The Violent Land Read online

  He wasn’t expecting the sudden crackle of brush as a man pushed through it and nearly tripped over him.

  “Son of a—” the man yelled as he stumbled and tried to catch his balance. He seemed to be taken as much by surprise as Matt was. He clawed at the holstered gun on his hip.

  Matt leaped back, but as he did so, one foot caught on an exposed tree root. He fell backwards and landed on his rump. His left hand went behind him to steady him as he raised his Colt. He fired as soon as the other man’s gun cleared leather.

  The .44 slug punched into the man’s chest and knocked him down. Matt leaped to his feet and bulled through the brush, breaking into the clearing where the bushwhackers’ horses were tied just as two more men spun toward him. They had been lighting quirlies. The cigarettes dropped from their mouths as they split up, making Matt choose between them.

  He went for the one on the right first, triggering two swift shots that sent the man spinning off his feet. That gave the man on the left enough time to unlimber his Colt, and the gun boomed as Matt whirled toward him. Matt heard the wind-rip of the bullet’s passage beside his ear as his revolver roared and bucked again in his hand.

  The third man staggered and dropped his gun, blood gushing from his bullet-torn neck. He clapped his hands over the wound, but that didn’t do any good. The crimson flood just washed over his fingers. The man made a grotesque strangling noise that might have been him trying to curse Matt with his last breath, then he pitched forward on his face.

  Matt stood there tensely, waiting to see if anybody else was going to show up in response to the gunfire. The horses were spooked by the shots and the sharp tang of gunsmoke in the air, not to mention the coppery scent of freshly spilled blood, but their reins had been tied securely to the trees and they couldn’t pull loose. After a minute they began to settle down.

  None of the other ambushers farther down the slope seemed to be paying any attention to the shots from up here. That came as no surprise to Matt, considering how much gunfire filled the air already. He opened his Colt’s cylinder and thumbed in three fresh rounds from the loops on his shell belt to replace the ones he had fired. As he snapped the cylinder closed, he began moving down the slope in search of more bushwhackers.

  Preacher was already considerably lower on the hillside than Matt. A big fight like this was nothing new for the old-timer. When he first came west, the vast frontier was full of enemies. Kill one, and a dozen more took his place. So Preacher was used to the odds being against him.

  He liked it that way.

  These gunmen today weren’t all that much of a challenge, though. Guided by the continuing crack of rifle fire, he came up behind a man who knelt in some rocks, shooting at the wagons in the gap below. Preacher holstered both Colts and drew his Bowie knife instead.

  The varmint never knew what hit him as nearly a foot of cold, razor-sharp steel buried itself in his back. The deadly keen tip of the knife pierced his heart and killed him. He let out a surprised whimper as he died.

  Preacher pulled the knife free, wiped the blood from the blade on the dead man’s shirt, and began looking for new prey to stalk.

  He wasn’t long in finding it, but there were two of the bushwhackers this time, using a pair of thick-trunked pines about ten feet apart for cover. One man’s Winchester ran dry, and he half-turned to reload it. When he did, he saw the old man in buckskins standing there.

  “Avery!” he yelled as he dropped the empty rifle and reached for his revolver. The other man whirled around in alarm and swung his rifle toward Preacher.

  Preacher’s hands came up, both of them filled with his revolvers. The twin Colts blasted at the same instant. The man to Preacher’s left was driven back against the tree trunk by the slug’s impact. The one on the right doubled over, shot through the belly. Both of them collapsed.

  That made three of the varmints done for, Preacher thought. He wondered idly how many more bushwhackers were on this hill. He hoped he wouldn’t run out of them too soon. This was a better fight than the one against the bank robbers in Big Rock earlier that afternoon, but it still wasn’t a patch on some of the epic battles he had taken part in during the old days.

  The worrisome thing was that the light was starting to fade. The sun would be setting soon, and when it did the shadows on this wooded hillside would grow thick in a hurry. That wouldn’t bother Preacher—he had eyes like a cat—but it might make things more difficult for Smoke and Matt.

  Not that he had to be overly concerned about those two, he reminded himself. They had been in too many battles to count. Maybe they hadn’t always come through unscathed, but they were still alive and the bad hombres they had come up against were dead. No, Smoke and Matt could handle themselves just fine.

  Preacher followed the sound of shooting until he came upon three more men clustered behind some trees. His Colts were in his hands and he was about to open fire on them when they paused in their attack on the wagon train and started talking to each other.

  The words didn’t really make any sense to Preacher, but he knew he had heard some of that language before. And the men’s accents were similar to Dieter Schumann’s voice. They were speaking German, Preacher realized.

  That wasn’t surprising. There was a whole wagon train full of German folks down there, and these varmints were shooting at them. Of course there was a connection.

  But the bushwhackers could have been common, everyday outlaws. Knowing that they weren’t might come in handy later on, Preacher thought, because this might not be the last attack on those immigrants.

  He was looking forward to sitting down and talking this over with Smoke and Matt when he got the chance.

  Until then ...

  “Hey, you Dutch-talkin’ varmints!” Preacher called as he stepped into the open. “Sprechen some o’ this!”

  He waited until the men turned before he opened fire. Shots rolled from his Colts in a wave of gun-thunder. The men didn’t go down easily, even with slugs from Preacher’s revolvers smashing into them. They got off several shots in return. The broad-brimmed felt hat sailed off the old-timer’s head. Another bullet plucked at the fringe on his sleeve.

  One of the bushwhackers finally crumpled under the leaden onslaught, then another, and finally Preacher drilled the last of the hombres in the forehead and made him collapse like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Preacher pouched one of the irons and got busy reloading the other Colt. He did that mostly by feel, because he was keeping a close eye on the fallen gunmen, in case one or more of them was still alive. Unlike the other bushwhackers he had seen, these three were wearing town clothes, tweed suits and bowler hats. That jibed with his realization that they weren’t from around these parts.

  When both guns had full cylinders again, Preacher checked the bodies and made sure the men were dead. One of the hombres was short and beefy, with a red face and clean-shaven jowls. The other two had been taller and sported close-cropped beards.

  He wondered if these men were behind the attack on the wagon train. They could have paid the other men to bushwhack the immigrants. That thought led him to search the bodies. He found their wallets and tucked them away inside his buckskin shirt. He would look over their contents later, when he was back with Smoke and Matt.

  That done, he started down the slope again, but he hadn’t gone very far when he heard men coming toward him, crashing through the undergrowth as they hurried up the hill.

  From the sound of it, they were giving up the ambush and lighting a shuck out of here. Preacher wasn’t surprised. It took a craven coward to bushwhack folks in the first place. The people with the wagon train seemed to be putting up a fight, and after a while, hired gunmen would get tired of that and decide to cut their losses and run.

  Preacher found himself a nice sturdy tree and got ready. Both Colts had full cylinders, which meant he had twelve shots without reloading, and he intended to make good use of each and every one of them.

  “Come on, you sons o’ b
itches,” the old mountain man muttered as he waited. “The ball’s about to open, and it’s gonna be one hell of a fandango!”

  Chapter Ten

  Over on the other hill, Smoke and Dieter circled the bushwhackers’ horses, following the sound of voices. Smoke smelled tobacco and knew the guards had lit quirlies. That told him they weren’t nervous. They didn’t think they had anything to fear because they had the easy job, watching the horses while the rest of the men ambushed the wagon train.

  They were about to find out how wrong they were.

  Colt leveled, Smoke stepped around the horses and saw the two gunmen standing there. He said sharply, “Hold it! Don’t go for your guns!”

  They ignored the order. The two men whirled and jerked their pistols from leather.

  “Now, Dieter!” Smoke said. His gun roared as the whipcrack of a shot from the rifle wielded by the young Prussian split the air as well.

  In the blink of an eye, Smoke had put two slugs in the chest of one of the gunmen. He pivoted slightly, ready to bring down the other one, but the man had already dropped his gun and took a stumbling step to the side. He fell to his knees and sprawled on the ground as his strength deserted him, along with the life’s blood welling from his chest.

  Smoke looked over at his companion as Dieter lowered the Winchester. The youngster’s face was pale and drawn, but he seemed composed enough.

  “Is the man dead?” Dieter asked.

  “More than likely,” Smoke said.

  “I have never killed a man before. I never even shot at anyone before.”

  “I won’t say it’s something you ever get over, but it helps to know that he would have killed you without blinking an eye. And the people he’s working with may have already killed some of your friends down there.”

  Smoke wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but an even more pronounced pallor came over Dieter’s face. Smoke knew the young man was thinking about the girl he had feelings for, the one he had never told that he loved her.

  Best to channel that fear into action. Smoke said, “Let’s go. There are more of them farther down.”

  After making sure the two gunmen were dead, they left the bodies lying there next to the skittish horses and started down the slope. A hundred yards farther on, they came up behind a man using one of the pines for cover as he fired a rifle at the wagons down in the gap.

  Dieter raised Smoke’s Winchester and pointed it at the man’s back, but Smoke rested his free hand on the rifle barrel and pushed it back down.

  “Might be a good idea to take a prisoner if we can,” Smoke whispered. “That baron of yours might want to ask him some questions.”

  Dieter nodded in agreement. Smoke motioned for him to stay where he was, then moved closer to the man. Preacher had taught Smoke how to be quiet when Smoke was just a young man, and while he wasn’t quite as good at it as the old mountain man, there wasn’t much difference between them.

  The bushwhacker didn’t even know Smoke was there. Smoke reversed his gun, raised it above his head, and brought the butt crashing down on the back of the man’s skull. The man dropped his rifle and sagged forward against the tree. His arms clutched at the rough bark for a second before he lost consciousness. Out cold, he slid down the trunk to the ground.

  Smoke holstered his Colt and bent down to jerk the man’s belt from its loops. He used the belt to lash the man’s hands together behind his back. He wasn’t gentle about it, either. The way he saw it, would-be murderers didn’t deserve any special consideration.

  When he was finished with that, he drew his knife and used it to cut strips from the man’s shirt. With those, he tied the man’s ankles together.

  “That way he can’t get up and run off,” Smoke explained to Dieter. “He’ll still be here when we get back, unless one of his friends comes along and turns him loose.”

  “Should I stay here and guard him?” Dieter asked.

  Smoke shook his head.

  “No, you come with me. From the sounds of it, the odds are still pretty heavy against us.”

  That was true. A lot of guns were still going off on the hillsides.

  And those folks down there with the wagons were still under heavy fire. They were bound to have taken some casualties by now.

  Baron von Hoffman had been firing up at the slopes for what seemed like forever, although it was probably more like a quarter of an hour. He crawled back and forth underneath the wagon so he could send shots at both hills.

  He never should have brought the wagons through the gap, he told himself bitterly. Looking back on it now, he could see that this was a perfect spot for an ambush, and he had led his people right into it.

  He should have known it was going to happen sooner or later. He had opposed some powerful men back in Germany and come very close to upsetting all their plans. Even though he had failed and they had proven successful in their efforts, they weren’t the sort of men to forgive such defiance.

  Being well aware of that, he had made hasty plans to leave the country, taking his allies and servants with him. A year earlier, he had made arrangements to buy the failed ranch in Wyoming, knowing that sometime in the future he might need such a place for sanctuary. He had hoped that would be enough to spare them any trouble....

  But deep down, he had known that it wouldn’t be.

  However, the voyage to America had gone smoothly, and once he and his group were in this country, they hadn’t encountered any problems. They had traveled by train to Kansas City, where the baron had bought wagons and supplies for the trip to Wyoming.

  They could have taken the train all the way to Cheyenne, but he thought that setting out by wagon from Kansas City might help throw any pursuit off their trail. It was slower, of course, but to his way of thinking they wouldn’t be as easy to follow.

  Clearly, he had been wrong. The lack of trouble had lulled him into complacency, and all the while his enemies were making arrangements of their own, hiring men to get ahead of him and set the trap that had now closed....

  Those thoughts were eating at von Hoffman’s brain like acid when he felt something drip onto the back of his hand. He looked down and saw the splash of blood on his skin.

  Lifting his head, he looked above him. The blood had seeped through a crack in the floorboards of the wagon bed. That meant there had to be a lot of blood up there, which probably meant someone was dead.

  Von Hoffman cursed bitterly, wiped his hand on the grass, and crawled to the side so the blood wouldn’t continue to drip on him. He was sick inside. Anger boiled up in his belly. He wanted to scramble out from under the vehicle, leap to his feet, and charge the ambushers, shrieking out his rage as he emptied his rifle at them.

  If he did that, the only thing he would accomplish would be to get himself killed even more quickly. He was a Prussian nobleman, he told himself. He ruled his emotions, not the other way around. He drew a deep breath and brought himself under control.

  It seemed to him that there were fewer shots coming from the slopes now. The attackers couldn’t be giving up. They still had the upper hand. They could keep the wagons pinned here until dark, and then they could come swarming down from the hills like Cossacks to overrun the defenders. It wouldn’t be long until that happened, and for the life of him, the baron couldn’t see anyway to stop it.

  Then he lifted his head again as he heard a sudden outbreak of shots from the eastern hill. This wasn’t rifle fire, though. It sounded like several handguns going off as fast as someone could fire them.

  Something was going on up there, von Hoffman thought with a frown. Something he hadn’t expected.

  After killing the three men with the horses, Matt had followed the sound of shots to two more bushwhackers and gunned them down as well when they ignored his command to drop their rifles. He was thinking that it might be a good idea to take a prisoner so they could question the man and maybe find out what this attack was all about. But he could only do that if one of the varmints cooperated and didn’t
make Matt kill him.

  One thing was certain. In a situation like this where the odds were stacked so heavily in favor of the other side, a fella couldn’t afford to get fancy. Any time Matt had to shoot, he was going to shoot to kill.

  He was moving through the brush when a gun suddenly blazed at him from the left. One of the bushwhackers must have figured out that there was an enemy stalking them. Matt hit the dirt, but he didn’t return the fire. He didn’t want to waste bullets, and he also didn’t want to give away his exact position.

  Instead he waited, breathing shallowly.

  After a few moments, he heard branches rustle. He tipped the barrel of his Colt in that direction. A rifle emerged from the brush first, followed by the man holding it.

  The man stopped short when he saw Matt lying there. He tried to lower the Winchester so he could get a shot off, but before he could pull the trigger, Matt’s revolver roared and a slug ripped through the bushwhacker’s thigh, shattering the bone and dropping him to the ground. The man howled in pain and rolled around, clutching at his wounded leg.

  Matt started to his feet, thinking that he might be able to take a prisoner after all, but as he did, the man he had just shot put the pain of his broken leg aside and grabbed the gun on his hip. Matt crouched and fired as the man’s Colt came up. Flame gouted from the muzzles of both guns.

  The bushwhacker’s slug missed, but Matt’s didn’t. It plowed into the man’s brain, leaving a red-rimmed black hole in his forehead. His head jerked back, then forward, and then his face hit the ground as he died.

  Well, he wouldn’t be taking that hombre prisoner, Matt thought, despite just winging him at first.

  No sooner had that thought gone through his head than he heard a huge commotion about fifty yards to his right. Shot after shot blasted out, so close together it was hard to tell them apart, and interspersed with the dull booms of a pair of revolvers came the wicked cracks of rifle fire. A lot of rifles.