Too soon to die, p.24
Too Soon to Die, page 24
“I’m sorry about that, I truly am, but I don’t have any choice.” Markham gestured curtly with the gun. “What’s it gonna be, Rogers? All you have to do is throw that iron down and not try to stop Denny and me from ridin’ away from here. If you do that, I promise I won’t shoot you.”
Rogers laughed coldly. “You think I’d ever believe the son of a vicious killer like the Santa Rosa Kid?”
* * *
Denny’s mind whirled dizzily. First she’d been stunned by the fact that Steve Markham would pull a gun on her, then she had been every bit as surprised as Markham by Brice Rogers showing up. The herd was under attack by unknown ambushers, too, and Denny wanted to get back and help Cal and the others fight off the assailants.
But even with all that spinning around in her thoughts, she was aware of the way Markham stiffened suddenly at the mention of the Santa Rosa Kid, a name she had never heard before.
“Shut up!” Markham said. “You got no right to talk about him. It was lawmen like you who hounded him to death!”
“And you’re following in his footsteps, is that it?” asked Brice from behind the boulder. “A thief and a murderer and who knows what else? You think Denny’s going to fall in love with you after you’ve kidnapped her and helped butcher her friends?”
“I’m gettin’ sick and tired of you, Rogers. I reckon maybe I will kill you after all. You can’t stop me, not without shootin’ this gal—”
Denny stomped down hard on the top of his foot. She wasn’t going to do any real damage that way, but the blow hurt enough to make Markham yelp in pain and bend forward a little. At the same time, Denny jerked her head back and it hit him squarely on the nose with enough force to make blood spurt from his nostrils. Markham’s grip on her slipped just enough for her to get both hands under the arm around her neck, force it down a little more, and twist away from him.
He bellowed a curse and triggered the Colt. Shots boomed out from it, but he wasn’t aiming at her. The slugs whined off the rock where Brice had taken cover. As Markham blazed away at the deputy marshal, Denny’s frantic gaze fell on the Colt Lightning that had fallen from her holster. She dived toward it, scooped it up, rolled over, and came up on one knee.
Flame geysered from the muzzle of the .38 caliber double-action as she pulled the trigger three times as fast as she could. The slugs pounded into Markham’s chest and rocked him back a couple of steps. He didn’t drop his gun, but his arm sagged and that gave Brice the chance to return his fire. Two shots crashed from Brice’s .45. Those bullets ripped into Markham’s body and slewed him halfway around.
He fell to his knees and dropped the gun as he put his hands out to catch himself. For a long moment he stayed there like that on all fours, and Denny felt sick as she saw blood running from the holes in his body and pooling on the ground underneath him. With a groan, he fell over onto his left side and seemed like he was trying to curl up around the agony that filled him.
She got to her feet as Brice rose from behind the boulder. With their guns still pointed toward Markham, they advanced slowly toward him. Denny’s eyes flicked toward Brice as she asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” His voice showed the strain he was under. “How about you?”
“My throat’s going to be a little bruised where he choked me, but I’m fine. What the hell’s going on here, Brice?”
“He’s an outlaw,” Brice said. “And that’s probably his gang trying to steal the horse herd right now.”
In fact, the gunfire still continued out in the basin where Cal and the rest of the crew had been driving the horses. Denny wanted to go to them and help them, but something compelled her to holster her gun, kneel beside Markham, and ease him over onto his back.
“Careful, Denny,” said Brice as he continued pointing his gun at Markham.
“He’s shot to pieces, Brice. I don’t think he’s a danger to anybody anymore.” She paused. “Not even himself.”
Markham’s breath rasped in his throat. His eyes were closed. At the touch of Denny’s hands and the sound of her voice so close to him, he forced them open and blinked up at her. Struggling to talk, he said, “I . . . I’m not . . .”
“Not what?” she asked. She tried not to look at the bloody ruin that was his chest, a lot of the damage inflicted by her own Colt Lightning.
“Not . . . an outlaw. Not . . . really. My pa was . . . an owlhoot . . . the Santa Rosa Kid . . . just like . . . the lawdog said. But I never . . . never did anything . . . all that bad . . . rustled a few cattle . . . here and there . . . stuck up a store . . . or two . . . but then Bert Rome . . . and Sam Brant . . . came to me . . . They used to ride . . . with my pa . . . said they had a plan . . . make us all rich . . . said if your pa was dead . . . your ma would pay a fortune . . . to get your brother back . . . alive . . . but they needed an inside man . . . workin’ on the Sugarloaf . . .”
Denny’s eyes widened in horror at the enormity of the plan spilling from Markham’s blood-frothed lips. In the back of her mind was the knowledge that she had actually started to care for this man and she ought to be sad that he was dying right in front of her eyes, but what he was saying forced out any other thoughts.
“Denny . . . I’m . . . sorry,” Markham managed to get out. “I never wanted . . . to hurt you . . . Never figured on . . . fallin’ in—” The words choked off as his eyes went glassy. A final shudder went through his body as his head tipped slowly to the side.
Denny knelt there in silence for a long moment before Brice said quietly, “He’s gone, Denny.”
“I know.” She took a deep breath and stood up. Opening the Lightning’s loading gate, she shook out the empty brass from the rounds she had fired and started replacing them with fresh cartridges from the loops on her shell belt. “But his no-good friends are still out there trying to kill my friends, and I intend to go put a stop to that right now.”
CHAPTER 48
Brice could tell that Denny was making a valiant effort to hold herself together and keep her emotions under control as they rode hard toward the canyon mouth. Steve Markham’s body lay behind them where it had fallen. There was nothing they could do about it now. Denny had seen the outlaw’s true colors, but she had considered him a friend and maybe more, and his death had some effect on her.
She was as coolheaded in times of danger as anyone Brice had ever met, though, man or woman, so he knew, whatever those feelings were, she would put them aside . . . until the fight ahead of them was over, one way or another.
Side by side, they burst out of the canyon and galloped toward the herd, which was close to a mile farther north. As they rode, Denny pulled her Winchester from its saddle sheath, and Brice did likewise.
They could hear the shooting over the pounding hoofbeats. It sounded like a small war was going on. That came as no surprise to Brice. Calvin Woods and the other cowboys from the Sugarloaf weren’t the sort of men who rolled over and died. They would battle to the last breath and fight with every bit of heart, soul, and guts they possessed, no matter how much they were surprised or how badly outnumbered.
Brice saw riderless, unsaddled horses running around ahead of them. The herd must have scattered when the shooting started, he thought. Originally, while he was traveling to Montana as quickly as he could, he had believed the outlaws were after the horses, although that really wouldn’t have been much of a payoff for a plan elaborate enough to require an inside man.
Judging from what Markham had blurted out while he was dying, he’d been involved in a much more ambitious scheme than that, one that involved kidnapping Louis Jensen. Possibly Denny, too, although Brice was fuzzy on the details.
Maybe they would find out if they were able to capture one or more of the men attacking the Sugarloaf crew.
Before they got any closer and blundered right into some of the enemy, Brice reined in and signaled for Denny to stop.
She slowed her mount and then brought it to a halt, but she didn’t look happy about it. “We’ve got to go help Cal!” she protested.
“Getting ourselves killed won’t do him any good. Listen. You saw the horses from the herd running wild. That means Cal and the other hands turned them loose. They must have gone to ground somewhere to put up a fight against Markham’s gang.”
“It wasn’t his gang,” said Denny. “You heard him. Two of his father’s old partners dragged him into it. What did you say his father was called? The Santa Rosa Kid?”
The two outlaws—Rome and Brant, Brice recalled—probably hadn’t had to do too much convincing to get Markham involved, but that didn’t matter. None of it did. “I can explain all that later. Do you happen to know this country?”
Denny shook her head. “Not one bit. I’ve never been here until today.”
“Neither have I. None of my assignments ever brought me this far.” He turned his horse a little and gestured with the rifle he held. “We’d better circle around and get the lay of the land.”
“Brice, there’s no time—”
“We can’t just rush in blind.” Brice knew it would rile her, but he went on. “I’m the one with the badge, Denny, so I’m in charge here.”
Anger flared in her eyes, as he expected it would. “Maybe one of these days, I’ll have a badge, too,” she shot back at him.
“Maybe so,” he said, although he didn’t see how that could ever happen when her goal was to run the Sugarloaf. “But for now, come on. We’re going this way.”
He heeled his horse into motion and headed west, back toward the foothills that bulged into the basin. He didn’t look back to see if she was following him, but after a moment he heard the swift clatter of her horse’s hooves and then she drew alongside him.
“You’re not always going to be able to boss me around this way, you know,” she called over to him.
“I don’t recollect ever bossing you around before.”
“And you’re not now! I just happened to decide you were right for a change, that’s all.”
Brice managed not to grin at her deeply ingrained stubbornness. He nodded and said, “Let’s find out just what sort of trouble Cal and the rest of the hands are in.”
It didn’t take them long to discover how the battle had shaped up. They stopped just below the crest of a long ridge and dismounted, then took their hats off and on foot eased up high enough to peer over it. About two hundred yards away lay an old buffalo wallow, a wide depression about five feet deep with fairly steep walls. Cal and the other Sugarloaf cowboys had taken cover in it and were shooting up at the higher ground surrounding it. Puffs of powder smoke came from those lopsided knolls as the ambushers returned the fire.
It was a standoff, but it wouldn’t continue indefinitely. The advantage definitely belonged to the attackers. The Sugarloaf hands had dismounted and sent their horses galloping out of danger, so they had no way to escape. They had limited supplies of ammunition and probably didn’t have any water down there, so as the afternoon heat continued to build, they would start to bake and thirst would torment them.
Before the day was over, the defenders wouldn’t be able to put up a fight anymore, and the outlaws would roll over the buffalo wallow and wipe them out. Brice saw that immediately, and judging by the grim expression on Denny’s face, so did she.
“Look at that powder smoke,” she said quietly. “There must be fifteen or twenty of them.”
“More than likely,” agreed Brice. “Too many for a couple of us to make much difference.”
Denny bristled. “We can’t just go off and abandon Cal and the boys!”
“I never said we were going to. But if we just gallop up and start shooting, we won’t last thirty seconds.”
She wasn’t able to argue with that. She nodded and asked, “What did you have in mind, then?”
“We’ll have to whittle down the odds a few at a time.” He looked intently at her. “That’s going to mean some close work. Are you up to that, Denny?”
“What the hell do you think?”
Brice motioned her back down the slope. When they were out of sight of any of the attackers, he put his hat back on and said, “I think we’ll work around there a little farther to the north and then start closing in from behind them.”
* * *
Denny had done her share of gunfighting since returning to the West to live. More than her share, considering that she was a young woman and young women didn’t do such things to start with. But she had smelled powder smoke and felt it sting her eyes. She had experienced the deafening roar of gunfire and the jolt of a revolver bucking in her hand as she squeezed the trigger. She had heard bullets singing their deadly song close beside her ears.
Most important, she had killed. She had seen men crumple and die before her gun, had known the terrible gravity of what it was to end a human life. Remorse hadn’t haunted her dreams—all the men she’d killed had had it coming to them, to be honest—but it wasn’t something she took lightly.
With her friends’ lives in danger, she was more than willing to shoulder that responsibility again.
She and Brice left their horses where they were and moved ahead on foot, staying low and using every bit of cover they could find. Few trees grew in the basin, although the slopes not far away were heavily timbered. There were clumps of brush and clusters of boulders, though, and the two of them took advantage of that.
The shooting from the outlaws continued. Shots still blasted from the defenders in the buffalo wallow, too, but it seemed to Denny that the return fire was more sporadic than before.
“They must be running low on ammunition,” she said in a half-whisper to Brice. “Sounds like they’re trying to make it last as long as possible.”
“Yeah. Let’s just hope it lasts ’em a little while longer, until we’re in a position to do some damage and maybe change the odds.”
A few minutes later they bellied down and crawled through brush until they reached a spot where they could peer out through gaps in the growth. Ten yards away, two outlaws knelt behind a slab of rock and fired rifles down at Cal and the other men from the Sugarloaf.
Denny glanced over at Brice and saw him grimace. “You let me handle this, Denny,” he told her in a whisper. “You don’t need to do what’s got to be done here.”
“Shoot them in the back, you mean? You’re a lawman, Brice. That’s got to rub you the wrong way.”
“But you’re a—”
“A woman?” She shook her head. “Right now, I’m just a Sugarloaf hand like Cal and those other boys down there. That means I ride for the brand. The Jensen brand. And I’ll be damned if you or anybody else stops me from helping my trail partners.”
Brice sighed but nodded. “All right.” He settled his rifle against his shoulder and peered over its barrel. Both of them had already levered rounds into the Winchesters’ firing chambers when they began their deadly stalk. “We’ll try to time it so we fire when they do. The rest of the bunch will be less likely to notice that way.”
“I understand,” Denny breathed. She had the butt of her rifle snugged up against her shoulder. She lay her cheek against the smooth wood of the stock and lined her sights on one of the outlaws. “I’ve got the one on the right.”
“I’ll take the one on the left, then. They’ve been raising up and shooting together. As soon as they do it again . . .”
Denny was ready. As the two owlhoots lifted themselves above the boulder and raised their rifles, she slipped her finger inside the Winchester’s trigger guard. The finger curled around the trigger . . .
A second later, as the outlaws’ rifles roared, Denny squeezed.
CHAPTER 49
By the time another quarter of an hour had passed, the gunfire from the defenders in the buffalo wallow had dwindled almost to nothing, just an occasional shot to keep the ambushers honest. Denny had a feeling Cal had ordered the others to stop shooting in order to save some of the bullets for the inevitable last-ditch fight.
But in that quarter of an hour, Denny and Brice had stalked and killed four more outlaws, planting Winchester rounds squarely in their backs. What they were doing was cold-blooded murder, Denny knew . . . but she also knew that under the circumstances, her father would have done the same thing. So would her uncles, Luke and Matt, and her cousins, Ace and Chance. Jensens were, by nature, honorable men, but that didn’t stop them from being practical, especially when some devil was trying to hurt them or their friends.
“You reckon they’re starting to notice that no more shots are coming from this side?” she quietly asked Brice. With so many guns going off, by timing their own shots to blend in the way they had, they’d hoped their efforts would go undetected for a while.
“I don’t know,” Brice replied. “If they have, they’re liable to try to sneak up on us.”
The same thought had occurred to Denny. For that reason, she had been casting frequent glances over her shoulder. So far she hadn’t detected any threats, but she wasn’t going to let down her guard.
They moved on in search of more outlaws to deal with. The gun blasts made it easy to track them by sound. They crawled up into a scattering of smaller boulders and found themselves with clear lines of fire at three rough-looking men.
Propped on her elbows, Denny took a breath to settle her strained nerves and then started to draw a bead on one of the outlaws. Since there were three of them instead of two this time, even if she and Brice shot perfectly, one of the outlaws ought to have time to whirl around and get a shot off at them. That was a risk they had to take.
Before either of them could squeeze the trigger, a rock clattered somewhere behind them. It was only a small sound, but as taut as Denny’s nerves were, it sounded like an avalanche. Brice heard it, too, and lunged up off the ground. He flung himself to the side, and Denny realized just before he landed on her that he was throwing himself into the line of fire, shielding her body with his own.
Shots roared. Brice grunted, and at the same time, a slug whined wickedly off one of the rocks only inches from the two of them. Denny squirmed halfway out from under him and twisted toward the gunfire. A bullet sizzled through the air next to her cheek. Part of her brain clamored with alarm, but she remained cool enough to realize the Winchester was too awkward for close work. She dropped the rifle and palmed out the Lightning instead as a pair of outlaws rushed toward them, firing revolvers.
