When a second bullet kicked up dirt nearby, then whined on beyond them, Katie jumped into action. “Follow the men!” she shouted, kicking her own horse. Her two daughters followed suit.
A short, quick gallop brought them to a ridgeline that was extended by an outcropping of rocks. All seven of them dashed behind the cover, putting the ridge between them and the shooters.
Jim swung down from his horse, his rifle in hand. Frank, Barry, and Gene joined him. The girls dismounted and also sought safety behind the rocks. Katie grabbed the reins of all seven horses.
“What are you doing? Get down!” Jim shouted when he saw her.
“You want these horses to bolt?” Katie asked. “I have no intention of being left afoot.”
With a nod of assent, Jim waved her on up the ridgeline, even as bullets were whistling overhead. Jim crawled up to the top of the ridge and looked across the draw to the rocks on the other side. As he was looking, he saw two flashes as their assailants snapped off another couple of shots at them.
“Shoot at them!” Jim shouted. “Keep their heads down!”
Frank, Barry, and Gene began firing, jacking shells into their rifle chambers, firing, then working the lever again. In this way they kept up a deadly fusillade that kept their assailants at bay. That was exactly what Jim wanted, for it gave him the opportunity to slip, unobserved, to a location about twenty-five yards down the ridge. When he was in position he gave the signal for the other three to stop shooting.
Abrubtly, the gunfire stopped, chased by returning echoes from across the ridge. There was a long period of silence and Jim held his finger to his lips, indicating to Barry and the others that he wanted the cease-fire maintained.
“What happened to ’em?” Jim heard a voice ask. It was the voice of one of the assailants.
“I don’t know,” another voice answered.
“You think they skedaddled?”
“Stick your head up there and have a look.”
That was what Jim was waiting for. Laying his cheek alongside the walnut stock of his Winchester, he peered through the rear sight, centered the front sight, and waited.
He almost pulled the trigger when he saw a hat come up, but he held his fire. He was glad he did when he realized that the hat was on the end of a rifle.
A moment after the hat disappeared behind the rock, it reappeared, this time on someone’s head. Jim squeezed the trigger.
The rifle boomed and kicked back against his shoulder. Through the drifting smoke of the discharge, Jim saw the assailant slump forward, his rifle clattering down the rocks in front of him, finally ending up on the ground below.
“Whitey?” a voice called. “Whitey, you hit?”
Jim jacked another shell into the chamber and waited for another head to appear, but there was none. Instead, he heard the clatter of hoofbeats as a horse galloped away.
“They’re runnin’!” Frank called. He started to climb up for a better look, but Jim held out a cautioning hand.
“Wait,” Jim said. “That was only one horse.”
“You think they’s more of ’em?” Barry asked.
“I don’t know. Hard to figure only two men attacking four.”
“Maybe not,” Frank said. “Bein’ as they were in good position like that, could be they figured on droppin’ two of us with the first two shots. Then the odds would be even and they would still have the position.”
“That’s true,” Jim agreed. He rubbed his cheek for a moment. “All right, I’ll have a look.”
Warily, Jim climbed over the top of the ridgeline he had been using for cover. Then he started across an opening toward the next ridge. He kept his eyes on the crest, waiting for any shape or shadow that might show up against the skyline. But nothing appeared.
Paying no immediate attention to the body, Jim climbed to the top of the ridge from which the assailants had staged their ambush. He looked around. Except for one rider in the distance, he saw no one. Climbing back up to the crest, he waved his hand over his head, signaling that all was clear.
Frank, Barry, and Gene jogged across the opening then. They were followed a moment later by Katie and her daughters. The women had divided up the horses so that she was leading three, while each of her daughters led two.
Jim was looking down at the body when the others arrived. The blood around the bullet hole in the slain man’s temple seemed exceptionally crimson when contrasted with the man’s white hair and nearly white skin.
“Damn,” Gene said. “Look at that. I don’t think I ever seen a body get so pale so fast.”
“He always looked like that,” Kate said, arriving at that moment. “They called him Whitey.”
Jim recalled then that he had heard someone shout that name out during the fight.
“What would make a fella so pasty-faced?” Gene asked.
“I don’t know,” Katie admitted.
“He’s what they call an albino,” Jim explained.
“An albino? I’ll be damned. I’ve heard of them. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one before,” Gene said.
Jim looked at Katie. “Is this one of the men who captured you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Katie replied. “The son of a bitch who got away is called Shardeen.”
“Mama!” Brenda gasped. “I thought you told us never to use words like that.”
“I did,” Katie replied. “But I also told you to always tell the truth. And the only way you can refer to Shardeen truthfully is to call him a son of a bitch.”
Jim and the others laughed at Katie’s declaration, yet they were all respectfully aware of the reason she spoke of him in such vitriolic terms.
Shardeen rode hard, looking over his shoulder often to see if anyone was following him. It hadn’t been a very smart move, firing on four men like that. But he figured if he and Whitey could get one apiece with the opening shots, they could kill the other two before they even realized what was happening to them. Then the women would’ve been easy pickings. It would’ve worked, too, if that damn Whitey hadn’t missed.
Hell, it was all Whitey’s fault. As far as Shardeen was concerned, gettin’ hisself killed was good enough for the son of a bitch.
Shardeen had had enough of Mexico with its rocks, desert, cacti, scorpions, and Mexicans. He didn’t care if he never heard another word of Spanish, and he didn’t care if he never saw those damned women again.
Chapter 16
Hector Ortega was having a drink when someone came into the cantina with news that seven gringos had just ridden into the village of Durango. The number was significant to Ortega, because he had left Texas with seven gringos. But three had been killed back in Escalon. So how could there still be seven?
“How many gringos did you say there were?” Ortega asked.
“Seven. Four men and three women.”
Four men, Ortega thought. That number was right. If three of them had been killed at Escalon, then there would be four remaining. But who were the women? Where had they come from?
Ortega recalled, then, that he had heard something about a group of Americans capturing three women, a mother and two daughters. And even though he knew that Jim Robison and the others weren’t guilty of that, the village of Escalon had thought them to be, thus bringing on the gunfight.
Ortega poured a glass of tequila for the man who had brought the information. “Senor, the three women. Tell me about them.”
The man with the information held up his glass. “Gracias,” he said. Before answering, he drank his drink; then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What do you wish to know?”
“Is one old and the others young?”
The man with the information grabbed his crotch. “The old one is not too old, and the young ones are not too young,” he said with a leering grin.
The others laughed.
“It is the mother and daughters,” Ortega said, almost to himself. “How is it that they are with my vaqueros?”
“Your vaqueros, senor? But they are gringos. How can they be your vaqueros?”
“Gringos, yes,” Ortega said. “But they are my vaqueros, because I am their chief,” he said with haughty bluster. “Perhaps I had better go see these men and learn why they have three women with them.”