Bloody Sunday (19 page)

“Maybe I should sell the ranch,” she mused. “I could take the money and use it to start a new life somewhere. In Mexico, maybe.”

“Elston might make you an offer,” Luke suggested dryly.

“Elston! By God, I'll go back to Baltimore and put the noose around my own neck before I'll sell out to him. He made this personal when he attacked the MC. In fact, I've always thought he was responsible for Sam's death. Finn or one of those other gunmen bushwhacked him.”

“I don't know,” Luke said. “I'm thinking that maybe Whitey Singletary has been working for Elston all along without Sheriff Whittaker knowing about it. Singletary's a backshooter. I'm convinced of that.”

Glory nodded and said, “I can see that. The man's a monster.”

Luke would have agreed, but at that moment he heard something that made him sit up straight and reach out a hand to the coiled gun belt and holstered Remingtons at his side.

“What is it?” Glory asked. She was smart enough to whisper the question.

“I heard what sounded like a horseshoe hitting rock somewhere not far from here,” Luke replied, equally quietly. “I knew they might come to look for us, and I think they're here.”

He was acutely aware of his state of undress as he drew one of the revolvers and leaped to his feet. Up here in these hills, with ravines and rock spires and rugged bluffs all around, it was difficult to be sure where sounds were coming from, but Luke thought the warning noise he had heard had originated somewhere down the slope toward the canyon where he and Glory had almost died.

That would make sense, he thought. He told Glory, “Get dressed. We may have to move fast.”

They should have been moving before now. He knew that, but he had allowed his own weariness, the idyllic surroundings, and Glory's loveliness to lull him into letting his guard down. It had been a stupid move, he told himself as he set the Remington on a rock in easy reach and started pulling on his clothes, which were still slightly damp.

When he was dressed, he buckled on the gun belt and jammed his hat on his head. He had been listening intently and hadn't heard anything else, but he knew he hadn't been mistaken about the earlier sound. Someone on horseback was definitely in the vicinity.

The rider might be one of Glory's ranch hands. This was MC range, after all. But they couldn't bet on that. The man might just as easily be one of Elston's hired gun-wolves.

Luke knew there were bighorn sheep in these hills. A game trail used by the animals twisted up the slope next to the waterfall. Luke pointed to it and whispered, “We'll go that way.”

Glory looked at the trail with a dubious frown.

“Can we climb that?”

“We've climbed worse today,” Luke said. “Come on.”

With a sigh, Glory started up. Luke followed her. The going was easier than it looked like it would be, although they had to reach down and grasp handholds among the rocks so often that they might as well have been crawling.

They reached the top of the slope and saw that the trail followed the creek as it wound its way down from the upper elevations. The stream had to be spring-fed, Luke thought. These were just hills, not mountains, so there were no snowcapped peaks and no snowmelt to feed it.

The going was a little easier here. Every few minutes, Luke called a halt so he could listen again for sounds of pursuit, but other than that he kept them moving at a steady pace. He didn't hear anything, but he knew that didn't mean they were safe. The men who might be after them were experienced hunters . . . especially when it came to hunting other human beings.

During one of the pauses, Luke said, “It'll be dark in another few hours. If we can give them the slip until then, we ought to be safe. Can you find your way back to the ranch in the dark?”

“I don't know,” Glory said. “Probably. Maybe. I've never had to navigate by the stars.”

“I have,” Luke told her. “We'll work together and figure it out.”

She smiled at him and said, “I think I'm very lucky that you came hunting for me, Luke. Who would have thought that things would work out this way?”

“It's not what I had in mind when I rode into the valley,” he admitted. “But life seldom works out the way we plan.”

“I've been thinking.... What if the rider you heard was one of my men? Maybe instead of running away, we should be signaling for help.”

He shook his head and said, “The same thought crossed my mind. But we can't risk it. There's an even better chance it's Elston's men looking for us.”

“I suppose you're right,” Glory said with a sigh. “I'm just getting tired. The past few days have been—”

As if to punctuate her unfinished sentence, a rifle cracked somewhere not far away, and the bullet struck the rock where she was sitting, missing her by mere inches before it ricocheted away with a sinister whine.

Glory let out a startled cry. Luke grabbed her and swung her behind a stone outcropping. It didn't provide much cover, but it was better than nothing.

“Stay there,” he told her as he knelt behind a scrubby juniper. “Press your body back against the rock as much as you can.”

“Luke . . .”

He heard the desperation in her voice as he twisted his head back and forth, searching for the source of the shot. He thought it had come from somewhere above them, which was a bad thing. That would mean some of the pursuers had gotten around them somehow and had been waiting for them. It was possible Elston's men knew these hills better than Glory did and certainly better than he did.

“We'll be all right,” he told her. He made his tone as reassuring as possible.

“You don't know that,” she said from a few feet away where she had her back pressed against the rock. “Luke, if we're about to die, I want to be certain that you believe me. About Alfred and Hugh, I mean. You weren't just saying that.”

“I believe you. You're not a killer.”

“That's right, I'm not. And if you come out of this alive and I don't make it—”

“No point in thinking about that,” he broke in.

“Yes, there is,” she insisted. “If I don't make it and you do, I want you to promise me that you'll let the authorities know who really killed my husband.”

“They likely won't believe me,” Luke said.

“I don't care. I just want the truth to be out there, whether anyone else believes it or not.” Her voice softened as she added, “Right here and now, it's enough that you do.”

Luke nodded. He said, “I give you my word. But it's not going to come to that—”

Another shot blasted, closer this time. A slug chewed splinters from the tree bark and sprayed them across his face. He felt the sting of one as it cut his cheek, but the brim of his hat protected his eyes.

He twisted to his left, saw two gunmen leaping from rock to rock as they charged down the slope at him. The Colts in their hands spouted flame. Luke had filled his hands with the Remingtons when he took cover. He lifted the left one and fired as another bullet whipped past his ear and struck the tree.

His shot caught one of the men in mid-air and slammed him backwards as blood flew from his chest. Luke fired again, this time at the second man. That bullet cut through the man's thigh and dropped him to the ground. He hit hard, striking his head against a rock as he landed, and didn't move again.

Those two attackers weren't alone. Luke threw himself down as another bullet sang over his head. This shot came from below. He rolled over, spotted at least three men among the rocks and trees along the creek bank. Lying on his belly, he lifted both Remingtons and began triggering them.

Firing up or down a slope was tricky, but the disadvantage applied equally. Luke missed with his first couple of shots, but then he tagged one of the gun-wolves as the man tried to dart from one tree to another. The bullet shattered the man's shoulder and dropped him to the ground, howling in pain.

Luke's ears rang from the guns going off. A whiff of powder smoke drifted to his nose. He shifted over so the juniper's trunk shielded more of his body as a bullet plowed into the ground a couple of feet to his right. The two remaining attackers had taken cover behind some rocks, and all he could do was wait for them to show themselves again.

“Luke, look out!” Glory cried.

His head jerked to the right. Another of Elston's men was creeping along the slope toward them from that direction. Now that he had been discovered, the man's beard-stubbled face contorted in a snarl and he opened fire with the revolver in his hand.

Luke felt the wind-rip of a slug past his ear as the Remington in his right hand roared and bucked against his palm. The gunman doubled over as the slug punched into his guts. He dropped his weapon and collapsed, and as he hit the ground he began to tumble down the slope. His fall came to an abrupt end as he landed in the creek with a splash. He lay facedown in the shallow, fast-moving stream, and the water around him began to take on a reddish tinge.

Rocks clattering down from above warned Luke that more trouble was on the way from that direction. He rolled over and saw a man about twenty feet up the slope from where he and Glory had stopped. The man had a Winchester in his hands. He jerked the rifle to his shoulder and opened up with it as soon as he realized he'd been spotted.

Luke had to roll swiftly to the side as the rifle rounds smacked into the ground where he had been lying. He fired both Remingtons and saw the rifleman rock back as the bullets hammered into his chest. He dropped the Winchester, pitched forward, and slid face-first down the slope about ten feet before coming to a stop.

The rifle landed a little closer than that to Luke. He holstered his guns and scrambled to his feet, then lunged for the Winchester. His movements exposed him to the fire of the men farther down the slope. Hot lead sizzled through the air around his head. He snatched the Winchester from the ground and worked the weapon's lever as he went down in a twisting fall.

In his eagerness to kill, one of the men downslope had stepped out from behind the boulder where he had taken cover earlier. Luke drilled him with the first shot from the repeater. Luke fired again and forced the other man to duck even lower behind the rock that shielded him.

“Hold it, mister! Drop the rifle or I'll kill the woman!”

Luke wasn't the sort of man to despair, but the harshly shouted command struck a pang in him. He turned and saw that one of Elston's hired killers had reached Glory. He stood in front of her now, pointing a gun at her as a triumphant leer stretched across his ugly face.

That leer vanished as two sharp cracks turned his face into a red ruin. He must not have realized that Glory was armed. She had gotten her derringer out while he focused his attention on Luke, and he probably never knew what hit him as she fired both barrels at him. The gun in his hand went off as his finger involuntarily jerked the trigger, but he had already fallen backwards and the bullet screamed harmlessly into the sky.

Luke couldn't see her very well from where he was, but she peeked around the outcropping at him as she reloaded the derringer with cartridges from a pocket in her riding skirt. She looked pale and shaken, but she called to him, “I'm all right, Luke.”

He waved a hand to let her know he heard her, then motioned for her to get back under cover as much as she could. Bodies littered the slope around them, but one of the gunmen remained alive and was still a threat. He might have more friends nearby, too.

“Hey, Jensen!” the man called. “You hear me?”

Luke scooted over behind the juniper again. The tree's trunk was scarred all over now from the bullets that had struck it.

“I hear you,” Luke said, “but I doubt if I'm interested in anything you have to say!”

“Don't be so sure,” the gunman replied from behind the boulder where he had taken cover. “You can still get out of this alive. All we really want is the woman.”

“You think I believe you'll let me walk away after I've killed so many of you?”

The man made a disparaging sound and said, “Hell, we're all professionals here, ain't we? Anybody who sells his gun for a livin' knows he's gonna catch a bullet sooner or later. That's all part of it. The job is to bring the woman to Elston, and that's all I really care about.”

“I thought Elston wanted us both dead.”

“Orders have changed,” the gunman said, and Luke could practically see the man shrugging. “Now he wants her alive. You, on the other hand, nobody gives a damn about one way or the other. Let me have Miz MacCrae, and you can ride away from here. Be stubborn about it and you'll die.”

Luke frowned as he thought rapidly about what the man had just said. Now that he thought about it, it was true that all of the attackers' fire had been directed at him, not Glory, as if they were trying to keep her alive. And the man who had gotten the drop on her could have just blown her brains out then and there if her death was still the goal. Instead, that unlucky hombre had used her as a bargaining chip to try to get Luke to surrender.

Maybe there was some truth to what the gunman behind the boulder was saying.

“Better make up your mind, Jensen,” the man called after a few moments of silence. “Our patience ain't gonna last forever.”

“Seems to me like you just don't want to fight anymore,” Luke goaded him. “You've seen how all your pards have wound up either dead or shot to pieces.”

He heard the man spit.

“I told you, they ain't my pards. We just work together, that's all. Worked together, I should say. I won't deny, you are one big skookum he-wolf when it comes to killin'. But there's a dozen more men combin' these hills for you, and they're probably on their way here right now. They have to've heard all that shootin'.”

That was right, too, Luke thought. The odds facing him and Glory weren't going to do anything except get worse as time passed. Maybe the moment had come to try some sort of subterfuge.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Throw all your guns out where I can see 'em! Then you step out with your hands in plain sight. Don't try for a hideout gun or anything like that. Like I told you, I don't have any real reason to keep you alive except to make things a mite simpler.”

“Luke?” Glory whispered in a tone of disbelief. She had to be shocked that he was apparently considering betraying her.

Holding his hand where the man downslope couldn't see it, Luke motioned back and forth, hoping Glory would understand that he was telling her to disregard everything he had said and was about to say.

“All right,” he called. “You've got a deal. Hold your fire now, while I throw these guns out.”

He was going to match his speed with one of his derringers against the gunman. The man was going to be on the lookout for a trick, but Luke still thought he had a good chance....

Glory's scream blasted that hope into smithereens. Luke heard something scrape in the rocks as he started to turn quickly toward her. A flashing shape above him told him that the gunman's “negotiation” had been nothing more than a distraction while some of the other killers crept down the slope behind him. A heavy weight crashed into Luke and drove him back against the juniper.