Valley of the Gun (9781101607480) (8 page)

The Ranger looked stunned, but only for a split second. He took a step back as the sound of a rifle shot resounded from high atop a hillside.

“Down!” he shouted at Mattie, even as he hurled himself against her and took her to the ground under him. Beside them a bullet thumped into the hard dirt. The sound of the shot followed a second behind it. Sam rolled with the woman pressed against him, until he heard Dan Breely let out a deep, hard grunt and fall to the ground. Sam rose, dragging Mattie with him, taking cover on the other side of the buckboard, where Ollie Haines already lay crouched against the front wheel.

“The sons a' bitches left a man staked over this watering hole,” he said in a trembling voice. “Now they've killed ol' Dan'l.”

Sam and Mattie gave each other a look, both knowing how lucky they'd been to stay away from the water hole in daylight. Whoever was up there had seen the buckboard coming and decided to wait until everybody was gathered here.

Mattie's horse had spooked and galloped away. The string stirred and chuffed for a second, but went back to their drinking.

Sam noted the rifle Mattie still managed to clutch to her bosom as another bullet thumped against the other side of the wagon.

“Can you cover me here?” he asked.

“You're going up after him?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sam said. “If not, he'll sit up there and pick us to pieces. I just need you to keep him busy—throw him off.”

“You're covered,” she said. As she spoke, her eyes went up to a drift of rifle smoke and her fingers raised the long-distance sights on her rifle. “I'll do more than keep him busy. If I get a glimpse of him, he's dead.”

“Here I go,” Sam said, seeing the dun standing over by the water's edge, milling restlessly. He patted a hand on her shoulder, turned and raced toward the dun. Mattie braced the rifle against the front corner of the wagon and took aim in the direction of the smoke.

Chapter 8

A shot thumped into the ground as the Ranger leaped atop the dun and raced across the short stretch of flatlands in the cover of rocks. No sooner had the shot resounded than Mattie began a vicious string of return fire. When the firing slowed, another shot from up the hillside whistled past Sam's head. He rode the dun dangerously fast up a narrow path in the direction of the shooter, seeing the fresh drift of smoke.

A third shot from above him ricocheted off a rock and spun away. But this time instead of hearing Mattie lay down a barrage of return fire, Sam heard only one single shot from the buckboard. Yet this shot sounded prolonged, more important somehow than the shots proceeding it. The sound of it seemed to stretch all the way from the buckboard to the hillside, echoing off rock as if it could have come from either direction. He glanced back down toward the buckboard and saw Mattie stand up for a second and wave a hand back and forth slowly before lowering herself back down out of sight.

“She hit him?” the Ranger said aloud to himself. He looked up toward the drifting smoke.
She must have. . . .
If the shooter wasn't hit, why wasn't he firing?

Sam deliberately slowed the dun and continued on, but not without caution. Even if the shooter was hit bad or dead, there could still be another shooter, just waiting for him to slow down enough or stop long enough to present a good target.

Nice and easy,
he warned himself, keeping the dun at a slower but steady pace until higher up the trail he submerged both the horse and himself in the cover of boulders.

At a level where he'd judged the shooter to be perched on a cliff, he stopped the dun, stepped down from the saddle and let the reins fall to the dirt. In a silence broken only by the low whir of a breeze across the rocks, he slipped around a corner of stone. Colt drawn and ready, he moved along a narrow ledge with nothing beneath him but an airy drop onto the tops of spiky scrub pines and hard rock three hundred feet below.

He turned at the next rounded edge of a boulder and he felt relieved as he came upon the ledge where the shooter lay facedown in a puddle of fresh dark blood. Looking around warily, seeing only a horse in a small clearing back away from the ledge, Sam stepped forward and noted the gaping exit hole in the back of the shooter's bloody head.

Standing over the body, Sam reached out with the toe of his boot and rolled the dead ambusher over onto his back.

“You're no more than a kid,” he whispered, a look of surprise on his face. He stared at the bullet hole in the young man's forehead just above his left eye. The dead man's hat lay nearby with a bullet hole just above its brim.
What were you doing riding with outlaws like these?

He had to remind himself that Dad Orwick had more than just outlaws riding with him. He had disciples, churchmen, perhaps even members of his flock of all ages, doing his bidding. On the ground he saw a small ornament, a silver wagon wheel on the end of a horsehair watch fob. He picked it up and looked around at boot prints interspersed with a small, round indentation.

A peg leg?
Could be, he told himself, sticking the silver wheel trinket into his vest pocket. At any rate, the shooter hadn't been here alone.

Sam shook his head and considered whether or not to tell Mattie how young this shooter was. After a moment of staring at the dead boy lying at his feet, he shook his head, reached down and took the shooter by his shoulders. Still feeling warmth through the young man's shirt, he dragged the body into a stand of brush.

No, he thought, he wasn't going to mention the shooter's age to Mattie unless she asked, and why would she ask? It served no purpose, he decided, letting out a breath. She had killed the shooter who was out to kill them. Let that be the end of it.

He walked to the standing horse and led it around a thin path to where his dun stood waiting. When he searched the dead man's saddlebags and found nothing of any importance, he stepped atop his copper dun. Leading the shooter's horse behind him, he took his time descending the steep trail to the stretch of flatlands, then moved at a gallop. He slowed down as he neared the buckboard where Mattie stood watching, the hand above her eyes acting as a visor. Ollie Haines stood beside her, having stripped the harness and reins from the dead team horse and backed the wagon away from it.

“I got him, didn't I?” Mattie called out confidently as the Ranger drew nearer.

“You sure did,” Sam said, slowing his horse and the horse beside him. “Good shooting,” he said, not wanting to think any more about how young the shooter was.

“I told you if I got a glimpse of him, he'd be dead,” Mattie said.

“You sure did,” Sam said again, stopping, swinging down from his saddle. He held the dead shooter's horse toward Haines as Haines turned from the buckboard and walked over to him.

“Obliged, Ranger,” said Haines, taking the horse and looking it up and down. “This one will do.” He dropped the horse's saddle and led the animal to the buckboard, standing it beside the other team horse.

“We're getting up out of here. You need to do the same,” Sam called out to him. He saw Breely's body lying on the buckboard, a blanket tucked around it. “Any minute this place could turn hot again.”

“I'm ready to roll!” Haines said, Sam's words causing him to cut a wary glance up along the hill line. “Soon as I tie this string behind my wagon, I'm cutting out of here.”

“We'll stay here and cover you until you're up out of sight in the hills,” Sam called out to him.

“Much obliged, Ranger,” Haines called out in reply, his voice sounding worried.

Sam and Mattie watched him work quickly while they both kept their eyes on the hillside in the direction where Sam had found the young ambusher.

“Did you see any sign of another rifleman up there?” Mattie asked, scanning the hillside.

“No, I think it was only the one shooter,” said Sam, keeping his words guarded. “But this is still a bad place to be in broad daylight. It looks like Dad Orwick is big on leaving gunmen behind to cover his tail.”

“He's always been that way,” Mattie said reflectively. She looked at Sam as he watched the upper hill line. “It could be like this the whole way,” she said with a slight warning. “A gunman waiting where you're least expecting it.”

“I'm always expecting it,” Sam replied. He turned his eyes to hers. “A place as open as this, I'd be expecting it even if I wasn't trailing somebody.” He looked her up and down. “Are you all right?” he asked, sensing something pressing on her mind.

“I'm fine,” she said, but Sam didn't believe her. He kept his eyes on hers until she had to look away for a second. When she looked back at him, she asked, “The gunman . . . did my shot kill him right away? I mean, did he suffer?”

There it is.

“No,” Sam said firmly, “he never knew what hit him.” He looked away toward the hills again. He let out a breath. Instinctively, some inner voice had warned him not to tell her about the young shooter. He was thankful now that he'd heeded that warning.

“I know he's not the first man you ever shot,” he said, making a wry reference to his bullet-grazed shoulder. “Is he the first man you ever killed?”

“Maybe,” she said guardedly.

“‘
Maybe'?
” Sam's eyes turned back to hers.

“I mean,
yes,”
she corrected herself. “I've thought so long and hard, imagining how it would feel killing Dad Orwick. . . .” She let her words trail. Sam saw the pale, ill look on her face, now that her first taste of killing had set in.

Oh yes,
he thought, he was glad he hadn't said much about the ambusher.

“The way you're feeling right now,” Sam said, softening his tone of voice, “that's how you'll feel every time.”

“Really?” she said.

“Yes, really,” said Sam. “It never
feels
any different . . . If you're lucky, you just won't think about it as much.” The two studied each other's faces for a moment, then turned their eyes back the hillsides until they heard Haines call out behind them.

“I'm gone here,” he said, having climbed quickly into the buckboard, let off the brake handle and settled onto the hard wooden seat. “Anything you want me to tell the guards at the mines, Ranger?”

“Tell them to watch for me if they're still riding out searching for the robbers,” Sam called out.

“I doubt they'll be riding out after this long,” Haines replied. “The boss might set a bounty on them. Send out Gayle Warden or some other big gun. Otherwise these thieves can pat themselves on the back for this one.”

Mattie and the Ranger continued to watch the cliffs and hillsides as the buckboard and the string of horses moved away in a rise of dust. When the wagon disappeared behind the first tall stand of rocks, Mattie let her grip relax on her rifle stock.

“Who's Gayle Warden?” she asked Sam.

“He's a bounty hunter who does a lot of work for mining companies, railroads and such,” the Ranger replied. “They hire him because he's familiar with Old Mex. He made a name for himself killing a few loudmouth gunmen over in Sonora and Mexico City—they call him the Iron Warden there.”

Mattie shook her head slowly as they both walked to their horses and took up their reins. All that remained of the buckboard and horses was a drifting cloud of dust. On the ground lay the dead team horse, a simmering feast for the creatures of prey. Overhead, two buzzards had already begun circling wide and slow.

“Bounty hunters, lawmen, posses, mining guards,” she said, stepping up into her saddle. “This world you live in is something a person must see for herself in order to believe it.”

“Some folks see it and still don't believe it,” Sam replied quietly, “times when it spills off the badlands and into their civilized world.” He gave another look around. “Let's get off these flatlands,” he said.

In his saddle, he nudged the dun toward the short rocks at the water's edge where Mattie had washed her long johns and left them on the ground. Without stopping, the woman veered her horse over to the rocks, reached down from her saddle and picked up the wet undergarments. She draped them out over the dapple's rump to dry as they rode on.

Higher along a rocky hillside, the Ranger picked up a single set of hoofprints and the two of them followed the prints the rest of the afternoon. When they stopped and gazed at a small, weathered shack sitting in a clearing ahead of them, Sam sniffed the air closely.

“Over here,” he whispered to Mattie.

She followed him without a sound. They reined their horses off the thin path and out of sight behind a stand of thick, mature pines that stood like ancient columns between heaven and earth. As they stepped down from their saddles silently, Sam drew his big Colt and cocked it down his side.

“What is it?” Mattie whispered.

“Cooking smoke,” Sam whispered in reply.

“I don't see it,” Mattie said, glancing all around.

“Because it's gone,” Sam said. “Somebody cooked up some rattlesnake, then put the fire out.”

Mattie sniffed the air closely. A look of recognition came to her face.

“Now I smell it,” she said.

Sam nodded and said, “Stay here with the horses. I'll move in close and see if they're still there.”

“Be careful—” she said, catching herself but stopping a second too late.

Be careful?
Sam just looked her up and down.

“You know what I mean,” she whispered.

“I'll try,” Sam said in a lowered voice.

He crept through the pines toward the shack in a crouch, his six-gun in hand. Circling the small clearing, he stepped out and approached the shack from the side, keeping himself unseen. He tested the plank porch before putting all his weight on it. Once he determined it was all right, he moved to an open window and peeped inside for any sign of life.

He saw no fire in the small hearth, only a bed of waning red coals. But he did see a tin skillet of rattlesnake meat lying on a wooden table. A blackened coffeepot sat in the hearth coals. The aroma of snake meat and coffee wafted faintly—just as he'd thought, he told himself, easing silently to the open front door. Nobody left coffee and a skillet of snake meat to go to waste.

Stepping inside the door, Sam walked to the rear window and glanced out, noticing a fatigued horse tied to a pine sapling at the edge of the clearing. No sooner had he seen the horse than he heard the creaking of a roof plank and glanced up at it.

Here he is,
Sam told himself.

He eased closer to the skillet on the table, picked it up and shoved it onto a low, glowing bed of ashes, his eyes upturned, listening. With his gloved hand, he reached into the skillet, picked up a small gray-white chunk of back meat and put it in his mouth.

Chewing slowly as if to keep from being heard, he waited in a tense silence until he heard the roof creak again, footsteps moving diagonally upward toward the center. Then he stopped chewing and fired three quick shots almost straight up, stair-stepping each shot higher toward the roof's peak.

“Aiiii!
Son of a bitch!” a voice cried out in pain.

With his Colt raised, Sam followed a loud thumping sound down the roof with the tip of his smoking barrel. Where the noise stopped, he fired again. This time he heard the man fall off the edge of the roof and land heavily on the ground outside the rear window.

Stepping over to the window, Sam began chewing again, the big bull rattler not being the most tender he'd ever eaten. He looked down on the ground at the bloody man, who was struggling toward a fumbled rifle a few feet away.

“Don't try for it,” Sam warned him, his Colt ready to fire again. “You're shot bad as it is.”

The wounded man stopped reaching for the rifle and rolled onto his bloody side. He stared up at the Ranger with clenched teeth, his mouth bleeding.