HAWK STEADIED HIMSELF on the cases of tinned goods, then braced his body in the swaying wagon by placing one foot on stacks of sacked flour. “I’ll be behind you all the way,” he warned when Landy again muttered about odds.
“They’ll never let you past the guards,” the driver said glumly, thinking of his own hide in a showdown.
“They will if you play it straight,” Hawk pointed out “If you don’t, I’ll have time for two bullets. You’ll get ’em in the spine. Neither of you will ever walk again. You’ll wish ten thousand times over that I’d shot you dead.”
Timmons glanced back at Hawk, who was resting one knee on a bunched tarp. “You got nerve to try this.” He licked his lips. “More nerve than anybody I ever knowed.”
Landy removed a hand from the reins and wiped it on a shirt that was damp with sweat. “We’re the targets if there’s shootin’.”
“You are,” Hawk admitted. “And remember it!”
“Look, like I said, we ain’t part of the gang. All we do is bring in supplies—”
“Your friend Wharton is back in town picking glass chips out of his face because he tried to take my gun. If you’re not part of Keegan’s bunch, why’d he act so tough?”
“Keegan’ll pay for anybody we catch nosin’ around,” Landy confessed. “Reckon that’s what Wharton figured on.”
“He figured wrong—”
“Hell he did,” said Timmons suddenly. He had been faced around in the seat, looking back and down at Hawk in the deep bed of the heavily laden wagon. And even as Bart Timmons spoke, Hawk heard the sounds of a horse at a hard run, angling toward the wagon. Until that moment, sounds of the horse had been lost under the rumble of the freighter and team.
Approaching out of the dust was a dun horse, eyes wild as its rider reddened its flanks cruelly with spur rowels. Timmons had recognized the bare-headed rider bent over in the saddle. But as the rider on the pounding horse swept closer Hawk saw that the face resembled a gargoyle, misshapen and bloodied. Despite the ravaged features he knew it was Wharton.
Quickly, Hawk levered a shell into his rifle, making sure of his balance on the unsteady pile of sacked flour. The rider had been coming across open country to the left of the wagon, but was now swinging toward the road.
“I violated one of the rules of the game,” Hawk said more to himself than to the pair on the wagon seat. “I let your friend Wharton live.”
A faint muzzle flash came alongside the neck of the racing horse. A bullet made a flat sound as it ripped into a flour sack under Hawk’s feet, and he felt the shock through the soles of his boots.
“Hold that team in!” he warned Landy, as he realized the pace of the four-horse team had suddenly quickened. Hawk snapped off a shot as Wharton fired again. Wharton sagged even lower as his body twitched under the impact of a bullet from Hawk’s rifle. As Hawk watched, he saw the man’s left hand lose its grip on the reins. Wharton fell under the horse’s rear hooves, raising dust. For an instant, the hard-running animal stumbled, then righted itself and streaked for open country, stirrups flapping. Wharton’s lifeless, bloodied body rolled until it crashed in a disfigured heap against a large boulder.
“Haul that team in!” Hawk ordered, turning on his precarious platform. The wagon was gaining speed and rocking from side to side as it sped along the rough road.
As he shouted the order and tried to swing his rifle, Landy launched himself at Hawk from the high seat. In his right hand a knife glittered in the sunlight. Timmons, had snatched the reins and was now hauling back on them to try to keep the spooked team from running away.
But the gunshots and Landy’s savage cry as he tried to drive the knife point into Hawk’s throat made them run even harder. At the last moment, Hawk parried the knife thrust with his rifle barrel. Instead of tearing into his jugular, the blade ripped open the left side of his shirt. As he tried to wrestle Landy and aim the rifle, the wagon wheels dipped into a chuckhole. Both men lost their balance as the wagon tilted precariously, the load shifting, its weight threatening to smash through the sideboard. But the wagon righted itself instead of rolling.
Hawk, on his back, tried to fling Landy aside. But the man fought with the fury of the insane, mouthing curses, trying to tear at Hawk’s face with his teeth. Hawk used the heel of his left hand to smash Landy’s nose flat against his face. Screaming in pain, Landy fell back, and Hawk sprang to his knees. Before he could balance himself, Landy crashed into him again, trying to drive the knife into his heart. Blood from the ruined nose splashed the. side of Hawk’s neck. Jackknifing his body, he flung Landy into the right sideboard. Hawk levered himself to his feet, but the jolting of the wagon hurled him down again. They were no longer on the road; the team had veered left to open country. Timmons seemed unable or unwilling to control the wildly-running horses. A great cloud of dust ballooned in their wake.
Hawk regained his feet before Landy, but both men were knocked sprawling as the left wheels of the wagon ran over a brush clump. To keep himself from being thrown out, Hawk seized the tie end of a heavy sack. Regaining his grip on the rifle, he reversed it as Landy desperately charged him again. If possible, he wanted the man alive, to drive the team and get him past the guards.
But Landy ducked the rifle swing and came in with the knife poised at Hawk’s scarred abdomen. At the last instant, Hawk pivoted and brought the rifle butt down sharply on the back of Landy’s skull. Bone caved in under the tremendous blow.
Above the roar of hoofs and wagon wheels on the uneven terrain, Landy gave a choked-off scream and continued his wild plunge through the dropped tailgate of the wagon. His body made a loop in the air. He came down on his back in a clump of rabbit brush. A case of tinned goods spilled out the back of the wagon. The cans went rolling, some of them catching the sunlight.
The team had finally slowed its pace, winded. Hawk swung around in time to see that Timmons had given the reins a turn around the brake handle. And from some secret place under the seat Timmons had seized a sawed-off shotgun.
Before Bart Timmons could squeeze the triggers, Hawk shot him. A single barrel of the sawed-off shotgun sent shot whipping into the clear sky. Timmons fell backward off the seat, dropping the shotgun to the floorboards. He fell between two of the horses. Wheels of the heavy wagon crushed out what life remained in him.
Clinging to his weapon, Hawk clambered to the seat, wedged the rifle between his knees and caught the reins. He wrapped them around his strong hands, anchored his heels against the dashboard, and finally brought the team to a halt. They stood with heads down, barrels heaving. He turned them back to the road, pulling up to stare at Timmons. The man lay smashed into the ruts by the wheels.
Hawk lifted his gaze from the dead man and studied the horizon on all sides to make sure the gunshots had not attracted anyone who might be nearby. Keegan might have a patrol out. In that case, he was in for trouble before he even reached the pass into the mountains. But nothing moved in the heat haze.
It took some minutes to adjust the cargo that had shifted during the wild run. Sweating, he shoved case after case back from the tailgate so that no more would spill out when he began the steep climb into the mountains. In the wagon bed, wedged under a sack of flour, he found Landy’s hat. It was smashed in and bloodied. He threw it over a sideboard, then climbed to the seat and rolled a cigarette. The smoke, drawn deep into his lungs, was calming.
He thought of some advice Colonel Spate had given him some years ago: “If you suspect a man is your enemy, kill him. Don’t wait to make sure. Any delay and you could be the dead one.”
“What if after you kill him you find out he wasn’t an enemy?” Hawk had asked.
Colonel Spate’s smile was cold. “Human life means nothing unless it’s your own.”
He finished the cigarette, flipped the butt into the road, then picked up the sawed-off shotgun that had fallen to the floorboards. He found extra shells in the shelf under the seat and reloaded the one chamber that had been discharged. He placed the shotgun and rifle on the seat beside him, first cocking the rifle. He loosened the .44 in his holster, took a deep breath and said aloud, “Well, Keegan, let’s have a look at that bride you’ve kidnapped.” He started driving. Now he would be much more vulnerable than he had been when he was crouched in the wagon bed behind heavy sideboards. All he could do was bluff it out.
The only way into the fortress on this side of the mountain was by the main road, straight in.