Deadly Road to Yuma (18 page)

By the time Matt got back to the stable with the good news about the trestle and the railroad map, Sam had had an idea. Matt spread out the map first, though, and the rest of them gathered around to look.

“There’s a water stop twenty miles west of here,” Matt said, pointing to it on the map. “That’s even better than a flag stop, because there’s no chance the engineer will miss it.”

“I’m starting to think this might work,” Thorpe said. “But how do we get Shade out of here?”

“He’ll go on horseback—” Sam began.

“He’ll have to be tied up mighty damn tight,” Thorpe said, breaking in.

Sam nodded. “That goes without saying, Marshal. And he’ll have you and Everett guarding him.”

“What about us?” Matt asked. “And what about that distraction you were talkin’ about?”

Sam smiled. “That’s going to be our job.”

“Let me guess,” Matt said. “It means we’ll be the ones gettin’ shot at, right?”

“If all goes according to plan. We’re going to take the wagon and make the mob think that we’re headed for Bowtie Canyon so we can stop the train and get on there.”

“But the wagon will be empty,” Thorpe guessed.

Sam nodded. “That’s right. Matt and I will bust out of here with guns blazing and head east, drawing the mob after us. That’s when you and Everett will take Shade the other way on horseback. We’ll rendezvous with you later at that water stop west of here.”

“If you don’t get shot full of holes,” Thorpe said.

“Well, yeah, there’s that chance,” Sam admitted with a shrug. “But there are no guarantees in life, are there?”

“Just that we’ll wind up gettin’ shot at too damn often,” Matt said, but the reckless grin on his face belied the words.

Thorpe thought it over for a few moments and then nodded. “All right. We’ll give it a try. For the life of me, I don’t see anything else we can do. When will we get started?”

Matt looked toward the front doors as the murmur of loud, angry, excited voices in the distance began to grow. “Like the saloon girl said to the padre,” he noted, “it won’t be long now.”

Maggie Winslow had heard Garth plotting with Jeffries and Gonzalez earlier in the day when she visited the outlaw camp, so she knew what was going on now as she watched from the lobby of the hotel, peering anxiously past the curtain she had pulled back from the window.

Men walked out of the saloon and began to congregate in the street, talking loudly among themselves. They looked toward the livery stable as their discussion grew more animated.

Maggie thought about Matt Bodine, his friend Sam Two Wolves, and the two lawmen who were in there along with their prisoner, Joshua Shade. They had to know what was going on, because the talk was all over town about how the outlaws had placed a bounty on their heads.

They were probably aware as well that the local lawman, Marshal Lopez, had ridden out of town earlier, leaving Bodine and the others on their own like a craven coward.

Lopez had claimed that he was just trying to do what was best for his family. Maggie could certainly understand that. She had been spying for the gang for the past twenty-four hours now. It made her feel dirty, as if she were an outlaw herself. But she had no choice except to cooperate if she wanted to protect Ike and Caleb.

Maggie suspected that Garth and the others were somewhere close by now, waiting in the darkness just outside town for the roar of gunshots that would tell them the attack on the barn had started. Would they wait until the shooting stopped to rush in and set Shade free?

The proprietor of the hotel stood behind the desk. He said nervously, “I’d get away from that window if I was you, ma’am. It might not be safe in a few more minutes.”

She knew what he meant. It might not be safe to stand by the window once the bullets started flying.

Her fingers clutched the curtain tighter. She was thinking about what would happen once the mob attacked the jail. The wild young cowboys who had spent the past few hours drinking thought that they would be earning themselves a reward as well as getting their revenge on Matt Bodine.

But it wouldn’t work that way, Maggie suddenly realized. They were fools to trust anybody in Shade’s gang. The outlaws wouldn’t pay off on the bounty Garth had promised.

Instead, it was much more likely they would turn on the town, looting and killing wantonly, as they had done in so many other places. A lot of people would die here tonight, Maggie thought as her heart began to pound harder in her chest. Innocent men, women, and even children…

And weighed against that was the safety of Ike and Caleb, one innocent man and one innocent—oh, so innocent!—child. To save her own family, could she allow the people of Pancake Flats to be duped into participating in their own massacre?

It was the most horrible question she had ever been forced to ask herself.

But she didn’t have to answer it, because at that moment someone yelled, and guns began to roar.

With no time to waste, Matt and Sam had gone over to the wagon as soon as they decided on the plan with Thorpe and Everett. They stood behind the wagon with their rifles trained on the door as the marshal unlocked it.

“Come out of there, Shade,” Thorpe ordered harshly as he swung the door open.

Shade came out, all right. Like a mountain lion springing on an unsuspecting deer, the outlaw burst from the wagon like a shot. Mouthing obscenities, Shade slammed into Thorpe and knocked him over backward. He landed on top of Thorpe and clawed at the lawman’s throat.

Shade got his fingers fastened around Thorpe’s windpipe, but he didn’t have time to tighten them into a choke hold. Matt stepped up and brought the butt of his Winchester crashing down on Shade’s head. Shade went limp, collapsing on top of Thorpe.

“Get this crazy, foul-smelling bastard off me!” Thorpe yelled.

Shade smelled bad, all right. They had stopped often to let him relieve himself, and he had a bucket inside the wagon for that purpose, too. Evidently, though, he had stopped using it.

Matt and Sam both wrinkled their noses in disgust as they grasped Shade’s arms and hauled him off Thorpe. They dumped the unconscious man on the hard-packed dirt floor of the stable, and didn’t worry about being gentle in how they did it.

“He’s like a wild animal that’s been caged,” Thorpe said as he got up and brushed himself off. “I’d almost feel sorry for him if he wasn’t responsible for the deaths of probably a hundred innocent people, maybe more.” Thorpe shook his head. “Get him on a horse.”

Matt and Sam lifted Shade into the saddle of one of the extra horses they had gotten ready to ride earlier. Then Everett held the unconscious man in place while Matt and Sam tied him.

Matt lashed Shade’s feet together under the horse’s belly. Sam tied the outlaw’s wrists to the saddle horn, then cinched another rope tight between Shade’s elbows and tied that to the saddle horn as well. Shade couldn’t possibly fall off the horse now, even while he was out cold. He was forced to lean forward over the horse’s neck, too, so that he would make a smaller target if bullets started to fly.

The racket in the street was louder now as Matt and Sam stepped back from their work. “He’s not goin’ anywhere,” Matt said. “At least, not without that horse.”

A shout came from outside. “Bodine! Matt Bodine! You hear me?”

Matt didn’t answer. He hurried to the horses and tied Sam’s mount, along with a couple of others, to the back of the wagon while Sam was climbing onto the driver’s seat. The mules were already hitched up, so all he had to do was turn the team and the wagon around. He did that while Thorpe and Everett blew out the lanterns and hurried to their own horses.

“Bodine, if you and your friends let the prisoner go, we won’t kill you!” the man who had shouted before called from the street. “We don’t want any bloodshed!”

“That’s a damn lie,” Matt said quietly to Sam as he brought his horse alongside the wagon. “The way they’re likkered up, somebody’s bound to let off a shot, and that’s all it’ll take.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, it would be quite a bloodbath—if it went the way they think it’s going to.”

Everett held the reins of Shade’s horse while Thorpe went over to the double doors. “This is Deputy U.S. Marshal Asa Thorpe!” he yelled. “Hold your fire! We’re coming out!”

There was a moment of surprised silence from the mob, and then the spokesman called, “All right, Marshal, come on out! There won’t be no shootin’!”

Barely visible in the gloom, Thorpe nodded to Matt and Sam. Then he flung the bar up, unfastening the doors. Sam cried out and slashed the mules across their rumps, driving them forward. Thorpe whirled his horse and dashed back along the barn’s center aisle, joining Everett and Shade in the deep shadows at the rear.

Matt crashed out first, Winchester in hand. Yelling, he fired over the heads of the startled crowd. Men shouted in alarm and leaped aside to keep from being run down as the mules burst out of the barn with the wagon right behind them.

Sam swung the wagon in a sharp turn toward the railroad station. The horses tied on at the back had to gallop along with the vehicle, and they caused members of the mob to scramble out of the way to avoid being trampled, too.

Matt was still firing as he crouched in his saddle and broke a path through the crowd for the wagon. He aimed high, though. As far as he was concerned, the men who had been about to storm the livery barn were sorry sons of bitches for trying to free Shade, but maybe they didn’t deserve to die for it.

If any of them got in the way of a stray bullet or a charging horse or mule, though, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Most of them would get off luckier than they deserved.

“Stop them!” somebody yelled. “Stop that wagon!”

More guns began to roar. Powder smoke spurted from gun muzzles, stinging noses and blinding eyes.

Matt and Sam were counting on that, along with the darkness and confusion, to keep the mob from noticing that Thorpe and Everett weren’t with them. If everything went according to plan, the drunken, greedy cowboys would think that all four of them were getting away, along with Shade. The extra horses tied to the wagon would contribute to that illusion, too.

As Matt pounded down the street at a hard gallop, he glanced to his left and saw the town’s lone hotel looming there. Someone stood at the front window, peering out with a wide-eyed, worried expression, and Matt felt a second of recognition as he realized the watcher was Jessica Devlin.

There was no time to acknowledge her, though. Matt flashed on past the hotel with the wagon careening behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that Sam was staying low on the driver’s seat.

Colt flame bloomed from the scattered mob, until a man yelled, “Stop shootin’! Stop shootin’! Shade’s worth a thousand dollars
alive
!”

Someone else shouted, “Get your horses! Let’s get after ’em!”

Matt wasn’t too worried about pursuit, though. All he and Sam had to do was stay in front of anyone who came after them for a couple of miles. Then they could abandon the empty wagon and ride off into the night. Thorpe and Everett would have a big enough lead then that they could reach the water stop west of town before anyone figured out what was going on. Even when the cowboys found the empty wagon, if they did, they wouldn’t know where Shade had gone.

Of course, somebody might figure it out if they talked to the railroad clerk and found out that Matt had been asking about stops west of Pancake Flats…but again, by that time, Matt hoped they would be on the train rolling toward Yuma.

It was a shame, though, he thought as they raced on into the darkness, that he would never see Jessica Devlin again.

He would have liked to find out just what it was that was troubling that pretty young woman.

At the moment, of course, he had his hands full just staying alive…

Guns were still going off behind them as they left Pancake Flats behind. Matt figured several of the cowboys had been able to grab their horses and give chase fairly quickly.

To discourage them, he reined in and wheeled his horse around while Sam kept the mules racing eastward. He lifted his Winchester and sprayed an arc of bullets across their back trail, still aiming high. He hoped the muzzle flashes from the rifle would be enough to make the pursuers think twice about chasing them.

Then he whirled his mount and pounded after the wagon. He caught up to it a few moments later, and gave Sam a reckless grin as he drew even. Sam returned the grin, and kept slashing at the mules’ rumps with the reins.

Guns kept flashing and banging behind them, but none of the bullets came close as far as Matt could tell. More than likely, the cowboys chasing them were blazing away with six-guns, and they weren’t going to hit anything at that range unless it was by pure luck.

Every so often, Matt stopped and threw a few shots behind them with his Winchester as Sam continued to follow the railroad tracks toward Bowtie Canyon. The pursuit fell farther and farther back.

Finally, Sam hauled on the reins and called, “Whoa! Whoa!” to the mules. Matt reined in as well and swung down from the saddle to untie Sam’s horse from the back of the wagon while Sam was climbing down from the driver’s seat. He untied the spare horses as well.

Matt pressed the reins into Sam’s hand and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

It went against the grain for them to ride away from trouble, rather than charging straight into it, but it was more important tonight that they rejoin Thorpe and Everett and make sure that they’d reached the water stop safely with Joshua Shade.

Leading the extra horses, Matt and Sam rode carefully across the railroad tracks, then headed south toward the border. They didn’t intend to go as far as Mexico, however. After a mile or so, they turned west, paralleling the Southern Pacific right-of-way.

There were no more shots. The blood brothers figured that the cowboys who had chased them from Pancake Flats would find the wagon and realize they’d been tricked when they discovered the vehicle was empty. By then, it would be too late. They wouldn’t be able to track Matt and Sam by starlight, and they’d have no idea where Joshua Shade really was.

All Matt and Sam had to do now was reach the water stop, rendezvous with Thorpe and Everett, and hope that nobody figured out where they were before the train came through in the morning. It was pretty simple…but there was still a lot that could wrong between now and then.

Garth knew something was wrong when he saw the muzzle flashes streaming out of Pancake Flats to the east. He and the rest of the gang were less than half a mile north of the settlement.

They had left Winslow and the kid alone back at the place where they had been camped. It was a risk, not leaving a guard behind, but with the way the gang’s numbers had shrunk since that damned Bodine and Two Wolves had poked their noses in, Garth wanted every man with him. Winslow was still out cold, and the kid was asleep. They weren’t going anywhere.

Now, as he listened to the shots and saw the orange spurts of flame trailing off to the east, Garth cursed bitterly under his breath.

“Those lawdogs must’ve made a break for it with Joshua,” he said. “Mount up! We’ll try to cut ’em off!”

“Wait a minute,” Jeffries said.

Garth whirled on him. He didn’t like having his orders contradicted, and he’d had just about enough of the dapper gunman anyway.

“What the hell’s the idea?” Garth demanded.

“We can’t get ahead of them,” Jeffries said. “Not from this angle. They’ve got too big a lead on us.”

“What do you reckon we ought to do then?” Garth didn’t bother trying to keep the anger out of his voice.

“The only reason for them to go east, away from Yuma, is if that they’re trying to catch the train before it ever gets to Pancake Flats. Marshal Thorpe must plan to commandeer the locomotive and highball it right through town instead of stopping.”

Garth frowned and chewed his mustache. What Jeffries said made sense, even though Garth didn’t want to admit it. As he thought about it, the glimmerings of another idea came to life in his brain.

“The train’s still got to go through Pancake Flats before it can get to Yuma,” he said.

“Exactly,” Jeffries agreed.

Gonzalez, who had returned earlier from spreading the rumor in the settlement concerning the reward or bounty or whatever you wanted to call it, said, “What are you two talkin’ about?”

Garth turned toward him and raised his voice so that the rest of the men could hear, too. “We’re gonna ride in and take over that two-bit town,” he declared. “Then, when the train comes through, we’ll stop it and take Joshua off of it.”

Murmurs of agreement came from the other outlaws. Garth nodded, confident again in his decision, even though so far his quarry had seemed able to stay one jump ahead of him.

“Those men who went chasing off after the wagon might actually catch it,” Jeffries suggested.

“All the more reason to get into town and take over,” Garth snapped. “If they come back with Joshua, we’ll be ready for ’em. If they don’t, we know what we’ll have to do.”

With that, the outlaws mounted up and headed toward Pancake Flats.

Maggie had recognized Matt Bodine as he galloped past the hotel, leading the way for the wagon, and she thought he had recognized her, too, in that brief instant. He hadn’t slowed down, though, even for a second, which came as no surprise. Bodine and his companions were making a break for it with their prisoner before the mob had a chance to storm the livery stable.

Or were they? Maggie saw the riderless horses tied onto the back of the wagon, and asked herself where Marshal Thorpe and the other deputy were. They wouldn’t be
inside
the locked wagon with Joshua Shade.

That meant they were still in the barn—or maybe they had gone out the back with the prisoner while Bodine and Two Wolves were going out the front and capturing the attention of everyone in the mob.

Like a flash of lightning, the whole thing was crystal clear in Maggie’s mind. She knew what they had done, and as she watched the angry cowboys stream out of town after the wagon, she realized that the trick had worked. Like hounds baying after a false scent, the mob had taken the bait.

Maggie felt a wave of dismay go through her. It wasn’t that she trusted Garth and the other outlaws or anything like that. But as long as Joshua Shade was a prisoner, they still had a reason to keep holding the safety of Ike and Caleb over her head and forcing her to help them.

Was she never going to be free of those awful men? Would her husband and son ever be free? Those questions went through her head as she closed her eyes for a moment and sighed.

The hotel proprietor came up beside her. “What’s wrong, Miss Devlin?”

Since Maggie had given Matt Bodine that name, she had used it here at the hotel, too, after slipping off her wedding ring so that she wouldn’t appear to be married. She wasn’t sure at the time why she had done that; it had been an instinctive move.

But later, when she’d had a chance to think about it, she had realized that by pretending to be unmarried, she stood a better chance of getting closer to Matt Bodine if she needed to in the future. She had seen the way he looked at her. He thought she was pretty, and it wouldn’t take much encouragement on her part to get him interested in her.

She could carry off that masquerade if she had to, she decided, in order to save her family.

Now, of course, it looked like that wouldn’t be necessary, because Bodine and Two Wolves were gone, and Maggie would have been willing to bet that Joshua Shade was, too. The other two men must have tied the prisoner on a horse and escaped with him that way, while Bodine and Two Wolves distracted everyone with the wagon.

Maggie realized that the hotel keeper was standing beside her, waiting for an answer to the question he had asked her. She said, “I just don’t like all this shooting. I wish those men had never come here.”

“You and me both, miss,” the man agreed. “All this trouble is bad for business and bad for the town’s reputation. I’m glad those men are gone.”

Maggie wasn’t, but she kept that to herself. She had hoped that things would end here, one way or the other, but unless she was completely wrong in her guess about what had happened, it wouldn’t.

Ike and Caleb would still be in danger, and of course, so would she, although she didn’t really care anymore about what happened to her.

She wished she could see her husband and son right now, and know that they were all right.

The night wind stirred the sand on top of the tiny ridge against which Ike Winslow lay with his son, Caleb. In this dry, semiarid land, the temperature dropped rapidly once the sun went down, and as the air cooled, the sleeping little boy had instinctively nudged closer to his father for warmth.

Neither of them was aware of the lean, gray shape gliding through the shadows toward them. The coyote was hungry, as coyotes nearly always were. He sensed prey, but he approached carefully, his natural caution outweighing his hunger.

The bigger shape wasn’t moving, but it didn’t smell dead yet. The smaller one shifted around from time to time, but didn’t seem to represent any threat. The coyote slunk closer, figuring he would grab the little creature by the leg and drag it off away from the bigger one, so he could make a leisurely meal on it.

The wind picked up again, blowing their scent to the coyote. His tongue lolled from his mouth, saliva dripping from it. His muscles tensed.

One quick dash in, and he could clamp his jaws around the little one’s leg. He wouldn’t go hungry tonight.

Grains of sand from the top of the ridge trickled over Ike Winslow’s face. Some of it fell in his left eye. The eye twitched in irritation. Ike grimaced.

His eyes opened, and without thinking about what he was doing, he reached up to rub at the irritated one. That made thunderous peals of pain go through his head.

But even over that horrible racket, he heard the growling somewhere close by.

His eye watered as he blinked rapidly, trying to get the sand out of it. He put a hand on the ground and pushed himself up. Darkness surrounded him, but it was relieved somewhat by the light from millions of stars.

That starlight was bright enough for Ike to see the ugly shape crouched only a few feet away. He recognized it as a coyote and yelled hoarsely. The coyote whirled and dashed off into the darkness, unwilling to do battle against such a larger foe.

Only then did Ike become aware of the warm little body nestled against him. He looked down in amazement at his son. His shout had woken Caleb, who was now stirring. A thin cry came from him.

Ike struggled to sit up, lifting Caleb and holding the boy against his chest. His head hurt like hell, but all his muscles seemed to be working and he was grateful for that.

But where were they? he wondered as he looked around at the empty landscape. The last thing he remembered, he had regained consciousness after falling off the runaway wagon and stumbled north, until he ran into the outlaws who had Maggie and Caleb.

Caleb was still here, but the outlaws were gone.

And so was Maggie.

Ike’s brain wasn’t working at its full capacity yet, but one thought was crystal clear in it.

He had to find his wife. He had to find Maggie.

Cradling Caleb against him, he fought his way to his feet. He tipped his head back, which caused a moment of excruciating dizziness before things settled down again, and studied the stars. He knew how to steer by them, so he knew which way was south.

That was the way Marshal Thorpe had been taking the prisoner. Ike knew that if Joshua Shade hadn’t been freed yet, the gang would have continued in that direction, hoping to rescue their leader.

So Ike started that way, too, none too steady on his feet, not at all sure what he would do if he caught up to the gang…but he was certain of one thing.

If those bastards had hurt Maggie, he would kill them, each and every one of them, no matter what it took. A part of his mind was aware that it was ludicrous for an injured man with a baby on his hands to make such a vow, but he didn’t care.

If Maggie was hurt, they would pay. He would see to it.