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  Instead of continuing out the open door, Luke and Burnett peeled off to either side and pressed themselves to the wall just back from the edges. The marshal had his own gun drawn. Out on the street, the air was alive with the roar of increasing gunfire and flying lead.

  To the others in the office, Burnett shouted, “Get back! Crowd over in the corner by the cell block door. Better yet, get all the way back in there where it’s even safer.”

  “We can’t do any good back there,” protested the doctor. “Where are the keys to your gun rack?”

  “You know how to handle a gun, Doc?”

  “I had a gun in my hands long before I ever picked up a medical bag,” came the gruff answer. “Now where’s the damn keys?”

  Before Burnett could answer, Millie said, “In the middle drawer of the desk. I know where they are!” She lunged to yank open the drawer and from within seized a ring of keys.

  While this was taking place, Luke was peering around the edge of the door frame, trying to assess whatever the hell was going on. His line of sight was limited to an angle extending north along Main Street, past the two saloons that sat on opposite sides from one another, and other adjacent businesses. A dozen or so riders were thundering right down the middle of the street, throwing lead wildly to either side, shooting at anything that moved. A couple of horsemen up near the front of the group seemed to be concentrating especially on the jail building, peppering it with shot after shot. It seemed evident that one of them was responsible for planting the slugs in the man who’d appeared briefly to give warning.

  Luke took careful aim and pulled a trigger on one of those riders. The man jerked from the impact and went tumbling off the rear of his horse. In response, a heightened hail of bullets came pouring at the jail. The open door rattled and shook on its hinges, shedding slivers and chunks of wood from the chewing lead. A handful of slugs came through the opening, some sizzling low to gouge into the floor, others angling high to dislodge dust and wood chips from the ceiling.

  Luke realized some of the shots were coming at an angle from the south, not just from the pack of riders he’d gotten a fleeting view of. More shooters were also opening up from the other end of the street!

  “We’re getting riddled here,” the black-clad bounty hunter said through clenched teeth. “It’d be suicide to try and go out this door, but we need to get out there on the street for any chance to fight back effectively. Is there a back way out of here?”

  “A bolted door leads out the rear end of that room where the washbasin is,” Burnett answered. “I know the way better than you. I’ll go. You stay and—”

  “No, I’ll go.” Luke was already in motion as his words cut off those of the marshal. “You stay here, guard your daughter and the others. I’ll come around from the back and cover you so then you’ll have a chance to make it out, too.”

  Luke ran to the back wall of the office, careful to stay out of the direct line of the doorway. The gun rack was on his side of the room. Millie and the others were crowded into the opposite corner, near the heavy door that led back to the cell block.

  Doc Whitney held up the ring of keys Millie had pulled from the desk drawer, shouting, “One of these unlocks that gun rack. Use it to grab us some weapons!”

  The chaos out in the street was increasing. Bullets continued to batter the front of the jail building. Every once in a while one sailed in through the open door with a menacing whine ending in a loud whap! as it made contact with an inanimate object. Crouched just back from the door frame, Burnett had begun throwing some return fire.

  “No time for sorting through keys,” Luke called back to the doctor. “Stand clear!” A moment later he’d placed the muzzle of one of his Remingtons against the links of the chain that secured the rifles lined up in the rack and pulled the trigger. The links blew apart, adding a metallic ring to the roar of the gun.

  Momentarily holstering his pistols, Luke quickly yanked the broken chain free from the way it was threaded through the trigger guards of the gun row. The selection consisted of two double-barreled shotguns, three Winchesters, and two Henry repeating rifles. Luke tossed one of the Winchesters to Doc Whitney, followed by a box of ammunition.

  “Throw another one to me. I know how to shoot!” called Millie.

  “And me!” echoed Russell.

  Not taking time to question or argue, Luke tossed the remaining two Winchesters. It didn’t pass his notice, though, that only the pasty-faced, trembling Jules Mycroft, pressed deepest back in the corner, failed to request any weapon.

  Turning briefly to the doorway, Luke called, “How you fixed for ammunition, Marshal?”

  “I got enough for my handgun,” Burnett replied over his shoulder. “But slide me one of those shotguns along with some shells!”

  Luke did as requested, giving one of the shotguns a hard shove across the floor so that it came to a stop against the heel of the marshal’s boot. He followed suit with a box of shells.

  “It’s pure hell out there on the street!” Burnett called anxiously. “We need to get out there and try to turn the tide!”

  “I’m on my way!” Luke paused only long enough to shove a box of shells behind his belt and grab the second shotgun for himself, then he darted to the opposite side of the room, crossing the area aligned with the front door between any incoming rounds.

  At the door leading back to the cell block, Luke paused again, long enough to say to the group huddled in the corner, “Somebody needs to go up to the front and help the marshal in that doorway.”

  The bulky old doctor started in motion. “I’ll go.”

  Russell suddenly crowded past him. “No, I will. I can move faster. You stay here and guard Millie.”

  “I’m not some helpless baby, you know,” Millie protested, jacking a shell into her Winchester. “I told you I know how to shoot, too!”

  “Knock off the damn arguing,” Luke barked. “When I’m able to cover the marshal so he can join me out on the street, there’ll be plenty of opportunity for more of you to take over up front. In the meantime, somebody come rebolt this back door behind me.”

  As he started through the cell block door, he saw, out the corner of his eye, Russell making his dash to the opposite side of the room and then moving up to join Burnett at the front. By God, Luke thought, maybe there was still hope for the kid not being irreversibly influenced by the gutless Mycroft.

  * * *

  While the majority of his gang was raising hell throughout the rest of the town—a dozen riding in from each end, mowing down hapless citizens, starting to loot the smaller stores and businesses, and a select handful located near the jail, pinning down the marshal—Sam Kelson and four handpicked men concentrated on the Arapaho Springs bank. The establishment had been open for the day’s business for only a few minutes when the five barged in with drawn guns.

  The bank guard, a frail-looking, elderly gent sitting in a chair near the front door with a cup of coffee balanced on one bony knee and his shotgun leaning against the wall beside him, was gunned down immediately just to make a statement on the seriousness of the matter at hand.

  When one of only two customers present, a local businessman with a pouch of deposit money still in hand, tried to protect his interests by going for a nickel-plated hideaway in his vest, he met the same fate. The other customer, a rather handsome woman on the good side of middle age, emitted a startled peep and then fainted. As did one of the female clerks. The two other clerks, both soft-looking middle-aged men, immediately froze and stood with raised hands and nervously bobbing Adam’s apples, trying to swallow their fear while all the time trembling and dripping sweat with gun muzzles staring them in the face from mere inches away.

  Kelson moved around behind the partition and confronted the bank president trying to crawl under his desk. Kelson dragged him up by his sparse hair, swatted him alongside the head a couple of times with the barrel of his Colt, then bent him backward over the desk and snarled in his face, “You know what thi
s is. And you know what these red bandannas on our arms mean. So lead me to your biggest bills and make it fast. All we want is paper. You can keep the change. How fast and how thoroughly you cooperate will decide whether or not we leave it behind with your blood splashed all over it!”

  Chapter 12

  Luke emerged cautiously from the rear of the jail, making sure none of the raiders had worked around to pose an awaiting threat. Once he’d determined none had, he quickly checked each corner of the building to decide his most effective option for gaining the street in order to start fighting back against the attackers.

  The jail building was located toward the south end of town, about three quarters of the way down Main Street. The higher-volume businesses—bank, hotel, stores, saloons—all lay to the north. The closest building that way was a saddle shop, separated by a cluttered alley. Immediately to the south of the jail was an open space choked with chest-high underbrush and a few scraggly trees.

  Luke opted for the south side. He’d gotten his fill of alleys yesterday, plus the underbrush provided a fair amount of concealment. He picked his way forward, shotgun gripped in his left hand, Remington in his right. When he drew even with the front of the jail, he crouched momentarily where he had a good view through the bushes without revealing hardly any of himself.

  A quick scan showed that most of the action had shifted to the north. Gunfire, curses, shouts, and screams filled the air, mingled sporadically with the sound of breaking glass and the occasional shrill protest of a horse. Though some of the raiders still remained mounted, a number of others were now on foot, forcing their way into the stores and shops. For the first time, Luke noted that each of the attackers wore a bright red bandanna tied above the elbow of his right arm.

  Near his end of the street, four raiders remained for the clear purpose of keeping the marshal pinned in place while his town was being pillaged. Two of these were positioned in front of the livery stable catty-cornered across the street. They’d dismounted and taken cover behind each end of a long wagon heaped with loose straw. From there, they were pouring a steady stream of rifle fire on the jail building.

  To the north, on the same side of the street, a raider was ducked behind a corner of the saddle shop, throwing his share of lead with a handgun. Directly across the street from him, a fourth man was shooting from inside a small, cottage-style building with a sign over the door that read QUILTING NOTIONS & FINE POTTERY. He’d busted out one of the windows and was working with a long-barreled Henry repeater.

  Luke took all of this in in a matter of mere seconds. From there, it took only another second for him to decide what his course of action would be.

  Each time one of the men behind the straw wagon fired on the jail, he would lean out and expose himself momentarily in order to do so. Each man guarded the brief exposures against the return fire from the jail, but since neither was aware of the position Luke had taken up, they were leaving themselves wide open to him.

  He chose the shooter on the farthest end of the wagon for his first target. The next time the man leaned out, Luke was ready. His Remington spoke twice and both slugs the long-barreled pistol sent screaming across the width of the street hit their mark. The first bullet jerked the rifleman up and back, seeming to balance him for a fraction of an instant on his toes, and then the second one slammed him the rest of the way back and down, his rifle spinning away from outflung arms.

  Luke immediately swung his aim to the man on the other end of the wagon. Given all the noise and shooting that filled the street, the rifleman appeared not to notice his closest cohort had gone down. Nevertheless, for some reason he chose the very instant Luke fired on him to drop a little lower in his crouch behind the corner of the wagon. Luke’s shot passed a fraction of an inch above the man’s head, doing no harm except to a fistful of straw that was blown to shreds.

  The near miss was enough to alert the man to Luke’s presence, causing him to drop back farther behind the wagon so that Luke’s follow-up shot missed, too. At the same time, rounds fired from the jail doorway also pounded the end of the wagon, driving the rifleman even farther back.

  Luke saw this as an opening. Shouting “Cover me to the north. I’m going over!” to Burnett and Russell, the black-clad bounty hunter sprang from the underbrush and started across the street in a full-out run. Yesterday afternoon’s sunshine and a low, moaning wind through much of the night had considerably improved the muddy street. There was still a layer of slop deeper down, but it was covered over by a dried crust that gave Luke decent purchase as he ran.

  Crouched forward ten feet from the straw wagon, Luke spotted the movement of feet passing between the wheels on the back side of the wagon. He immediately went into a dive, pitching onto his stomach with the shotgun extended forward in his left hand. As he landed, he triggered both barrels simultaneously and sent a devastating blast ripping under the belly of the wagon.

  The feet on the other side caught the brunt of the blast and were instantly shredded to bloody stumps. As the rifleman back there went crashing to the ground, his feet and the lower part of his legs literally blown out from under him, his agonized scream was shrill enough to cut through the twin roars of the shotgun.

  After triggering that devastation, Luke immediately went into a roll and scrambled back to his feet. Even with Burnett and Russell providing him cover fire, he knew he couldn’t afford to make himself a stationary target for the shooters up the street, behind the corner of the saddle shop and in the window of the quilting and pottery store. Proof came as the wind-rip of bullets passed mere inches behind his head just before he reached the far end of the straw wagon and lunged behind it.

  In back of the wagon, Luke quickly sought out the man whose feet he had blasted away. The former shooter was still alive, though in such horrible agony he likely wished he wasn’t. Luke wasted no time sending a bullet to put him out of his misery.

  Moving up to the north end of the wagon and dropping in low behind a wheel, Luke began reloading his shooting irons—shotgun and handguns alike— as he called across the street to Burnett. “Two down, but there’s still two more to deal with before we can move up the street—one by the saddle shop on your side, another in the window of that quilting store on my side!”

  “Not anymore,” the marshal called back. “While you were making your dive behind the wagon, Russell got the one in the store window.”

  “Good job!” Luke responded.

  “I’m coming out,” Burnett said. “I mean to rush that bastard behind the saddle shop!”

  “Make your move. I’ll follow your lead,” Luke called back. He barely finished saying those words before Burnett came barreling out the front door of the jail.

  With his shotgun thrust ahead of him, the marshal turned hard to his left and ran straight for the saddle shop. Luke broke from behind the wagon and started at an angle for the same spot.

  Perhaps the gunfire and chaos from only a short distance up the street had sufficiently drowned out the exchange between Luke and Burnett so that the shooter at the corner of the saddle shop hadn’t heard or understood. Or maybe he’d heard but was just a crazy brave damn fool bent on holding his ground and doing the job he’d been assigned no matter what. For whatever reason, hold his ground is what he tried to do.

  From his angle, Luke caught sight of the shooter first as he leaned away from the building. Firing a Remington as he ran, Luke’s shot went wide of his intended target. It came close enough, however, for the shooter to shift his attention from firing toward the jail as he originally intended and swing the muzzle of his pistol in Luke’s direction. That caused him to lean out further still—directly into the line of fire for Burnett’s shotgun, which the marshal triggered as he continued his rush. The blast raked the side of the building and pounded into the man’s chest and shoulder, hurling him backward as if he’d been yanked by an invisible wire. He hit the ground four feet away, a bloody, lifeless heap.

  Burnett halted, his gaze sweeping northward up
the street. Over half of the raiders still delivering hell up that way had dismounted. Most of those had forced their way into stores and shops, where they were looting and killing. Shooting continued in a seemingly endless roll of noise, some of it return fire from shopkeepers and frantic citizens trying to rally against the attack.

  Flinty-eyed, Burnett looked over at Luke. “This is my town, my fight, Jensen. You don’t have to make it yours.”

  “Seems to me I already staked out a piece of that claim, Marshal,” Luke replied. “Looks to me like a big enough fight for each of us to have a share.”

  Burnett gave a curt nod. “Anybody with a red bandanna on his arm, shoot to kill. It’s that simple.”

  “Easy enough. Got it.”

  Burnett turned back to Russell, who had emerged from the jail doorway and stood thumbing cartridges into his Winchester. “You did a good job in that doorway, son. Keep at it. Stay here, guard this end of town and keep Millie and the doc safe.”

  Russell tried to protest. “But there’s only two of you. I should—”

  “You should do as I say! Stay here. Keep my daughter safe.” The marshal held out his shotgun. “Here. Take this. Give me that Winchester. You can grab one of the Henrys off the rack when you go back inside.”

  The guns were exchanged. Burnett pinned Russell in place with a final hard look, then turned north again, brandishing the Winchester. He started up the street. On the opposite side, Luke moved forward as well, keeping pace.

  Chapter 13

  After Doc Whitney had shown Luke out the jail’s rear door and then bolted it behind him, the doctor inadvertently left the connecting door to the cell block ajar when he hurried back to the front office area. Cowering in the corner only a few feet away, a trembling, terrified Jules Mycroft cast his eyes on this and recalled the marshal’s words from earlier. “Get all the way back in there where it’s even safer.”