred to her. “It’s time to call in our reinforcements.”
“What reinfor—” Brice began, but before he could go on, Denny leaped to her feet and charged forward, so the men who had taken cover in the buffalo wallow could see her.
With her hat still in her hand, she whooped and waved it over her head in sweeping motions as if she were signaling someone behind her. “Come on, Sugarloaf!” she shouted. “Come on, Smoke! Come on, Pearlie! We’ll wipe ’em out!”
Her words and actions made it appear that she was leading a formidable force into battle. Bullets began to hum around her as outlaws raced toward her and opened fire. Behind them, the rest of the ambushers swung away from the buffalo wallow to meet the new threat.
That gave Cal and the men who were trapped down there the opening they needed to launch a counterattack of their own. They swarmed over the top of the earthen barrier around the wallow and charged up the slope, firing as they went. Their bullets slashed into the outlaws from the flank.
Brice, limping heavily on his bullet-creased leg, caught up to Denny, grabbed her around the waist, and bore her to the ground. “Get down, blast it!” he cried as slugs whipped through the air above them. “You’re gonna get yourself killed!”
“Reload!” Denny told him. “We’ve got to make those owlhoots think there’s an army out here!”
They lay among the rocks and thumbed fresh rounds into their revolvers, then fired as swiftly and accurately as they could so that lead scythed into the outlaws from two directions at once. It wasn’t exactly a crossfire, but it would do until the real thing came along.
The end result was that most of the would-be murderers and kidnappers fell, drilled by Sugarloaf lead in a frenzy of back-and-forth firing that lasted maybe a minute but seemed to stretch out longer. The three who were left unscathed threw down their guns and shoved their hands in the air, shouting, “Hold your fire! Don’t shoot! We give up!”
The Sugarloaf hands surrounded them, grabbed them, and wrestled them to their knees. The outlaws were lucky they didn’t just shoot and be done with it.
Denny and Brice stood up.
Denny waved and called, “Cal!”
The foreman went over to them, also limping a little and with a streak of blood on his cheek from a bullet scrape. “Denny!” he exclaimed. “You’re all right?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. Brice got nicked, but it’s not too bad.”
“Where’s Steve Markham? The last we saw, he was with you, not long before that bunch jumped us.”
Denny’s face turned grim. “Steve’s dead,” she told Cal. “He was . . . one of them. He tried to get me away before the ambush, but he didn’t succeed.”
Cal grunted then looked at Brice. “I reckon you showing up out of the blue had something to do with that, Marshal. I was wondering why you’re here in Montana.”
“It’s a long story, as they say,” replied Brice. “How bad is it with your bunch, Mr. Woods?”
“Two men dead, four more wounded but not too bad, I hope. Our saddle mounts are gone, and the horse herd’s scattered hell-west and crosswise!”
“Your saddle horses probably didn’t go far,” Denny said. “Brice and I left our horses not far from here. I’ll go get them, and one of the boys can use Brice’s horse to help me round up your mounts. Then you can go after the herd and round them up.”
“I can ride my own horse,” Brice protested.
“Your leg’s wounded,” Denny told him. “And I don’t give a damn if you’ve got a badge, you’re not giving me orders anymore.”
Brice looked like he wanted to argue, but then he shrugged. “All right. The most important thing is get this handled as quickly as possible.”
“That’s right,” Denny said. “Because hell’s going to break loose down on the Sugarloaf, and somebody’s got to warn Smoke about it!”