Wing crawled over next to him, and Longarm said grimly, "You might be safer staying as far away from me as you can, old son. It's me that damned bushwhacker's after."
"Yeah, but it's my wagon that bastard made me wreck!" Wing shot back, his singsong accent vanished now. "Gimme a gun, Custis!"
Longarm didn't have time to ponder the transformation in the cook. He just slid the.44 from the cross-draw rig at his waist and extended it butt-first to Wing. "Pepper the top of that knoll with this," he said. "You can't really reach it from here with a handgun, but maybe it'll keep the son of a bitch occupied for a minute."
"What are you going to do?"
"Try to get behind him." Longarm had already spotted a gully that ran from near the trail to behind the knoll. If he could reach it, he could work his way along it until he might have a shot at the bushwhacker from a different angle.
Wing reached into the pile of supplies that had been tossed helter-skelter from the back of the wagon. He grinned as he brought out a box of.44s. "With these extra cartridges, I can keep that low-down skunk hoppin'!" he promised.
Longarm nodded, then moved to the other end of the wagon and waited in a crouch. Shots were still coming from the knoll, the bullets smacking into the thick wood of the wagon's body but not penetrating. After a moment, Wing raised up enough to stick the barrel of the revolver over the edge of the wagon. He blazed away at the knoll.
At the same instant, Longarm launched himself into a run that carried him toward the beginning of the gully. It was about twenty yards away, and Wing's covering fire allowed Longarm to cover fifteen of those yards before the bushwhacker realized he was in no danger from the handgun. A couple of slugs kicked up clods of dirt around Longarm's feet as he raced for the gully, but all they made him do was run faster. He threw himself forward in a dive that carried him out of the line of fire.
Wing had reloaded and was shooting again. The rifleman couldn't ignore him completely. Accuracy was impossible at that distance with a pistol, but pure dumb luck was always within the realm of possibility. Chance might carry one of Wing's shots that far and pose a danger to the ambusher.
Pushing himself up into a crouch, Longarm ran along the bottom of the gully, using the barrel of the Winchester to thrust aside brush that clawed at him and tried to entangle him. Within moments, he had several painful scratches on his hands and face from the briars. He stuck his head up to see how close he was to the knoll.
He had covered more than half the distance when he became aware that he no longer heard the spiteful crack of the rifle, only the steady booming of the Colt that Wing was using. Having seen Longarm disappear into the gully, the bushwhacker might be playing it safe. He might be headed for his horse at this very moment, intending to flee so that he could try again to ambush Longarm some other time.
Longarm wasn't going to allow that to happen. He increased his pace, ignoring the stubborn brambles.
A couple of minutes later, he emerged from the gully and saw that he was behind the knoll where the rifleman had hidden. He heard the thud of hoofs. There was only one bushwhacker, Longarm saw, and the man was already mounted up and wheeling his horse around, about fifty yards away.
Longarm brought the Winchester to his shoulder and yelled, "Hey!" The bushwhacker twisted in the saddle and tried to bring his own rifle around for a shot, but Longarm pressed the trigger first. The Winchester kicked against his shoulder, and through the haze of powder smoke that spurted from its muzzle, he saw the ambusher go flying from the back of the horse as if he were a puppet being jerked around by a puppeteer in a giant Punch and Judy show. The gunman went one way, his rifle the other, and Longarm was pounding toward the man in a run before either of them hit the ground.
There hadn't been time for any fancy shooting, drat the luck, Longarm thought as he came up to the sprawled body. His bullet had taken the man in the left side and punched clear through to the right, ventilating both lungs and probably the bushwhacker's heart. He was stone dead already, eyes open and glazed.
Longarm had never seen him before.
Hunkered on his heels beside the body, Longarm quickly went through the man's pockets, finding only the makin's and a couple of double eagles. Blood money? Longarm wondered. The bushwhacker wore range clothes, and it was clear from the high-crowned hat that had fallen from his head and the riding boots on his feet that he was no lumberjack. Longarm didn't recall seeing him on the Diamond K--but he might not have seen every one of Kinsman's hands in the time he had been on the ranch. Wing would surely know if this was one of Kinsman's riders, though.
Longarm straightened and walked to the top of the knoll. The gun Wing had been using was silent now, so Longarm shouted, "Hold your fire, Wing!
It's me, Custis!" He stepped into sight of the trail and waved the rifle over his head.
Wing emerged from behind the wreckage, and Longarm waved for him to approach. The cook hurried up the slope and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, but that bushwhacker ain't. I had to kill him." Now that the situation wasn't quite so urgent, Longarm added, "What the hell happened to that accent of yours?"
Wing grinned sheepishly. "I've lived in this country for nearly thirty years, Custis. Came over to San Francisco back in the fifties. Most folks take one look at me, though, and expect me to start waving a hatchet around and talking like a heathen Chinee." He shrugged. "I've found it's usually easier to give folks what they want."
Longarm chuckled and shook his head. "I've run up against some real hatchet men from time to time. You do a passable imitation, Wing. If that's the way you want it, I won't say nothing about it when we get back to the ranch. Right now, I want you to take a look at that fella who just tried to kill us."
CHAPTER 6
Wing didn't recognize the dead bushwhacker either, and he did know all the men who rode for the Diamond K. "Rough-lookin' gent," he said as he gazed down at the corpse, "but I can tell you this for certain, Custis, I never saw him before."
"Me neither," grunted Longarm. "Wonder why he was trying to kill me."
"Maybe he wanted to steal those supplies we had in the wagon."
"Maybe," Longarm said dubiously. He knew better. He had been the target of enough ambush attempts to realize when someone was trying to gun him down. The dead man hadn't cared about the supplies, or the wagon, or even Wing.
He had just wanted Longarm dead.
They each took one of the bushwhacker's legs and dragged the corpse down the hill to the trail. Then Longarm went back for the man's horse. Once that was done, they set about getting the wagon upright again. The mules hadn't broken their traces and run off, for which Longarm was mighty grateful. He and Wing unhitched a couple of the animals and tied ropes from them to the wagon. When they got the mules to pull with some yelling and whacking across the rumps, the ropes drew taut and then pulled the wagon back onto its wheels--back onto three wheels anyway, since one had come off. Longarm found it and rolled it back to the spot of the wreck. Then he and Wing replaced the broken axle with the spare that was hung underneath the wagon and put the wheel back on. It was hard, sweaty work, but they got it done. Most of the supplies had spilled out of the vehicle when it overturned. Longarm and Wing gathered them up and replaced them in the bed of the wagon, then added the body of the dead ambusher. Longarm tied the man's horse on behind the wagon.
"They probably expected us to be back on the ranch before now," Wing said as he got the wagon moving once again. "Might be gettin' worried by now."
A few minutes later, he was proven right. A group of riders led by Joe Traywick came trotting around a bend in the trail. Traywick held up his hand in a signal to halt, and the horsemen waited until Wing drove the wagon up to them.