Brotherhood of Evil (11 page)

Chapter 23

Out in the bunkhouse, things were starting to get desperate.

All the fires were out, so the place wasn't in danger of burning down anymore, but the flying lead had killed a couple men and several more were badly wounded. Pearlie and Cal had come through unscathed so far, but they knew that couldn't last much longer.

“Kid,” Pearlie said as he thumbed fresh cartridges into his Winchester, “we gotta make a break for it.”

“How are we gonna do that?” Cal asked. “There are too many of them out there!”

“We're gonna turn their own tactics against 'em. Keep fightin'. I'll be back in a minute.”

Staying low because bullets were still coming through the broken windows, he made his way to a small closet at the far end of the bunkhouse and felt around inside its darkened interior until he found what he wanted—the jug of kerosene they used to fill the lanterns.

On his way back to the window with the jug, he stopped at his bunk to pull on his clothes, stomp into his boots, and buckle on his gun belt. He told the other men to take turns doing the same thing while continuing to battle the invaders.

“Are we gettin' out of here, Pearlie?” one of the cowboys asked.

“We dang sure are,” Pearlie said, adding under his breath, “one way or the other.”

Back to the window where he had left Cal, he told the youngster to go get dressed. “Don't waste no time about it, neither,” Pearlie warned. “I got a hunch those hombres out there might be gettin' tired of this. They're liable to launch an all-out attack any time now.”

“I understand.”

While Cal was dressing, Pearlie cut a strip of cloth off the tail of his flannel shirt and stuffed one end of it into the neck of the kerosene jug, which was nearly new and almost full.

Cal was as good as his words, making it back to the window in only a few moments, dressed in boots, jeans, and a buckskin shirt. His gun belt was strapped around his lean hips. He exclaimed, “You're making a bomb!”

“Yep. Don't know if it'll be enough to turn the tables on those varmints, but I reckon it's just about our only chance.”

“What do we do?”

“You stay here and keep an eye on 'em. I'm gonna unbar that door and wait for them to charge us again. When they do, I intend to pitch that jug right in amongst 'em. If it explodes like I hope, it'll blow some of 'em to hell and distract the others enough for us to go out shootin'. Once we're out, everybody scatter. With any luck, some of us will get away and can keep on fightin'.”

Cal nodded again, then said wistfully, “I sure wish Smoke was here.”

Pearlie sighed. “So do I, kid. So do I.”

Satisfied that the strip of flannel had soaked up enough kerosene to serve as a makeshift fuse, Pearlie went around the room explaining the plan to the rest of the defenders, all of whom nodded in grim-faced understanding. Even if Pearlie's plan didn't work, they would go out fighting. Most of those tough, veteran cowboys wouldn't ask for anything else.

Pearlie unbarred the door, then held the jug in one hand and a lucifer in the other as he looked toward the window where Cal stood vigil and fired an occasional shot.

After a few minutes, Cal called, “Looks like they're forming up for a charge, Pearlie!”

“I knew it,” Pearlie said. “They got us outnumbered, and they never set out to have no siege.”

“Here they come!”

Pearlie used his thumbnail to snap the match to life. He held the flame to the kerosene-soaked rag, which caught instantly. He had to move fast to keep the jug from exploding in his hand. He dropped the match, jerked the door open, and pitched the jug toward the attackers as hard as he could.

The group of riders had just surged forward, shooting as they came, when the jug sailed among them and erupted in a huge ball of flame.

The explosion engulfed several men and horses and seared some of the other mounts enough to make them jump around wildly. In the blink of an eye, a well-coordinated attack turned into wild chaos.

“Come on!” Pearlie yelled as he burst out of the bunkhouse. He'd grabbed his rifle from where he had leaned it against the wall beside the door, and the Winchester spurted fire and lead as his shots raked the invaders.

Cal and the rest of the crew were close behind him. Rifles and pistols roared as they spread out. Their bullets tore through several of the attackers and knocked them off their out-of-control horses.

But there were just too many gunmen. Reinforcements closed in from all sides. Sugarloaf cowboys were gunned down and ridden down. The battle quickly began to turn into a slaughter.

Pearlie was headed for the barn. He thought maybe if he could get in there, he might be able to slip out the back and then circle around toward the house. He was still worried about Sally. Some of the invaders had charged the house, and although he had seen muzzle flashes from one of the windows and knew that Sally was fighting back, he had no idea how that part of the fracas had turned out.

Most Western men, even the most hardened outlaws, wouldn't harm a decent woman on purpose—but a bullet had no mind of its own, and a hell of a lot of them were flying around.

Even over the gun thunder filling the air, Pearlie heard hoofbeats pounding toward him. He pivoted to his right, dropped to one knee, and fired the Winchester at the man trying to ride him down.

Unfortunately, the man's horse chose that moment to rear up. Pearlie's shot caught it in the throat. Mortally wounded, the horse collapsed. Its rider kicked his feet free of the stirrups, sailed over the dying animal's head, and crashed into Pearlie. The impact drove him over onto his back, jolted the rifle out of his hands, and knocked the breath out of his lungs.

The hardcase who'd rammed into him wasn't in much better shape. He lost the six-shooter he'd been holding, so he stuck a knee into Pearlie's belly and grabbed for his throat. The outlaw's fingers locked around Pearlie's windpipe and tightened ruthlessly.

Caught without much breath in his body to start with, the lack of air quickly began to affect the foreman. A red haze settled over his eyes and his muscles seemed to have lost most of their strength. He tried to buck upward and throw the attacker off, but he couldn't manage it.

He felt consciousness start to slip away and knew that if he passed out, chances were good he'd never wake up again. He was about to make a last-ditch effort to break free when the man suddenly let go of his throat and toppled to the side.

Cal stood over Pearlie and urged, “Come on! Let's see if we can make it to the barn!”

As Pearlie sat up, he glanced over and saw that the back of the attacker's head was bloody and misshapen. Cal held the Winchester he'd brought from the bunkhouse. Pearlie knew the youngster had used the rifle's butt to stove in the hombre's skull.

“I'm . . . obliged to you . . . kid,” he panted as he got to his feet. “Reckon you . . . saved my life.”

“Shoot, you've saved my life plenty of times,” Cal said. “I'm glad I got a chance to return the favor.”

Pearlie picked up the Winchester he had dropped and dashed toward the barn again with Cal at his side.

Another of the invaders on horseback tried to cut them off. Both rifles cracked at the same time, and the bullets hammered the man out of the saddle and dropped him limp and lifeless to the ground. Pearlie and Cal made it to the barn, where Pearlie pulled one of the big double doors open and they slipped inside. He didn't know if any more of the outlaws had noticed them.

“Let's head for the back,” he told Cal. “I want to get around behind the house.”

“I'm worried about Miss Sally, too. I don't reckon we can get there by going straight across, though.”

“Naw, it's the next thing to hell out there,” Pearlie said.

The barn's interior was in utter darkness, but having spent so much time in there, the two of them were able to make their way around. Horses in the stalls were making a racket. The shooting and yelling outside had spooked them.

Pearlie found the small rear door and started to open it, then hesitated. Gunmen could be waiting to open up on them as soon as they stepped out.

But they couldn't stay in the barn. Pearlie was under no illusions that the crew of the Sugarloaf would win the battle. They had done a lot of damage to the invaders, but in the end, those on the ranch were simply too outnumbered to prevail. Eventually, the victors would send men to search the barn and all the other buildings and root out any survivors. Pearlie didn't want him and Cal to be there when that happened.

He took a deep breath, then pulled the latch string and opened the door.

No shots blasted. Pearlie and Cal stepped out, and the only gunfire continued to come from the front of the big building.

“Head for the trees,” Pearlie rasped. He took off at a run for those sheltering shadows with Cal right beside him.

Chapter 24

On the other side of the main house, Sally had stopped struggling against the man who held her. She was just wasting her strength. Better to conserve it and bide her time until she had more of a chance to get away.

Her captor rode to the back of the house where several men waited. One of them held a lantern.

The light revealed a lean, handsome man in a dark suit and string tie standing slightly in front of his companions as if he were in charge. He had an unmistakable air of command about him, in fact. “Ah, Major Pike!” he said in a resonant voice as the man rode up with her. “I see you obtained our main objective.”

So the man who had grabbed her was a major, or at least had been at one time, Sally thought. That agreed with her impression that the attack had seemed like a military operation. The men weren't soldiers, though, she decided. None of them were in uniform. They looked like the same sort of hardcases Smoke had battled many times in the past.

“Whatever you're up to, you're going to regret it, mister,” she said coldly to the man in the black suit. “You can't use me against my husband. He'll see to it that you pay for what you've done, all of you.”

“On the contrary, Mrs. Jensen—and by the way, thank you for not bothering to deny who you are. I've seen pictures of you, and I would never fail to recognize such a beautiful woman, but as I was saying, despite your bravado, your husband will do exactly as he's told or I won't be able to guarantee the safety of you, the members of your crew who survive this battle, or the citizens of Big Rock. Surely Smoke Jensen wouldn't want the blood of so many people on his hands.”

“It won't be on his hands,” Sally snapped. “It'll be on yours. Who are you, anyway?”

The man didn't answer the question right away, gesturing instead. “Put the lady down, Major. There's nowhere she can run. She's intelligent enough to know how futile that would be.”

Pike lowered Sally to the ground. “You'd better listen to the doctor, ma'am. Don't make this any harder on yourself than it has to be.”

Sally straightened her robe, pulled it a little tighter around herself, and ignored how much her bare feet hurt from running on the ground. She lifted her head defiantly as she glared at the man in the black suit. “So you're the mysterious doctor.”

“Indeed,” he said with a self-satisfied smile as he lifted a slender, supple finger to the brim of his hat. “Dr. Jonas Trask, at your service.”

“If you were really at my service, you'd take that fancy gun you're wearing and blow your own brains out.”

“I assure you, that's not going to happen. Now that I'm finally so close to the object of my quest, I won't allow anything to keep me from it.”

His quest?
What in blazes did that mean? In the past, evil men had gone after Smoke because they wanted vengeance or out of greed when he stood in the way of some lawless scheme of theirs, but she wasn't sure she had ever heard such fervor in the voice of an enemy.

Trask's motivations didn't really matter, only his actions, which were already bad enough to have earned him a bullet a dozen times over. He wasn't finished. He snapped his fingers and ordered, “Take her back into the house and make her comfortable. From the sound of it, the resistance is almost finished.”

Sally's heart sank when she realized that was true. The shooting was a lot more sporadic, and that could only mean that most of the Sugarloaf hands had been killed, wounded, or captured. The enemies' overwhelming numbers, as well as their ruthless nature, had been enough to carry them to a bloody victory.

Just as that thought went through her head, shots rang out from the nearby trees, the ones Sally had been trying to reach when she fled from the house earlier. Pike yelled in pain and slumped forward in his saddle. As his startled horse reared, he hung on and shouted, “Get the doctor inside!”

A rider burst from the woods, firing a pistol as he charged toward the house. He bent low to make himself a smaller target. Rifle fire continued from the trees. One of the hardcases doubled over and collapsed as a slug punched into his guts. The others had to scramble for cover as bullets kicked up dirt around them.

One of the men grabbed Trask's arm and hauled him toward the back door of the house.

No one had hold of Sally. Her captors had been so confident of their triumph that they hadn't bothered to restrain her. She turned and sprinted toward the onrushing horseman. Pike cursed, fought his spooked mount back under control, and wheeled the horse around to gallop after her. Sally glanced over her shoulder at him. He might be wounded, but he wasn't giving up. She knew he would be able to catch her before her rescuer—whoever he was—arrived.

Another shot came from the trees and Pike's horse screamed as its forelegs buckled. The major went down with the horse and didn't move. Sally hated to see animals harmed, but in this case, it couldn't be avoided.

“Miss Sally!”

The shout came from the man racing toward her. Pearlie! She recognized his voice. He slowed the horse, leaned toward her, and held out his hand. They grabbed each other, clasping wrists, and he swung her up in front of him as he whirled the horse, shielding her with his own body as they galloped toward the trees.

With expert control, Pearlie guided the lunging horse between the trunks of the pines. He called, “Head down!” as low-hanging branches threatened to sweep them from the animal's back. They reached a clearing, and another rider fell in alongside them. Sally couldn't see him, but she had a pretty good idea who he was.

“Cal!” she gasped.

“Right here, Miss Sally,” the young man confirmed. “Are you all right?”

“I am now. Let's light a shuck out of here!”

“That's just what I reckoned we'd do,” Pearlie said.

 

 

Dark fury filled Jonas Trask as he stood in the parlor of the ranch and watched one of the men clean and bandage the deep bullet graze in Pike's upper left arm. Trask could have done a better job of the medical attention, of course, but he was too angry at the moment to deal with such trivial details.

Outside, an ominous quiet lay over the ranch. The survivors from the Sugarloaf's crew, most of them wounded, were back in the bunkhouse and under heavy guard.

One of the gunmen came in and talked quietly to Pike for a few minutes, then left. Pike's deeply tanned face was bleak from more than the pain of his wounded arm.

“What was that about?” Trask snapped.

“Casualty report,” Pike said. “Eleven of our men were killed. More than a dozen wounded, and some of them probably won't make it.”

“I would say that the losses were worth it,” Trask replied with an angry, bitter edge in his voice, “if not for the fact that the person we were really after got away!” He shook his head and blew out his breath. “How could they snatch her out of our grasp, when we were so close to total victory?”

“I thought they were all done for,” Pike said. “But that's no excuse. I know that, Doctor.” With his arm bandaged, he shrugged back into his coat, wincing a little. “We'll get her back. They can't have gotten very far. I've already sent out search parties. You'll have Mrs. Jensen in your hands again before you know it.”

“I had better,” Trask said. “I had damn well better.”

The men in the room were all hard-bitten killers, but every one of them paled a bit at the threat in the doctor's voice.