Hired Guns Read online

  “It ain’t how I want it,” Ferris replied. “But I’m the one who’ll be called to account by the Dixons if their orders ain’t followed. I got a right to think of my own hide, too, don’t I?”

  “What about the hides of the good boys who’ve already been cut down by this skunk, and those who might be next in line if we keep messin’ around with a killer?” DeMarist demanded.

  Ferris didn’t have an answer for that right away and things went quiet again.

  Staying low, making short, quick movements, Luke unwrapped the shirt from his hands and draped it over the length of a saltbush stalk. He buttoned two of the shirt’s buttons to hold it in place. Next he removed his hat and hung it on the top spike of the stalk. Twisting around so that he was facing south, he was ready.

  Based on the exchange of words with Ferris, Luke believed he had DeMarist’s position pretty closely fixed. He was the closer of the two, off to the south and at a somewhat elevated spot. These factors, combined with DeMarist’s insistence he was ready to shoot to kill the next chance he got, were what made Luke choose him to try this ploy on.

  With the shirt- and hat-decorated saltbush stalk gripped in his left hand, held carefully below the rim of the gully, Luke reached out and wrapped his right hand around an apple-sized chunk of rock. Reaching up, he flipped the piece of rock out to where it clattered nicely amongst some other rocks just beyond the edge of the gully. A second later, he shoved the decoy stalk, held at arm’s length, up where it could be plainly seen.

  “There he is!” DeMarist bellowed. An instant after that, his rifle barked.

  As soon as he felt the shiver of a bullet’s impact run through the stalk and down to his left hand, Luke thrust his legs straight. Rising, he drew his right-hand Remington in a fast, smooth motion, swinging his arm up and over the rim of the gully. There was DeMarist, fully exposed from the waist up, behind an egg-shaped boulder twenty yards away. His rifle was extended and he was just triggering a second round into the decoy when Luke centered the muzzle of his. 44 on him and squeezed his own trigger. DeMarist’s face disappeared in a red splash and he toppled backward, the rifle slipping from his dead fingers and dropping down over the face of the boulder.

  Chapter 30

  Luke dropped back down onto the gully floor as a pair of shots rang out from the north. One of them nicked a shoulder of the decoy as he yanked it down, the other gouged into the gully rim to one side.

  “Little late joining the party there, weren’t you, Ferris?” Luke jeered. “Or could it be you hesitated just enough, on purpose, to allow me to take care of your insubordinate man for you?”

  “That’s a dirty lie!” Ferris bellowed. “I rode with Dog DeMarist near ten years. I considered him a friend and practically my right arm, and now you’ve blowed his face off!”

  “If he wouldn’t have stuck his nose in my business, he’d still have his face. You might want to think about that,” Luke told him as he began unbuttoning his shirt and removing it from the saltbush stalk.

  “You’re gonna pay, blast you—pay in blood!”

  “Ferris, don’t you get tired of hearing your own feeble threats?” Luke prodded. “Especially with your army melting around you like snow in July?”

  “With Parker Dixon’s money footin’ the bill, an army can be built back up soon enough,” Ferris argued. “And given what you’ve done on top of how bad he wanted you in the first place, you can’t fight back hard enough or run away far enough to escape what he’ll send after you!”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not doing any running. All I want is for Dixon himself to show up and reveal his intentions for me in person.”

  Before Ferris could reply, the shooting to the west—from the hill where the ambush had begun—seemed to take on a kind of urgency. A series of evenly spaced shots were triggered. Five of them. Then, after a slight pause, five more in the same steady cadence.

  Luke paused in the act of putting his shirt back on and listened intently. Spaced precisely like they’d been, the shots indicated some kind of signal, he decided. The fact that all other shooting from the hill then ceased and Ferris, too, went completely silent, convinced him all the more.

  Luke waited, staying still and silent himself.

  A signal meaning what?

  There were no more shots coming from Pettigrew, either. Did that mean the rugged blacksmith had been overrun? Was that the message the signal was sending? Or was Pettigrew merely holding his fire, sparing ammo, because he was taking no incoming rounds to shoot back at?

  Luke finished buttoning his shirt and secured his hat on his head. Things had taken an unexpected and strange turn. He believed he had whittled the forces against him out here in the rough down to Ferris and maybe one more man, and he’d begun contemplating how he would make his next countermove on them.

  But now, suddenly, all that had changed. Everything was different, or at least felt different. Based on nothing he could actually see or hear, Luke nevertheless had a strong sense that Ferris was quietly withdrawing, moving away.

  Aiming to try and prod him some more, Luke called, “What’s the matter, Ferris? Cat got your tongue?”

  Nothing. A silence that somehow seemed even deeper than before.

  Luke reached down and grabbed another chunk of rock, a melon-sized one this time. This one he heaved a good distance to the north, in the general direction where he figured Ferris to be. The big rock landed and then bounced and clattered loudly before coming to rest. But it got no reaction. None whatsoever.

  Minutes ticked by. Everything stayed quiet.

  Removing his hat again, Luke poked his head slowly, cautiously up to where he could peer over the lip of the gully. With both .44s drawn and held ready, he swept his gaze thoroughly over the rugged landscape to the north. Nothing moved or stirred in the slightest. And Luke’s sense that there was no longer anyone out there—that Ferris and whoever he might have had with him had slipped away—grew stronger than ever.

  More minutes ticked past. Luke continued to rake his gaze over the surroundings, his ears perked as intently as his eyes. Nothing moved, not a whisper of sound reached him.

  He dropped back down and returned the hat to his head. For another minute or so he did nothing but glare down at the sandy, gravelly floor of the gully, pondering. Then, abruptly, Luke pushed into motion once more. Keeping in a low crouch, he began following the twisting cut toward the west.

  * * *

  When he came within sight of Pettigrew’s broad back, Luke froze in place and just watched, studying before he moved any closer. After about half a minute, the blacksmith reached up and rubbed behind his ear. A smile of relief briefly touched Luke’s lips. So Pettigrew hadn’t stopped shooting because he was overrun and lying dead, riddled with bullets. He appeared to be okay, still hunkered in roughly the same spot he’d been when Luke and the others left him more than two hours earlier.

  Keeping behind a protective slab of rock in case Pettigrew overreacted to a voice coming from behind him, Luke called in a low voice, “Don’t shoot, Pettigrew! It’s me, Jensen.”

  Pettigrew twisted around hurriedly. But recognizing the voice, he checked himself from raising his rifle. His brows pinching into a tight scowl, he said, “Jensen! What are you doing back here?”

  “I missed your sunny disposition,” Luke replied dryly. “Keep me covered, I’m moving up.”

  Pettigrew turned back around and aimed his scowl out at the grassy hill. “Come ahead,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m ready to give you cover, but the way things all of a sudden turned silent a little while ago, I doubt it’s gonna be necessary.”

  Luke advanced in quick, smooth movements, keeping cautiously low in spite of there evidently being little reason to do so. A final short sprint brought him up to where he was able to drop in alongside Pettigrew.

  “What the hell’s going on? I’ve been hearing a lot of shooting from back there—didn’t Eagle or Barlow make it?”

  “On the contrary
, I have every reason to believe they got out fine,” Luke told him. “They broke north, the quickest way to try and make it back to the encampment. The shooting you heard was all concentrated on me. I stayed behind to run interference and thin the herd some.”

  “Thin the herd?”

  “Head off the men—including Ferris himself—who were attempting a flanking maneuver,” Luke explained. “I saw to it that three of them failed.”

  “Ferris one of ’em?”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Tell me about it,” Luke muttered. “I had things narrowed down to Ferris and maybe one other man when that odd pattern of shots sounded from up on the hill. It was clearly a signal of some kind. Whatever it meant, it was enough to make Ferris suddenly withdraw from the skirmish we had going. My guess is that he must have circled around and back up to the other side of that hill.”

  “Could be,” Pettigrew allowed. “I didn’t see no sign of anybody coming or going, but there’s sure something different than before going on over there. I got a notion, though I can’t say why—it’s one of those things you feel more than you know, you understand what I mean? Anyway, what I’m thinking is that more men showed up than there was when this first started. Who they are or where they came from, I can’t say. But I think those shots might’ve been a message saying they’d arrived. And then, right after that, all the other shooting stopped.”

  “Yeah, that’s the way it was back there in the rocks, too,” Luke said. As they talked, his gaze, like Pettigrew’s, was constantly raking the grassy hill and the rolling countryside all around. “How are you holding up? How’s the leg? You didn’t take any more hits, did you?”

  “Nothing to amount to anything,” Pettigrew scoffed. “Got stung with few stone chips when a couple of their shots came a mite close. But that was my fault for ducking too slow. Mostly, they can’t shoot for beans. As far as the bullet hole in the leg, it’s throbbing to beat the band. Dang sure letting me know it’s there, but nothing I can’t handle. And the blood’s just seeping a little.”

  Luke glanced down at the wounded stump. Before he and the others had departed earlier, they’d wrapped Barlow’s undershirt around the thigh, covering both the entrance and exit holes made by the bullet, then had cinched it tight with laces from Pettigrew’s own shoes to keep pressure applied to help stanch the bleeding. By the look of the scarlet stain on the underside of the thigh, it appeared to Luke that there was more than just a little seeping going on but he made no comment.

  Instead he asked, “How about ammunition? How much do you have left?”

  “Not much for the rifle,” Pettigrew admitted, the first hint of despair noticeable in his voice. “But I’ve still got the handgun and shell belt that Eagle left me. One good charge from those varmints on the hill, though, would pretty much burn up the whole works. But you know what? Right about now I’d almost welcome that. Whatever this is that’s going on right now, is giving me the fantods. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’d rather go back to the shooting.”

  Luke couldn’t suppress a lopsided grin. “Yeah. I don’t know how smart it is, but there are times when just blazing away feels like the best thing.”

  It was less than a minute after that when the rifle with the white cloth tied to its barrel—a piece torn from someone’s shirt, it appeared—thrust above the crest of the grassy hill and waved slowly back and forth.

  And then the too familiar voice of Hacksaw Ferris—obviously having circled back around, the way Luke had guessed—called down.

  “You down there in the rocks! Hold your fire. We’re coming out under a flag of truce. We want to parley. Trust me, you’ll want to hear what we have to say.”

  “Ferris!” Luke said through gritted teeth. “I wouldn’t trust him if... But never mind, we can’t afford not to find out what this is all about. You do the talking. It’s not necessary right now for him to know I’m here.”

  Pettigrew nodded. Then he called out, “Come ahead. Slow and easy. You’ll have guns trained on you at all times, so don’t be stupid enough to try any tricks.”

  There was a slight hesitation and then a man on horseback, holding high the rifle with the white flag tied to it, came into view and rode slowly down the slope of the hill. Behind him came another horse with two slender figures occupying its saddle. A length of lasso could be seen encircling the pair, binding them tight together. A blanket was draped over the heads of the two figures, and to either side of the horse carrying them rode a man holding a rifle aimed at the pair from a distance of mere inches. Last came Ferris on a black-maned gelding.

  Halfway down the slope, the rider with the flag shifted to one side and reined up. The horse carrying double moved up and also stopped, the riflemen crowded close on either side following suit. Ferris moved up on the outside of the flag man and checked his gelding.

  “I know that yellow dog Jensen took off on you,” Ferris called. “But is Tom Eagle still down there?”

  “It’s for us to know who’s here and who ain’t,” Pettigrew told him. “Just go ahead and say your piece.”

  Ferris looked displeased with the answer. But then, after a moment, he said, “All right. It makes no difference right now, but I guarantee you’re gonna want to pass on to Eagle and Jensen what I’ve got to say and you’d better do it pronto. It starts with this—” Ferris waved his right hand with a bit of a flourish, causing one of the riflemen to reach out suddenly and yank the blanket off the bound pair, revealing their previously concealed identities.

  Pettigrew groaned at what he saw. “That’s my boy! That’s Heath and Belinda Eagle. Those animals have got our kids!”

  Chapter 31

  Nothing but somber expressions were in evidence on the faces of all gathered under the main canopy of the mountain encampment. Tears glistened in the eyes of the women, and the mothers of the two captives fought hard to hold back sobs. Long shadows cast by the sun sinking behind the ragged line of the western horizon only added a sense of deepening gloom to the scene.

  After Hacksaw Ferris and his men had made their revelation followed by the demands that went with it, they’d withdrawn—still with their prisoners—back over the crest of the hill. A short time later the fading rumble of horses’ hooves signaled their complete departure.

  Once he’d made a quick reconnoiter to determine their leaving was not some kind of trick, Luke had returned for Pettigrew. The gang had left behind a single horse, not out of any measure of compassion, but strictly for the sake of enabling someone to ride away and carry word of their demands.

  Luke quickly helped Pettigrew get mounted, intending for them to ride double back to the mountain camp where, in addition to the unfortunate news they had to deliver, the wounded man’s leg could get some medical attention. Hopefully—either when they got there or on the way—they’d get the chance to reunite with Eagle and Barlow.

  Before he joined the burly blacksmith on horseback, however, Luke’s ears had picked up the thud of approaching hooves. He’d spun around with drawn guns, thinking a betrayal was in the works after all. But instead, to his surprise and delight, his gaze had fallen on the heavy-chested paint he’d inherited, the one he’d managed to swat away at the start of the ambush in order to save it from the fate of the other horses Ferris’s gang mowed down. Now, with the shooting finally over, some sense of loyalty or other instinct was bringing the animal back around and its arrival couldn’t have been more timely or welcome.

  Mounted individually as a result of the paint’s return, Luke and Pettigrew had wasted no more time getting their horses aimed north toward the Spearpoints. Luke set a steady pace but moderated it somewhat in deference to the wounded blacksmith’s condition. But no complaining had come from the grim-faced Pettigrew. Luke could barely imagine what it took for the man to bear up under the pain from the bullet holes in his leg, not to mention the added torment at the thought of his son being in the hands of ruthless cutthroats.

&nb
sp; In one more badly needed stroke of luck, as the two riders were making their sweep northward and veering away from the badlands, they’d been spotted and hailed by none other than Eagle and Barlow. The pair had only recently emerged from the broken land, having successfully avoided any encounter with Ferris’s flanking attempt on their side, and were making their way across the prairie on the lookout for some of the former ranch horses they hoped to find roaming free.

  Being able to double up with Luke and Pettigrew solved their lack of mounts, and after they’d been hit with the gut-punch news about the young couple having been captured by Ferris’s bunch, that’s how the four of them had proceeded to the mountain camp.

  Once there, after Pettigrew was laid out on the big table so Mr. and Mrs. Wray could begin treating his leg wound, Eagle had addressed the others who were assembled, looking on expectantly, awaiting his report. Hugging his wife tight against him with one arm, he spoke in halting, agonized words and told them how Belinda and Heath were now captives of Hacksaw Ferris’s pack of curly wolves.

  Then he laid out the rest of it, the demands made for getting them released unharmed—that being that he and Luke Jensen lay down their arms and hand themselves over to the gang by noon the following day. Once the two men were in custody, Belinda and Heath would be released and they, along with all the rest of the refugees, would be allowed forty-eight hours of safe passage to completely vacate the valley.

  Any who remained after that could expect to be hunted down and killed.

  The fate in store for Eagle and Luke was left unspoken.

  That was how things stood in the thickening twilight as the somber-faced group under the canopy was left trying to come to grips with what they’d been told and then reach a decision on what to do in response.

  Into the somewhat stunned quiet that hung over the scene following Eagle’s report, Jonathan Wray, even as he continued to work on Pettigrew’s leg, spoke in a flat, calm voice.