“They was actin’ funny, Zack,” Braverman said. “Lookin’ this way and all. I think one of ’em pointed. I was watchin’ ’em through my spyglass.”
Jardine’s jaw clenched in frustration. It was all he could do not to walk over there and stove in Braverman’s stupid skull with the butt of his rifle.
It wouldn’t do any good, he told himself. Braverman was too dumb to realize that a reflection off the lens of the telescope was probably what had alerted the two strangers that somebody was over here.
“Come on,” he ordered as he started down the trail.
Braverman and Hilliard fell in behind him, thumbing fresh cartridges into their rifles as they followed their boss.
When Jardine reached the parked vehicle, he snapped at the other men, “Put that crate back in the wagon with the others.”
“But we haven’t got the money yet, Zack,” Dave Snyder protested.
“And we’re not going to today. We’re calling off the swap.” The men didn’t look happy about that, so Jardine went on, “Don’t worry, we’ll get our payoff, and it’ll be just the first of many. But I don’t like the way this is playing out, so we’ll set up another meeting.”
The other men exchanged glances. They knew that Zack Jardine was something of a superstitious man by nature. If a deal didn’t feel right to him, he wouldn’t go through with it until it did.
So there was no point arguing with him. Anyway, arguing with Jardine was dangerous, and they knew it. They were a hard-bitten bunch, but Jardine was the worst of the lot.
He knew that, too.
As several of the men gathered around the long, heavy crate to lift it back into the wagon bed with its brothers, Jardine leveled an arm and pointed toward the arroyo he had spotted from the top of the bluff.
“Those two hombres are over there in a gully, on foot, and at least one of them is wounded. I want them both dead. That shouldn’t be too hard. I’m going back to Flat Rock with the wagon. The rest of you go take care of those two ... and don’t come back until they’re buzzard bait.”
Chapter 3
“Give me your bandanna,” Sam said.
Matt reached up to the blue-checked bandanna tied around his neck.
“This is my favorite bandanna!” he protested. “You remember that girl who gave it to me—”
“Yes, and she seemed quite taken with you, at least at the time, so I doubt that she’d want you to lie there and bleed to death. Hand it over.”
With a sigh, Matt took off the bandanna and gave it to Sam, who used the Bowie knife he carried in a sheath on his left hip to cut it into two pieces. He wadded up each piece and shoved them into the bullet holes.
Matt grunted in pain.
“Take it easy,” he said. “I just got shot, you know.”
Sam lifted his head as he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats somewhere on the prairie not far away.
“And you’re liable to be again,” he said, “because unless I’m mistaken, those bushwhackers are about to pay us a visit and try to finish us off.”
Sam looked both ways along the arroyo, at least as far as he could see. That wasn’t very far, because of the way the gully twisted and turned, less than a hundred yards in either direction. But he spotted his horse a short distance away and whistled for the animal. He wanted the Winchester in the saddleboot.
As the horse trotted toward him, Sam stood up and got both hands under Matt’s arms from behind.
“I can stand up!” Matt said.
“Faster this way.”
Sam dragged Matt along the floor of the arroyo toward a pile of brush that had washed up against a rocky outcropping during some past flash flood.
In this part of the country, these arroyos were bone-dry nearly all the time, except for the one or two occasions every year when a rare desert thunderstorm would send walls of water gushing through them.
The brush and the rock would provide a little cover for Matt. Sam propped him up against the outcropping.
“Think you’re strong enough to handle your guns?”
Both of Matt’s Colts were still in the holsters attached to the crossed gunbelts. He drew the revolvers and said, “You bet I am. Just give me something to shoot at.”
“You ought to have some targets soon enough.” Sam’s horse had come in respose to the whistle. Sam hurried over to the animal and drew the Winchester from its sheath.
Then he took off his hat and slapped it against the horse’s bullet-creased rump. That sent the horse galloping off along the arroyo where Sam hoped it would be safer.
Sam went to the far side of the arroyo and waited there with the rifle in his hands. The banks were steeper here. The bushwhackers would have to descend into the arroyo and come along the bottom of it to get at their intended victims.
“Keep your eyes on the rim above me,” Sam called to Matt. He pointed up with a thumb. “They might cross over somewhere else and try to get above us. I’ll watch the rim on your side.”
Matt nodded and lifted his gaze to the top of the bank about six feet above Sam’s head. The bushwhackers might try to sneak up and fire down directly on them from up there.
The hoofbeats had stopped. That meant whichever way the bushwhackers planned to proceed, they were approaching on foot now.
Matt and Sam both listened intently for the scrape of boot leather on the ground or anything else that might give away the location of the would-be killers.
They didn’t hear anything except the faint sighing of the wind across the plains. Then a shadow moved on the rim above Sam’s head. Matt knew that a man on his side of the arroyo cast it, and he jerked a gun barrel up to alert Sam to the lurker.
Sam had already realized the man was up there. He lifted the Winchester to his shoulder as the crown of a sweat-stained, pearl-gray Stetson came into view.
Sam held his fire, well aware that this could be a trick. One of the bushwhackers could have put his hat on a stick and lifted it up there, trying to draw a shot that would tell him and his companions where Matt and Sam were.
A few seconds later, the man stepped into sight. He held a rifle, and as he spotted Sam, he tried to lift the weapon.
He was too late. Sam’s Winchester was already lined up. The rifle cracked and sent a .44-40 slug drilling through the bushwhacker’s shoulder. With a yell of pain, the man twisted and flopped backward out of sight.
But as if that had been a signal, more shots erupted from farther along the arroyo as several more gunmen charged toward Matt and Sam.
Matt twisted and pressed himself against the outcropping, grimacing as the movement made pain from his bullet wound jolt through him. Flames stabbed from the muzzles of his Colts as he opened fire on the darting, shooting figures.
On the other side of the gully, Sam dropped to one knee and triggered several rounds from the Winchester. Fire spat from the rifle’s muzzle as a storm of lead howled back and forth along the arroyo.
Bullets sizzled through the air and whined off rocks. One of the slugs hit the bank just above Matt’s head and sent dirt and gravel spraying over his face. He jerked back and blinked as the grit stung his eyes and blurred his vision for a moment. The barrels of his Colts drooped.
Sam kept up his deadly fire. Through the haze of gunsmoke that floated in the arroyo, he had seen several of the attackers stagger and a couple of them had fallen. He wasn’t surprised when he heard a man bellow out a curse and then order, “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”
Sam knew that might be a trick, a tactic to make him and Matt think their enemies were giving up.
But when he stopped firing, he could tell that the other guns had fallen silent, too. Echoes of the thunderous blasts still bounced back and forth between the walls, but as they faded, Sam heard swift hoofbeats again. It certainly sounded like the bushwhackers were pulling out.
“You all right?” he called over to Matt.