MOSE HEARD THE thunder of gunfire rattle over the pounding of the rain. Instinct and experience dictated his movements as gut-knowledge impressed fact upon his mind. The stage carried no bullion, nor any mail. That meant the only profit in holding it up lay with the passengers. On the steep downslope of Windy Ridge random fire was likely to tip the whole shebang over the edge and leave the stick-up artists devoid of pickings.
No self-respecting road agent would chance that. No: he’d show himself and take his chances against the guard. Try to halt the coach—which Mose would have done on the. instant—and lift his loot before leaving them free to continue.
Wild fire meant that some crazy bastards were out to kill everyone.
Mose lifted his foot off the lever of the brake, yelled at the horses, and let them run. It was one hell of a longshot, and he was none too sure of his chances on the way down. But it was better than a rifle slug in the gut. He spat tobacco through the rain and waited for the next curve to show. Were he able to recall a prayer, he’d have tried one: he felt it was needed.
He sensed a shift beside him. Turning, he saw Nick stand halfway to his feet, one barrel of the scattergun spreading flame through the rain. Then the guard was gone, pitching sideways off the seat.
Mose kept the horses running. Nick was old enough to look after himself. And getting killed was part of his job.
Bullets thudded into the woodwork behind him and he could hear his passengers yelling near loud enough to drown out the gunfire. He grinned, some kind of madness taking over his senses, and steered the team into the curve.
Mose and his team knew each other well enough to trust the vital fusion of man with horse. He let them run; they obeyed his commands. He put the long reins over and the blacks stretched sideways around the turn. The Concorde slewed wild, scraping bits of woodwork along with the sparks from the rock, and settled into the downgrade. The bumping threatened to lift Mose off the seat. It threatened to buck the stage off the trail. It spilled the three passengers onto the floor in a welter of profanity. But it carried them all clear of the ambuscade.
Nick saw it go. And swore as he rammed a fresh cartridge into the shotgun. There was a pain like fire lancing through his left side where a rifle bullet had pierced him. He had no way of knowing if his wild shot had hit the patch of water-shrouded flame he’d fired at, but he hoped it had.
He was twenty-four years old and the last eight had been spent packing a gun for one employer or another. He seldom talked about his past because there wasn’t much to talk about. Though he prided himself on his loyalty. He had sided Al Birch in the Daranga County war, even though he disagreed with the cattle baron’s politics. And the Big Fish spread during the long struggle with Jules Denny and his sons. Each time he had given his word and held to it; just as he had to Ma Harvey.
He came up out of the mud, cocking the scattergun as he rose.
The stage was gone around the next curve and through the cascades he could see three men climbing onto saddle mounts. He began to run. He ignored the pain in his side in his determination to get close enough to use the sawed-off Meteor. He’d promised Ma Harvey that he’d guard her coach, and he was bent on doing that. Just that—even if it meant his own life.
He crossed through the spill of water that had hidden the ambushers, holding his Stetson down to keep the water out of his eyes, one hand over the loading gate of the scattergun.
On the far side he saw three men. Two were already in the saddle, moving off towards the downslope. The third was fighting his horse, circling round it as the animal skittered hindquarters away from the falling water and the probing boot-heel.
Nick grinned and fired on the run.
The shotgun discharged too high, spattering shot around the road agent’s head. He cursed, dropping his foot from the stirrup as he yanked the horse’s head around with his left hand.
Nick triggered the second barrel.
The shot blew the outlaw back against his horse. He slid down the rain-wet flanks, fighting to hold onto the animal as he hauled a Remington .44 revolver from under his oilskin. While he pulled the gun clear Nick was pushing a fresh load into the shotgun. He did it slower than usual because his left arm was stiffening up and the pain in his side hunched him over to an awkward position. He cursed, feeling the warmth of blood trickle down his arm, and finished loading.
The other man was sitting on the wet ground, one arm dragged back behind him where the horse was fighting to break free. The other was stuck out in front of him, pointing the Remington at Nick’s chest. There was blood on the road agent’s face and torso, and his mouth was twisted up in a snarl that was part anger and part anguish. As Nick snapped the Meteor shut the outlaw fired.
The .44 caliber slug hit the young stage guard dead center of his chest. It slammed him backwards so that he lost his balance and emptied the scattergun into the sky. Stretched on his back, he felt as though someone was ramming a hot iron through his lungs so he wriggled over onto his face and tried to push himself upright. He got to his knees and reached for the fallen shotgun, but then something hit him in the back and he tasted mud in his mouth. After a while the sandy taste gave way to a salty thickness that clogged his throat and nose. He made one last attempt to reach the gun, but it was too difficult. The pain got worse and he thought about screaming. It was too much effort, so he closed his eyes and let the darkness blot out the pain.
The road agent watched him die before climbing cautiously to his feet. Gingerly, he ran a hand over his face, wincing when he touched the bloody furrows torn out by the shotgun. His chest, too, was aching where the edge of the spreading shot had caught him, but worrying about it wasn’t going to heal the wounds. He holstered the revolver and mounted his nervous horse, taking off after his companions at a reckless gallop.
Getting shot up was one of the dangers a man had to face in this line of work, though he didn’t have to like it any the more. He didn’t think he was hurt too bad, though the wounds would bear looking at, and felt more angry, now, than anything else. The kid had proved a real surprise, coming back like that with a 44-40 slug punched through his ribs at close range. He might have spoiled the whole plan, though from the way the driver took off, the stage was due to spill anyway.
Mose was thinking along the same lines. He was hoping that the owlhoots would hang back to take care of Nick, maybe even get themselves shot up by the kid—if he was alive—but at least give Mose a breathing space.
Instead, there were two riders coming fast in pursuit. That much Mose knew from the backward glance he risked while he bucketed the Concorde down the straight. After that he kept his eyes pointed forwards, concentrating on the trail.
He hit the curve, aware—in a way that churned his gut and dried his mouth—of the drop below and the narrowness of the trail. It took all his skill to steer the lead horses through and get the others round. Behind them, the stage slewed wide, the off-side forward wheel tumbling a whole chunk of the edge downwards. The rear wheel swung farther out, spraying droplets of rainwater through the emptiness as it spun free over the drop. Mose felt the body of the coach dip and his legs tensed to drive him clear should the angle get any worse. Then the momentum and sheer power of the team dragged them back onto firm ground and they careened on through the squalling rain.
It was the wildest drive of Mose’s life. Few other men could have done it, not on a road so steep and curve-strewn as Windy Ridge. Not with the Spring sky greasing the going until even a walk was fraught with danger. Not with rifle fire spanging out of the rain and two—maybe three—wild killers riding herd on his future.
But Mose—somehow—did. He held the Concorde on the trail and kept it ahead of the riders. Though for how long, he avoided guessing.
Matthew Gunn stood up as the sounds drew closer. His wide mouth thinned out in an angry line and he turned his blond-maned head slowly from side to side, listening through the incessant hissing of the rain. Whatever was happening up there on the mountain was nothing to do with him, but he could no more resist checking it out than he could leave a Gila monster free to crawl over his chest. Curiosity, habit, instinct—whatever impulse it was, it was one of those in-born things that kept him alive.
He turned back from the mouth of the cave affording him a dry sleeping place and scuffed sand over the glowing embers of his cook fire. Whatever it was happening out there, it would take a while to get down onto the flat: he would have time to dress up against the rain. He shrugged into a slicker, setting a flat-brimmed Stetson over his shoulder-length hair, and checked the load in the Winchester that was never far from his hand.
Looking at him, the casual observer would have been hard put to define his origins. His tall frame was corded with lean muscle, and his pale blue eyes seemed to belong to a more northerly country. They, like his sun-bleached hair, were inherited from his Scottish father. His wide cheekbones and somewhat flattened nose came from his mother, Rainbow Hair, daughter of Mangas Colorado. Matthew Gunn, who was also Azul of the Chiricahua Apache, carried the traits of both his peoples. Around the Border Country men knew him as Breed.
He was tall, handsome in a hard-eyed kind of way, and capable of both the ruthless cruelty of his mother’s folk, and the philosophies of his father, Kieron Gunn. He wore a shirt of bleached and well-washed linen, buckskin pants that fitted snug into knee-high, Apache moccasins, and the black Stetson. Around his waist was belted a holster filled with a Colt’s .45 Frontier model revolver, on his left hip, a Bowie knife. A slender-bladed throwing knife was tucked into his right moccasin. As with the Winchester, he was adept in the usage of them all.1
He gathered up his bedroll and lashed it to the saddle resting against one wall of the cave. Outside, a tall-standing roan horse grumbled a complaint at being saddled wet, then stood waiting for him to mount. They had come a long way together, the man and the animal. From Texas over into New Mexico, then on into Arizona, and along the way they had learned to respect one another. Matthew Gunn—Azul—tended to have more time for animals than for people: the latter were generally less trustworthy.
He climbed onto the roan and started out through the gathering dark.
He reached the Windy Ridge road with the pale yellow sun turning the rain to a sickly ochre color and halted the pony under the skimpy shelter of a windblown wild oak. The noises were a whole lot closer now, and he slid the Winchester clear of the saddle scabbard, levering a shell into the breech with automatic movements.
Apache-trained, his ears picked up sounds few others would have caught, translated them into a pattern. And waited. There was a team of horses running close to panic, pulling a heavy vehicle. A wagon? A stage coach? That would be determined in moments. Behind came two men firing rifles, after them a single rider. All took wild chances, riding that way in the dark, down a trail like Windy Ridge.
Patterns showed through the rain. Breed narrowed his eyes, peering hard at the oncoming shape. He saw a runaway stage buck through a curve like a jack rabbit dodging a hunter. There were flashes: gunfire from the riders. The man atop the driver’s bench slumped forward and to the side, fighting to hold the reins. The horsemen closed the gap.
Breed heeled the roan out into the open, draping the single guide rein around his saddle horn as he brought the Winchester up to his shoulder.
Mose Curran spat tobacco along with a curse over the withers of the nearest horse. He could feel something burning through his left shoulder and knew the road agents had hit him. That it was a supremely lucky shot did nothing at all to reassure him. All Mose knew was that he couldn’t juggle the team any longer and he was going to die. The stage would run wild and turn over, or get stopped by the men behind him. In which case he would most likely get shot again. Either way, Ma Harvey had trouble. He groaned, trying hard to keep the team in check.
Then fresh gunfire intruded upon his pain-dulled senses.
Presented with an unknown situation most men have three choices. They can leave well alone, support the under-dog, or side with the strong. Why Matthew Gunn chose to help Mose Curran he could no more explain than he could justify his insistence on retaining aspects of his Apache mother’s culture. A man with any kind of sense would have capitalized on his white inheritance, cut his hair short and worn American clothes. Passed for pure white. That way life would have been a whole lot easier. He could have holed up in his cave and gone to sleep with no more than the passing memory of gunshots to disturb his conscience.
But there was something inside of Matthew Gunn that insisted he take part. It was—like his heritage of the white and the red—both blessing and curse, a thing that set him apart from other men whose paths were mostly seen clear.
It was the reason he came out firing.
The first shot lifted the leading horseman from his saddle. The second winged the next man, spinning horse and rider away into the rain-soaked brush. Breed fired a second shot into the falling body, levering the Winchester as the man tumbled over and over with red holes starting up out of his oilskin. Then he heeled the roan off trail, going after the other one.
They met a quarter mile out from Windy Ridge, the road agent hanging over his saddle with blood spilling from his wide open mouth.
‘Bastard,’ he grunted as he caught sight of Breed. ‘Fuckin’ bastard.’
He was holding a cocked Winchester as he said it. Squeezed the trigger to punctuate the sentence.
The shot went wild: the man was too badly hurt to fire straight. Breed smiled, though no humor showed on his face, and triggered his own carbine. The bullet took the hold-up artist in the stomach, doubling him over the neck of his horse. He coughed fresh blood over the animal’s ears and tried to lever his carbine a second time. Breed shot him again, watching indifferently as the bullet smashed out through the back of his skull, twisting him sideways from the saddle.
The road agent fell heavily, spooking the horse as his weight quit the left side stirrup. He hit the ground with his right ankle stuck out through the metal, and the horse took off into the rain. It felt the weight dragging at its side and began to race round in crazy circles, trying to tear the body clear. Breed turned his own mount, kicking it up to a fast canter back the way he had come. He had meant to kill the outlaw, but it jibed to leave a good horse like that. Still … maybe he could ride back and bring it in. It should be worth some money with the gear and guns.
He reached the trail and took off after the stage.
Up ahead he heard the sound of one man running a horse hard, and closed in.
The rider was hunched down over his saddle and when he caught the sound of the roan’s hoofbeats he twisted over, pointing a gun down the backtrail. He had no idea who might be following him so damnably fast, but knew that Jake or Burl would have hollered. In addition, the gunfire he had been listening to suggested that someone else was in on the play. And with that kind of money at stake there was no room for extra hands. So—one way or another—whoever was backing him was an unwelcome visitor. He fired the Remington.
Breed saw the muzzle flash and swung down along the side of the roan. It was unlikely that the shot would hit: firing from the back of a running pony was a thing no sensible man would try, except to scare his pursuers. So he was relatively safe. Nonetheless, there was no harm in taking precautions. He moved back to an upright position and cocked the Winchester one-handed. He kept the roan to a fast gallop, hauling up behind the other man.
The Remington barked three more times, each shot blasting wild over Breed’s head. Then he was level with the road agent.
He held the rein in his left hand, the Winchester in his right. He knew what the kick of the fast-action carbine felt like, so he shoved the muzzle hard against the man’s back before pulling down on the trigger.
The bullet spat out of the barrel with no more than a half inch between its exit and its entry. It severed the road agent’s spine as neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel, exiting through his stomach in a welter of rain-damped blood. The outlaw doubled over the haunches of his panicked horse, his boots flying clear of the stirrups as he somersaulted backwards. His hands sprang out before him, as though they sought to clutch the sky and tug it down against him. Then he was gone, one more corpse to mark the way down Windy Ridge.
Breed grunted as he thundered past the falling body, heading fast after the stage.
The Concorde was moving fast and wild over the flat.
Up on the driver seat Mose Curran was doing his best to hang onto the reins and keep the team running straight. He was losing too much blood to do it very well, and was too weak to fight off the man who swung onto the coach beside him. He made an attempt to hold the reins, but the other man was younger and stronger, and Mose relinquished his grip without overmuch argument.
Breed left the roan to pace alongside the stage as he climbed into the drive seat. The old man holding the reins was bad hit in his shoulder, and not about to put up too much argument, so he took over the Concorde and set to slowing it down. The team was spooked by the gunfire and the wild drive, but after a bit he had the ponies in check.
The roan kept up alongside and. before too long the stage was slowed to an easy canter. There was a whole lot of noise coming from the passengers, but Breed ignored it. They owed him enough, he figured, for their lives, without howling for explanations.