Golden Riders (11 page)

“That would be me most likely,” Sam said. “This is going to hurt.” He lowered the wadded bandanna and pressed it against the wound.

Toby winced and clenched his teeth but keep himself from yelling out loud.

“God . . . it does,” he rasped.

Sam took the young man's bloody right hand and laid it on the bandanna.

“Keep it pressed here,” he said, “the hurting will
ease some. We've got to stop this bleeding.” He patted Toby's shoulder. “Now, what about your sister?”

Toby managed to keep talking as the pain in his belly lessened beneath the wadded bandanna. Sam turned him slightly onto his side and looked at the bleeding exit wound. The ricochet had flattened even more on its way through the flesh and sliced out wide, like a knife wound. Fortunately, the flat exit wound was drying over better than the bullet hole in front.

“My sister . . . Lindsey, got away . . . but I've got to get to her,” Toby said, his voice sounding stronger as he thought of his sister out there alone, three gunmen stalking her. He tried to raise himself. He was too weak, not to mention the searing pain in his belly.

“This ricochet is going to cost you a shirtsleeve,” Sam said. He reached up from his boot with his boot knife and cut Toby's shirtsleeve at the upper seam. He ripped the seam all around and pulled the sleeve down off of his arm. Toby watched him split the sleeve down its middle into two strips and tied their ends together into one long strip. As he started to reach the strip under Toby's back, the mule stepped forward into the brush noisily. Sam almost swung around toward it.

“That's your mule from the wagon, I take it?” he asked, having been once again surprised by the animal's sudden appearance.

“Yes . . . that's Dan,” Toby said. The mule stopped three feet away and stood peering at the two of them.

“Is he always so curious?” Sam asked.

“He's part prospector's mule . . . and part pet.” Toby's
voice grew stronger, finding renewed hope for him and his sister now the Ranger was here.

Sam finished reaching the strip of cloth under him and tied it around his waist, holding the bandanna in place and putting some pressure on the exit wound.

“Can you ride that mule?” he asked. “If you can't I've got three horses near here. I'll bring you one.”

“Is it quicker . . . me riding a horse?” Toby said.

“It doesn't matter,” said Sam. “You can't keep up with me with this wound. I want you to keep slow and follow my tracks. I can't wait up for you, not if we're going to find your sister.”

“I can ride Dan,” said Toby. “The main thing is we get to Lindsey.”

“That's what I figured you'd say.” Sam reached down and helped Toby rise to his feet. The young man gasped in pain but overcame it and kept himself standing.

“It's turning daylight. Let's get down to water and take it from there,” said Sam. He raised the young man's arm across his shoulders and led him out of the brush, the mule right behind them.

Lindsey Delmar had spent the night running blindly in the maze of boulder, rock, capstone and brush. When she'd begun to realize how disoriented she was, she'd stopped searching for a way out. Like a frightened rabbit she'd simply taken cover and conserved her energy until the next sound behind her sent her darting from one spot to the next, and taking cover again. With the butcher knife in hand, she'd made up her mind that she would fight for her life if it came to that. But for now
—keep moving
,
she commanded herself.

At each new hiding place she lay in the dirt listening closely, wondering if her brother was coming; wondering how she would know it was him if she did hear anything. She had seen a shadowy silhouette in the moonlight at one point; but just as she'd started to call out, she saw that it wasn't Toby. It was the gunman, the one the other two called Chris.

As dawn had begun to rise in the east, she'd taken cover on a cliff and waited for daylight to reveal a path down to the sand flats. Lying there she heard the sound of hooves clicking softly on the rocky trail below. She
had started to rise up and look down toward the trail when she was startled by a voice near her calling out in the darkness.

“Roy, up here,” she heard the voice say. “I'm coming down.”

In the grainy light she saw Chris Weidel step into sight less than twenty feet away and look all around. His face appeared to stop and look straight at her for a moment. Then he turned away and walked down the path toward the main trail. She went weak in her chest for a moment and lowered her face to the dirt. But she collected herself quickly and forced herself to rise enough to gaze down over the edge of a rock and watch Mangett and Rose ride forward at a walk, Rose leading Weidel's horse by its reins.

“They're lying down somewhere, the both of them,” she heard Weidel say, the three of them talking only a few yards below her. “One of them's hit, I saw some blood. But I've beat this blasted hillside to death.” He stopped and coughed and hacked for a moment. “They ain't coming up,” he added in a choking voice. He held a wadded bandanna to his mouth.

“Damn it,” said Mangett as Weidel took his horse's reins from Rose. “I want those two. I want them
bad
.” He stared at Weidel.

“I'm done with it, Roy,” Weidel said, half speaking into the bandanna. “Far as I know they might have circled back to their wagon. They ain't got very far if they did.”

“Damn it,” Mangett said again. “We can't keep running back and forth. This whole ambush idea has
turned into a damned mess. We're going on to Kane's hideout.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Still . . . I hate giving up twins, knowing what they're worth, knowing they're up there somewhere. We can give it one more try.”

“I'll hang back and get them,” Rose volunteered. He'd already decided, even if he found the twins, he wasn't bringing them to Mangett. He would send them on their way, maybe even apologize. Things had gotten out of hand, but he could make them right. This whole thing had happened because of that fool Arnold Pulty
—the son of a bitch
.

Mangett chuffed at him and looked all around in the gloom. “I mean it, Roy,” Rose said. “I'll duck into the rock up there and watch for them come morning light. They can't make it long without heading down to the water.”

“Yeah? What if they're already gone like Chris says,” Mangett replied.

“Then I'll find out, and I'll catch back up to you along the trail,” said Rose.

“You couldn't find horseshit with both hands up a mustang's ass,” Weidel said.

In the brush and rocks above them, the young woman lay listening as silent as death.

Rose let Weidel's insult go unchallenged; Mangett gave a short scornful laugh and sat considering it for a moment.

“If you could find them as easily as you let them get away, we'd do well leaving you to look,” he said.

“I'll find them, Roy,” said Rose. “Find them, or see
where they went back in the night and slipped away from here.”

“Find them, goddamn it,” said Mangett, jerking his horse around onto the trail. “Since you came up with the idea, either find them or don't come back.”

Weidel chuckled and turned his horse beside Mangett.

“How's that for a bargain?” he said to Rose. “Roy and me win either way.”

“Now wait a minute, Roy,” said Rose, hedging a little. “I'm trying to help out here. But now I either have to find them or I'm cast out?”

“Like Adam out of Eden,” Weidel laughed over his shoulder as the two booted their horses up into a gallop.

“Damn it, Roy,” Rose called out as they rode away. “Oh, I'll find her—find them both, that is,” he corrected himself. “Just you wait and see.” There it was, he'd said plenty. When he caught up with Mangett later, who could say he hadn't done his best.

Listening, Lindsey watched the young gunman turn his horse and nudge it over onto the steep, narrow path. She ducked again and lay stonelike until she heard the horse's hooves pawing, scraping, struggling up the path only a few feet away. She wasn't sure where Toby was back there, but she wasn't about to let the gunman ride back and find him. She took a deep breath to clear her head and crawled over to the edge of a low cliff and waited while the rider drew closer. She gripped the butcher knife in her hand.

As Joey Rose rode by unsuspecting, she lunged out from the cliff, four feet down and landed atop him, slashing, stabbing and screaming. Rose's terrified horse
reared and bolted from under him, sending him and Lindsey crashing to the rocky ground. Rose felt the burn of the knife blade across his face, his side; he felt the sharp stab of steel into his shoulder, his ribs. The two rolled and fought, Lindsey putting all her entire strength and effort into killing the gunman, for her sake, for her brother's. She knew she was fighting for their lives. She knew Toby would be doing the same thing were the tables turned.

But instead of dying right away as the young woman somehow felt he would, Rose fought back hard, realizing that he too was fighting for his life. As soon as she had lunged down on him, he'd realized it was her. As they fought, he tried at first to grab her wrist, grapple with her and get the knife out of her hand. Yet, feeling the blade cut him time after time, he instinctively abandoned any notion of grabbing the knife. Instead he shoved himself away from her, struggled to his feet, drawing and cocking his gun.

Seeing the gun aimed at her, Lindsey jumped aside. Rose, his face and eyes covered with blood, tried to focus on her and get off a shot. But before he could, Lindsey leaped off the path into the maze of rocks and ran down and away toward the flatlands below.

“You've killed me; damn you, girl!” Rose shouted and sobbed. “I never done nothing to you!” Holding his sliced face together with a bloody hand, his Colt hanging down his side, he staggered back and forth in the path, still stunned by the attack. The girl had swept down, caught him off guard, cut and stabbed him viciously, and disappeared, screaming as she went. Now the path
was silent, except for the sound of him panting, catching his breath.

And now he stood staggering in the silence, bleeding all over, looking along the path through a veil of blood at his horse standing twenty yards away. The animal had settled quickly. It looked back at him curiously, as if wondering what strange circumstance had brought on the young woman's sudden outburst of wild behavior.

“Damn it, girl . . .” Rose said in a broken voice, stooping, picking up the butcher knife, seeing drops of his blood splatter into the dirt at his feet. “I was only trying to help. . . .”

Lindsey ran hard and fast down the winding game path, through tangles of brush. She leaped over rock, ducked around stands of spiky barrel cactus and never slowed until she collapsed at the edge of the desert floor. Then she lay gasping for breath for only a moment. Looking back over her shoulder, she shoved herself to her feet and staggered to a rock and leaned back against it, keeping watch on the path behind her. She knew she had stabbed and sliced the young gunman many times. But she didn't trust the outcome, not after finding out firsthand how hard it was to kill a man.

She'd thought at the outset that a butcher knife would make short work of him. But she'd been wrong. Her hope now was that he would bleed to death up there along the path. Or, at least be badly enough wounded that he wouldn't bother coming after her, or going on after her brother.

Her brother . . .

She gazed upward along the hill line behind her in the direction of Dutchman's Tanks, as if hoping Toby would appear up there, wave at her, and soon come bounding down to her, fit as ever. The whole thing had been nothing but a nightmare—a bad dream that had vanished with the passing night. Now that daylight shined bright and clear . . .

Stop it,
she said to herself.

Last night had been real and terrible, but nothing had gotten any better with the coming of daylight. She was alive, that meant something. But Toby was still back there somewhere, hurt, maybe dead for all she knew. Thinking of him, she pushed herself up from against the rock. She had to follow this main trail along the bottom edge of the hill line and get back to where the path ran up to the water hole. She looked all around. She had to do all this and at the same time stay out of sight. For all she knew the gunmen could come back looking for her. She'd heard them say they were riding on, but she couldn't trust it. She couldn't trust anything, she reminded herself.

She walked down the last few sloping steps of the sandy hillside to the main trail. She stayed along the inner edge of the desert trail and walked back to where she knew they had turned up on the path to the water hole. She kept the rocky hills near her side should she suddenly need their shelter.

She had walked steadily, nonstop for an hour when she came upon the sound of thrashing in the dried brush a few yards up on the sloping hillside. Stopping and freezing in place, she stared in terror, expecting to see the wounded gunman who had somehow circled
above her and lay in wait. Yet, as she stood watching, she saw a large, bloody wolf—one of the losing combatants in last night's contest over Arnold Pulty's corpse—step out of the brush and stand staring down at her, its fangs showing.

Oh God . . . !

She backed away a slow step. Wolves never came out in the daylight, she told herself.
Did they?
She backed another step, the wolf stalked forward slowly. She saw a deep, bloody tear in its fur.
No, they don't,
she answered herself, not unless something was wrong. She backed another step, telling herself not to run. If this monster saw her running, it would strike out after her. But she only moved slowly, quietly, showing no threat—

Oh no . . . !

The wounded wolf leaped forward, charging down at her in a full run—limping in its hindquarters, but running all the same.

Lindsey ran with all her strength along the sandy lower edge of the hill line, veering out every step farther onto the desert floor. She had no idea where she was running to, she only knew to run, put distance between herself and the wolf. For how long or far she didn't consider, to what inevitable end she dare not imagine.

The harder she ran out onto the barren desert floor, the more the deepening sand slowed her down. She looked back, seeing the big limping wolf gaining on her. Beneath her, she felt her feet moving as if she were running in a bad dream, running hard, getting nowhere.

She screamed. It made no difference to the wolf.

“Get away!” she shrieked, but the wolf ran on,
getting closer, too close. She heard the panting rattle of its breath, heard its paws striking the sand. When she looked back again, she knew it was over. The big animal made a long final leap, as was its instinctive move when it knew it had its prey.

Lindsey stumbled to her knees, rolled in the loose, hot sand, trying to cover herself with her arms. The wolf had her; she knew it. But then she heard the animal let out a terrible yelp. As she looked through her protecting arms, she saw it fly sideways, its direction changed in midair, a ribbon of fresh blood streaking from its side. Then the blast of a rifle shot caught up with itself from among the rocks along the lower hillside. In the sand, the mortally wounded wolf dragged itself forward, its fangs snapping at her foot. Lindsey scooted quickly forward away from it, the wolf's paw digging at her, striking against her shoe. She struggled to her feet on the run, looking back wide-eyed. She'd gone three steps when the wolf's body bucked hard in the sand and seemed to melt there. The report of a second rifle shot came down from the rocks and echoed out across the desert floor.

Lindsey felt a sudden rush of relief, but also the dizzying press of heat, of thirst and exhaustion. Even as she tried to focus on the figure standing atop the line of rock in a drift of smoke where the shots had come from, she felt the world spin around her, and she fell backward, limp onto the burning sand.

The Ranger looked out across the desert floor from up in the rocks atop a narrow cliff. He saw the wolf dead in the sand; he watched the young woman fall to the
ground. With his Winchester in hand he climbed down among a stand of boulders, walked around to where he'd left the horses, and led them along a slim path to a downhill trail. At the bottom of the sloping hill line he stepped up into his saddle and shoved the Winchester into its boot.

Riding the easygoing buckskin, leading the black-point copper dun and the big paint alongside him, he raced out through the sand to where the young woman lay collapsed beneath the hot morning sun. She struggled up onto her elbows as the sound of the horses drew closer. Seeing the rise of dust from the three horses, not realizing it was a lawman riding toward her, she struggled the rest of the way to her feet and started running all over again.