36

COLTER’S RIGHT EAR rang from the scream of the ricocheting lead. He could feel blood running down his cheek that had been cut by flying rock slivers.

But he stayed his ground and quickly laid his sights once more on the head of the rider nearest him. It wasn’t as easy a shot as it would have been a second ago, before the third man had alerted the two riders, but he took it, anyway, and smiled in satisfaction as the rider who’d just started to gallop for cover flew down the side of his horse to pile up on the canyon floor.

In the corner of his left eye, Colter saw Louisa drop to one knee and face the canyon as she raised her carbine to her shoulder.

As she opened up on the man who’d been nestled in the rocks on the far side of the canyon—Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam-bam!—Colter fired three more quick rounds, emptying the saddle of the second rider and sending his horse galloping after the first.

“Damn!” he said, staring down through his and Louisa’s powder smoke at the man Louisa had shot and who now lay sprawled on his back half out of the niche he must have been hiding in.

“Teach you to stare at a girl’s tits when you should be watchin’ out for ambushes, Red!”

“Hey, I wasn’t!”

Louisa jerked around just as Colter heard the thud of galloping horses behind them.

“Two more!” the girl shouted.

She ran back through the boulders and several yards down the back of the ridge. Colter followed her, his ears burning with chagrin, as Louisa dropped to a knee and aimed at one of the two riders galloping toward them from the south, up a shallow grade stippled with cactus.

She blew the first rider off his horse with ease. Her second shot plumed dust behind the second man. Colter raised his own Winchester quickly. The rifle leaped and roared, spitting fire.

The second rider jerked back in his saddle, dropping one of his reins and clapping that hand to his leather-clad chest, near the long, red tail of his neckerchief. As he started to fall forward, Louisa’s Winchester roared, blowing the man back flat against the horse’s hindquarters. He started to slide down the horse’s left hip but then the horse gave a shrill whinny, dropped to its knees and turned a forward somersault.

The rider must have gotten his left boot hung up in the stirrup, because he flew like a ragdoll, obscured by flying dust, up over the horse’s head before the stirrup jerked him violently down once more and out of sight beneath the horse that immediately started to rise. The man gave a shrill, short-lived scream.

As the horse shook itself, causing the saddle to slide down its side, it sidled away unsteadily, addled. The rising dust revealed its rider sprawled on his side, only the long tail of his neckerchief moving as the breeze caught and waved it.

“Damn, Red, we make a good team!” Louisa turned to Colter and planted a soft, wet kiss on his lips, her tongue gently pressing against his own and instantly warming his volatile young loins. She pulled her head away and winked one of those lustrous hazel eyes. “But the admonition of before stands. Come on—there’s no rest for the wicked!”

Colter stared after her as she swung around and began running down the ridge toward the canyon floor, meandering around rocks with her rifle on her shoulder. His mind spun. He could still feel her mouth on his, her tongue pressing against his own.

Then he leaped forward and ran after her, breathing hard.

At the bottom of the canyon, one of the five men they’d shot was trying to crawl away. Louisa strode purposefully up to him, stopped, and delivered a single killing shot from her shoulder, causing the man’s head to bounce violently as blood and brain matter splattered the ground beneath him.

“Holy shit,” Colter whispered, running a sleeve across his sweaty forehead. “I’ve never known a woman like you before, Miss Louisa.”

“And you probably don’t know what to think.”

Colter looked at the man she’d just sent to Glory. The man’s high-heeled, dark brown, silver-spurred boots were still kicking. “No, I reckon not.”

“Just don’t fall in love with me, Red. Lou did that . . . and paid the price.”

She trotted east along the canyon floor, heading toward where they’d hid their horses. “What price is that?” Colter called after her.

“He’s not done tallying it yet!” Louisa beckoned as she ran. “Come on, Red. We got more riders comin’!”

Colter heard the hooves and turned to see a triangle of riders galloping toward him from the west end of the canyon. “Shit!” The keenness of the girl’s eyes was second only to her ears.

Colter followed her into a narrow canyon that fed the main one, and they mounted up and rode north out of the gap. Once they were in the open desert, Colter, riding beside Louisa, glanced over his shoulder. The riders were hot after them, maybe a hundred yards away and closing.

He looked at Louisa. She must have been reading his mind, because when she’d glanced back to see their pursuers, she turned to Colter and said, “We’ll get shed of them after the next hill.”

Colter grinned and turned his head forward, tugging his hat low over his eyes to keep it from blowing off in the hot, dry wind. But when they were halfway up the next hill, winding around boulders and cactus snags, a man’s voice shouted, “Keep ridin’!”

Colter and Louisa both jerked looks to their right to see Prophet wave his shotgun from a nest of rocks and scrub brush. He was kneeling on his hat. Ruth Rose was on the other side of the trail and slightly higher on the hill, aiming a rifle over the top of a low, flat boulder. Colter recognized her by her long, brown hair and yellow bandanna.

“Speak of the devil!” Louisa shouted as she crested the hill before plunging down the other side.

Behind them Prophet shouted, “Keep a-ridin’—there’s a half-dozen more o’ these curs over the next ridge!”

Colter looked at Louisa as he galloped just off her pinto’s left hip. She glanced back at him, scowling. “I told you he was bossy!”

She crouched low over her galloping horse’s neck and batted her heels again the mount’s flanks, urging more speed.

* * *

Prophet crouched against the boulder, his shotgun in one hand, his rifle in the other. He stared toward the seven riders galloping toward him in a jostling, dusty wedge—seventy yards away and closing quickly.

He looked slightly up the grade behind him and north, where Ruth hunkered behind another boulder, a rifle he’d taken off one of the men he’d killed in her hands. She’d promised she knew how to wield the weapon, had even been a fair shot back in the Ozarks from where she hailed, though it had been several years since she’d fired such a weapon.

He’d told her to take her time, line up the sights on her target, and squeeze the trigger slow.

He hunkered lower, pressing his left cheek up against the backside of the boulder to make certain he wasn’t seen before he wanted to be. He’d let her take the first shot, because she’d probably only get one. He knew it was important to her to get at least one. Then he’d cut loose with his rifle and barn blaster.

He glanced toward her again but could see only her boots. She’d assumed a prone position and was probably lining up her sights on the far side of her covering boulder. Prophet gritted his teeth.

Come on, Ruth, they’re gettin’ close. . . .

The ground vibrated beneath him as the riders approached to within fifty yards . . . forty. . . .

Ruth’s rifle cracked. At the same time the ka-pewww! reached Prophet’s ears, he heard a metallic thunk. The rifle of one of the two lead riders flew out of his hands. He screamed and clutched his arm, releasing one of his reins and sagging back in his saddle, his hat tumbling back off his head.

Prophet rose to a knee and commenced hastily lining up his sights and firing. The spent cartridges flew up over his right shoulder as, one after another, three riders were thrown from their saddles. Another dropped down the far side of his horse and was dragged by his stirrup on up the trail behind his wildly buck-kicking mount.

Prophet heaved himself to his feet and took a step forward as three still-seated riders brought their horses to skidding stops and turned their rifles on him. The rider on the far right fired a wild shot from his shaky perch, and Prophet punched a round through his throat. As the man tossed his rifle aside as though it were a hot potato and grabbed his throat, Prophet lined up his sights on one of the other three riders and squeezed the trigger.

The hammer pinged on an empty chamber.

He tossed the Winchester aside. As the other two riders galloped toward him, bellowing curses, Prophet ran forward, reaching for his shotgun and swinging it around before him. The two riders came at him, crouched low, one firing a rifle while the other triggered his pistols one at a time.

Bullets screeched around Prophet, who ran ahead to meet the attack head-on.

He triggered his right barrel at the man on the right, blowing him straight back off his horse while triggering a shot from midair, screaming. Prophet dove forward and hit the ground on his belly as the second rider galloped past him on his left.

Prophet swung the gut shredder around and cut loose with the second barrel just as the second rider curveted his horse. The double-ought buck tore into the killer’s left arm and shoulder and tore a couple of red chunks from his face.

Prophet slid the empty shotgun behind him, unholstered his Colt, raised it, and fired.

“You fuckin’ son of a bitch!” the killer screamed, his cream duster billowing as a bullet tore into his side.

He cocked his carbine and ground his heels into his horse’s flanks. The white-socked black lunged off its rear heels and galloped toward Prophet, its eyes white-ringed with fear. Prophet fired the Colt again, again, and again, watched dust puff from the rider’s duster, and then he dove to his left. One of the black’s hooves clipped Prophet’s right heel as he hit the ground and rolled as two slugs hammered the dirt and gravel around him.

Ignoring the gnawing pain in his tender ribs, Prophet pushed to his knees. The man had stopped the black and was looking at Prophet. His duster had more red on it than white, and it sagged off his broad shoulders. Blood from Prophet’s buckshot slithered down his right cheek.

Prophet shook his head. “You ain’t dead yet?”

The man grinned, shook his head. With both hands, he raised the carbine.

The man’s head jerked sharply to his right. He dropped his arms. The rifle fell to the ground. When the man lifted his head again, his brown bowler hat was gone, and the entire right side of his head was painted red and white from blood and brains.

He sagged slowly to his right. As his horse turned to start running back in the direction from which it had come, the rider fell out of the saddle, hit the ground, rolled once, and lay still.

Prophet turned to see Ruth walking toward him slowly, aiming her rifle from her hip. She held her yellow bandanna in her teeth, and it flapped around her neck in the wind that also tussled her hair, lifted dust, and tore at the lingering powder smoke.

“Now, that,” Prophet said, “was the shootin’ of an Ozark Mountain gal! Good to know that about you.” He gave a devilish wink.

She smiled as she lowered the rifle and strode toward him, taking her bandanna in her hand. She frowned, stopped suddenly, and stared down at his side.

“Oh, Lou!”

“What is it?”

He looked down. Blood spotted his sweat-soaked and filthy buckskin shirt above his right hip.

“Ah, shit,” he complained. “I thought I just landed on a pointy ol’ rock!”

His seeing the blood and the ragged hole in his side caused the wound to fire war lances of sharp pain all through him. Odd how that was, he absently thought as his right knee started to buckle. He chuckled, a little giddy.

Ruth lurched toward him, wrapped his right arm around her neck, and led him over to a rock. He sat down heavily, winced against the pain, and blinked to clear his spotty vision.

“Oh, Lou!” Ruth said, sandwiching his big face in her hands, her eyes shiny. “Don’t you go and die on me, you big bastard!”