Deadly Road to Yuma (13 page)

By morning, the wagon had covered several miles without encountering any trouble. Exhaustion and the strain of worrying about his family had taken quite a toll on Ike Winslow, dulling him mentally and physically. He swayed a little on the seat next to Marshal Thorpe as he clutched the reins, slapping them against the backs of the mules from time to time to keep the animals moving.

Thorpe was still as stiff and upright as he had been when the journey started. His head swiveled from side to side almost constantly as he kept a lookout for any sign of trouble. Garth and the other outlaws were going to have a hard time taking him by surprise.

But that was
his
job, Ike reminded himself. If he wanted to save Maggie and Caleb, he had to kill Thorpe.

He had never killed anybody, hadn’t even been in a serious fight since he was a kid. All he’d done for years now was work hard and try to provide for his family.

But a series of bad years on the farm had forced him to borrow money, and then more bad years had kept him from being able to pay it back. And almost before he knew it, the farm was gone, taken away by the bank.

He had been able to scrape together enough money to buy supplies for the trip West. If he hadn’t already had the wagon, left over from better times, he wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

Maggie had been mighty good about the whole thing. She knew Ike was doing his best, she had told him, and she thought heading West to make a new start was a fine idea. Maybe deep down she didn’t really believe those things—Ike suspected that she didn’t—but she said them anyway.

Now he had led her right into trouble that might be the end of them all. Lord knows what was happening to her even now. You couldn’t expect brutal, ruthless men like Shade’s gang to keep their hands off of a young, pretty woman for very long. Sickness roiled Ike’s gut as he tried to shove the horrible images out of his head.

He had to concentrate completely on the job he had been given, he told himself. That was all he could allow himself to think about.

Kill Thorpe. Turn into an outlaw like the rest of Shade’s men. Even if he somehow survived this ordeal, he would be hunted for the rest of his life as a murderer, a wanted fugitive who had shot down a federal lawman.

That new life he had hoped for when they started West was gone, slipping through his fingers like smoke.

“Rein ’em in,” Thorpe said beside him.

Thorpe hadn’t said anything for what seemed like miles. The abrupt command took Ike by surprise and made him jump a little. He recovered quickly, hauled back on the lines, and asked, “Something wrong, Marshal?”

“No, we just need to give the mules and the horses a little rest,” Thorpe explained. He called to the outriders to halt as well, and then climbed down from the wagon seat, still holding the shotgun. “Better stretch your legs while you’ve got the chance, Winslow.”

Ike had given the marshal his real name when he asked to join the group of volunteers going along with the wagon. He didn’t see that it mattered if they knew who he was. He didn’t know what he would have done if Thorpe had refused to bring him along, so he emphasized his experience at handling a wagon team. And of course, it was true that he had driven a team of mules hundreds of miles already. He’d had no trouble so far with this team.

Luck had been with him…if you could call it lucky to be captured by a gang of desperadoes and forced to help them murder nine innocent men so they could free a monster in human form.

Thorpe went to the back of the wagon, which had a door set into it. A heavy padlock held the door closed. The marshal reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to the padlock, and as Ike dropped to the ground beside the wagon, Thorpe tossed the key to him. Instinctively, Ike caught it.

“Unlock the door,” Thorpe said as he stepped back and leveled the shotgun. “We’ll give Shade a little air.”

Swallowing nervously, Ike went to the door and stuck the key in the lock. He stood well to the side and stretched his arm out to reach the key as he turned it. If Shade tried anything, Ike didn’t want to be in the line of fire when that scattergun went off.

He hoped desperately that Shade wouldn’t try to escape just yet, though. If Thorpe was forced to kill the outlaw, then the rest of the gang would call off their rescue attempt…and Maggie and Caleb would be lost.

Nothing happened, though, except the door swung open. Training the shotgun on it, Thorpe said, “Come on out of there for a minute if you want, Shade.” Without taking his eyes off the door, he added, “Draw your gun, Winslow.”

Ike pulled the Colt revolver the outlaws had given him. He let the weapon dangle at his side as he watched the door. The walnut grips felt odd in his hand. He had used a rifle and a shotgun in the past, but he’d never handled a six-gun all that much. He wasn’t sure he could hit anything with it except at close range.

Like the width of a wagon seat…

Ike caught his breath as Shade appeared in the doorway at the rear of the wagon. His confinement over the past week had caused a pallor to set in on the outlaw’s face. His hair was matted and tangled, his eyes sunken and haunted by unknowable demons. His suit was dirty and disheveled. He looked like a lunatic, Ike thought, and from everything he had heard about Joshua Shade, that was an apt description. The man was crazy as a bedbug.

But still dangerous. Ike felt a chill go through him as those haunted eyes swept over him.

Something about the man inspired great loyalty in his followers, too. Ike had heard the way the outlaws had talked about “the reverend.” Sure, they respected Shade because the raids he planned were successful and had netted them plenty of loot, and no doubt they feared him as well.

But it was more than that. The fire that blazed in Shade’s eyes got into a man and burned right through him when Shade looked at him. Ike felt it now. He didn’t think that he ever would have succumbed to it…but at least he could understand why some men did.

“You can walk around a little if you want,” Thorpe told the prisoner. “We’ll give you some water and something to eat. Just don’t try anything funny.”

Shade didn’t say anything. He just stared at Thorpe with those baleful eyes for a long moment, then turned to look at Ike. Ike had to look away. A dry chuckle came from Shade.

“That’s right, boy,” he rasped. “Avert your eyes from the avenging angel of the Lord.”

Shade had no idea that Ike was working with the gang, and Ike couldn’t tell him. He just said, “I’ll get the canteen.”

“And a little jerky, too,” Thorpe said.

Awkwardly because of the shackles and leg irons, Shade climbed down from the wagon bed. There was nothing inside the enclosure but the bare planks, nothing Shade could use to free himself or turn into a weapon. He shuffled along for a few steps, then turned and went back to lean against the wagon. Evidently, that was all the exercise he wanted.

Ike holstered his gun and got the canteen and a strip of jerky from the bag of supplies stashed under the wagon seat. Being careful not to get between Shade and the marshal, he handed them to Shade.

“The blessings of the Lord be upon you, my son,” Shade said. Ike thought he detected a hint of irony in the outlaw’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure.

Shade took a long drink from the canteen, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck as he swallowed. He smiled as he handed it back to Ike.

“I’ll take particular delight in flaying every inch of skin from your body, you foul, fornicating sinner, so that you take days to die screaming in agony.”

Ike shuddered as he stepped back. Shade’s voice had been as soft and friendly as he uttered that threat as it had been a moment earlier when he asked for the Lord’s blessing on Ike. The man was loco, all right. No doubt about it.

“You won’t be torturing anybody else, Shade,” Thorpe said. “Now take that jerky and get back in there. Lock up after him, Winslow.”

Shade did what the marshal told him. Ike was glad when he swung the door closed and couldn’t see that evil, smiling face anymore.

But he knew he would have trouble shaking the image from his mind, maybe for the rest of his life…however long
that
was.

Ike didn’t expect it to be very long.

“When can we have the woman?” Gonzalez asked, for the fourth or fifth time.

“When Joshua’s free again,” Garth answered, trying to suppress the feelings of irritation that went through him. “I ain’t takin’ no more chances. I want her safe and sound to use as leverage against that husband o’ hers just as long as we might still need him.”

Along with the other members of the gang, they were riding along about two miles behind the wagon carrying Joshua Shade. Garth had spotted it earlier through his spyglass when they paused at the top of a long swell that provided a good view of the territory to the south.

Earlier, when the wagon tracks had left the main road and turned south, Garth had studied the map that Shade always used when he was planning their jobs. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out what the marshal was doing.

Thorpe wanted to get his prisoner on a train as soon as possible, because that was the fastest and safest way to transport Shade to Yuma. So instead of going all the way to Tucson to catch the train, he had struck out across country toward the railroad, following a meager track that barely qualified as a trail.

“Right there,” Garth had said, stabbing a blunt finger at the map he had spread out on a rock. “He’s headed for Pancake Flats.”

Since then, nothing had happened to change his mind. It was mid-morning now, and the wagon was still headed in the same direction.

Garth turned his head to look at the others. Mrs. Winslow rode double with Jeffries; they had abandoned the wagon back where the gang had been camped before. It wasn’t that Garth trusted the dapper gunman not to molest the woman, but he probably trusted him more than he did Gonzalez and the other men.

Mrs. Winslow had her baby in her arms, cradling the kid against her. Garth felt an unaccustomed twinge of pity. He had killed plenty of times in his life—men, women, children, whoever he needed to kill to get what he wanted—but every now and then, such as now, some fleeting, unwanted memories came back to him. Memories of a time before he was a killer and an outlaw, when he’d had a woman and a young’un of his own…

With a grimace, Garth turned around to face front once again. Those days were long gone, and good riddance to ’em. They’d ended badly anyway, and he’d just as soon not think about them.

“Hey, Garth,” Gonzalez said.

“What?” Garth snapped, his voice abrupt and angry because he figured the Mexican was fixing to pester him again about raping Mrs. Winslow.

Gonzalez had something else on his mind, though. “I think I saw a couple of riders up there, off to the east of the trail.”

Garth looked where Gonzalez was pointing and didn’t see anything. He reined in and motioned for the others to do likewise. Fishing the spyglass out of his saddlebags, he extended it and lifted it to his eye, squinted through it.

The pepper-eatin’ son of a bitch was right, Garth thought as he focused in on a pair of riders. They were too far away for him to make out any details about them, but they were also a good quarter of a mile east of the trail leading to Pancake Flats.

“Just a couple o’ cowhands, more than likely,” Garth said as he closed the spyglass. “There are some cattle spreads down this way, but they’re pretty scattered. Or maybe they’re just drifters passin’ through these parts.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Jeffries said.

“You heard what Winslow said. The marshal wasn’t takin’ anybody with him except some outriders. The whole bunch is with the wagon.” Garth tugged on his mustache as he frowned in thought. “But I reckon it wouldn’t hurt anything to be sure. The rest of us will ride on ahead and circle around the wagon to the west so’s we can set up an ambush. Larkin, you and Glenister go check out those riders over east a ways.”

The two outlaws Garth had selected for the chore nodded in understanding. One of them asked, “What do you want us to do about ’em?”

“Oh, hell, might as well play it safe,” Garth said. “Wait until the shootin’ starts, then kill both the sons o’ bitches.”

During the morning, Matt and Sam had swung gradually to the east as they followed the wagon, so that they wouldn’t be directly behind the vehicle. They didn’t want Thorpe to check his back trail, spot them, and take them for members of Shade’s gang.

Nor did they want the outlaws to realize that they were riding herd on the wagon. With some distance between them and Thorpe’s party, even if Shade’s men noticed them, they might not think the two of them had any connection to the wagon.

“Do you think the gang will try to take Shade away from the marshal before the wagon gets to Pancake Flats?” Sam asked.

“Well, if I was a no-account outlaw, that’s what I’d try to do,” Matt said. “Be harder to take him off the train. Not impossible, mind you, but harder.”

Sam nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. How would you go about doing it?”

Matt rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought. “Well, again, if I was a no-good, murderin’ skunk like Shade’s men, I reckon I’d try to get ahead of the wagon and set up some sort of ambush.”

“You know Marshal Thorpe has to be thinking the same thing,” Sam pointed out. “He’ll be ready for something like that.”

“Bein’ ready for something and bein’ able to stop it when it starts happenin’ are two different things.”

Sam shrugged. “I can’t argue with that.”

“They’ll find a good spot with plenty of cover,” Matt went on, gesturing as he spoke, “and then try to gun down as many of the outriders as they can in the first volley. Then men on horseback will sweep in and finish off the others.”

“There’ll be a lot of lead flying around that way,” Sam said, playing devil’s advocate. “Shade might get hit by a stray bullet.”

Matt shook his head. “That wagon looked sturdy enough to stop some of the slugs anyway, and as soon as Shade hears guns goin’ off, he’ll hug the floor as tight as he can. Chances are he’d come through it without a scratch.”

All that sounded feasible to Sam. He said, “So what do we do to stop it?”

Matt grinned. “Bushwhack the bushwhackers?”

“I like the way you think…dirty and underhanded.”

“I’ll give any man an even break, includin’ outlaws, when it’s just him and me. But when they’re plannin’ on murderin’ innocent folks, they’ve stepped over a line. They don’t deserve any more consideration than a nest of rattlers.”

Sam chuckled. “I was just joshing you, Matt. I agree completely.”

“I guess we need to get in front of the wagon then.”

Sam urged his horse ahead at a faster pace. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

Only a few minutes had gone by before Matt called over the pounding hoofbeats, “Look yonder!” and pointed westward.

Sam saw the thin haze of dust in the air about a mile away and said, “Riders!”

“Quite a few of ’em, by the looks of it! That’s got to be Shade’s gang, tryin’ to cut off the wagon!”

“Marshal Thorpe’s bound to notice that dust.”

“Yeah, but he won’t know what’s causin’ it,” Matt said. “Could be some cowboys hazin’ a jag of cattle from one place to another. Thorpe’ll have to keep that wagon movin’, dust or no dust.”

Sam nodded grimly. The marshal had no choice but to keep going and hope to reach Pancake Flats before the outlaws closed in on him.

“So much for an ambush!” Sam said. “It’s a race now!”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed, “a race Thorpe can’t win in that wagon!”

Without saying anything, both of them veered to the west, angling toward the wagon now. It was likely the marshal was going to need their help before too much more time passed.

Just then Matt felt something whip through the air not far from his head, followed an instant later by the sharp crack of a rifle. He jerked his head around and saw a couple of riders pounding after him and Sam, maybe two hundred yards back.

“Damn!” Matt said. “We’ve got company!”

Sam looked around, too. “Shade’s men?”

“Bound to be. They must’ve spotted us and sent those hombres to keep us busy while they hit the wagon. The fat’s in the fire now, boy!”

So it was. Outlaws closing in from behind, more outlaws about to attack the wagon Matt and Sam had come along to protect…No one could have blamed the blood brothers for being discouraged.

But both of them wore reckless, fighting grins on their faces as they urged more speed from their mounts and galloped straight toward their favorite destination…

Trouble.

“Damn it!” Willard Garth grated as he heard shots begin to ring out in the distance. “There wasn’t supposed to be any gunplay until
we
started the ball!”

“Too late now,” Gonzalez said. “Let’s go kill those gringo bastards and get the rev’rend out o’ there!”

Garth twisted in the saddle. “Jeffries! Take the woman and the kid and fall back! Keep ’em outta the fight!”

Jeffries looked like he wanted to argue, but then he shrugged and hauled his horse’s head to the side, peeling away from the rest of the gang. It was unlikely they would need the woman after the next few minutes, Garth thought, but being in command had taught him to hedge his bets.

As Jeffries fell back, Garth and the other outlaws kicked their horses into a run. In the lead, Garth veered his mount slightly to the east on a course that would intersect with that of the wagon.

He wanted to stop the vehicle and get Joshua Shade out of there as quickly as possible. The longer Shade was locked up, the more chance that something bad could happen to him, like being hit by one of the stray bullets that were about to start flying around.

Up ahead, the wagon careened past some boulders and a clump of scrubby mesquite. As the outlaws drew closer, Garth could see that stupid pilgrim Winslow slashing the reins at the mules, driving them on to greater speed.

That was just the opposite of what the bastard was supposed to be doing, Garth thought. By now he should have pulled his gun and plugged that damn marshal! Instead, it looked like he was trying to help Thorpe get away with his prisoner.

Winslow was going to be damned sorry about that, Garth vowed as he leaned forward in the saddle and pounded after the wagon.

Ike had been scared plenty of times in his life, including earlier today. But he had never been as flat-out terrified as he was when bullets started whining through the air near his head. His heart was racing so hard, he felt like it was about to climb right up his throat and burst out of his mouth.

At the same time, he wasn’t just frightened for himself. He was scared for Maggie and Caleb, too. He glanced over at Marshal Thorpe, who was saying, “Whip that team up harder, Winslow! Damn it, make ’em run!”

Ike bit back a groan of despair. He knew what he was supposed to do. As Thorpe twisted around on the seat beside him and leveled the shotgun back over the top of the wagon, Ike knew he could slip the gun out of the holster on his hip, raise the weapon, and put a bullet in the marshal’s head before Thorpe could stop him.

If he did that, the other deputies might give up the fight and run for their lives, rather than face the outlaws. Joshua Shade would be free, and maybe…just maybe…he would spare Ike’s life, and the lives of Ike’s wife and child.

On the other hand, Shade was too loco to predict what he might do. He could have all three of them tortured to death just to amuse himself.

The other problem was that Ike had never even shot at another human being, let alone killed anybody. He had thought that he could do it when he believed that his family’s safety depended on him being a killer, but when the time had come, he had frozen just as he started to reach for his gun.

Then Thorpe started yelling at him to whip up the team, and instinctively Ike had obeyed. Now the chase was on, with the outlaws closing in from the right, a huge dust cloud boiling up from the hooves of their galloping horses.

The outriders had swung around so that all of them were now between the wagon and the outlaws who were closing in from the west. Their rifles barked and cracked as they returned the gang’s fire.

To Ike’s horror, one of the deputies suddenly flung his arms in the air, throwing his rifle away, and toppled out of the saddle. Ike caught a glimpse of blood spurting from the man’s throat where a bullet had torn it open, but then the grisly sight was lost in the dust.

Ike suddenly wondered what the outlaws had done with Maggie and Caleb. Had they brought the two of them along, so that they were in danger from the bullets buzzing through the air like lethal bees, or were they somewhere behind the gang in relative safety? Ike wished he could see them again, just one more time, but he hoped they were well out of the line of fire, even if it meant he would never lay eyes on them again in this lifetime.

“Keep those mules moving!” Thorpe yelled at him over the rolling thunder of hoofbeats. The marshal got his knees up on the seat and started crawling out onto the top of the enclosed wagon bed.

What the hell was he doing? Ike glanced over his shoulder and saw that Thorpe had flattened out and drawn his pistol, although he still had the shotgun at his side. Thorpe edged over to the side so that he could reach down to one of the little windows that let light and air into the wagon.

He was going to kill Shade!

That thought sprang into Ike’s head. If the outlaws closed in and looked like they were about to stop the wagon, Thorpe planned to shoot through the window and kill the prisoner rather than allow him to be freed.

With Shade dead, the gang would have no reason at all to spare the lives of Maggie and Caleb. Ike couldn’t let that happen. He knew now what he had to do. He twisted on the seat and dragged the Colt out of its holster. Thorpe wasn’t even looking at him. It would be a simple matter to shoot the marshal.

But as Ike turned, holding the gun in his right hand, the reins slipped out of his left. He made a grab for them, but missed as they fell to the floorboard of the driver’s box. The mules were running flat out now, and if the reins slid off the box, Ike would have no way of stopping the team. He lunged after the lines.

At that moment, the wagon hit a rough spot in the trail, jolting heavily as it bounced. Ike was already off balance as he reached for the trailing reins. He felt himself thrown from the seat, and something crashed into his head with stunning force. The pain filled his entire being, washing everything else away, and swept him along with it into oblivion.