Hard Ride to Hell (9780786031191) (25 page)

Matt's Colt roared as he crouched and returned Randall's fire. Bullets from Randall's gun whined over his head as he heard the big gunman crashing and tumbling down the narrow staircase. Randall risked a broken neck by recklessly throwing himself down the stairs that way, but he must have preferred that to letting himself be taken prisoner.

Matt couldn't see Randall anymore. The man must have rolled all the way to the landing. Preacher started to rush forward into the opening, but Matt motioned him back.

Another slug snapped through the air and thudded into the roof. Obviously, Randall hadn't broken his neck. And he had them trapped up here, Matt realized. If they tried to make it down those stairs, they would be easy targets.

Randall's gun fell silent, and as it did, Matt heard the faint crackling of shots coming from somewhere outside. He glanced over at Preacher and saw the old mountain man frowning in confusion at the sound.

“That's Standing Rock and the other warriors, more than likely,” Matt explained. “Smoke was going to get them to stage a diversion so we could get out of the mansion. It would have worked if Randall hadn't pinned us down up here.”

“What we need is a diversion of our own, I reckon,” Preacher said. “Grab that fella on the bunk.”

Matt looked at the bloody corpse, not sure what Preacher intended for him to do.

“Heave him down the stairs,” Preacher went on. “I'll be right behind him.”

“No, I will be,” Matt said. “I can move faster than you, stove up like you are.”

“Stove up! Maybe I ain't as young as I used to be, but I'm still faster than you, you big ol' muscle-bound galoot!”

Matt ignored Preacher's outburst and said, “Throw some lead down the stairs to cover me.”

He bent and took hold of the dead man, turning the body so that he could slide his arms under the guard's arms and lock them around the corpse's sticky, blood-soaked chest. It was a grisly task and made a wave of revulsion go through him, but with his great strength Matt was able to lift the dead man and hold the body in front of him like a grotesque shield.

Preacher stuck the guard's gun around the corner and triggered three swift shots down the stairs. The racket in those narrow confines was deafening. Hoping that Preacher's shots had made Randall duck back momentarily from the bottom of the stairs, Matt lunged down them.

He heard a gun roar twice and felt the shock of bullets striking the body he held in front of him. Halfway down the stairs, the guard's dead weight threatened to make him lose his balance, so Matt gave the corpse a shove and sent it plummeting the rest of the way. He caught himself by bracing a shoulder against the wall and palmed out his revolver. Flame licked from the muzzle as he triggered.

The echoes made it hard to hear, but Matt thought he detected running footsteps from the third floor hall. He bounded down the rest of the stairs and dropped into a roll that carried him through the door at the bottom.

As he came to a stop and raised his gun, he caught a glimpse of Randall ducking away from the main staircase's third-floor landing. The gunman snapped a shot that tore up the flower-patterened wallpaper a couple of feet from Matt's head. Matt triggered again, but knew he had missed as Randall continued to flee downstairs.

“Come on!” Matt called to Preacher and Mrs. Dayton as he scrambled to his feet. Now that they weren't trapped in the little attic room anymore, they had a chance to fight their way clear of the mansion.

That chance improved with every minute that passed, since Matt knew that Smoke was on his way by now.

 

 

While the diversion staged by the Assiniboine hadn't been completely successful, it had partially served its purpose by drawing away some of the guards from the front of the mansion. And since the other gunmen had rushed inside to see what the shooting was about in there, the front door was unguarded at the moment. That was the easiest way in, so Smoke took it.

When he rushed into the foyer, a couple of the guards were halfway up a broad, curving staircase. They must have heard him come in, because they stopped and whirled around. Recognizing him as an intruder, one of the men yelled, “Get that son of a bitch!” Both guards jerked up their guns.

They never had a chance. Smoke drilled both of them, each with a single shot. One man fell backwards on the stairs with blood welling from the hole in his chest. The other doubled over from the slug in his guts and fell against the fancy banister running along the edge of the staircase. He tumbled over it and crashed to the parquet floor of the entrance hall.

Smoke bounded up the stairs, stepping over the dead man who still lay there, eyes glassy and staring at nothing.

A slug whipped past his head when he reached the second-floor landing. The other guards who had charged into the mansion must have doubled back when they heard the shots break out behind them.

Smoke dropped to one knee as he saw a muzzle flash to his right. A gunman had taken cover behind a spindly-legged little table. It didn't offer him enough protection, though. Smoke's next bullet smashed one of the table legs and knocked it out of the way. The slug after that ripped through the man's spine and sent him rolling across the floor.

A bullet chewed splinters from the wall near Smoke's head. He twisted and fired the other way at a man standing in an open doorway. The man jerked back out of sight as the bullet smashed into the doorjamb beside his ear.

Smoke didn't like leaving a threat behind him, but according to Matt, Preacher was being held in the attic so Smoke wanted to keep going in that direction. His gun was empty, though, so before starting up to the third floor, he ducked into an alcove to thumb fresh cartridges into the Colt's cylinder.

“What's going on out there?” a man's voice bellowed from down the hallway. “By God, what's all that shooting? Somebody answer me!”

The man's tone told Smoke he was used to giving orders and to being obeyed. That probably meant it was Colonel Hudson Ritchie doing the yelling. As he thought about all the death and destruction the Colonel was responsible for, either directly or indirectly, Smoke wanted to go after him and deliver some hot lead justice to the man, but saving Preacher and Little Hawk had to come first. He leaped for the stairs that led to the third floor. A bullet whined past his head as he dashed across the open space between the alcove and the staircase.

Shots had been ringing out above him. Just as Smoke started up the stairs, the big man he had seen earlier with Matt lunged onto the staircase at the top. For a split-second the two men froze as they looked at each other.

The shot that crashed in the next instant didn't come from either of their guns. Smoke felt the bullet's impact. It twisted him halfway around. He kept moving, spinning out of the way as the man at the top of the stairs opened fire. More shots came from the other end of the corridor, where the man Smoke took to be the Colonel was firing around the corner of an open doorway. He was the one Smoke's shot had chased back into the room a moment earlier.

Smoke had to take cover in the alcove again. He looked down at his right side where the bullet had hit him and saw that the slug had torn along the thick leather of his gun belt at an angle instead of penetrating his body. It had been enough to knock him off-balance for a moment, but hadn't done any real damage.

That was a stroke of luck, but Smoke knew he couldn't count on that happening again.

He heard movement on the stairs. More shots blasted, tearing up the wall at the corner of the alcove. As the gun fell silent, he risked a look and saw the big man, who had to be Randall, lunge past, dragging a man in a gray suit. That would be Colonel Ritchie. Smoke threw a shot at them, but he missed and the bullet exploded the newel post on the staircase's top baluster.

Another figure suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs from the third floor. Smoke held off on the trigger at the last second as he recognized Matt.

Matt had almost fired as well. They stared at each other over their gun barrels for a heartbeat, and then Matt grinned. He waved at someone up the stairs and said, “Come on! Smoke's here!”

That was encouraging. Sure enough, Preacher appeared at Matt's side a moment later, although Smoke had a little trouble recognizing the old mountain man at first. Preacher looked like he had taken a bath in blood.

A fair-haired woman hesitantly came down the stairs behind Preacher as Smoke hurried to join them. Preacher looked at her and asked, “Where's the young'un?”

“In my room,” she answered. “He must be terribly frightened with all this shooting going on.”

“He comes from good stock,” Preacher told her. “He'll be all right. Best fetch him, though.”

As the woman hurried down the corridor away from the stairs, Smoke asked, “Preacher, are you all right? You look like you just crawled out of a slaughterhouse.”

“It ain't my blood,” Preacher assured him. “I'll be a mite stiff and sore for a while, but I'm fine. Better now that the three of us are together again.”

Smoke felt the same way. They were still in great danger, but as long as they were together, he liked their chances.

“Where are Randall and the Colonel?” Matt asked.

“Randall made it past me,” Smoke said. “He hustled a fella I took to be the Colonel downstairs.”

“Big man, bald, forehead sort of bulges?”

“I didn't get a real good look at him,” Smoke said, “but I think that's him.”

Matt nodded and said, “That's the Colonel, all right. And if there are any guards left alive downstairs, Randall will rally them and try to keep us trapped up here.”

“He's liable to have his hands full with other things if Standing Rock and his warriors are able to fight their way through the Colonel's men outside.”

The woman came back up the hall with a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms.

“Here he is,” she said.

Preacher said, “Smoke, Matt, this here's Miz Dayton. She helped me get loose. She works for the Colonel, but she wants Little Hawk to get back to his pa where he belongs.”

Smoke tugged on his hat brim and said, “Smoke Jensen, ma'am. I'm pleased to meet you. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Please, Mr. Jensen . . . if it's possible . . . if you could spare Hudson's life . . .”

“Ma'am, I'm afraid that's going to be entirely up to him,” Smoke told her. “But one way or another, we're taking this baby home.”

Mrs. Dayton swallowed hard and nodded.

“I know. Little Hawk should go home. It . . . it's the only right thing—”

A shot roared. She cried out and staggered. Little Hawk was about to slip from her arms and fall when Preacher caught the child, using his free arm to pull Little Hawk against his bloodstained chest.

“You bitch!” a man roared. “You betrayed me!”

Smoke, Matt, and Preacher whirled toward the far end of the hall. The Colonel stood there, smoke curling from the barrel of the pistol in his hand. He knew this house much better than they did, and Smoke realized he must have slipped up a rear set of stairs to reach the second-floor corridor and get behind them.

Shooting Mrs. Dayton was the last thing he was going to do. Smoke, Matt, and Preacher all fired at the same time, the three shots blending into a thunderous explosion. The slugs hammered into the Colonel's chest and threw him back against the wall behind him. He hung there for a second, his gun hand sagging and blood bubbling from the bullet holes in his chest.

“You . . . you can't do this,” he said, his voice weak. “That's . . . an order. . . .”

He pitched forward, already dead by the time his face smacked into the carpet runner.

“That just leaves Randall,” Matt said.

“And whoever he's still got with him,” Smoke added. He turned to Preacher. “Is Little Hawk all right?”

“Yeah, the little feller don't appear to be hit,” the mountain man said. “Better see about Miz Dayton, though.”

The woman had collapsed after being shot by the Colonel. Smoke holstered his gun and knelt beside her, carefully lifting her so that she was propped against his leg. Blood stained the front of her dress. Her eyes fluttered open. She peered up at Smoke and whispered, “The . . . the baby?”

“He's fine,” Smoke assured her. “The Colonel missed him.”

“No . . . he never meant to hurt Little Hawk.... He was trying to kill me. . . . I gave him . . . everything . . . but none of that mattered. He didn't care . . . didn't care who he hurt . . . as long as he . . . got what he wanted. . . .” Her eyes widened, and she had even more trouble talking as she said, “You'll keep the little one . . . safe . . . take him home . . .”

“You got our word on it, ma'am,” Preacher said as he held Little Hawk. “This little varmint's gonna be fine.”

“Thank you . . . I . . .” A spasm shook her. In a clear, amazed voice, she said, “Oh, my.”

Then her head fell back against Smoke's knee as death claimed her.

He lowered her gently to the floor and then stood up. His face was grim as he said, “The Colonel got what was coming to him.”

“You won't get any argument from us,” Matt replied. “What now?”

The shooting had stopped outside. Smoke moved closer to the landing and called downstairs, “Randall! Randall, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Randall said. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“Name's Smoke Jensen,” Smoke told him. “Colonel Ritchie is dead. You don't have anything to fight for anymore. You might as well throw down your gun.”