But it was too late. Rance’s bullet took him square through the heart, and he, too, slithered and slid to the ground.

  Only then did he look toward the first man. He frowned. Too high. The shot hadn’t hit him smack in the chest, but it had gone right through the neck.

  Well, whatever worked, worked.

  Their horses just stopped. Didn’t wander off or anything. Rance smiled despite the pain in his chest. He liked a well-trained animal.

  He sat there a moment longer, watching for any signs of movement. When he had watched for about five minutes and the men still lay still, he stood up and mounted the sweating black again.

  Gripping his chest, he slowly rode down to pick up his new horses.

  17

  “Cain’t we hurry up just a little bit?” Arvil complained. “They’re gonna get away from us, I’m tellin’ you!”

  “No,” said Slocum, Blue and Amos, all at once, and a surprised Arvil gave a little jump back in his saddle.

  Amos said, “Now, see here. There’s no need to run these horses into the ground just to catch up with them sooner than later. We’ll corner them tonight, either way. You’ll have plenty of chances to take your revenge, old chap, never fear.”

  “I’m just afraid it’s gonna get too dark for us to spy out their trail,” Arvil still protested. “What if we lose ’em entire?”

  “Arvil?” said Slocum, who had gone through this with him before, as had they all.

  “What?” Arvil replied.

  “Shut up.”

  Arvil grumbled for a moment, then said, “I might as well have rode back home with Dutch and Harry. I sure ain’t gonna see no justice done with you boys tonight. Maybe not never.”

  “Yes, Arvil,” said Amos airily. “That’s right. Look on the bright side.”

  “Aw, you shut up, too,” Blue suddenly broke in. “I’m gettin’ real tired of all’a Arvil’s bitchin’ and Amos’s snide remarks. None’a which Arvil gets. So as far as I can tell, Amos is makin’ ’em for his own damned amusement.”

  “What don’t I get?” Arvil demanded.

  Slocum stopped grinding his teeth long enough to shout, “Enough! Y’know, once upon a time—like about an hour ago—I would’a said we’d be better off without Arvil, but now I’m beginnin’ to think I’d be better off without the lot of you. Now, stop your bitchin’! These are the goddamned Carthages we’re out after, not some bunch of kids who ran off with the church poor box. These are cold-blooded killers with no compunctions at all. You three for-gettin’ that little fact?”

  “Compunctions,” repeated Amos softly. “Excellent word choice, Slocum.”

  Blue didn’t hear and Slocum pretended not to, lest it get Blue started again.

  Arvil, at least, had the sense to stare at his hands, but Blue said, “And you’ll pardon me all to hell, but how come you’re in charge, there, Slocum? I thought this was Mr. Fancy Britches’s party.” Curtly, he nodded toward Amos.

  “Ah, my friends,” Amos said wearily, with a shake of his head. “We’re all tired, gentlemen. Our horses are tired, our backsides are tired, and most of all, I’m tired of arguing and wresting about over nothing. I suggest we save our copious latent belligerence for Rufus and Rafe Carthage, who are undoubtedly not far from here.”

  Then Amos turned in his saddle and continued, “Blue, if my tone has offended you, I am heartily sorry. I’m afraid it’s my way, and I can’t change it. Arvil, believe me, I understand your frustration, and I sympathize with it. And while our friend Slocum may not be officially in charge, I would personally follow him through the gates of hell, if need be.”

  “Thanks, Amos,” Slocum said with a curt nod.

  “Not a problem,” replied Amos.

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” muttered Blue.

  Slocum ignored him, and added, “And now we can pick up a little speed, Arvil. The horses have had a break. But keep it to a slow lope, and stay behind me.”

  Arvil said, “Thank God,” but the sound was somewhat muffled by the noise of hoofbeats kicking up, kicking into the rhythm of a slow canter.

  Rufus and Rafe had left behind a clean trail, and an easy one to follow, Slocum thought as he loped along. They hadn’t taken the time to try to hide it or do anything cagey. They’d just taken off, and taken off fast.

  Of course, Slocum wasn’t sure if they were capable of anything cagey, what with Rance dead, now. All in all, he had a pretty good feeling that they would catch and corner Rafe and Rufus tonight, and kill them, one way or the other. Case closed, as Amos would say.

  But still, something was gnawing at the back of his brain, something indefinable, something cryptic, and he couldn’t get rid of the feeling.

  But he was so close, so goddamn close! So he just decided, for now, to ignore that feeling. He’d deal with it later.

  When Rance Carthage rode down into Crowfoot, he didn’t quite get the welcome he was expecting, and he’d been expecting just about anything: a shootout with the Hoopskirt posse, a rampage with his brothers, the bank in the process of being held up, the whole place in an uproar, you name it.

  He didn’t expect, however, to be backed out of the bar at the point of two rifles and a Greener shotgun, just because he was a stranger and he had red hair.

  He didn’t expect the populace at large to pelt him with wizened apples and eggs and tomatoes and cabbages and road apples.

  He didn’t expect that he’d have to get back on his stolen bay, cowering and ducking vegetables and fruit and horse shit, and ride out of town at a lope, leading the sorrel.

  And he also didn’t expect, once he got far enough out of throwing range, that he’d turn around, pull his rifle from the boot, and shoot down three citizens in cold blood before making his getaway.

  Although out of everything that happened, that was probably the most like Rance.

  Those numbskull brothers of his must have made some kind of impression on Crowfoot, all right!

  It had never crossed Rance’s mind that there was anything odd about his own appearance, that he might make a frightening first appearance. He’d forgotten about the dried and fresh blood soaked through and nearly covering his shirt, and the burnt and frayed gunshot holes through it.

  Of course, he’d almost forgotten about the pain, too, in his sure and certain nearness to finding his brothers once more. He had to find that damned posse first, though, that was the thing. He had to put those bums in hell once and for all.

  And he would, he thought as he followed their trail. He would.

  Anytime now.

  And once he’d taken care of that business—along with a visit to the proverbial woodshed for his pea-brained brothers—well, the highfalutin town of Crowfoot need to be taught a little lesson, too.

  Yes, indeed, they did.

  He smiled at that, and hurried on.

  “Get down,” Slocum hissed, and motioned the others off their mounts before they caught up with him.

  He was already on the ground.

  He waited for them on the top of a shallow rise, after shooing his Appy away. It wandered back down the slope and started to graze along with the others.

  He was kneeling when they caught up to him.

  “There,” he said to no one in particular, and pointed.

  There, in the little basin of land, sheltered from the wind by nothing but living rock and sand dunes and what brush was able to cling to life there, sat a little cabin. It was built out of smooth stone and raw rock. There was a light in the window, and a fire in the chimney.

  There were also two bodies lying out in the yard. Two men, middle-aged, it looked like.

  Hard to tell in the dark, especially when they were in the shadows of the rock cabin and the big stone stock tank.

  Blue, who was glass-less by this time, thumbed back his hat and breathed, “Shit.”

  Amos said nothing, but Slocum knew his feelings on the subject were just about the same as Blue’s.

  Arvil swallowed hard, then whispered, “Holy God. We gotta stop this before it goes any further.”

  “As we’ve been saying all afternoon,” Amos muttered as he checked his guns. He’d come up the hill loaded for bear, looked like.

  “So what do we do now?” Arvil asked. “Just start in to blastin’ ’em?”

  “Gotta make sure it’s them, first,” Blue said. He, too, was making a last check of his weapons. “After all, somebody might have come along after ’em.”

  “And might have been too distraught to at least cover those bodies?” Amos asked.

  Blue gave him a dirty look. “Maybe,” he snapped. “I don’t know about the United States Secret Service, but us fellers out here in the front lines got to be careful about folks.”

  “Knock it off,” Slocum grumbled. “Arvil, take the left flank. Blue, the right. Me and Amos’ll stay put and try to coax ’em out.”

  Blue skittered off one way and Arvil went in the opposite direction.

  Slocum muttered, “Amos, I’m gonna have to kill you one’a these days.”

  “Not just yet, if you don’t mind, old chap,” Amos said. “Let’s get this little thing out of the way first. Now, may I ask how you propose to coax them to the forefront?”

  Slocum didn’t answer. Instead, he turned his head toward the little rock cabin and hollered, “Rufus! Rufus and Rafe Carthage! You in there?”

  A flurry of shots exploded from the cabin, and Amos and Slocum both ducked back behind the crest of the hill just in time to avoid the sand and gravel kicked up by their impact.

  “Golly,” said Amos dryly. “I wish I’d thought of that. So very subtle.”

  Arvil and Blue were firing by this time, laying down slugs all over the cabin, but mostly in the general direction of the windows. The bullets coming from Blue’s direction were having better luck finding their target, but nobody had yelped from inside, yet.

  Stone shattered and chipped from the little building as Slocum and Amos popped up over the rim again and began to fire.

  “Somethin’ tells me we ain’t gonna shoot through that rock any time soon,” Slocum said over the exploding gunfire.

  “Just what I was thinking,” Amos replied. He reached down the hill a few feet, to his saddlebags, which he’d brought along. “The roof, you think?”

  “Be my best guess,” Slocum answered. “Looks to be thatched straw.”

  Amos nodded, reached inside the saddlebag’s pocket, and pulled out a stick of dynamite.

  He smiled a little. “Just like that first little job we did together, back outside Omaha.”

  “Worked then, as I recall,” Slocum replied. “Course, you can never tell with Carthages.”

  Amos struck a lucifer while Slocum shouted, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire, men!”

  From the side, he heard Arvil shout, “Who you talkin’ to?”

  Slocum rolled his eyes, and called back, “You, you idiot. Everybody. The cabin, too.”

  Eventually, the men in the cabin stopped shooting at them, although it took long enough that Amos had to shake out his first match and blow on his singed fingers. “Can we just get on with it, please?” he hissed as he pulled a fresh lucifer from his tin.

  “Gotta make Blue happy,” Slocum whispered back. And then he shouted, “Hello the cabin!”

  There was a pause, and then somebody—probably Rufus, Slocum thought—shouted back, “What you want, you shit-ass law dogs?”

  Beside Slocum, it was Amos’s turn to roll his eyes.

  Slocum ignored it. He called, “Come out now, with your hands empty and over your heads.”

  In reply came another volley of shots from the cabin. Blue and Arvil started returning it as fast as they could.

  “Well,” said Amos, striking the match on his gun belt, “Lord knows you tried. Magnificent effort, old friend.”

  “Thanks,” Slocum said dryly. “Just light and throw, will you?”

  “My pleasure.”

  With a fiery blue pop and hiss, Amos touched the match to the fuse. He waited a moment, watching it burn down a tad. Then he got to his feet and drew his pitching arm back. Slocum covered his ears.

  But before there was time for the dynamite to explode, Amos fell. Fell right down in a heap next to him, and Slocum had to scramble fast to get the explosives out of his hand and tossed aside.

  As it was, the dynamite only rolled down into the yard, blowing up the stock tank and sending bits of stone and metal and a great deal of water up in the air.

  Slocum was too busy to notice, though. He moved to Amos, cursing the Carthage brothers the whole time, and turned him over. Amos was alive, but there was no slug hole he could see.

  And then he had an awful bad thought. He rolled his unconscious friend to the side, and there it was: a hole in his back, just down a tad from the top of his left shoulder.

  He stared out into the darkness behind him. Who in the hell was out there?

  18

  Amos halfway regained consciousness almost immediately, and Slocum heard him exclaim, “Bloody Hell! Have I been shot?”

  Only Amos could say those words with such umbrage and outrage, and Slocum couldn’t help but let a hint of a smile cross his face. But that was all he had time for. The gun battle was still raging, in fits and spurts after a small pause for everybody to be taken aback by the explosion.

  He said, “Yeah, Amos. In your back. We’ve got an uninvited guest out there, somewhere.”

  Slocum scanned the surrounding territory the best he could. It was mostly moon-silvered brush, no trees, and very gently rolling.

  “He could be anywhere,” Amos said, echoing Slocum’s thoughts.

  “Shut up,” Slocum growled. “You’re losin’ blood.”

  “Well, most people do, after they’ve been shot,” Amos replied through gritted teeth. “I don’t see why I should be any—”

  Another shot sounded from behind them, just as the grit, inches from Slocum’s side, popped up with the impact.

  Amos began, “I suggest we—”

  “Move!” Slocum shouted, and dragged Amos to one side over into the cover of bushes. It wasn’t a very good place to shoot from, but it was a fair to middlin’ hiding place.

  Blue and Amos were still firing sporadically, and Slocum heard a familiar bird call. It was Blue, signaling a question, if he remembered right. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  Slocum whistled back after a second. He hoped he’d just signaled that there was trouble. Either that, or he’d sent the message that the U.S. Cavalry was on its way.

  It had been a long time.

  Inside the stone cabin, Rafe’s face was full of rock chips, which he sat on the floor, picking out, while Rufus kept up firing from a window.

  “Slow the hell down!” Rafe growled as he plucked out another shard. “You’re gonna run us out of ammo.”

  Rufus, who was bleeding, too, just kept firing. He’d had about enough of being ordered around. After all, he’d wanted to keep on going, not stop here for the night. He would have been just as happy to ride around both those old coots instead of kill them and take their cabin.

  But no, Rafe had to have his way, and they’d wasted a couple-three slugs on them, then got themselves trapped in here. Just like a couple of goddamn rats.

  He couldn’t figure out why the fellows in the center had stopped firing. Maybe they’d got them. Now, there was a happy thought! But the boys on either side were keeping him busy enough.

  He was glad the cabin had been built of stone. No slug could make its way through to get at him, that was for sure! But these bullets singing off the window’s edge, that was another matter. He had to keep wiping his face to keep the blood out of his eyes. And it hurt, goddamm it, when he accidentally rubbed one of those stone fragments the wrong way.

  “Will you get back to your post, dammit?” he yelled at Rafe. That was another thing about stone cabins. Sound echoed through them like nobody’s business. When that blast had gone off it had almost deafened both of them!

  At least they’d only thrown the one, so Rufus figured that meant it was the only one they had. He felt better about that, but oddly disappointed that he hadn’t thought of it first, hadn’t thought to bring along a little dynamite of his own. That would have been some sight, all right, seeing those men and their mounts blown straight to hell!

  Rafe was getting up off the floor and crawling to the other window at long last. Rufus watched as Rafe crouched under the opening, checked his rifle and handgun again, then brought up the rifle and began firing.

  Finally. For a change, somebody was taking his orders!

  In the distance, Rance had just finished a long string of rather inventive swear words.

  He squatted back down in the brush, seething, but at least he’d picked a place where he could see if some idiot stood up again. He knew it was the posse he was shooting at, because he could see the shadowy shapes of their horses moving around beneath the low hill.

  And when that man stood up—the Brit, he was pretty certain—he’d taken his best shot. He didn’t know whether the man was dead or not, but he comforted himself that he’d sure fallen hard enough to be dead.

  But somebody else had been firing from that position, too. Somebody who had grabbed the sparking explosive out of the Brit’s hand and tossed it far enough, but not so far that it did anybody any damage.

  At least, he was pretty sure it hadn’t.

  More’s the pity. If that shooter up there had known what was good for him, he’d have just let it blow him up. He’d suffer less that way. Less than what Rance planned to give him, anyhow.

  Nobody was firing from the middle position right now, though, so Rance decided to change tactics. He’d go to the left first, he guessed. One side was as good as the other.

  He began to creep, slowly, through the brush, his butt brushing his heels half the time. His chest had started hurting him again a while back, and the wound in his side was bothered some on account of all this crawling around.

  In fact, it had opened up again.