Death Rides Alone (15 page)
Authors: William W. Johnstone
CHAPTER 25
Luke spent some time reattaching the loose shoe, which hadn't come off completely, as best he could, and then he and Tyler resumed their journey. He had moved his saddle back to the gray so the horse having trouble wouldn't have to carry his weight. That seemed to help, as did the slow pace Luke set. The delay chafed at him, though.
And it didn't even seem to help that much, because by nightfall the shoe was loose and the horse was limping again.
“This is ridiculous,” Luke said as they sat and made a cold supper from jerky and stale biscuits. Out in the open in the basin like this, with killers searching for them, he didn't want to risk having a fire. “At this rate it's going to take us another week to get to White Fork.”
“You're sure in a hurry to turn me over to the law, is that it?” Tyler said.
“I'm in a hurry to resolve this situation so we can clear your name.”
“So you can get your hands on that cache of loot I promised you.”
“I've put a considerable amount of time and effort into this, not to mention risking my neck on numerous occasions,” Luke said. “As I've told you before, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to make a little profit on the deal.”
“And if I turn over all my money to you, what do I get out of it?”
“You don't have to dance at the end of a rope,” Luke pointed out. “Or have your carcass left to rot out here before you ever get back to White Fork, which is what will happen if Sheriff Axtell's deputies catch us.”
Tyler shrugged and said, “Yeah, well, I guess you're right about all that. And don't think I'm ungrateful for everything you've done for me so far, Luke. I just wish there was some way to settle this without waltzin' right back into that nest of rattlesnakes.”
“It usually takes daring to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”
“Is that another quote?”
“Nope. Just common sense.”
With no coffee and nothing to do, Tyler turned in early, rolling up in his blankets and going to sleep. Luke would let him rest for a few hours, then wake him to stand guard during the middle of the night.
Luke sat there listening, but there was nothing to hear except the faint sounds of the horses grazing on the clumps of grass stubborn enough to grow in this semi-arid basin. Time passed slowly.
Luke didn't doze off, but he drifted into a state where his senses were all alert but his brain was cloaked in a state of peaceful mindlessness.
That condition evaporated instantly when he heard something in the distance. He lifted his head and peered into the surrounding darkness while at the same time honing his ears to an ever sharper keenness.
Somewhere far off, hoofbeats sounded. That was what he had heard.
Riders were abroad in the night.
That didn't have to mean anything. Wandering cowpokes, an Indian hunting party, a cavalry patrol . . . all of those were possibilities, although none of them were exactly likely, either, Luke thought. Still, he couldn't just assume that the riders were searching for him and Tyler.
But he couldn't assume that they weren't.
The hoofbeats didn't come any closer. Luke listened to them for a while, until they finally faded away. Even so, he didn't relax again until he reached over and shook Tyler awake for his turn on guard duty.
Luke waited until the young man was good and alert, then said, “I heard some riders a while ago. They were a long way off to the east, and as far as I could tell they didn't come in this direction.”
“Axtell's men,” Tyler said. “Bound to be.”
“We don't know that, but I'd say there's a good chance of it. After a while I couldn't hear them anymore. I don't know if they went the other direction or if they stopped and camped for the night.”
Tyler ran his fingers through his hair and said, “I'm starting to understand what you tried to tell me about being a fugitive, Luke. As long as I was running, they'd never stop hounding me, would they?”
“That's right. You'd always be looking over your shoulder, wondering if you were going to die in the next five minutes.”
“That's no way to live.”
“I wouldn't think so.”
“So I reckon I ought to thank you for forcing me into doing the right thing,” Tyler said. “Even though I sure wasn't happy about it for a while.”
“Well . . . we'd better wait and see if it pans out, I suppose.”
“Even if it doesn't, I'm trying to do right by Rachel. That's got to be worth something, doesn't it?”
“It does,” Luke agreed. “Right now, just keep your eyes and ears open while I get some shut-eye.”
* * *
Nobody tried to sneak up on their camp during the night. In the morning, Luke banged the loose horseshoe back into place even though he knew it wasn't likely to hold. They rode north, taking it easy.
“If that shoe comes off again, we'll have no choice but to abandon the horse,” Luke said. “I don't like it, but there it is. We've done all we can reasonably do.”
“It's because of those riders you heard last night, isn't it?” Tyler said. “They've got you spooked.”
“Not really. I knew all along there was a good chance we might run into more of Axtell's and Douglas's men as long as we were out here.” Luke shrugged. “But hearing those riders didn't help matters any, I suppose.”
They made slow but steady progress during the morning. The basin wasn't as flat as it looked from a distance, which wasn't surprising. It rose and fell in places, and an occasional rocky knoll thrust up from the ground.
Luke aimed toward one of those knolls, thinking it might provide a little shade while they stopped for a midday meal and to let the horses rest. They hadn't gone very far in that direction when Tyler hipped around in the saddle to check their backtrail, which he did every so often.
This time he exclaimed, “Hell!”
Luke reined in and turned to look, too. Right away, he saw the column of dust rising into the brassy sky behind them.
“Whoever it is, they picked up our trail, and they're comin' on fast!” Tyler said.
“I think we know who it is,” Luke said. “Nobody would be moving that fast out here without a purpose.”
“And that purpose is bound to be filling me full of lead!” Tyler looked around with an air of desperation about him. “We've got to find some coverâ”
“Up there,” Luke said, pointing to the rocky knoll he had seen earlier. He hadn't mentioned it to Tyler at the time, just headed in that direction without explanation, knowing that Tyler would follow him.
Tyler squinted and said, “Looks like the best place to fort up that we're gonna find. Can we get there in time, before they catch up to us?”
“Only one way to find out,” Luke said. He had been leading the horse with the bad shoe. Now he dropped the reins and heeled the gray into a run. The extra horse would just have to fend for itself.
Tyler let go of the other spare mount's reins and pounded after Luke on the paint. They were banking their lives on the horses with which they had started this journey.
This wasn't the first time Luke had been in a race for his life. As he rode, he looked back over his shoulder occasionally to see if the pursuit was gaining on them.
He was pleased to see that, judging by the dust cloud, it didn't seem to be. The killers had probably been riding long and hard over the past couple of weeks, and their horses weren't any fresher than Luke's and Tyler's were.
They drew closer to the rocky knoll. Over the pounding hoofbeats, Luke called, “We'll get up there and hold the high ground!”
“But there's nowhere to go from there,” Tyler protested, “no other cover for miles around here! They'll have us trapped as sure as if we were up a tree!”
“Maybe,” Luke said, “but it's the only chance we've got.”
Tyler couldn't argue with that.
Even mounts as gallant as the gray and the paint had proven to be had to falter sooner or later, and they began to slow when the knoll was still half a mile away. Luke looked back again and judged that the column of dust was a little closer than it had been the last time he checked.
It was going to be a near thing, whether he and Tyler reached the higher ground in time for it to do any good.
They had come too far to give up now, though, and besides, both of them knew good and well that they couldn't expect any mercy if the men behind them worked for Gus Axtell or Manfred Douglas. The horses galloped on, giving it all they had even though that supply of strength was fading with every lunging stride.
The next time Luke looked back, he could make out the dark shapes of individual riders at the base of that dust column. If he could see the pursuers, that meant the pursuers could see him and Tyler, so he wasn't surprised when bullets began kicking up dirt behind them.
Tyler happened to be looking back and saw one of the spurts of earth and gravel as a slug plowed into the ground. He said, “They're shooting at us!”
“That pretty well answers the question of who they are, doesn't it?”
“Did you ever have any doubt?”
“Not really,” Luke said.
The knoll was less than a quarter of a mile away now, but the riders in pursuit were only a couple of hundred yards behind. That was still too far for anything except a very lucky shot to find its target, especially when the shots came from the saddles of running horses.
Anything was possible, though, when the bullets started to fly. Luke knew all he and Tyler could do was keep moving.
Then the knoll was right in front of them, and they put their horses up the slope in frantic, plunging leaps.
“Go! Go!” Luke shouted to Tyler. He let the gray fall behind a little and twisted in the saddle to fire one of the revolvers back at the riders. Again, the odds of actually hitting any of them were tiny, but he wanted to let the men know they were in for a fight.
Tyler and the paint pony disappeared over the top of the knoll. Luke was glad they had reached safety, even though it was probably only temporary.
That thought had just flashed through his brain when the gray stumbled and went down. Luke reacted just fast enough to kick his feet loose from the stirrups, and the next instant he flew from the back of the fallen horse and crashed into the rocky ground with stunning force.
CHAPTER 26
For long seconds, the only thing Luke was capable of doing was lying there gasping for air while the world spun crazily around him. Up was down, down was up, and although he knew he needed to be doing something, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what it was.
Then a bullet struck close by him, throwing dirt and gravel in his face, and the stinging impacts brought him back to his senses. He raised his head and pushed himself up with one hand. Another bullet whined past his ear. He looked down the slope and saw that the men on horseback had almost reached the knoll.
A rifle cracked somewhere close to him. Once, twice, and then again the sharp reports filled the air. Then a hand grabbed hold of Luke's upper left arm and tried to haul him to his feet.
“C'mon, Luke!” Tyler shouted. “We've gotta get out of here!”
Luke looked up and saw Tyler standing there, the Winchester in his left hand while he used his right to try to lift Luke. Realizing that the young man had come back to help him, Luke called on his stunned nerves and muscles to work again and forced himself up.
He looked at his right hand and was shocked to see that the Remington was still in it. Somehow, instinct had kept him from dropping the gun when he slammed into the ground.
Since he was starting to see straight again, he raised the gun and blasted a couple of rounds toward the pursuers. Then he and Tyler backed toward the top of the knoll, still firing as they retreated.
The pursuers couldn't charge straight up the slope into the face of all the lead that Luke and Tyler were throwing at them. The riders spread out as they reached the knoll, throwing themselves from their saddles and continuing to fire as they hunted for cover. Although the bullets flew fast and furiously for several moments, none of them did any damage.
Then Luke and Tyler sprawled backward over the crest and rolled into the shelter of the boulders perched there.
“Man, that was close!” Tyler said as he lay there trying to catch his breath.
“Why'd you come down after me?” Luke said. “You were safe up here.”
“Yeah, but safe for how long? I can't fight that bunch off all by myself.” Tyler grinned. “Besides, I reckon I've gotten used to having your ugly face around, Luke. I didn't want to see you filled full of lead.”
“I'm obliged to you. Without that covering fire you gave me, I probably wouldn't have made it the rest of the way up this hill.”
Tyler looked around and said, “Yeah, and now that we're here . . . what next?”
Luke took stock of their situation as well. The knoll was mostly flat on top, an irregular circle about fifty feet in diameter. Grass grew here and there, along with a few scrubby bushes. Large rocks were scattered around. They had been here, unmoving, ever since geologic forces had thrust this knoll up from the surrounding flats in some unknown past era.
His horse must have scrambled to its feet after falling and joined Tyler's paint, because both animals were standing several yards away, cropping at the grass, apparently unhurt. The gray seemed to have a charmed life when it came to falling, but Luke wasn't going to complain about that bit of good fortune.
A few more shots had rung out after Luke and Tyler reached the top, but by now all the guns had fallen silent. Since the pursuers couldn't see them from down below, shooting was just a waste of bullets.
Luke figured the men had spread out even more. If they had the instincts of the predators they obviously were, they would be circling the knoll to insure that their prey stayed trapped up here until they figured out their next move.
“We'd better make sure they don't sneak up on us,” Luke said. “You take one side and I'll take the other.”
Tyler nodded in agreement and got to his feet to move in a crouching run toward the north side of the knoll. Luke took the south side, toward the direction they had come from. He edged up to one of the rocks, took his hat off, and risked a glance around the boulder.
Some sharp-eyed son of a bitch down below was watching. A gun blasted, and as Luke jerked his head back, a slug hammered into the rock and threw dust and stone chips into the air. The shot had missed by inches.
He heard another gun go off on the far side of the knoll. Tyler yelped.
“You hit?” Luke called to him.
“Nope,” Tyler answered. “But I took a gander over here and it looks like the back door's nailed shut good and tight, too.”
That came as no surprise to Luke. He would have employed the same tactic if he had been leading a posse after a couple of fugitives.
“As long as they don't try to make it up the hill, hold your fire,” he told Tyler. “No sense in wasting our bullets taking potshots at them.”
“They don't have very good cover,” Tyler said. “Not as good as we do.”
“No, but there are at least five times as many of them. Every time we expose ourselves to shoot at them, we increase the chances that one of them will wing one of us.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Tyler said, but he didn't sound like he cared for the idea of being cautious. “It'll be dark in six or seven hours, though, and then they can sneak up on us.”
Luke couldn't argue with that, but his reply to Tyler was true as well.
“A lot can happen in six or seven hours.”
* * *
What happened was that boredom set in on both sides. The deputiesâif that's what they wereâcouldn't get a good shot, and Luke and Tyler didn't want to take a chance and step out from behind the boulders so they could draw a bead on the pursuers.
At the same time, nobody could actually relax in a standoff like this. The tension drew a man's nerves tighter and tighter, until it seemed like they would snap at any second.
By late afternoon, Tyler was as wild-eyed as a spooked horse. He took off his hat, raked his fingers through his hair until it stood up on end, and called across to Luke, “I'm not sure how much longer I can take this.”
“You'll take it as long as you have to,” Luke said. “That's the only way to stay alive in a situation like this. You have to wait for the breaks to come your way.”
“Yeah? What if they don't? What if your luck stays bad and in the end you lose?”
“Then you go down fighting,” Luke said with a shrug. “You make sure that you die as wellâor betterâthan you lived.”
“I'm not sure I'm that damn stoic,” Tyler muttered.
Luke didn't reply, because something had caught his eye. A flicker of movement to the south. He saw it again, then stood up and went over to the gray, being careful not to give the gun-wolves below a clear shot at him.
He took his field glasses from one of his saddlebags, then returned to the boulder where he'd been crouching. He lifted the glasses to his eyes and peered through them. It took him a moment to locate and focus on what he had seen a moment earlier.
Then he lowered the glasses, smiled faintly, and told Tyler, “Make some noise over there, Judd.”
“What?”
“Open fire on those men down there. Get them shooting back at you. It doesn't matter much if you hit them. Just be careful and don't let them hit you.”
“Well, that's always the general idea, I reckon, the not getting hit part, I mean. What's this about, Luke? Why are we putting up a fight now?”
“Because help may be on the way,” Luke said as he set the field glasses aside and drew his Remingtons.
He wheeled around the rock and began triggering both revolvers as fast as he could, raining lead down on the hunters who had chased them up here. A few slugs whined off the boulders near him, but Luke's unexpected barrage made most of the men duck their heads and hunker down.
On the other side of the knoll, Judd Tyler was following Luke's example and emptying the Winchester as fast as he could, swinging the barrel from side to side so that the bullets sprayed all around the enemy. When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, he ducked back behind the rock just in time to avoid a hailstorm of lead.
The men on Luke's side launched a furious response of their own and fired at least a hundred rounds toward the top of the knoll in the next couple of minutes. None of the bullets did any damage except to the boulders, but the shooting created a wave of gun-thunder that spread out across the basin.
That was exactly what Luke was counting on.
He reloaded the Remingtons, waited until the firing from the bottom of the slope died down a little, and then blazed away again at the pursuers. That prompted another heavy round of return fire. To anyone listening, it would sound like a battle royal was going on, even though none of the shots were actually hitting much of anything.
“I thought you said not to burn up ammunition without a good reason,” Tyler called across to him.
“There's a good reason,” Luke said. He reloaded again, then holstered the revolvers and picked up the field glasses. He looked through them to the south and saw the half-dozen men on horseback he had spotted earlier. The riders must have heard all the shooting, just as Luke intended, because they were coming toward the knoll and moving fast.
Nolan Howard was in the lead.
Luke had wanted to protect everyone connected to the wagon train from getting mixed up in his and Tyler's troubles, and that included Nolan and the rest of the scouts. That was why he and Tyler had gone around the wagons and moved on ahead of the immigrants.
The delays they had encountered along the way had given the scouts the chance to catch up, though, as Nolan and the others ranged far ahead of the wagons. Luke hadn't counted on that happening, but he knew there was a chance it might. That was one of the possibilities he'd been holding out for during the long, tense afternoon on the knoll.
Now Nolan and his fellow scouts were riding hard in this direction, obviously intent on finding out what all the commotion was about.
Luke moved back far enough that the hired killers couldn't see him but the riders out on the flats still could. He took off his hat and waved it back and forth over his head, hoping to attract Nolan's attention.
The move seemed to work. The riders reined in and slowed to a stop. Luke saw sunlight wink off of something shiny. One of the men had a telescope or a pair of field glasses trained on the top of the knoll.
A moment later, the riders galloped toward the site of the standoff. Luke had a hunch that he'd been recognized, and that would be a warning to Nolan that the men around the base of the knoll were enemies.
“What in blue blazes is going on?” Tyler demanded.
“Help is on the way,” Luke said. “In fact, it's almost here. Make sure that rifle is loaded, because in a few minutes we'll need to go down there and lend a hand.” He smiled. “The hunters are about to become the hunted.”
Other books
The Mysterious Ambassador by Lee Falk
The Intruder by Krehbiel, Greg
The Passenger by F. R. Tallis
A Major Attraction by Marie Harte
The Mistaken by Nancy S Thompson
Deadly by Sylvia McDaniel
Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman
Ian by Elizabeth Rose
Wicked Ink by Simon, Misty
A Most Unusual Match by Sara Mitchell