The Loner: Dead Man’s Gold (15 page)

“Son of a
bitch
!” Thomas Novak grated between clenched teeth. “You weren’t supposed to shoot the girl, Wesley!”

The snake-eyed youngster turned his head and glanced at Novak. “I didn’t,” he said. “I was aiming at the hombre in the barn. Didn’t come anywhere close to the girl.”

“Maybe one of the others winged her. I hope she’s not hurt too bad. That fella Fortunato won’t like it if she is.”

“Wait a minute,” Wesley said as he and Novak crouched at one corner of the ruins. “She’s on her feet again.”

Novak was glad to see that. He watched as Dr. Dare limped into the barn. He hated to let her get under cover like that, but there was no way they could stop her without shooting her, and Fortunato had made it clear that the redheaded young woman had to survive, along with the priest. That made the job a lot harder…but they would be getting well paid for it, Novak supposed.

Bayne and Hobart had gone to the other end of the old building. Green was still coming up with the pack animals and the extra horses, and Donaldson was with him, nursing the wounded arm that had gotten ventilated while they were chasing their quarry.

And somewhere back there were Count Fortunato and that prissy, smart-ass servant of his. Novak figured they would stay well out of the line of fire and show up after the fighting was over.

The next couple of minutes proved him wrong. He heard hoofbeats and looked over his shoulder to see Fortunato approaching the ruins at a gallop, trailed by a wildly bouncing Arturo. The two men hauled back on their reins and brought their horses to a stop, Arturo shouting frantically, “Whoa! Whoa! ” as he did so.

Fortunato dismounted and came over to the corner where Novak and Wesley waited. Arturo remained in the saddle, slumped forward over the horn as he clutched it and tried to catch his breath.

“Where are they?” Fortunato demanded.

“In that old barn over yonder,” Novak replied as he inclined his head in that direction. “They were able to get the wagon in there before we could stop them.”

“So they have plenty of water and supplies.”

Novak shrugged.

“This is a standoff, then,” Fortunato said, anger edging into his tone. “I had hoped that you could prevent them from reaching shelter.”

“I hoped so, too,” Novak said. He kept a tight rein on his temper and told himself not to let the count’s arrogant attitude get under his skin. “But they saw us coming up behind them too soon. We just didn’t have time to catch them before they got here.”

“What about Dr. Dare and the priest? Are they both all right?”

Novak hesitated. If he told Fortunato that the woman might be wounded, the Italian would probably fly off the handle. Anyway, Dr. Dare had gotten up and hustled on into the old barn under her own power. She’d been limping, but other than that she’d appeared to be all right. If she was injured, chances were that it wasn’t too bad.

“They’re fine as far as I know,” he said, then glanced at Wesley to make sure the young killer wouldn’t contradict him. Wesley was watching the barn, though, and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the conversation between Novak and Fortunato.

The count grunted. “Good. It’s possible they may have written down what I need to know, but we can’t depend on that. I need them alive.”

“What about the other hombre?” Novak asked. “I know you said before that you were curious about him, but he wounded one of my men at long range. He may be too good with a gun. We may have to kill him to take him down.”

“Do what must be done,” Fortunato said. “My ultimate goal is much more important than any curiosity I may have about that stranger.”

Novak nodded. “All right. We’ll have to figure out a way to smoke them out of there. Right now, it’s a standoff, like you said, Count.”

From horseback, Arturo said, “If I might…make a suggestion?” He was still a little breathless from the hard ride.

Fortunato and Novak both turned to look at the servant in surprise.

Arturo went on, “It appears that only Dr. Dare and the young man were firing at you and your men, Mr. Novak. I doubt if the priest’s moral code will allow him to use firearms.”

“So?” Novak said.

“That means they can only defend two sides of their shelter at once. It has four sides, does it not?”

Novak frowned. “You mean we should split up and come at them from all four directions at once?”

“It strikes me as a strategem that would have considerable chances for success. All you need to do is get one man into the barn so that he can kill the stranger, and then Dr. Dare and the priest will have no choice but to surrender.”

Fortunato said, “You underestimate Dr. Dare, Arturo. As you said, she was using a gun, too.”

“But surely she would be disheartened by her ally’s demise. If she has an advanced university degree in history, she must be intelligent enough to know that she stands no chance of defending herself and Father Jardine successfully without the help of their unknown friend.”

Novak rubbed his lantern jaw in thought. “I don’t much like the idea of splitting up…”

“A general dividing his forces to attack from more than one direction is a time-honored military tactic,” Arturo insisted. “I’ve read a number of books on military strategy.”

Novak looked at Fortunato. “What do you think, Count?”

“We have them outnumbered by four to one,” Fortunato said. “It seems foolish not to take advantage of that superiority.”

“Four to one? I make it three to one, once Green and Donaldson get here.”

Fortunato shook his head. “No, there will be eight of us if Arturo and I join in the attack.”

“Wait just a moment, Excellency!” Arturo exclaimed. “I never said that
I
should take part, let alone yourself—”

A wolfish grin spread across Fortunato’s face as he said, “No, you’re right, Arturo. Splitting our forces is indeed a good tactic. Now get that gun of yours out, because you’re going to get to see firsthand how it works.”

The Kid’s heart had leaped into his throat when he saw Annabelle go down. Despite knowing that it was the wrong thing to do, his instincts were about to send him dashing into the open to help her, when she looked up and called to him, “I’m all right.”

Then she scrambled to her feet and ran into the barn, although she was limping rather heavily and wincing as she hurried inside.

The Kid reached out, caught hold of her arm, and pulled her into the shelter of the wall beside him. “What happened?” he asked her. “Are you hit?”

Annabelle shook her head as she leaned against the adobe wall. “I just tripped, damn it!” She glanced over at the priest. “Sorry, Father.”

“It’s all right,” Father Jardine said. “I understand how upset you are, Doctor, and I’m quite certain the Lord does, too.”

“I twisted my ankle when I fell,” Annabelle went on. “I feel so stupid.”

“No harm done…except to your ankle,” The Kid told her. “When I saw you go down, I figured you’d been shot. That came as quite a surprise, the way they’ve been trying so hard to keep that from happening.”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Fortunato’s men were shooting at me, not you,” The Kid said. “They were being careful not to get any lead anywhere close to you, even though you were shooting at them. The count doesn’t want anything happening to you.”

Annabelle thought it over, then nodded. “No, I suppose not. He doesn’t know exactly where to look for the candlestick, like Father Jardine and I do. That means we’re safe, for the time being.” Her eyes widened as something occurred to her. “I’ll bet he was shooting at
you
that day. He wasn’t trying to shoot me at all!”

The Kid nodded. “Yeah, I reckon you can bet your hat on that one. I thought about that, too.”

“So you nearly got me killed!”

“After saving you from those other varmints who were trying to capture you,” The Kid pointed out.

“Well…there is that,” Annabelle admitted.

“And how long do you think you and the padre would live if Fortunato got his hands on what he’s after?”

“Not long. Our usefulness would be at an end then, wouldn’t it?”

“It sure would,” The Kid said.

“Then the thing to do is stay out of his hands. The best way to accomplish that is by killing him.”

“Doctor!” Father Jardine said.

“I’m sorry, Father, but it’s true. Anyway, how many deaths has the Church been responsible for over the centuries, in order to accomplish what was thought to be a greater good? How many died in the Inquisition?”

“I’m not going to have this argument with you,” Father Jardine said stiffly. “The things that were done in the past were done for good reasons.”

The Kid couldn’t think of a reason good enough for tearing somebody apart on the rack or burning anybody at the stake. He fully believed that some hombres were flat-out evil enough they deserved to die, but a hangrope, or better yet, a bullet in the brain would do the job just fine.

But like the priest said, those were arguments for another time. Right now, they had to concentrate on staying alive.

“It’s fine to talk about killing Fortunato,” he said, “but how are we going to do that? They have us pinned down here, and outnumbered, to boot.”

“Yes, but I know enough about Fortunato to know that he’s not a patient man,” Annabelle said. “They could try to wait us out, but they’re bound to know that we have plenty of supplies and water. We may have more than they do. So a siege isn’t going to work. They have to try to take advantage of their superior numbers.”

The Kid agreed with her. Those thoughts had started to form in his mind, too.

“So you think they’ll attack?” he said.

“That’s right. I realize you know more about this sort of thing than I do, Mr. Morgan, but that makes sense to me.”

The Kid nodded. “To me, too. That means we’re going to have to move fast.”

“What are we going to do?”

The Kid looked around at the crumbling old barn. With no roof, and with three of the four walls having partially collapsed, they didn’t have much cover except for the mostly intact wall right in front of them. He knew what he would do if he were ramrodding the bunch of gun-wolves Fortunato had hired.

“They’ll split up and come at us from all four directions at once,” he said. “We won’t be able to stop them when they do.”

Annabelle paled, making the band of freckles across her nose stand out more. “You’re saying it’s hopeless?”

The Kid shook his head. “No, I’m saying we’re going to have to do something they don’t expect, and we need to do it fast.” He looked over at Father Jardine. “Father, if I give you my rifle, will you—”

He stopped short as the priest began shaking his head.

“Blast it, let me finish!” The Kid said. “Will you use it to fire over their heads, to make them think that I’m still here?”

Father Jardine frowned. “I don’t like the idea of using a firearm at all, but I suppose I could do that.”

“Where are you going to be?” Annabelle asked The Kid. “You’re not going to abandon us, are you?”

“You know better than that,” The Kid snapped. “But I’m not going to be where those hombres think I am.”

He left the Winchester with Father Jardine, who handled the rifle gingerly. Nobody was going to mistake the way he used it for the way The Kid would handle the weapon, at least not for very long.

But they didn’t need the ruse to succeed for very long, he thought as he slid over the crumbling rear wall of the barn and ran in a low crouch toward a clump of mesquite and cottonwood about fifty yards away.

The Kid had been keeping an eye on the old homestead and knew that all of Fortunato’s men were still hidden behind it. The gunfire had stopped as each side tensely watched the other.

But that meant Fortunato’s men couldn’t see what was happening directly behind the barn. They couldn’t see him going over the wall and making his way into the concealment of the trees and brush. When he reached the cottonwoods, he turned and dropped to the ground so that he was looking back toward the barn.

If the boss gunman split his force, as The Kid fully expected him to do, the killers would circle wide around the old barn and then attack from all four directions at once. Would they launch their attack on horseback or on foot?

The Kid didn’t know. Either way, he would have to deal with it. One thing was for sure—they wouldn’t be expecting him to be out there.

As that thought went through his head, Annabelle and Father Jardine opened fire again from inside the barn. The Kid had told them to position themselves on either side of the door and just take potshots at the house so the gunmen would know there were still two defenders in there. Chances were, they wouldn’t suspect that Father Jardine was one of them.

The priest was worried that he might accidentally hit one of their enemies with his shots. The Kid figured that was highly unlikely, but he would consider it a stroke of good luck if it happened. Father Jardine wouldn’t, but that was his problem.

The Kid’s problem was keeping all three of them alive until they found what Annabelle and the padre were after…and beyond that, too.

As he watched, he saw dust rising on the other side of the old homestead. He wasn’t sure what caused that, unless Fortunato’s men had brought some extra horses with them and one of the hired guns was bringing them up now. The Kid heard hoofbeats and took that as an indication that his guess was correct.

But the dust continued to rise, and he still heard horses running. What in blazes was going on over there? he wondered with a puzzled frown.

There was a hot wind out of the south, as there nearly always was at that time of year in the hellish wasteland, and as The Kid watched, the dust cloud continued to grow and began to drift toward the barn.

The tricky sons of bitches!
he thought. They were running their horses around and around to raise that cloud of dust, knowing that the wind would carry it over the barn and obscure the vision of the defenders. That would allow Fortunato’s men to split up and come at the ruins from different directions without being seen. Somebody in that bunch knew how to use his brain.

The Kid could only hope that having the element of surprise on his side would be enough to keep the odds from being overpowering.

Annabelle and Father Jardine continued to fire their rifles inside the barn as the dust drifted over it, making it hard for The Kid to see them anymore. He knew they would be able to see even less. A moment later, two men darted into view from his right, carrying guns and angling toward the back of the barn.

Colt in hand, he stood up and called, “Hey! ”

The men skidded to a halt and turned toward him, alarm etched on their hardbitten, beard-stubbled faces. They swung their guns around.

That was as much chance as The Kid gave them. More chance than hired killers deserved. He fired, putting a slug in the chest of the nearest gunman, then switched his aim and triggered twice more at the second man, whose well-honed reflexes allowed him to get a shot of his own off before The Kid’s bullets ripped into his body. The slug whipped past The Kid’s head and thudded into the trunk of a cottonwood behind him.

Both gunmen were down, writhing in pain as blood welled from their wounds and life fled from their bodies. The Kid ran forward. He scooped up one of the fallen guns and kicked the other well out of reach of the man who had dropped it. Then he cut to his left to meet the attack that had to be coming from that direction. Annabelle and Father Jardine would have to hold the others off for a few minutes.

The rest of the hired gunmen had waited for a shot to serve as a signal for the attack to begin, as a volley of shots thundered through the air, the reports coming from several directions at once. The Kid reached the rear corner of one of the collapsed walls, dropped to a knee beside it, and leveled the guns in his hands. Two shapes loomed out of the dust cloud, flame gouting from the muzzles of their guns. The Kid pressed the triggers. The irons bucked and roared as he fired.

One of the men spun off his feet as The Kid’s bullets pounded into him. The other stumbled but stayed on his feet. He snapped a shot at The Kid that struck the adobe wall and sprayed chips of it into The Kid’s face. That made him duck and hold his fire for a second, and that was long enough for the man to turn and retreat. His figure, blurred by the dust in the air, disappeared.

The Kid didn’t like it that one of the enemy had gotten away, but there was nothing he could do about it. At that moment, from inside the old barn, Annabelle cried desperately, “Kid!”

He vaulted over the crumbling wall and ran toward the sound of that frantic cry. Dust still blew over the ruins, making it hard to see. He made out a couple of struggling figures and realized that Annabelle was fighting with someone. The man wrenched the rifle out of her hands and shoved her to the ground, then spun toward The Kid.

For a split-second, the air cleared enough for The Kid to get a glimpse of a young, cruel face with dark, flint-like eyes. Then three shots roared out, all of them coming at the same instant so that they sounded like one.

The young killer staggered to the side, the crimson flower of a bloodstain spreading on his shirt front. He tried to lift his gun, but before he could pull the trigger, The Kid and Annabelle both fired again. The bullets drove into the gunman’s chest and knocked him backward off his feet.

The man had taken the rifle away from Annabelle, but she still had the Colt Lightning, and the revolver was in her hand. She had used it to help gun down the young killer. The Kid reached her side and dropped the empty gun in his left hand so he could take hold of her arm and help her to her feet. She leaned against him, panting from fear and exertion.

The Kid’s eyes darted around, searching for his next target. He didn’t see anything except the swirling dust.

“Are you hit?” he asked Annabelle.

“No, I’m all right. What about you?”

“I’m fine. Where’s the padre?”

“The last time I saw him, he was still over by the entrance.”

The Kid turned in that direction. The dust was beginning to clear slightly, so he could make out the opening where double doors would have hung if the barn had ever been completed. He didn’t see Father Jardine anywhere around it. Alarm leaped through him.

“He’s not there,” he told Annabelle.

“What?” she gasped.

The Kid pushed her against the adobe wall and said, “Stay here, and keep the wall at your back. I’ll find him.”

Knowing her personality, he halfway expected her to argue, but she just called, “Be careful, Kid,” as he ran toward the entrance.

He was pretty sure they had accounted for four of their enemies. He didn’t know how many that left, but from what he had seen of the group earlier, he thought there couldn’t be more than another four or five of them, and at least one of them was wounded. He and Annabelle had cut the enemy in half—but they were still outnumbered.

“Padre!” The Kid called as he came up to the entrance. “Father Jardine!”

No answer came back.

The Kid leaned against the wall and checked his gun. He thumbed fresh cartridges into the cylinder to replace the expended ones. Then, moving fast, he went out of the barn in a low crouch and swept the Colt from side to side.

He didn’t see anything, but he heard something.

Hoofbeats.

It sounded like Fortunato’s men were leaving.

There was only one explanation that made any sense, and The Kid didn’t like it one damned bit. He ran toward the homestead where he and his companions had first taken shelter. No gunshots met him, but he still wasn’t completely convinced this wasn’t a trap.

He reached the building and pressed his back against the wall, holding the gun up beside his ear. He listened but didn’t hear anything except the faint sigh of the wind and the fading sound of hoofbeats to the west. He edged along the wall until he came to the doorway, then stopped to listen again. Still nothing anywhere close. Silence hung over the abandoned homestead. The Kid turned and started to step through the doorway.

But then some instinct warned him, and even as alarm bells sounded in his mind, he knew he had inherited that trait from Frank Morgan. No man could live such a dangerous life as The Drifter for so long and not have an uncanny, almost supernatural ability to sense danger. Without really thinking about what he was doing, The Kid reached up with his free hand, snatched his hat off his head, and sent it sailing through the opening in front of him.

A gun blasted to his left as the taut nerves of the man waiting there to bushwhack him snapped and caused him to fire at the hat. The Kid had followed the Stetson in a rolling dive that brought him to a stop on his belly, facing the man who’d tried to ambush him. Tilting the barrel of the Colt upward, he slammed two swift shots into the bushwhacker, driving him back against the adobe wall behind him. The man hung there for a moment, eyes wide with shock and pain, as the gun in his hand slipped out of his nerveless fingers and thudded to the sandy ground.

Then the man slid down the wall, leaving a bloody smear on the adobe, and came to rest in a sitting position against it. His head drooped forward, but his eyes were still open. The Kid came quickly to his feet and hurried over to the dying man. The bloody froth on the man’s lips told The Kid that his bullets had punctured the man’s lungs, and the hombre would soon drown in his own blood.

But he wasn’t dead yet. The Kid kicked the fallen gun out of reach, then knelt beside the man, took hold of his shock of white hair, and pulled his head up. The man had the weathered face of an old-timer. There was a fresh bloodstain on his side, and The Kid figured this was the man he had wounded a few minutes earlier. The others had left him there to try an ambush while they rode off.

Leaning close, The Kid said, “Fortunato’s got the priest, doesn’t he?”

The man blinked watery blue eyes and looked surprised. “You know about…Fortunato?”

“Damn right I do,” The Kid said.

“Who…who are you?”

“Never mind that. Just answer my question. Does Fortunato have Father Jardine?”

“Why should I…tell you anything?”

“Because I’ll give you some water and make you comfortable while you’re waiting to die,” The Kid said. “That’s all anybody can do for you now, mister.”

“You can…go to hell.” A harsh laugh bubbled from the man’s bloody lips. “I’ll be…waitin’ there…for you.”

The Kid’s mouth tightened in a grim line. “Shot the way you are, it’s going to take you a long time to die, mister,” he said. He put the muzzle of the Colt against the man’s right knee. “You can spend it in a lot more pain than you have to, if that’s the way you want it.”

The man’s eyes widened even more. “You…you wouldn’t…”

“You’ve got two knees,” The Kid pointed out. “And two elbows and ankles and wrists—”

“You son of a bitch! You snake-blooded bastard!” The man leaned forward and coughed, spewing more blood over his shirt front. “Yeah, Novak grabbed…the priest…Fortunato said…he could tell ’em where to go…Said…they’ll get there…first…”

The Kid had already figured that out, but hearing it put into words just made the situation seem even worse. He took the gun away from the man’s knee and slid it back into leather.

The man blinked up at him. “How about that water…you promised m—”

His head fell forward again. The Kid didn’t bother raising it. The man was dead.

Annabelle said, “You told him he would take a long time to die.”

The Kid jerked his head around and saw her standing behind him, the Lightning in her hand. “What are you doing here?” he asked her. “I told you to stay in the barn.”

“I heard shots, and you didn’t come back. I had to see if you were all right.”

He straightened to his feet. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You threatened to shoot that man in the knee.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to get him to talk, and I knew he didn’t have much time left. He was hurt too bad to realize that.”

“So you lied to him. About how long he had to live, and about threatening to shoot him again.”

“Yeah, whatever you say.” The Kid stepped away from the body and picked up the hat he had tossed through the opening to draw the bushwhacker’s fire. As he settled it on his head, he went on, “You heard what he said, about Fortunato and the others capturing Father Jardine?”

She nodded. “What are we going to do, Mr. Morgan?”

“Only one thing we can do,” The Kid said as he walked out of the homestead and started looking around. He hoped that Fortunato’s men had left a horse here for the old-timer. If they hadn’t, then Annabelle would have to ride one of the horses from the wagon team.

She limped after him and demanded, “Well, are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?”

“Does the padre know how to find the stuff that old German hid?”

“We’ve discussed it. He knows what landmarks to look for. I still have all the notes I took when I was reading through those old documents in Mexico City, though.”

The Kid nodded. “Maybe that’ll give us a little bit of an edge. We’ll need it…because the only way to save Father Jardine and keep Fortunato from getting those artifacts is to find them first.”