.45-Caliber Firebrand (27 page)

“Listen, mister . . .”

“I ain't gonna ask you again,” Mason snarled, canting his edgy gaze toward Camilla. “If she shakes so damn hard she trips my trigger, it's her fault, not mine!”

“Hold on, hold on.” With two fingers, Cuno slowly slid his .45 from its holster, thrust it out in front of him where Mason could get a good look at it, then, crouching low, dropped it with a thud. Just as slowly, holding both hands in front of him, palms out, he straightened.

“Got another one on ya?”

“No.”

“How 'bout a knife?”

“No,” Cuno lied.

He had a bowie in his boot. Let the sheriff find it for himself, if Cuno didn't find a chance to use it on the man first. He had no qualms about killing the sheriff. It was either Mason or Serenity and the children. But he needed to do it fast.

Mason slid his hand away from Camilla's mouth, leaving a white oval where his hand had been. He shoved her to his left, and she stumbled away, glaring at him, hardening her jaws with fury.

“Go over there and sit down, senorita. One move out of you and your gringo friend gets drilled through his heart.”

Keeping his Schofield leveled on Cuno, Mason reached inside his open coat and behind him. He pulled out a set of handcuffs and tossed them over the fire. They fell on the dusty, rocky floor at Cuno's feet.

“Put those on good and tight. Then you, me, and the girl are goin' for a ride to Fort Jessup. Wouldn't make it back to Willow City before the storm moves in. Besides, killin' federal badge toters and sellin' rifles to Injuns is a
federal
offense.”

Rage sweeping him like a wildfire, Cuno said through gritted teeth, “I didn't sell any rifles to Indians. I sold those—”

“Put 'em on and be quick about it!” Mason glanced at Camilla. “Go over and stand by your boyfriend. Either one of you tries anything, I'll shoot you both. Got no qualms about killin' women. These rampaging Utes got my nerves tangled, and all I
really
want's a drink and a warm
bed
!”

As Camilla sidled around the fire, limping slightly on her bad ankle and keeping her eyes on the lawman, Cuno stooped, picked up the cuffs, and reluctantly set his right wrist in a ring. Desperately, his thoughts flailed around for a way out of this current dilemma. Finding none, desperation made his heart hammer and his temples pound.

“You're makin' a mistake, Mason. Those federals got what they deserved, and I didn't sell any rifles to the Utes.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

A log popped in the fire between Mason and Cuno, and the lawman stumbled back with a start, snapping his eyes wide. Embarrassed, he aimed the Schofield straight out from his shoulder as he shouted,
“Put them cuffs on, goddamnit—I'm through triflin' with you!”

Cuno glanced at Camilla, then dropped his gaze to his right wrist as he closed the cuff around it. He set his other wrist in the other cuff and, closing it, hearing the click, he felt his cheek twitch and his knees turn to putty, as though the door to an inescapable trap had just been closed and bolted behind him.

“You first, senorita,” Mason ordered, wagging his gun at the passageway. “Head on out. Then you, freighter.”

Camilla turned slowly and, favoring the ankle she'd twisted while fleeing the bear, ducked into the passageway. Cuno turned to follow her, dropping to his knees and crawling awkwardly, unable to use his cuffed hands. Camilla was crawling out the low entrance ahead of him when he heard Mason behind him, the lawman's boots scuffing the cave floor, spurs ringing, his nervous breaths echoing around the cavern.

Cuno could feel the bowie snugged down in the sheath he'd sewn into the side of his boot well. If he could get to it, he'd use it. He'd cut the lawman's throat if he had to . . . if it was the only way he could shed the man and get back on Serenity's trail.

He poked his head out the cave entrance. Camilla had turned toward him on her hands and knees and, wrapping her right hand around a good-sized rock, looked at Cuno meaningfully as she slowly rose to her feet.

Cuno shook his head. Her chances of being able to knock the lawman out with the rock were slim, and the attempt might well get her killed. Frowning and pursing her lips, Camilla dropped the stone.

“Step back away from the entrance,” Mason ordered as he poked his head out the cave entry. “Give me a good ten feet, and face me. Don't try makin' a run for it. I'm right handy with this here hogleg.”

When Cuno and Camilla had stepped back away from the entry, Mason crawled out on one hand and his knees. Keeping the Schofield aimed at Cuno's chest, the lawman heaved himself up with a wince, his bearded face flushed and sweating, steam rising around his head.

“Whew!” he said, chuckling nervously. “Right close quarters in there.” He looked down the slope to where Renegade stood in some tall grass along the stream, staring skeptically up the ridge. Snow was beginning to stick to the horse's back and saddle.

Mason looked at Cuno. “Where's the girl's hoss?”

“Only got the one.”

“Head down to him, then. Mine's in a box canyon 'bout a half mile north.” Mason grinned. “Me and the girl'll ride your horse till we come to mine. You'll lead the way . . . on foot.”

Cuno stared at the lawman.

Mason read the dark intent in the young freighter's eyes. “Remember—you try anything, I'll drill you both. Got no time for nonsense.”

“Yeah, I know,” Cuno grumbled as he turned and, Camilla walking beside him, started down the slope. “You just want a drink and a warm bed.”

Cuno sidestepped down the slope that was slippery from the fresh snow dusting the grass and slide rock. It was an awkward maneuver, for he couldn't distribute his weight with his arms, and he almost fell several times. It didn't help that he was distracted by the urgent need to escape the lawman. Somehow, he had to get the knife out of his boot. If an opportunity didn't show itself sooner, he'd look for his chance when they were changing horses up canyon.

He took another step, almost slipped on a flat rock. Catching himself, he heard a loud grunt behind him. He turned his head to peer over his shoulder. Both of Mason's boots were sliding out from beneath him, his hands flying skyward.

Mason's revolver roared, stabbing smoke and flames straight up at a couple of low-arching pine boughs. The lawman hit the slope on his back, and his revolver clattered against the rocks about four feet above his head.

Cuno dropped to both knees.

The sheriff, face etched with pain, twisted around and dug a boot heel into the slope while flinging his right hand upslope toward his revolver. Cuno wrapped his cuffed hands around the man's left foot and jerked him straight down the slope, so that his hand missed the gun by a foot.

Cuno was atop the man in a second, straddling the man's torso bundled in the wolf coat.

As Mason cursed and grunted and flung his left hand upslope and behind him like a broken wing, flailing for the gun, Cuno raised his cuffed hands back behind his shoulder like a club, his biceps drawing the sleeves of his mackinaw taut, then swung them forward and down. He smashed the knuckles of his gloved left hand soundly against the lawman's bearded left cheek.

Mason's head whipped up and sideways, and his eyes fluttered.

Cuno swung his clenched fists up behind his left shoulder, and rammed them down against Mason's right cheek. There was a solid thud. The man's head slammed back against the slide rock.

The sheriff winced, bunching his untrimmed beard, the cuts on both cheeks showing in the dull light. He lifted his head slightly, the muscles in his face drawn slack, and then his lids fluttered down over his eyes, and his body fell slack against the ground.

Out like a blown lamp.

Blood from one of the cuts trickled down from the nub of his cheek and into his beard.

Camilla stood beside Cuno, staring down in shock, her earflaps jostling in the wind with her hair.

“Dig around in his pockets for his key,” Cuno said, breathing hard as he straightened, his boots straddling the lawman's legs.

While Camilla fished around in the lawman's coat pockets, Cuno looked around. The sky was about as gray as it could get without turning night-dark. It was a black-and-gray world, the snow fluttering like goose down. There were no animals around. Some of the snow was starting to lay, but not enough to hinder travel.

When Camilla found the key, she fumbled around for a time, her bare fingers numb from the cold, before the cuffs ratcheted open. Cuno flung them aside, then opened the lawman's coat. His pearl-gripped .45 was wedged behind Mason's cartridge belt.

Cuno lifted the lower right flap of his own coat, slipped the revolver into its holster, then scooped up the lawman's Schofied and stuffed it behind his cartridge belt. Taking Camilla by the arm, he started back down the hill toward Renegade.

“He is not dead,” Camilla warned, glancing back at the lawman.

“No.”

“You shouldn't kill him?”

“Yeah, I should,” Cuno grunted. But he couldn't.

He helped Camilla down the last part of the slope and threw her up onto Renegade's back. He ripped the reins from the pine branch, then climbed up in front of her.

He clucked to the horse.

As Camilla leaned taut against him and wrapped her arms around his waist, he heeled the paint into a wind-shredding gallop up canyon. He'd lost precious time, and Serenity might already be dead.

But he'd get Michelle and the kids back from the murdering Leaping Wolf if he got himself killed in the bargain.

25

A SHRILL CRY cut through the hushed, chill air of the canyon.

Cuno halted Renegade and looked around as another scream sounded—a shrill exclamation of unbearable pain and terror that echoed off the rolling, shrub-tufted hills to his right and off the steep, sandstone wall looming on his left, the crest of which was swallowed by heavy clouds.

With the echoes in the eerily quiet, snow-stitched air, it was hard to get a fix on where the screams were originating. Cuno turned to peer along his back trail, toward the high saddle barely visible in the gray distance.

He and Camilla had crossed the saddle over an hour ago, riding as fast as Cuno dared push Renegade on the uncertain terrain. At the bottom of the saddle they'd followed the canyon that they were still following now south by southwest, the tracks of the wagon and the Indian ponies clearly marking the brush, sand, rocks, and the dusting of wet snow.

Another scream rose. It sounded as though it were uncoiling from the bottom of a deep, stone-walled well. It pricked the hair beneath Cuno's collar, and tightened his gut. He looked around quickly, shuttling his gaze back and forth across the canyon, from the base of the high ridge on his left, along which a stony, dry creek bed snaked, stippled with leafless trees and tangled brush, to the ravine-sliced hills rising more gently on his right.

He could feel Camilla's heart beating in her chest pressed against his back as she, too, swept their surroundings with her eyes.

“It's ahead of us,” Cuno said, lifting his right boot over the saddle horn and dropping straight down to the ground.

He couldn't tell if the scream, which continued with frustrating, horrifying regularity about every fifteen seconds, belonged to a man or a woman. That he'd drawn to within a few hundred yards of the Utes had been plain in their sign, the snow only having just barely dusted their tracks since they'd passed. Within the last ten minutes, he'd spied steaming horse apples.

“What are you going to do?” Camilla said, scooting up into the saddle.

Cuno tossed her the reins. He dug around under his coat for Mason's Schofield. He filled the .44 from shells on his own belt, spun the wheel, and extended the gun to Camilla grips first.

She frowned at the gun, slowly wrapped her mittened hand around the handle.

“Hole up down in that creek bottom. If I'm not back for you in an hour, you're on your own. The Indians are ahead, so you'll need to find a way around them to Jessup. Shouldn't be but a few miles from here.”

Staring gravely at Cuno, Camilla shoved the gun down in a pocket of her bulky coat. “There are too many Indios, Cuno. You don't have a chance against them.”

He shucked his Winchester from the boot beneath the girl's right thigh. “Maybe I'll get lucky.”

He racked a shell in the Winchester's breech, off-cocked the hammer, and set the barrel on his shoulder as he swung around and started down canyon.

“Hold on.”

Cuno turned. The girl reined Renegade up beside him. She grabbed his coat collar with one hand, then leaned down and kissed his lips, drawing him toward her tightly. She didn't say anything as she released his collar and straightened. Her solemn, brown-eyed gaze held his.

Cuno turned and began tramping west, his insides recoiling at each echoing blast of the chilling scream. Behind him he heard Camilla put Renegade down the slope toward the streambed, the horse's shod hoofs ringing dully off snow-furred rocks and crunching frozen brush and branches.

He walked a hundred yards, rounding a sharp zigzag between two granite scarps, the screams growing shriller and more frequent. They were joined by a softer sound that Cuno gradually came to recognize as little Margaret Lassiter's crying. There were other sounds, too—the harsh voices of the Indians drowned by occasional bursts of hearty laughter.

Continuing down canyon, holding his rifle up high across his chest, following the screams and the sobs and the laughter, Cuno soon found himself climbing a low scarp of raw granite. The formation had bubbled up out of the ground several millennia ago, and it now bristled with a couple of stunt cedars and a tiny juniper that grew out of a crack in the top.