Deadly Road to Yuma (14 page)

Matt and Sam pulled their rifles from the saddle boots as they raced toward the wagon, closing in from the east as the outlaws closed in from the west. They still had to deal with the owlhoots who were pursuing them, however, and that problem became more pressing as a bullet tugged at the sleeve of Matt’s shirt.

“We ought to do something about those varmints behind us!” he called across to Sam as they galloped side by side. “Some of those slugs are comin’ a mite too close for comfort!”

Sam nodded. “I was thinking the same thing! On three?”

“One, two, three!” Matt shouted.

The blood brothers hauled back on the reins as the same time, pulling their mounts around in sharp turns that would have sent most horses tumbling out of control. Matt and Sam had trained their animals for this very maneuver, though, and they stayed upright, coming to a dead stop with Matt and Sam facing back toward their pursuers.

Winchesters came up as if synchronized, socketing themselves against the shoulders of the blood brothers. The outlaws realized they were charging right into the barrels of those rifles and tried to react, but they were too late.

The whipcracks of sound erupted so close together, they might have been mistaken for one shot. Flame spurted from the muzzles of the Winchesters as Matt and Sam fired.

And both outlaws went backward off their horses, punched out of the saddles by the .44-40 slugs that smashed into their chests.

“That takes care of those two,” Matt said as he lowered his rifle.

“Let’s see what we can do about the others,” Sam said.

They grabbed the reins again, whirled their horses, and charged toward the running battle that was going on between the outriders and the rest of Joshua Shade’s gang.

The deputies were putting up a valiant fight, Matt saw, but one of them was down already and they had been badly outnumbered to start with. Thorpe never should have tried to transport Shade to Yuma with such a small force accompanying him. By doing that, he was practically asking the outlaws to try to take the prisoner away from him.

But it was too late to change things now. Matt and Sam would just have to hope that the element of surprise would be to their advantage.

As they closed in, Sam called, “Something’s happened to the driver! That team’s a runaway!”

Matt saw he was right. Thorpe appeared to be alone on the wagon. The marshal was stretched out on the top of the vehicle, firing his pistol toward the outlaws as the wagon careened along.

“It’s gonna wreck if it keeps goin’ like that!” Matt shouted.

“That’s the least of our worries right now!” Sam called back.

That was true. Another deputy pitched off his horse as outlaw lead riddled him. Matt and Sam were close enough to join the fight now, though, and they did so as they came up slightly behind and to the side of the gang.

In a flank attack, they gashed into Shade’s men with their Winchesters blasting as fast as the blood brothers could work the levers. That sudden hail of unexpected shots took a heavy toll. Half a dozen members of the gang were down before they knew what was going on.

The rifles clicked on empty after a moment, though, and there was no time to reload. Matt and Sam jammed the Winchesters back in the saddle boots and drew their Colts.

Blinding, choking dust filled the air. Flames spurted from the muzzles of the twin revolvers in Matt’s hands as he guided his horse with his knees. He fired right and left as he tore through the gang in a mad dash. Laughter floated around him, the laughter of a man who was never more alive than when he was daring death to reach out and take him.

Sam’s attack was more deliberate but no less effective. He skirted the edge of the gang, making for the wagon as he fired at the outlaws he passed. A couple of them fell, and another man reeled in his saddle as he was hit, but managed to hang on.

Sam came alongside the vehicle, and saw Thorpe start to swing the shotgun toward him. “Don’t shoot, Marshal!” he shouted.

Thorpe recognized him and held off on the Greener’s triggers. Instead, the lawman twisted back the other way and touched off a blast toward a couple of outlaws who had almost drawn even with the wagon on that side. The buckshot shredded one man and blew him out of the saddle. The other man fell back, pawing at his face where one of the balls had ripped his cheek open and caused a cascade of blood.

Thorpe fired the other barrel a second later, but Sam didn’t see where that charge went. He had already pulled ahead, and was now galloping alongside the runaway mules. A glance at the driver’s box showed him that that driver was crumpled on the floorboard, either unconscious or dead. He lay near the edge on the far side from Sam, and as the wagon gave another bounce and lurch, the man began to slip off.

There was nothing Sam could do for him except hope that he fell clear of the wagon wheels. The driver slid out of sight and was left behind in the roiling dust.

Sam brought his horse closer to the lead mule on the left side. In the past, he had pulled off the trick he was about to attempt, but it was damned dangerous. Still, there was no other way to stop the madly galloping mules except to shoot one of the leaders, and that would cause the wagon to crash. The reins had slipped completely off the box and were trailing under the vehicle now.

Sam took a deep breath, slipped his feet out of the stirrups, and threw himself from the saddle. For a harrowing instant, he hung in midair between his horse and the mule. Then he crashed down on the mule’s back.

A pained grimace twisted Sam’s face as he tangled his fingers in the mule’s mane and hung on for dear life. Landing like that was guaranteed to be pretty damned uncomfortable on a man’s privates, but he would recover. As he settled himself securely on the mule’s back, he pushed the pain to the back of his mind and reached for the harness.

“Whoa! Whoa, you jugheads!” Sam shouted as he hauled back on the harness. The mules responded almost instantly to his firm touch and began to slow down.

He didn’t want them to slow too much, though. Those outlaws were still back there giving chase, so the mules needed to keep running.

Or
were
the outlaws back there? As Sam twisted his neck to look over his shoulder, he saw to his surprise that the gang had fallen back. From the looks of it, they were peeling off and abandoning the attack. A few rifle shots still cracked here and there, but the gunfire had diminished considerably.

To his great relief, Sam spotted Matt and saw that his blood brother appeared to be all right. Matt rode toward the wagon as Sam pulled back on the harness again and slowed the mules even more.

Marshal Thorpe slid from the top back onto the seat. “What happened to the driver?” he called to Sam.

“Don’t know,” Sam replied with a shake of his head. “He fell off a ways back. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive or not.”

Sam checked on the outlaws again as the mules slowed to a halt. The shooting had stopped entirely now, and the dust trailing off to the north made it clear that the outlaws were leaving.

That might be a trick, though. They could always double back and attack again. Because of that, Sam didn’t think it would be a very good idea for the wagon to remain stopped for long.

The team really needed some rest after that hard run, though, or else they might collapse. It was a double-edged sword on which the situation was perched right now.

Matt rode up, as glad to see that Sam was all right as Sam had been about him. Behind him, the surviving deputies straggled in, only four of them now.

That meant that four men had been lost in this attack. Four lives lost, more than likely, just so Joshua Shade could have his evil life snuffed out at the end of a hangrope in one place and not another. That knowledge put a bitter taste in the mouths of both Matt and Sam.

Sam slid down from the mule and retrieved the reins that had fallen earlier. He wrapped them around the brake lever while Thorpe was climbing down from the seat.

“I have to check on the prisoner,” Thorpe said. He started toward the rear of the wagon, digging for the key to the padlock that held the door closed.

Matt had been reloading his Colts, the first thing he did after any fracas. He snapped the cylinder closed on the second Colt and filled both hands. Pointing the irons at the door, he told Thorpe, “I’ll cover you, Marshal.”

“Shade, if you’re anywhere near that door, stand away from it!” Thorpe bellowed. “If you try anything, we’ll shoot to kill!”

He unlocked the padlock, pulled it loose, and stepped back as he raised the shotgun. The door swung open, revealing Joshua Shade huddled at the far end of the wagon bed. For a second, Matt thought the outlaw chief was dead, but then Shade raised his head and glared at them. His eyes were like some crazed animal’s.

“Loco as ever,” Matt said.

Thorpe gestured with the Greener’s twin barrels. “Stand up, Shade. Were you hit during all that shooting?”

“The Lord’s hand was upon me,” Shade said as he climbed to his feet. He couldn’t stand upright in the wagon, but he was able to get up far enough that it was obvious he wasn’t hurt. “He shielded me from harm.”

“If you had somebody lookin’ out for you, it was more likely the Devil,” Matt said.

“All right, I’m satisfied,” Thorpe told the prisoner. “You can sit down again.”

He closed the door and snapped the lock back into place.

Then he turned and looked at the surviving deputies, who were keeping watch in case Shade’s gang returned.

“Are the others dead?” Thorpe asked.

One of the men nodded with a stricken expression on his face. “I’m afraid so, Marshal. We checked their bodies to make sure.”

“Except for that Winslow fella,” another man added. “We didn’t find him, and I see now he ain’t on the wagon either.”

“He fell off,” Thorpe said. “You can look again while you’re rounding up the horses and loading the dead men on them.”

“You’re takin’ the bodies with you?” Matt asked.

“I’m not going to leave them for the damn coyotes, if that’s what you mean,” Thorpe snapped. “They were good men, and they died in service to the law. I’ll see to it that they’re laid to rest properly.”

“I think that’s a good idea, Marshal,” Sam said. “Matt and I will help.”

“That is, if you’ll let us go with you the rest of the way to Pancake Flats,” Matt added.

“I’ve lost half my men and it’s likely those outlaws will come back,” Thorpe said. “So I don’t really have any choice but to allow you and Two Wolves to come along, do I, Bodine?”

Matt grinned at Sam. “Always nice to be wanted, ain’t it?”

“What the hell happened?” Jeffries demanded. “You outnumbered them three to one!”

Garth fought down the impulse to pull his gun and blow a hole in the arrogant son of a bitch. “Those two hombres off to the east were Bodine and Two Wolves!” he said, although he didn’t think he owed any explanations to Jeffries. “They killed Larkin and Glenister and then hit us from the flank. I never saw anybody who could shoot like those two!”

“How many men did we lose?”

“Ten,” Garth answered bleakly. That was more than a third of the gang. “We still outnumber ’em by quite a bit, though. We’ll just regroup and go after Joshua again.”

The members of the gang were riding slowly south, following the wagon. They had picked up Jeffries and the woman and the kid, then started on the trail again.

The woman still rode double with Jeffries, holding the kid in her arms. She spoke up now, asking, “Mr. Garth, did…did you see what happened to Isaac?”

“Your husband?” Garth shook his head. “I don’t have no idea, ma’am. The dust was too thick to see much. For all I know, he’s still drivin’ that wagon with the marshal.”

“He…he didn’t do what you told him to do?”

Jeffries said, “Evidently not, or Joshua would be free now.”

“Last I saw, the marshal was still fine,” Garth confirmed.

“Good,” the woman said with a note of defiance in her voice. “I’m glad he didn’t help you. I knew he couldn’t kill a man in cold blood.”

Garth reined in and turned to frown at her. “Ma’am, you
do
know that by goin’ against us, that husband o’ yours has put your life in danger, as well as your kid’s. If he ain’t gonna help us…”

He left the rest of it unsaid, but he was sure Mrs. Winslow knew what he meant. If the pilgrim wasn’t going to cooperate, there was no need to keep his family alive.

She had the sense to turn pale and look scared at least.

“Hey, Garth,” Gonzalez said suddenly. “Somebody comin’.”

Garth turned back around and saw a man staggering across the semiarid landscape toward them. Heat haze blurred him for a moment, but then he came closer and Garth recognized him.

So did the woman. “Ike!” she cried.

“Hang on to her,” Garth growled at Jeffries. Then he spurred his horse forward, followed by Gonzalez.

Blood had sheeted down the right side of Winslow’s face, giving him a gruesome appearance. He weaved from side to side as he walked, as if he could barely stay on his feet.

Maybe he had been wounded early in the fight, Garth thought. It was even possible that he had hesitated long enough to tip off the marshal and Thorpe had shot him. The important thing was that he was still alive and they might be able to get some use out of him after all.

Winslow stopped and stood there swaying as Garth and Gonzalez reined in. “What happened?” Garth demanded as he dismounted. “You were supposed to plug that damn marshal!”

“I…I tried,” Winslow said. “I had my gun out…but then the wagon…the wagon hit a rough spot in the trail…bounced so hard it threw me off the seat…I hit my head on something…” He winced and lifted his hand toward the big gash above his right ear, then lowered it without touching the wound. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything after…after that…”

Winslow’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and he dropped to his knees. As his wife screamed, “Ike!” he pitched forward on his face.

“Hold her!” Garth yelled at Jeffries. He knelt beside Winslow and rolled the pilgrim onto his back. Winslow’s chest rose and fell jerkily, so he was still alive, but he appeared to be out cold.

“I can cut his throat if you want, Garth,” Gonzalez offered. “Then we can have some fun with the woman.”

“Not until we get Joshua back from that marshal, damn it!” Garth stood up and gestured toward the unconscious man. “We’ve got extra horses now. Throw him on one and tie him in the saddle.”

Jeffries looked over the shoulder of the sobbing Maggie Winslow, who still clutched her infant son to her. “Why do we need him? He couldn’t even do a simple thing like killing Thorpe.”

“I don’t know, but it won’t cost us anything to take him along,” Garth snapped.

He was getting sick and tired of everybody questioning his orders. Joshua had made it clear that Garth was to be in charge if anything ever happened to him, but Jeffries and Gonzalez didn’t seem to remember that, and some of the other men were starting to cast dissatisfied looks in his direction, too.

He needed to do something to remind them that he was the boss, at least for now, and bringing Winslow along was part of that.

The other part was making a daring move to show them that he could come up with a plan. He said, “We’re gonna split up.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jeffries asked. “There aren’t as many of us as there were when we started out.”

Garth knew that, and Jeffries knew he knew it, the smug varmint. Garth said, “That wagon won’t get to the railroad until close to nightfall. We’ve got time to circle around and set up an ambush like I wanted to do all along. A dozen men will do that. The others will push the wagon right into the trap we set up. This time it’ll work,” he added, hating the sound of the defensive note that crept into his voice. If he could hear it, that meant the others could, too.

But all it would take was freeing Joshua, and killing that marshal—Bodine and Two Wolves, too—to make the rest of the gang forget all about their previous failures. Garth was going to do that if he had to fight to the last breath in his body.

“You know, Marshal,” Sam said, “you didn’t seem all that surprised to see Matt and me when we showed up to help you fight off those outlaws.”

Unexpectedly, a hint of a smile appeared on Asa Thorpe’s face. “That’s because I wasn’t,” he said.

The two men were on the wagon seat, with Sam handling the reins now as the vehicle rolled south toward Pancake Flats. His horse was tied on behind the wagon. Matt had the point about a hundred yards in front, with the remaining four outriders spread out to the sides and behind the wagon.

Sam looked over at Thorpe and said, “You’re going to have to explain that.”

“I don’t have to explain anything. I work for the United States government.” Thorpe shrugged. “But I don’t suppose it would hurt anything now to admit that things worked out pretty much like I planned, at least where you and Bodine are concerned.”

“All right, now I’m
really
curious.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you two young hellions. You can’t stay away from trouble. You seek it out, even though you claim to be peace-loving hombres.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Sam said. “But close enough for government work, as they say.”

Thorpe grunted, and it was a second before Sam realized that the marshal had just laughed. Thorpe went on. “I knew that if I told you and Bodine you couldn’t come along, you’d be bound and determined to do it anyway. I figured that you’d follow along, thinking that you were putting one over on me.”

“So when the outlaws attacked, as you were sure they would, we’d be in position to hit them either from the side or from behind, taking them by surprise.”

“That’s right,” Thorpe said with a nod. “And it sort of worked out that way. We’re still here, and Shade’s still our prisoner. And we did considerable damage to the gang.”

“But not so much that they’ll give up,” Sam predicted.

Thorpe sighed. “No, I figure they’ll be back. It wouldn’t surprise me if they hit us again before we reach Pancake Flats.”

The sun was lowering in the western sky now. In another hour, it would be dark. If everything went according to plan, the wagon would reach the settlement—and the railroad—about then.

Which meant that if the outlaws wanted to stop them before that happened, another attack would come within the next hour, Sam thought.

“Why do it this way to start with?” he asked, not knowing if Thorpe would answer him or not. “I can understand why the government wants Shade to be hanged at Yuma. They can make a bigger show out of it that way.”

“You sound like you know how things like that work.”

“My father was Cheyenne,” Sam said. “His people have had to deal with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I do indeed know how petty, hidebound bureaucracies work, Marshal. I don’t expect that the Justice Department is any different.”

Thorpe grunted again, but Sam didn’t think it was a laugh this time.

After a moment, Sam went on. “Why didn’t you bring a troop of cavalry with you to escort the prisoner to Yuma? That wouldn’t be so unusual, would it?”

“No, I suppose not,” Thorpe admitted. “In fact, I thought about that, and wired the chief marshal’s office about it. I was told that no soldiers were available at the moment and that the situation with Shade was too pressing to wait until they were.” He paused. “I was also ordered to keep the involvement of local law enforcement and civilians to a minimum.”

A frown creased Sam’s forehead as he thought about what Thorpe had just said. That explained why the marshal had recruited only a minimal amount of volunteers. He was just following orders.

But why in the hell had the chief marshal given him those orders in the first place? Thorpe’s superior had to have known that trying to take Shade across Arizona Territory, with only a small group of deputies to guard him, was bound to attract rescue attempts by the crazed outlaw’s gang.

Before Sam could ponder that puzzling question any more, Matt turned his horse and rode back to the wagon. He fell in alongside the seat.

“I don’t like the looks of the country up ahead,” Matt said. “There are a couple of bluffs flankin’ the trail. Be a good spot for an ambush.”

“Can we go around them?” Thorpe asked.

Matt shrugged. “Maybe. The terrain looks pretty rugged on both sides of the trail, though. Lots of arroyos and ridges. None of ’em are too deep or too high, but they’d still be hard to get that wagon through ’em.” He thought it over and then suggested, “Better slow down and let me scout that cut between the bluffs before you go through there.”

“That sounds like a good way to get yourself shot if there
is
an ambush,” Sam said.

Matt grinned. “Won’t be the first time I’ve waltzed into a place where I might get myself shot, now will it?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Matt lifted his reins. “I’ll be back—” he began.

But before he could finish making that promise, shots blasted out from somewhere behind the wagon, and rifles crashed closer as the remaining outriders began to return the fire.