The Loner: The Blood of Renegades (12 page)
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Chapter 22
Conrad knew they couldn’t go after Selena without horses, but the delay while they searched for the stampeded animals caused worry to gnaw at his thoughts. He hoped he’d be able to locate the black gelding because he knew how strong and dependable it was—but would take any mount he could find.
As it worked out, the first horse he and Arturo found was a roan that shied away until Conrad spoke to it in a calm, soothing voice as he approached. He had learned the trick from his father, and it nearly always worked. They had brought a couple bridles with them, and as soon as he was within reach, Conrad slipped the leather harness over the roan’s head. The horse fought halfheartedly, and Conrad figured it was probably glad to have a human calling the shots again.
He handed the reins to Arturo, who led the roan while they continued looking for another horse.
A few minutes later, Conrad heard some racket in a thicket of brush. He took a chance and let out a low whistle. The noise stopped. He whistled again, and a large, dark shape pushed itself out of the thicket with a crackle of branches. The horse gave a familiar toss of its head. Conrad grinned as he recognized it. “It’s good to see you, too,” he told the black as he came up to it and slipped the bridle on.
“Since we have our full allotment of horses, I suppose we should head back to the cabins now?” Arturo asked.
“Yeah, but we’ll keep our eyes open along the way. If we find any more, we’ll try to drive them that direction.” Conrad paused. “How are you at riding bareback?”
“Bareback?” Arturo repeated, sounding as if he could hardly believe Conrad had asked the question. “Completely inexperienced and vaguely horrified at the mere concept. Riding with a good saddle is perilous enough to the male anatomy. But I suppose if you insist . . .”
“No, no, we’ll lead them. Come on.”
They didn’t see any more horses on their way back to the settlement, but by the time they got there, three of the men who had agreed to come with them had arrived not only with mounts for themselves but several extras. The fourth man showed up a short time later with two horses. Taking saddles and tack from the barn they got the animals ready to ride.
Kingman and Ollie came back from Ollie’s cabin. Kingman wore jeans, a flannel shirt, and a pair of high-topped boots. They weren’t Ollie’s, that much was certain. Ollie’s clothes would have swallowed Kingman whole.
Along with the fresh clothes, Kingman had a gunbelt strapped around his hips with a black-butted Colt in its holster. He carried an old Henry rifle. Conrad smelled a pungent odor coming from him and figured it was that cow-doping salve Ollie had mentioned.
“All right, I’m here,” Kingman said. “I just need a horse.”
Conrad had already put a saddle on the roan for Arturo, and was tightening his own saddle on the black. He leaned his head toward the spare mounts. “Take your pick, but you’ll have to be fast about it. The rest of us are ready to ride.”
“Listen here, Browning, I don’t know what makes you think you can give orders—”
Kingman’s angry response stopped short as he made a visible effort to control himself. Clearly, he didn’t like the fact that Conrad seemed to have taken charge of the rescue effort, but they had called an implied truce earlier.
Conrad hoped that was what caused Kingman to rein in his temper. It might be the man was just biding his time, taking advantage of Conrad’s offer to help rescue Selena, all the whilc plotting how he could double-cross Conrad and Arturo later, once Selena was safe.
That was assuming they were able to rescue her, Conrad thought . . . and the odds against that were pretty long.
“How many of us are going?” Kingman asked while Ollie saddled a couple of the remaining horses.
“Eight.”
Kingman frowned. “Is that all? What happened to the rest of the men who survived the raid? There were more than six of us, weren’t there?”
Ollie looked uncomfortable. “They’ve, uh, decided they don’t want to stay here anymore, Dan. They’re gonna move on.”
“And let Leatherwood get away with what he’s done?” Kingman asked in a mixture of outrage and disbelief.
“That’s their decision to make,” Conrad said. “Are we ready to go?”
He looked around at the members of the group. All of them nodded except Kingman, who put his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. He kicked his horse into a run.
Conrad and the others mounted and followed at a slower pace.
Ollie said worriedly, “Dan doesn’t need to be runnin’ that horse so hard. It’ll play out, and then he’ll be stuck.”
“That’s his problem,” Conrad said. “He’s smart enough to realize what he’s doing is stupid. If he keeps it up, he’ll have no one to blame but himself.”
And Kingman having to give up the chase would be a mixed blessing, Conrad mused. On the one hand, not having Kingman with them meant they’d have one less gun.
On the other hand, it also meant Conrad wouldn’t have to worry about Kingman shooting him in the back during a battle with the avenging angels.
By the time they reached the pass, Kingman had stopped to wait for them. “I guess I lost my head a little back there. We’ve got to push ourselves pretty hard, or else we won’t catch up to Leatherwood before he gets back to Juniper Canyon.”
“I think the odds of that are already pretty slim,” Conrad said. “Having to take the time to catch the horses gave them a good lead on us. Unless Leatherwood stops and makes camp for the night, I don’t think we’ll catch him.”
“He won’t do that,” Kingman said. “He’ll be too anxious to get back to Father Agony and deliver the prize to him. He knows where he’s going, so he’ll ride on through the night.”
Conrad nodded. “I agree. And
we
know where he’s going, so we don’t have to worry about following any trail they leave behind. We can head straight for Juniper Canyon.”
we
know where he’s going, so we don’t have to worry about following any trail they leave behind. We can head straight for Juniper Canyon.”
“Then let’s do it.” Kingman heeled his horse into motion, holding it down to a lope.
The eight riders moved through the pass and started down the twisting trail on the other side. It took them back into the dry, inhospitable country that most of the region was like. A three-quarter moon had risen, and its silvery glow reflected off the impassible salt flats to the east, creating a white gleam that lit up the night almost like day.
Kingman gradually pulled ahead again. Ollie brought his mount alongside Conrad’s and said quietly, “I’m worried about something, Mr. Browning.”
“What’s that?”
“Even if we catch up to Leatherwood before he gets back to Juniper Canyon—and I know, that ain’t likely to happen—we’ll still be outnumbered. If we don’t catch up, that means we’ll have to rescue Selena and the other women from Elder Hissop’s fort, and he’ll have a lot more men to fight us than just Leatherwood and some avenging angels, so it’ll be even worse.”
Conrad looked over at Ollie. “Fort? Nobody said anything about a fort.”
“Well, it’s not like a cavalry fort or anything like that. It’s more like a big house, I guess you’d say, where Elder Hissop and all his family live. He’s got seven wives already, you know, and there ain’t no tellin’ how many kids. I can’t keep up with that, but Father Agony’s old enough that some of his sons are grown men and more of ’em almost are, and they’ll fight for him. They’ll do anything he tells them to, you can count on that, because he sees to it they get first call on all the women he don’t want for himself. Then you’ve got some brothers and cousins and nephews thrown in, and some fellas who ain’t related by blood but might as well be, they’ve been followin’ the elder for so long. You might almost say he’s got himself an army. Since they can hole up in that big house with its thick adobe walls and a parapet on top where he puts riflemen, it just seems natural that you could call it—”
“A fort,” Conrad said. “I see your point, Ollie.”
“I’m as anxious to get those gals back as anybody, but there’s just eight of us. Eight. I’m startin’ to wonder just what it is we can do.”
“Well, that’s the thing about a fort. It can be strong enough to keep out an army, but rats can still get in there. That’s what we may have to be.”
“Rats?”
“That’s right.” Conrad nodded. “Well-armed rats.”
Chapter 23
By the middle of the next day, Conrad and his companions had seen no sign of the men they were after. It had become obvious they weren’t going to catch Jackson Leatherwood. He had to be pushing his avenging angels as hard as the pursuers were pushing themselves.
Realizing that, Conrad called a halt to rest their horses.
Kingman reined in, but he hipped around in the saddle to complain. “We’re wasting time by stopping now. These horses can go a little farther.” He had voiced the same complaint each time they had stopped to rest the horses.
Conrad was getting tired of it. “What’s the earliest we could make it to Juniper Canyon even if we didn’t stop again? Sometime tonight?”
Ollie and a couple men nodded and muttered agreement. “It’d be midnight or later even if we were able to ride straight through,” Ollie said.
“In that case, I don’t see any point in wearing out our horses—or killing them—in an attempt to get there sooner,” Conrad went on. “That would just leave us a lot worse off.”
Kingman sighed and dismounted. “You’re right, I know. I just can’t stop thinking about Selena being their prisoner.”
“Leatherwood’s not going to let anything happen to Selena before he gets her back to Hissop. He’ll want to deliver her safe and sound. I think you can be pretty sure of that.”
Ollie spoke up again. “Those avengin’ angels are killers, Dan, but they wouldn’t mistreat a woman.”
One of the men said, “And Selena’s not the only prisoner. My Rachel is with them.”
“And my Dora,” another man said.
“And my Caroline,” a third put in.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Kingman said. “I don’t mean to slight anybody. We’ll rescue all the women, of course.”
At least Kingman genuinely seemed to care about Selena, Conrad thought, and wasn’t just upset because of the two thousand dollars he had lost at the same time. He had become an outlaw after he was banished from Juniper Canyon, but still had
some
human feelings.
some
human feelings.
Of course, Conrad had a hunch Kingman would try to recover that loot, along with rescuing the women. If it came down to deciding between Selena and the money, Conrad had little confidence in which one Kingman would choose.
As they continued along the railroad Conrad spotted the water tank at Navajo Wash. Each man had a canteen slung on his saddle, but in the hot, dry country a single canteen didn’t last all that long. Between the men and the horses the water supply was already running low. It was a good chance to top off their canteens.
He remembered water spraying out through the bullet holes in the tank where Leatherwood’s men had shot it. If a train had come along since then and stopped to take on water for its boiler, the train crew likely had noted the problem and patched the holes. Even if that wasn’t the case, the tank would still have water in it below the level of the bullet holes.
“Kingman, we’re going to stop up ahead at Navajo Wash,” Conrad called.
Riding in front as usual, Kingman glanced around as if he were going to argue, but then he nodded. No matter how upset he was, in country like this a man never lost track of how much water he had left and where he could get more. If he let himself get too distracted and forgot about those things, nine times out of ten the buzzards wound up picking his bones.
The riders moved on toward the water tank. Conrad found himself staring at it, thinking about the furious gun battle he and Arturo had fought there a couple days earlier against the avenging angels. It seemed more like ages had passed since then.
It was hard to keep track of things when people were trying to kill you all the time, he told himself with an inward chuckle. After a while, all the deadly days started to run together.
Sunlight suddenly winked off something on the tank. A nail head, maybe, or some sort of metal strap?
But the reflection moved, bouncing against Conrad’s eyes again from a slightly different position, and he knew it wasn’t any nail head.
“Spread out!” he shouted as he kicked the black into a run. “Everybody spread out!”
Arturo reacted instantly. He had done a good job learning the lessons that traveling with Conrad Browning taught a man. He veered his horse in the opposite direction from Conrad’s and urged it into a hard gallop.
The Outcast Saints were a little slower to move. The whipcrack of a rifle shot sounded from the water tank, and one of the men grunted, jerking back in his saddle. He managed to stay mounted, but sagged forward over his horse’s neck and dropped the reins. The horse spooked and bolted ahead in a run.
Seeing their companion shot prodded the other men into frantic action. They followed the example set by Conrad and Arturo and raced off in all different directions, no longer easy to cut down.
Conrad leaned forward in the saddle as he rode. Drawing his Winchester from its sheath he watched the water tank. He could see one man up on the platform. No, more than that, he corrected himself as more shots rang out. Two or three at least, and men were firing from behind the shed.
Leatherwood had split his force. Though the avenging angels had left their surviving enemies defeated and demoralized, he knew there was a chance they would mount a pursuit. He had left men at Navajo Wash to ambush anyone who came after them, to make sure he reached Juniper Canyon with the prizes he had claimed for Father Agony. It was good strategy.
The rescuers would have to fight, and they had already suffered an injury. Maybe a fatality. Conrad had lost sight of the wounded man.
He crossed the tracks and circled to the left of the water tank. Guiding the black with his knees, he levered a round into the Winchester’s chamber and fired at the tank. The back of a galloping horse was no place for accuracy, so he didn’t try to be too fine about his shots. He cranked off half a dozen rounds as fast as he could, spraying the platform.
The tank would have more holes in it before the day was over.
It wasn’t the only thing with holes. One of the ambushers flew backward off the platform with his arms flailing. From that distance, his scream was a tiny little thing, cut short in a hurry as he crashed to the ground on his back.
Conrad flashed past the tank. He felt the hot breath of a slug as it passed close to his cheek, but that was the closest any of the bushwhacker lead came to him. He could see the men behind the shed, so he circled back toward the tracks to get a better shot at them.
With a flash of pride he noted Arturo coming in from the other side. He had the heart of a warrior, although he would have denied that. He was willing to fight and pitched in without hesitation. Conrad saw smoke spurting from the muzzle of Arturo’s rifle.
Kingman had chosen a different tactic, plunging straight ahead along the tracks. He had almost reached the tank without being shot, when he hauled back on his horse’s reins so violently the animal skidded to a halt and reared up on its hind legs, pawing at the air.
His revolver barked twice, and another man clutched at his belly and spun off the platform. Diving out of the saddle as the last man on the platform fired down at him at almost point-blank range, he rolled into the shadows under the tank, and that was the last Conrad saw of him for the moment.
One of Leatherwood’s men behind the shed was down, but two others were still on their feet, firing. Conrad’s heart leaped into his throat as he saw Arturo’s horse stumble and fall, but Arturo was thrown clear. He crashed to the ground, rolled over a couple times, then lay still. He was an easy target.
Before anyone could draw a bead on the fallen man, Ollie Barnstabble came charging around the shed on his horse. He left the saddle in a dive and threw his arms out like the wings of a giant bird, embracing both gunmen and driving them off their feet. One man rammed head-first into the shed wall and collapsed. The other one tried to put up a fight but was no match for Ollie’s size and strength. Ollie dragged him to his feet and shook the fight—and possibly the life—out of him.
Arturo pushed himself to his hands and knees but was slow getting up. Since the three men who’d been behind the shed were taken care of, Conrad sent his horse galloping toward Arturo, as he heard a swift flurry of gunshots. Glancing back he saw the third and final gunman topple from the platform. Kingman had finished him off.
Conrad was out of the saddle and off the black before the horse completely stopped moving. Taking hold of Arturo’s arm he helped him to his feet. “Are you all right? Were you hit by any of those bullets?”
Arturo was wheezing and gasping. “Just . . . just got the breath . . . knocked out of me, sir. I’ll be . . . fine . . . in a moment.”
Conrad looked him over and didn’t see any bloodstains on his clothes. “You were splendid just now, you know,” he told Arturo with a smile.
“Thank you, sir. What about the others?”
“Let’s go see.” Conrad took the reins of both horses and led them toward the shed and the water tank.
Ollie stood over the sprawled bodies of the three men by the shed. “They’re all dead,” he reported without Conrad having to ask him. “One shot and a couple with busted necks.”
“The three who were up on the platform are done for, too,” Kingman put in as he thumbed fresh rounds into the cylinder of his Colt. “All of them drilled.”
“What about our man who was wounded?” Ollie grimaced. “If we get Dora back, she’s gonna be a widow. Come to think of it, I guess she’s a widow anyway, whether we get her back or not, because Todd’s dead. Looked like that shot got him through the heart, the poor fella.”
“So now there’s seven of us,” Kingman said as he snapped his gun closed. “The odds just got worse. Although they were so bad to start with I don’t reckon it really matters.”
“It matters,” Conrad said. “It’ll matter to Dora.” He looked at the bodies sprawled on the ground. “I don’t suppose anybody thought to bring a shovel?”
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