Gibson leaned over and grabbed the barrel of Longarm's Winchester, forcing the rifle down. “Damn you!” the cattleman yelled. “You warned them!”
Now that the ambush was ruined, all the men who were hidden on the hills opened fire, but it was too late. Instead of being trapped in the wash, the outlaws were running free, spreading out and throwing a few shots of their own back at the hills. That was just what Longarm had hoped would happen.
He jerked his rifle out of Gibson's grasp. “You don't know everything that's going on here, Walt,” he snapped. “I wish you'd trust me on thisâ”
“Trust, hell! You're no better'n an owlhoot yourself!” Gibson clawed at the butt of the revolver holstered at his hip.
Longarm lashed out with the butt of the Winchester, slamming it into Gibson's jaw and knocking the rancher from the saddle. His gun went flying from its holster and landed on the sandy ground several feet away. Longarm swung down quickly from his own saddle and kicked the gun farther away.
“Sorry, Walt,” he said, though Gibson was stunned and probably didn't understand the words. “Hope I can explain all this to you someday.” Longarm jerked the bag of supplies loose from the saddlehorn. “I'll leave you the buckskin. I wouldn't set a man afoot out here.”
He mounted up again and wheeled the dun around. The outlaws had split up to a certain extent, but most of them were galloping off to the north, toward a couple of buttes that jutted up from the plains. Longarm went after them.
He hoped that Walt Gibson was all right. The rancher hadn't given him much choice. To Gibson's eyes, it had appeared that Longarm was trying to help the outlaws.
And when you got right down to it, that was true. He hadn't wanted them to ride into that ambush. Nora might have gotten hurt. Besides, this might be a way for Longarm to solve the other problems that were facing him.
He was going to turn outlaw.
Chapter 10
Longarm rode hard, knowing that he was calling on the dun for the last reserves of its strength. His only advantage was that he was pursuing the outlaws from an angle now, and he was soon able to cut down the gap between them. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw that the sun wasn't very far above the horizon. It would be dark in an hour or so, and Longarm wanted to join up with the gang before then.
A look in the other direction showed him dust hanging in the air. That would be coming from the posse, which was now pursuing the gang on horseback. But the outlaws had a good lead, and Longarm didn't think the lawmen would catch up before Wallace's bunch reached the edge of the sand hills.
Longarm was within a few hundred yards of the nearest outlaws now, riding almost parallel with them. He took off his hat and waved it in the air to get their attention. As long as he was doing that, they would know that he wasn't trying to shoot at them. He veered the dun and came closer to the riders. A few minutes later, he was close enough to get a good look at themâand vice versa. With his clothes covered by trail dust and a few days' worth of beard stubble on his face, he hoped he looked as disreputable as he felt right now. He clapped his hat back on his head and spurred on to join the outlaws.
“Howdy!” he called over the pounding of hoofbeats as he came up alongside the riders. None of them had Nora Canady with them, he saw, but this was where he had to start.
“Who the hell are you?” shouted one of the men. All of them were holding guns, and Longarm knew that if he played this wrong, he might easily wind up being riddled with bullets.
“Name's Parker!” he called back, using, as he often did, his own middle name as an alias. “I'm the fella who tipped you off to that ambush back there at the wash!”
“Much obliged!” said one of the other men. “But why'd you do that?”
Longarm grinned wolfishly. “Never did like to see anybody shot down like a dog! Besides, you're the Wallace bunch, ain't you?”
“What if we are?” demanded the first man.
“I've been looking to join up with you boys! Heard a lot about you!”
The riders slowed their horses to a trot and regarded Longarm intently. He saw suspicion in their eyes. No man who was on the dodge lived very long by being trusting. After a moment, one of the outlaws said, “You're a wanted man yourself, are you?”
Longarm nodded. “Damn right. I was riding with the Pollard gang, up Wyoming way, until lately.” He happened to know that Lem Pollard and most of the men who had been riding with him had been either killed or captured in a botched bank robbery in Cheyenne a few weeks earlier. It was entirely plausible that he could have been one of the few survivors to get away.
“You were part of that bank job in Cheyenne?” asked one of the men.
“Yep. Some damn law dog's bullet like to parted my hair for me too.”
“Heard it was quite a fight.”
“That it was,” Longarm said solemnly. “I was lucky to get out with a whole hide. Been riding south ever since. Heard about the hell you boys've been raising down here in Texas while I was up in Tucumcari, and I said to myself, that's the bunch you ought to join up with, old son.” He paused, then, added, “You are the Wallace bunch, aren't you?”
The outlaws ignored his question, and one of them barked a question instead. “How'd you know about that ambush?”
“Pure luck. I saw your dust and was trying to catch up to you when I spotted the sun shining on a rifle barrel up on that slope. Didn't take long then to see where those bastards were hiding. They'd started moving out a little to get a better shot at you when you rode into that wash. What were they, sheriff's deputies or Rangers?”
“Don't know. But we've heard that Major Jones sent a whole troop of Rangers out here from Austin just to run us down.”
Longarm let out a whistle of admiration. “You fellas must be ring-tailed wonders, to get a whole troop of Rangers after you!”
His reaction concealed what he was really feeling, which was a considerable amount of worry. Having a bunch of Rangers roaming around the countryside would just make things that much more complicated. He hoped he could get Nora away from the outlaws quickly. If he could accomplish that, then the Rangers could have the Wallace bunch, with his blessings.
His words of praise were effective. The outlaws stuck their chests out and looked satisfied with themselves. “I reckon we've got quite a rep, all right,” one of them said. He leaned over slightly in the saddle and extended a hand to Longarm. “I'm called Van Horn.”
Longarm shook hands, and the other outlaws introduced themselves as Dutchy, Graydon, and Funderburk. Van Horn seemed to be in command of this little bunch, so it was to him that Longarm directed what was apparently a casual question.
“I reckon you boys plan to rendezvous wherever you've been holing up back in the sand hills?”
“That's the plan,” said Van Horn.
“I hope you can see your way clear to taking me with you, since I lent you a hand back there where you were almost ambushed.”
Van Horn considered for a moment, then nodded. “We'll take you to the hideout, all right,” he said. “But that's no guarantee you'll ever get out of there alive. That'll be up to Heck.”
“Heck Wallace?”
“That's right. He'll decide if you're all right and can ride with us ... or if you're a damned lying lawman, in which case I wouldn't give you a plugged nickel for your chances of living very long, mister.”
“Me, a lawman?” Longarm hooted with laughter. “Just lead the way, Van Horn. I reckon when he hears what I did for you boys, Mr. Heck Wallace is going to be mighty glad to see me!”
Â
The sand hills started gradually. There were narrow stretches where sand had collected in the low places between rises. Longarm and his companions crossed several of those stretches, which were divided by broader bands of ground that were a mixture of sand, rock, and tough grass and mesquite trees. But as they swung further east and rode on, the sand became more and more prevalent, and then finally, as they topped a rise, Longarm saw the dunes take over the landscape completely, white mounds that rolled away to the horizon like waves in a stormy sea.
And those dunes moved like waves too, Longarm knew, only a lot slower. But they were always in motion, drifting along before the wind so that in a week's time their contours might change completely. Sometimes, when the wind blew harder, the dunes shifted even faster. Old-timers called them the walking hills, and it was an apt description.
As the outlaws entered the dunes, they stuck to the low places, where the sand was packed harder and made easier going for the horses. Now that dusk was settling down, the hills lost some of their brilliance and took on a gloomy air instead, rising sometimes seventy or eighty feet above the men riding through them and bulking darkly as if they were about to crash down on the puny humans who dared to invade them.
The eerie landscape wasn't completely barren. Dwarf oaks grew in many of the low places, rarely reaching a height of more than three or four feet. Longarm knew that their roots extended much farther under the ground so that they could suck up as much life-giving moisture as possible. He commented on that to Van Horn, who nodded and said, “Yeah, those are shin oaks. The Comanches used âem to find water when they'd run off in here after their raids on the settlements. Dig down around the roots of those shin oaks and you'll hit water, sure as shootin'. Drink your fill, put the sand back in the hole, and nobody would ever know there was a water hole where you'd been. Heck knows, though. He knows every place in this whole godforsaken desert where a man can find water.”
“Wouldn't be related to old Bigfoot Wallace, would he?” asked Longarm.
The outlaw called Dutchy snorted. “Don't let Heck hear you askin' that question, Parker. Growin' up in Texas with the name of Wallace, he heard about Bigfoot ever since he was a sprout.”
“He's sick of it,” said Van Horn. “And no, he ain't related. Are you related to Quanah Parker?”
Longarm laughed and said, “There's no Comanche blood in me that I know of. I came out here from West-by-God Virginia after the Late Unpleasantness, and we didn't have too many Comanch' back there.”
“Well, you look a little like an Indian,” said Dutchy. He turned to Funderburk. “Don't he?”
Funderburk just grunted. He hadn't said more than three words since Longarm had ridden up to join the group. The outlaw called Graydon was a little more talkative, but not much.
Longarm was aching to know which of the outlaws had grabbed Nora Canady and why. He suspected it had been Heck Wallace himself; the leader of the gang was more likely to have pulled such an audacious stunt. But he couldn't ask any questions about the stagecoach robbery, because as far as these men knew, he wasn't even aware of what had happened. All he could really do was talk idly until they reached the hideout.
Luckily, in his line of work, Longarm picked up much of the same gossip that the fellows who rode on the other side of the law heard in their travels. He was able to talk about who had pulled what job, who had been caught and hanged, who had been gunned down by star packers. Every such exchange strengthened his companions' belief that he was who he said he was. At least, he hoped so.
Darkness had fallen and the stars had come out, providing enough illumination for the riders to see where they were going. Once the moon rose and cast its silvery glow down over the sand hills, it would be almost as bright out here as on an overcast day.
Along with darkness had come a strengthening of the wind. It had a chill to it that was rather shocking compared to the heat of the day just past. Longarm knew from experience, though, how cold it could get on the desert at night. These sand hills were no different. By morning the temperature would be downright frigid.
Van Horn and the others expected to be at the outlaw camp before it got too cold, however, and sure enough, after another half hour of winding through the sand hills, a light appeared up ahead. It was a campfire, Longarm realized, built down in one of the low valleys between dunes so that it could not have been seen for more than a few hundred yards.
“Good,” said Van Horn. “The other boys got back first and started a fire. Sure hope they put some coffee on to boil.”
“And got some beans cookin',” added Dutchy. “I'm hungry,”
“You're always hungry, Dutchy,” Graydon said.
“Now, that ain't true a-tall. Sometimes I'm asleep.”
Longarm couldn't help but chuckle. He reminded himself that he was riding with a group of men who were ruthless killers and thieves. True, Van Horn was sort of friendly, and Dutchy was a comical cuss, but that didn't really mean anything. They were still outlaws, and Longarm knew they would kill him in the blink of an eye if they knew he was really a lawman.
His badge and identification papers, tucked away in the leather folder inside his shirt pocket, seemed at times to be glowing white-hot, so that they melted right into his skin. But that was just his imagination, he told himself. Still, he wished he'd thought to hide them before joining up with the bandits. He knew a Texas Ranger who carried his badge in a hidden pocket inside his belt, and another who concealed his badge in a secret compartment in a pocket watch. Longarm wondered if he ought to look into something like that for himself.
And there was always the possibility that one of the other members of the gang would recognize him from a past encounter. Longarm couldn't do anything about that. He would just have to take his chances.
Problem was, Nora Canady's chances were inextricably linked with his at the moment.