“They’ve been holding up stagecoaches and robbing banks from Big Springs to El Paso for the past six months,” the driver said. “I was warned to be on the lookout for ‘em. They rode up out of a dry wash right over yonder, though, so I didn’t even have time to whip up the team ’fore they had us surrounded.”

  “I’m ready to ride,” Gibson announced. He swung up into the saddle on the back of the buckskin.

  Longarm nodded. “Remember to tell the sheriff in Monahans what happened,” he told the driver.

  “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Long. His office is goin’ to be my first stop!”

  Longarm and Gibson trotted their mounts away from the stage road, heading east the way the outlaws had done. When Longarm glanced behind them, he saw that the coach had gotten underway and was rolling south again.

  “I appreciate you coming along, Gibson,” he told the rancher. “Looked like there were seven or eight men in that gang. Hefty odds for only one man to go up against.”

  “Yep, now it’s only four to one,” Gibson said with a grin. Longarm couldn’t help but chuckle at the anticipation he heard in the cattleman’s voice. Gibson was obviously spoiling for some action.

  “You have a spread around here somewhere?” Longarm asked.

  Gibson nodded. “Down by San Solomon Springs, about fifty miles southwest of here. My foreman was going to meet me with some horses in Monahans. I took a herd up into New Mexico Territory and sold it, decided to come back on the stage instead of riding back with my cowhands.” He grunted. “Bad mistake. I was cut out for a saddle, not no bouncin’, dust-choked contraption like that stagecoach.”

  Longarm’s liking for the man grew. He had never been overly fond of riding a stagecoach either. “You talk much to Miss Cassidy while you were traveling together?” he asked. It didn’t surprise him that Nora had used a phony name. Too many people had heard of Bryce Canady and might connect her with him if she used her real name. That was more proof—as if he’d needed it—that leaving Denver had been Nora’s own idea. She was running away and evidently didn’t want to go back.

  But he was sure she didn’t want to be in the hands of a bunch of outlaws either.

  “No, she was pretty quiet, kept to herself,” Gibson said. “Pleasant enough, just not the sort to talk much. We all respected that, of course.” The rancher’s face and voice hardened. “Those bastards had best not harm her. If they do, every man west of the Brazos will want to hunt them down and string them up like the skunks they are.”

  “I reckon they know that too,” said Longarm. That knowledge was the hole card he was counting on. The outlaws might use Nora as a hostage or even hold her for ransom, but there was a good chance they wouldn’t molest her. Mistreating a decent woman was something that just wasn’t tolerated on the frontier.

  The riders Longarm and Gibson were trailing had left tracks that were plain to see. Evidently, they weren’t worried about pursuit. Longarm thought about that for a minute, recalled some things about West Texas geography he had learned on previous visits to the Lone Star State, then said,

  “We’re heading toward those damned sand hills, aren’t we?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Gibson. “Rumor has it that Wallace has a hideout somewhere in there.” He shook his head. “It’s hellish country, I know that.”

  So did Longarm. Mile after mile of sand dunes that constantly shifted under the push of winds that never stopped blowing. The almost-white sand reflected the sun and the heat until riding through the dunes was like traveling through a blast furnace. And the soft sand sank under the hooves of horses and the feet of men alike, so that walking through it was even worse than slogging through mud. Over the years, a lot of people had tried to cross those sand hills. The bones of many of them were still bleaching in the West Texas sun. An entire wagon train had even disappeared in there, Longarm recalled. The sands seemed to have swallowed it whole, wagons, mules, and dozens of immigrants all vanishing.

  “There’s water in there, if you know where to look,” Gibson went on. “The Comanches used to hole up in there. They never had any trouble finding water.”

  “What about you?” asked Longarm. “Ever been across the sand hills?”

  The cattleman shook his head. “Nope. Been on the edges, maybe a mile or so into them, but that’s all. That was enough for me. It’s a good seventy miles across there from west to east, and God knows how far they stretch to the north. Clear up into New Mexico, I reckon.”

  “And if Wallace and his bunch get there before us, it’ll be hard to track them. The wind will wipe out any sign in an hour or two.”

  “That’s right. That’s why I’m hopin’ we’ll catch up to ’em before they get to the sand.”

  Longarm hoped so, too. Nora Canady’s safety—her very life—might depend on it.

  And there was nightfall to contend with too. The sun was already low in the western sky behind them. The trail would be harder to follow once it got dark. Longarm wasn’t the sort to give in to despair, but if he had been, he might be feeling it now. To have tracked Nora so far and come so close to her, only to have her snatched away from him like this...

  He pushed that thought out of his mind and told himself to concentrate on the job at hand.

  A few minutes later, he and Gibson both saw dust ahead of them at the same time. The rancher pointed it out and said, “Got to be them.”

  Longarm leaned forward in the saddle. “Yeah. Come on.”

  Both men heeled their horses into a run. The dun was getting tired, Longarm could feel that, but he hoped the horse had the stamina to stand up under the strain a while longer.

  The riders who were kicking up dust in front of them seemed to be moving along at a pretty good clip, but nothing like the pace Longarm and Gibson set for themselves. The two pursuers rapidly closed the distance between themselves and the outlaws. They came in sight of their quarry just as the bandits were about to enter a wide, dry wash between two hills littered with boulders.

  Longarm reined in sharply as he saw a glint of light from behind one of those rocks. Sunlight was reflecting off something hidden back there, and there was only one thing it was likely to be.

  “Look!” Longarm’s hand shot out and gripped Gibson’s arm. “They’re riding into some sort of ambush.”

  Gibson’s deep-set eyes, surrounded by wrinkles caused by years of squinting into the sun, did just that once again. He said, “Damned if you’re not right. There are men hidin’ behind those rocks, and Wallace is so damned confident he’s ridin’ right into their sights!”

  Longarm’s brain worked furiously. He knew that the Wallace gang had been raising hell in these parts for quite a while, and it was entirely possible that was a sheriff’s posse or a troop of Rangers concealed there on the hills, having laid this trap for the outlaws without even knowing that the gang had just held up a stagecoach. The men waiting in ambush couldn’t possibly know about Nora Canady being kidnapped either. The stage hadn’t even had time to reach Monahans yet.

  But surely they would see her and realize she was a woman. Surely they would hold their fire....

  Because if they didn’t, once the gang was in that wash, they would be easy targets for the riflemen concealed on the hillsides. The whole bunch might be cut down like a field of wheat before the scythe.

  With only the glimmerings of a plan beginning to form in his head, Longarm reached for his Winchester.

  “What’re you doin’?” asked Gibson.

  “Can’t let that ambush go ahead,” said Longarm. “A stray bullet might hit the girl.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t interfere—”

  “The hell I can’t,” said Longarm as he brought the Winchester to his shoulder and began firing as fast as he could work the lever and jack fresh cartridges into the chamber.

  He aimed high, sending the slugs well over the heads of the outlaws and into the dry wash in front of them. The sharp crack!-crack!-crack! of the rifle made the outlaws jerk their horses to a halt and whirl around to see where the shots were coming from. They stopped short of the wash that would have been their death trap.

  Longarm’s shots had another effect. Waiting to ambush somebody usually wound a man pretty tightly, and a couple of the posse members fired instinctively when they heard the rattle of shots. That was all the warning Wallace and his men needed. They spurred furiously away from the wash.

  Gibson leaned over and grabbed the barrel of Longarm’s Winchester, forcing the rifle down. “Damn you!” the cattleman yelled. “You warned them!”

  Now that the ambush was ruined, all the men who were hidden on the hills opened fire, but it was too late. Instead of being trapped in the wash, the outlaws were running free, spreading out and throwing a few shots of their own back at the hills. That was just what Longarm had hoped would happen.

  He jerked his rifle out of Gibson’s grasp. “You don’t know everything that’s going on here, Walt,” he snapped. “I wish you’d trust me on this—”

  “Trust, hell! You’re no better’n an owlhoot yourself!” Gibson clawed at the butt of the revolver holstered at his hip.

  Longarm lashed out with the butt of the Winchester, slamming it into Gibson’s jaw and knocking the rancher from the saddle. His gun went flying from its holster and landed on the sandy ground several feet away. Longarm swung down quickly from his own saddle and kicked the gun farther away.

  “Sorry, Walt,” he said, though Gibson was stunned and probably didn’t understand the words. “Hope I can explain all this to you someday.” Longarm jerked the bag of supplies loose from the saddlehorn. “I’ll leave you the buckskin. I wouldn’t set a man afoot out here.”

  He mounted up again and wheeled the dun around. The outlaws had split up to a certain extent, but most of them were galloping off to the north, toward a couple of buttes that jutted up from the plains. Longarm went after them.

  He hoped that Walt Gibson was all right. The rancher hadn’t given him much choice. To Gibson’s eyes, it had appeared that Longarm was trying to help the outlaws.

  And when you got right down to it, that was true. He hadn’t wanted them to ride into that ambush. Nora might have gotten hurt. Besides, this might be a way for Longarm to solve the other problems that were facing him.

  He was going to turn outlaw.

  Chapter 10

  Longarm rode hard, knowing that he was calling on the dun for the last reserves of its strength. His only advantage was that he was pursuing the outlaws from an angle now, and he was soon able to cut down the gap between them. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw that the sun wasn’t very far above the horizon. It would be dark in an hour or so, and Longarm wanted to join up with the gang before then.

  A look in the other direction showed him dust hanging in the air. That would be coming from the posse, which was now pursuing the gang on horseback. But the outlaws had a good lead, and Longarm didn’t think the lawmen would catch up before Wallace’s bunch reached the edge of the sand hills.

  Longarm was within a few hundred yards of the nearest outlaws now, riding almost parallel with them. He took off his hat and waved it in the air to get their attention. As long as he was doing that, they would know that he wasn’t trying to shoot at them. He veered the dun and came closer to the riders. A few minutes later, he was close enough to get a good look at them—and vice versa. With his clothes covered by trail dust and a few days’ worth of beard stubble on his face, he hoped he looked as disreputable as he felt right now. He clapped his hat back on his head and spurred on to join the outlaws.

  “Howdy!” he called over the pounding of hoofbeats as he came up alongside the riders. None of them had Nora Canady with them, he saw, but this was where he had to start.

  “Who the hell are you?” shouted one of the men. All of them were holding guns, and Longarm knew that if he played this wrong, he might easily wind up being riddled with bullets.

  “Name’s Parker!” he called back, using, as he often did, his own middle name as an alias. “I’m the fella who tipped you off to that ambush back there at the wash!”

  “Much obliged!” said one of the other men. “But why’d you do that?”

  Longarm grinned wolfishly. “Never did like to see anybody shot down like a dog! Besides, you’re the Wallace bunch, ain’t you?”

  “What if we are?” demanded the first man.

  “I’ve been looking to join up with you boys! Heard a lot about you!”

  The riders slowed their horses to a trot and regarded Longarm intently. He saw suspicion in their eyes. No man who was on the dodge lived very long by being trusting. After a moment, one of the outlaws said, “You’re a wanted man yourself, are you?”

  Longarm nodded. “Damn right. I was riding with the Pollard gang, up Wyoming way, until lately.” He happened to know that Lem Pollard and most of the men who had been riding with him had been either killed or captured in a botched bank robbery in Cheyenne a few weeks earlier. It was entirely plausible that he could have been one of the few survivors to get away.

  “You were part of that bank job in Cheyenne?” asked one of the men.

  “Yep. Some damn law dog’s bullet like to parted my hair for me too.”

  “Heard it was quite a fight.”

  “That it was,” Longarm said solemnly. “I was lucky to get out with a whole hide. Been riding south ever since. Heard about the hell you boys’ve been raising down here in Texas while I was up in Tucumcari, and I said to myself, that’s the bunch you ought to join up with, old son.” He paused, then, added, “You are the Wallace bunch, aren’t you?”

  The outlaws ignored his question, and one of them barked a question instead. “How’d you know about that ambush?”

  “Pure luck. I saw your dust and was trying to catch up to you when I spotted the sun shining on a rifle barrel up on that slope. Didn’t take long then to see where those bastards were hiding. They’d started moving out a little to get a better shot at you when you rode into that wash. What were they, sheriff’s deputies or Rangers?”

  “Don’t know. But we’ve heard that Major Jones sent a whole troop of Rangers out here from Austin just to run us down.”

  Longarm let out a whistle of admiration. “You fellas must be ring-tailed wonders, to get a whole troop of Rangers after you!”

  His reaction concealed what he was really feeling, which was a considerable amount of worry. Having a bunch of Rangers roaming around the countryside would just make things that much more complicated. He hoped he could get Nora away from the outlaws quickly. If he could accomplish that, then the Rangers could have the Wallace bunch, with his blessings.

  His words of praise were effective. The outlaws stuck their chests out and looked satisfied with themselves. “I reckon we’ve got quite a rep, all right,” one of them said. He leaned over slightly in the saddle and extended a hand to Longarm. “I’m called Van Horn.”

  Longarm shook hands, and the other outlaws introduced themselves as Dutchy, Graydon, and Funderburk. Van Horn seemed to be in command of this little bunch, so it was to him that Longarm directed what was apparently a casual question.

  “I reckon you boys plan to rendezvous wherever you’ve been holing up back in the sand hills?”

  “That’s the plan,” said Van Horn.

  “I hope you can see your way clear to taking me with you, since I lent you a hand back there where you were almost ambushed.”

  Van Horn considered for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll take you to the hideout, all right,” he said. “But that’s no guarantee you’ll ever get out of there alive. That’ll be up to Heck.”

  “Heck Wallace?”

  “That’s right. He’ll decide if you’re all right and can ride with us ... or if you’re a damned lying lawman, in which case I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickel for your chances of living very long, mister.”

  “Me, a lawman?” Longarm hooted with laughter. “Just lead the way, Van Horn. I reckon when he hears what I did for you boys, Mr. Heck Wallace is going to be mighty glad to see me!”

  The sand hills started gradually. There were narrow stretches where sand had collected in the low places between rises. Longarm and his companions crossed several of those stretches, which were divided by broader bands of ground that were a mixture of sand, rock, and tough grass and mesquite trees. But as they swung further east and rode on, the sand became more and more prevalent, and then finally, as they topped a rise, Longarm saw the dunes take over the landscape completely, white mounds that rolled away to the horizon like waves in a stormy sea.

  And those dunes moved like waves too, Longarm knew, only a lot slower. But they were always in motion, drifting along before the wind so that in a week’s time their contours might change completely. Sometimes, when the wind blew harder, the dunes shifted even faster. Old-timers called them the walking hills, and it was an apt description.

  As the outlaws entered the dunes, they stuck to the low places, where the sand was packed harder and made easier going for the horses. Now that dusk was settling down, the hills lost some of their brilliance and took on a gloomy air instead, rising sometimes seventy or eighty feet above the men riding through them and bulking darkly as if they were about to crash down on the puny humans who dared to invade them.

  The eerie landscape wasn’t completely barren. Dwarf oaks grew in many of the low places, rarely reaching a height of more than three or four feet. Longarm knew that their roots extended much farther under the ground so that they could suck up as much life-giving moisture as possible. He commented on that to Van Horn, who nodded and said, “Yeah, those are shin oaks. The Comanches used ‘em to find water when they’d run off in here after their raids on the settlements. Dig down around the roots of those shin oaks and you’ll hit water, sure as shootin’. Drink your fill, put the sand back in the hole, and nobody would ever know there was a water hole where you’d been. Heck knows, though. He knows every place in this whole godforsaken desert where a man can find water.”

  “Wouldn’t be related to old Bigfoot Wallace, would he?” asked Longarm.

 

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