.45-Caliber Desperado (21 page)

After he'd ridden fifty or so yards, the corridor branched sharply left and dwindled to a foot-wide crack. The gap was wider above, so Cuno stepped off Renegade's back and onto the right side wall, planting his boots on a narrow, gravelly ledge. The walls were deeply and broadly pitted, and he saw a funnel of sorts leading at an upward slant toward daylight and tan, windblown grit.

Cuno reached down and slid his Winchester from his saddle boot. He racked a round into the breech, set the hammer to half cock, and glanced at Renegade, who gave his head a wary shake, nearly slipping his bit from his teeth.

“Cool your heels, boy,” Cuno said. He swallowed as he looked up, tracing the funnel with his gaze. “I'll be back in a minute.”

Using the small ledges and fissures and nubs of protruding stone, Cuno climbed the funnel to a broad gap filled with sky and sunshine. Just below the ridge, he doffed his hat and, holding it in his hand, poked his head up above the ridge's lip, looking northward.

All he could see were humps and thumbs of gray rock spotted with white bird shit, here and there a bristly weed clump. About seventy yards beyond the knobs of eroded rock, the other bank rose gently to rolling prairie sprouting massive bluffs and mesas with slopes stippled with cedar shrubs.

Cuno doffed his hat and climbed up and out onto the ridge, staying low as he looked around, planning a route over the precarious terrain here atop the dinosaur spine of a stone ridge crest. He strode northward, leaping several narrow precipices, then climbing a higher ridge pocked with what must have been volcanic air vents.

He was almost to the top of this ridge when he stopped suddenly.

He stared at the rock facing him, the fingers of his left hand curled into one of the vents, his right hand gripping his Winchester's receiver.

Voices. Men's voices.

They carried almost inaudibly on the howling wind. If he could trust the sounds that the wind tossed this way and that, the voices originated just beyond the scarp he was on. Hard to tell how far away. He could hear only intermittent bits and pieces of the conversation between wind gusts.

Slowly, he continued climbing until he reached the top of the ridge. Again, he doffed his hat and rose slowly, looking around. There were several boulders up here and a stout cedar twisting up from a wide crack in the mottled gray and black rock. He hunkered down behind a boulder and lifted a look over the top.

Sucking a sharp breath, he quickly lowered his head. He crawled on one hand and both knees to the boulder's far left side, where there was a gap between this rock and a large stone knob farther to his left. Cautiously, gritting his teeth, feeling his blood surging in his veins, Cuno edged a look through the gap and held there, eyes wide in spite of the wind-tossed grit.

On the other side of the ridge, in a rocky hollow and with their backs to another ridge behind them, sat three men.

They had to be the same three who'd been dogging the gang. Before them was a low fire. The flames were sheltered enough by the surrounding ridges that the wind only harassed them slightly. Two of the men were a few years older than Cuno, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties. One had long black hair, a black beard, and dark eyes. He was dressed in a black vest over a dark blue shirt down which hung a silver crucifix. He had high-topped black boots bristling with knife handles and black denims. He was pouring coffee from a black pot into a speckled blue cup.

The other younger man hunkered back in a slight hollow between the black-haired man and the third man. He wore a tin star on his wool vest. A sweeping dragoon mustache mantled his upper lip.

His eyes were . . .

Cuno's heart quickened. He drew his head sharply back behind the boulder, lower jaw hanging. The second younger man was Sheriff Dusty Mason—the man responsible for throwing Cuno to the wolves at the Arkansas River Federal Penitentiary.

Cuno caught his breath, squeezing his rifle in his big, gloved hands.

How in the hell had Mason gotten on his trail? Why? Had the sheriff made it his own personal and professional responsibility to make sure that Cuno sweated out the remainder of his life at Arkansas? It appeared so. But why? Mason had honestly thought that Cuno had killed those other lawmen in cold blood, but the young freighter had certainly done nothing to justify a personal vendetta.

Cuno gritted his teeth, felt the indignant rage surge behind his breastbone, making his head light, his fingers and toes tingle. Rarely had he wanted to kill a man more than he wanted to kill Dusty Mason if for no other reason than the sheriff was responsible for Cuno's being right here, his heart red as molten iron, swollen with hate.

A wolf dogged by those he'd once considered his own kind . . .

When he'd gotten his emotions under control, he edged another look through the gap between the rocks. The third man sat back against the base of the opposite ridge, legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed, arms crossed on his chest, broad-brimmed hat tipped over his eyes. What Cuno could see of his face was deeply lined and furred with a thin salt-and-pepper beard. His hair was longish, mostly brown but streaked with gray.

He'd been a large, rawboned man at one time, but age had chiseled him down to rawhide and sinew. A walnut-gripped Remington was thonged low on his right thigh. A bowie was sheathed on his opposite hip. To his right, an older model Winchester rifle, its stock worn smooth with use, leaned against the stone wall.

On his vest was pinned the moon-and-star copper badge of a deputy United States marshal.

The wind's moans and weird yowling were echoed in Cuno's ears. Despite the wind and the fact that at least two of these men were lawmen, Cuno felt a strange calm sweep easily over and through him. A killing calm . . . He raised the Winchester, drew the hammer back to full cock.

He felt the most animosity toward the sheriff, but because the older, federal man was asleep and farthest left, making him an easier target, Cuno would drill him first.

CUNO RESTED HIS Winchester's sights on the old lawman's chest, left of his badge. Just over the man's heart. He drew half a breath, held it, and took up the slack in his trigger finger.

A shrill rattling rose, instantly drowning out the wind's keening.

Cuno jerked the trigger back. The Winchester roared. The slug puffed dust from the ridge just above and left of the old lawman's head. At the same time, the snake struck—a stone-colored blur flying toward Cuno from the shade beneath a rock to his left. The rattler sunk its fangs into his left forearm, a sharp searing pain, instantly hot and throbbing.

Cuno gave an involuntary cry and threw his arm up and out, flinging the snake whiplike away from him. The viper hit the ground and coiled instantly again about six feet away, the tiny beadlike eyes fixing its victim with a threatening stare.

Cuno lowered the Winchester. He glanced toward the fire. The three stalkers were reaching for rifles, shouting and running for cover while loudly levering cartridges.

Cuno backed away from the boulders, gritting his teeth against the pain in his forearm. Rifles roared from below, slugs hammering the rocks around him. He donned his hat and spun, feeling like a fool for having to retreat like a damn tinhorn, but the snake had sunk its teeth resolutely into his forearm, and already he could feel the arm burning and aching and starting to swell.

Snakebit, he could not take on the three stalkers, all of whom were bearing down on him furiously, their slugs spanging off rocks with enraged, echoing whines.

Holding his burning arm close to his side, Cuno hop-scotched the knobby surface of the rocky ridge. He leapt the fissures over deep, blue-dark, stone-walled corridors, got disoriented for a moment, and looked around wildly before recognizing a landmark.

A minute later he was half falling down the funnel that he'd taken up from the box canyon in which he'd left Renegade.

The horse nickered as Cuno approached and shied back a ways. “Hold on, boy,” Cuno said, breathless, holding his rifle out away from him for balance. “Don't bolt on me now . . .”

He pushed himself away from the gravelly incline and dropped clumsily into the saddle. Trying to remain calm in spite of the black poison he imagined being pumped through his veins, coursing toward his heart, he backed the horse along the corridor. He reached a bulge in the stony gap, managed to turn the horse around, then batted his heels against the stallion's flanks.

“
He-yaaah!
”

Shod hooves clacked on the rocky, gravelly floor of the corridor, echoing. The wind whistled through the gap high above Cuno's head. Swallows shrieked and fluttered about their mud nests. Cuno's arm grew heavier and hotter by the second. His mouth was dry. He could feel cold perspiration popping out on his forehead.

He stormed out the mouth of the corridor and angled sharply right, heading back the way he'd come. As he rode, the wind pelting his face with grit, he pricked his ears to listen for the two lawmen and the black-haired man. If they were on his trail, he couldn't hear their hoof thuds above the devilish wind.

There were other craggy corridors in the maze of rock jutting around him, probably wide enough gaps for the stalkers to thread as they tried to cut him off. He kept his rifle up in his right hand, ready to fire if one of his pursuers dashed out of a gap. He hadn't seen their horses near their camp, though, so it would likely take some time to gather them.

He'd climbed the bank and was booting Renegade into a hard gallop when he heard a shout behind him. A rifle popped, the report quickly clipped by the wind.

He glanced over his shoulder to see two riders galloping out of the riverbed about fifty yards left of where Cuno had left it. A third man, Sheriff Mason, was galloping up out of the bed now, too, lowering his head over his horse's neck and batting his steel-shod heels against his horse's flanks.

The black-haired gent was in the lead, though the old marshal was riding up fast behind him and slanting off to his right as he lifted his rifle to his shoulder, reins in his teeth. The black-haired gent had his own rifle raised.

Smoke puffed from it. There was a crack like that of a branch snapping.

Cuno heard the bullet spang off a rock to his right. Another crack. Another bullet curled the air near Cuno's head. He flinched, ducked lower in the saddle, then cursed and slid his rifle from his boot, taking his reins in his left hand, which felt as though a tender, red heart were throbbing in it.

He doubted he'd outrun those three on their three fresh horses. He'd have to make a stand right here. The thought had no sooner passed through his brain than near rifles thundered around him.

He flinched again and looked around, disoriented. Brouschard, Eldon Wald, Dirty Leo McGivern, and Chisos McGee were firing their rifles toward Cuno's pursuers from behind a boulder and a spur of rock humping up from the ground and sheathed in bear grass.

Cuno leapt out of his saddle, dropped his reins, and whacked Renegade's left hip to send the mount galloping southwest out of the line of rifle fire. He hunkered down beside Brouschard whom he was incredulous to see had suddenly become his unlikely ally.

“Good work, kid,” the yellow-bearded devil cackled, triggering another shot over the spur. “Was figurin' you'd either give up the ghost in them badlands . . . or lead them trail wolves right into our rifle sights!”

Cuno triggered his Winchester twice, but his three pursuers were holding back now, and all three were obscured by the blowing curtains of dirt and sand. “You should have waited another minute,” Cuno growled. “They'd have been another fifty yards closer!”

Brouschard turned to him, away from the rear stock of his cocked rifle, and flashed his broken teeth in anger. “Shut up, shaver. You was supposed to bring me their stars!”

Brouschard narrowed an eye as he aimed down his rifle, then tripped the trigger. Cuno couldn't tell if he hit anything. He could no longer see his pursuers. They'd likely taken cover themselves or hightailed it back to the badlands.

Pain bit his arm like a whipsaw blade, and he groaned as he fell back against the earthen shelf. His vision dimmed, his stomach bucked and pitched like a bronco mustang, and suddenly he stumbled to one side as the conflagration in his guts surged bitter-hot to his throat.

He dropped to his knees and threw up all the contents of his stomach, which wasn't much, as the gang was low on food and Cuno had eaten a spartan breakfast of jerky and coffee boiled with yesterday's grounds.

Brouschard laughed. “What the hell's the matter with you?” When he saw Cuno's knob-knuckled hand, both the hand and the wrist swollen half again their normal size, and red as as raw beef, the big man scowled. “Christ!”

“Get after 'em,” Cuno said, panting and running his sleeve across his mouth. He tossed his head in the direction of the badlands. “Get after those sons o' bitches, Brouschard. Talk's cheap. You got three other men—a fairer fight than mine was!”

Deep lines cut savagely across the big man's forehead. “I was about to!” he roared, leaping to his feet and cupping one hand to his mouth to shout toward where McGee and Wald were hunkered behind a boulder. “Let's go, boys. Grab your horses. We got 'em on the run!”

When all three had run off to an escarpment to the east and behind which they'd tethered their horses, Cuno sank back once more against the knoll.

His heart thudded. Sweat dribbled through the dust coating his face. His arm felt as though it had been dipped in burning tar. His heavy lids drooped over his eyes. He opened them when a sound drifted to his ears beneath the wind.

Through the blowing dust a horse and rider galloped toward him. Camilla's sombrero flopped from its thong behind her shoulders; her hair blew about her head like a wild, brown tumbleweed. Cuno tried to keep his eyes open, but the lids closed like heavy iron doors, and everything went black.