Ride the High Lines (An Ash Colter Western Book 2) Page 5

  ‘Anyone in particular?

  ‘Not yet. I’ve still got too much to do here.’

  ‘Looking after this place?’

  ‘This place. My father. And he needs someone to look after him, too, otherwise he’d spend his every waking moment just working.’ Her face clouded and she gestured to our surroundings with a brief sweep of one hand. ‘Daddy settled this land more than twenty years ago. He fought tooth and nail to hold it when the Utes went on the warpath back in ’73. Until Kidd came in six weeks ago, we felt safe here, secure.’

  ‘But Kidd changed all that,’ I hazarded.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. And that upset Daddy more than he’s willing to admit.’

  We had gone in a wide half-circle by this time, and were now walking around behind the house.

  The day was bright and dry, more like the days they usually have in that part of Colorado, but I still didn’t like the look of the dark clouds I could see smothering the peaks of those distant mountains.

  ‘Don’t you ever get lonely out here?’ I asked, changing the subject.

  She glanced away from me, but not before I saw hurt sparking in her green eyes. ‘I’m the only girl for forty miles around,’ she said tiredly, as if she were finally giving voice to something she had often thought. ‘The nearest eligible bachelor lives thirty miles away. I have no friends of my own or any other age. Of course I’m lonely.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Buckhalter. I didn’t mean to pry.’

  She waved one hand vaguely, and forced a game smile back on to her face. ‘Don’t apologies. It’s not your fault — though I will confess that having you and your men here over the past few days has really brought it home to me, just how few people we see or know in this part of the country. Oh, and by the way. My given name is Ruth.’

  I nodded and said it again. ‘Ruth.’ It had a fine, soft, velvety sound.

  I did not have long to savor it, however, for the moment was broken by the urgent drum of hooves that could only signify a horse coming in fast.

  Because we had both been half-expecting trouble sooner or later, we hurried back around the main house without another word. Lem Winch was just bringing his pony to a halt in the yard. As he poured himself effortlessly from his saddle with dust rising around him, the rest of the men appeared in the barn doorway, also drawn by the sounds of his dramatic approach.

  He turned his knowing eyes upon me, nudged back his hat and said, ‘They’ comin’, cap’n. Kidd an’ seven others.’

  I felt a thrill of anticipation wash through me.

  ‘Where?’

  He hooked a thumb over one shoulder. ‘’Bout six, eight miles back thataway.’

  ‘Did they see you?’

  His response was a withering look, so I changed tack.

  ‘Coming fast?’

  ‘Fast enough, I reckon. Be here inside half an hour, easy.’

  I nodded. ‘Right. Ruth, get along inside the house and stay out of sight. Where’s your father?’

  ‘There’s some boggy round to the south and east of here. Daddy went to see what he could do about fencing it off.’

  ‘Henry — go fetch him. Rest of you men, get yourselves under cover.’

  Before anyone could do anything, however, John Horan fixed me with his curiously smoky gray eyes, a big Remington rifle with a brass telescopic sight in his hands. ‘You still aimin’ to stick with this plan o’ yours, Mr. Colter?’ he asked quietly.

  I looked back at him. He, like Winch, was a man of few words. But there were other, more subtle ways to register disapproval or disagreement, and Horan knew them all. A glance, a sigh, the briefest whispered curse or a sorry shake of the head — he had used them all at one time or another to express his low opinion of my plan.

  And perhaps he had some justification. It was, after all, almost too simple. The next time Kidd showed up here, Buckhalter was to send him away with another stubborn refusal to co-operate. We would then follow him at a distance, locate the exact whereabouts of his camp and then raid the place the following dawn and capture the entire gang.

  Horan had expressed his reservations about the thing right at the start. He was no more bloodthirsty than any other man I had met, but because Kidd was who he was, Horan believed that the best way to deal with him and his men was simply to catch them in a crossfire and shoot them all.

  I should have expected no less. Horan was from Arthur Shaw’s ranch, the AS Connected, and if his employer wanted Kidd dead, then so did he.

  Still, I was adamant. In the first place, I was not prepared to risk any injury or damage to the Buckhalters, Buckhalter’s men or his property. In the second place, our job was to catch Kidd. The law could, and would, handle, what was to follow.

  Now I looked back at Horan as the rest of the men stood around us, waiting. I said, ‘We’re sticking with the plan.’

  Horan spat. ‘Well, you know what I think about it. I don’t mean you no disrespect, Mr. Colter, but your plan stinks.’

  Henry Morse and Saul Yarbrough drew in low, hissing breaths. Bob Bancroft watched me with a lazy smile on his face. Winch said, ‘I ain’t takin’ sides, cap’n, but John’s speakin’ fer all of us. Feller’s sneaky as this here Kidd, you don’t give him any kinduva chance a-tall.’

  I was angry that they should choose this moment to go against me, but there was no time to argue about it, not just then, so I responded only briefly. ‘You men are here to follow orders,’ I said. ‘Follow ’em.’

  Horan held my eyes for a moment longer, then turned and stalked away. I felt a twinge of apprehension in my stomach, but whether it was because of him or just that fluttery feeling that always came before a showdown. I wasn’t sure.

  Suddenly the yard was a hive of activity, as the j men disappeared into the barn, Ruth hurried across the yard and into the house, and Henry went in search of Ed Buckhalter. I looked to the south, but could see no sign of approaching riders.

  Ten minutes later Buckhalter came galloping back in with Henry, the long face beneath his loose-brimmed black hat tight and serious. ‘You be all right?’ I asked him briefly, as Henry dragged both his own and Buckhalter’s mounts into the barn.

  Buckhalter just nodded and strode towards the house.

  He had installed an open iron water tank to one side of the house to aid trough-feeding in winter, and it was to this massive, five thousand-gallon container that I now went. In the distance cattle were bawling, and Ruth’s dog, no doubt sensing the electricity in the air, was yapping excitedly. I found myself a good vantage point to one side of the rust-pitted tank and sank onto my haunches.

  Some birds flapped past overhead. I peered up, identified them as orioles and brown thrashers.

  Then I put my eyes back on the flats to the south and suddenly my every muscle stiffened, for I could see them now, coming in line abreast; eight men, walking their horses slowly towards us, their every gesture calculated to menace and intimidate.

  I watched them come nearer, until finally I could pick out more details.

  I recognized Kidd immediately, even though he was no longer wearing the smart gray suit he had favored that night at The Mother Lode. I recognized the same insolent blue eyes, the largish nose, the thick flaxen spill of his hair beneath a high-crowned, sand-colored Stetson, and I found myself wondering if he would suspect a trap. I could feel the thousand-dollar note in my pants’ pocket. Kidd must know I would take up his challenge. But would he suspect a trap here?

  I could only hope that he would not.

  Now my eyes moved along the line to take in Kidd’s companions, and I recalled all the details Sheriff Taylor had told me back in Fort Wray.

  The man directly to Kidd’s left was dressed in a black frock coat and striped gray pants. He had a pinched, mournful looking face and wispy fair hair fanning out from under a black shovel hat. This, I thought, would be Preacher Sweet.

  Preacher Sweet was the oldest of the bunch, being some ten years Kidd’s senior. He was an Arizona man who had worked vari
ously as a farmer, a clerk and a cowboy before finding religion and becoming an itinerant preacher, specializing in fire and brimstone. He used to burst into crowded saloons and shoot them up in his efforts to make the wayward see the error of their ways, and it was in this fashion that he accidentally shot his first man in 1868. To his surprise he found that he liked the power his big .44-caliber Smith and Wesson Russian gave him, and he had been killing ever since.

  The next man was huskier, in his mid-twenties, dressed more like a cowboy. Unless I was mistaken, this was Arnie Bakke, also known as Dutch Arnie.

  Bakke had started off as a horse-breaker and ranch foreman down in the Edwards Plateau country of southern Texas. Then one day his employer, Frank Chilton, came home early and found him in the not-unwelcoming arms of Mrs. Chilton. All hell broke loose, and when the gunsmoke cleared, Dutch Arnie was wanted for murder. He, like the Preacher, had been running and killing ever since.

  Killin’ Jim Middleton came next. He was tall and underfed, whiskery, vague-eyed, with gap-teeth and a wet nose. His unsettled childhood was clearly to blame for the vagaries he displayed as an adult.

  His mother had been a prostitute and he had known only a string of unsympathetic ‘uncles’ almost from the time he had first learned to walk.

  Not surprisingly then, he had grown up into a wild and homicidal twenty four year-old. He was an accomplished horsethief, and rumor had it that he had carried out a number of successful political assassinations down in Mexico.

  All of these men I recognized from Sheriff Taylor’s descriptions, these and four others — the Mexican gunman Tiburcio Mendez; Buckshot Dave Ryan, the so-called Butcher of Belleville; Al Tate, the Nevada lawman turned outlaw; and Kansas Bill Johnson.

  I felt cold in the pit of my stomach.

  Unhurriedly they walked their horses into the yard. I saw their heads turning this way and that, scouring every building and patch of cover, naturally suspicious. Then the door to the main house gave a squeak and my eyes swiveled that way just as Buckhalter came out on to his porch with his rifle in his hands.

  ‘That’s far enough!’ he shouted, and Kidd dutifully reined down and his men followed suit.

  All at once the clinking of bits and the creaking of latigo strings died away and the yard was suddenly deafeningly quiet.

  I focused my attention on john Kidd. It was hard to credit that he was the man who had so captured the country’s imagination. He seemed too ordinary, just one more face in the crowd. There was nothing about him that elevated him above any of the others.

  His clothes were standard range-wear, his sidearm a common enough Colt .45, his holster plain and functional. He did not even wear it tied down in the manner of gunslingers.

  At last he raised his voice. ‘Now, that’s no way to greet old friends,’ he chided.

  Buckhalter snorted disdainfully. He had courage, I thought, to face down all eight of them. ‘Friends! Rustlers, more like! By Christ, you got a nerve, showing your face around here again, Kidd!’

  Kidd’s smile was an easy flash of ivory. I looked at him and felt that he didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything. He opened his mouth to make some sort of response, but at that moment a long gun suddenly roared out, and Kidd’s horse staggered sideways as a big, meaty red hole punched into its neck.

  It took us all by surprise. For one vital moment I didn’t even understand properly what had happened. I caught a brief glimpse of Kidd’s face, the whites of his startled eyes, the edges of his broad mouth yanked down into a grimace as his screaming horse fell sideways. All at once pandemonium reigned in the yard, as Kidd’s swearing men fought down their startled horses and tore their handguns from leather.

  Kidd kicked free of his stirrups no more than a second or two before his horse hit the dirt with stiff legs and scared eyes. He rolled and was momentarily lost beneath a low cloud of dust. Another shot tore out and the man I had tentatively identified as Kansas Bill Johnson screamed and fell headlong from his saddle.

  It came to me then, what had happened, and my teeth clamped together and I came up out of my crouch with my .442 in my hand. Horan! I thought. Horan, damn him!

  By this time Kidd’s men had started shooting back, but because they didn’t know just who it was they were supposed to be aiming at, their gunfire was wild and indiscriminate. I heard bullets striking wood with a thap and a whop, bouncing off the water tank with a hornet’s whine. From the edge of my vision I saw Ed Buckhalter pivot and fall off the porch. If anything happened to him or Ruth …

  I brought the .442 up, knowing that because of Horan’s stupidity we had no choice now but to make a fight of it, and I fired into the insane kaleidoscope of cursing men and turning animals.

  Kidd came back up onto his feet, his clothes powdered with the dust of the yard. Al Tate reached down and grabbed one of his upraised arms. He pulled hard and Kidd Hung himself up into the saddle behind him. I fired at the two of them, trying to wound, not kill, but in all the confusion my shot went wild.

  Then they were out of there, peeling away from the yard in a strung-out, disorganized line, leaving one dying horse and two wounded men in their wake.

  I shoved out from behind the water tank. At roughly the same moment Ruth tore open the front door, screamed, ‘Daddy!’ and threw herself down into the dirt to cradle her father’s head.

  As the rest of the men came boiling out of the barn, yelling in their excitement, I crossed swiftly to the downed outlaw, Johnson. He was wriggling about on his back, and blood was making the material of his duck pants stick to the flesh around his left hip.

  I looked down at him, my breathing coming fast and my heart racing madly. His face was screwed up into a million creases. His handgun had fallen not far away. It was a big Dragoon. I kicked it well out of his reach before turning my attention to Buckhalter.

  He was sitting up now, making little choking sounds as he struggled to handle the pain of his wounded left shoulder. Ruth looked up at me. Her face was a bloodless oval, and tears shone in her big green eyes. Then she turned her attention back to her father and, hearing footsteps behind me, I spun around.

  John Horan was in the forefront of the men. Smoke curled from the barrel of his Remington rifle in a string of interlaced question marks. I looked at him. He had deliberately gone against me, and in such a way as to ruin whatever chance of success my plan might otherwise have had.

  I stuffed my gun away, crossed the distance between us, reached out, yanked the rifle from his grasp and tossed it away. I saw surprise on his face.

  He thought he had come to know me over the past few days. He didn’t think I could be angry, or show that anger, and he was probably banking on getting clean away with what he had done. But he was about to discover that he didn’t know me at all.

  It was neither the time nor the place for it, I realized that afterwards, but right then, with gunfire still ringing in my ears —

  I swung a roundhouse right that caught him full on the point of the jaw and threw him backwards.

  The men cleared a path behind him and he went down into the dust. He said, ‘Damn you, Colter — ’ and then he went for the Army .44 on his hip, but suddenly Bob Bancroft’s gun appeared in his left hand and the ratchety sound it made coming to full cock froze him in his tracks.

  ‘Don’t make it two mistakes in the one day, John,’ he advised quietly.

  Horan glared up at him, bleeding from a split lip. Bancroft waited a moment, until he was sure that Horan knew he meant what he’d said, and then he turned the gun away from him and fired it, once. We all flinched as he put the wounded horse out of its misery.

  I stabbed a finger down at Horan. ‘Best you clear out of here now, Horan,’ I snapped. ‘You’re through on this crew.’

  ‘But I —’

  I pushed forward, dragging him back up onto his feet and threw him away from me, in the direction of the barn. ‘Get your horse and get the hell out of here!’

  I wanted to say more. I wanted to ask him if it w
as his boss who had paid him extra to kill Kidd, or all the other big Association cattlemen together. Was that what his fancy rifle and sight was for? But time was wasting. To the others I said, ‘Get your horses, men. No, not you, Bob. You’d better stay behind and keep an eye on this Johnson.’

  Although he wasn’t happy about it, he nodded acceptance without complaint, and put his sidearm away. Meanwhile, Lem Winch’s dark eyes were suddenly lighting up. ‘We goin’ after ’em, cap’n?’

  I nodded, and as one the rest of us headed into the stable and caught up our already-saddled mounts. A moment later we thundered out of the yard, heading across the cattle-dotted flats to the south, following the course Kidd and his men had charted not five minutes before. I did not know what we would do when we caught them. I did not even know if we would catch them. But I knew that we must at least make some attempt to get the man we were after, for we would never get another chance, not after this.

  We pushed our horses up from a canter to a gallop. I narrowed my eyes as the cool wind pushed against my face. I thought about Horan. In spite of his obvious misgivings, I would have put money on him following orders. And yet I had been wrong.

  And then there was Bancroft. Of all the men, he was the last one I would have expected to come to my defense. And yet I had been wrong about him, too.

  We saw Kansas Bill’s horse cropping grass away to our left. The animal had instinctively followed the others when they had quit the yard, but it must have stumbled on its trailing reins so often that in the end it just gave up and slowed to a halt.

  It lifted its head and watched us thunder past, but made no attempt to join us. A minute or so later, Winch heeled his pony up alongside me. He was pointing at something up ahead. I followed the line of his finger and saw a knot of riders not more than a mile away — Kidd’s bunch for sure. I drew my handgun and let my mustang have its head, and the others matched my action and speed.