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Authors: William W. Johnstone

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BOOK: A Good Day to Die
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“Thanks, but I don't need him. He travels fastest who travels alone,” Sam said.
“Still, I will feel better if there is another along to watch your back. One gun more or less won't make any difference to the fortune of the Grande, but it could make a very great difference to you. Latigo is one of mine, loyal first to the Delgados, not the Castillos.”
Sam nodded. “I've seen him at work. A good man.”
“But bad enough to stay alive,” Lorena said, “like you, amigo.”
“And you!”
Sam crossed to Latigo. The pistolero, in his mid-twenties, was of medium height, with a runner's build. Beneath a sombrero, thick black hair was parted in the middle, the ends reaching down to his jawline. He sported a blue bandana headband. He had almond-shaped eyes and a thin mustache.
He lifted a hand in greeting, holding it palm-up for a beat before letting it fall to his side. “We meet again.”
“Sure you want to go along?” Sam asked.
“Why not? It's a nice day for a ride,” Latigo said.
“In that case, I'll stay here and you go.”
“I don't like riding that much, gringo.” Latigo's gaze dropped to the sawed-off Winchester in its special long holster hanging down Sam's right thigh. “I see you still have that trick gun, the Kick of the Burro.”
“Mule's-leg, podner.”
“What I said.”
Sam went up and down the string of three horses, checking them out. The second in line, a piebald brown-and-white cow pony, was dressed with Sam's own saddle.
“They're all good but the pinto is the best. I had them put your saddle on it,” Latigo said.
“I'll take your word for it. Thanks,” Sam said, pleased. He liked the pinto's lines and appreciated being able to ride his own saddle, broken in to his specifications. It wasn't the same, riding with another man's leather underneath him.
He put the brown paper lunch bag into a saddlebag, then secured the rolled-up black robe behind the cantle. A length of rawhide thong helped rig the gun case on the saddle's left-hand side. Unfastening the lead rope, Sam cut the pinto out of the string.
Latigo took the rope, trailing the two reserve horses behind him. Sam stepped into the saddle, mounting up on the pinto.
“
Muchos gracias, señora,
” he said, nodding to Lorena, touching thumb and forefinger to his hat brim. A tip of the hat, polite and respectful.
“Vaya con Dios,”
she said, lifting a hand in seeming casual salutation and letting it fall. Entirely correct and proper, yet no more than that, for the great lady of the rancho.
Sam and Latigo walked their horses across the patio into the courtyard. In its center, a knot of vaqueros wrestled with Rancho Grande's ultimate weapon. The Long Tom, an old Spanish cannon about fourteen feet in length, was mounted on a carrier with four solid wooden wheels. It looked like it belonged on the gun deck of a Spanish galleon or pirate ship. It was very old, but effective. Its punishing firepower had broken more than a few Comanche onslaughts across the long years.
The handlers struggled to move the Long Tom into place, positioning it so that it anchored the defense of the courtyard and its field of fire encompassed the main gate in case of a breach.
Diego Castillo was up on a parapet, repositioning the riflemen along the wall. He was oblivious of Sam ... or pretended to be. That suited Sam fine.
The front gate was in the process of being secured. One massive door was closed, the other stood open. Sam and Latigo exited single file, Sam first, Latigo following with the string of two horses behind.
Once they were clear of the portal and out in the open, Sam waited for Latigo so they could ride abreast. Behind them, eager hands wrestled with the slab door, pulling it closed with a dull, booming thud that reminded Sam unpleasantly of the closing of a coffin lid.
Latigo was looking at him. Perhaps they shared similar thoughts.
“That sounded like the crack of doom,” Sam noted.
Latigo shrugged his shoulders. “
Quien sabe,
gringo? Who knows?”
F
OURTEEN
Sam and Latigo heard the death throes of the doomed stagecoach before they saw it. It was early evening; long shadows were falling.
From beyond the next ridge came the drum of thundering hoofbeats. A coach jounced on overworked springs, the undercarriage rattling and banging, its iron-rimmed wooden wheels rumbling along a dirt road. Counterpointing the stagecoach's frantic flight came the clamor of raucous pursuit, more hoofbeats, shots, shrieks, war whoops and yowls, bloodcurdling in their feral intensity.
The ridge ran east-west. Sam and Latigo rode almost to the top, pausing just below the crest of the rise, showing only enough of their heads to let them see what was happening below without being seen.
On the far side of the ridge stretched the rutted dirt road of the Hangtree Trail. Sam and Latigo were west of Hangtown, east of the Breaks, and far enough away from both so that neither could be seen.
The stagecoach hurtled east, chased by a band of Comanches. It was flanked on both sides by a couple lead riders, the rest of the braves closely bringing up the rear. Prey and predators streaked by at a breakneck pace.
The braves harried the coach like wolves trying to bring down a lumbering bear closing in for the kill. Shots cracked, arrows whizzed. That the moment of truth was near could be seen from the fact the stagecoach was without a driver.
Two men would normally have occupied the seat up front, the driver and the shotgun messenger. But there was only one, and he was dead. He lay on his side sprawled across the driver's seat, inert save for the motion imparted by the plunging, bucking, roiling vehicle. Arrows jutted out of him.
The shotgun guard was nowhere to be seen. He must have fallen off somewhere farther back on the road, out of sight. Other arrows protruded from the coach's roof, sides, and back. That it was not yet a corpse wagon was told by intermittent shots and shrieks coming from inside it.
The course lay straight across the flat. Six terrified horses, yoked in tandem to the wagon pole, raced straight ahead, freed of all restraint now that no man's hand held the reins. The end would be soon. Comanche riders flanking the coach team whipped their mounts with leather quirts, urging them to greater speed to overtake the lead horses.
Once that was done the braves could grab the animals' headstalls, turning them and bringing them to a halt. Two were almost there, leaning dangerously far out of their saddles, hands reaching.
Their fellows were bunched up in a pack coming alongside and behind the vehicle. Copper-red, half naked, sinewy Comanches armed with rifles, lances, and bows and arrows failed to completely obscure the forms of passengers inside the coach.
A bowman riding abreast of the coach box reached over his shoulder to draw an arrow from the quiver hanging across his back. Fitting it to the bowstring of his curved composite bow fashioned from buffalo bones, he drew the string taut, angling for a shot.
A man in the coach shot at him with a six-gun, missing, but causing the bowman to slow down and fall back.
Jamming his hat down tight on his head to keep from losing it—the hat that is, not the head—Sam kicked his heels into the pinto's flanks, urging it forward. It lunged over the crest of the ridge and down the other side, tearing a slanting line across the gentle downhill slope and pounding across the flat.
Left to his own devices, Latigo would have abandoned the coach and its passengers to their fate. Not out of callousness or indifference, but out of prudence. He'd come up in a hard school and learned early not to take unnecesary risks. The coach folk were strangers, no kin or friends to him.
But Latigo had been charged to ride with Sam Heller and, having been so charged by Señora Lorena, was faithful to his duty. The gringo was loco, a madman. But ah, what magnificent madness!
With more than a few sighs and head shakes, Latigo took off after Sam, taking his mount and the two horses strung behind him over the top of the hill and down the other side.
On the pinto, Sam tore across the flat after the stagecoach and its pursuers. His horse was fresh, the coach was near. Behind, Latigo was coming up fast, leaning far forward in the saddle.
Comanches are not easily taken unawares, but the band of marauders was intent on its prey. The pinto closed the gap between itself and the rearmost of the braves. Sam drew the mule's-leg with his right hand, gripping the reins between his teeth.
Levering the cut-down Winchester, he opened with a fast-crackling volley of lead.
Three braves in the back of the pack were swept off their mounts and thrown to the ground, never to rise again.
The others now knew Sam was on their tail.
The stagecoach was slowing; so were the Comanches. A rider at the head of the team on the left-hand side held the headstall of the lead horse nearest him, trying to turn the animal.
The stagecoach rumbled to a halt. Sam rode up along the left-hand side of the coach, closing on three braves clustered together.
The nearest, a bowman with arrow nocked and pointed at a passenger half leaning out of a window and shooting, turned and loosed the arrow at Sam. Narrowly missing his head, it whizzed past so close he could feel the air disturbed by its passage. Sam triggered a burst of rounds, drilling the archer and a rifle-wielding brave riding alongside him.
Latigo unsheathed a repeating carbine from its saddle scabbard and drove down on the stagecoach's right-hand side, firing at three Comanches grouped there.
Five braves, the trio faced by Latigo and the two on Sam's side, wheeled their mounts around, turning them to meet the threat. A brave with an eight-foot-lance rushed Sam, thrusting the spear-blade at him. Sam shot him in the torso, felling him.
A brave threw a tomahawk at Latigo and missed. A passenger stuck his arm out of the coach, gun in hand. He blazed away at the tomahawk thrower at point-blank range, burning him down.
The brave holding the lead horse in check released its headstall to bring his rifle in line with Sam. Sam fired first, knocking him to the ground. He urged the pinto forward.
The brave he'd felled was still alive, groping in the dirt for his weapon and catching it up. The pinto trampled him. Sam held the animal in place, its iron-shod hooves dancing atop the Comanche, hammering him into the dirt.
Sam moved on, rounding the front of the team and coming up behind the duo on the other side shooting it out with Latigo. Sam shot one in the back while Latigo downed the other.
Taking no chances with possible hair-triggered survivors, Sam shouted, “Don't shoot, We're friends!”
“Amen to that, brother!” a man's voice returned from inside the coach.
Sam and Latigo reined in, eyeing downed braves pouring red lifeblood onto the hardpacked dirt road, the ground soaking it up like a sponge. Swinging down from the saddle, Sam hitched the pinto's reins to an iron staple bolted to the side of the coach. Latigo similarly secured his horse, then checked the lead rope and two horses on the string. They checked out okay. He and Sam dropped finishing slugs into the skulls of the downed who looked like they were still breathing.
Inside the coach, a woman cried out, “Lord be praised!”
The stagecoach doors were flung open and two men climbed out.
Carbine in hand, Latigo climbed up on the front of the stagecoach. He set the hand brake, locking it into place, and checked the driver for signs of life. “Dead,” he said, looking up.
Sam's clothes were damp with sweat and he was breathing hard. He started reloading, plucking cartridges from a bandolier and feeding them into the mule's-leg. He faced west, eyes scanning west and north. The immediate landscape was partly obscured by dust clouds kicked up by the chase. He tried to peer through them, frowning. It looked clear of more Comanches, for now.
One of the coach duo was a big, sandy-haired fellow with a handlebar mustache. He wore a baggy, rumpled brown suit with a tan vest and held a .32 pocket gun. The other, of medium height, was slight, birdlike and thin faced. He wore a derby hat, a natty green-and-black checked suit, and long, slim boots. His right arm at his side held a big-bore, heavy-caliber handgun pointed at the ground.
“I don't mind telling you, you and your friend saved our bacon, sir. Thought we were goners, sure,” he said to Sam. He mopped his face with a damp handkerchief. “Whew!”
“Sam Heller's the name. My friend is Latigo.”
“I'm Hal Brewster, salesman out of St. Louis,” the second man introduced himself.
“Donny Donahue, same line and town,” the sandy-haired man said. Drummers they were, traveling salesmen.
A woman inside the coach stuck her head outside. She was haggard, white lipped, and trembling. “One of my girls is hurt, hurt bad. Can you help her?”
“I'll take a look, ma'am.” Holstering the mule's-leg, Sam stepped up into the coach's interior.
Two dead bodies lay heaped on the floor like sacks of dirty laundry, a man with the shaft of a broken arrow sticking out of his eye socket, and a woman with half her face shot away.
Occupying the rear seat was another woman and two girls. “I'm Mrs. Anderson, Mary Anderson.” She and a girl about twelve years old were huddled around the wounded youngster. At the same time they were trying to keep their legs and feet as clear as they could of the corpses on the floor.
“I was taking my nieces Sally and June to meet their daddy in Dallas. June was hit,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I don't know what to do!”
Sally was about the same age as Lydia Fisher. Long brown hair parted in the middle framed a deathly white oval face. Her eyes stood out like they were on stalks. She was shivering, and held herself so taut that she looked to Sam like she'd twang like a plucked bowstring if touched.
June, ten, was short and chubby with brown hair cut in bangs and a round face. She half sat, half lay in corner of the seat. The back of her head was cradled and propped up by a rolled-up fringed shawl. An arrow was stuck in the girl's chest high on the right side. Sam winced when he got a good look at it.
June's eyes were closed, her lids drawn taut, orbs bulging like walnuts behind them. Her lips were parted, a line of wetness clung in the corner of her mouth.
Mary Anderson peered over behind Sam's back, breathing hard. “She's not moving! Is she ... ?”
Sam held the side of his head low over the girl, listening. Her breathing was faint, slow and laboring. “Still alive,” he said, straightening up.
“Thank God!” Mary Anderson cried. June whimpered, tears spilling from half-closed eyes.
“Fainted, looks like,” Sam surmised.
A twisted hand gripped his forearm, squeezing it. Mary Anderson was a bony, wiry, old-maid type, but at the moment her clutch was so strong Sam's flesh went numb under it. “How ... how bad is it?” she asked.
“Not good, but it could be worse. There's no wheezing in her breath or bubbles in the blood around the wound, so it probably missed the lung. I ain't no doctor, mind,” he added quickly.
“Can you pull the arrow out?”
“I don't know. Maybe not—too dangerous. Might do more harm than good. Better off leaving it be till we get to a doctor.”
“What doctor? Where?” Hysteria rose in Mary Anderson's voice, threatening to break loose.
“We're not too far from town, six to eight miles. The sooner we get there, the better—for everybody.”
“Isn't there anything that can be done now?”
“See that she don't move around much or jar that arrow against anything.” Leaning toward the open doorway, Sam eased away from Mary Anderson as best he could with her death grip clutching on his arm. “Ma'am, please ... I got to see about getting us moving.”
She let go of him. Sam stepped down outside the coach. It was hot in the open under the declining sun, but not as close and stifling as it had seemed inside the coach. Sam flexed his fingers and shook out the arm, trying to get some feeling back into it.
Donahue was taking a long pull from a pint bottle of whiskey he had stowed somewhere on his person. His head was tilted back, throat muscles working. When he lowered it, his eyes watered and his face was red.
“Ah! Good for what ails you,” he said, gasping. He proffered the bottle to his companion. “Brewster?”
“Thanks, Donny, I could use it!” Brewster had been reloading his six-gun. Putting the cylinder back in place, he stuffed the big gun in a hip pocket of his pants and took the bottle. Raising it to his lips, he thought twice and lowered it undrunk, holding it out to Sam. “Mister ... ?”
“Thanks. I can use it,” Sam said. The whiskey was strong, raw, and fiery, giving him a jolt—what he needed. A shadow fell across him. Latigo leaned over the passenger's side of the driver's seat, looking thirsty.
“Drink up, by God!” Donahue said.
Sam handed the bottle to Latigo, who drank deep. When Latigo handed it back to Sam, there was only mouthful or so left in the bottle—but then, there hadn't been all that much remaining when Sam passed it to him. Sam returned the bottle to Donahue, who finished it off and tossed it over his shoulder to the side of the road.
BOOK: A Good Day to Die
12.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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