Golden Riders (24 page)

Bolten and Short gave each other a spiteful look, each knowing that Kane had split them up because of the bad blood between them.

“Sounds good to me,” Bolten said.

Kane looked at Faraday, his nose still purple and swollen from what Bolten had done to him.

“Yeah, I'm all right with it,” Faraday said grudgingly.

Kane looked at Quince.

“I'm a rich man; what do I care?” the outlaw said with a grin.

“That's the spirit,” said Kane. He looked at the four. “I'm going on ahead with this wagon while you fellows cover us with rifles as far as the pass—in case anybody comes up on our trail.”

“There's
nobody
on our trail,” Bolten said with confidence.

“I was told there'd be a
federale
patrol scouting ahead of the train,” Kane said. “If there's not, so much the better. But if there is, we're going to be ready for them. Once our wagon gets into the pass, we'll give your wagon rifle cover from the rocks until you've joined us.” He looked all around again, then settled his gaze onto Bolten. “You four sit tight here until you know we've taken position in the rocks. You see anybody riding up on our trail, turn the rifles on them.”

As soon as the Ranger and the
federales
had heard the heavy gunfire in the distance along the new rail spur, the captain had led his cavalry patrol forward at a run. When they'd rounded a turn in a sandy rise and the idling train came into sight, Sam, riding near the captain's side, looked over and spotted the first wagon rolling out of sight into the narrow pass over a thousand yards away. The captain saw it too. Ahead of them, they both observed the second wagon sitting beside the train.

“Captain,” the Ranger shouted above the loud rumble of horses' hooves, “let me go. They're getting away.” He gestured his rifle barrel toward the distant pass.

The captain didn't answer for a moment, the two of them pounding on toward the train. But as they gained ground and shots zipped past them from both the train and the narrow pass, the captain waved his corporal and two more riders in closer to him and shouted, “Corporal, go with the Ranger.” He motioned the three soldiers toward the shots coming from the pass where puffs of gray smoke rose up in the resounding gunfire.

The corporal and the men looked surprised, but veered their horses away from the hard-pounding patrol and joined the Ranger toward the narrow pass. Watching from atop a rock inside the pass, his rifle in hand, Braxton Kane saw the riders split away from the patrol and head in his direction.

“Damn it, they know we're here,” said Kane to Short, Prew and the Bluebird standing beside him. The three stood with smoking rifles in hand. “I know they saw us before we got out of sight, else I would have never starting shooting at them.” Along the flatlands gunfire exploded back and forth between the train and the charging
federales
.

“We'll never outrun them up here,” Short said, “not with this wagon, not with all this gold. I had a feeling this was all a bad deal from the get-go.”

“Did you really?” said Kane, turning to him, his Colt out and cocked an inch from Short's chest. “I think
you've
been a bad deal from the get-go. You've pissed all over my plan since the day I told you about it.”

“Easy, Brax, I—”

Short didn't get his words out of his mouth. The Colt bucked in Kane's hand and sent him flying backward off the rock. The Bluebird and Prew stared down at his bloody broken body on the sandy ground below.

“Anybody else think this was a
bad deal
from the get-go?” Kane asked, the Colt smoking in his hand. He cocked it for another shot.

The two shook their heads.

“All right then,” said Kane, the gunfire still exploding, the four riders getting closer. “Bluebird, take the
rest of that homespun dynamite and blow that rock pass all to hell.” He grinned at Prew and tapped himself on his forehead. “See? While you and your brothers washed your brains out with mescal, I was already figuring
possibilities
.”

“Good thinking, Boss,” Prew said. He pointed out onto the flatlands as the Bluebird hurried away and climbed out among the rocks at the narrow mouth of the pass. “One of those riders is not a soldier. These
federales
don't wear trail dusters and gray sombreros.”

“Don't I know it,” said Kane. Again the grin. “But surprise,
surprise
,”
he added. “Guess who does. . . .”

“Ranger Sam Burrack,” Prew said flatly.

“Yep, that's him coming to call,” said Kane. “Looks like I get to take vengeance without even going looking for him. I just wish I could see his face when all that rock comes falling down on him. But I'll settle for riding away with all this gold, while pieces of him splatter all over the desert floor.”

At the wagon beside the train, Woods stopped firing out the window long enough to call out to Bolten who stood firing out the open door window across the rail car from him.

“Kane and his rifles have stopped covering for us, Luke!” he shouted. “They must be holding fire until we get started toward the pass!”

“I hope you're right,” Bolten said. “If they don't we're dead, this many Mexes riding us down.” He turned and continued firing. In the loaded wagon, Quince looked up from his smoking rifle.

“If we wait much longer, we'll never make it to the pass before they ride right up our shirttails!”

Bolten glanced over toward the pass, then out at the charging horsemen gaining ground.

“You're right, Jimmy, let's get the hell out of here.”

Even as rifle shots zipped past them, the four spilled out of the rail car shooting. Quince jumped into the driver's seat of the wagon and turned it back toward the crossing ramp as the other three gunmen pulled their horses out from between rail cars and leaped into their saddles. They raced along the side of the rail train behind the wagon and across the ramp. With
federales
pounding closer, they headed toward the narrow pass, seeing the four riders headed in the same direction, far ahead of them. As he looked, he saw the figure in the gray sombrero and flapping duster tails veer away hard and sharp from the other three.

“What the hell is Kane waiting for!” Bolten shouted, neither seeing nor hearing any cover fire from the pass. As he shouted he saw Faraday rise out of his saddle and fall away in a spray of blood. He glanced around quickly at the wagon, making sure Quince was still driving it toward the pass. Yet, even as he looked he knew they would never make it unless Kane and his three men started covering them. And even then the odds looked bad for them.
Jesus . . . !
All this gold . . .

“Kane, damn you,
you son of a
—”

His words were drowned out as the desert beneath him seemed to lift in the air and slam down hard. Shattered rock, dirt and debris blasted him from his saddle and sent him rolling through more sand, through short,
spiky briars and barrel cactus. Behind him, Quince flew up out of the driver's seat of the wagon and sailed away in the cloud of smoke and dust that churned and billowed behind the explosion. Without Quince slapping the reins to the horses' backs, the wagon slowed immediately but not before rolling over Luke Bolten as he tried to struggle to his feet.

In the dust and smoke, Woods staggered in place, his hands raised, having been thrown from his horse as the animal lost its footing in the powerful blast.

“I know, I know, I'm under arrest,” he called out to the mounted
federales
who looked like ghost riders appearing through the swirling smoke. Half dazed, he staggered forward toward the Mexican captain. “See . . . ?” He wiggled his raised fingers.
“Mí, Americano,
under
arresto, sí?”
he said, as if the captain would not understand a word of English.

“No, you are not under arrest, you fool,” the captain said, his voice even and calm.

“Ah . . .” said Woods, with a smile. “In that case—” But before he could take another step, a dozen rifle shots resounded and cut him to shreds.

Even before the blast had gone off, Braxton Kane and Prew had gotten in the wagon and ridden away while the Bluebird went about his job. The Mexican-Indian had taken his time getting the dynamite placed where it would deliver the most damage to the two large stands of canyon rock standing like sentinels at the mouth of the narrow pass.

When the blast did come, Kane only smiled sidelong
at Prew Garlet and kept the wagon rolling, their three horses' reins hitched to the freight wagon's tailgate. Prew turned in the seat and looked back.

“We'd better wait here for him. I think we've gone far enough,” he said. When he saw Kane wasn't stopping he said, “You can't leave him back there afoot.”

“He's a Mex-Injun, he'll do just fine on foot.”

“I can't let you do this,” said Prew.

“You can't stop me,” said Kane. Before Prew could reach for his gun, Kane turned and jammed his cocked Colt into his chest. “I've gone about as far as I care to with you and him both. In fact, I wish I had gone on and killed you back when you told me you were still
seeing things
from drinking mescal.” He shook his head slowly. “What makes you think I could rely on a man who puts poison like that in his head?”

“Brax, come on,” Prew said, looking down at the Colt. “I'm over all that. I'm not seeing things anymore.”

“Not seeing things anymore. . . .”
Kane mused. “The fact that you even have to say something like that is enough for me.” He squeezed a shot into Prew's chest. Then he grabbed him before he could fall away, and squeezed another shot right beside it. Beneath him, the wagon jerked as the team of horses almost spooked and took off running. But Kane settled the animals with a firm hand on the reins. He quickly set the brake, stepped down and looked back along the trail for any sign of the Bluebird. When he didn't see him, he turned to the team of horses and went to work. He was no fool. He knew there was no way he'd get away from the
federales
with a freight wagon load of gold.

He unhitched the team of horses and untied the three saddled horses from behind the wagon. He hurriedly emptied the saddlebags from the horses' backs and filled them with gold ingots. It wasn't as much as he would have gotten had everything gone as planned; but it was still enough to get him where we wanted to go and keep him living high for the rest of his life.

He smiled to himself as he loaded the horse and got ready for the trail. Hell, he told himself, he might go deeper into Mexico, see if he could find some of that loaded mescal he'd heard so much about. Of course he wouldn't make a fool of himself like the Garlets and the other idiots who'd tried the stuff,
hunh-uh
, he had better sense than that, he thought, swinging up into the saddle.

The way he had it figured, with the pass closed he had about an hour or more start before the
federales
got up around the hillside and over to where he'd be. He nudged his horse forward, leaving the remaining gold lying in the wagon with Prew's body, in the Mexican sun. Too bad, but that's how it worked out. . . .

He booted his horse forward and rode upward along the hill trail at an easy clip, the horses loaded with gold on a long lead rope behind him. When he looked back now and then, he saw no sign of the Bluebird, or of any
federales
, or any of his own men. He didn't stop or let up on the horses' pace until he'd ridden a little over an hour. Then he stopped only long enough to pick up the canteen hanging looped on his saddle horn, uncapping it and raising it to his lips.

He'd swallowed a long tepid mouthful of water and
started to lower the canteen. But he froze at the sound of a horse's hoof scrape the hard dirt in the middle of the trail ahead of him. He looked up and saw the dark outline of the rider, the duster, the sombrero.

“Braxton Kane . . . ,” the Ranger called out, sitting his horse crosswise on the thin dusty trail. “I'm Arizona Ranger Samuel Burrack—”

Kane didn't let him get his words from his mouth. He raised his Colt and started shooting. On his fourth shot he felt a hot, sharp pain race through his chest. He felt himself fall backward off his saddle. For a split second he felt his fingers claw at the bulging saddlebags—
his gold!
—as he slid from the horse's rump to the ground.

Sam rode the coppery black-point dun over and caught Kane's horses and the lead rope before the horses could bolt past him. He settled the horses and stepped down from the dun. He led the dun and the other horses over and looked down at Kane who lay gasping on the rocky ground.

“You—You . . . taking me in?” Kane rasped. Blood ran from his lips, through his trembling fingers clenching his chest.

“I'd hate to,” Sam said, coolly. He held the Colt out at arm's length, cocked, smoking, ready to fire again.

Kane looked down at the gaping wound in his chest. He glanced over at the saddlebags full of gold, shook his head, and looked back up at the Ranger.

“Don't . . . then,” he wheezed. He closed his eyes, tight.

The string of horses almost spooked again as the
second blast from the Ranger's Colt resounded out across the Mexican hills, the desert, the sand flats below.

“You've sure been a long day's work, Braxton Kane,” he said down to the limp body lying dead in the dirt, knowing Kane couldn't hear him. He looked all around. He saw the dust still drifting back there, still rising and swirling, lazily now, wafting up from the desert floor. “But now we're all done here.” He looked out in the direction of the
federales
, then at the horses. “Cover your ears, boys,” he said, raising his Colt and firing four signal shots straight up in the air.

The string of horses jerked at the rope. Kane's horses and his own coppery dun only twitched their ears and tossed their heads a little. The dun chuffed and stuck his nose out. The Ranger ran a gloved hand down its muzzle, patted it.

“Tough guys, huh?” he said to the two hard-seasoned trail horses. Then he led all the horses over and hitched them to a scrub piñon out of the sun and he laid himself down in the shade of a rock. There might be other Golden Riders running loose, but he'd gotten the leader, and that was the main thing. The others he'd get to in time. Since the Bluebird wasn't up here, he'd either blown himself up or gotten away.

So be it. See you soon, Bluebird,
he told himself, and he leaned back and closed his eyes and waited for the
federales
. After all, this was their job. He was just there . . . well, helping out, is
all.