Over the Edge (2 page)

The brake came on hard as the driver tried to stop them from rolling out of control. Another thud shook Callie so hard she was thrown backward on the bench seat and smacked her shoulder into the side of the stage. The stage, slow anyway because of the climb, slued sideways, tipped so Callie was nearly lying on her back, then shuddered to a halt.

Callie heard the coach’s team of four horses go pounding away, broken free from their burden.

The guard overhead shouted, “Stay inside!” He fired and now the driver’s gun came into action. Callie spun on the seat now tipped upward at a steep angle. She lay on her side, shoved her feet against the downhill side of the stage, and got back up to the window.

A bullet whistled past her face.

There were two left. They’d taken cover and were trying to pick the men off the roof. Callie focused her eagle-sharp eyes on the pair attacking them. The tip of one gun was visible. In the motionless stage she could now aim with real precision. She fired. A cry of pain sounded as the muzzle vanished.

Return fire hailed on them from one remaining outlaw.

A sudden shout from overhead told her one of the stagecoach men was hit. She watched for the last remaining gun and saw it just as another shot came from farther up the trail. The bullet hit the window frame. Shards of wood slashed her face.

A second bullet was just as close, and she dived low to give them less of a target.

“You’re hit!”

She looked down at the young man, who was using his body as a shield to protect her son. “Just wood. The bullet missed.”

“Give me the gun.”

“Can you shoot? Can you hit what you aim at?”

The man’s jaw went rigid, then stiffly he shook his head no.

“Then stay down there, city boy. Let us handle this.”

Bullets came now from three guns. She knew three of the four men were hit but apparently not bad enough to stop them from shooting.

Another cry of pain came from overhead and the gunfire from the stage stopped. Callie swiped at the blood flowing, blocking the vision in one eye, which wrecked her aim and put her at a distinct disadvantage in a gunfight.

“Throw out your guns or we’ll shoot until every man aboard is dead.” The voice was chilling, ugly. Callie heard fury in it. And pain. The man wanted vengeance. The people on the stage had drawn blood, and the man yelling didn’t sound like the type to let them go on their way.

“I hear a child on that stage.” The voice sent a chill through her veins. “You want him to live, throw out your guns.”

Connor’s wailing made it hard for her to think.

Protect him, save him. God, please save my son.

Callie gripped her pistol. Soon they’d be in close-quarters fighting. It was going to come to that and when that happened it was hard to tell the winners from the losers because everyone got bloody.

No matter how young.

“Just surrender. Let them take what we have,” the young man whispered.

Callie looked at him. These men might let a woman go on her way with a child, but they’d blame this city man for the shooting from inside the stage, no matter how fast he talked. He was very close to death and it was her fault, at least to the extent that it was anyone’s fault but these outlaws.

“Stay down. They won’t let you walk away from this.” Connor’s cries kept building. His blue eyes were drenched with tears.

“I’m a man of God. Many bandits won’t shoot a parson.”

She refused to pull her attention away from the outlaws to try and persuade the parson of the long chance he’d be taking. Instead, with her pistol in her left hand and her rifle in her right, she waited, watched, prayed. Careful not to let the muzzle of her rifle protrude from the window, she hoped to get a shot at the unwounded man. It might be enough to break off the attack.

They came in a rush.

Three men erupted from behind bushes and boulders. Callie fired at the one running fastest and he went down and rolled out of sight along the edge of the trail. The men fired back, but she kept up the assault with both rifle and pistol. The outlaws ducked behind boulders. The stage was tipped nearly sideways on the trail. Held up from being flat on its side by a boulder that poked through the door she wasn’t using.

Callie got an idea. When she was praying this hard and she got an idea, she always thanked the Lord, even if He hadn’t carved it with a fiery fingertip into a slab of stone. They’d wheeled around until the trapdoor in the roof was facing downhill. With a quick twist of her body, she kicked the trapdoor on the stagecoach roof open.

“Get out of here.” She turned blazing eyes on the parson. “Take your wife and my son and go. The wagon blocks their vision of the downhill side of the trail. They won’t see you leaving. Run for Colorado City and get help. We’re not more than a mile or two out. All downhill. I can hold them off.”

“No, I won’t run like a coward and leave a woman to defend me.”

She respected that; she really did. She was also tempted to lay a butt stroke across his skull. “You can’t shoot. I can. Get away and get help. With my shooting, we all have a chance to survive this. But with your shooting, all of us are going to die.”

The parson’s jaw went so tight she thought his teeth might crack.

“Go, you’re wasting time. I think one of them is down and the other three are wounded, but not seriously.”

A bullet slammed into the stage. Callie ducked and faced uphill again. “Go, please. With your help my son has a chance to live.” Her tone had changed from issuing orders to begging.

She glanced at the parson and saw him nod.

“Hurry, you’re wasting time. Cover Connor’s mouth so they won’t hear you.” The cruelty of that made her sick, yet it was the only way the baby wouldn’t bring these men down on all of them.

The parson helped his wife slip through the trapdoor, handed her Connor. Callie tore her eyes away from her son and it felt as if she tore her own flesh. Connor’s cries cut off, and Callie blocked the parson’s exit with her rifle. His deadly serious eyes met hers.

“When you get to Colorado City, if . . . if I don’t make it, Parson, find Rafe Kincaid. He’s got a ranch near Rawhide, a little mining town to the west. He’s Connor’s uncle and he’ll look out for the boy.” Callie hoped it was true.

The parson nodded, clawed his way through the trapdoor out into the crisp fall air. Callie saw him slip his arm around his wife, who carried Connor. They ran. Another bullet fired and Callie had to turn away from her child. Just like Seth had turned away from both of them. The urge to cry shocked her. She wasn’t a crying kind of woman, but saying goodbye to her son, well, that was worth a few tears.

She wondered if this goodbye would be forever.

Another bullet smashed through the stage wall and made her forget everything but the fight.

Callie returned fire. The outlaws poured lead into the stage. She was forced to duck. Peeking out, she saw three men slip closer and she let loose with her rifle. They vanished again. Closer, closer every time.

She couldn’t cover three men, and that meant she couldn’t keep them pinned down. But she could make their advances slow. Give the parson every possible second. Make these thieving coyotes pay a high price for every step.

The gunfire stopped. The outlaws were out of sight. Waiting. She could only hope and pray they’d wait long enough. She searched the scrub pines and blazing aspens and boulders along the trail.

The men started shooting again. Callie returned fire. The sharp smell of sulfur and blood stung her nose. Splinters sprayed her hands and bloodied them, making her grip on the trigger slippery.

The men ducked out of sight and silence reigned.

Were the stage driver and the man riding shotgun dead? If they weren’t, if they’d just been wounded, maybe knocked out, maybe they’d come around and get back into the fight. Even one more gun and she’d have a chance.

The men fired, rushed forward, and dropped. Callie reloaded while the men hid. Time inched forward. She could almost hear the parson’s running steps. Down toward town. Help would come.

The coach was so shredded it was little protection anymore. She’d like to shout a threat to the men, let them know help might well be on the way; maybe they’d cut and run. But then they’d know she was a woman and that might make them even more brazen.

Callie noticed the seat across from her had been blasted loose from the frame of the stage. She grabbed at it and moved the thick slab of wood into place in front of her like a shield.

All three of them popped up and dashed forward, shooting. The stage splintered. Needles of wood gouged and slit. Her buckskin jacket and leather riding skirt were decent protection, but her face had been clawed by the wood. A chunk of oak slammed into her head and knocked her backward. She fought her way back to the window. Blood flowed into her eyes and she swiped at it with her forearm. Her vision cleared for only a moment before more blood flowed.

They charged again, shooting. She saw where they went, though each time they’d slip around and emerge in some unexpected place. Then, with their guns in play, her grip shaky and her vision blurred, she couldn’t take good aim.

They had about two more of these charges before they overran the stage.

Had it been long enough? There should be men in Colorado City who’d come running, especially to protect a woman, but also to fight for the stage, to fight for right. She knew the West, and yes, there was lawlessness, but there were also plenty of men who used their strength to maintain the peace.

C’mon, Parson. You’ve had time. A man on a fast horse could be coming soon.

She watched out the window, eyes riveted on the trail. Watching, hoping, praying for anything to aim at. Did God answer such a violent prayer?

A sudden flash of silver drew her attention. That first man she’d seen with his stupid silver hatband. He was close enough to gain the stage. She saw even with just this glimpse of him that his muscles bunched to run. Her last chance. Her son’s last chance. At least his last chance to have a mother who was alive to raise him.

She aimed her rifle, swiped the blood away from her eyes, stilled her trembling hands through sheer will, and fired.

A cry from the bushes stopped everything.

The three men didn’t appear for another charge. Callie watched for another shot. Time moved as slowly as if her pa’s pocket watch ticked in her ear.

There was nothing.

And then the sound of hooves pounding toward her from Colorado City. They gave her such hope that again she was hit by a need to cry.

Waste of time.

She heard more running horses. This time from the outlaws. They’d been driven off.

Time to come out now. Time to go get her son.

Forcing her eyes to move, she saw her hands. There was a lot of blood. Looking down, she saw her jacket soaked in crimson. A stab of pain drew her eyes to her left arm. An ugly stake of wood at least three inches long stabbed through the leather of her fringed jacket. Blood poured from that wound.

How much blood did a woman have to spare anyway?

Her hands were rigid on her rifle and pistol. The stage was riddled with bullet holes.

Her mind told her hands to let go, to ease off the triggers before she accidentally fired again, this time into the chest of some rescuer.

The horse from Colorado City stopped and she saw a man’s legs and backside as he swung down from a pretty gray. The edges of her vision darkened until it was like looking through a long, narrow tunnel.

Then the man turned.

It was Seth Kincaid.

Alive and well. He’d have been better off dead.

She could arrange that.

She still had her gun.

Chapter
2

Seth saw the stagecoach driver lying halfway in the bushes on the side of the trail. He’d ridden right past him. Seth wheeled around to go help.

A bullet whizzed out the window of the stage and missed him by little more than a foot. Seth drew his six-gun.

“Seth Kincaid, you get back here and let me shoot you, you low-down skunk.”

A woman.

A woman who knew his name.

A woman who knew his name and wanted to kill him.

He’d never had much luck with women.

He was pretty sure he’d heard that voice before, but he couldn’t place quite where.

The memory conjured up a pleasant feeling in his chest. Which sure didn’t match with the threat and the gunfire.

Almost getting shot was thrilling. Grinning, he dropped to his knees and crawled forward. He saw the open trapdoor of the stage. The gunshots had come from the other side, so maybe he could disarm the woman threatening him.

And maybe not.

Maybe he’d get shot.

Finally he was having some fun.

His heart banged and he felt more alive than he had in weeks. As he crawled he tried to figure out why her voice made his spirits rise in a way that had nothing to do with the reckless fun of being in a gunfight.

Just when he was ready to poke his head up so he could get a look through the trap, riders approached from the direction of Colorado City. He ducked into the undergrowth alongside the trail in case the outlaws had circled around and were coming back. He waited until he saw the star on the man who led the way. He holstered his gun. Then stepped out, his hands in plain sight.