The Thunder Riders Part 8

He waited, hearing the hoof falls and the occasional ring of an iron shoe. Fifty yards back along the trail, three jostling silhouettes took shape in the darkness, starlight flashing off bridle bits and rifle barrels held across saddlebows.

Yakima straightened and raised the Winchester to his shoulder. He loosed five quick shots, one after the other, blowing up dust a few feet in front of the horses. The horses whinnied and the men shouted.

When the echo of the last shot had died, the silhouettes were gone. The thuds of galloping horses dwindled in the hushed night.

With a satisfied chuff, Yakima turned and walked back toward his own mounts while thumbing fresh sh.e.l.ls into the Winchester's loading gate. He mounted the sorrel, deciding to give the roan a rest, and angled back out to the trail pocked with the shoe prints of a dozen galloping horses and the two ragged furrows of the stagecoach.

He found the stage a half hour later, a black smudge in the darkness before a mesquite patch. Brush wolves were growling and yammering around the carriage, snapping brush, and Yakima didn't stay to see what they were fighting over.

He kicked the sorrel ahead, wrinkling his nose at the smell of blood and viscera wafting toward him from the stage, and continued following the gang's sign through the rocky desert. Two hours after finding the stage, he switched horses, loosening the sorrel's saddle cinch and slipping the bridle bit, and continued astride the roan, with the sorrel's reins dallied around the saddle horn.

He rode hard all night, losing the trail only twice and having to backtrack to pick it up again. At dawn, he watered the horses at a runout spring, then sat on the ground with his back against a boulder. Fatigue was heavy in his bones. His eyelids drooped, and he was out.

In a dream, he was standing in the yard of his cabin, digging a root cellar, when Wolf trotted toward him from the corral, head down, a playful cast to his mola.s.ses-colored eyes. The mustang nuzzled his neck, the bristled lips tickling.

Yakima lifted his head sharply, heart beating fast. The roan jerked its head back with a startled snort, turned, and trotted to the end of its tied reins.

Yakima picked up his rifle, stood, and peered eastward. Rose touched the horizon, dimming the stars and ribbing the high, long clouds with red, purple, and gold.

He mounted the sorrel, dallied the roan's reins around the horn, and headed south.

Chapter 10.

That evening, just as the sun set, the posse's tracks angled off the desperadoes' trail into a notch in the rolling, scrub-covered hills. Probably to bed down for the night. Yakima pulled on past.

He had two good horses; he could keep riding for another couple of hours before the mounts would need rest. The desperadoes would probably hole up soon as well, which meant Yakima would continue gaining on them. He might even catch up to them by morning.

What he'd do when he did catch up to them, he wasn't sure. He couldn't take down the entire gang alone. He would have to wait for dark, steal into their camp, rescue the girl and Wolf, and then get the h.e.l.l away without getting drilled.

A tricky maneuver at best.

Two hours later, he made camp in a dry arroyo, staked out the horses in the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s growing among the cottonwoods. There was no water, but he'd filled his canteens at the last rock tank.

When he'd let each mount drink from his hat, he unsaddledboth of them, rubbed them down with gra.s.s, scrubbing off the sweat foam and dust, then built a small fire and made coffee with the supplies he'd found in the saddlebags. There was little food-only a few strips of jerky and some biscuits-but that with some wild roots he'd dug up near the cottonwoods would be enough to sustain him until he caught up to the gang.

He slept fitfully for three hours, huddled up in his blankets as the temperature fell to near freezing. Waking and shivering, he built up the little fire again. He heated the remaining coffee and had another cup with his last biscuit before kicking sand on the fire, shrugging into his sheepskin vest, and saddling the horses.

His breath fogged under the stars. h.o.a.rfrost glazed the rocks, brush, and cottonwood limbs. The thuds of his horses' hooves seemed loud as gunshots in the cool, quiet air, under the shimmering stars, as he rode up out of the arroyo and back onto the trail of the Thunder Riders.

It remained cool even after the sun rose. Cresting a steep saddle, Yakima shivered as the chill wind blew up from the valley below, over the ruins of a ragged gathering of crumbling pueblos and rotting brush pens spread across a slope stippled with cedars and ironwood clumps.

A blocklike adobe church with an empty bell tower stood amid the pueblito's ruins, its wooden cross lying on the ground before the stout gray doors, which opened and closed gently in the breeze. On the slope behind the church, amid elms and oaks, lay a cemetery spotted with leaning wooden crosses and cracked adobe shrines.

Yakima scrutinized the village for a time but saw no movement. He gigged the horses down the deeply rutted wagon trail, aiming for the stone well coping in the middle of the main street, riding slowly and raking his gaze across the fire-blackened adobe hovels, pens, and corrals on both sides of the trail.

It appeared that no one lived here anymore, but Yakima saw the remains of a couple who had-no more than skeletons clad in threadbare white slacks and tunics, Yaqui arrows protruding from their remains. Apparently, the attack, which had occurred a good five or six years ago, judging by the decay and the brush that had grown up around the buildings, had been swift and efficient, leaving no one from the village to bury their dead.

Yakima stopped the horses near the well. A skeleton lay about twenty feet away, at a corner of the church and beside an overturned hay cart. The dead man's empty eye sockets stared at Yakima, a thin, faded red bandanna whipping around the neck to which only a few strips of dried brown skin remained. Yakima wrapped the reins around the roan's saddle horn and turned to the well.

Though the village appeared abandoned, someone apparently tended the water source, as the wooden bucket sitting upside down on the low stone wall had been patched several times and a new hemp rope attached to the handle.

Yakima dropped the bucket into the well and pulled it back up, water sloshing over the sides. He filled his two canteens, then set the bucket in front of the horses. He hadn't yet released the handle when a bullet tore into the ground beside him, the rifle's crack cleaving the breeze-sweptsilence, the horses whinnying and jerking back with a start.

Yakima slapped his .44 and wheeled toward the church.

At the same time, a familiar voice shouted, "Hold it, breed!"

Sheriff Speares stood just inside the church's open door. Speares no longer wore the bandage on his face, and his swollen, crooked nose resembled a purple-yellow gourd. He aimed Yakima's own Yellowboy repeater straight out from his left hip. Movement to the right of the church attracted Yakima's eye, and he turned to see the deputy U.S. marshal, Patchen, moving up along the church's cracked adobe wall, snugging the stock of his Henry rifle against his shoulder.

"Less'n you wanna buy a bullet from your own rifle," Speares said, "you best pull that six-shooter nice and slow, drop it on the ground."

Yakima cast his gaze from Speares to the marshal and back again. He'd been concentrating so hard on the desperadoes, he hadn't kept an eye on his back trail. The posse had caught up to him.

He kept his hand on his pistol grips. He didn't want to kill them, but he wouldn't let them take him again.

"Drop it!" Patchen shouted, as though reading Yakima's mind.

The man's echo hadn't stopped before Yakima at once jerked his stag-b.u.t.ted .44 from its holster and dove behind the well coping. Speares and the marshal fired their repeaters, both slugs slamming into the well coping and spraying chipped rock.

The horses nickered and pranced and shied away from the well. Speares fired again, and the roan screamed hideously behind Yakima, who snaked his Colt around the coping and fired three quick rounds, two drilling the church wall near the marshal, the other chewing into the door to the right of Speares and sending the sheriff lunging inside the church's heavy shadows.

Yakima rose and wheeled toward the horses.

The roan was down, legs quivering, blood gushing from the hole in the side of its head, just beneath the ear. Yakima swerved wide of the thrashing horse and ran to the sorrel, which was sunfishing toward the other side of the street. The horse was planting its rear hooves, ready to gallop, when two more shots sizzled over Yakima's head.

Sprinting up to the left of the sorrel, Yakima grabbed the saddle horn. The sorrel lunged forward, and Yakima had to fight to maintain his grip on the apple as he hop-skipped on his right foot before kicking his left boot into the stirrup.

As the horse galloped between two ruined adobes, Speares shouted behind him, "Bring the horses!"

Two more rifle shots sounded, one slug drilling a rotting rain barrel just off the sorrel's right hip, the other grinding into the faded pink adobe wall on Yakima's left.

The horse traversed the gap in four long strides, then Yakima neck-reined it left, avoiding an old privy pit, and they shot west, paralleling the village's main street.

Behind him, Yakima heard men shouting and horse hooves thumping, Speares's voice booming above the others.

Yakima crouched over the sorrel's stretched neck as they galloped off across the brush-tufted slope. When they were clear of the village and an old placer digging, Yakima glanced over his left shoulder. The posse was gathered in front of the church, a tall man in a tan duster holding the reins of Speares's horse as the sheriff swung into the saddle. Already mounted, Patchen was pulling away from the group, elbows flapping like wings as the steeldust lunged toward Yakima.

Yakima hipped forward. Ahead, a notch in the northern ridge opened. He reined the galloping sorrel into it, hoping it wasn't a box canyon, and the sorrel tore up red gravel along the bottom of an ancient riverbed.

A couple of old stone shacks sagged along the low banks, and the horse's drumming hooves startled a small herd of Sonoran deer, which bounded up the left slope, disappearing among the rocks and pinons.

The sorrel followed the riverbed's slow curve westward. Yakima cursed, hauling back on the reins when the bed of the ancient river disappeared under a towering wall of wagon- and cabin-sized boulders. Tufts of brown and faded green grama gra.s.s pushed up between the rocks, and a couple of stunt pines twisted, leaning as though under a heavy wind.

Yakima jerked a look behind. Speares's posse was out of sight around the bend, but the clattering of shod hooves on rock grew steadily louder.

Turning toward the ridge, Yakima picked out a narrow game trail angling up the side to the left, meandering around boulders.

He rocked forward, grinding his heels into the sorrel's flanks. "Go, horse!"

The horse hit the slope on the run and dug its rear hooves into the sand and gravel along the trail, flinging its front feet out for purchase. Yakima crouched low and gripped the horn with both hands, batting his heels against the mount's ribs.

A shrill laugh rose from below, amid the grinding of hooves and squawk and rattle of tack. "Boys, we got us a duck on a millpond! Aim and fire at will!"

Yakima jerked a glance down the slope. The posse, led by Speares and Patchen, was storming toward the base of the ridge. Speares flung himself out of the saddle and shucked the Yellowboy from the boot. Yakima was a long way from the ridge crest, and well within range of the posse's rifles.

The horse was moving so slowly, it made a good target. Without the horse, Yakima was doomed.

He slid his left foot from the stirrup and dropped down the horse's side. He was about to ram his rifle b.u.t.t against the horse's hip, hazing it up the ridge-he would catch up to it later, after he'd discouraged the posse-but a bullet fired from below did his work for him.

The sorrel leapt with a start and lunged up the trail, lifting dust and loosing gravel in its wake. At the same time, Yakima rammed a fresh sh.e.l.l in his carbine's breech and ducked behind a boulder.

Shots cracked from down the slope, one bullet slamming into the boulder, another ricocheting off a flat rock to Yakima's left. He doffed his hat and edged a look toward the riverbed. The posse had dismounted, one man leading their horses back down the canyon while the others spread out among the rocks.

Speares leapt a boulder, heading for another. As several rifles puffed at the ridge base, Yakima drilled a round into the boulder Speares had just ducked behind, then another at a man wedging himself between a cedar and an arrow-shaped rock on the right side of the gravelly gorge.

He pulled the rifle back behind his own cover and glanced up the trail weaving away to his right. The sorrel was a good sixty yards away, and not far from the ridge crest, but it had slowed to a walk, looking back down the ridge behind it.

Yakima drilled a round into the rocks near its rear hooves. The horse buck-kicked, whinnied, and galloped up the ridge, heading for the crest and, he hoped, down the other side to safety.

Bullets tore into the rock and gravel around him. He returned several shots, then looked around, choosing a path up the ridge. He returned several more shots, bounded out from behind his cover, and ran several yards up the ridge before ducking behind a petrified tree root, a slug blowing sand across his boots.

Someone yelled from below, the words unclear beneath the sporadic gunfire and ricocheting lead. He peered around the petrified root.

Speares was zigzagging up the slope on Yakima's left, holding the Yellowboy straight up and down before him. Patchen was lunging up the slope on his right, his tan face framed by his silver sideburns, sunlight winking off his rifle barrel. The other posse members remained at the ridge's base, covering the lawmen, slugs whining around Yakima's head or grinding into the root before him.

Yakima pressed his cheek against the root, brushing sand from his right eye.

When he began hearing the clatter of running feet, he fired three rounds downslope, then bounded up toward the ridge. He zigzagged for thirty yards and, as a bullet nipped the heel of his right boot, dove into a hollow amid several wagon-sized boulders.

He rose to his knees, snaked his rifle barrel around the right side of the rock. Patchen was running toward him, breathing hard, holding his rifle across his chest. When he saw Yakima bearing his aim down on him, his eyes snapped wide.

Yakima's rifle exploded. The marshal gave a yelp as the bullet tore into his left thigh. Mustachioed lips stretched back from his white teeth, he pushed off his right foot and dove into a rock nest shrouded in p.r.i.c.kly pear and Mormon tea.

The rifle fire from downslope had ceased, as the other posse members couldn't see over the curve of the slope.

Hearing boots and spurs coming up the slope on his left, Yakima ejected the smoking sh.e.l.l from the carbine and sidestepped into a narrow gap between several large boulders. He continued through the gap, turned right around the back of one of the boulders, turned right again and worked up the side, circling back toward the front, intending to slip up behind Speares.

When he was nearly back to where he'd started, he saw the sheriff step into the large gap between the boulders, aiming the Yellowboy from his shoulder.

Yakima snugged his rifle against the back of the sheriff's sunburned neck.

Speares froze.

"I'll take my rifle, Sheriff."

Holding the rifle he'd appropriated from the jailhouse in his left hand, he held his right hand out where Speares could see it.

Speares's back twitched, his head turning slightly to the right.

"Don't be stupid," Yakima warned.

"You'll kill me anyway."

"Maybe." Yakima snapped his fingers. "The rifle."

Speares remained frozen for a few seconds, and then his shoulders slumped slightly. He held out the Winchester Yellowboy, and Yakima wrapped his hand around the rear stock. The smooth, familiar walnut and remembered weight of the bra.s.s receiver felt good in his palm.

He prodded Speares's back with both rifle barrels. "Belly down. Nice and slow."

Speares growled, "What're you gonna do?"

"Belly down!"

Speares dropped to his knees, glanced over his left shoulder, his eyes dark with dread, then kicked his legs out and fell to his belly. Again he turned his head to peer over his shoulder. His s.h.a.ggy blond hair flopped over his forehead.

Yakima crouched to remove Speares's revolver from his holster. He tossed the Remington in the rocks, then aimed the Yellowboy at the back of the sheriff's neck. "If you can't take me me down, how do you expect to take the down, how do you expect to take the gang gang down?" He angled the Yellowboy at a mole behind Speares's right ear. "Face the dirt." down?" He angled the Yellowboy at a mole behind Speares's right ear. "Face the dirt."

Speares winced, set his chin on the ground. "Please . . . don't." His heart thudded and all the blood in his body seemed to rush to his battered nose. He hated the pleading tone in his own voice. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I'm unarmed. Don't shoot me."

He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his chin and knees to the ground, every muscle taut, waiting for the bullet.

A voice sounded along the slope before him. "Where the h.e.l.l is he?"

Speares lifted his head sharply. Patchen lay twenty feet away, aiming his Henry rifle out from behind a rock and a stunted cedar, squinting down the barrel. His red face was pinched with pain and fury.

Speares turned to look over his left shoulder. Only sun-bathed rocks and brush behind him.

The breed was gone.

Chapter 11.

Thirty miles south of Yakima and the posse, the Thunder Riders rode in a long line, two abreast, up a winding mesa trail sheathed in creosote, sage, and ocotillo, with large boulders pushing up around the lone oak or elm. Jack Considine sat astride Wolf, while Anjanette rode a claybank gelding off Considine's right stirrup.

She wore a fringed leather vest over a blue plaid shirt, and the small silver crucifix nestled in her cleavage winked occasionally in the crisp winter sunlight. Her man's Stetson was secured to her head by a horsehair thong swinging free beneath her chin, her rich hair flowing across her shoulders.

She'd appropriated the clothes from the saddlebags of the young outlaw she'd been forced to shoot. She had blood on her hands, but she'd been forced to kill before, when she and Old Antoine had been prospecting in bandito-infested mountains. The pleas of the young gunslick were little more than whispers.