‘‘Is there anything at all Stoddard won’t stoop to in order to get what he wants?’’ Grayson asked at breakfast the next morning.
‘‘I reckon we’ll find out today,’’ Fargo said.
A grim silence greeted his comment. They all knew what he meant. Since it was possible they would reach San Francisco by the end of the day, this would be Stoddard’s last chance to stop them.
A narrow trail ran along the top of the cliffs around Monterey Bay, Fargo recalled from previous visits to the area. A man on horseback could negotiate the path without too much trouble, but a stagecoach was a different matter. Sandy would have to use great care in handling the reins, especially on some of the hairpin turns.
As the coach pulled out after breakfast, Fargo couldn’t shake the feeling that they had been herded into taking this route. Maybe the ambush on the road to San Juan Bautista hadn’t been meant to stop them. Maybe Stoddard’s goal had been to force them onto this trail instead, where he would have an even easier time getting rid of them.
Fargo didn’t know what Stoddard’s plans were, but he rode with the Sharps across the saddle in front of him, ready for trouble.
If anything, the scenery was even more spectacular here than farther south. To Fargo’s left, the cliffs plunged a couple of hundred feet to jagged rocks where the waves crashed and foamed. To his right rose a steep, rocky slope dotted with pine trees. A brisk updraft blew from the sea, bringing with it the smell of brine. God had done some mighty fine work here along the coast of California. Fargo would have enjoyed riding through these parts, if he hadn’t known that it was only a matter of time before Stoddard struck again. He was afraid that today, with Stoddard still on the loose, God’s back might be turned.
They were halfway around the bay when a low rumbling sound made Fargo stiffen in the saddle. He twisted and looked up at the hillside, where a plume of dust was beginning to rise. Instantly, he realized what was going on and knew that they were all in deadly danger.
‘‘Avalanche!’’ he shouted at Sandy as he wheeled the Ovaro around. ‘‘Avalanche!’’
The coach was about a hundred yards behind him. Sandy had heard the rumble and knew what it meant, too. The trail was too narrow for the coach to turn around, at least not without taking a lot of time to do it. Sandy’s only option was to whip up the horses to their top speed and try to outrace the rocks now tumbling down the face of the hill toward the trail.
If he failed, the avalanche would sweep the coach right off the top of the cliff into the ocean. No one on board would survive the fall.
Fargo watched, every muscle in his body tense, as Sandy sent the coach careening along the narrow trail. A single misstep by one of the horses would pile up the team, and that would probably result in the coach going over the edge, too. Behind the racing vehicle came Jimmy with the lead rope attached to the extra horses gripped in his hand. He couldn’t get past the coach on the trail so he followed it.
Fargo didn’t think the youngster would abandon Angie anyway, even if it had been possible. The girl was inside the coach with Belinda and Grayson. By now they had to have realized what was going on, and they were probably terrified. They were trapped there, unable to do anything to save their own lives.
The rumble had turned into a roar, and the plume of dust was now a rolling cloud. Fargo saw trees snap and go down under the power of the avalanche. The stagecoach seemed to be traveling in slow motion as it came toward Fargo with the rockslide closing in from above.
A small rock about the size of a carpetbag bounded through the air and struck the roof of the coach a glancing blow. It bounced off and kept going. That was the vanguard of the avalanche. That was how close it came to destroying the vehicle.
Then the rest of the hellish storm of stone swept on past, mere yards behind the stagecoach.
‘‘Jimmy,’’ Fargo grated. He couldn’t see past the coach because of the boiling dust cloud, but Jimmy had been behind it, and now there was nothing back there but the avalanche.
Sandy’s bearded face was ashen under its tan as the jehu brought the coach to a rocking, swaying halt a few yards short of where Fargo sat on the stallion. As soon as the coach stopped, one of the doors flew open and Angie leaped out. ‘‘Jimmy!’’ she shrieked as she stared back at the destruction behind them. ‘‘Oh, God, Jimmy!’’
The roar was dying away now as the avalanche lost force. The trail was blocked by tons of rock that would take a week or more to clear away. Angie looked at it and wailed, ‘‘Jimmy!’’
A tentative voice came from the back of the coach. ‘‘Y-yeah, Angie?’’
She had covered her face with her hands as wretched sobs racked her body, but she stopped and jerked her head up as she heard those words. Fargo was surprised, too, but a grin spread over his face as Jimmy’s head rose above the roof of the coach at the back of the vehicle. He was clinging to the rear boot, and Fargo guessed that he must have leaped from his horse onto the back of the stage when he saw that he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the crushing rocks any other way.
‘‘Jimmy!’’ Angie cried again, but this time her voice was filled with joy. As the young man dropped to the ground, she ran to him and threw herself into his arms. She said, ‘‘Jimmy, I thought you were dead!’’
‘‘No, but I sure didn’t miss it by much,’’ he said as he embraced her and gave her an awkward pat on the back. His eyes widened in shock as she lifted her head and pressed her mouth to his in a passionate kiss.
Belinda and Grayson climbed out of the coach and smiled at the reunion going on. Grayson’s smile vanished, though, as he looked back down the trail and surveyed the damage done by the avalanche.
‘‘What about the other horses?’’ he asked.
‘‘Gone, I reckon,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘One more thing Stoddard has to answer for. But losing them won’t keep us from getting to San Francisco. The team that’s already hitched up can take us the rest of the way if it has to.’’
Grayson nodded. ‘‘Yes, you’re right. And blocking the trail like that won’t have any effect on the stagecoach line, either, since it won’t run through here on a regular basis. Stoddard has failed again.’’
‘‘And I reckon he knows that by now,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘All that dust will have hidden us from his men for a while, but enough of it has blown away by now so that they must have seen we’re still alive. We’d better get moving before—’’
Too late,
he realized a second later as a rifle blasted and a bullet tore through the air next to his ear.
They were already under attack again.
13
‘‘Everybody behind the coach!’’ Fargo shouted as he threw himself out of the saddle. He slapped the Ovaro on the rump and sent the stallion galloping along the trail, out of the line of fire.
Given their situation, trying to flee would do no good. The riflemen hidden in the trees on the slope above them would be able to pick them off one by one, because the coach couldn’t go very fast on this narrow, twisting trail.
Anyway, even if they had tried to escape, the first one the bushwhackers shot would be Sandy, halting the stagecoach again.
Fargo brought the Sharps to his shoulder and fired at a puff of powder smoke he spotted on the hillside. He didn’t know if he hit anything, but at least he was putting up a fight. Meanwhile, the other five people scrambled behind the big Concord coach. More shots came from the slope, and bullets thudded into the vehicle.
Fargo ducked behind the team and moved in a crouching run toward the coach. As he did, he heard the meaty sound of lead striking flesh behind him, and one of the horses screamed in pain. A bitter taste filled Fargo’s mouth as he realized that the gunmen planned to kill all the members of the team. That would strand the stagecoach here and accomplish Hiram Stoddard’s goal of preventing it from reaching San Francisco.
Fargo drew his Colt and sprayed the hillside with slugs, hoping that would force Stoddard’s men to hunt some cover, and buy him and his companions a few minutes. From behind the coach, Sandy and Jimmy opened up with their guns as well.
Reaching the coach, Fargo pressed the Sharps into Grayson’s hands. ‘‘You still have cartridges for it?’’ he asked.
Grayson nodded. ‘‘Thanks, Skye. One good shot at those bastards is all I want.’’
‘‘Maybe I can flush them out for you,’’ Fargo said as he thumbed fresh rounds into his Colt. He snapped the cylinder of the big revolver closed. ‘‘I’m going to take the fight to them.’’
‘‘Skye, what are you—’’ Belinda began, but before she could finish the question, he had tossed his hat aside, left the cover of the coach, and sprinted for the trees, moving at an angle and darting back and forth to make himself a more difficult target to hit.
Bullets whined around his head and smacked into the rocky ground around his feet. But he managed to reach the trees without being hit, and once he was among the pines, he knew the bushwhackers couldn’t see him anymore. Like a wolf among sheep, he launched into a deadly game of hunter and hunted— although these ‘‘sheep’’ were heavily armed and just as capable of killing him as he was of killing them.
Fargo moved through the woods and up the slope with a stealth that was second nature to him, as silent and swift as a Comanche. He holstered the Colt and drew the Arkansas toothpick instead. At close quarters, the long, heavy knife was a terrible weapon.
The firing died away, and he heard a low-voiced call. ‘‘Damn it, where’s Fargo? I’m not worried about any of those other pilgrims.’’
‘‘He made it into the trees,’’ another man replied. His voice held an edge of fear. ‘‘He’s probably up here among us by now.’’
‘‘All right, kill the damn horses and let’s get out of here,’’ the first man said. Fargo recognized the voice. It belonged to the hardcase called Elam, who must have recovered at least somewhat from the wound Fargo had given him in Los Angeles.
Elam was farther away, but the man who had answered him was close by, no more than a dozen feet from Fargo. Not making a sound, Fargo closed in on him. The man crouched behind a thick-trunked pine tree. He was drawing a bead on the stagecoach team with his rifle when Fargo’s left arm looped around his neck and jerked him upright.
Fargo could have cut his throat and killed him with little or no sound, but instead he thrust the blade into the bushwhacker’s back and loosened his hold on the man’s neck so that a scream of agony ripped from his throat. The shriek echoed across the hillside.
The gunmen had started to open fire again, but only a couple of shots had sounded before they heard the scream and stopped pulling their triggers. ‘‘What the hell was that?’’ one man yelled, giving away his position.
Fargo pulled the toothpick free and let the bushwhacker’s limp body fall to the ground.
‘‘It’s Fargo! Fargo must’ve gotten one of us!’’
A grim smile touched Fargo’s mouth. That was what he wanted to hear. He wanted them spooked. It would make them careless.
He cat-footed through the trees toward another of the men and came upon him kneeling behind a bush. The man heard the rustle of pine needles under Fargo’s booted feet and whirled around with a startled shout, trying to bring his rifle to bear as he did so.
Fargo’s left hand closed around the rifle barrel and wrenched the weapon aside, while at the same time his right drove the toothpick into the bushwhacker’s belly. The hombre screeched in pain, but the scream trailed off into a gurgle as Fargo ripped upward with the blade, opening him up and spilling his guts out. Fargo shoved the dying man away from him.
Killing so brutally went against the grain for the Trailsman, but he was facing long odds. And he knew that none of these men would hesitate to kill the folks who had taken cover behind the stagecoach. They were hired guns and more than likely had blood on their hands from way back.
The second scream was still echoing when a man shouted, ‘‘Damn it, Elam, I’m gettin’ out of here!’’
‘‘Me, too!’’ called another man. ‘‘I’m not gonna sit here and wait for Fargo to kill me!’’
‘‘You sorry bastards!’’ Elam bellowed. ‘‘Come back here and finish the job!’’
His companions must have been more afraid of Fargo than they were of him, however, because a moment later, when the shooting started again, only one rifle spoke. Fargo felt confident that it belonged to Elam.
One might be enough, though, unless Fargo could silence it in a hurry. Another horse in the stagecoach team gave a shrill whinny of pain as a bullet struck it.
Fargo forgot about being quiet. He stuck the Arkansas toothpick back in its sheath, drew his Colt, and crashed through the brush toward the sound of the shots. Elam must have heard him coming because the big hardcase was already turning toward Fargo as the Trailsman burst into a tiny clearing where Elam was crouched behind a screen of trees.
The rifle in the man’s hands blasted as Fargo threw himself forward. The slug whistled over Fargo’s head. He squeezed off a shot as he hit the ground, aiming at Elam’s chest. Elam moved just as Fargo pulled the trigger, though, and the bullet dug a shallow furrow in his upper right arm instead.
That was enough to make Elam yell in pain and drop his rifle. Rather than try to recover it, he flung himself backward, behind the shelter of the trees. Fargo’s second shot knocked some bark off the rough trunk of a pine, but that was all the damage it did.
Biting back a curse, Fargo leaped to his feet as he heard Elam heading down the slope toward the trail. The man might have dropped his rifle, but he still had a handgun, and he still represented a threat to Belinda, Grayson, and the others.
Fargo went after him.
‘‘Watch out down there!’’ he shouted to those who had remained with the coach. ‘‘Elam’s headed your way!’’
As Fargo raced through the woods, he caught glimpses of Elam but never got a good enough look to take a shot. Also, he ran the risk that, if he missed, his bullet might range on down the slope and out of the trees, where it could hit one of his friends. Grimacing, he holstered the Colt.