11

“Rifle!” barked Hammett. “I saw the sun flash on the scope.” He was still lying on top of Charmian, who had the sense not to struggle.

“Figured that. Where?”

“One o’clock.”

“I asked where, not when.”

“Top of that rise.” He pointed.

Butterfield was stirring, trying to disentangle himself from the stool. Siringo laid the barrel of the Colt alongside his temple, stilling him. The old detective holstered the weapon and reached out to catch his rifle scabbard by its strap and drag it over. He slid out the carbine, levered a shell into the chamber, and crawled over the unconscious stable boy, creeping up to the sill of the shattered window.

As he watched, exposing only one eye inside the frame, something moved among the redwoods standing at the top of the hill.

He ducked just as another bullet passed through the missing pane, burying itself in the wall opposite with a sound like an axe chopping wood. He sprang up on his knees then, obliterated the rest of the window with the Winchester’s barrel, and fired three times fast, working the lever in between.

“You can’t hit anything shooting like that,” Hammett said, as the echo of the third shot growled away over the hills.

“I don’t expect to, just announce there’s somebody in here with an iron. Everybody all right?”

Charmian said, “I’m fine. Is Abner dead?”

“Maybe. I didn’t hit him gentle.”

“You hit—?”

“He was a distraction.”

“I’m swell,” Hammett said. “Thanks for asking.”

Siringo shushed him.

The sound of a motor sputtering to life reached them. He’d ducked again after firing the salvo, but now he rose into a cautious crouch, in time to see a battered Model T truck come bucking out of the woods, its flat windshield flashing in the sun as it turned in the direction opposite the stable.

His face was wet on one side. He swept the back of his hand across his cheek and looked at the smear of blood. A shard of glass had brushed past just close enough to break the skin.

Then something heavy struck the backs of his bent knees and his legs folded in on themselves. He had sense enough to twist his body and avoid plunging through the window with its border of razor-sharp glass. As he did so, he opened a path for Abner Butterfield, who’d knocked him off his feet, to scramble over him and dive through the opening with his arms crossed in front of his face.

“Stand clear!” Hammett got to his knees and leveled his .38 at the stable boy, who was running toward the tree-topped slope, his arms pumping.

Siringo bumped up the pistol with his elbow. A round crashed into the rafters overhead.

“He ain’t told us what he done with the horse!”

“Sorry.”

“You yonkers got too much lead in your pencil and no brains in your head.” He threw the Winchester at Hammett, who dropped his gun to catch it in both hands.

“What—?”

“Cover me in case that flivver comes back.” He looked at Charmian. “What’s the best horse you got? I don’t mean the prettiest.”

The widow had pushed herself up into a seated position. “Washoe Ban,” she said. “He was Jack’s favorite. He’s old, but he’s in excellent shape. First stall.”

It was a suspiciously beautiful black gelding with sleek haunches and a deep chest, which at least was something. He grasped its mane in both hands and heaved himself astraddle. He hadn’t ridden bareback this century, but some things you never forgot, especially when you were in a hurry. The animal grunted in surprise and pique, but bolted out of the stall when he put his heels to it. A lariat hung in a stiff coil outside the stall; he snatched it off its nail as he passed.

Charmian—no slouch herself when push came to shove—was already at the double doors leading outside. She unlatched them and flung one open just as the horse got to it. Siringo had to duck to avoid cracking his skull on the top of the opening.

Once outside, the old gelding caught the fresh air in its nostrils and went into full gallop without any urging; all he had to do was point it toward the running figure growing smaller in the distance and they were off, gobbling up the yards.

The ground was wet, he’d been too long out of the saddle, and he hadn’t thrown a rope since the LX Ranch; as who would? It wasn’t a skill that translated into other occupations. Not that it signified: He’d get thrown and bust his neck long before he came within lasso range.

Washoe Ban laid back his ears and thrust his head forward, making a silhouette like a speeding arrow. His hot wet breath flew back into Siringo’s face. The rider hunkered low, but the wind found his untrained hat anyway and snatched it off his head.

*   *   *

“I got a cartwheel dollar says Curry fades you in the stretch.”

Cassidy was grinning, chewing a cedar toothpick. With his big jaw and his bowler cocked to one side he always looked like an Irish prizefighter. The brogue he affected to go with his alias contributed to the illusion.

“Just a buck? Why not one of them double eagles you got up in Montana, you’re so sure?”

“I hear you talking, but your words don’t mean horseshit. I like you, Charlie, but you ain’t rode with us yet. You could be a Pinkerton for all I know, burrowing your way into our little fambly.”

“That’s a laugh, that is.” Siringo frowned. “Why are you boys always racing your horses? What if the law shows up and they’re bottomed out?”

“That’s why this place is called Hole in the Wall. They got to ride in single-file, where Sundance can Winchester ’em off one by one. Meanwhile we keep lean. You ought to trade that bitty mustang. They might win races, but a big stud carries more.”

“You mean like a Wells Fargo box?”

Cassidy laughed and almost choked on his toothpick. “You keep after a man, Charlie, that you do. I’m starting to think you are a Pink.”

He won, too, by three lengths; Kid Curry, the cross-eyed son of a bitch, hated him for that even more than the other thing.

*   *   *

The blamed fool boy was running square toward his would-be killer. Siringo was sure Butterfield was the target, or the slug would have passed through an upper pane, aimed at the three people who were standing, and not one on the bottom, which had been in line with the seated stable boy’s head. The old cowboy dug his heels deep into the gelding’s flanks, and the horse found more bottom with a lunge. The wind stung Siringo’s eyes. He felt a tug on his cheek; nothing stopped up a cut like a good hard run.

But, hell’s bells! The fleeing boy stayed the same distance away, like a tree in the desert, its promise of water forever beyond reach no matter how straight you rode nor how long. One of those dreams where time was getting dearer by the minute and you were running in place.

And then he began to make progress.

The horse was galloping flat-out, leveling the slope, and Butterfield was losing steam. He looked back over his shoulder once, which slowed him even more. The burst of speed he put on in his fresh panic wasn’t enough to maintain the gap. Siringo swatted his mount’s right haunch with the coiled lariat. The animal snorted—contemptuously, Siringo thought—and their pace quickened. Where did the old ball-less wonder keep it all? It didn’t seem fair somehow.

The youth slipped in the mud, but caught his balance in mid-stumble and made for the trees, his torn overalls flapping. But that little loss was a big gain for the man on horseback. Keeping his eye on Butterfield, he straightened, raised the rope, took a couple of swoops, paying out hemp between his thumb and palm, steered soft right with his knees as the boy zigged that direction, took a swoop, calculated the wind by the movement in the redwoods’ branches, took a swoop, grinned in concentration, took a swoop, and let fly.

The stiff loop flew high and straight, the rope whizzing through his hand; but it drifted left. It was going to miss. The horse was slowing now, just a little, but clearly it had touched bottom at last. Age was their common enemy. If Butterfield made it into the trees and over the top of the hill, Siringo wouldn’t get another chance.

But God abhors a horse thief.

The wind caught the rope, the boy zigged left, and the loop dropped over his head like a horseshoe scoring a ringer.

As soon as it cleared his shoulders, Siringo leaned back hard with a fistful of mane. With a painful whinny the horse ground to a stop, plowing furrows in the ground with its hooves as the rider gave the lariat a mighty backward jerk.

*   *   *

“That’s the boy, Charlie!” Shanghai Pierce called out from outside the corral. “Set the hook deep! I got to take you with me fishing one of these days.”

*   *   *

The world flew out from under Butterfield’s feet. He executed an inverted U two feet into the air, lit on his tailbone, sprawled onto his back, and before he could recover from the stun of it all the man on the other end of the rope heeled Washoe Ban around and headed back toward the stable at a brisk lope, dragging the fight plumb out of the stable boy. Holy Christ, but life was a beautiful thing.

Then, as he slowed to a walk, he spotted the group of strangers standing between him and the stable, ugly bastards in dungarees, steel poking through the toes of their workboots. They were armed with scythes and sledgehammers and pitchforks. Siringo’s hat was skewered on one set of tines.