Better than putting holes in his hide, though.
He brought the Winchester to his shoulder, levering a round into the chamber as he did so. The rifle cracked as he aimed just above one set of muzzle flashes.
Sam triggered half a dozen swift rounds, shifting his aim to the other bushwhacker in the middle of the volley.
He heard yells of pain that told him some of his bullets had scored, but the gunmen didn’t stop firing. They just shifted their aim to his sanctuary along the creek.
Sam pulled back as far into the hollow as he could as slugs smacked into the dirt wall next to him. He waited for a lull, then cranked off another four rounds, spraying the shots along the opposite side of the creek bank where the men had believed him to be camped.
That was enough for them. They held their fire and retreated. Sam heard them running, followed a moment later by the clatter of hoofbeats as the bushwhackers galloped away.
Wary of a trick, he stayed where he was and took advantage of the opportunity to reload the Winchester, thumbing cartridges through the loading gate until the magazine was full again. Once he had done that, he waited some more, until finally he stood up and made his way cautiously toward the campsite.
He had picketed his horse a short distance away, hoping the animal would be out of the line of fire if any trouble broke out. That was the first thing he checked, and he was relieved to see that the horse appeared to be fine, other than being a little spooked by the racket and the stench of powder smoke in the air.
When Sam approached the spot where he had spread his blankets, he saw several dark splashes on the ground. Kneeling, he touched a finger to one of those splashes, then rubbed it against his thumb.
Blood, he was pretty sure. So he had winged at least one of the men, no doubt about that. Not fatally, though, and possibly not even seriously, because both of the bushwhackers had been able to flee like they had wings on their feet.
He straightened and went over to his bedroll. His hat lay off to one side where it had been thrown by the bullets that hit it.
Sam picked it up and held it over his head. Stars shone through the holes ripped in the hat. He grunted. He could always buy another hat, but not another head.
The leather on his saddle had been torn, too, and slugs had gouged grooves in the wood underneath it. That damage could be repaired, and his blankets could be patched and mended.
He gathered his gear, stuffed the ruined hat in one of his saddlebags, and saddled his horse. He was moving his camp in case the bushwhackers came back with reinforcements.
Sam followed the creek for a couple of miles before he found another place to settle down for the rest of the night. In the morning it would be easy enough to come back to the site of the ambush and pick up the trail again.
In other ways, though, the situation had become much more complicated. As he lay looking up at the stars, he asked himself how the bushwhackers had known where to look for him. He supposed it was possible the leaders of the bunch, whoever they were, could have posted men to watch the trail and ambush anyone who seemed to be searching for them.
It was also possible that the two men who’d snuck up on his camp tonight had nothing to do with what had happened several days earlier. They could have been a pair of drifting outlaws bent on murder and robbery.
But if they weren’t ... if they were connected to the men who had tried before to kill Sam and Matt ... now they knew one of their intended victims was on their trail.
That meant if they were in Flat Rock, they would be on the lookout for him when he rode into town. This was going to make his job even more difficult and dangerous.
But that was nothing new, Sam told himself. He and Matt didn’t go looking for trouble, but it seemed to find them anyway. This was just one more instance of that happening.
He would deal with whatever was waiting for him in Flat Rock when he got there, Sam told himself. He rolled over and went to sleep.
Chapter 12
Zack Jardine was in a bad mood when the pounding on the door woke him. He sat up in the tangle of grimy sheets and muttered a curse.
The woman who lay beside him shifted a little and muttered in her sleep. Jardine couldn’t remember her name. Dolly, Dotty, something like that.
It didn’t matter. She was a whore, and that was more important than what her name was.
Somebody was still hammering on the door with a fist. Dolly had taken a nip of laudanum when she and Jardine were through with their business, so it wasn’t likely she was going to wake up anytime soon.
That racket was liable to rouse anybody else who was sleeping, though, so Jardine swung his legs off the bed and stood up.
If that was one of his men at the door, drunk as a skunk, Jardine intended to whip him within an inch of his life.
Wearing only the bottom half of a pair of longjohns, Jardine fumbled around on the little table beside the bed until he found a match. He snapped the lucifer to life and held it to the wick of the candle that sat on the table as well.
Then he turned to the ladderback chair where he had hung his gunbelt. He pulled the Colt from its holster and looped his thumb over the hammer.
With the candlelight shining on the heavy slabs of muscle on his chest and shoulders, he went to the door.
“What the hell is it?”
As soon as the question was out of his mouth, Jardine took a quick step to the side, just in case whoever was in the hall fired a slug through the door.
Of course, if somebody wanted to kill him, the varmint might figure he would do that. In that case it would be a matter of the man guessing whether Jardine moved left or right.
Fifty-fifty odds. Jardine could live with that. He’d faced worse odds before and was still alive.
No shot sounded in the hallway. Instead a man called through the thin panel, “Zack, Joe Hutto just rode in with Three-Finger Smith. Three-Finger caught a bullet.”
Jardine jerked the door open. He had recognized Dave Snyder’s voice.
“How bad is he hurt?”
Snyder shook his head.
“I don’t know. That Englisher woman’s takin’ a look at him now. She claims to know somethin’ about doctorin’. I think he’ll live, though.”
“Joe’s still downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be down in a minute to talk to him. I want to know what happened.”
“I got a pretty good idea what happened, Zack,” Snyder said. “Somebody’s on our trail.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Jardine said. “Tell Joe not to go anywhere.”
“You bet,” Snyder said as Jardine swung the door closed.
Jardine went to pull his clothes and boots on. The night was warm, and Dolly—if that was her name—had thrown the covers aside. Jardine glanced at her naked body.
She was young and still relatively pretty, with a lot of curly blond hair, and under other circumstances he might have tried to wake her up enough to have another go with her ... or maybe not even bothered waking her.
But he had more important things to worry about now, such as the potential threat to the deal for those stolen rifles.
Jardine buckled on his gunbelt and left Dolly sleeping there. He clattered downstairs to the main room of the Buckingham Palace, the saloon and whorehouse that was the biggest building in the relatively new town of Flat Rock.
According to the banjo clock on the wall behind the bar, it was nearly two o’ clock in the morning. The place was still open but not very busy at that hour. Only about a dozen men were in the barroom, and more than half of them were Jardine’s men.
Including the one stretched out on the bar, bleeding onto the hardwood from the bullet hole in his side.
The auburn-haired woman who called herself Lady Augusta Winslow looked up from examining the wound and said coolly, “I charge extra for medical services, Mr. Jardine. I assume you’ll cover the expenses incurred for the care of your man here.”