Bloody Trail (6 page)

Both Danby and Hammond raised their guns
again, moving in for the kill.

“
Shoot the bastard!” Danby
cried.

But a shot rang out from close by, and they
both looked round to see its source. Bill saw Jed flatten himself
against the side of a building, his smoking Navy Colt in his hand.
It was enough to distract Danby and Hammond, and since they could
not see where the shot had come from, they took off and their men
followed.

“
Remember to shoot any horses.
Don’t want any of these Wolf Creekers following!” Danby
cried.

Bill ran over to Jed. “My God! They’re
shooting the horses. Cholla!”

“
And my Rojo!”

Together they raced along Lincoln and rounded
the corner to the livery.

The first of the raiders were racing along
North Street as Bill and Jed approached the livery. Rojo, Jed’s
beloved strawberry roan gelding, was tethered to the hitching rail
in front just as Jed had left him, alongside a sorrel. Both horses
were snorting and straining to get loose.

One of the five drew to a halt, pulled out his
gun and shot the sorrel once in the head, and Rojo twice in the
chest. The sorrel dropped dead instantly, but Rojo reeled, and then
collapsed. He lay there, making a fearful noise, with his legs
twitching.

“
No!” cried Jed, rushing ahead. He
raised his gun and fired at the raider, but missed.

The gunman made no such mistake. He shot Jed
in the chest. Then, seeing Bill coming along behind him, he let off
a shot at him.

Jed, feeling his life slipping away, ignored
the gunman and staggered toward Rojo—who lay snorting and
squealing, his eyes rolling and his great chest pumping blood
out.

“
Rojo,” Jed sobbed. “The bastard
has done for us both.” And realizing that there was nothing he
could do for his mount, his friend of so many years, he dropped to
his knees and patted the horse’s neck. Rojo nickered at the feel of
his owner’s hand.

“
I can’t stand to see you suffer,
Rojo,” he wheezed as he pressed a hand to the gushing wound on his
chest. He raised the gun to Rojo’s head. “We’ll go together,
buddy!”

He fired and shuddered as his horse convulsed,
then lay still. Then, with his eyes full of tears, he slumped
forward over Rojo and died.

The gunman laughed and then turned in the
direction of the stable and the corral beyond, where Bill had left
Cholla and all his other charges.

Bill seized the opportunity, his heart racing
and his mind full of nothing except the desire for revenge. He ran,
grabbed the gun from Jed’s dead hand, and shot the departing gunman
in the back.

****

Ann and the Li children had taken refuge in
the Expositor where the editor, David Appleford, and his printer,
Piney Robbins, had done their best to keep the boys’ heads
down.

At last, when the shooting and the screaming
of the dying horses seemed to be over and the gang all seemed to
have ridden off, Piney stood up, grabbed the old Baby Dragoon
pocket revolver that he kept in his desk drawer, and opened the
door into the street. The sight that greeted him made him feel
sick. The street was still full of smoke and the smell of powder
was everywhere. A couple of businesses had caught fire or been
deliberately set alight. Through the haze, he saw the carcasses of
about a dozen horses lying where they had been slain as they stood
tied to hitching rails. Two human bodies lay at the far end of the
street.

Then he heard the noise of hooves and saw two
gunmen riding fast toward him. He took a step to the edge of the
boardwalk and aimed his weapon.

The leading raider saw him and fired, his
bullet going wide. Piney barely aimed, but luck was with him. The
bullet caught the raider in the face and he tumbled backward overt
his horse to land face up in an expanding pool of his own
blood.

At that very moment, Li Chang’s mice escaped
from his pockets and made a concerted bid for freedom through the
open door. Despite the combined cries of David Appleford and
Chang’s brothers, Chang chased after them, his mind numbed by the
horror of all he had heard. All he wanted was to protect his
precious mice. He dashed through the door into the street then
stopped when he saw the bloody body of a horse lying right in front
of him.

He did not see the frightened, riderless horse
that had reared up as it lost its rider and then started into a
gallop. It ran straight into Chang, its full weight trampling him
into the ground, shattering his rib cage and instantly breaking his
neck.

Ann Haselton had instinctively run out after
him, then stopped and stared in horror at seeing him trampled to
death. She ran to him as soon as she was able, not seeing the
panicking final gunman who had started shooting at anything that
moved. He shot her in the back. The bullet went straight through
her heart and she fell over the dead, broken body of her charge, Li
Chang.

****

Spike and Emory had both been working hammer
and tong, without a word between them—which was normal—when they’d
heard the sound of gunfire. Each glanced at the other, then Spike
grabbed the Austrian .50 caliber he kept loaded and leaning on the
ladder to the loft, and headed for the wagon doors which stood
open. In seconds, he spun on his heel and yelled to his partner as
he passed. “Town’s under attack—least there’s a hell of a gunfight
going on. Grab the Spencer—I’ll take the side from above, you take
the front.”

The north side of the blacksmith’s shop looked
out toward Torrance’s Livery, the front toward the school. The shop
was on the edge of town, not in its center, where the shots came
from. It was Spike’s thought that raiders, if indeed this was a
raid, would be looking for anything of value, and Torrance kept
some fine stock at his place. Spike, however, was more worried
about his own steel gray.

He couldn’t imagine them bothering the school.
He was better armed than Em, and knew himself to be a better shot;
after all, he’d been four years getting shot at by some of Mr.
Lincoln’s finest, and other than a scar across his cheekbone—and
that from a blade—and a limp from a cannon blast, he was not much
the worse for the wear.

Even though a lot more lead could be thrown
from the Spencer, the long rifled Austrian was a much more accurate
weapon at a distance, and he would lay down only fifty yards from
the livery. He could put one through a button on a man’s vest at
that range. He’d once dropped a Yank sniper out of a hickory tree
with the long Austrian, and then paced off the four
hundred-and-thirty-yard shot.

As he’d suspected, and just as he got prone in
the loft, two riders he didn’t recognize approached the livery. To
his surprise, one of them drew and head-shot a horse tied at a rail
across the road from the corrals—the animal collapsed like he’d
dropped a hogshead barrel.

Spike had no idea who the men were, but it
didn’t take more than that one gunshot to figure them up to no
good—the question was, did they deserve killing? He snapped the gun
to his shoulder, took a deep breath, squeezed, and shot the mount
out from under the lead rider—who hit the ground on the run, caught
the arm of the second, and swung up behind him. As Spike bit the
end off another paper load, they disappeared behind the houses at a
dead gallop.

His own horse, Hammer, a steel gray dappled
gelding—cut proud enough that he still wanted to jump the fence
when there was a mare on the wind—was in that livery, and he and
Ham had been though a lot together. He wasn’t going to see him shot
down by some lowlife. Reloading, he waited for another butt-wipe to
ride on the livery, but none came.

Spike did have money in the bank, and that
concerned him, for raiders would surely make it their first target.
But from many battles under many different conditions, he knew one
thing for sure. It was better to evaluate your position, and the
odds, before you set off half-cocked—to coin a particularly
appropriate phrase. That is, if you wanted to stay
alive.

More shots rang out from different areas of
town. Either there were plenty of raiders or some damn
townsfolk-fools were shooting at each other. He and Em held their
ground until the shooting quieted down. Then he dismounted the
ladder, bade Em to take up his position in the loft, and retrieved
his shirt. He buttoned up—he normally worked bare-chested in the
shop’s heat—and strode out for the bank, only a block down Lincoln
Street. Moving from cover to cover, keeping close to the walls of
the buildings he passed, he kept a sharp eye for strangers or
anyone armed.

As he neared the town’s most substantial
masonry building, he realized the situation was damn bad. Not only
were some men shot up, but a fine young lady, the schoolmarm, Miss
Ann Haselton, and a child, one of the Li children—the youngest,
Spike thought—lay dead.

His throat went dry, and heat coursed his
backbone.

Spike had seen enough death to last him
several lifetimes and had thought he was immune to it, but the
woman and the child got to him. He stopped and stared at the
weeping women who bent over the prostrate bodies, and old snakes
started wiggling in his belly. He hated the thought of it, but
innocent blood had been spilled—and that meant that blood had to be
taken.

****

Bill stood, numbed, alongside the bodies of
his friend, Jed, and Jed’s horse. The Danby gang had raced west
along North Street and out of Wolf Creek, leaving death and
destruction in its wake. Powdersmoke, mingled with the smoke from
burning wagons and three blazing buildings, formed a haze which
burned Bill’s eyes, already filled with tears over Jed’s loss.
Those tears mercifully blurred his vision as he looked over the
carnage on North Street. He could see the bodies of at least three
people, plus those of nine or ten horses. Somewhere down the street
a dog howled mournfully, undoubtedly at the loss of its master. The
cries of the terrified, wounded, and dying sounded as if Satan and
his legions were invading Wolf Creek. Of course Jim Danby, Wes
Hammond, and Satan were one and the same to Bill.

“
Cholla!”

Bill tucked Jed’s pistol into the waistband of
his pants, then headed inside the stable, the dead outlaw’s horse
following, eager to get away from the smoke and blood. Bill’s vow
to never again use a gun had been shattered when he saw Jed
murdered, and Rojo, along with who knew how many other helpless
horses, gunned down where they stood. He had acted strictly on
instinct when he grabbed the gun from Jed’s dying hand and shot his
killer. The man had turned away from Jed and toward Bill’s stable,
clearly intent on killing the horses inside, then burning down the
barn. There was no way Bill could let that happen. A quick bullet
in the back was the only solution.

The few horses remaining in the stalls were
still nervous, pacing, snorting and nickering, eyes rolling and
nostrils flaring at the scent of smoke.

“
Cholla!” Bill called again. His
paint came charging from his corral and up to Bill. He stopped and
nuzzled Bill’s chest, then whickered. Bill wrapped his arms around
the big gelding’s neck.

“
Dunno why you didn’t follow me
like you always do, boy, but thank God you didn’t,” Bill murmured.
“Somethin’ must’ve told you to stay behind. Cowboy once told me
there’s a saint—Francis if I recollect right—who protects animals.
Guess he was watchin’ over you, ol’ pard. If he was, I’m sure
grateful. Meantime, I’d better try and calm your friends down, then
see where I can help out.”

Bill was more sickened by the killing of many
of Wolf Creek’s horses than that of several of its residents. After
all, his thinking went, men always had a way to fight back. Horses
had no such choice. They were innocent victims of man’s greed and
inhumanity.

Deputy Fred Garvey’s horse, a blocky grulla
gelding, was in the stall closest to Bill. Bill stroked its nose to
soothe the frightened animal.

“
Easy, Dusty,” Bill whispered.
“They’re gone. Nothin’ to worry about now.”

“
Bill! You in there? Sheriff
Satterlee’s lookin’ for you. Needs you pronto.”

Jimmy Spotted Owl was standing in the door of
the stable. The young half-Cherokee cowboy’s face was streaked with
gunpowder.

“
Satterlee’s lookin’ for me? Why?”
Bill questioned.

“’
Cause he’s gettin’ up a posse,
and needs horses. Gotta get on the trail of those renegades before
they get too much of a jump. Sheriff wants to know how many horses
you’ve got left.”

“
Tell him half a dozen, not
countin’ my Cholla,” Bill answered.

“
You’d better tell him yourself,”
Jimmy replied. “I’ve got to find Billy Below and Phil Salem. We’re
gonna ride with Satterlee. Whole town’s riled up over all the
killin’s, especially little Li Chang and the
schoolteacher.”

Bill’s heart jumped into his
throat.

“
You mean they killed Marcus
Sublette?”

“
Not Marcus Sublette. Ann
Haselton.”

Bill gasped. He felt like he’d just taken a
Comanche lance right through his gut.

“
Miss Haselton? Are you
certain?”