The Time-Traveling Outlaw (14 page)

She had drawn the curtains. Ideally they would have been able to board up the doors and windows, but that would have been far too suspicious. Either way, she couldn’t see what was happening outside. 

The horses drew close. She waited for the sound of a rifle shot.
He must be waiting for them to stop
, she thought. But when they had obviously pulled up in front of her house, and the sounds of hoof beats was gone, she still heard no shot. 

What she did hear were the sounds of men climbing down off their horses. That was already bad. Logan was supposed to shoot Sturgess while they were still mounted. The man should be dead, and his men should be riding away by now. Maybe Logan didn’t have a clean shot.

She heard boot steps thumping across the porch, then a knock at her door. Her heart began to pound. This was not how things were supposed to go. Should she answer? Not answer? Make them think she wasn’t home. 

She stared at the door. If it was Sturgess himself standing on her porch, surely Logan had a clean shot now.

The knock came again, harder this time. She opted for staying silent. If she had looked down at her knuckles, she would have seen how white they were from squeezing the gun, but her eyes were fixed to the door.

She heard the thump of boots again, then a shadow appeared behind the curtained window on the right. The outline of a man stood there, shorter than most, the distinctive curve of a bowler hat upon his head.

The shadow grew bigger, the head growing darker as the man leaned closer to the glass. Sally slowly, quietly, raised the gun, pointing the barrel at the figure at the window. She thumbed the hammer back with a soft click that sounded a hundred times louder in her ears. Then she moved her finger to the trigger.

The shadow started to raise its hands, whether to cup them around his eyes for a better look or to break the window, Sally didn’t know and would never find out.

A shot rang out.

Sally flinched, almost surprised that she didn’t accidentally pull the trigger. The shadow at the window disappeared in a blur. It had been Winston, no doubt, and her first thought had been to wonder why Logan would shoot Winston. He was a dangerous man, to be sure, and maybe Logan figured he’d be the most loyal. But the plan had been to kill Sturgess, not his henchman, even if Winston was the worst of the bunch.

She stayed hunkered down in the tub, clenching the gun, listening.

Men were shouting, at least two, but just how many was hard to tell. Another shot was fired, a deep, echoing shot that had to have come from Logan’s rifle. Then there was what surely had to be return fire, the loud cracks of pistol fire. 

This was all wrong.

She thought of climbing out of the bath, unlatching the front door, and joining the fray, but she remembered what Logan had said to her. Besides, she had no idea how many men were out there. Logan was probably safe on top of the barn, a superior position, well-covered by the slant of the rooftop. 

So much for the plan, though. The exchange continued outside, the echoing thunder of the rifle overlaid with the cracking of pistol fire. As she listened closely, she reckoned there were at least three men with pistols.

The rifle fired again, and she heard a man scream, a terrible, gurgling wail that was mercifully short. Logan had almost certainly killed one of the men, but it didn’t seem to have deterred the others. She wondered if one of them was Winston, but she had never seen the man carry a gun. In the street in front of Abigail’s, he had taken those strange, flat stones from his jacket and begun to hurl them, looking almost comically like a little boy skipping stones at the lake. But there was nothing funny about the man. He was as deadly as a copperhead. If he wasn’t exchanging fire with Logan, she wondered where he was.

She heard the clop of boots on the porch, and then she saw a different shadow in the window on the left, a man wearing a cowboy hat, gun drawn, firing up at an angle. Maybe he’d run close to the house for cover. But it didn’t help. As she watched, she heard the boom of the rifle, then the shadow jolted, the shadow of blood spatter on the window. The shadow jerked, the head thrown back, and then it fell. She heard the heavy thump of the body hitting the porch. 

The shadow of the spray pattern made the curtained window look like some strange piece of art hanging in a gallery somewhere. The dark spots began to run into dark lines down the glass.

She only heard one pistol firing now, and then it paused, likely reloading. For the next twenty seconds, everything was quiet. She would have thought the silence would be a welcome reprieve. Instead, it was more disturbing than the clatter of gunfire. 

Something was wrong.

She heard the footsteps behind her, but not until it was far too late. Sally sat up in the tub and began to turn. Winston was there. She swung the gun, but he grabbed the barrel, twisting it out of her hand with one smooth motion. He broke the gun open, ejecting the shell, then tossed the weapon in the far corner. 

Sally stood in the tub. She balled her fists and swung at him. He may have been the quickest man she’d ever seen. He may have studied fighting in the Orient. But he hadn’t been expecting the blow.

He was turning back to her after throwing the gun when her fist landed against his right temple. His bowler hat flipped off his head, revealing the dark stubble of his shaved head. He stumbled backwards, looking almost laughable for a moment, like a comedian on stage making a pratfall. 

He fell flat on his bottom, his eyes dazed.

Sally climbed out of the tub and made for the door. She had landed a lucky punch, but the window for escape was narrow. She was at the door, unlatching it, when she glanced over her shoulder.

Winston was in a crouched position, his eyes no longer dazed. They looked honed in and deadly, staring at her. He reached out to his right to retrieve his hat, never taking his eyes from her. He placed the bowler on his head, then reached into his jacket. 

She half expected him to take his hand out holding another one of those weird rocks. Instead, he held a curved silver blade, almost like a miniature sickle. 

Sally chided herself for standing there like an idiot gaping at him. She turned back to the door and undid the latch. She reached out and turned the doorknob, the door cracking open.

Then she felt him behind her, just like that. One moment he was on the floor, and the next his entire body was pressed up against hers. His arm whipped over her shoulder and she felt the cool metal of the knife at her throat, just under her jaw.

He let the door swing the rest of the way open. 

One man lay dead in the yard. The only man left alive outside crouched behind a pile of wood she had stacked there for the stove. He had his back to the woodpile, pulling shells from his belt and reloading his pistol.

Winston walked her out onto the porch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other dead man, the one she’d seen shot by the window, as if it had been some kind of macabre puppet show. None of the three men outside were Sturgess.

Winston kept her walking forward, keeping her between himself and the barn. She looked up at the roof and felt the edge at her throat nick her skin. She saw him then, just the barrel of the rifle and the top of his head.

They walked to where the man crouched behind the woodpile, and Winston leaned down to whisper in his ear. The man nodded and got behind Winston. So now she was nothing more than a shield. Her heart was pounding in her chest.

“Please,” she said. “If you just let me go—”

The knife at her throat nicked her again, but this time it wasn’t due to her moving her head. He had given her a little cut as a reminder to keep her mouth shut. She felt the warmth of her own blood trickle down to her collar bone.

They began to walk back, toward the road, moving near the closest horse. Again she thought of a comedy stage act, the three of them bunched up together, walking like some strange, six-legged insect. She looked up again and saw the glint of the sun off Logan’s rifle barrel. He was a good shot, but she guessed there was no way he was going to try to shoot the men behind her.

The man gathered up the reins of the nearest horse, and then they were a strange insect leading a horse. They walked to a second horse and began to lead it backwards as well. 

She imagined the frustration he must be feeling right now. The plan hadn’t worked at all, and now she was about to be taken prisoner. He could probably shoot one of the horses, but she doubted he would. He’d always seemed kind and gentle when interacting with them. Besides, that wouldn’t keep them from leaving, only slow them down.

They kept walking toward the road, the knife at her throat the entire time. She saw the rifle atop the barn disappear over the other side. The house, the barn, and everything else began to grow smaller as the kept moving. When they got to the road, the knife disappeared, and she gasped in relief, putting her hand to her throat and feeling the blood there. 

But the relief was short-lived. She felt a blow at the back of her neck, and everything went dark.

The plan hadn’t worked at all. 

He’d killed two of them and had the other one pinned down. He was running low on ammunition, but he didn’t need much.

Then that little derby-wearing freak came out of the house, and his heart sank. Winston was behind Sally, holding something to her throat. Even if he didn’t have a weapon, he was probably skilled enough to kill her in that position without one. And the margin of error for a shot at this distance was far too small.

Dammit! he thought. 

Once Winston had started poking around the house, he knew he had to take a shot. He couldn’t let them find her in there with a gun, the place locked up. It would have been obvious what she intended, and who knew what they would do to her?

And Sturgess was nowhere to be seen. He’d thought for sure the man would show, eager to rub Sally’s face in his victory. But maybe he had smelled out the trap. Maybe he was just far more cautious than Logan had given him credit for. Either way, he wasn’t going to underestimate the man the next time. He just hoped there was a next time.

Winston was smart, using Sally as a shield while he moved to where his last living companion lay under cover. Then the three of them walked back the way they had rode, gathering up the horses as they went.

He could have shot one or both of the horses, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. It only would have delayed the inevitable anyway.

His best chance was to climb down and give chase. There were two horses left down there from the men he had shot. So he moved from his position, keeping low as he half-slid, half-walked back down the barn roof to where the ladder was propped against the lip.

Only when he got there, the ladder wasn’t propped up anymore. He felt a ball form in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at the ground, probably a fifteen to twenty-foot drop, and saw the ladder lying flat against the ground. Winston.

He should have fired at Winston first, but he was close to the window at the time, and Logan didn’t want to risk an errant bullet going into the house. So he’d taken the first shot at one of the men standing in the yard. He’d missed the first shot, and then it was an all-out firefight. He killed the man on the second shot, but while he was engaged with the three other men, he’d lost track of Winston.

That sneaky son-of-a-bitch had made his way around the barn and taken the ladder down. Then he must have made it back around the house and broken in from the back.

Logan took a deep breath and tried to think. If he made that jump, he was likely to break something, or twist his ankle at the very least. He walked along the edge of the roof, thinking. Then he smelled it.

Smoke.

He looked around, but didn’t see where it was coming from. He heard Maisy whinny from inside the barn. 

Dammit
, from the first shot he’d fired, that sneaky bastard had honed in on the barn, removing his ladder and still having time to light a fire. The hay was probably burning, and it would spread quickly. He needed to get down, now.

Logan paced up and down the edge of the roof, slipping once and almost sliding right off. He caught his balance, though, propping his hand against the slant of the roof. He couldn’t see an obvious way down on this side, other than jumping. It might come to that.

He scrambled over the peak, glancing up toward the road, seeing the trail of dust as the two men rode away with his Sally. He wanted to scream. He'd have to figure out how to save her later. Right now he had to save himself.

The other side of the barn wasn’t any better. There were no hand-holds, no obvious place to try to climb down. Just a sheer drop all the way around. And the smell of smoke was getting stronger. He saw the first wisps seeping up from the edge of the roof.

He tried not to panic. He’d been in rough spots before. But he was starting to feel it anyway, rising up in the veins in his neck. He went back to the other side, scanning again for anything. He looked for what he thought might be the shortest drop, though from up here everything looked like a nasty fall. 

He took the live round out of the rifle and threw it with both hands, trying to keep it level, hoping it wouldn’t break in the fall. He threw it at a patch of weeds that he thought would soften the impact. But he missed. The rifle fell on a hard patch of dirt, and he heard the crack of the barrel before his brain registered the sight of the gun, broken in two. 

Great
, he thought.
That’s what I’m going to look like after I jump
. Had he really come through time, jerked back and forth twice, to end up like this? If he failed, Sally was probably going to die. Sturgess would find a way, probably make it look like an accident, or simply make her disappear. The thought made him want to throw up. Then there were Sam and his daughter, so far away in time. But he could still see Sam’s head break apart from the point blank gun shot.

He’d miscalculated, twice now. And now it looked like he was going to end up either badly injured or worse. But he had to try. He had to do—