Die by the Gun, page 25
part #2 of Chuckwagon Trail Series
Mac sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. His heart raced faster as he did so. He sucked in another breath, taking it in so he caught every hint of scent on the faint breeze blowing from higher elevations. Trying not to look too obvious, he slid his revolver from its holster and laid it across his lap. Gritting his teeth at the noise, he broke it open and checked to be sure he carried a full load. When he was sure, when his strength was enough, he drew back the hammer, half stood, and looked into the rocks above them. His finger curled on the trigger the instant he spotted a hat rising up from behind the crest of a boulder.
The report startled both Desmond and Estella, but it took his target by even more surprise. The man rose, pushed his hat back from his head, touched the hole in his forehead where oozing blood turned inky black in the starlight, and slumped forward. Mac had drilled him through the brain with one shot.
“Who’s that?” Desmond asked.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Mac said. He tugged at his horse’s reins to get it back down the trail he had just ridden. Pushing between the tall rocks gave protection on either side. It also funneled a volley of shots coming from the rocks near the man he had killed.
“Those are not Rurales,” Estella cried. “They are gringos. They do not wear uniforms.”
“Chances are good they’re Wardell’s men,” Mac told her. He silently cursed. They should have killed them, all of them, rather than believing they would hightail it for Fort Sumner. “Keep moving. Your pa has run off the Mexican soldiers. We have to go back that way.” He ducked involuntarily as another round spanged off a rock beside his head. Hot chips of splintered rock stung his cheek.
“How’d you know they were up there?” Desmond pushed forward to stand between the gunmen and Estella.
“I caught the smell of tobacco. I don’t partake, and I’ve never seen you build a smoke.”
“You saved us,” Estella said.
“We’re not out of this yet. Check farther downhill and see if they’re circling us.”
“Wait, no!” Desmond tried to stop her but Mac grabbed his arm and spun him around.
“It gets her out of the line of fire. They’re not down there. They’re above us. All of them.”
“How can you tell?” Desmond looked worried. He scowled when Estella vanished around a bend in the trail.
“Instinct,” Mac said. Actually, he had no idea, but his show of confidence settled Desmond’s nerves and focused him on the narrow gap between the rocks and the sandy pit just beyond where they had first taken refuge.
Mac looked around. Their attackers had chosen a poor spot for an ambush, unless they had intended to gun the trio down. Mac wished about now he was with Felipe riding along on the chuckwagon, heading for Fort Sumner. Might as well wish he was on the moon, he reflected wryly. Escaping wasn’t going to be easy, especially with Desmond and Estella to look after.
“We can’t make a stand here,” Desmond said. “There’s no way to move around. We either attack them straight ahead or get on down the trail.”
Mac reached into his coat pocket and fingered the spare ammo there. Desmond was right. He had a dozen rounds plus the six chambered in the S&W. Then he remembered his shot that reduced the attackers’ number by one. Five rounds in his six-gun. Even if Desmond had more, the men coming after their scalps could wait them out.
“I can’t see what’s happening,” Desmond said. “It’s too dark.”
Mac avoided staring at the deep shadows and looked instead at the spots where the stars shone the brightest. On a cloudless night the illumination was enough to see clearly. In this tumble of rocks, he caught glimpses of movement but listening hard gave him more information on what the gunmen were doing. When he took another deep whiff, he raised his pistol and fired three times. He heard a grunt, then a curse. He hadn’t killed the man trying to sneak up on them but he’d certainly winged him.
“Who are you?” Mac called. “We don’t have any feud with you.” He held up his hand to keep Desmond quiet. Whatever answer he got was likely to be a lie. All he wanted was a hint as to how many men they faced and where they had positioned themselves in the rocks.
“We’re only bandidos,” the answer came back. “We want the money you got from the cattle sale!”
Mac pressed Desmond back. They quietly retreated. He had located the one who answered. That had to be the leader.
They inched away and finally came to the base of the small hill. Estella waited anxiously a hundred yards away.
“Go to her, get away,” Mac said softly. “I’ll keep them back until you find Flowers or her pa.”
“I’m not leaving you to face them alone,” Desmond insisted.
“They want her, or the money she’s got. The only way they’d know about it is if Wardell sent them to steal it.”
“They might be Mexicans,” Desmond said. Then, “Oh. They aren’t. They don’t have accents.”
“I think I recognize the leader. His name’s Ransom.”
“Wardell’s foreman!”
“You go on now,” Mac said. “Make a lot of noise as you go so they’ll think I’m with you. I’m going to lay an ambush for the ambushers.”
He handed the reins of his horse to Desmond.
“I won’t need it, and you have to decoy them. If they see or hear only one horse leaving, they’ll know what I’m up to. Now go.”
Mac knew Desmond obeyed when he heard the thudding of hooves going toward Estella. He bent double and ran to a spindly greasewood bush and crouched behind it. Hands sweaty, heart hammering, he waited. It took only a minute for a trio of men on foot to come from the narrow trail and spread out.
Ransom would be in the middle. His henchmen would flank him. Mac steadied his revolver, squeezed off a shot, and cried out in triumph when the middle man collapsed as if his knees had turned to water. Mac swung to the left and triggered a second shot, then hurriedly flung lead to the right. He winged one man and scared the other. Not letting himself think too much about what he was doing, he got his feet under him, ignored the pain twisting him around from his prior wounds, and ran forward shouting.
The man he had winged switched hands and tried to fire. Mac dispatched him with two more shots. He stumbled and went to a knee. This saved him from catching a wild shot from the third man. Using both hands to steady his aim, he fired.
The third man straightened, then toppled like a tall tree sawed off at the roots.
“Mackenzie!”
His head snapped up at the sound of his name. His heart jumped into his throat.
“You know me, Dewey Mackenzie. I could take you in to the law. I could drag your worthless carcass all the way back to New Orleans. But I won’t. You know why? You killed three of my men. The Huffman brothers. All dead.”
Quick Willy Means came from the rocks, widened his stance, and pushed his coattails back on both sides. He wore two revolvers and looked able to draw and fire both of them.
“The only thing missing is Hiram Flowers,” Means went on. “I got a beef with him, but you were the one I was sent after. I can deal with him later since that’s personal, not business.”
Mac raised his gun and fired. The hammer fell on a spent chamber.
“I was counting, Mackenzie. Six rounds fired. How’d you survive this long being so careless?” Means started walking toward him. “Go on. Try to reload. I can plug you from here, but I want to see you squirm for all you’ve done.”
Mac had nothing to say. Anything that came from his lips would be futile. Means intended to cut him down. Why goad him? Why give him even an instant’s satisfaction? Mac wasn’t the type to grovel or beg for mercy. Getting compassion or leniency from the bounty hunter was a waste of the last few seconds he had on earth.
He cracked open his S&W and ejected the spent brass. Means came down the slope even faster.
“Time to die, Mackenzie. Time to die!”
The bounty hunter went for his guns, both of them. Mac cringed when a shot rang out, but when he opened his eyes, he was startled that the bullets hadn’t ripped through him. He hadn’t thought Means was that bad a shot, either left- or right-handed.
More shots rang out. The thunder of a galloping horse from behind caused him to look over his shoulder. Desmond Sullivan fired his rifle repeatedly.
Means was distracted by the new attacker, giving Mac time to fumble in his coat pocket and find a cartridge. He stuffed it into an empty cylinder and reached for another when he heard a heavy thud. Desmond’s horse ran past him. His eyes following the horse, he saw it pass where the bounty hunter stood, his guns smoking after shooting Desmond from the saddle.
Mac snapped the gun closed.
“He died for you, Mackenzie. Now you’ll die!” Quick Willy Means turned his revolvers on his victim. Lead whined past Mac’s head. He grunted as a bullet hit him in the side, about where he had been shot before.
Seeing double from the impact, he raised his pistol and fired. One shot. That was all he had. One shot. He fell facedown on the ground, waiting for Means to finish the job he had started. Through the hard ground where his cheek pressed down, he felt vibration. Another horse. He tried to warn Estella away. No words came. All that came for him was darkness.
CHAPTER 29
Mac was lifted straight up and dropped on a hard surface. He cried out from the shock and pain. His eyes refused to focus for a few seconds, then he saw Hiram Flowers.
“You aren’t dead. I wondered . . .” Mac said. His words sounded strange. Flowers poured water over Mac’s chapped lips. He swallowed enough to repeat what he’d said. By now he saw beyond Flowers. He lay in the back of a wagon bouncing along. Every bump the wagon hit jolted him and increased his misery.
Moaning, he rolled onto his side and forced himself to sit up. His shirt had been cut away and a fresh bandage circled his waist. It not only covered his fresh bullet wounds but held his bruised ribs in place.
“I fetched Don Jaime and his men,” Flowers said. “We ran off the Rurales, then heard more gunfire.”
“What about Desmond?” Mac looked around. “He saved my life. He distracted Means long enough for me to reload.”
A chill passed through him. Reloaded? He had slipped one cartridge into his pistol. One. His life—and Desmond’s—had rested on one single shot. Closing his eyes, he called up the image of Ransom and his men, then Quick Willy Means, as if they were players on a stage and he was in the audience. He watched it all as if it had been dipped in molasses.
“Desmond took a bullet in the thigh, but the fall from his horse shook him up even more.” Flowers sounded disgusted. “He’s in good enough shape to ride, even though she protested.”
Mac didn’t have to ask who Flowers meant. Estella would be nursing her beau every inch of the way.
“We’re back in the U.S.?”
“Yup, we are.”
“Good,” Mac said. He wondered why he had ever considered riding farther into Mexico. He had been greeted with more lead and death than he wanted to consider, even if most of it had followed him. The bounty hunters, Wardell’s men, they had trailed him down from New Mexico Territory. Only the Rurales, and maybe Don Pedro inciting the bandidos, had been new dangers. Now all that lay behind him, across the border.
“Are you considering drifting on, Mac? I’m not funning you when I say you’ve got a permanent job with the Circle Arrow. We can reach Denver, take a train to Kansas City, and then ride on back to Fort Worth.”
“Denver,” Mac said softly. A thought poked into his head but stayed just beyond the reach of his brain.
“You got any ideas about making sure Desmond gets home?” Flowers asked.
Mac looked hard at the trail boss. This was the first time Flowers had ever admitted he had no answer for a thorny question. Even more surprising, he was asking a chuckwagon cook for advice.
“That’s not my problem,” Mac said. “Truth is, it shouldn’t be yours, either. Desmond’s proved himself capable of taking care of any trouble that comes his way. And if what you say’s true about Estella, she sees that in him.”
“Don Jaime will never let them get hitched.”
“They’ll light out, and he’ll never see his daughter again. You willing to let her go back to the Circle Arrow with Desmond and explain it all to Mercedes Sullivan?”
Flowers groaned.
“I don’t have any idea how I’d explain that her son’s found a girlfriend and intends to get married. Mercedes is a Methodist, and I reckon Estella is Catholic. How that’ll play out is anyone’s guess.” Flowers shook his head. “What are we gonna do, Mac? I can’t think of a single thing that makes a lick of sense.”
Again a thought rose and—almost—came spilling from Mac’s lips. His head hurt so bad it threatened to split open. His bullet wounds and ribs were bound up so tightly they didn’t give him much pain. That was something to be thankful for, anyway.
“Where are we?” He turned his head to look through the opening at the front of the wagon. “We’re almost back to Fort Sumner!”
“You were out of your mind for a day or two, then settled down for the last few.” Flowers peered at him, squinting as if this gave him better insight. “You’re looking mighty good, considering what you were like before.”
Mac started to respond, then stopped. He grinned broadly.
“I need to talk to Desmond and Estella. And Don Jaime.”
“That can be a chore, at least as far as getting Desmond’s attention. We’re almost back to our herd. When we get there, that’d be the best time before he and Estella hightail it to parts unknown.” Flowers cleared his throat. “That’s what I expect to happen. Not saying it will, but finding anybody to bet against me isn’t possible.”
Mac settled back, working over his scheme. The fog had finally cleared and let him see things better now. Try as he might, he couldn’t find any drawbacks with the idea. When the wagon rattled to a halt at the Circle Arrow camp, he climbed down and went hunting for Desmond and Estella. Finding them proved easy enough.
Estella had her beau stretched out on a blanket as she held a cool compress on his forehead. His leg was bandaged where the bullet had ripped off a hunk of flesh. Every move the man made showed a touch of pain. Mac didn’t doubt Desmond ached all over from falling off his horse, but he also believed much of the apparent pain was feigned to keep Estella fussing over him.
Somehow, Mac couldn’t find it in his heart to fault Desmond for doing that. Estella was a lovely woman.
“I wanted to thank you for distracting Means,” Mac said. He sank to the ground and sat cross-legged near Desmond. “I was a goner until then.”
“You took on a powerful lot.” Desmond looked at Estella. “You risked your life to save us. I had to return the favor.”
“We’re even,” Mac said.
This caused Desmond to sit upright. His demeanor changed.
“We’re not going to Denver with the herd.” He looked at Estella, then back at Mac. “Her pa and my ma don’t have any say-so. We love each other.”
“Yeah, about that. I’ve got a proposal that might work out for all of us.”
“What is it?” Desmond’s suspicious nature showed how much he had learned on the trail drive. Before he would have opposed anything Mac had to say, just on general principles. Now he would listen and if he liked what he heard, agree. That was all any man could do.
Dewey Mackenzie launched into his plan. Desmond remained unconvinced, until Estella warmed to the notion and started talking to him in low, confidential tones. Mac got to his feet and left them discussing what he’d suggested. He had others to corral.
* * *
“I don’t see what good I’ll be,” Hiram Flowers said. “That so-and-so isn’t gonna listen to anything I have to say. All I want to do is get on the trail to Denver. You coming with us, Mac? I hope so.”
Flowers tugged on the reins and brought his horse to a halt. Don Jaime’s hacienda loomed in the twilight, spacious and sprawling, more a fortress than a house. The high adobe walls encircled the entire hacienda. Inside were garden views for the rooms facing inward. Whether Don Jaime allowed them inside didn’t matter as long as he listened to what Mac had conjured up, more in a fever dream than through rational thought.
“Looks like we’ve been noticed.”
A man carrying a rifle came from the gates protecting the hacienda’s interior. The gates stood partly open, letting out a heady aroma of growing plants and flowers. After breathing trail dust, this buoyed Mac and made him even more sure he was on the right track.
“Don Jaime, good evening,” he called as the rancher planted himself in their path.
“What do you want?”
“You’ve paid off the banker? Your ranch is still yours?”
Don Jaime nodded. “Dunphy took the money. Reluctantly. He wanted to sell my land for a big fee.”
“To Luther Wardell,” Mac said. He saw how the rancher tensed and brought the rifle muzzle around, as if his adversary had appeared in front of him.
“What do you want? You did not work enough for me to pay. You lost a horse. You owe me money, but I will forgive the debt for all you did to protect my daughter.”
“Glad the debt’s canceled,” Flowers said dryly. “I’d hate to tally up all you owe us for protecting you from bandidos, Rurales—and Wardell’s killers.”
“Mister Flowers here has a proposal for you.” Mac walked his horse closer but did not dismount. Don Jaime gave no indication of relaxing.
“I do?” Flowers scowled. “What proposal?”
Mac spoke louder to drown out the trail boss.
“It’s a mighty long trail for the Circle Arrow crew to drive the rest of the cattle all the way to Denver.”
“It is.” Don Jaime lowered his rifle. Mac hoped the man had an inkling of what he was going to be offered.
“You’ve sold all your cattle. What good is it having a ranch if you don’t have any cattle left?”
“It will take two or three years to rebuild.”
“There are some heifers and more than a few bulls in the Circle Arrow herd.”
