CHAPTER 54
Smoke, Jerry Walker, and Ed Magruder laid down a withering fire from the back porch as the mounted attackers charged the house. Bullets smacked into the walls around them in seemingly endless fashion. It would take a long time to patch all those gouges and holes, Smoke thought wryly as he peered over the Winchester’s sights and squeezed off another round.
Despite being outnumbered, he and his two companions had the advantage of good cover. The raiders were out in the open. They suffered heavy losses, dead and dying men and horses spilling on the ground, and after an eternity that actually didn’t last much more than a minute, the survivors wheeled their mounts and pounded away. Smoke, Walker, and Magruder hurried them along with a few more well-placed shots.
As the gunfire died away to be replaced with a ringing silence, Smoke said to the two cowboys, “You fellas hold the fort back here. I need to see what’s going on up front.”
“Don’t worry about us, Smoke,” said Magruder. “If those skunks come back, we’ll durned well fumigate ’em.”
Staying low in case any of the raiders who had fled were thinking about trying a long-range shot, Smoke slid back into the house and then hurried toward the parlor. He didn’t hear any shots coming from there and hoped Sally, Pearlie, and Inez were all right.
Sally was in the foyer, holding a revolver. Smoke recognized Pearlie’s Colt and knew he must have given it to her in case any of the attackers managed to break in the front door. Pearlie still knelt at one of the parlor windows. Inez had taken Smoke’s place at the other front window and held a rifle. A tendril of smoke still curled from its barrel, testifying to its recent use.
Smoke put a hand on Sally’s shoulder and asked her, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Smoke,” she assured him. “I didn’t have to do anything. Inez and Pearlie are the ones who fought off those men.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been sick—”
“I’m fine,” she said again. “Maybe still a little weak from the illness, but I haven’t had any fever for a couple of days.”
“I know.” He nodded and turned to Pearlie. “Those varmints light a shuck?”
“Yeah,” Pearlie said, “after leavin’ a few more carcasses out there. And it happened sudden enough that it was almost like they got some sort of signal tellin’ ’em to break off the attack.”
“Maybe they did.”
“Smoke . . .” Pearlie’s rugged face was set in grim lines as he paused. “There toward the end of the ruckus, I didn’t hear any shootin’ from out in the barn.”
“My God,” Sally said. “Brad.” She reached for the front door.
Smoke stopped her, gently moving her back away from the entrance. “I’ll go see about him. Some of those men could still be lurking around out there. They might be trying to trick us into thinking they’re gone.”
Smoke’s instincts told him that wasn’t the case, that the raiders who had lived through the fight were gone, but the other possibility couldn’t be ruled out and he wasn’t going to let Sally risk her life on that. “Cover me from the window,” he told Pearlie as he closed his free hand around the doorknob and stepped out onto the front porch with the Winchester held at the ready.
No shots rang out. Smoke’s head was on a swivel, moving constantly as he searched for danger. Seeing none, his long strides carried him quickly across the ranch yard toward the barn. He paid particular attention to the sprawled bodies of the raiders, in case any of them were only pretending to be dead. None of them moved, though. Flies were already starting to congregate around some of them.
When he reached the open doors, he hooked one with a booted foot and jerked it wider, then went through the gap in a rush. His eyes needed a second to adjust to the gloom after being in the afternoon sunlight outside.
He cursed bitterly as soon as he spotted the two huddled shapes lying on the hard-packed dirt of the barn’s center aisle. He hurried to the side of each man in turn but didn’t stop to examine the bodies. A glance was enough to tell him that Hank Sinclair and Fred Judson were dead, gunned down brutally by intruders who must have gotten into the barn from the rear.
A second later Smoke saw the busted-down door and wondered what sort of battering ram they had used to do that. Not that it mattered. The bastards had forced their way in, and that was all that was important. That, and . . .
“Brad!” Smoke called. “Brad, where are you?”
There were a lot of hiding places in a cavernous barn and stable, he told himself. Brad could have crawled into one of them and stayed there safely, not budging even when Hank and Fred were killed. He could emerge from whatever hidey-hole he had found and come running to Smoke . . .
“Brad!”
The name echoed hollowly, mockingly, from the rafters.
Smoke bit back another curse and started searching. He looked in every stall on both sides of the aisle, then in the others at the rear. That crazy mustang Rocket tossed his head and whinnied, but that didn’t tell Smoke anything. He called Brad’s name several more times but still didn’t get a response.
“Smoke!” That was Pearlie’s voice, coming from the front of the barn.
Smoke swung around and hurried in that direction, thinking that maybe Pearlie had found Brad somewhere.
The former foreman was alone, though, standing just inside the entrance holding his rifle. “Smoke, did you find the younker?”
Smoke shook his head, unable to put into words the unavoidable answer to Brad’s whereabouts.
“Miss Sally’s about to go loco from worryin’,” Pearlie went on. “It’s all Inez can do to keep her calm. I sure wish we could take Brad in there to see her.”
“So do I,” Smoke said, “but the only ones here are Hank Sinclair and Fred Judson.”
Pearlie nodded grimly. “I seen ’em. They was good boys, Smoke. The men who done this—”
“They’ll pay for it—the ones who got away,” vowed Smoke. “And they’ll pay for taking Brad, too. If anything happens to that boy . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to finish. After a couple of seconds, he drew in a deep breath and said, “I’d better go tell Sally.”
“I’ll come with you.” Pearlie glanced over his shoulder. “Then I’ll get some of the fellas and we’ll do what we can for Hank and Fred.”
The two of them started across the ranch yard, weaving around the carnage of dead raiders and horses, only to stop abruptly when they heard hoofbeats rapidly approaching. They swung their rifles up as a horseman appeared, riding hell-for-leather toward the ranch house.
“Hold your fire,” Smoke said a second later. “That’s Monte Carson.”
The sheriff slowed his horse as he came closer. Monte’s eyes widened as he looked around at the bodies littering the open area in front of the house. Relief was in his gaze as he turned it toward Smoke and Pearlie and reined in. “I’m glad to see you fellas are still alive, but Lord, it looks like you fought a war here!”
“That’s the way it seemed for a while, Monte,” said Smoke.
“You’re all right, Smoke? Pearlie?”
“Yeah,” Pearlie said, “no permanent damage done to us, but Hank Sinclair and Fred Judson weren’t so lucky. They’re in the barn, dead, and Jack Floren is layin’ over there where he fell from the hayloft after they gunned him.”
“Damn it! They were good men. What about Sally?”
“She’s all right,” Smoke said. “She’s in the house with Inez Sandoval. What are you doing here, Monte?”
The lawman scowled. “I came to warn you about something like this happening, Smoke. I’m mighty damned sorry that I was too late.”
Smoke’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Warn us? How’d you know about it?”
Monte dismounted and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “This message came for you at the telegraph office. Lester was so shaken up by it that he didn’t even print it out proper-like, just brought me what he wrote down on his pad.”
Smoke took the paper and read it.
OUTLAWS TO ATTACK SUGARLOAF STOP
KIDNAP LOUIS STOP STEVE MARKHAM
PART OF GANG STOP HIS BUNCH HERE
TRIED TO STEAL HORSES STOP TWO
MEN DEAD BUT HERD SAFE STOP CAL
DELIVERING TO COBURN STOP HEADED
BACK WITH BRICE ROGERS STOP
DENNY STOP
STIRRUP MONTANA OUT
Smoke’s jaw was tight with fury as he lifted his eyes from the message. “Markham was an outlaw? And what in blazes is Brice Rogers doing all the way up there in Montana?”
Monte and Pearlie exchanged a guilty glance.
Monte said, “He found out Markham might be up to no good—”
“Hold on,” said Pearlie. “I ought to be the one tellin’ this, since I figured out Markham was most likely the son of the Santa Rosa Kid.”
Smoke’s frown deepened. “You two knew about this?”
Monte gestured toward the message still in Smoke’s hand. “We didn’t have any idea what that bunch was planning. We didn’t even know for sure there was a gang, or if Markham was mixed up with them. All we were certain of was that he was a dead ringer for an owlhoot called the Santa Rosa Kid. Pearlie and I both remembered him, from the days when he was a hired gun and hadn’t gone all bad yet.”
“He was pretty damn close to it even then,” muttered Pearlie.
“Yeah,” Monte agreed. “Anyway, Brice chased off after Denny to let her know that Markham might be up to no good. But I swear, Smoke, that’s all we knew. We didn’t have any idea his gang was going to try to kidnap Louis. Where is Louis? He and Melanie aren’t back yet, are they?”
“They’re on their way back, but they got delayed,” Smoke explained. “They might be here today.”
“Well, I guess that’s one stroke of luck, anyway—”
“The gang took Brad.”
Monte looked stricken at Smoke’s words. “Brad?” he repeated. “The boy?”
“Yeah. They’ve got him . . . and we can only guess what they intend to do with him.” Smoke’s hands tightened on the rifle he held. “But no matter what, I’m going to track them down and kill them, every last one of them.”