.45-Caliber Firebrand (20 page)

All three had rifles snugged in saddle boots, the stocks of the guns jutting up near their right knees.

Serenity was sitting on a rock near the fire. He had one boot off, intending to dry his socks and warm his bare feet in front of the flames.

“What have we here?” the oldster breathed, dropping the boot, slowly reaching for his Winchester, and resting it nonchalantly across his skinny thighs.

“Hello the camp!” one of the strangers called as all three angled their horses away from the stream and came on toward the fire.

Cuno lifted his coat above his .45's handle and released the keeper thong from the hammer.

18

THE HOOF THUDS sounded dully above the fire's crackling flames as the three riders rode past the mules and the wagons and approached the fire. Serenity had left his boot off, and he sat ten yards to Cuno's right, on the other side of the leaping flames, keeping one hand on his rifle's receiver.

In the periphery of his vision, Cuno saw the old man curling his white, yellow-nailed toes beneath his feet, and he could sense the oldster's tension.

“No call for that, now,” said the man plodding slowly forward on a blood bay gelding, on the group's far left side.

He glanced at the ivory grips of Cuno's low-slung .45 exposed by the raised coat flap.

“We're territorial marshals,” the man added, canting his head toward the other two men—a hawk-nosed gent with a three-day growth of salt-and-pepper whiskers and a fair-skinned man with bulbous blue eyes and a thick, cinnamon beard. Hair of the same color dropped low across his forehead, beneath his black, heavy wool hat. He wore a half grin on his face as he moved his jaws slowly from side to side, tobacco juice dribbling down the right corner of his mouth and into his beard.

“That's Bone there on the far side,” the first man said, canting his head to indicate the hawk-nosed man. “And this is Hayes. I'm Lipton. Pius Lipton. We're out of Ute on official business.”

“Marshals, huh?” Serenity growled, skepticism pitching his voice low.

“We can show you our badges if you like,” the man called Bone said, trying a mild grin that looked as at home on his face as a pair of women's hoop rings would look on his ears. “But we ain't here on business. We just seen your fire, that's all.”

His eyes flicked toward the lean-to behind Cuno, in which the girls and the youngest Lassiter boy sat huddled together to stay warm. A slight, weird light shone in the man's eyes for about half a second, before he returned his gaze to Cuno and lifted the corner of his mouth once more in that taut, counterfeit smile.

The flickering firelight made his pitted cheeks above his beard look oily. “Noticed you had a good one goin'. Hayes shot a deer a couple ridges back. It's too much for us, and don't care to haul it. We'd be more than happy to share if we can cook it over that nice fire you got goin'.”

“How 'bout it, ladies?” the red-bearded man called Hayes drawled in a thick Missouri accent. “You up to roasted venison this evenin'?” He dropped his chin and pinched his cap brim, peeling it out away from his forehead.

“We had a long haul,” Cuno said. “Injun trouble. Not sure we're up to entertaining this evening.”

Lipton was a tall gent with a thick gray-brown mustache drooping down around his thin mouth and badly pocked, windburned cheeks. He wore a red muffler snugged up under his hard, straight jaws, beneath a jutting, dimpled chin. His eyes were like brown marbles set deep in bony sockets. His voice was higher pitched than you'd expect from such a severely featured hombre. “Injun trouble?”

Cuno didn't want to mention in front of Michelle that the Trent ranch had been burned. He merely nodded and said, “You seen any westward? That's the direction we're from, headed east to Fort Jessup.”

“Not only
seen
three,” Lipton said. “We pinked three. Shot 'em all three down like cans on fence posts. Just chance we were upwind from 'em, or those savages woulda smelled or heard us for sure.”

In the periphery of his vision, Cuno saw Serenity glance at him. Cuno kept his eyes on the strangers.

“There's safety in numbers,” Bone said. “And no point in lettin' good deer meat go to—”

He stopped when the Mexican girl, Camilla, said in a taut, even voice brimming with hatred, “Send them on their way.” She whipped an arm out suddenly.
“Vamos!”

He glanced back at her quickly, startled by the girl's sudden passion when she'd been so silent that Cuno had often forgotten she was here. She sat beside Margaret, who had her arms wrapped around one of the older girl's upraised knees and was regarding the newcomers with the same wary, angry expression as Camilla. Michelle, sitting right of Margaret, sat with her own knees drawn up, and she had a similarly fearful expression in her lake-blue eyes, which kept darting between Camilla and the newcomers.

Cuno turned back to the three hard-faced men sitting their mounts side by side, staring with various degrees of annoyance at Camilla. On the far side of the fire from Cuno, Karl Lassiter stood with the same armful of firewood he'd brought up when the three riders had approached from the creek.

He cut his eyes between Cuno and the three strangers, the boy's own expression more puzzled than frightened, as though he were waiting to see how Cuno would handle it. His nose was running onto his upper lip, and he sniffed it back softly.

“You know how it is,” Cuno said, shrugging. “A woman's opinion trumps a man's every time.”

The strangers stared owlishly at Cuno, curling their noses or chewing their mustaches, all three incredulous.

“You ain't no man,” Bone growled, spitting the words out like prune pits, his anger building. “Why, you're just a wet-behind-the-ears kid, only a little older than that snot-nosed brat with the firewood. The only man here's that old, stove-up graybeard, and he can't even get his sock on.”

Serenity rose slowly, his jaws hard. “I weren't trying to get it on. I was tryin' to get it off, so's I could dry it . . . if it's any of your business, which it ain't. Now, you heard the girl. Pull your picket pins an'
hoof
!”

Behind Cuno, Margaret gave a muffled screech against Camilla's knee. Across the dwindling fire, Karl sniffed sharply, his load of wood rising and falling as he breathed.

The strangers scowled down at the group before them. Finally, Lipton said, not taking his eyes off Camilla, “Come on, boys. Let's go build us a fire and roast us up some supper.”

He reined out around the fire and spurred his horse into a trot. The other two lingered, glaring down at the campers. Cuno kept his hand near his Colt, and his heart thudded dully.

Finally, Hayes reined his red gelding around the fire, grunting, “Good luck if them Injuns come callin'!”

He tipped his hat to the girl, snarling. Then he and Bone, riding single file, trotted down canyon after Lipton, and Renegade stood lifting his hooves in place and nickering amongst the trees behind them.

Cuno turned to watch them disappear into the darkening woods, following a slow bend in the stream-cleaved canyon.

“Trouble,” Serenity said, holding his rifle down low by his side. One foot still bare, he spat into the fire to hear it sizzle. “Copper-riveted scalawags, with the boots on!”

“You think they were lawmen?”

Serenity shook his head. “Maybe, but it's my guess they ain't nothin' but owlhoots on the dodge. They just said they was badge toters so we'd let 'em light here with us and the girls . . . and help us against the redskins . . . if there are any redskins, which I doubt. We woulda heard the shots.”

Cuno glanced at the older Lassiter boy as he grabbed his rifle. “Keep the fire built up, Karl. I'm gonna take a ride.”

“Where you goin'?” Serenity said, squatting to lay his sock near the fire to which Karl was adding the dry, crackling wood.

Cuno grabbed Renegade's dangling reins and stepped into the saddle. “I'm gonna see where they camp. Go ahead and start supper. I'll be back.”

Cuno slid the Winchester into his saddle boot and urged Renegade down canyon. He stopped when he saw Camilla standing just outside the lean-to, staring into the gathering darkness in which the three strangers had disappeared.

“Be careful,” Camilla said quietly, holding a buffalo robe around her shoulders. Her long hair danced out in the breeze like long, slender fingers.

“I will.”

Camilla reached up with one hand to slide her hair away from her eyes, then turned slowly and knelt beside the food sack to begin preparing supper.

 

Cuno rode slowly through the trees along the murmuring stream, the cold breeze pressing against his back. Weaving around the aspens, he followed the canyon's first slow curve and started tracing another.

Voices sounded from downwind—muffled and ghostly. There was the snap of a stout twig beneath a heavy foot.

Cuno held his reins taut and stared straight out over Renegade's head. Three shadows moved amongst the gnarled, black trees, just beyond a deadfall that had gotten hung up against a tree still standing.

Cuno reined the paint sharply left and held up behind a flame-shaped, cabin-sized boulder, then swung Renegade around until he was facing the stream winking dully in the fading gray light.

The hoof thuds grew gradually louder. The voices grew, as well.

One of the men—Cuno recognized Bone's voice—said, “That little Mex is sure gonna feel good in
my
blanket roll tonight!
Damn
, it's cold!”

There was a light thump, as though one of the men had softly punched another man's shoulder. “I told ya—since I seen her first, she's
mine
. You know I'm partial to—”

The red-bearded Hayes cut himself off when Cuno gigged Renegade out from behind the boulder, turned the horse down canyon, and stopped, facing the three riders. The three hard cases, silhouettes in the darkness of the windy canyon, all jerked with starts and hauled back on their reins, stopping their horses suddenly.

One of the horses snorted angrily. Another whinnied.

Renegade shook his head fatefully, as though he knew from experience what was coming.

Bone cursed and pulled his head up high. “Where the hell you come from,
boy
?”

“You followin' us?” Lipton said in his oddly feminine voice.

Cuno raised his coat flap above his holstered .45, so that the grips were clear. He kept his voice hard but even. “We asked you boys to ride on. Since you didn't, I reckon I've got no choice but to kill you.”

The boldness of Cuno's statement took all three men aback for about three seconds. Bone chuckled with exasperation, glancing at a partner on either side of him. “You
think
so,
do
ya, boy?”

Lipton was the first to reach for the big, pearl-gripped Colt Navy holstered just right of his saddle horn. Cuno palmed his Colt without thinking about it but only staring at the place where he intended the bullet to go.

Automatically, he sent the slug punching through the dead center of Lipton's bear coat. The mustached gent, whose Colt Navy hadn't even finished clearing leather, screamed and bounded straight back in his saddle, showing his white teeth between stretched lips in the thickening darkness.

As the two other men jerked their hands toward their weapons, Cuno's pistol bucked and roared twice more. Bone lurched back just as Lipton's bucking horse rammed Bone's horse, and he and Lipton both whipped sideways out of their saddles.

Meanwhile, Hayes crouched forward over his own saddle horn, holding the reins taut in one hand and firing his long-barreled Peacemaker over his horse's left wither.

The bullets sizzled past Cuno's right hip and plunked into a tree behind him. Cuno quickly cocked his Colt and fired another round into Hayes's chest. The red-bearded man lurched back and fired his Peacemaker once more, this time shooting his horse in the neck.

Cuno reined Renegade quickly to the left as Hayes's red gelding screamed and, whipping its head up and around, staggered sideways. The deer tied behind Hayes's saddle flopped around wildly.

As Renegade, nickering nervously, wheeled in a tight circle, Cuno watched the other two horses run off buck-kicking down canyon while the red rolled atop the groaning Hayes in the high grass between two cottonwoods. The horse's tooth-gnashing screams echoed shrilly around the canyon.

Holding Renegade's reins taut in one hand, Cuno extended his cocked Colt, angling it down and aiming carefully this time, and drilled a round through the gelding's head. The horse sagged as it died, hooves thrashing automatically, pummeling the groaning, sobbing Hayes into a veritable pulp in the grass.

Cuno looked around at the other two men. Lipton lay belly down ahead and left, about thirty yards away. Bone lay on his back, neck twisted oddly, one leg curled beneath the other, arms thrown out to both sides as though in supplication. His unblinking eyes glistened in the light of the night's first stars.

Cuno swung down from his saddle and, dropping the paint's reins, stood looking around and listening like a hunter. He flipped the Colt's loading gate open, extracted the spent shells, and replaced them with fresh from his cartridge belt.

When he was sure that no one had been attracted by the gunfire—at least not yet—he holstered the Colt and walked over to where Hayes now lay unmoving, his torso protruding from under the dead horse's left shoulder, the snout of the dead buck snugged up against the man's neck.

The man's eyes were half open and staring down his nose, with his mouth stretched wide as though the horse was still grinding Hayes's pelvis into a fine powder. Curious about the men's identities, Cuno began to open Hayes's bloody, bullet-torn coat. He glanced across the horse to see a rifle lying in the brush where the dying beast's spasms had apparently tossed it from the dead man's saddle sheath.