The scout did what he knew might keep him alive.

  He turned rigid. He did not move. Men who moved were usually the ones who died. He leaned his back against the boulder, keeping the knife close and ready with the blade pointing up. He breathed silently, slowly, and confidently. He waited. Mostly, he listened.

  The assassin two hundred yards away screamed for Pedro. Pedro, who had to be the one on the other side of the rock, did not answer.

  At least, Florence thought, now I know your name.

  When Pedro did not answer the call, the man farther away gave up and shot again down at Grat Holden.

  That shot caused the Mexican on the other side of the canyon to chastise him.

  “Hold your fire, hombre!” the man yelled in Spanish. “The one below is trapped like a rat.”

  Hombre and rata—the Spanish word for rat—bounced several times down and across the canyon.

  “Do you see anyone?” the far man on Florence’s side yelled.

  “Silencio,” the killer across the canyon shouted.

  The echo rang out hauntingly. Silencio . . . Silencio . . . Silencio . . . Silencio . . .

  All fell silent.

  Nothing to hear except the wind.

  Florence felt the sweat all over his body. His armpits were damp. His tongue tasted the salt of sweat on his lips. Luckily, no sweat rolled into his eyes, which darted to his left and right as he waited to hear or to see from which side the killer would make his play.

  A moment later, he heard the noise. He smiled, and his eyes stopped moving left and right. They looked up.

  Smart, Florence thought. The man had pulled himself to the top of the rock.

  Slowly, painstakingly, Sam Florence came up to his feet. On soft feet, he turned around and brought the knife up. He drew in a deep breath, let it out, and listened.

  The man on the top of the rock moved like a cougar. Softly. Silently. This one was a real professional.

  Florence waited until his senses took over then he leaped and his left hand grabbed the man’s arm just above the wrist. Coming back to the ground, he yanked the man forward. The knife the silent killer held toppled to the ground as he let out a shriek and fell.

  He landed on his back with a thud. Air whooshed out of his lungs. The man tried to rise, tried to find the Remington .44 in his waistband, but the Bowie drove into his chest all the way to the hilt. He died with his eyes open, locked on Sam Florence.

  CHAPTER 48

  “Pedro!” the voice screamed from the other side of the canyon.

  The reply was the echo.

  Pedro . . . Pedro . . . Pedro . . . Pedro . . .

  Ben Masterson emptied the cylinder of .38-caliber casings. He had put six bullets into the chest of the man who had fallen over the side of the canyon. Six bullets in one man. That was wasteful. That was unprofessional.

  Masterson had left his 1873 trapdoor Springfield down below in the scabbard on the saddle of his horse. The two double-action revolvers he kept in the sash would do him little good against the man on the far end of the canyon, the one with a Springfield rifle. Yet the man whom Masterson had filled with lead and sent to a long drop to the canyon floor, had left him a little present.

  He crawled out of the depression, and his fingers touched the warm metal of the Springfield rifle the man had dropped. Gripping it and holding it in front of him, Masterson moved like an Apache on the dirt. He rounded the corner, squeezed in behind some rocks, and brought the big rifle up close for his personal inspection.

  At first, he thought the bandit had been using the regular Springfield, the one the Army’s foot soldiers had been using for roughly seven years or so, but as he examined the rifle, he understood what he was holding.

  It wasn’t the 1873 Trapdoor. It still smelled brand new, hardly had a scratch. It had to be one of the new models . . . from one of the boxes that Captain Jed Foster had stolen.

  Evidently, the old captain and traitor had parceled out a few of his stolen weapons to lay an ambush. That meant the army men were on the right trail.

  Masterson wet his lips. Well, he thought, let’s see if this needle gun’s worth all the fuss that has been made over it.

  He was old enough to remember the first Springfield, the old “needle gun,” first produced and delivered to Union troops in the last days of the War of the Rebellion. That one had been designed by Erskine S. Allin himself, who had become a legend at the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts. “Allin’s Alteration,” the rifle was called, although Masterson liked needle gun, even though the firing pin was longer than plenty of needles Masterson had seen. Muzzle-loaders were out of fashion—actually, outdated—so Springfield had commanded Allin to convert those old rifles into breechloaders. That would save a lot of lives, the Army and the factory figured, if soldiers didn’t have to stand up to ram a ball, patch, and powder down the barrel.

  It was a wonder, of course, that the Army stuck with Springfield after Allin’s first try at the breech-loading rifle. The .58-caliber bullet, seated in a copper-cased cartridge and charged with sixty grains of powder, made too much gun. What Allin eventually did, of course, was reduce the caliber to .50, but the weapon still had a big problem. The breech block would often fly open, and that wasn’t what a soldier wanted when he was facing a swarm of charging Sioux warriors who could riddle a body with arrows before those old 1865 and 1866 models could be reloaded.

  Eventually, the Ordnance Department of the United States Army found something from Allin and Springfield that the boys really liked. It had been called the No. 99, and later the Springfield Model 1873, but to most soldiers, and most people, it was just the Springfield Trapdoor.

  Those first weapons issued to the Army’s foot soldiers came with a barrel that was thirty-two and five-eights inches long and shot a .45-70 cartridge charged with a four-hundred-and-five-grain bullet. The steel of the new rifles came with a blued finish. Older guns, well, the sunlight reflecting off those bright weapons could blind a man.

  By 1874, the Army was outfitting cavalry regiments with Springfield carbines and taking away the old Sharps carbines. Springfield’s version of the shorter weapon had a barrel twenty-two inches long, and the cartridge had been reduced to .45-55, decreasing the powder charge of the rifle by fifteen grains.

  Masterson remembered the first time he had ever fired a Springfield carbine. The kick of the rifle was so hard, he had lowered his trapdoor and told the captain, “Cap, this here baby’s powerful enough to drop two men with one shot—the fella that got shot, and the fella that did the shootin’.”

  Masterson hefted the rifle, still warm from the shots the bandit—now dead—had been sending down toward Lieutenant Holden. Rifles had certain advantages over carbines, but not if you happened to be a horse soldier. The barrel on this one seemed to be a tad longer than the 1873 model. So maybe it would have great range. In his mind, the biggest change had to be the bayonet.

  He shook his head at the way the Army brass did its thinking. What good was a bayonet to a cavalry trooper? Horse soldiers didn’t even like carrying sabers into battle. All those long knives did was get in a trooper’s way. And a bayonet? Nobody ordered bayonet charges anymore, especially those who had lived through the foolish charges during the Rebellion. A while back, the boys of the Ordnance Department had asked for bayonets that could be used for digging trenches. That went over about as well as a reduction in pay. So bayonets had been going back to the old style, good for spearing meat over a fire’s coals, but not much good for anything else.

  But the one Masterson held? It looked more like a cleaning rod than anything else, which might be useful after all.

  Otherwise, the Springfield looked about the same as the 1873 trapdoors. It shot a copper cartridge in. 45-70 caliber.

  Masterson looked around. He saw the crushed butts of several cigarettes, the dead man’s sombrero, and plenty of ejected copper casings from the Springfield. The question he had to answer first was, Is this trapdoor loaded?

  CHAPTER 49

  Masterson opened the latch and smiled. Just to be sure, he removed the single cartridge, kissed it, and reinserted it, then closed the latch—the trapdoor that earned the rifle its nickname.

  If the dead bandit had any extra bullets, however, he had taken those with him to the canyon’s floor.

  One shot. That’s all Masterson had, other than the twelve bullets in his two .38-caliber Colt revolvers. The man at the other end of the canyon was too far away for the pistols to be effective.

  He heard shots on the other side of the canyon, and Holden’s Winchester returning fire. Bullets whined off rocks. Echoes made it sound like Custer’s Last Stand was being fought again. The man with the big rifle on Masterson’s side shot, too.

  Masterson pulled back the hammer of the Springfield and came to his knees. Leaning against the boulder, he peered around the corner and started to bring the heavy rifle to his shoulder then he stopped.

  The Army did one thing pretty well. They issued single-shot rifles to foot soldiers and horse soldiers alike. Some troopers complained that was because the Army was too cheap to buy ammunition. The brass did not want the soldiers shooting more than they had to. But Masterson’s shoulder had been bruised from target practice, and every trooper he had worked with had learned to sight in a rifle. You didn’t go into a turkey-shooting contest without a little target practice first.

  Sights needed adjustments. Some rifles shot high. Others tended to be low. A few were damned near perfect. Some got too hot. Others jammed. Masterson was holding a new rifle that had only been fired a few times, and he had never fired it at all. He had only one shot. He had to make that one shot.

  The man Masterson had to kill sent another bullet at Grat Holden. Masterson drew the nickel-plated Lightning and popped three quick rounds at the two-bit assassin hiding in the rocks. He brought the weapon back, emptied the spent cartridges, and replaced them with fresh loads. By that time, the man he had to kill sent a .45-70 slug into the tree to the former sergeant’s right.

  Masterson looked at the splintered branch. “Is he that bad of a shot?” he asked aloud. “Or is he trying to run a bluff?”

  He stuck the .38 around the rock and felt the Lightning buck in his hand twice, then brought it back and waited for the killer to answer with his big needle gun.

  The man did not bite.

  The gunfire continued on the other side of the canyon. Masterson shoved the hot Colt pistol inside his sash, grabbed the Springfield rifle, and rose to his feet. He glanced over the side of the boulder, saw the muzzle flash as the killer down the trail fired again at Holden, and made his break.

  Seeing the man whirl toward him before ducking behind the rocks and shrubs, Masterson counted as he ran, timing how long it would take the killer to open the breech, eject the casing, reload the weapon, close the trapdoor, cock the heavy rifle, and bring it back up to fire. A good trooper could fire ten shots from a Springfield in one minute.

  Masterson didn’t think the man holding the 1880 model was a good trooper. He counted out fifteen seconds before he dived behind some brush to his right. Sliding to a stop, he kicked a few pebbles and pinecones over the side. A few seconds later he saw the barrel of the killer’s rifle appear.

  Almost twenty seconds, Masterson thought. Really slow at reloading.

  Using the dead limbs as shooting sticks to rest the barrel against, he brought the rifle up to his shoulder, adjusted the rear sight for distance, checked the wind, and made that calculation in his head.

  The barrel disappeared behind the rock.

  Masterson studied the terrain. The only place the killer could shoot from was the side. The top would be too high, and unless he wanted to climb up the treacherous slope, he wouldn’t be trying to make a play from the ridge above him.

  Masterson waited, expecting the man would turn fast, make a quick shot, then dive back behind cover.

  The man appeared, and Masterson squeezed the trigger. The stock slammed against his shoulder. The 1880 model hammered the shooter even worse than the 1873 Trapdoor. To his surprise, he saw the puff of dust a good foot or more from his target’s forehead then felt the slug of his assailant’s rifle slap the brush over his head.

  He swore, tossed the Springfield to the ground, and drew both Lightnings. Then he ran, charging but not screaming, not even opening his mouth. He just ran with the nickel-plated .38 in his right hand, the blued model in his left, fingers in the trigger guards.

  Silently he counted . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . spacing the numbers a second or so apart. Ten . . . eleven . . . twelve . . .

  The man had not appeared. Not even when Masterson reached twenty.

  The giant slab of reddish-white rock was just before him. His mind roared at him to stop, take cover, but he thought of something else. He rounded the corner and saw the big man.

  The rifle was in his lap. A skinning knife was in his right hand. He was trying to pry the copper casing out of the breech. The big man swore and came halfway to his feet, dropping the rifle in the dirt and trying to throw the knife at Masterson.

  Both revolvers bucked in his hand. The .38 bullets slammed into the center of the two pockets on the Mexican’s shirtfront. Masterson pulled the two triggers again and then he ducked, more from instinct, and felt a .45-70 slug whine off the rock just above his head.

  One of the killers on the far side had tried to save the life of his partner and take off the back of Masterson’s head.

  Catching his breath, Masterson looked at the man he had just drilled with four bullets. The man was studying his bloody chest before he toppled over and lay still.

  Masterson lowered the two hot Colts, grabbed the smoking Springfield the man had dropped, and pulled it close. The copper cartridge remained stuck in the barrel.

  After wiping the sweat off his brow, Masterson shook his head. “Erskine S. Allin,” he said in a dry whisper, “I think you’ve got some more work to do, ol’ hoss.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Sam Florence heard four fast pops across the chasm, followed by the blast of a heavy rifle two hundred yards down from where he stood. The first shots would have been from Ben Masterson, and since Florence had not heard any kind of return fire, he could assume the old cavalry sergeant had just sent the second killer on the other side of the canyon straight to hell.

  The whine of the heavy rifle bullet convinced Florence that the assassin’s shot had missed Masterson. So . . . three of the bushwhackers were dead.

  How many men would Jed Foster have put up here to stop the Army from getting their rifles back? Florence studied the man he had just knifed to death then said to himself in a soft whisper, “No. Wasn’t Captain Foster who sent them.”

  The man who lay dead in the dirt and debris wore sandals. His pants were dingy tan cotton, ripped and patched. His shirt was filthy calico, with a blue and gray silk bandanna that had faded from years in the sun. He was short, skinny to the point of nearing starvation, and his fingers were covered in grime, grease, and . . . blood.

  He did not even have a shell belt for the cartridges of his stolen Springfield rifle, but a white canvas sack that hung over his shoulder. Florence studied the man’s face. An old, practically ancient face on a young, young man. He was not the kind Foster would send to do a man’s job. So Foster had hired it out.

  “Amonte Negro,” Florence whispered out loud. He nodded in understanding and picked up the 1880 Springfield rifle the dead man had dropped.

  Foster had hired the Mexican bandit to do that part of the job for him. That meant Jed Foster didn’t have many men with him. There was some sense to that, Sam Florence decided. Fewer men you hired meant fewer men you had to pay—or kill. Foster was also used to the Army’s way of doing things, with as little manpower as possible. Smaller patrols could cover more ground. The fewer people you had to trust or depend on, the better off you most likely would be.

  But . . . if Jed Foster trusted Amonte Negro to take out American soldiers, Jed Foster was losing some of his own faculties. Amonte Negro had sent a handful of men to do a job that needed ten or twelve.

  On the other hand, the old scout told himself, it just takes one bullet to kill you. He picked up his Winchester as the bushwhacker’s rifle shot roared down the canyon, and the bullet whined loudly off a rock across the gorge.

  Belly to the ground, Florence peered down the path, if anyone would call that a path, and began crawling like a snake. Every twenty yards or so, he would stop, study the way ahead, and listen. The only sound came from the moaning of the wind through the crevasses and the trees, most of which were dead on his side of the canyon.

  He moved again, keeping his rifle in front of him, his head up, eyes aware and constantly looking. The man, maybe the last one of Amonte Negro’s boys, knew Sam Florence was there, and even knew Florence had killed his partner. Likely, he had taken a few potshots across the canyon at Ben Masterson to make Florence think he had forgotten all about him. Seemed that would be something one of Amonte Negro’s idiots would consider.

  The man jumped out, the Springfield at his hip, not more than thirty feet from Florence.

  Immediately, the scout rolled, realizing that bandit wasn’t as stupid or as clumsy as the others. He had moved up a good hundred yards or so from where Florence had last spotted him, and there the killer had remained quiet as a mouse, just biding his time and waiting for the gringo to make a mistake . . . which he had done. He had underestimated his adversary’s intelligence.

  The Springfield roared like a howitzer, and Sam Florence figured he was dead. But he heard the bullet slap into the dirt two inches from his face, blinding his left eye. The killer swore, tossed the empty rifle at his feet, and palmed for an old Remington revolver stuck inside his waistband. By that time, Florence had the Winchester butted against his shoulder and was raising the barrel. He couldn’t see anything out of his left eye, but his right eye was all that he needed.