Texas Drive (16 page)

The raiders were out of sight, already having crested the ridge, and Ted crossed his fingers. He felt guilty about it, as if wishing them away from the O’Hara place was condemning someone else just as innocent. He sat just below the ridge to give the horsemen time enough to reach the fork.

When he could stand the tension no longer, he urged his pony up and over the top. The riders were bearing down on the fork. Conlee was in the
lead, and Ted knew that whichever way he went, the others would follow. There was no way in hell any of them would cross the big man after the demonstration they had all witnessed.

Ted sighed audibly when Conlee took the right branch, carrying him away from the O’Hara place.

The hoofbeats were distant now, and Ted had to push his horse to regain lost ground. His breathing was shallow and his throat was dry. He licked his lips with a pasty tongue. In the back of his mind was the nagging accusation that, now that he had found Conlee, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to believe it, but it was true, and he knew it.

The riders were no longer in sight when he reached another fork in the road. He slowed to listen, but could no longer hear them. He dropped from the saddle and checked the road. The soil was dry, but recent use would have kicked up some clots of earth that should still be damp.

The left branch of the fork was bone dry. Its soil had been undisturbed for several hours, at least. He let go of the reins and walked a few yards over to the right branch. There he saw the clots of dirt kicked loose by four dozen hooves. Even in the dry ground, there was no mistaking recent traffic.

Ted sprinted back to his horse and vaulted into the saddle. Jerking the reins, he spurred the pony along the right branch. He broke into a full gallop desperate to make up lost time. At the back of his
mind was the possibility that this might be his one and only chance to get at Conlee without the full complement of guerrillas around him.

And if he did find them, he still didn’t know what he would do.

THE MOUNTED MEN
pulled up in front of the dark house. Ted crept as close as he dared on horseback. There was practically no cover between him and the house, and he dismounted, tugging his horse into the trees and looping the reins around a low-hanging branch. Ted wormed his way even closer, crawling through knee-high grass. It whispered as it scraped against his clothing, but there was no way to avoid the sound.

The drunken mob a hundred yards away was unlikely to be listening for the sound of one man slipping through grass like a snake on its belly. A light went on in the farmhouse window, and someone shouted from inside.

The window was closed, and Ted was too far away to hear what was said. Most of the raiders were still mounted, but two had dropped to the
ground, handing the reins of their mounts to companions. Because he was so much larger than the others, Conlee could still be seen on his horse. One of the men on foot stomped onto the porch and rapped a heavy fist against the door.

“Come on out, we need some help with our winter wheat,” someone shouted, and the men laughed.

The man on the porch pounded harder on the front door, and the light inside went out. “Come on out here, you bastard,” he shouted. He rapped the door even harder, until its hinges rattled. Another of the men dismounted and moved around the side of the house, where he found a window. Rapping on the window frame, he called to whoever was inside to open up.

When he got no answer, he stepped back a little and kicked at the window frame. He missed, and the glass shattered as the misplaced foot crashed through it. The man lost his balance and fell backward, one leg still sticking through the broken window. He screamed and his companions laughed.

“What’s the matter, Roy? You drunk or somethin’.”

Roy jerked his leg back, but it wouldn’t move. He screamed again and tried to get up, then lost his balance and lay there moaning.

“Gimme a hand, you sonsabitches. I’m caught.” His voice sounded strangely thin. There was a whimper at its edge, all the bravado gone now.

Ted squirmed a few yards closer, trying to get an angle on the side of the house. He could see Roy, one leg still elevated, until two men dismounted and walked over to see what was wrong with him.

“Christ, Roy,” one of them said. “You’re bleeding like a damn pig. For chrissakes …”

Roy stuck a hand up, and the man who’d spoken grabbed it, helping the injured man to his feet.

Conlee jerked the reins of his horse and spun around the corner of the house. The man at the front door was still alternating between pounding and shouting. As Ted drew another ten yards closer, the man switched from pounding to kicking.

Roy’s rescuers lifted him and pulled him away from the window. The movement brought a cry of agony from the injured man, and Conlee sat on his horse, watching.

“Stupid bastard,” he shouted. “Roy, you’re too damn dumb to live.”

Roy continued to moan.

“Christ, there’s a piece of glass in his leg, must be eight inches long.”

“Get him up, see if he can walk,” Conlee said.

They hauled Roy to his feet, but the injured leg collapsed under him.

The two men lowered Roy to the ground again. One of them leaned close to get a better look. “There’s so damn much blood, I can’t see nothing.”

A brief flicker of a match being lit threw shadows on the side of the house, but the match guttered
out almost at once. Conlee dismounted and walked toward the prostrate form as another match flickered. This time, a handful of dry grass was set on fire, for a torch, and the kneeling man leaned over Roy.

“Damn, the whole back of his leg’s laid open. He needs a doctor.”

“No doctor,” Conlee said. “Ain’t wastin’ time takin’ no damn fool to no doctor.”

“He’ll get gangrene, Major.”

“His own damn fault.”

Conlee bent to have a look. The motion saved his life. A sharp crack sounded from somewhere inside the house. The rest of the window glass showered over the small knot of men.

“Sonofabitch,” Conlee shouted. “Sonofabitch tried to kill me. Come on out of there, you bastard.” He shook a fist at the ruined window. Another blast from a shotgun ripped at the frame, scattering buckshot in a three-foot circle as it blew through the remnants of the glass.

“Give me the damn torch,” Conlee shouted “Give it to me,” and he snatched at the clump of grass, now burnt most of the way down. He threw it through the open window frame. Another shot answered, and Conlee ducked to one side.

“Check the barn, boys,” Conlee shouted, backing away from the window. Roy continued to moan. “Shut up, dammit,” Conlee screamed. “Shut the hell up.”

“He needs a doc, Major.”

Conlee pulled a revolver from his belt and cocked it. Roy moaned again, and Conlee fired twice. Ted saw the wounded man jerk, and his own body nearly bounced with the suddenness of the gunshots.

“He don’t need no doc no more,” Conlee said. He laughed, and one or two of the men on horseback joined him. “Alright, break in the door, some of you birds. The rest of you see what you can find in the barn. Get some coal oil, too, if you can find any.”

The man at the front of the house kicked more viciously at the door, until it fell in with a squeal of screws pulling loose. The crash of the door on the floor sounded like a clap of thunder.

Another blast from the shotgun ripped through the open doorway, tearing into the man who’d kicked it in. The man flew backward and landed on his back in the dirt.

Conlee laughed again, shaking his head as if he just couldn’t understand such stupidity. “How many times I told you, you kick a door in, stay the fuck out of the line of fire?”

The rest of the men swarmed around the house, some racing toward the barn, others looking for windows around the back.

Ted raised his Winchester, trying to get Conlee in his sights, but the big man kept moving like a caged tiger, stalking around the corner of the house and back. The men around him saved his life at
least twice, stepping into the line of fire as Ted was about to pull the trigger.

Then he was gone. He sent two men through the doorway and charged in after them. A brilliant light, gone almost as soon as it appeared, flashed in the house. It signaled another blast cracking from the shotgun, this one muffled by something.

A moment later, the brittle cracking of a burst of gunfire from inside the house snapped across the grass like a string of firecrackers. In the aftermath, a woman screamed. Conlee reappeared in the doorway, then stepped onto the porch, dragging a woman by one arm.

The men outside cheered, and Conlee bowed. “Told you boys I felt like havin’ some fun, didn’t I?”

“You can’t do no better’n that?” one of the men asked.

Another one of the raiders laughed. “What do you want, Lily Langtry, for chrissakes? You got to take what you can get. This one’ll do fine fer now.”

The man stepped forward as Conlee let go of the woman’s arm. She lay on the ground, curled into a ball. Conlee prodded her with a foot, and she screamed again. Conlee waved in disgust, then stepped back away from the woman. The other man, a string bean with a mop of hair that made him look like a used broom, bent down and grabbed the woman by the hair. She tried to fight
him off and dug her nails into the man’s wrist. He cursed and slapped at her twice, then grabbed hold of her nightdress and ripped it open.

Ted licked his lips, bringing the Winchester around and waiting for Conlee to stand still long enough to draw a steady bead. But long years of warfare had done their work. Conlee paced constantly, the way officers on the front lines had always done, to keep the enemy sharpshooters off balance. A stationary officer was a dead officer.

Conlee was no officer, but he thought like one, and he had more power and more inclination to abuse it than anyone Ted had ever seen. The string bean opened his fly and dropped onto the woman with a grunt as she scissored her legs and kicked at him.

Two more raiders walked over, as casual as if they were standing in line to buy a newspaper, and reached down to take an ankle each. They pulled the woman’s legs apart, and the string bean grinned at one of them over his shoulder. The woman had stopped screaming, knowing it would do her no good.

And Ted couldn’t take it anymore. If he couldn’t get a shot at Conlee, he could nail the string bean. He sighted on the man about shoulder high. The attacker was propped on his hands, as if doing pushups. It was close, but Ted wondered whether it was better to lie there and do nothing or take the chance of hitting the woman by accident. He
thought for a moment of Ellie, and how he would feel if she were the one being raped, and he knew he was going to shoot the bastard even before the answer formed in his mind.

He bit down on his tongue, then squeezed the trigger. The shot exploded like a stick of dynamite. Ted heard the sound of it echo off the walls of the barn. The raiders heard it too, and all but Conlee looked around to see where it had come from. Conlee was the only one with enough presence of mind to dive for cover.

Ted heard the woman scream again, and he glanced just long enough to see her scrambling out from underneath the body of her rapist. She ran toward the house, then seemed to change her mind and veered off into the darkness. One of the raiders sprinted after her, and Ted fired again.

He saw the raider fall, then turned and crawled for all he was worth through the grass. He readied the tree line as shouts echoed behind him. He heard footsteps as several of the raiders charged through the grass. Ted turned once and fired quickly, without aiming. He didn’t give a damn whether he hit anyone, as long as he slowed them down. He reached the tree line and raced for his horse.

The shouts drew closer, and he kicked his horse once as he jerked the reins to wheel toward the far side of the trees. He heard hoofbeats as several of the raiders charged across the open field on horseback.
He wondered whether he had let his temper get the best of him. But he didn’t wonder long. He knew what the woman would say, and that was good enough.

Scattered gunfire cracked behind him, but he knew it was more to terrorize him than to hit him. No way they could see him, he thought. Not yet. The raiders split into two packs. He heard a half-dozen horses wheel to the right in an effort to skirt the trees and catch him as he broke through. At least one broke to the left, and he wondered whether it might be Conlee himself.

Whether it was Conlee or not, the odds were better to the left, and Ted broke for a gap in the trees dead ahead. His pony spurted through the opening and out into the grass. The rider to the left hadn’t turned the corner yet and Ted jerked the reins to head straight for the endmost tree. He held the Winchester in one hand as he charged headlong for the corner.

A solitary rider loomed up and Ted fired without waiting to see whether it was the guerrilla chief. The shot went wide, but it spooked the rider, who sawed on the reins and tried to swerve to the right. He skirted close to the trees, just missing the last one in line, and the man’s horse bucked. The rider was skillful, and he steadied his mount as Ted plunged on toward him.

Using the weight of the barrel to reload the chamber, Ted pivoted the carbine with a flick of his
wrist. His finger found the trigger almost immediately and he fired again, this time not twenty yards from the rider, still struggling to control his mount. This time, the bullet found its mark. He heard the man groan, and as he dashed past, the wounded guerrilla fell heavily from his horse.

Ted fired once more as shouts broke out behind him. He charged back toward the house. Only three raiders were still there, busily torching the barn. Ted charged past, this time with the Colt, and emptied the revolver into the scattering knot of arsonists. The house was already fully ablaze, and it would be suicide to stop.

Ted galloped between house and barn and off into the open field. He slowed a bit once he was out of pistol range. He thought about looking for the woman, but he had to push the thought aside. He’d done what he could. The rest was up to her.

He broke across the open field, weaving from left to right and back, on the off chance he might stop a wild shot. He wished he were in Texas, where the terrain would have given him some cover. Here, other than the slight ups and downs of the gentle hills, cover couldn’t be had. That made it a flat-out race. Ted liked his pony, but there were limits on what he could, or would, ask the animal to do.