CHAPTER 17
Smoke heard the shots and the swift rataplan of running hoofbeats and knew instinctively that he and his men had ridden into a trap. That possibility had lurked in the back of his mind, but he had known that he had to check out the situation anyway.
As he wheeled around instantly, with Cal and the other cowboys following suit, Smoke spotted the riders charging them from behind. Without even stopping to think about it, he knew they had been hidden in the box canyon. It was the only place they could have been lurking in order to get behind the group of Sugarloaf riders. Muzzle flame bloomed in the darkness as the raiders opened fire.
They had launched their attack too soon, he thought. They should have waited until they were closer if they wanted to make sure of their prey.
* * *
That was all the confirmation Denny needed that the strange riders were indeed up to no good. She drove the buckskin forward, guiding the horse with her knees as she pressed the carbine’s butt firmly against her shoulder and started raking the intruders with lead.
Since they were between her and her father, she worried a missed shot might go on past them and hit someone it wasn’t supposed to. She aimed low, knowing she was more likely to hit innocent horses, but that couldn’t be helped. Downing some of them would put the riders on foot, making it easier for the Sugarloaf men to round them up.
* * *
With his rifle already in his hands, Smoke flung it to his shoulder and sprayed lead into the mass of riders charging toward him and his small crew.
His men opened fire as well. For a long moment, the darkness was torn asunder by orange streaks of light that geysered from the barrels of rifles and pistols. A deadly storm of lead lashed back and forth between the two groups. Then they came together, and chaos erupted as the battle shattered into numerous individual fights.
Smoke found himself facing two shadowy riders who charged him from different angles. He shifted his grip on the Winchester and thrust it out using only his left hand, while his right palmed the Colt from its holster and brought it up. The gray was used to the sound of gunfire, so it stood fairly steady while Smoke squeezed off shots with both weapons. The revolver boomed and bucked in his right hand, and the attacker on that side flew backwards as the .45 slug swept him out of the saddle.
The rifle was harder to fire one-handed, and the recoil kicked the barrel high. As Smoke was bringing it down, he felt the heat of a bullet whipping past his cheek, and then in the next split second, a hammer blow smashed into his left side, high up just below the shoulder. The impact twisted him halfway around in the saddle. His left arm went numb with shock, and the rifle slipped from his fingers.
* * *
Even caught in the crossfire, only a few of the rustlers wheeled around and opened fire on the threat coming up from behind them. Most charged ahead, intent on overrunning and overwhelming the group from the Sugarloaf.
Denny heard slugs whining through the air near her head. She would have been scared half to death—if there had been time for that. She allowed her instincts to take over, veered the buckskin to the left, and kept shooting. Her bullets spooked the attackers. They peeled away and circled back toward the main fight.
The dark maw of the canyon mouth loomed on Denny’s left. She could have darted in there and hidden until the battle was over, thus staying fairly safe from stray bullets. But there was no guarantee that Smoke and his allies would win. From what she had been able to see, they were outnumbered. She wanted to help so pressed on.
The battle had broken down and spread out into smaller confrontations. Muzzle flame spurted here and there like a sprawling cloud of deadly fireflies. Denny raced toward one of those clashes, hoping she would be able to tell friend from foe. If she couldn’t, she would have to hold her fire.
* * *
Since he was already slewed to the side, Smoke didn’t have as far to bring the Colt around to meet the remaining threat. A flood of pain washed away the numbness that had gripped him when he was hit, but he tightened his jaw against it and triggered a pair of swift shots. Only a few yards away, the man who’d wounded him rocked backwards in the saddle but didn’t fall. His horse charged on, wild and out of control.
Sensing the imminent collision between the two horses, Smoke kicked his feet free of the stirrups and was thrown clear when they crashed together and went down. Unfortunately, he landed on his wounded shoulder, which caused such a blinding explosion of agony that for a moment he was unaware of anything else and unable to move.
* * *
In one of the split seconds of glare that ripped the night apart, Denny saw two horses crash together and one of the riders fly through the air, land hard, and roll over a couple times. She watched as another rider spurred toward him.
* * *
When his senses came back to him, Smoke lifted his head and saw a huge dark shape looming above him, blotting out the stars and the moon.
It was a man on horseback, who shouted, “Now you’ll die for what you’ve done, Jensen!”
The barrel of a pistol swung swiftly toward Smoke.
Denny knew the only other Jensen out there was her father. The carbine flashed up to her shoulder and barked as soon as she lined the barrel on the shadowy target. The man cried out in pain as the slug raked him somewhere. The pistol fell from his hand.
Denny worked the carbine’s lever and fired again, but the man had already bent forward in the saddle to make himself a smaller target, or he slumped that way because he was wounded. The bullet whipped harmlessly over his head. He was able to yank the horse around and jab his spurs viciously into its flanks. The animal let out a shrill scream but leaped away. Denny fired again and grimaced because she knew she had missed.
She sent the buckskin pounding toward the fallen man, leaped down while the horse was still moving, staggered forward a step, and dropped to her knees beside him. He was struggling to sit up. He had lost his hat when he fell, and in the moonlight she was able to make out the familiar features. “Pa, are you hit?” she asked as she pressed a hand against his right shoulder.
“Denny?” he exclaimed. “What the hell—” He let out a groan and twisted, favoring his left side.
Denny saw the dark stain on Smoke’s shirt and set her carbine aside so she could take hold of him and carefully eased him back to the ground. “Just lie there. You’re hurt.”
“Denny, what in blazes . . . are you doing here?”
“Saving your bacon, from the looks of it.” She groaned inwardly. Maybe that wasn’t the wisest reaction, but she was too worried about him to be thinking straight at the moment.
She turned her head and looked out across the valley. Shots still flashed here and there, but most of the fighting seemed to be over. As she watched tensely, the last of the gunfire died away. And it was too dark to tell who had won the battle.
“Denny—” Smoke began again, but she hissed at him to be quiet.
“We don’t want to bring them down on top of us,” she whispered. “Was it those rustlers who jumped you?”
“Had to be,” he said, keeping his voice as quiet as hers.
She heard the pain in his tone. Uncertainty over how badly he was hit gnawed at her, but she couldn’t risk a light to examine the wound.
Hoofbeats thudded not far off in the darkness. Denny tensed and picked up the carbine. She couldn’t remember if, in the heat of battle, she had worked the lever after the last shot she fired. There might be a round in the chamber, or there might not be, but she couldn’t risk cocking it. Not with an unknown rider so close.
A familiar voice called softly, “Smoke! Smoke, you around here?”
A shudder of relief went through Denny. Still not knowing if any of the rustlers were still around, she kept her voice quiet as she responded, “Cal! Over here!”
Horse and rider loomed out of the shadows. Cal said in evident amazement, “Miss Denise? Is that you?”
“I’m here, Cal. So is my father. He’s hurt.”
She heard a muttered curse from the foreman as he reined in. Cal dismounted in a hurry and let his horse’s reins dangle as he knelt on Smoke’s other side. “How bad is it?”
“Blast it, I’m all right,” Smoke said, but his voice sounded weak. “I caught a slug in the left side . . . just under my shoulder, but it missed my heart . . . else I’d be dead already. I don’t think it broke any bones. I’m just . . . bleeding like a stuck pig . . . You’d better get . . . Denny out of here—”
“The hell with that. I’m not going anywhere without you, Pa.” She looked across him at Cal. “What about the rustlers?”
“I’m pretty sure they all lit a shuck, except for the ones we killed.” He added grimly, “We lost some men, too, I think. I’ll round everybody up and see how bad the situation is, but right now we need to get Smoke on his horse and the two of you back to the house as quick as can be.”
“I’m going to risk a light,” Denny said. “You get ready to shoot if anybody opens up on us. Probably need to do something about this wound, though, or he’s liable to bleed to death on the way back.”
Smoke said, “She sure does . . . take to giving orders . . . doesn’t she, Cal?”
“I reckon she’s right.” Cal stood up and pulled his Winchester from its scabbard. “You go ahead, Miss Denise, and see if you can patch him up a mite. If anybody tries to give us trouble, I’ll deal with ’em.”
Denny found the little waterproof packet of matches she had taken to carrying since she got back to the ranch and struck one of them. Squinting against the glare, she looked at her father’s side and saw that his shirt was soaked with blood from just below his shoulder to the waist. He had lost a lot of it already, and it still seemed to be welling from the wound.
The match burned down. Working by feel, Denny ripped the bloody shirt and pulled it aside, then struck another match. She saw the hole where the bullet had gone in and lifted his shoulder enough to make sure there wasn’t a matching wound on Smoke’s back.
There wasn’t. The slug was still in him somewhere.
Well, that wasn’t good, she thought, but at the same time it meant she only had to stop the bleeding from one hole. She dropped the second match as the flame reached her fingers, then pulled her shirttails out from behind her belt. She had a folding knife in her pocket. It took her only a minute to use the blade to cut a piece of cloth from her shirttail.
She wadded the cloth into a ball, told her father, “This is going to hurt,” and jammed it into the wound, pushing down until it completely filled the hole.
Smoke’s breath hissed between his clenched teeth, but he didn’t say anything or let out any other noise.
“Hold it there,” Denny told him.
He used his right hand to do that while she cut long strips from the bottom of her shirt and bound the makeshift plug in place with them.
“Somebody coming,” Cal warned. He had his rifle ready.
A couple seconds later, a man called, “Cal? Mr. Jensen?”
“That’s Rick Yates,” Cal said, relief plain to hear in his voice. “Rick! We’re over here!”
A couple riders pounded up.
One of them asked, “Are you all right, Cal?”
“Yeah, but the boss is here, and he’s hit.”
“Son of a—! Is that Miss Denise?”
“What about those rustlers?” Denny asked as she stood up wearily.
“Gone,” Yates replied.
“Good. You can help me get my pa on his horse.”
They found Smoke’s gray, which didn’t seem to have been injured in the collision with the rustler’s mount. As carefully as possible, the cowboys lifted Smoke into the saddle.
“I’ll ride behind him to make sure he doesn’t pass out and fall off,” Denny said. “Somebody give me a hand getting up there.”
Yates held his hands to make a step for her. Denny settled herself on the horse’s back behind the saddle, put one arm around her father’s waist to steady him, and used the other hand to take the reins.
“Here’s Smoke’s Colt,” Cal said. “Looks like he dropped it.”
“Reload it,” she said.
When Cal had done so, using cartridges from his own shell belt, she put the reins between her teeth for a moment and held out a hand. “Give it here,” she ordered around the reins.
Cal handed her the revolver, butt first. She stuck it behind her belt.
“Miss Denise . . . ?” the foreman said uncertainly.
“Anybody tries to stop us, they’ll be sorry,” Denny declared and then heeled the big gray into a run. They disappeared into the night, heading south toward the ranch headquarters.