Deep Trouble (12 page)

Gunfire split the night.

“What’s he doing in Flagstaff?” Abe looked at the telegraph, scowling.

Tyra jerked it out of his hand. She saw Abe’s annoyance, but she had to read the wire because she saw more than annoyance. She saw fear.

Reading quickly, she said, “Gabe ran into trouble. He mentions someone named Doba Kinlichee?”

She looked up at her pa. “Is that Indian? Gabe could be in serious trouble, but he doesn’t go into any details.”

Abe stood beside Madeline and his children—two of them more man than boy, all lined up for the excitement of receiving a telegraph. That didn’t happen every day. “Last time I got a telegraph, it was from Gabe, too. He told me our ma had died.”

Tyra drew in a long, unsteady breath. “It sounds like he needs help, Abe. Flagstaff isn’t that far.” She looked over her shoulder at her father. Over sixty years old now. Definitely stoved up some. Too many battered falls from horses he was breaking. Too many kicks from testy longhorns. But a strong man still. And a man determined to have Abraham Lasley’s brother for his son.

“I think we oughta ride up there and bring him back.” Pa turned to Abe, frowning. “I got enough men to run my place for a few weeks. “I can go if you’re tied down with the ranch.”

“Obliged, Lucas.” Abe looked at Madeline again. “I’ve got to go help, Gabe, honey. Will you be all right?”

The boys frowned. The two older ones were nearly Abraham’s height these days and did the work of men. They didn’t run as big a place as the Rocking M, but they had a few hands.

“We’ll be okay, Pa,” Abe’s oldest son, Adam, said. “You go see to Uncle Gabe.”

“I can send a man or two over every day to take up the slack, Abe. Gabe don’t know me. If he’s got trouble riding with him, he might not know who to trust.”

“I’m going, Pa.” Tyra braced herself for trouble. Pa let her work hard alongside the men. She stood there in a riding skirt, wearing a six-gun, a Stetson on her head where a bonnet ought to be, and proudly dressed this way right smack-dab in town where people could see her. Pa didn’t object to it. But there were limits.

“Yep, I think you oughta go, Ty. Might as well carry on with you and Gabe gettin’ hitched.”

Tyra couldn’t agree more.

“We can pack up a horse with supplies and head out.” Abe had that grim expression on his face.

Tyra had seen it many times when Abe talked about his little brother. But Tyra was the youngest, too. Her mother had died when she was little, and she’d grown up running wild. She was no fragile flower of a young maiden.

Tyra kicked constantly against being treated as if she were still a kid. Gabe was a tough man who knew how to work hard, despite what Abe said. She was going to hunt Gabe down, marry him, and spend the rest of her life proving youngest brothers and sisters could manage their lives just fine.

“Take care of your brother, Abe. We’ll be fine.” Madeline was as competent and calm as any frontier woman. “Boys, let’s go fill our list and head home. We got chores.” She headed for the general store with her four children—Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, and David.

Abe waved them off and watched them walk away. He muttered, “I hope we have a girl when we get to
F.”

“What?” Tyra didn’t quite understand what that meant.

Abe gave her a worried look. “If your name was Frankincense, but everyone called you Frank… if you were a boy, I mean… you wouldn’t hate your father for it would you? Girls aren’t quite as likely to hate their fathers as boys, do you think?”

“Are you sure you want to go, Abe?” Tyra would have checked Abe’s forehead for a fever if she was a little closer. “Pa and I can find him.”

“Never mind. Let’s hit the trail.”

They had a packhorse and spare mounts so they could make good time. They had a long ride ahead of them, but a horse, with saddles switched often so they could run without a rider, could cover a hundred miles a day. They’d make Flagstaff fast, find out where Gabe was heading, and save the poor boy.

Tyra caught herself. She’d been affected by Abraham’s “little brother” talk. Gabe wasn’t a
poor boy
. He wasn’t going to need to be rescued. He could handle things himself. But they’d show up, and he’d see she was all grown up and came with a fancy ranch—one of the biggest in the area—and he’d come along quietly, counting himself lucky.

For just a second, it pinched that the ranch might be a bigger lure than the wife. Jutting her chin out, she refused to let it bother her. Gabe would figure out just how lucky he was soon enough. She’d spend her life making sure he knew how good things could be.

Gabe jerked his revolver from his holster and looked back, but he couldn’t see anything. The bullet that had fired sounded like it was aimed upward.

“Throw down your guns!” A shout from out of the darkness on the east side of the camp sounded as deadly as the gunfire.

Wherever they were hiding, the hombres couldn’t see into the shadowed area behind the fire and didn’t yet realize the camp was empty.

Only silence met the order to disarm.

“The next bullet’s coming right into your camp.”

All the night animals had gone silent. Not a bug chirped, not an owl so much as fluttered its wings. Every creature, and Gabe included himself, held its breath, waiting.

“She’s gone!” A dark shape silhouetted itself against the firelight. While one man had threatened and shot from cover, another had slipped into camp in the dark to get the drop on… whoever it was they were after.

Outlaws, varmints. They made Gabe killing mad.

Others broke from a stand of trees not that far away from where they’d camped.

“I see four of ‘em.” Gabe muttered.

“No, five.” Doba sounded positive.

Gabe felt more than saw Shannon kick her horse. “Five?”

“Let’s move,” Hosteen said. He turned his horse and vanished into the night.

“Walk. Running is too noisy.” Doba went after Hosteen.

Shannon’s pinto surged forward as if to follow, but Gabe subdued it with a rigid grip on the reins. He didn’t want Shannon out of his grasp. And he didn’t want her to lose control of the horse because it would run, especially if there was more gunfire. Pounding hooves would lead that gang straight to them.

He pulled Shannon close so she rode on his right-hand side, putting his body at least somewhat between her and the outlaws, shielding her. Once she was alongside him, her hand settled on his, and for a second he thought she meant to wrest the reins away and run.

Instead, she gripped his hand tightly and drew his eyes to hers. “Thank you.” The words were softer than the gusting of the wind, but he heard them. More than that, he
felt
her gratitude.

Gabe wanted to tell her not to be grateful. If it had been up to him, they’d still be back there, shot to ribbons.

He remembered the clinking of the approaching horses and wondered, hoped, he’d have noticed. But Doba’s son and the Crenshaws had gotten there ahead of those back-shooters. Gabe thanked God for that.

He concentrated on the fading squabbling voices from their camp. At least one of them was female.

He couldn’t let Shannon give him any credit. “They must have seen our fire and ridden in. If the kids hadn’t come, we’d be dead or trapped.”

She turned to look back with such a hard twist he grabbed her arm to keep her on the saddle. “You said there were four people, right?”

“Yes, but Doba’s right. There were five.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure as can be in the pitch dark from a distance. Why?”

“Just—nothing.”

“Shannon, why? You’re not telling me something.”

Doba picked up the pace, but still they walked for the sake of quiet. Shannon’s silence was in perfect harmony with the night.

There was not time to stop and shake the words loose that she was obviously holding in. But even on the move, under the cover of that wicked attack, he could definitely talk to her. “I want to know right now, Shannon Dysart, what you meant by—”

The shouting from behind them stopped.

Gabe quit talking just as fast.

Silence reigned in the night, broken only by the moan of the increasingly frigid wind. The trail Hosteen followed descended and twisted. A stony, tree-studded wall rose on their right; the ground fell away on their left.

Emmy, Marcus, and Ahway came up closer, and Doba dropped back on a trail barely wide enough for two to ride abreast. They all listened intently.

At last Doba whispered, “They’ll be coming.”

The trail circled an outcropping of rock. In front of them, the path was more rock than dirt. If they picked up speed, their hoofbeats would practically shout for the outlaws to come after them.

Winding around a clump of pine, the trail began to descend and twist until it reached lower ground. Gabe hoped the outlaws didn’t know what direction to ride. He fought down the urge to turn and fight. His second reaction was to race at top speed away from whoever had attacked them. But using iron control, he did neither.

The trail steadily rose then dropped again. Gabe judged that they’d put at least two miles between them and the site where they’d camped. More importantly, they’d put a mountain between them. The Hosteens knew this land very well. No sound would travel that far. And few outlaws would go haring off in the night, possibly in the wrong direction.

If they were following, they’d need to abandon silence anyway, so a few words wouldn’t hurt a thing.

“Hosteen,” Gabe still spoke barely above a whisper, “do you know the trail ahead well enough to ride faster? They won’t hear us from this distance.”

“We’ll pick up the pace for a while,” Hozho answered. Gabe realized the old woman was actually in the lead. He could barely make out vague shapes at this distance.

She’d said she’d grown up in the canyon, so maybe she knew this land better than any of the others. Hozho kicked her horse into a trot.

Gabe stared at Shannon, not sure whether to trust her off his lead. “I haven’t forgotten you know something about that attack, but we don’t have time to talk about it now. Let’s move out.”

She jerked her chin in agreement, and her dark eyes, black in the night, shined with intelligence and calm in the moonlight. It satisfied him. With a quick flip of his wrist, Gabe pulled the reins into place and gave Shannon control of her horse. He kicked his chestnut into a lope, and Shannon’s pinto followed down a trail that seemed bright and obvious as a highway.

Would those outlaws follow? And if so, how soon?

Hozho rode as hard as the night would allow, and the pace suited Gabe. He felt as if the moon laid a clear path before them, or maybe a torch was held by the guiding hand of God. He listened with every ounce of concentration for pursuit.

No rider was skilled enough to see tracks on rocky ground in the black of night. Not even the moonlight would be enough. He hoped hard they’d have the whole night to put distance between themselves and danger. And though this was a clear trail, it forked off in several spots, and those outlaws would have to be pure lucky to pick the right one to follow.

As they rode, Gabe had plenty of time to wonder what Shannon was keeping from him. Plenty of time to imagine the worst.