Rope Burn Read online

  “Ace!” Chance called. “Jump down from level to level!”

  “What? Are you loco?”

  “We’ll get down a lot quicker either way!”

  He had a point there, Ace thought grimly. He skidded to a halt and looked over the edge of the trail. The next zigzag was down there somewhere in the darkness. Not too far down—maybe a dozen feet. He could stand a drop like that.

  A bullet zinged overhead. Ace muttered and jumped.

  He landed hard, sooner than he expected, on a slope where it was impossible to remain upright. He went down and rolled, and as he did, he heard Chance’s “Ooof!” as he landed a few feet away. Both of them came up on their feet.

  “We lived through it!” Chance said. “Let’s do it again!”

  “Why not?” Ace said. Once again, they leaped out and dropped through the darkness.

  The landing wasn’t quite as much a surprise this time, but Ace fell again anyway. He slid and came to a stop with his legs hanging out into empty space. Guns were still going off above them, but as far as he could tell, none of the bullets were coming anywhere close now. And he could see trees not too far below them, so he knew that they were almost to the bottom.

  He pulled his legs in and struggled to his feet. “Come on,” he said to Chance, who had landed nearby. “If we can get into those trees, we can lose them.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. And then we’ll get these blasted ropes off!”

  Ace hoped so. He had spent altogether too much time tied up recently. He didn’t like the feeling at all.

  As they charged on down the trail, the shooting stopped, probably because the gunmen couldn’t see them anymore. Shouts drifted down from above. Men were giving chase now, probably thinking that they didn’t have anything to worry about since Ace and Chance were unarmed and had their hands tied behind their backs.

  If they got a chance, the Jensen brothers would show those hombres just how wrong they were.

  They reached level ground and dashed into the pines but had to slow down so they wouldn’t run full-tilt into the tree trunks. The shadows were so thick it was utterly black in here. Ace grunted as he bounced off a rough-barked trunk.

  “It’ll take them a few minutes to find us,” he said as he came to a stop. “We’d better try to get those ropes off while we can.”

  “Good idea,” Chance said, unseen in the darkness but close by. They fumbled around until they found each other, then turned so that their backs were to each other.

  “I’ll see if I can get you untied—” Ace began.

  “No, let me try first with you,” Chance interrupted. “I’ve spent so much time handling cards that my fingers are a mite more deft than yours, I’m thinking. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Ace assured him. He held out his bound hands from his back. “Go ahead.”

  A moment later, he felt Chance’s fingers working at the ropes. Chance was right. All the hours he had spent shuffling and dealing the pasteboards had given his fingers enough strength and dexterity that he was able to work the knots loose in a matter of minutes. As the ropes fell away from Ace’s wrists, he pulled his arms back in front of him and began rolling his shoulders and flexing his fingers.

  Somewhere not too far off in the darkness, a man called, “They’ve got to be in here somewhere.”

  “Shut up,” another man responded. “You want them to know where we are?”

  A chuckle came from the first man. “What does it matter? It’s not like they have guns.”

  “Yet,” Ace whispered to Chance. “Turn around and let me get to work on those knots.”

  The sounds of the men searching through the trees grew louder as Ace fumbled with the rope. His pulse hammered in his head. He forced himself to breathe slowly and regularly and concentrate on what he was doing. The knots began to loosen, and once they did, he needed only moments more to finish freeing Chance’s hands.

  “Those two are coming in this direction,” he breathed.

  “Yeah, and there are probably more out here searching for us, too,” Chance replied. “So we need to take care of them without any racket, if we can.”

  Each of them put his back to a tree trunk, about ten feet apart. The rustling footsteps weren’t far off now. The moon had started to rise, and a little of the silvery illumination penetrated the pine branches. Ace’s eyes had adjusted to the point that he could make out vague shapes.

  Because of that, he was able to see when the two men walked between the trees where he and Chance waited. One of the searchers whispered, “I don’t know why Olsen cares so much about findin’ those two. They’re afoot, and they’ll never make it back to the fort. Even if they do, he can just have ’em shot as deserters.”

  “I reckon they’ve given him so much trouble already, he’s bound and determined to get rid of them. Anyway, Chet’s the one who told us to go along with Olsen’s orders, and I don’t want to argue with a gunhand like him—”

  They couldn’t afford to wait any longer. The two gunmen were in perfect position. Ace and Chance leaped through the shadows at them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Even though the distance was short, the men heard Ace and Chance coming and tried to turn around to meet the attack. Ace lowered his shoulder and rammed into his man from the side, knocking him off his feet. Ace’s momentum carried him to the ground, too.

  He threw his left arm out blindly. His forearm struck the barrel of the gunman’s rifle and knocked it to the side. Ace grabbed the barrel with that hand and hung on while he estimated where the gunman’s face was and threw a punch with his right. He knew he might break his hand if he judged wrong and hit the ground instead.

  His fist crashed into flesh and bone and he felt the hot spurt of blood across his knuckles from a pulped nose. The man bucked wildly underneath him. Ace tried to hang on, but he was thrown off to one side.

  He took the rifle with him when he went, though, wrenching it out of the gunman’s grip.

  The man leaped to his feet and clawed at the gun on his hip. Ace rolled over and came up on his knees in time to see that and strike first. Since he had hold of the rifle’s barrel, he lashed out with the stock, driving it into the gunman’s groin.

  The man forgot about pulling his revolver and doubled over as he moaned in pain. Ace lunged up and whipped the rifle around. The stock caught the man in the jaw this time and laid him out cold.

  A few yards away, Chance had tackled his man around the waist and knocked him off his feet. They rolled across the ground, which was littered with pine needles, and struggled over the gunman’s rifle. Chance had both hands on it, but his opponent clung to it stubbornly. As the man panted with exertion, Chance smelled raw whiskey on his breath. The Jensen brothers escaping had ruined a perfectly good night of drinking and carousing after slaughtering all those Apaches.

  They both clambered onto their feet as they continued to wrestle over the rifle. They staggered back and forth. Chance didn’t know how Ace was doing, but no shots had rung out so far. Chance wanted to keep it that way.

  The men hadn’t yelled for help, either. He supposed the attack by supposedly helpless men had surprised them enough that they weren’t thinking straight yet. But they would recover their wits soon enough, Chance knew.

  In fact, he heard the man he was battling take a sharply indrawn breath and knew the hombre was about to yell. Chance lunged forward, driving hard with his feet. That forced the gunman backward, and Chance kept bulling ahead until he forced the man into one of the tree trunks. He heard a solid thunk! as the back of the gunman’s head hit the rough-barked trunk. The man said, “Uh!” and his knees buckled. His hands slipped off the rifle.

  Chance lifted the stock into the man’s jaw. The man slithered loose-limbed down the trunk. He was out.

  Chance turned, saw another shadowy figure on its feet, and hazarded a whisper. “Ace?”

  “Yeah. Is your man down?”

  “He sure is. Yours?”

  “Out col
d, and I’ve got his rifle.”

  “Let’s get their Colts,” Chance said.

  That sounded like an excellent idea to Ace. He bent, found the buckle on the gunbelt of the man he had knocked out, and unfastened it. A moment later, as he strapped the belt around his own hips, he felt the familiar and reassuring weight of a six-gun against his thigh.

  “That’s more like it,” he said.

  “What now?” Chance asked.

  That question made Ace frown. “Olsen has close to thirty men, and he’s going to be keeping Evelyn mighty close to him. Even if we took them by surprise, there’s no way we can outgun a force like that and get her away from them.”

  “I don’t reckon there’s any point in wondering about MacDonald.”

  Ace shook his head in the darkness. “I saw probably half a dozen shots hit him. There’s no way he survived. But at least he went out fighting, like he wanted to.”

  “I guess he wasn’t all bad . . .”

  “Mostly he was,” Ace said. “But you’re right, not all.”

  They stood there in silence for a second, until Chance said, “If we can’t rescue Evelyn, that just leaves getting back to the fort and trying to talk sense into Major Sughrue, like you said earlier.”

  “It’s our only shot,” Ace agreed.

  “Can we make it on foot? And get there before Olsen does?”

  Honestly, Ace didn’t see how they could, especially the second part of Chance’s question. But they had no other option except to try.

  “If we don’t get to the fort in time, we’ll circle around it and head for Packsaddle. We need to find a telegraph and get word to Washington.”

  “Might as well get started, then.”

  They trotted off into the darkness, trusting to instinct to guide them in the right direction.

  * * *

  They traveled most of the night, pausing only occasionally to rest. Leaving Evelyn behind, knowing that she was in Frank Olsen’s hands, was disturbing, but they also knew that getting themselves killed trying to shoot it out with Olsen’s men wouldn’t do Evelyn any good.

  When the sky lightened enough with the approach of dawn for them to look around at their surroundings, Chance asked, “I don’t suppose you have any idea where we are?”

  “Not exactly, but I know we’re headed in the right direction.” Ace pointed to the south, where foothills rolled into the distance. “I know the road Olsen is building is in that direction, so Howden-Smyth’s mine must be that way.” He swung his arm back to the west. “Which means the fort is southeast of us, and I can tell from where the sun’s fixing to come up in a little while that we’re aimed toward it.”

  Chance turned and squinted back in the direction they had come from. “I haven’t seen or heard anybody on our trail, but that doesn’t mean they’re not back there. What are the odds of Olsen sending somebody to try to track us?”

  “Pretty good, I’d say,” Ace replied. “Or pretty bad, depending on how you look at it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, I can tell you that.”

  They moved on, because there was really nothing else they could do at this point, and a short time later came to a small creek where they were able to drink. Their bellies were getting empty by now, but there was nothing they could do about that. Ace spotted a couple of rabbits and could have easily knocked them over with the Winchester he had taken away from the gunman, but he didn’t want to risk a shot giving away their position.

  They paused to rest again at mid-morning, not far from a gully that angled across the landscape. They were nearly out of the foothills now. Ace looked out over the rolling, trackless, semi-arid plains and didn’t see anything moving.

  “I wonder if there are any ranches around here where we could get some horses,” Chance said.

  “Not likely. This isn’t really ranching country, as far as I—”

  Ace didn’t finish his statement, because at that instant, the crack of a rifle shot and the whistle of a bullet past his ear sounded simultaneously. He whirled around and saw three riders burst out of a stand of trees fifty yards away. They rode hell-bent for leather toward the Jensen brothers, firing as they came. Powder smoke billowed from their guns.

  Ace flung the Winchester to his shoulder and slammed out two shots toward the attackers. Beside him, Chance did likewise. As the echoes filled the air, Chance shouted, “Head for that gully over there! It’s the only cover around here!”

  He was right about that. Ace didn’t see any trees or rocks nearby. He turned, raced to the gully, and slid down its bank. Chance leaped into it beside him.

  The gully was only about five feet deep, so Ace and Chance had to crouch as they flattened themselves against the bank and thrust their rifles over the edge. “We don’t have a lot of bullets,” Ace said. “Pick your shots.”

  “They’re splitting up!” Chance said. “They’re going to try to flank us!”

  Ace saw that. It was good strategy, too. One of the men galloped straight at them while the other two veered left and right.

  The man in the center wore a black, round-crowned hat with a turquoise band and a feather sticking up. Ace recalled seeing him with the gunmen Eugene Howden-Smyth had sent to join forces with Olsen. He was an Indian—his coppery, hawklike face made that obvious—but not an Apache and except for his hat he dressed more like a white gun-wolf. Ace would have been willing to bet this man was the one who had tracked him and Chance.

  Ace drew a bead on him and squeezed the trigger, but the Indian’s instincts must have warned him. Either that or it was blind luck, but he jerked his horse aside and Ace knew his shot had missed. He jacked another round in the chamber but then fell back as the Indian fired and a bullet hit the ground right in front of the gully and kicked dirt and rocks into Ace’s face.

  Ace heard hoofbeats pounding to his right and rolled in that direction. The man who had flanked them in that direction had gotten his horse down into the gully and was thundering toward the Jensen brothers. Ace fired, hating to kill the man’s horse, but from this angle, he didn’t have a shot at the rider.

  The horse collapsed as the bullet slammed into its chest. Its forelegs folded up and the gunman suddenly found himself catapulted over the animal’s head. He landed hard, rolled over a couple of times, and tried to come up on his feet as he clawed at the revolver on his hip, which had somehow stayed in the holster during that wild fall.

  Ace shot him in the head, a single shot that drilled through the man’s brain and exploded out the back of his skull. The upper half of his body went backward while momentum kept his legs trying to run forward. This resulted in an awkward collapse as the man wound up twisted in death on the gully floor.

  There was a bend about twenty yards away in the other direction, so the man approaching on that side had some cover. Slugs slammed into the bank near Chance, and when he threw himself backward and turned that way, he spotted the rifle barrel sticking around the bulge in the gully’s bank. The hired gun had dismounted and was using that for cover.

  Chance rolled again as a bullet plowed into the ground next to him. He wound up on his belly and fired twice, chewing chunks of dirt away from the bank as he forced the gunman to duck back. Then, leaving the rifle on the ground, he sprang up and sprinted toward the bend. When he saw a flicker of movement, he dived forward. Something tugged at his shirt as another shot blasted. He went down, somersaulted, and came up with the Colt in his hand.

  The gun roared and bucked against his palm. He had a clear shot at the man now. The slugs pounded into his chest and drove him back against the bank, pinning him there for a second as if he’d been nailed in place. The rifle he had been firing at Chance slipped from nerveless fingers, and the man pitched to the ground right after it.

  That left just the Indian tracker. As if sensing that he was suddenly on his own, he snapped a couple of final shots toward the gully and then reined in, wheeling his horse so he could gallop back the other direction. Ace stood up and tried to draw a bead on the man. T
he Indian bent forward over his mount’s back, making himself a smaller target. Ace fired, but the galloping horse never broke stride and the rider didn’t budge.

  Chance hurried over and asked, “Did he get away?”

  Ace lowered the rifle and frowned as the Indian disappeared back into the trees. “Yeah, looks like it. Which means he’ll hightail it back to Olsen and tell him where we were when he found us.”

  “We’d better not be here if anybody comes back to look for us, then. But that varmint probably figured out that we’re heading for Fort Gila. Maybe we’d better consider some other plan, Ace, or we’re liable to find Olsen waiting for us.”

  Ace nodded and was about to agree with that, but the sudden rataplan of hoofbeats that filled the air made both Jensen brothers wheel around and lift their guns. They froze as half a dozen cavalrymen reined to a halt on the other side of the gully and trained Springfield rifles at them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  For a second, Ace thought that some of the troopers who’d been with Olsen had gotten behind them somehow. With the way those soldiers had the drop on them, he and Chance wouldn’t be able to shoot their way out of this fix. And if they were captured again, Olsen wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He would go ahead and have them killed, especially if he could do it without letting Evelyn know what had happened.

  But just then, an officer rode up beside the troopers and called, “Hold your fire!” To Ace and Chance, he ordered, “You men lower your weapons.”

  The man wore the insignia of a lieutenant. He was young and lean-faced and Ace had never seen him before. But he wasn’t Frank Olsen, and that might make all the difference.

  Ace lowered the Winchester but didn’t drop it. Chance did likewise. The mounted troopers didn’t relax when the Jensen brothers did that, however. They maintained their air of deadly readiness.

  From horseback, the officer asked, “Who are you, and what’s going on here?”