Trackdown (9781101619384) (7 page)

“Well, I wasn’t sure…the bank’s got pretty thick walls, you know…but then some other folks said they thought they heard somethin’, too…”

Bill didn’t wait to hear any more. Without pausing to grab his hat, he rushed past Benjy out of the office. He flung an order over his shoulder.

“Go find Mordecai at the café!”

The bank was a couple of blocks away. Bad leg or no bad leg, Bill could move pretty fast when he had to. He did now, running toward the bank.

Behind him, Benjy scurried across the street toward the café. People started to yell questions, sensing that something was going on.

Bill was still more than a block away when he spotted two men standing by a bunch of horses tied in front of the bank. Those men appeared to see him coming at the same time. They twisted toward him, clawed guns from their holsters, and opened fire.

With his heart hammering wildly in his chest, Bill threw himself down and to the right, landing behind a water trough.
The range was too far for accurate shooting with handguns, but the men at the bank might get lucky. The bullets they sent toward Bill kicked up dust from the street in a wide swath.

He rolled closer to the boardwalk and looked through the gap between it and the water trough toward the bank. More men spilled from the building now, all of them brandishing guns. It was a robbery, all right, no doubt about that. Bill drew his revolver, aimed high so the shots might carry better, and triggered two rounds toward the outlaws.

That drew more fire from them. He didn’t have time to see if his shots hit anything before bullets began coming uncomfortably close to him. He scooted back to his right as slugs thudded into the water trough.

Some of the townspeople were still yelling, but they weren’t asking questions now. Those cries were shouts of alarm and warning. People scurried for cover as the battle continued in the street.

It was a pretty one-sided battle, Bill thought. There were nine or ten of the robbers and only one of him.

A rifle cracked behind Bill and to his right. He twisted his head around to look and spotted Mordecai crouched behind a barrel on the boardwalk on the other side of the street. The deputy had gotten hold of a Henry rifle somewhere and used it to open fire on the outlaws as they tried to get mounted. Men and horses milled around now in a confused mass.

Monroe Mercantile was only a few doors away. Bill cast an anxious glance toward the store. At this time of day, Eden might be in there, or she could be over at the café or even back at her father’s house. Bill just didn’t know.

He hoped that if she was in the store, she would have the good sense to stay behind the counter in the back, where she ought to be safe from any of the bullets flying around wildly in the street.

He needed to get closer, he realized. His Colt would be more effective at shorter range. The shots from Mordecai’s rifle had the outlaws roiled up right now, so this might be his chance.

He pulled three cartridges from the loops on his gun belt and thumbed them into the empty chambers in the revolver’s
cylinder. Then, snapping it closed, he lunged to his feet, leaped to the boardwalk, and started running toward the bank.

Before he had gone more than three steps, something knocked his right leg out from under him. He fell off the boardwalk and toppled into the street. At first he thought a bullet had struck him, but he didn’t feel any pain other than that of crashing to the planks and getting the wind knocked mostly out of him.

He didn’t have time to figure out what had happened because at that moment, the door of the mercantile was flung open and Eden ran out, crying, “Bill!” She must have been watching from inside the building and had seen him go down. She leaped off the boardwalk and started running toward him.

Fifty feet separated them. Bill shouted, “Eden, go back!” but she might not have heard him over the sudden thunder of hoofbeats. The outlaws had made it into their saddles and now they charged along the street, guns still blazing.

Bill’s eyes widened in horror as he saw one of them veer his horse straight toward Eden. His gun was still in his hand, but he couldn’t fire because she was between him and the outlaw.

At the last second she must have realized her danger, because she jerked her head around and screamed. She was too late as she tried to twist away.

The man didn’t ride her down, though. Instead he turned his horse a little, leaned down from the saddle, and threw an arm around her, scooping her right off the ground in one smooth movement.

Then he sent his horse pounding right at Bill.

In desperation, Bill scrambled to his hands and knees and threw himself into a roll toward the boardwalk. The hoofbeats were so loud they sounded like cannon shots as the outlaw’s horse raced past him, missing him by mere inches. He would have sworn he felt the animal’s hot breath against his face.

Eden screamed again as Bill rolled and came up on one knee. He could see the top of her head and her thrashing legs in a long gray skirt, but the outlaw’s broad back shielded the rest of her from his sight.

Bill lifted his gun and started to fire, but his finger froze on the trigger before he squeezed off a shot. It was possible the bullet would go all the way through the outlaw’s body and hit Eden, too. He couldn’t take that chance.

Maybe Mordecai could stop the man.

But as he looked past the rider who had grabbed Eden, Bill saw one of the other bank robbers thrust his pistol in Mordecai’s direction and pull the trigger. Flame gouted from the gun muzzle, and Mordecai was driven backward by the slug’s impact, away from the barrel where he’d been crouching. The deputy landed on the boardwalk in a limp sprawl.

“Mordecai!” Bill shouted as he surged to his feet. The
wild thought that this couldn’t be happening racketed through his brain. In the span of only a few seconds, he had seen his wife kidnapped and his friend and deputy gunned down. He had to stop this somehow, he told himself as he started to run after the escaping outlaws.

Several of them twisted in their saddles and fired back at him. Bill had to hit the dirt again as bullets whistled through the air just above him. That hail of lead would have cut him down if he hadn’t thrown himself to the ground.

The riders were a full block away from him now, he saw to his dismay as he looked up. He couldn’t hope to catch them on foot, nor could he empty his Colt after them without running the risk of hitting Eden.

But if he had a horse…

He leaped to his feet again and headed for the nearest hitch rack. His own horse was down at Josiah Hartnett’s livery stable. He didn’t have time to fetch it. He would just have to take one of the saddle mounts tied up along the street and return it to its owner later on, after he’d rescued his wife and brought the bank robbers to justice.

He wasn’t going to even entertain the possibility of some other outcome.

He was even more hobbled than ever as he hurried along the street, and after a second he realized it wasn’t because of his limp. A glance down at his feet told him that the heel of his right boot was gone. A stray bullet must have caught it and knocked it off as he was running along the boardwalk. That was why he had fallen into the street.

And it was him falling into the street that had drawn Eden out of the mercantile and put her in a position to be swooped up by that damned bank robber, Bill thought bitterly. He had to get her back before she was hurt. He just had to.

He grabbed some reins, jerked them loose, and swung up into a saddle. He didn’t know whose horse he had and didn’t care. He jerked the animal around and kicked it into a run after the fleeing bank robbers. They had reached the western edge of Redemption by now and were galloping out onto the prairie, strung out in a line. Bill tried to find the one who had taken Eden.

A flash of bright hair caught his eye. He raced after that rider. Buildings flashed past him on both sides. The citizens were running out into the open now, and some of them carried rifles they had fetched from their homes or businesses. They started firing after the outlaws, their bullets streaking through the clouds of dust raised by the hooves of the galloping horses.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Bill bellowed the order and hoped they would follow it. He didn’t care how many of the outlaws they killed, but he didn’t want anything to happen to Eden.

The settlement fell behind him. He was riding full tilt over the prairie now, leaning forward over the horse’s neck and urging every bit of speed out of it that he could. The animal responded gallantly. Bill didn’t know if he could cut into the lead that the outlaws had, but he was sure going to try.

He never got the chance. He heard a sharp crack, followed instantly by a scream from the horse, and he barely had time to kick his feet free of the stirrups before he flew through the air above the head of the falling animal.

Once again Bill crashed to the ground, but this time the landing was hard enough to knock all the breath from his body and all the awareness from his brain. Oblivion swallowed him up whole.

Tatum wasn’t sure what had possessed him to grab that pretty blond clerk from the general store. Sure, sometimes a hostage came in handy, and a pretty girl or a kid were the best ones. A posse wouldn’t crowd you too close if they thought they might stumble over the body of a slain prisoner.

On the other hand, a hostage could put up a fight and slow you down, too, and the members of a posse might be more determined than ever to keep going if you snatched one of their own. It was easier to give up when money was all that was at stake.

So there were pros and cons to the whole thing, but even so, when he’d seen her there in the street, ripe for the taking,
he hadn’t hesitated. He didn’t regret that decision, at least not yet.

The blonde seemed to have yelled herself out for the time being. She wasn’t screaming in his ear anymore.

But she hadn’t stopped struggling. She still twisted and fought, trying to get free from his grip. She must not have given any thought to the fact that they were galloping across the prairie at top speed. If he let go of her now, she’d fall off the horse and probably break her neck.

“Settle down!” he shouted as he tightened his arm around her. “Stop it! You’re gonna get hurt!”

“Let me go, damn you! Let me go!”

Tatum glanced back over his shoulder. The members of the gang were spread out and a haze of dust a hundred yards wide hung in the air. He wasn’t sure how far they had come, but Redemption was far behind them. He didn’t see any pursuit yet, but it was inevitable.

Other than the young marshal, who hadn’t appeared to be hurt bad, that old-timer with the rifle was the only townsman Tatum had seen go down. Chico was a good shot; he’d drilled the old bastard. But they had thrown plenty of lead around elsewhere during their getaway. Some of the other citizens could have been hurt. The gang had made a good haul at the bank, too. Tatum was experienced enough at this sort of thing to know that.

So the townspeople would have plenty of reason to get a posse together and come after them, even if he hadn’t scooped up the blonde, he told himself.

Anyway, he was the boss. The others knew better than to question his decisions.

They would have a good lead. The trick would be to maintain it.

And the first thing to consider was the strength and stamina of their horses. They made sure they had good mounts. In this line of work, that was vital. Not only that, they had spare horses stashed in a little canyon about ten miles from here. Hannah and the old man were watching them.

Tatum slowed his horse, knowing that the others would
see what he was doing and follow his example. It wouldn’t do them any good to ride their horses into the ground before they reached the canyon where they could make the switch.

The blonde finally managed to twist around enough that she could throw a punch at his face. Tatum moved his head aside and laughed.

“You’re wasting your time and energy, honey,” he told her.

“Damn you!”

“Too late. I reckon the Devil’s already got a corner of Hades all picked out for me, so it doesn’t really matter all that much what I do in this world, now does it?”