Longarm had been mighty lucky so far, and he knew it. He threw a glance at Nora, who was sitting up and screaming, hands clapped over her ears to shut out some of the sounds of gunfire. Longarm started to take a step toward her, thinking about snatching her up from the ground, but Graydon was running toward Nora from the corral, gun drawn. Longarm knew he couldn’t reach her before the outlaw did.

  The horses were milling around in the makeshift corral, spooked by the shooting and the yelling. Two of the outlaws were still there, trying to calm the nervous animals. Longarm fired over the heads of the horses and bellowed at them at the top of his lungs, and sure enough, they bolted, surging against the ropes and bursting right through them. The two outlaws were caught in the miniature stampede and knocked sprawling.

  Longarm lunged toward the horses as Graydon reached Nora and fired past her at the lawman, making her flinch and scream even louder. The slug burned across Longarm’s right side, just above his belt. He stumbled, thrown off balance by the impact of the bullet, even though it had only dug a shallow furrow in his flesh. Pain flashed through him, but he thrust it away, ignoring it as he leaped for the dun.

  He caught hold of the horse’s mane with both hands and kicked off with his feet, trying to throw a leg over the back of the animal. The Pony Express riders had been able to mount up that way, but they had all been young and small and wiry. Longarm was big and rangy and no longer in the first flush of youth.

  But he was desperate, and that desperation gave him speed and strength he might not have otherwise had. He slammed down on the dun’s bony back and felt a twinge in his recently recovered balls. Then he was leaning forward, knees clamped to the horse’s flanks, one hand tangled in the dun’s mane, the other wielding the Colt. He yelled encouragement to the dun as he sent it straight toward the fire.

  The dun jumped, sailing up and over the flames without hesitation. Longarm lashed out at Graydon as the horse came down next to the outlaw and Nora. The barrel of Longarm’s pistol thudded against Graydon’s skull. Longarm hated treating a perfectly good gun that way and hoped the blow hadn’t bent the barrel. But Graydon folded up like a house of cards, and that was more important to Longarm at the moment. He bent down and looped an arm around Nora as she leaped to her feet. He had to use his gun hand to do it, but he was able to pick her up and pull her onto the horse with him as it surged past the fallen outlaw.

  “Hang on!” Longarm shouted to Nora. “We’ll get out of here!”

  She twisted in his arms, clawed at his face with her fingernails, and generally started fighting like a blamed wildcat.

  That surprised Longarm, but not completely. After all, she had already betrayed him to the outlaws this morning, for reasons that he still couldn’t fathom. Obviously, she didn’t want to go with him, didn’t want to be rescued despite her fear of Wallace and the other men.

  He struggled with her, trying to calm her, as the dun lurched up one of the sand dunes that surrounded the camp. A gun boomed somewhere behind them, and then Longarm heard Wallace bellowing, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot, you stupid bastards! You’ll hit the girl!”

  She was his ace in the hole, all right, thought Longarm.

  Just then, she dug her elbow hard into the wound on his side.

  Longarm gasped in agony and bent forward as the whole world seemed to turn black and red for a second. Mostly black, with bright streaks of red running through it. That was the color of pain, he thought.

  Nora writhed in his grasp, then hit him again in the side, followed by ramming the heel of her hand under his chin. Her fighting was clumsy but effective. Longarm almost toppled off the horse. He caught himself at the last instant.

  But he couldn’t catch Nora. She tore free from him and fell off the back of the dun just as the horse crested the dune. She landed hard and started rolling over and over, tumbling down the steep slope of the sand hill. Still half-blinded by pain, Longarm yanked the dun to a momentary halt and hipped around to look back at Nora. The skirt of her traveling gown had hiked up over her hips as she rolled down the hill, and Longarm saw the flash of pale skin from her legs in the half-light of dawn. Van Horn and one of the other men were already running toward the base of the dune to grab her when her rolling finally came to a stop.

  “Kill him! Kill the son of a bitch!”

  That was Wallace giving the orders. Guns began to bang again. Now that he no longer had Nora with him, the outlaws had no reason not to shoot at Longarm. They opened up with a vengeance, their guns blazing as they sent lead whistling up the slope toward Longarm. He heard the all too familiar flat slap of a bullet passing close beside his ear as he turned and dug his heels into the dun’s flanks. The horse leaped forward into an awkward gallop as it went down the far side of the sand hill.

  The other horses had scattered, and that fact gave Longarm his only advantage. He was the only one mounted. It would take the outlaws quite a while to round up their frightened mounts—he hoped. Longarm rode west, trying to keep the dun to the more solid ground so that he could make better time. With the lead he had, he at least had a chance to get away from the Wallace gang.

  But he’d had to leave Nora behind, and that fact gnawed at his guts. Sure, turning around and trying to go back to rescue her right now would be suicide, just as sure as if he’d put the barrel of his own gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Wallace and the others would kill him on sight.

  At least Nora was safe for the moment, as safe as she had been since Wallace had grabbed her off that stagecoach. He would just have to find some other way to get her away from those outlaws, Longarm told himself.

  That was when a wave of dizziness and weakness hit him, and he almost toppled off the back of the dun.

  Longarm caught himself, pulled himself upright again, and gingerly touched a hand to the wound on his side. His shirt was soaked with blood, more blood than Longarm had thought he was losing. That was the reason he had almost blacked out. Gritting his teeth, he reached through the gap in the bullet-torn shirt and explored the wound. It was a little deeper than he had thought. Blood was still oozing from it, but slowly now, barely a trickle. The injury wasn’t life-threatening, not by itself. But under the circumstances ...

  The sun had topped the horizon behind him. Its heat on his back told him that he was going in the direction he wanted to go. If he could get out of the sand hills, find the stage road, and follow it to Monahans, he could get help, both for his injury and for his next attempt to rescue Nora Canady.

  Without him prodding it, the dun had settled down into a trudging walk through the sand. Longarm dug in his heels, urging the horse back to a faster pace. Wallace and the others might have caught their horses by now and could be coming after him. He was leaving a clear trail for them to follow. In the sand, there was no avoiding that.

  On the other hand, they might not chase him. They might just take Nora and break camp, moving to somewhere deeper in the sand hills. That would probably be the smart thing for them to do. Wallace had successfully eluded pursuit for months now by hiding in the dunes. He could find another place to camp. Vengeance on Longarm would have to be weighed against the payoff the gang could get by selling Nora back to her tycoon father.

  Longarm hoped greed would win out this time. He was in no shape to fight off a bunch of bloodthirsty owlhoots. He needed time ... time to heal, time to make plans....

  The sun got hotter as it rose steadily into the sky behind him. Soon, it was like a hammer beating down on him. At least he had been wearing his hat when he escaped from the outlaw camp. The Stetson gave his head a little protection from the burning rays.

  His mouth felt as if it was lined with wool, though. Even under normal circumstances, he would have been thirsty. With all the blood he had lost, he was in serious danger of passing out from lack of fluid.

  And of course he had no canteen. That was back at the outlaw camp, along with his saddle, his rifle, and all the rest of his supplies. He had the dun, the clothes he was wearing, his Colt, and the dozen cartridges in the loops of his shell belt.

  That would have to be enough.

  The dun needed water too. Longarm knew that, but there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was ride through the dunes ... up one, down another, zigzagging back and forth to try to avoid the steepest slopes, always heading generally to the west.

  Only when he looked up and saw that the sun was directly above him did he realize how long he had been riding. It was the middle of the day. He had gone far beyond mere thirst now. His whole body was screaming for water. He would have to take a chance and stop the next time he came to some of those shin oaks. Maybe he could scoop out a hole around the roots of the trees and find a little moisture that way.

  A few minutes later, he spotted some of the diminutive trees and angled the dun toward them. They clustered in a narrow, low place between two dunes, and a little grass even grew around the trunks of the trees. Longarm brought the horse to a stop and slid off its back, holding tight to the mane to keep himself from falling all the way to the ground. He took several deep breaths, the hot, arid air burning his lungs. When he felt strong enough and steady enough, he stepped away from the dun and lowered himself to his knees beside one of the oaks. Using both hands, he began to dig around its base, scooping out the sand and flinging it behind him. Digging should have been easy, he thought, but somehow it wasn’t. It seemed like more sand fell into the hole from the sides than he was taking out of it.

  But gradually, the hole deepened, and when Longarm plunged his hands into the sand at the bottom of it, he thought the grains felt slightly damp. They seemed to cling together more.

  That was enough to give him a burst of renewed energy. He dug faster, trying not to let himself become frantic. Pawing at the dirt like a madman would just waste energy, and he couldn’t afford to do that.

  Suddenly the dun was beside him, sticking its nose in the hole and butting at him. Longarm swatted the horse’s muzzle and shooed it away. That confirmed what he had thought. The dun smelled water; otherwise it wouldn’t have acted like that.

  “Hang on, old son,” he rasped, his voice sounding strange to his ears as it came from his dry throat. “Maybe in a few minutes there’ll be water enough for both of us.”

  Longarm leaned forward and reached down into the hole. The sand was mud now. He pushed it aside, making a little hollow, and watched in fascination as a little water seeped into the depression, forming a tiny pool a few inches wide. A sound that was almost a sob came from deep inside Longarm. With fumbling fingers, he pulled his bandanna from the pocket of his trousers and lowered it into the hole, letting it soak up the water. Then he lifted it, tipped his head back, and squeezed the precious drops from the cloth into his open mouth.

  Dirty water had never tasted so good.

  Longarm repeated the process several times, pausing to dig down a little deeper when the water stopped seeping into the hole. Then, when he felt stronger, he took the wet bandanna and stood up, using it to swab around the dun’s dust-caked nose and mouth. He soaked up more of the water and squeezed it into his hat, then held that so the horse could drink.

  “I reckon maybe we’ll both make it out of here yet, old son,” he said to the horse.

  The sound of a shot split the air.

  Longarm almost dropped his hat. The horse had finished sucking up the water in it anyway. Longarm clapped the Stetson back on his head and looked around, trying to figure out where the shot had come from. It had sounded close, but not right on top of him. Had the outlaws split up, and was the shot a signal from one of them to the others that he had found Longarm?

  Longarm grabbed the dun’s mane again and swung up onto its back. “Come on, hoss,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry as hell about it, but we got to run again.”

  He urged the horse into a run, still heading west. At least, he hoped it was west. With the sun overhead now, it was harder to tell which direction he was going. He wished he could think more clearly. He didn’t want to ride right back into his pursuers.

  There hadn’t been any more shots, only the one. Longarm had no idea what that fact meant. The horse plunged up the side of a dune, half-ran, half-slid down the far side. Longarm leaned forward, clutching the horse’s mane, urging it on. Only gradually did he become aware that the dun was moving at a smoother gait, not lurching back and forth as it had to do in the grip of the sand. Longarm looked down at the ground in amazement, saw that the dun was running now over land that was still sandy, but not like before. This ground was harder and had more vegetation growing in it. Longarm twisted his head to look behind him. The dunes rose there, a few hundred yards back.

  He was out of the sand hills!

  He looked ahead of him again, and movement caught his eye. He saw a horse, a figure in a broad-brimmed hat standing beside the animal. He saw something in the figure’s hands ... a rifle.

  And it started to come up and point toward him.

  Not now! thought Longarm as he reached for his Colt. He couldn’t have escaped from Wallace and the others only to run smack-dab into the mysterious man who had tried to kill him up in New Mexico Territory....

  Longarm had barely touched the butt of his gun when something crashed into his head and flung him into a darkness so deep that even the bright West Texas sun was no match for it.

  Chapter 14

  So this was what heaven was like, thought Longarm. A soft bed to lie in, a cool cloth bathing his brow, gentle hands lifting his head so that cold water could be trickled into his mouth and down his throat. He had halfway expected to wake up in the other place, but since it wasn’t hot and he didn’t hear the fiendish, cackling laughter of demons and imps, he supposed Saint Peter had taken pity on him and let him in through the Pearly Gates after all.

  Then he choked on the water and came up off the bed, gagging and coughing. Red waves of pain coursed through him.

  Now it started. He was in Hades after all, and the eternal torment was about to commence.

  “It’s all right,” a voice said as Longarm’s coughing fit diminished. “Take it easy, mister. Just lie back there and catch your breath.”

  That was a woman’s voice, thought Longarm.

  Satan was a woman?

  He dragged his eyes open, and saw a face looming over him. It was a woman’s face, all right, with wings of dark hair framing it. At the moment, lines of concern were etched on her forehead, but Longarm could tell that under better circumstances, she would be mighty attractive.

  “You’re too ... pretty to be ... the Devil,” he croaked.

  She blinked in surprise; then a faint smile curved her lips. “Thank you ... I think,” she said.

  “Wh ... where am ...” Longarm was too weak to finish the sentence.

  “You’re in my bed,” she told him bluntly. “Just lie still and rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

  “The fella who ... shot me ... where is he?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that you came thundering out of the sand hills at me on that fire-eyed dun, and I was afraid you were going to ride me down. Then you acted like you were going to shoot me. You might have if you hadn’t fallen off your horse.”

  Longarm looked past her and saw a hat hanging on a nail driven into the wall. It was a broad-brimmed hat, sort of like the one that had been worn by the bushwhacker with the Spencer carbine in Ashcroft, but not identical. Close enough, though, that Longarm had taken it for the same hat.

  “I saw you ... lift your rifle....”

  “Well, what would you do if some crazy man was riding straight at you like a bat out of hell?” The woman was starting to sound a little impatient now. “But I never shot you, mister. You fell off your horse, plain and simple, and knocked yourself out when you hit the ground.”

  Longarm let his head sag back against the pillow under it. His eyelids were so heavy that he couldn’t hold them up any longer. But even as they slid shut, he asked, “Did you ... see anybody else ... out there?”

  “You mean somebody chasing you? The same somebody who put that bullet crease in your side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t see hide nor hair of them. Now, are you going to shut up and get some sleep? If you do, I’ll have some food ready when you wake up.”

  Longarm’s stomach lurched. Food was the last thing in the world he wanted right now. Sleep, though, that sounded pretty good. He opened his mouth to tell the woman he would try to sleep.

  He was out like a blown-out lamp before he could even form the words.

  Longarm had no idea how long he had been asleep when he woke up again. He blinked several times and looked around the room. There was a small table beside the bed, and on it burned a lamp with the wick turned down low. The tiny flame gave off enough light for him to see that the walls of the room were adobe. The bed was big, a four-poster that took up nearly all the space in the room. It looked like it would have been more appropriate in a Southern plantation house, rather than some adobe hacienda in West Texas.

  The room’s single window had a curtain drawn across it. Longarm suspected it was night, because no light leaked in around the edges of the curtain.

  Now that he had acquainted himself with his surroundings, he took stock of himself. He realized with a shock that he was naked except for some bandages wrapped tightly around his middle. The wound ached, but it didn’t hurt too badly, even when he shifted around in the bed and sat up. Obviously, the woman had cleaned it and bound it up. She seemed to have done a good job of it too, which indicated that she’d had some experience in patching up bullet wounds.

  An earthen pitcher sat on the table next to the lamp. Longarm reached over and picked it up, dipped his finger into the liquid in it, and tasted it. Water, sure enough. He lifted the pitcher to his mouth and took a long drink. That helped his thirst some, but he still felt as if he would never again be able to get enough to drink. He forced himself to set the pitcher back on the table anyway. Guzzling down a lot of water right now might make him sick.