24
Frank let out a whoop of excitement as the revolutionaries thundered past the boulder. The roar of gunshots was deafening. Clouds of powder smoke billowed up over the trail.
As the last of the riders galloped past, Frank spotted Stormy and El Rey bringing up the rear of the charge. The two riderless horses had fallen in with the others. Frank put his fingers to his mouth and gave a loud, shrill whistle. Stormy veered toward him.
As the Appaloosa came up, Frank grabbed the reins and the saddle horn and swung up onto Stormy's back. He rammed the empty Winchester in its sheath. He saw movement from the corner of his eye, and looked over to see Esteban leap from the side of the hill into El Rey's saddle. The old man gave Frank a grin to indicate that he was all right.
With a touch of Frank's heels, Stormy leaped forward, carrying him toward the battle. Frank had lost track of Dog, but he figured the big cur was around somewhere, probably close by. Dog could take care of himself.
Frank drew his Colt. The two groups of riders had slammed together in the trail and were now firing at each other at close range, and in some cases men who had been knocked off their horses were fighting hand to hand. The dust and smoke made it difficult to see, but as Frank charged into the ruckus, one of the Rurales suddenly loomed up to his right. The man fired his rifle, the shot coming close enough so that Frank heard the wind-rip of the bullet beside his ear. The Rurale lunged his horse toward Stormy and thrust the bayonet attached to the barrel of his rifle at Frank.
Frank twisted in the saddle, making himself a smaller target. The move almost came too late. The tip of the bayonet caught the side of his denim jacket and ripped a gash in it. The Rurale didn't have a chance to pull the rifle back and try again, because Frank shot him in the chest. Rocking back, the Rurale dropped his rifle and clutched at his saddle, trying to hold himself on his horse. He failed. His fingers slipped off, and he fell, screaming as he landed under the slashing hooves of his half-crazed mount.
Another horse slammed into Stormy from the left. The Appaloosa stayed upright somehow, but the impact slewed Frank far over. His left foot came out of the stirrup, and he would have fallen if he hadn't used his left hand to grab the saddle horn at the last instant. Hanging on Stormy's side like a Comanche on the side of a war pony, Frank thrust the Peacemaker under the Appaloosa's neck and fired at a sharp upward angle at the Rurale who had nearly unhorsed him. The bullet caught the man under the chin and tore through his throat, angling on up into his brain. He toppled off his horse, dead before he hit the ground.
With a grunt of effort, Frank's muscles strained against his weight and pulled him back up into the saddle. His left foot found the stirrup again. He pulled on the reins and Stormy reared up on his hind legs, turning around and around as Frank searched for another enemy.
One of the Rurales charged screaming at him, waving a saber. As Stormy came down on all four legs again, Frank ducked under the bloodstained blade and reached out to jam the muzzle of his Colt against the man's chest. The Rurale's eyes widened in horror as he realized what was about to happen, but he didn't have time to do anything else before Frank pressed the trigger and blew his heart right out of the gaping hole the .45 slug left in his back when it exited.
“Señor Morgan! Señor Morgan!”
Even over all the tumult and the roar of gunshots, Frank heard his name being shouted. He twisted around in the saddle and saw Esteban flash past him, motioning for him to follow. Frank sent Stormy racing after El Rey. As he looked past Esteban, he saw what had prompted the shouts of alarm from the old man. Four Rurales had the Black Scorpion surrounded.
One of the men fired and blood spurted from Antonio Almanzar's side. Antonio tumbled off his horse. Esteban yelled, “ 'Tonio!” and rammed the big black stallion into the Rurales' mounts. El Rey and a couple of the other horses went down in a welter of flailing hooves. Frank saw Esteban go sailing through the air.
The old
mozo
managed to land nimbly and use his momentum to roll over a couple of times and come to his feet. One leg appeared to have been injured, however, because he dragged it behind him as he hurried toward Antonio. Esteban had dropped his revolver, too, but he snatched a knife from his belt and plunged it into the body of one of the Rurales. Wrenching the blade free, Esteban stumbled on until he was standing over the body of the fallen Antonio. A couple of Rurales lunged at him, but he just snarled and brandished the knife.
From horseback, Frank snapped a couple of shots at the men attacking Esteban. One of the Rurales spun off his feet, killed by Frank's bullets. But the other one reached Esteban, used his rifle to knock the knife aside, and rammed the bayonet on the end of it into the old man's belly.
The hammer of Frank's Colt clicked on an empty chamber. The gun was empty, and there was no time to reload. Frank holstered the Peacemaker, kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and launched himself from the saddle in a diving tackle as Stormy raced past the Rurale, who had pulled his bayonet out of Esteban's body and poised it to strike again.
Frank crashed into the man, wrapping his arms around the Rurale's shoulders and knocking him off his feet They rolled over a couple of times, locked together by Frank's iron grip. Frank got an arm around the man's throat and pressed his forearm against it like a steel bar. The Rurale flopped and writhed and made gagging noises, but Frank kept up the pressure. The muscles in The Drifter's shoulders bunched as he squeezed and heaved even harder, and a sudden sharp cracking sound, along with the way the Rurale's body went limp, told Frank that he had just broken the man's neck.
Breathing hard, his eyes stinging from powder smoke, Frank let go of the dead Rurale and pushed himself to his feet. A few yards away, Esteban still huddled over Antonio's sprawled form, protecting the young man with his own body. Esteban's white cotton shirt was crimson now with blood. He had been hit several times, and as one of the Rurales rushed up to him, triggering a pistol, several more rounds ripped through the old man's body. He collapsed on top of Antonio.
Frank leaped forward, grabbing up a fallen rifle. He flung it like a spear, and the bayonet buried itself in the throat of the man who had just shot Esteban. The Rurale gave a gurgling scream as blood flooded down his chest from his ravaged throat. He stumbled and fell on his face to kick out the few remaining seconds of his life.
His face grim, Frank dropped to a knee beside Esteban and Antonio. He rolled the old man over and was surprised to see a smile on the wrinkled, nut-brown face. “Señor Morgan!” Esteban gasped. “It was ... a good fight . . . no?”
“It was a good fight,” Frank told him. “Hang on, Esteban, and I'll get you out of here.” The fighting seemed to be dying down around them. Frank thought that if he could get Esteban on a horse ...
The old man's fingers clawed at Frank's arm. “No! You must ... leave me! Save Antonio!”
Frank looked at the young man. Antonio's hat had fallen off, and the mask had slipped down so that most of his face was visible. He was pale, but he was still breathing, Frank saw. The side of his black shirt was wet with blood, but he might have a chance. Esteban, on the other hand, was shot to pieces, and he and Frank both knew it.
The savage smile of battle had disappeared from Esteban's face, to be replaced by a look of mute appeal. Frank nodded and promised, “I'll do everything I can for him.”
“Gracias, Señor,”
Esteban gasped. “My life means nothing ... save perhaps to ... my wife and children ... but the Black Scorpion must live . . . so that one day our people will be ... free ...”
“Your life means a lot more than that,
mi amigo
,” Frank told him. He saw a flicker of understanding and gratitude in Esteban's eyes, and then they glazed over in death. Gently, Frank closed the lids over that empty stare.
He came to his feet and looked around. Gunfire still blared here and there. The battle had spread out over a wide area, and bodies of both the revolutionaries and the Rurales were sprawled everywhere he looked. In the area right around Frank and Antonio, however, there was a lull in the battle.
Frank spotted Stormy about fifty yards away, and El Rey was with him. The big black stallion had survived the collision with the other horses and seemed to be all right. Frank whistled, and Stormy trotted toward him. El Rey followed.
That was good, Frank thought. He would put Antonio on the stallion and tie him into the saddle. Frank's only thought now was to get Antonio back to the Almanzar hacienda. Once he was there, his father and sister and the servants could care for him and perhaps nurse him back to health.
As the horses came up and stopped, Frank bent and grasped Antonio under the arms. He lifted the young man, gritting his teeth with the effort required. As long as he was unconscious, Antonio was so much deadweight.
El Rey shied a little when Frank began to lift Antonio into the saddle. No doubt the stallion was spooked by the smell of blood, as well as the reeking clouds of smoke. “Take it easy,” Frank said quietly, trying to calm the horse. He strained until Antonio was on El Rey's back, and was then slumped forward in the saddle.
Suddenly, a savage yell came from behind Frank. He jerked his head around to see that one of the wounded Rurales had struggled to his feet and was lurching toward him, ready to run him through with a bayonet. Frank's Colt was empty, and the Rurale was almost on top of him, too close for him to avoid the lethal thrust of cold steel.
Before the bayonet could rip into Frank's belly, a brown and gray streak flew through the air and smashed into the Rurale from the side, knocking him off his feet. Dog landed on top of the man, and with one lunge, his razor-sharp teeth ripped out the Rurale's throat. The man's heels drummed against the ground as he died.
Snarling, Dog backed away from the body toward Frank. “Thanks, partner,” Frank said wearily. “I'd have been a goner if it wasn't for you.”
Frank called Stormy over, and with rawhide thongs that he took from his saddlebags, he lashed Antonio's ankles together under El Rey's belly. Then he tied the young man's hands to the saddle horn to keep him from slipping under the horse. Antonio would stay on El Rey now until somebody either untied him or cut the thongs.
Frank glanced around for his hat, which had come off during the fighting, but he didn't see it. There wasn't time to look for it, either. He mounted up quickly, caught hold of El Rey's reins, and said to Stormy and Dog, “Let's get out of here.” He rode to the south, away from the scene of the battle.
He hadn't gone fifty yards when he heard shouting behind him and a volley of rifle fire rang out. Bullets whined around him. A look back over his shoulder showed him Captain Estancia screaming at several mounted Rurales.
“Stop them! Kill them!”
Frank dug his heels into Stormy's sides and sent the Appaloosa leaping forward into a gallop. He held El Rey's reins tightly, and the black stallion fell into a racing stride beside and just behind him.
It was a race now. Frank knew that he and Antonio were mounted on better horses than the Rurales were, but not even Stormy and El Rey could outrun a bullet. At least Antonio was still unconscious and slumped far forward over the stallion's neck, unwittingly making a smaller target of himself. Frank did likewise, bending over in the saddle as he urged Stormy on. Guiding the Appaloosa with his knees, he zigzagged back and forth a little to throw off the Rurales' aim.
Frank headed for the flats. If he could get out of the foothills and down there on more level ground, the superior speed of Stormy and El Rey would give him even more of an advantage over his pursuers. The Rurales hung in steadily behind them, though, banging away at him and Antonio. Luckily, the back of a racing horse wasn't very conducive to accurate shooting.
Although Frank's attention was focused on getting away from the Rurales, a part of him was sick at heart. Esteban was dead, and from what Frank had seen, so were many of the Black Scorpion's band. Even though many of the Rurales had been killed, Estancia had survived along with quite a few of his men. The ones he had lost could be replaced, although it might take a while to get reinforcements up here. His grip on power in this region had been shaken, but in the end he was going to emerge victorious, or at least not defeated.
For now, Frank told himself. But it wasn't over, not by a long shot.
What felt like a finger of fire touched him on the upper left arm. He gritted his teeth against the yell of pain that tried to come up his throat. When he looked down, he saw the rip in the sleeve of his jacket and shirt. A bullet had come close enough to rip the clothes and burn his flesh without breaking the skin. Luck was still smiling on Frank Morgan.
They came down out of the hills, two men on fine horses moving at breakneck speeds, and then Stormy and El Rey lunged forward in great, ground-eating strides across the flatland. When Frank looked over his shoulder he saw the Rurales falling farther and farther behind. Puffs of smoke still came from their rifles, but Frank and Antonio were nearly out of range. Most of the slugs were dropping short now.
The Rurales gave up, reining in and dropping back. They dwindled rapidly in Frank's sight until they were gone. The horses continued to run freely, flashing across the brush-dotted landscape. Frank didn't slow down until he was sure that no one could catch them now.
A short time later, he stopped to check on Antonio. The young man was still unconscious, but he groaned and his eyelids flickered a little. Frank took hold of a wrist and found his pulse. It was rapid and irregular, but fairly strong. Without taking Antonio down from El Rey's back, Frank tore his shirt away to have a look at the wound in his side. From the looks of it, the bullet had gone in the front and out the back, plowing a channel through Antonio's body. The wound was fairly shallow, though, and Frank hoped the slug had missed anything vital. It might have broken a rib or two, but when Frank put his ear close to Antonio's mouth and listened to his breathing, he was confident that the young man didn't have a punctured lung. Although the bullet holes were covered with black, dried blood, they weren't bleeding anymore. He thought that Antonio stood a good chance of recovering from this injury if the wound didn't fester and if he didn't get blood poisoning. Frank wished he had some whiskey or tequila. If he could have poured a bottle of liquor through those holes to clean them, Antonio's chances would be even better.