Deadly Road to Yuma (19 page)

Maggie went up to her room in the hotel, struggling with the decision of what to do next. She had a pretty good idea what the outlaws would do. Any time now they would show up in Pancake Flats to find out what had happened. She knew she ought to warn the townspeople.

But if she did, if the citizens were ready and fought back, then Garth and the others would know who had alerted them to the impending raid. The outlaws were vicious and brutal, but they weren’t stupid.

They would regard her warning the town as a double cross, Maggie knew, and they could easily take out their anger at her on Ike and Caleb. She couldn’t risk that.

All she could do was hope that when they rode in and found out that Joshua Shade wasn’t here, they would ride out again in search of him.

If they did, she hoped they would take her with them. She never would have dreamed she would hope such a thing, but she wanted to be with her husband and son, wherever they were.

Maggie had been up in her room for only a short time when loud, angry voices in the street drew her to the window. She opened the curtain and peered out.

She wasn’t surprised to see the wagon that Sam Two Wolves had driven out of town at such a break-neck pace earlier in the evening. The vehicle was stopped in the middle of the street, with one of the cowboys who had pursued it now on the seat. He must have driven it back into town.

A large group of men was gathered around the wagon, some on foot and others on horseback. The riders were the ones who had given chase to the wagon, Maggie decided.

One of the other men shouted, “Are you sure there was no sign of Shade?”

“The wagon’s empty, I tell you!” the man on the seat replied. “Those bastards Bodine and Two Wolves fooled us.”

“Then where
is
Shade?”

No one seemed to know the answer to that question. Maggie wanted to lean out the window and tell them that they were fools, that Joshua Shade was probably miles from town by now, heading west toward Yuma along with Marshal Thorpe and the other lawman.

She didn’t do it, though. They could figure that out for themselves if they wanted to. If they had enough sense.

They didn’t have enough time to figure out anything, though, because at that moment the swift rata-plan of hoofbeats sounded loudly from both ends of the street, and suddenly more riders poured into town, bristling with guns.

“What the hell!” one of the cowboys yelled. He tried to claw the Colt on his hip out of its holster.

With a roar and a spurt of muzzle flame, one of the newcomers fired. The cowboy who had slapped leather doubled over in the saddle as the bullet tore through his guts. Slowly, groaning in pain, he toppled off his horse.

An ominous silence settled over the street following the shot.

Maggie recognized the man who had just gunned down that cowboy. He was Willard Garth, the leader of the outlaw gang while Joshua Shade was still a prisoner.

She saw Jeffries and Gonzalez as well, along with the other members of the gang. They had split up as they entered the settlement so they could catch the men in the street in a cross fire if need be.

This was exactly what Maggie had been expecting. The outlaws had ridden in to find out what had happened.

The ones she
didn’t
see were Ike and Caleb. Her heart began to pound harder as she realized that they weren’t with the gang. The outlaws must have left them somewhere outside of town.

Some instinct made Maggie clutch the windowsill as she looked out. Her eyes widened with shock and horror as she made a quick count of the outlaws. She gasped as she reached fifteen.

That was all of them. Wherever Ike and Caleb had been left, they were alone.

Maggie covered her mouth as the implications of that discovery soaked in on her. The outlaws had either abandoned an injured, unconscious man and a baby—or killed them before riding into Pancake Flats. Maggie shuddered at the thought of that awful Gonzalez and his knife…

All that passed through Maggie’s mind in a matter of seconds. Down below in the street, the outlaws still menaced the citizens with drawn guns as Garth demanded, “What happened? Where’s the prisoner who was in that wagon?”

“Your guess is as good as ours, mister,” the cowboy on the driver’s seat replied. “We would’ve sworn he was in here when we chased the blasted thing out of town, but when we caught up to it, it was sittin’ there empty, with nobody around.”

“Was the door still locked when you found it?” Jeffries asked.

“What?” The cowboy seemed confused.

“The door, damn it! The door on the back of the wagon. Was it locked?”

“Yeah…Yeah, I reckon it was.”

Garth asked Jeffries, “What difference does that make?”

“If Bodine and Two Wolves had taken Joshua out of the wagon where they abandoned it, they wouldn’t have taken the time to put the lock back on the door.” Jeffries shook his head. “My guess is that Joshua wasn’t in there when they left town.”

“Wasn’t in there! But that’d mean—”

“Yeah,” Jeffries agreed grimly. “They put one over on these folks.” He looked at the man on the driver’s seat. “Exactly who did you see with the wagon when it left town?”

“Why, they were all with it! That U.S. marshal and his deputy and those two gunfighters who were sidin’ ’em.”

“No, that’s not right,” another man said. “I got a pretty good look, and Bodine and Two Wolves are the only ones I actually saw.”

Garth put it together. Maggie knew that Jeffries already had.

“Blast it,” Garth said. “Bodine and Two Wolves tricked you, all right. While they went out the front, Thorpe and the deputy went out the back with Joshua. That’s got to be it.”

“Bodine and Two Wolves are probably circling around to meet up with them right now,” Jeffries said.

“They can’t make it all the way to Yuma on horseback,” Garth argued. “They have to know that we’d catch up to ’em before they got there.”

“They can still catch the train once it goes through here,” Jeffries pointed out.

“Yeah, if we let it go through,” Garth said. Without lowering his gun, he used his other hand to scratch at his jaw in thought. “Maybe that’s just what we ought to do.”

A grin appeared on Jeffries’s face. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking…that’s a good idea, Garth.”

Gonzalez spoke up. “The train won’t be through here until mornin’. What are we supposed to do until then?”

An evil leer spread across Garth’s craggy face. “I reckon we can have a little fun,” he said.

Some of the citizens of Pancake Flats realized who these men were and what Garth meant by that sinister statement. Faced with almost certain doom no matter what they did, they grabbed for their guns.

Maggie’s horror deepened, sickening her, as shots roared out. Garth and the other owlhoots opened fire, cutting down the townspeople in an almost casual manner. Maggie had to turn away from the muzzle flashes and the bits of flesh and blood flying in the air as outlaw lead tore through the crowd in the street.

But even though she clapped her hands over her ears, she couldn’t completely shut out the gunfire and the screams and the outraged, futile curses.

The massacre went on for what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a minute. When it was over, Garth bellowed to his men, “Spread out! I want everybody in town rounded up! But don’t set fire to the buildings. Everything’s got to look normal when that train gets here in the mornin’!”

Something drew Maggie back to the window, even though she didn’t want to look. She cringed as she saw the evidence of the bloodbath that had taken place in the street. Gore-splattered bodies lay everywhere. Moans came from men who had been wounded instead of killed outright. Garth dismounted and stalked among them, dispatching them with a single shot each to the head.

Instinct must have made him glance up. Maggie saw the killer’s eyes boring into hers.

“Stay there!” Garth shouted, and then he stalked out of her sight, into the hotel.

Another shot blasted downstairs. Maggie moaned. She knew that Garth had just killed the proprietor.

A moment later, she heard Garth’s footsteps stomping up the stairs. Fear froze her, although for an instant she considered throwing herself out the window rather than letting Garth get his hands on her again.

She couldn’t do that, though, not as long as she didn’t know what had happened to Ike and Caleb. So she stood her ground, summoning up what little courage remained inside her, and faced the door of the hotel room as Garth slammed it open and stalked in.

“Did you know anything about what Bodine and Two Wolves were plannin’?” he roared at her.

“If I had known, don’t you think I would have found a way to let you know?”

The coolness in her voice surprised her. She was glad for it, because she didn’t want Garth to know what she was really feeling.

“Where are my husband and son?” she went on. “I know they’re not with you, and the rest of the gang is here.”

His eyes narrowed. “Mighty smart, ain’t you?”

“I know how to count, if that’s what you mean. What about Ike and Caleb?”

“You’re like a damn bulldog when you get your teeth in somethin’. Don’t you worry about your husband and the young’un. They’re in a safe place.”

She didn’t believe him, but yet there was just enough of a sliver of a chance he could be telling the truth that she couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility.

“Listen, I’ve done everything you asked me to do. I’ve done everything I can to help you. Why don’t you bring them to me and let us go? Or just tell me where they are and I’ll go to them.”

Ponderously, Garth shook his head. “Nope. We ain’t done with you yet, missy.”

Maggie’s self-control, which she had been holding on to so tightly, finally slipped a little. “My God!” she cried. “What more do you want from me? Just give me back my family!”

“Not until Joshua Shade is free,” Garth said with the inevitability of a landslide. “And you’re wrong…there
is
somethin’ else you can do to help us.” He lowered his gun at last. “Just hush up and listen if you ever want to see that husband and boy o’ yours again…”

Time had no meaning to Ike Winslow now. Only two things existed for him—the incredible ache in his head and the will to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

And Caleb, too. His son was still real to him. He clutched Caleb to his chest, being careful not to drop him.

The boy had been fussy for a while after being awakened, but then he dozed off again with his head resting on Ike’s shoulder. Ike could feel him breathing. He drew strength from that. Caleb was all right, and to keep him that way, Ike had to keep going.

The pain in his head thudded with each step he took, but gradually it began to lessen. He started thinking more clearly, and he asked himself where the outlaws had gone.

More importantly, where was Maggie?

He knew her well enough to know that she would never desert them unless she was forced to. The outlaws must have taken her with them. But for what purpose? She couldn’t help them rescue Joshua Shade, could she?

Another possible answer lurked in the back of Ike’s head, but he refused to even think about it. If those bastards were going to molest her, they would have done it before now, he told himself.

Besides, the one called Garth seemed single-minded in his determination to free Shade from the law. If he had taken Maggie when the gang left, it would be because Garth thought she could help accomplish that goal, even though Ike couldn’t see how.

Once he thought that through, he felt a little better. Maggie had to be with the outlaws, which was bad, but it could have been worse. She was still alive and all right, he told himself, and after a while he began to believe it.

That helped him keep going, too.

His concentration on that goal kept him from hearing the hoofbeats at first. Then, suddenly, he became aware of them. A lot of horses were coming up behind him.

The gang? Why would they be behind him? They would have gone south when they abandoned him and Caleb, wouldn’t they?

Ike couldn’t figure it out, but after everything that had happened, he didn’t believe that whoever it was meant him any good. Before this terrible business with Joshua Shade’s gang, in a situation like this, he would have sought help from whoever he ran into.

Now, though, he tightened his grip on Caleb and launched himself into a stumbling run, trying to stay ahead of whoever was behind him.
Get away
, a voice said inside his head.
Just get away.

If he had been able to think a little more logically at the moment, he would have known that he couldn’t outrun the riders who were closing in on him. Right now, though, he was just a creature of raw instinct, an animal in flight.

“Hey, LaFollette, there’s somebody up there! Somebody on foot!”

“Well, don’t just sit there. Go get him.”

Ike heard the voices and understood the words well enough to know that he and Caleb were in danger. He started to run faster, but he hadn’t gone very far before he heard the thud of hoofbeats right behind him. He twisted his head around to gaze behind him in terror, and that caused him to stumble as he saw the dark, looming figure of a man on horseback towering over him.

Ike cried out as he fell to his knees. He cradled Caleb against him, trying to protect the boy. Caleb woke up and cried, a thin wail that grated on Ike’s ears.

“Son of a bitch! It’s an hombre with a baby!”

More hoofbeats came up. Ike hunched over as he knelt there on the ground. Somebody said, “A baby?”

“Yeah. What do we do about this, LaFollette?”

“Get him on his feet,” a voice growled in command. “I don’t know what he’s doin’ out here, and I don’t like things I don’t know.”

Strong hands grasped Ike’s arms and hauled him upright. He yelled, “Let me go! Leave us alone!”

“Get the baby,” the man called LaFollette said, but when the others tried to pry Caleb out of Ike’s arms, Ike howled and thrashed around, bouncing off the men as they surrounded him.

Disgustedly, LaFollette said, “All right, all right, let him keep the kid.” He stepped up in front of Ike and went on in a loud voice. “Damn it, mister, listen to me. Settle down. We don’t mean you any harm.”

Gradually, Ike stopped fighting. Breathing heavily, he said, “Who…who are you men?”

“Never you mind about that,” LaFollette snapped. He had dismounted like the others. There was enough starlight for Ike to be able to see that he was a compactly built man in range clothes and with a dark, closely trimmed beard. LaFollette went on. “Who are you, and what are you doin’ wanderin’ around out here with a kid?”

“He…he’s my son. My name is Winslow…Ike Winslow.”

“That tells us who you are, but not what you’re doin’ here.”

The whole thing was almost too complicated to explain, Ike suddenly realized. Joshua Shade, the gang of outlaws, the way he had been forced to act as a spy for them, the attack on the wagon in which he had been injured…and after that, he didn’t even know what had happened. He didn’t know where Shade was now, or the rest of the gang, or Maggie…

“I was attacked…by owlhoots,” he said, struggling to find the words. “They took my wife…my wagon…I don’t know where they are.”

All that was true, as far as it went.

“Outlaws,” one of the men repeated. “You reckon it was Shade’s bunch, LaFollette?”

Instead of answering the question directly, LaFollette asked Ike, “How many were there?”

“I’m not sure. Fifteen or twenty…maybe more.”

LaFollette grunted. “Shade’s gang is the only one that big in the territory, as far as I know,” he said. “I reckon this fella was unlucky enough to run into them.”

Ike was surprised at first that these men knew about Shade, but as he thought about it, he realized that the gang’s notoriety must have spread all over Arizona.

LaFollette went on. “It just so happens that we’re on the trail of that bunch, mister. You have any idea which way they headed?”

“I know…exactly where they’re going. I heard them…talking. They’re headed for a place called…Pancake Flats.”

“The Southern Pacific goes through there,” one of the other men said.

LaFollette nodded. “Yeah, Thorpe must be plannin’ on catchin’ the train there. I happen to know that the bridge over Bowtie Canyon washed out a while back, though, and the railroad’s just now gettin’ it repaired. Thorpe may be stuck up there with his prisoner.”

They knew a
lot
about what was going on, Ike realized. He still wondered who they were, what their part in this bloody affair was. Maybe they were bounty hunters of some sort.

It didn’t matter, though, as long as they agreed to what he said next.

“Take me with you,” he said, his voice stronger now that hope was flooding through him again.

“No offense, mister,” LaFollette said, “but why would we want to saddle ourselves with a wounded man and a baby?”

“Those bastards have my wife. I’ll help you stop them.”

LaFollette chuckled. It wasn’t a friendly sound.

“You don’t look to be in any shape to help anybody do anything, Winslow. You might just slow us down.”

“I won’t,” Ike said. “I swear it. If I do, you can leave me behind. Just leave me some food…for the boy.”

“We’re a long way from nowhere, LaFollette,” one of the men said. “I wouldn’t feel right about leavin’ a kid out here.”

LaFollette rubbed his bearded jaw for a moment, then shrugged. “I reckon you’re right. This hombre can ride double with the lightest man. That’s you, Sinclair.”

“All right,” the man called Sinclair agreed.

“I warn you, though,” LaFollette went on to Ike, “we aren’t gonna slow down for you. If you can’t handle the pace, you
will
get left behind.”

“I can handle it,” Ike promised. “As long as I know you’re going after Shade’s bunch, I can do whatever I need to.”

“You know, I believe maybe you can.” LaFollette turned to his men. “Mount up! We’ve got ground to cover!”