Lookout Hill (9781101606735) (28 page)

“Sorry, Denver,” Blaine murmured, stepping over and closing the front door.

But Jennings didn’t seem to hear him as he came to a halt and saw Dale look up at him, dropping a blood-soaked cloth he’d held pressed to his father’s chest.

“He’s—he’s gone, Denver,” Dale said in a broken voice. He patted his dead father’s shoulder. “I know he would have wanted you here. He always thought of you like a part of our family.”

“I always thought of him the same way, Dale,” said Jennings, shaking his head slowly, looking down at E.R.’s blood-streaked face, his closed eyes, his parchmentlike forehead. “You too, Dale, as far as that goes.”

Outside at the front wall and the destroyed gates, the battle continued in full rage.

“A time like this, we’re going to stick together like family too, Denver,” Dale Pettigo said. He lifted an arm and looped it over Jennings’ shoulder. “This is not the time to mention it, but I’m going to see to it you don’t get left out when it comes time to settle up his estate. He told me right before he died to make sure you get that favorite saddle of his.”

A saddle
…Jennings just looked at him.
A fucking saddle…?

He took a deep breath and calmed himself.

“Did he mention anything about the wagon, by any chance, his artifacts?” he said.

“He rambled something about it,” Dale said, shaking his bowed head. “But nothing that made sense, I’m afraid. He seemed to think the wagon is made of stolen Mexican gold, or full of stolen Mexican gold, something like that….”

“You don’t say,” Jennings said quietly, Dale Pettigo’s arm up over his shoulder, making him steadily more uncomfortable. “The reason I mention it is that that wagon is headed out a hole in the wall right now, onto the side trail around the edge of the gully.”

“No!” said Dale, dropping his arm from Jennings’ shoulder. “Then we must get right after it! I won’t have my father’s artifacts stolen! I know how much they meant to him. He kept them guarded night and day.”

This stupid son of a bitch….

Jennings just stared at him again.

“I sent some men to the barn for horses,” he said. “They’ll be coming any minute.” He took a step back. “What if there really was stolen Mexican gold on the wagon?”

“What do you mean
if there really was
?” Dale asked, giving him a curious downward look. “If it’s
stolen
Mexican gold, I would be obligated to turn it over to the Mexican government, of course, wouldn’t I, then?”

“Yes, I couldn’t agree more,” said Jennings.

“As it is, once we recover the artifacts, I’ll see to it they go to some university museum, some historical trust perhaps.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Jennings.

At the door, Randall Blaine and Jake Jenner stepped forward.

“Couldn’t help overhearing you, Denver,” said Blaine. “Want us to take the other two and go meet those horses, make sure they get here? It’s gotten hot and heavy out there.” He jerked a thumb toward the sound of the melee.

“Yes, do that, the both of you,” said Jennings.

“And make sure they don’t bring my roan,” said Dale Pettigo. “I’ll not risk getting that horse marked up. Just bring me one of the men’s horses. Any one at all will do.”

The two men looked at Dale Pettigo.

“You heard him,” said Jennings, “get going. I want that wagon back worse than you can know.”

As soon as the men were out of sight, Dale took out a handkerchief, blew his nose and collected himself in his grief.

“I’m going to be strong though this, Denver,” he said. “And I’m asking you to be strong with me.” He paused, took a breath and held his chest out. “Are you with me, Denver?”

“Without a doubt, I’m with you,” Jennings said. Taking Dale by his forearms, he added, “Do me a favor, step over here by your father?”

“Of course,” said Dale, letting the gunman usher him to his dead father’s side. When he stopped, he faced Denver and said, “How’s that?”

“That’s fine,” said Denver. “Now if you’ll turn toward your father…”

“Certainly,” said Dale, turning, taking a deep breath
and staring straight across his father’s body at the rough plank wall. “This is sort of like taking a tintype, except we have no camera, of course—”

His words were silenced by the explosion of Jennings’ big Colt as it bucked in the gunman’s hand. The bullet bored through the back of Dale Pettigo’s head and splattered blood and brain on the wall. Dale fell across his father’s chest, his arms swinging back and forth down the desk until they slowed gradually to a halt. Outside, the battle continued with fury.

Jennings stepped in closer; he looked down at the smoking bullet hole in the back of Dale’s head as he opened his Colt and replaced the smoking empty cartridge shell with one from his gun belt. His eyes went from Dale’s shattered skull to the lifeless face of Edgar Randolph Pettigo. He leaned in slightly closer to the dead man.

“A fucking saddle?” he said aloud.

When the wagon came bouncing and swaying through the gaping hole in the stone wall, the Ranger stood half-crouched at the driver’s seat, the reins in his hands. Dust and debris still swirling and settling around him. He hadn’t stopped the wagon, only slowed it enough for Lupo to throw his shoulder pack over onto the seat and jump up beside it. He clenched a lit cigar between his teeth.

“Keep rolling, Ranger!” he’d said, already picking up his rifle from the floorboard. He’d searched the darkness behind him while brush fire danced here and there from the dynamite blast.

Beside him, Sam glanced down, seeing him clutching his side wound with his free hand.

“How are you holding up?” he’d asked above the sound of the four horses and the bumping, squeaking wagon.

“I’m good…Keep rolling!” Lupo said firmly, struggling with pain in his lower side.

The Ranger nodded, slapped the long end of the reins to the rear horses’ rumps and they rolled on.

When they’d gone three hundred yards flanking around the gully just beneath the rim, they came to a slender, steep trail that cut downhill long and winding until it spilled onto a narrow stretch of flatlands.

“Stop here,” Lupo said suddenly, looking all around in the moonlight.

Sam leaned back, the reins in one hand; at the same time he pulled back hard on the long wooden brake lever.

As the wagon bumped and groaned to a halt, Lupo jumped down from the seat and reached for the shoulder pack. He looked around at a huge, land-stuck boulder surrounded by smaller boulders and rock, which held back a sloping hillside of dirt and scrub pine.

“This is where I blow the trail,” he said, puffing on the cigar, stoking up the fire on its tip. He gestured a nod, directing the Ranger farther down around a turn in the trail. “I will do nothing until you are around the turn and out of range. Then I will light a long fuse. Wait for me there. I will have to climb around the side and down to you.”

“I’ll be there waiting,” Sam said. Before reining the
wagon horses forward, he stood still, listened closely for a moment and said, “Riders coming. I hear their hoofbeats.”

“
Sí
, then hurry, Ranger. Get around that turn,” said Lupo. “I must get a long fuse prepared.” He reached out and slapped a hand on the wagon horse’s rump just as the Ranger gave them the end of the reins and sent them forward with a jolt.

As he watched the Ranger and wagon speed away down the rocky trail, Lupo gripped his wounded side with his free hand for a moment and squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. He felt warm blood seep from the sticky bandage and run between his fingers. Running his hand down the front of his thigh, he felt where the warm blood had turned clammy cold in the night air. He started to sway but stopped himself.

You have no time to die, Easy John,
he told himself. He adjusted the pack on his right shoulder and walked up into the rocks. He circled around the gigantic land-stuck boulder, dropped his pack at his feet, then kneeled and scraped out a hole in the dirt between the large monolith and another massive boulder leaning over against it. As he pulled bundle after bundle of tri-sticks of dynamite from the pack and burrowed them deep back into the hole, he heard the beat of horses’ hooves grow more distinct, coming down the trail behind him.

With his smoking cigar between his teeth and a thick coil of fuse in his hand, he hefted the shoulder pack onto his back. He walked backward, stooped, uncoiling the long fuse, laying it out around the large boulder until he reached the top, and dropped flat as
the riders came into sight in the pale moonlight. From atop the huge boulder, he looked down on the trail below. Three riders moved their horses along the trail at a walk, one of them leaning deep, staring intently at the wagon tracks in the dirt.

These were not the riders he heard, Lupo told himself. The sound he heard was still coming—many horses, farther back on the trail, coming at a thundering pace. He watched the dark silhouettes below come to a halt and look back along the trail as if hearing the same thing he heard. He had to hurry! Everything depended on him blowing up the trail, putting thousands of tons of rock and dirt between these men and his nation’s gold.

“Sante Madre,”
he whispered, crossing himself for the first time in as long as he could remember. He glanced around as if to make sure no one had seen him. Then he puffed his cigar up into a fiery glow. Sticking the end of his cigar to the end of the long fuse, he dropped the fuze sizzling onto the boulder, backed away and disappeared onto the rock gully wall.

On the narrow trail beneath the boulder, Hodding Siebert turned to Bellibar and the Russian with a curious look on his face. He’d caught a glimpse of a small black shadow streak across the purple sky above the trail and careen away. From the nearby rock and a stand of scrub cedar came a faint chirping sound that died away as quickly as it had started.

“Did you see that?” he said.

Bellibar and Cherzi Persocovich gave each other a look. Bellibar turned a concerned glance back toward the sound of horses’ hooves.

“We didn’t see nothing, Aces,” said Bellibar. “What was it?”

Siebert sounded agitated.

“If I knew what it was I wouldn’t ask if you saw it,” he said in a short tone, looking all around in the dark. “Did you hear it, then? It sounded like birds, or bats—hell, I don’t know what it sounded like,” he added, even more agitated.

“Settle down, Aces,” Bellibar cautioned him. “You
starting to get spooked again. All we hear are horses, and they’ll ride right down our shirts if we don’t get out of here.” He gathered his horse and booted it up into a fast pace down the rocky trail.

“Damn it to hell!” said Siebert, turning to the Russian as Bellibar rode away. “What Bobby Hugh can’t understand is that I’ve been hexed.”

“Hacked?” said Cherzi. He made a slight chopping gesture with his hand.

“No, damn it,
hexed
! You illiterate no-English-speaking son of a bitch!” Siebert shouted. “I’ve been hexed by both a witch and her demon mare. I can’t shake myself loose of them!”

Cherzi stared blankly at him.

“Yes, is horses I hear too,” he said in conclusion, turning his horse behind Bellibar and booting it into a run.

“Damn you and your Belleza
negra demonio
to hell,
bruja
!” Siebert shouted at the rock and scrub cedar. As his words echoed away across the yawning gully below, he stared at the rock and scrub with his hand on his Remington. But when no reply came, he cursed under his breath, feeling the ground beneath him tremble with the beat of horses’ hooves.

“We’re going to finish this thing! Mark my word,
bruja
!” he shouted, a raving madman railing mindlessly against the night. He saw the dark silhouettes of riders come into sight as he jerked his horse around and booted it into a hard run.

But down the trail, hearing Siebert bellow like a
lunatic, Bellibar had slid his horse to a sudden halt and jerked it around on the trail.

“For the love of God, what’s that idiot doing now?” he’d said, looking wide-eyed and sidelong at the Russian, who’d slid his horse to a halt beside him.

“He is hacked,” Cherzi said. He shrugged one shoulder. “A witch has hacked him…or her horse hacked him. I don’t know.” He shrugged again and shook his head.

Bellibar took a deep breath; he collected his restless horse beneath him.

“He’s gone off again,” he said, hearing the horses’ hooves thundering closer down the trail. “Let’s get him, Cherzi. Knock his head off with your rifle barrel if you have to.”

The two raced back up the trail toward the land-stuck boulder, but halfway there, they met Siebert heading toward them at a run. As the three slid their horses to a halt and gathered in the middle of the trail, Siebert shouted, “Get going. They’re right behind me!”

The Russian took a hard swipe at Siebert’s head with his rifle barrel but missed. Siebert jerked his horse back and reached for his Remington.
What the hell?

“Don’t shoot, Aces!” shouted Bellibar. “I told him to do that if he had to. He misunderstood!”

But Siebert brought the Remington up anyway, cocked, leveled out at arm’s length.