It had sounded like more than two rifles firing at him, however, and Sam figured there were at least four men he would have to deal with when he reached the top.
Those weren’t good odds. He would have felt a lot better if Matt had been here with him. Being outnumbered two-to-one didn’t mean much to the blood brothers. They had faced odds like that many times in their adventurous lives and were still alive and kicking.
But now that he had started up, there wasn’t much he could do except keep going. If he was able to come in behind the rustlers and get the drop on them, he could force them to surrender.
A sudden grating of rock somewhere above him made him jerk his head up.
Sam’s eyes widened as he saw a boulder almost as big as he was plummeting toward him.
He was on one of the ledges at the moment, so he threw himself into a dive that carried him out of the boulder’s path. It slammed into the ledge a few feet behind him as he landed. His momentum sent him sliding toward the brink of the curving ledge.
Sam had to drop his rifle to slap both hands against the sandstone and stop himself. Luckily the Winchester didn’t bounce off. The boulder rebounded from the ledge and fell the rest of the way to the ground, where it landed with a crash that raised a little cloud of dust.
Sam grabbed the rifle and scrambled to his feet. Obviously, the rustlers knew he was trying to climb the mesa, so he wouldn’t be taking them by surprise after all.
And if they could try to drop one boulder on him, probably they could make another attempt. He ran along the ledge toward the next crack in the rock. The mesa wall bulged out above it, so that would give him some protection.
His heart pounded as he climbed several feet up the sloping crack. He was safe here, but whether he retreated or forged ahead, as soon as he stepped out onto another of those open ledges, he risked having a boulder dropped on his head.
But he couldn’t stay here forever, Sam told himself. Boyd and his men might be able to lay siege to the mesa and starve out the rustlers, but they would be starving out Sam at the same time.
He looked up. The crack in which he had taken shelter became too steep after another ten feet for cattle and horses to use it as a trail ...
But a man could climb it, Sam thought.
A grim smile tugged at his mouth. It wouldn’t be easy—in some places the crack was almost vertical—but it could be done. And most importantly, the rustlers couldn’t get at him with either boulders or bullets while he was making the ascent.
He would need both hands, though, so he took off his belt and used it to rig a sling for the Winchester. When he had the rifle hung over his shoulder, he hurried along the slope until it turned upward at a steeper angle. Ignoring the ledge that had been cut into the rock, he started up the natural crack, crawling now because of the angle.
Somewhere above him, a man yelled, “Can you see him?”
“Blast it, no!” another man answered. “He’s found himself a hole somewhere!”
“Well, let him stay there,” the first man said. “Let him stay there and rot!”
Sam smiled again.
He continued climbing. The crack narrowed, grew steeper still, turned into a chimney. Sam pulled the Winchester around so that it hung in front of him, pressed his back against one side of the opening and his feet against the other, and worked his way up inch by inch.
After a while the strain set his muscles to trembling slightly. He slipped a little but caught himself before he fell.
There was nowhere for him to go except up, so he kept struggling to lift himself, again and again. Sharp places in the wall gouged his back through the buckskin shirt. He ignored the pain and continued climbing.
The shots would taper off, then flare up again. From down below, it would be very difficult for any of the men on the ground to get a clear shot at the rustlers on the mesa.
From the sound of it, though, Stovepipe, Boyd, and the others had found good cover for themselves, though, and continued throwing lead at the cattle thieves.
At the very least, that kept the rustlers occupied and gave Sam the chance he needed to make his way to the top.
The crack angled again, rather than going almost straight up. Sam stretched out in it to rest for a moment.
But not for too long, because the men who had come here with him were still at risk as long as they were trading shots with the rustlers. He had come to regard Stovepipe and Wilbur as friends, and the men from the Devil’s Pitchfork were allies, at least for the moment.
Sam moved the Winchester around to his back again and resumed the climb, once more proceeding on hands and knees. A few minutes later, he saw the end of the crack not far above him.
His first impulse was to climb out right away, but he stopped where he was instead and listened intently. He heard the shots coming from the other side of the mesa, but he heard something closer as welclass="underline" a man clearing his throat.
He’d suspected that the rustlers might leave a man over here on guard, in the area where they had seen him last. If he just poked his head up without being careful about it, he would probably get a bullet through the brain.
Sam looked around and found a fist-sized chunk of sandstone. The guard was to his right, so he drew back his arm as much as he could in the narrow confines of the crack and threw the rock in that direction. It sailed up and out and came thudding down on the ground atop the mesa.
Sam followed the rock, moving fast.
As he emerged from the crack with the Winchester cradled in both hands, he threw himself forward on his belly. About twenty feet away, a man in range clothes was turning toward him. The rock had done its job and served as a distraction, causing the guard to take his attention off the crack for a second.
The rustler held a rifle, too, and it spat flame and lead as he hurried a shot at Sam. The bullet hit the ground well to Sam’s left.
Sam fired more deliberately, and his aim was true. The .44-40 round punched into the rustler’s midsection and doubled him over. The man dropped his gun and howled in pain as he clutched himself. He staggered to the side.
That took him too close to the edge. He let out a sudden scream as he toppled off into empty air. The scream continued for the couple of heartbeats it took him to fall all the way to the rocks next to the mesa.
As Sam scrambled to his feet, he heard the soggy thud of the rustler’s landing. That grim sound ended the scream.
He ran toward the other side of the mesa. With all the other shooting going on, the rest of the rustlers might not have noticed the shots Sam had traded with the guard, but he couldn’t count on that. He had to move fast while he still had the chance.
As he had suspected, the mesa had some grass growing on its top and even a few small bushes. Off to Sam’s right was a basin where the top of the mesa had sunk, creating a rock-lined pool that held water from the occasional rains.
Gathered around that pool were the cattle that had been stolen from John Henry Boyd’s ranch. They didn’t need to be fenced in. They wouldn’t get far from the water, and anyway, where would they go?
Beyond the pool was a rope corral made from a couple of lassos and some stakes pounded into the hard ground. Four horses were inside the corral. Since Sam had already killed one man, that meant there were three more rustlers up here.
He got instant confirmation of that a second later when three men emerged from behind the horses and charged toward him, guns blazing.
Chapter 30
Sam was outnumbered and the scrubby vegetation atop the mesa offered no protection.
So he angled toward the only cover he could find, the cattle clustered around the pool.
Bullets sang around him. He returned the fire as he ran, working the Winchester’s lever and snapping shots toward the rustlers.
One of the cows let out a bellow as a stray slug struck it. Sam ducked between two of the beasts. One of them swung its head and nearly hooked him with a horn. He bounced off the sturdy flank of the other cow.