Lone Star 01 (2 page)

But the bridge ahead was clear. If a tree or some boulders had been thrown across the roadbed, the trap would have been perfect, forcing the wagon to halt or crash. Perhaps there hadn't been time, or there weren't any trees nearby and the rocks were too large to shift, or the gunmen hadn't wanted to risk a forewarning, and figured their ambush was good enough as it was—whatever their reason, they'd neglected to barricade the trail beyond their gantlet.

All this Ki deduced in the blink of an eye.

“We're going to try driving through them,” he shouted, urging the team on faster. “Be ready to jump and run if we start to roll over. At the rate we're going, we're liable to, but it's our only hope.”
And a pretty dismal one at that,
he thought, grimacing as he battled the wheel-twisting, hub-squealing, erratically tipping wagon. He glanced at Jessica, who was sitting upright on the seat. “For God's sake, Jessie, get down!”

“I was down,” she replied with a mirthless smile, cocking her two-shot .38 derringer. She had been down crouching behind the curved metal dashboard even as Ki had been first yelling for her to duck—but only long enough to reach up underneath her slicker and skirt to where she wore the derringer gartered to her thigh. Her other pistol, a custom .38 double-action Colt on a .44 frame, was packed in her trunk, it being too bulky and uncomfortable to wear on a long trip. It had been a logical decision at the time she'd packed it, but now it made her curse with frustration.

The wagon continued bearing down on the gunmen in front, leaning to the point of falling, swaying and lurching, throwing off their aim. Bracing herself against the seat, trying to keep her precarious balance, Jessica held her fire, not about to waste her bullets on bobbing targets out of the meager range of her hideout gun.

The man flanking her side of the trail came sprinting diagonally toward them, apparently figuring to intercept the wagon before it could go any farther. He rushed forward, clawing for a handhold, so close that Jessica could see his stubbled, thick-lipped face, and his lidded eyes gleaming with certain victory over a defenseless woman.

She brought the derringer up, caught her right wrist with her left hand, and took a bead on his chest. Her finger squeezed the trigger. The sound of her shot was hardly more than the snap of a finger, lost in the raging storm around them. The man screamed hoarsely and fell back to lie in the mud, inert and unfeeling as the rear wheel of the wagon jounced over him.

The bullet-spooked Morgans surged into their collars, dragging the wildly tottering wagon in frantic jerks. The two men in front and the man on Ki's side were still lined up and firing away. At such close range, both Ki and Jessica should have been riddled like sieves, but the swaying and lurching of the wagon made accurate firing impossible. The wagon was an inferno of flying lead, wood spraying in tiny slivers, the metal dashboard denting from ricocheting bullets. A slug burned along Ki's left arm, raising an ugly welt. But he kept on leashing the frightened team toward the bridge, and the two men in front suddenly realized he wasn't about to stop and let them shoot him, and if they stayed where they were, they'd likely get run over.

The men sprang aside, still firing up at the wagon. The one nearest to Ki dove for the on-side Morgan as it galloped past, in what was evidently a crazy maneuver to stop the team. He caught hold of the side strap and began running clumsily alongside in an effort to get a better grip and swing the horse off stride. The horse shied, sending the wagon into a sideways skid, and for a moment it seemed that the man would succeed. But he had misjudged the speed of the team and the nearness of the bridge. The Morgans lunged onto the planks, the horse with its clinging man grazing the bridge railing. His body was flattened, his single cry of shock and pain cut off as his chest was crushed. The horse dragged him another few feet, his fingers trapped in the strap, then smeared him once again against the railing. His body catapulted into the air, tumbling up over the railing and down into the river.

The wagon careened against the same railing, almost tearing off a wheel, then straightened and lurched, clattering, onto the bridge.

“We made it,” Jessie said, smiling broadly.

Ki shook his head. “There's a man in back.”

How Ki could sense such a thing over all the commotion and howling storm completely baffled Jessica, but she didn't question it. From long experience she'd learned to trust Ki's uncommon abilities, and she took it on faith that one of the two remaining gunmen had managed to grab the tailgate and climb aboard, and was now lurking in the closed bed of the wagon. She turned on the seat, derringer ready.

And the man launched his attack through the tattered curtain, firing his sixgun directly at her. But already Jessica was pivoting farther to one side so she could see behind her; her action was so swift he had not reacted to it, so he fired at where she had been.

Simultaneously, Ki killed him. His eyes were focused straight ahead at the trembling plank bridgeway, but suddenly, before either Jessica or the man could trigger again, the reins were in his left hand, and his right was slashing back. It was a hand hardened by years of training, and now it sliced unerringly like the edge of an executioner's axe, chopping against the man's throat, crushing his larnyx and cracking his spine.

The man crouched there with his pistol in his hand, staring at Jessica in sheer disbelief, paralyzed in death. Without a sound he rolled sideways as his left leg buckled under him, and toppled back out of sight behind the curtain.

Shaken, Jessie asked, “Any more?”

“Yes,” Ki answered, eyes still on the bridge. “But not with us.”

“Only one, though.”

“Here, perhaps. But these four were hired, Jessie, they weren't the brains. Likely the last man is already going for the horses they hid, and'll be riding to report their failure.”

“Eucher Butte. He'll be heading there.”

“Assuming he does, he'll be on this trail behind us, faster than us. Or if he's stupid, he might simply try to pursue us and cut us down before we reach Eucher Butte.”

“Which do you think?”

“Stupid,” Ki said flatly, recalling the lack of a barricade.

“Either way, if we do get to Eucher Butte alive, we'll be prime targets for plenty more treachery.”

Ki gave Jessie a flinty grin. “Did we expect anything else?”

“No, but I didn't expect it this soon. How did they know—”

Her troubled question was interrupted by a harsh, shuddering rumble in the bridge beneath them. Almost tumbling out of the side of the wagon, Jessie clutched desperately for the dashboard handhold as the bridge trembled violently again, creaking and groaning.

Alarmed, Ki stood up and peered out over the railing. They were virtually midway across the span, and the North Laramie was a dark, boiling cauldren flowing far below. A phosphorescent stroke of lightning lit the black sky for an instant, and by its white glare, he could see that an old thick spruce had been swept downriver, and had lodged lengthwise against the bridge pilings. Its gnarled branches and roots were gathering other debris—pine and yucca and scrub brush—adding to the weight pressing against the weak, spindly supports.

Ki slapped the reins, sending the team into a protesting gallop. The bridge began twisting, undulating from the mounting force pushing at its pilings, its creaking now growing almost intolerably loud.

There was a wrenching shake as the creaking was drowned out by a sundering roar. The bridge swayed, then dipped, the railings splintering and the deck buckling, dropping apart. The planks fractured in bunches, falling, leaving a gaping hole.

The team plunged through the hole, taking the wagon with it.

Chapter 2

The wagon tilted, upending beneath them. Ki scarcely had time to grip Jessica by one arm before they were hurled, tumbling, out into space and plummeted toward the raging river below. The wagon fell like a stone, shattering in the wreckage of bridge supports and driftwood. But thrown free, Jessica and Ki struck open water on the downriver side, dropping deep underwater and striking submerged rocks.

Dazed and gasping, they surfaced, only to be caught by the surging current. They swam with hard strokes, hampered by their slickers, hardly able to keep from being swept toward a series of sawtoothed boulders through which the river was cascading in deadly, foaming rapids. Half drowned, one hand still clinging to her arm, Ki helped Jessica fight out of the tugging current toward the bank, frantically trying to miss the flotsam of bridge beams, wagon parts, and running gear that were churning around them.

They were less than ten yards from the north bank when a side panel of the wagon reared out of the surface and rammed into Jessica. Ki's grasp was torn loose, and Jessica was thrust, rolling, back into the irresistible hold of the swirling flow. Ki made a lunge for her, but Jessica was already gone, plunging with the side panel toward the bone-smashing, whirling rapids.

Ki dove after her, swimming now with the current in an effort to intercept Jessica. He reached out, missed, stroked, and reached again, fingers tightening on the collar of her slicker. Then he battled one-handedly for the bank again. Taxing his muscles to the utmost, almost losing her again in his frenzied struggle, Ki managed to maneuver them out of the torrent. His boots scraped against stone, and he dug in for a better footing, half climbing, half crawling into a shallow break.

The backwash in this break in the bank created a whirling eddy, and two or three swimming strokes took them to the river's edge. The rain had turned the earth there into a grease-slick ooze, and it was only by clutching at an overhanging limb of a cottonwood that Ki was able at last to drag them both out of the cold rushing water.

Jessica lay on her back, arms flung out, eyes closed, soundless.

Ki knelt and placed his ear to her chest. “You're breathing.”

“Of course I'm breathing,” Jessie whispered hoarsely, still not moving. “Wait a minute, it's all I can do right now.”

A few moments later, Jessie slowly sat up. She coughed, threw up a small quantity of water, then gingerly felt her left shoulder, where the edge of the wagon panel had struck her.

“Are you all right?” Ki asked.

“I think so,” she replied, wincing. “It's bruised or maybe wrenched a little, but nothing feels broken.”

They rested there for a time, sucking air into their aching lungs, while the storm battered down and the angry river lapped at their feet. Upriver to their right, the rubbled bridge thrust skeletally toward the dismal sky. Downriver, the rapids were collecting the remains of the wagon and the plump carcasses of the team, along with bridge supports and planks, and much of the same mountainous pile of uprooted brush and trees that had collapsed the span. But the rocks were tougher, withstanding the ravaging pressure.

Jessie was the first to speak. “Gone, Ki, all gone.”

“Nothing that can't be replaced.”

“I know, Ki, but your weapons ...”

“It's not good to become too dependent on weapons. They're merely tools to help in one's task. There are other tools, other ways. Don't worry, the task will be done.”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“And our first task,” Ki continued affably, standing and offering a hand to Jessica, “must be to find shelter.”

Again Jessica nodded, rising and starting with him up the bank to the trail. When he paused on the way to smile encouragingly at her, she managed to respond with a weak smile of her own, sensing that Ki was trying to appear more optimistic than he actually felt. She herself mainly felt anger. As she stumbled over rocks and slipped on the muddy earth, her anger mounted with every step she took, an anger that grew into a grim, purposeful determination to settle the score, barehanded if need be, just as soon as they could reach Eucher Butte.

Angling back upriver toward the bridge, they came to the trail and began following it west again. They trudged slowly, partly from fatigue, partly through caution. The fourth gunman wasn't a threat; he was stuck on the other side of the river and probably thought they were dead. But the unexpected ambush had made them wary, alerting them to the fact that they were known to be traveling this way, at this time. And considering that their only weapons were Ki's shuriken and one remaining cartridge in Jessica's derringer, which miraculously had come through entangled in a pocket of her slicker, they both figured that, for now, discretion was a better part of valor.

The trail went along the spine of a low ridge for a while, then came to a plateau overlooking a long stretch of valley ahead. Off to their left, across a weedy field, jutted the angular silhouette of a deserted cabin. From a distance it appeared that some of the roof was missing and the door was sagging on its hinges, but the walls were still standing, and would provide needed protection from the wind and rain. Already Ki could feel a chill seeping through his veins, and though Jessica was uncomplaining, she couldn't keep herself from shivering.