Too soon to die, p.23
Too Soon to Die, page 23
Since Denny and Markham had ridden drag the day before, Cal put them out on the left flank. Denny was grateful for that. The previous day hadn’t been unpleasant, but the view would be better on the flanks.
Markham noticed her shifting around a little more than before in the saddle and said with a grin, “All those hours on horseback yesterday sorta took a toll after all, didn’t they?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Maybe I am a little sore, and it didn’t help that a rock was poking me through my bedroll last night and I couldn’t seem to find it. So I’m a mite sleepy, too.”
“I’d ’ve been happy to help you look for that pesky rock.”
“Oh, I’ll just bet you would have.”
“Just tryin’ to be helpful,” drawled Markham. “You know me.”
“Yeah, I do.” Denny thought about the way he had looked for a moment the day before and added, “Although sometimes, I’m not completely sure that I do.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, his forehead creasing.
Denny shook her head. “Never mind. We’d better keep an eye on that bay that gave us trouble yesterday. He seems even friskier today, like he wouldn’t mind a chance to gallop off and run for a while.”
“Maybe there are mustangs up in those hills over to the west. Wild fillies can be a powerful temptation.”
“I’ll bet,” Denny said dryly. “Just watch him.”
Once again, Cal set a brisk but not punishing pace.
By the middle of the day, the mountains to the west had extended much closer to their route. Denny could see rugged foothills cut through with canyons stretching to within a mile or so of where they stopped to rest the horses and make a meal of jerky and biscuits left over from the night before.
After eating, Denny sat down with her back against a little hummock of ground and closed her eyes, figuring she would bask in the sun for a few minutes and enjoy its heat.
She had barely gotten settled when a dark shadow fell over her, blocking the sun. She cracked her eyes open and glared up at the man standing so that he loomed over her, looking enormous. “What do you want?”
Markham hunkered on his heels in front of her. “It’s that dang bay horse you were talkin’ about earlier. He ain’t with the herd no more.”
Denny sat up sharply. “What? We need to tell Cal—”
Markham’s lifted hand made her pause. “Hold on. I think I saw that troublesome nag wanderin’ over toward those foothills. We should go take a look once the herd starts movin’ again. We’ll be on that side, so it won’t take no time at all to ride over there, have ourselves a gander up the canyon where I might’ve seen that hoss, and then get back to the herd. Ol’ Cal will never know we’re gone.”
“But how could the bay have gotten away from the other horses without anybody noticing?”
Markham shrugged. “All the fellas are a mite drowsy, just like you were. I ain’t sure who was supposed to be watchin’ the herd, but whoever it was, I wouldn’t want to get ’em in trouble just because some hardheaded critter wandered off.”
“Damn it,” Denny muttered under her breath. “You’re right about that.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re sure you saw the bay heading for those foothills?”
“Now that I think about it, I’m plumb certain.”
“This isn’t just some trick so you can get me off by myself and steal a kiss?”
“Denny!” He placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me, girl.”
“I’ll do worse than that if you try anything funny. But I guess we can take a look up that canyon when we go by. If we don’t find the bay pretty quickly, though, we’ll have to tell Cal so he can stop the herd and find it. My pa wouldn’t want to lose even a single head of stock.”
“Neither do I,” said Markham. “But I got a hunch we’ll find what we’re lookin’ for.”
CHAPTER 46
Brice Rogers felt the horse wearying underneath him and reined to a halt. He swung down and immediately started unsaddling the sorrel so he could switch the rig to the rangy gray. He had rented both mounts from Fulger’s Livery Stable back in Stirrup, which, based on the two citizens Brice had met, seemed to be inhabited entirely by cantankerous gents about to slide over from middle-aged to old-timer status.
Brice finished tightening the cinches and stepped back from the gray. He took off his hat, switched it to the hand that also held the reins, and scrubbed his right hand over his face. Like his horses, he was weary, too, right down to his bones. He hadn’t slept much on either of the trains, just dozed a little sitting up, and the previous night, after leaving Stirrup, he had ridden until well after midnight before finally stopping to grab a couple of hours of sleep.
He would have kept going even then, only the moon had lowered enough that he could no longer make out the trail left by the horse herd. Earlier, he’d been able to follow it with a fair degree of confidence.
By switching back and forth between mounts, he hoped to catch up to the herd today. Since he had two horses, he could push them harder than he would have dared with only a single mount.
That meant pushing himself hard, too, but he was willing to do that. Denny’s safety . . . her very life . . . might depend on it.
A moment more to catch his breath and he was on his way again, following the unmistakable tracks left by the dozens of horses he was following.
He rode on through the morning, stopping from time to time to check the manure left by the herd. He could tell the droppings were fresher, which meant he was getting closer.
By midday he was able to make out a faint dust haze hanging in the air ahead of him. It was difficult to judge the distance, but he thought it originated no more than a mile away. It was stationary, too, which meant the animals that had kicked it up had stopped moving for the moment.
Knowing he was that close made him urge even more speed from the sorrel. The gray trailed behind on a lead rope, but it hadn’t been all that long since he had changed mounts. As he rode on, Brice wondered if he should let the gray go and come back to retrieve the horse later. That way he could push the sorrel even harder.
He bit back a groan as he realized the dust cloud was moving again. He’d hoped to catch up while the herd was stopped for its noon rest. He was still moving faster than they were, so it was only a matter of time until he caught up, but it would take longer now that the herd was moving again.
Fifteen minutes later, he came in sight of a dark mass moving over the gentle hills in front of him. That was the horse herd, he thought. He was almost there.
The terrain had changed somewhat, with snowcapped mountains drawing in from the west. The lower slopes were heavily forested, while higher rose sheer, massive slabs of rock climbing to those white peaks. Under different circumstances, Brice would have appreciated the beauty of the scenery, but he barely saw it. His attention was focused on what was directly in front of him.
He reined in at the top of a rise when he saw that the herd had entered a broad basin stretching for several miles. It was the first chance he had gotten to take a good look, so he reached into his saddlebags and brought out a pair of field glasses. He lifted them to his eyes and peered through them.
His quarry seemed to jump a lot closer. He could see the individual horses through the glasses, as well as the riders coming along behind them and traveling out to the sides. He swung the glasses slowly from right to left, searching for Denny. If she had her blond hair tucked up under her hat, he might not have been able to spot her. She would look like one of the other slender, athletic young cowboys.
No, wait!
Far out on the left flank—farther out than they should have been—two riders had veered away from the herd and appeared to be headed toward the mouth of a rugged-looking canyon in the nearby foothills. Brice saw the flash of sunlight on hair that tumbled around one rider’s shoulders. He thought the other rider had red hair . . .
Denny. And Steve Markham, he thought. Leaving the herd together and headed for God knows where.
Brice’s breath hissed angrily between his teeth as he jammed the field glasses back into the saddlebags. He untied the gray’s lead rope from the saddle and let it drop to the ground.
Then he jammed his heels into the sorrel’s flanks and sent the tired but willing horse leaping forward into a gallop that carried him toward the foothills where Denny and Markham were disappearing from sight in that canyon.
* * *
“This is a mistake,” Denny said. “We should have stayed with the herd.”
“But what about that pesky bay?” asked Markham. “You said yourself, your pa wouldn’t like losin’ even one head of stock on a drive like this.”
“I know, I know. But we should’ve told Cal. Actually, we should have taken a better look around the herd before we rode off over here. Maybe the bay’s still with the others, and we just didn’t notice it.”
“We both looked.” Markham sounded a little impatient. “The damn horse ain’t there.”
“Well, I don’t see him in this canyon, either.” Denny jerked a hand at their surroundings. “Do you?”
The canyon was about fifty yards wide, brushy in places, open in others, with walls too steep for a horse to climb. Here and there a boulder had rolled down from above in ages past. A bend with rocky ridges on both sides lay several hundred yards ahead of them.
“Let’s just ride on up around that bend and take a look,” Markham suggested. “If we don’t see the bay by then, maybe I’ll admit that I was wrong.”
“And then we’ll tell Cal and stop the drive until we find the bay.”
“And then we tell Cal,” Markham agreed.
Side by side, they rode up the canyon toward the bend.
Along the way, Denny watched the brush to make sure the bay wasn’t hiding somewhere in the thick growth. She didn’t see the horse, and although she admittedly wasn’t much of a tracker, she didn’t spot any hoofprints where they were riding, either. “I think we’re on a wild goose chase. The bay was never here.”
“Well, we’ve had a nice ride, if nothin’ else,” he replied. “I’ll never complain about spendin’ time with you, Denny. In fact, I’d be plumb pleased to spend a whole heap more time with you, for a long time to come—”
“Wait just a minute,” she snapped as she reined in. “This whole thing really was just an excuse to get me off by myself, wasn’t it? Now you’re going to start flattering me and making calf eyes at me—”
“Good Lord, woman!” he burst out, finally unable to contain his frustration. He brought his mount to a halt as well. “Don’t you ever take that burr out from under your saddle? Every time a fella starts to talk plain about how he feels, you’ve got to cut the legs right out from under him! You ever stop to think about how intimidatin’ you are, Denny Jensen? Why, you’re rich and beautiful, and you got a pa who’s ten feet tall that no other man could ever live up to. A fella unlucky enough to fall in love with you might as well have a mountain as big as those up yonder to climb over!”
Breathing a little hard, Denny waited for the words to stop spilling out from Markham’s mouth. When they finally did, she asked, “Are you trying to say you’re in love with me?”
“Well, why the hell else would I have done all the things I did? I knew from the first second I laid eyes on you—”
The swift rataplan of hoofbeats from somewhere behind them cut into whatever he was about to say. Both of them turned in their saddles and saw a rider just entering the canyon, heading toward them at a fast clip. Whoever it was, he was too far away for Denny to recognize him immediately, but at the rate he was moving, that wouldn’t last long.
“Cal must have seen us leaving and sent one of the hands after us,” she said. “Now we’re going to be in trouble.”
Even more unexpected and alarming was the faint popping that suddenly came to their ears. Denny had heard that sound before and stiffened in the saddle as she realized what it was.
“Shooting!” she exclaimed. “Something’s wrong at the herd!”
The rider following them must have heard the gunfire over the pounding of his horse’s hooves, too, because he reined in sharply and half turned the mount, as if he couldn’t decide whether to turn back or gallop on toward Denny and Markham.
Denny was going to save him the trouble of deciding. She lifted the reins and said, “We have to get back—”
“No, Denny.” Markham’s voice was flat and hard, and the menacing tone in it made a chill shoot down her spine. “We’re not goin’ anywhere.”
She turned her head and saw the gun in his hand, its barrel aimed directly at her.
CHAPTER 47
Steve Markham tried to swallow the sick feeling that welled up his throat. Pointing a gun at Denny Jensen was the last thing on earth he wanted to do, but she wasn’t giving him any choice. Didn’t she know that he was just trying to save her life?
Well, probably not. There was no way for her to know that, he realized. She didn’t know that Bert Rome and the other men with him were attacking the Sugarloaf cowboys. Rome hadn’t told Markham exactly when the ambush would take place, only that it would occur near the middle of the day, so he had gotten Denny away from the herd as soon as he could after they’d stopped at noon.
And just in time, too, because Rome would have carried out the attack even if Denny was still there. Rome had made it clear that he didn’t want anything to happen to her—if they took her prisoner, they could demand a big ransom for her, too—but when bullets started to fly, anything could happen.
She stared at him, speechless for a few seconds, then demanded, “Steve, what the hell are you doing?”
“Keepin’ you from gettin’ hurt, Denny,” he told her. “You’re gonna come with me now. We’ll ride on up this canyon, around that bend where we’ll be safe, and then we’ll wait until all this trouble is over. You’ll see that I’m just thinkin’ about you—”
“No!” she cried. “You’re thinking about you! If you think that kidnapping me will make me love you, you’re crazy!”
No, not crazy. Instead of turning her over to Bert Rome, Markham had realized that the two of them could just keep riding, far away from there. It would mean giving up whatever his share of the profits from the scheme would have been, but the certainty was growing inside him that Denny Jensen was worth it. All he had to do was make her understand how he really felt... “You’ve just got to give me a chance—”
A shot fired somewhere nearby made Markham interrupt his plea and jerk his head around. The rider who had followed them into the canyon was galloping toward them again, and as Markham turned his horse that way, he saw the man fire a second shot into the air.
Too late, Markham realized the man was trying to distract him, and it had worked. Denny jabbed her boot heels into her mount’s flanks and sent the horse lunging forward wildly. Her horse’s shoulder rammed into Markham’s horse and the collision staggered both animals. They almost lost their footing and went down. As Markham hauled on the reins with his left hand and tried to regain control, Denny left her saddle in a flying leap and tackled him.
He outweighed her by a lot, and she never would have been able to knock him out of the saddle if he’d been expecting it. But he was taken by surprise and felt himself slipping. He dropped the reins and grabbed for the horn, but that just allowed his already spooked horse to start capering around even worse. Markham toppled off with barely enough time to kick his feet out of the stirrups.
He hit the ground hard with Denny on top of him. That was enough to jolt the air out of his lungs. Gasping, he shoved her away. The fall seemed to have stunned her, so she didn’t put up a fight. He rolled onto his belly and got his knees underneath him.
As he pushed up, he saw the rider pounding closer and recognized that damned deputy marshal, Brice Rogers. A part of Markham’s brain was stunned by that recognition. What was Rogers doing all the way up there in Montana?
Markham’s instincts still worked, he still had the Colt in his hand, and he lifted it.
Denny hit him again before he could pull the trigger. Either she had recovered quickly or hadn’t been as stunned as he’d thought. She grabbed his wrist and forced the gun back down as she threw her shoulder into him and tried to knock him to the ground again. He saw that the holster on her hip was empty. The Lightning must have fallen out when they took that spill from the horse.
He started to backhand her and knock her away from him, but he realized that was the wrong move and grabbed her instead, looping his left arm around her neck. She writhed in his grasp, but he was too strong for her. She couldn’t get loose. Twisting so that her back was to him, he dragged her squirming body against him and shoved his gun hand under her right arm so the weapon pointed toward Rogers, who was reining up hurriedly about twenty feet away.
“Let her go!” the lawman called as he leaped out of the saddle. He couldn’t risk a shot as long as Markham had Denny in front of him like that.
“Go to hell, law dog!” Markham yelled back at him. He tightened his arm around Denny’s neck.
She stopped struggling, evidently realizing that it wouldn’t take much effort for him to choke her into unconsciousness or even snap her neck.
Markham was about to open fire on Rogers—there was no reason to stand around and flap his jaws about this—when the deputy marshal ducked behind one of the boulders littering the canyon floor. Markham still had a shot at him, but not a very good one.
He had Denny, though, and she was the winning card in any hand.
“Throw your gun out, Rogers! I got no interest in killin’ you, as long as you don’t try to stop me and Denny from leavin’ here.”
“I’ll never go . . . anywhere with you!” Denny forced out past the forearm clamped like a bar of iron across her throat.
“You’ll figure out I love you, if you’ll just gimme a chance,” he told her.
“Let her go,” Rogers said again. “If you hurt her, I swear I’ll kill you, Markham!”
“I’d never hurt Denny!”
“You’re . . . hurting me now,” she grated.
