She put her rifle on the ground, too, and joined him behind the boulder he had picked out. It was about four feet tall and massive. The Kid knew he couldn’t have budged it even an inch if it had been sitting on level ground.
Luckily the boulder was on a fairly steep slope. All they had to do was start rocking it a little. Once they did, it shouldn’t take very long to dislodge it and get it rolling and bounding down toward the bushwhackers.
“Put your shoulder into it.” The Kid leaned down and got his own shoulder wedged against the rough stone. Close beside him, Lace got into position, too.
“I’m ready, Kid,” she said through gritted teeth.
“All right, when I give the word—”
At that instant a bullet whistled between their heads, hit the boulder, and ricocheted off with a high-pitched whine.
Chapter 21
The Kid’s head jerked around as he peered up at the bluff looming above them.
About forty feet above their heads was a small ledge he hadn’t noticed earlier. A man knelt on that ledge with a rifle in his hands. The rifle cracked again.
Once more The Kid felt the heat of a bullet passing close by his head and heard the whine as it ricocheted off the boulder.
The man must have climbed up there to keep an eye on his fellow outlaws down below. The Kid had suspected there might be a guard, but he and Lace hadn’t run into any sentries.
Until now.
Instinct brought his Colt out with blinding speed, but Lace was almost as fast beside him. Her gun began to boom as she said, “I’ll cover you, Kid! Roll that rock!”
He saw the rifleman on the ledge duck back hurriedly as Lace’s slugs smacked into the sandstone bluff around him and sent puffs of dust and chunks of rock flying into the air.
The Kid holstered his Colt and turned back to the boulder. They didn’t have much time. The other outlaws were bound to hear the firing behind them and realize some sort of threat was back there.
Planting his feet, The Kid put his shoulder against the rock and heaved with all the strength he could muster.
The rock didn’t go anywhere.
He gritted his teeth and threw his weight against the boulder again.
Beside him, the hammer of Lace’s revolver fell on an empty chamber with a resounding click. “I’m out!”
“Grab my gun!” The Kid yelled to her as he heaved against the boulder for a third time. He felt the weight of his Colt leave the holster as Lace followed his command.
The brief respite had given the outlaw on the ledge a chance to risk another shot, and the man’s rifle cracked again. The Kid felt the fiery kiss of a slug nicking his arm before it hit the boulder and screamed off into the distance. That arm and shoulder went numb for an instant as he slumped against the rock.
“Kid!” Lace cried out in alarm.
“I’m all right.” He gritted his teeth.
Sensation came flooding back into his arm, bringing with it pain. He focused on that pain, drew it to him, embraced it, and took strength from the anger it caused to well up inside him.
“Roll, damn you!” he yelled as he summoned all the strength he had left and heaved against the boulder one last time.
With a grating of stone against stone, it moved.
And just as The Kid had suspected, that was all it took. Suddenly overbalanced, the boulder tipped forward, and went over with a crash and a roar. The Kid lost his balance, too, and fell as the massive rock toppled away from him.
The blood was pounding so hard in his head he couldn’t hear much of anything else. But he was aware of Lace grabbing his collar and hauling him to his feet.
“We have to pull back!” she shouted at him.
The Kid realized why as he saw bullets smacking into the bluff around them. The outlaws in the rocks below had turned around and were blazing away at the two of them.
The attack didn’t last but a moment. Latch’s men suddenly had a much bigger threat than The Kid and Lace to deal with. The boulder he had dislodged struck another rock and started it rolling, then another and another as the slide spread out and rumbled down the slope.
The Kid and Lace threw themselves behind some brush and watched as dust billowed into the air from the falling rocks. They couldn’t see the outlaws below anymore, but even over the racket of the rock slide, they heard screams from the men who were caught in its path.
A bullet sliced through the branches near them. The man on the ledge above was still firing at them, but now that they had moved he didn’t have a very good angle.
Lace said, “If I could just get my hands on my rifle ...”
Both Winchesters were lying where their owners couldn’t get to them without exposing themselves to the fire from the man on the ledge.
The Kid put a hand on Lace’s shoulder. “Wait. There’s no use risking your life. If we stay right here, he can’t hit us.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Speaking of that, how bad are you hit, Kid?”
He looked down at his upper left arm. Blood stained his sleeve, but not a lot of it. He reached inside his shirt and carefully explored the wound with his fingers, wincing as he did so. “I’ll be all right. It’s barely a scratch. Hurt like blazes for a minute, but it’s already better. I can use my arm with no trouble.”
“You were lucky.”
“I know.”
Luck was one thing that seemed to follow him. He’d had more than his share of it ... both good and bad.
Lace handed The Kid’s gun back to him and reloaded her revolver. The rumble was fading below them as the avalanche played out. Dust still filled the air, so they couldn’t see if any of the outlaws had survived.
The Kid’s hand tightened around the Colt’s grip. If any of Latch’s men were still alive, he and Lace would soon have a fight on their hands.
As the dust cleared, several men on horseback emerged from some trees farther downslope. The Kid recognized Asa Culhane in the lead. The Gustaffsons, Thad and Bill, were with him.
The Kid wasn’t the only one who saw the men from the posse. The outlaw on the ledge spotted them, too, and opened fire.
While the man was distracted, The Kid rolled out into the open and grabbed his rifle. He came up on a knee, lifted the repeater to his shoulder, and fired twice as he aimed up at the ledge.
The outlaw cried out as the bullets ripped through him. He dropped his Winchester and fell, landing with his head and one arm hung limply over the edge.
Lace dashed out from cover and grabbed up her rifle as well. She whirled toward the boulders where the other outlaws had been hidden.
No shots came from down there. The avalanche had wiped the area clean, succeeding beyond what The Kid had hoped. He saw several huddled, gory shapes that had once been men, but that was all.
“Morgan!” Culhane shouted. “Morgan, is that you?”
The Kid lifted his rifle above his head and waved it back and forth a couple times in a signal for the Ranger and his companions to come ahead.
When Culhane and the Gustaffson boys rode up to them, Culhane stared at Lace and exclaimed, “Good Lord, Miss Morrison, were you right in the middle of this ruckus?”
“Circumstances left me no choice, Mr. Culhane,” she told him.
“I reckon not. I reckon you weren’t lyin’ when you said you knew how to shoot, too.” Culhane turned to The Kid and nodded to the bloodstained shirt sleeve. “How bad are you hit?”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” The Kid assured him. “What about the rest of the men?”
A few shots still rang out from the other side of the canyon. The outlaws over there hadn’t given up, but it sounded like they were having trouble finding targets.
“I don’t know,” Culhane said in reply to The Kid’s question. “They’re scattered all to hell and gone, up and down this canyon. Looked like we lost at least a couple men, but other than that, I ain’t sure.”
The Kid nodded. Culhane’s assessment agreed with his.
A bullet suddenly whined overhead.
“Those varmints on the other side are tryin’ to get the range on us,” Culhane went on. “We’d better hunt some cover.”
The Ranger was right. The Kid knew they were in range of the riflemen on the other side of the canyon. Although it would be a long shot from there, long shots sometimes found their targets.
“Climb up behind me, ma’am,” Culhane offered, taking his left foot out of the stirrup so Lace could mount. He grasped her hand and helped her swing up behind him.
“You can ride with me,” Thad told The Kid, who accepted the invitation. The five of them rode quickly back into the trees so the gunmen on the other side of the canyon couldn’t see them.
Safely hidden, they dismounted.
Culhane took his hat off and shook his head in seeming amazement. “It looks to me like the two of you wiped out the whole bunch on this side. How in the world did you do it?”
“We were lucky,” The Kid replied, repeating what Lace had said a few minutes earlier.
Culhane grunted. “Lucky ... and mighty good shots, I’d say. I don’t reckon I’ve ever seen the like. When I heard all them rocks tumblin’ down, I knew somethin’ was goin’ on, so I figured I’d better check it out.” Culhane nodded toward the Gustaffsons. “Ran into these two boys on the way up here. They had the same idea.”
“And we were looking for Nick, too,” Thad said. “Have you seen him?”
The Kid nodded. “He’s all right. He got winged in that opening volley, but Miss Morrison tended to him.” He pointed. “We left him in the trees, a couple hundred yards back that way.”
“It might be a good idea if we went back to make sure nothing else happened to him,” Lace suggested.
Culhane agreed. “Let’s go.”
Leading the horses, they started through the woods. Sporadic gunfire still popped and banged.
The ambush had turned into a standoff.
Reaching the spot where they had left Nick Burton, The Kid saw with alarm that the young man was gone.
“Is this the right place?” Lace asked as she frowned worriedly. “I would have sworn that was the log where he was lying. I gave him some whiskey to dull the pain of being wounded, and he sort of ... passed out.”
“This is the place,” The Kid said. “He’s got to be around here some—”
A sudden crackle of brush behind them was followed by a man’s harsh voice ordering, “Don’t move!”
Swinging around anyway, the five of them froze at the sight of an outlaw standing there, one arm locked cruelly around Nick’s throat holding him up while the other hand pressed the barrel of a revolver against the youngster’s head.
Chapter 22
“Take it easy, mister,” Culhane said. “You got to know if you kill that boy, you won’t make it outta here alive.”
“Neither will he,” the gunman said. “And some of you may not, either. Just give me one of those horses, and I’ll light a shuck out of here. I’ll let the boy go when I’m out of range.”
Culhane shook his head. “Can’t do it. I’m sworn to uphold the law, and that don’t include lettin’ a wanted outlaw ride away, hostage or no hostage.”
The man’s eyes widened in disbelief and anger. “Are you loco?” he demanded. “I’ll kill this little bastard! I swear I will!”
“Don’t ... don’t listen to him ... Ranger,” Nick croaked, forcing the words past the arm across his throat. “Go ahead and ... shoot him!”
The outlaw looked at Nick and snarled, “Why, you little—”
As soon as the man was distracted, The Kid’s hand came up, moving too fast for the eye to follow. His gun blasted, and the outlaw’s head snapped back sharply as the bullet bored through his brain and exploded out the back of his skull.
The slug’s impact sent the man flying backward, arms outflung. His gun sailed out of his hand, unfired. With a heavy thud, the dead outlaw landed on his back.
Bill Gustaffson let out a whistle of admiration. “That was
some
shootin’!” he exclaimed.
The Kid had faced a similar situation a short time earlier, when Ortiz had been threatening Lace with his rifle. He didn’t shoot then.
This time, close enough to the outlaw, The Kid was confident he could make the shot and kill the outlaw instantly, before the man could pull the trigger.
And that was how it had worked out, happening so fast Nick was left standing there, his eyes open wide, remaining motionless for a couple seconds as if the outlaw were still holding the gun on him.
“Ohhhh.” Nick’s knees buckled, and he fell to the ground.
Thad and Bill sprang forward to help him.
Culhane looked over at The Kid through eyes gone narrow with suspicion. “I’m startin’ to think you’re some sort of gunslinger, Morgan. You sure there ain’t no wanted posters out on you?”
“I’m positive,” The Kid said as he replaced the spent round in his Colt. He didn’t look at Lace, thinking she might be grinning.
Culhane didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t press the issue. He turned to the Gustaffsons, who were kneeling on either side of Nick. “Is he all right?”
“I think he just fainted,” Thad said.
“I might faint, too, if a bullet came as close to my ear as that one had to come to his,” Bill added.
“Let’s get him sitting up.”
The brothers lifted Nick into a sitting position, and Thad started slapping his face lightly to bring him around.
Culhane turned to look in the direction of the gunmen on the other side of the canyon. “Most of the posse’s still pinned down. You reckon there’s any chance we can get over there and do to that bunch what you did to the varmints over here?”
“I doubt if we’ll find boulders we can use to start another avalanche,” The Kid said. “That would be asking for too much luck.”
Culhane rubbed his jaw and nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that. But they’ve probably figured out by now their pards on this side are done for. If we could do some more damage, they might decide to cut their losses and make a run for it.”
“Maybe,” The Kid said with a shrug. “Or maybe not. Either way, the more of them we can get rid of, the better the odds for us.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’. I hate to ask it of a fella who’s wounded—”
“This?” The Kid gestured toward his bullet-creased arm. “This is nothing to worry about.”
Culhane nodded and turned to Lace. “Now, ma’am, as for you—”
“Are you going to start giving me orders now, Ranger Culhane?” she asked. “As much as I’ve already pitched in to help?”
“Well, now, ma’am, that was what you might call an extreme situation—”
“And it still is,” Lace broke in again. “I may not have started out with any personal stake in this, but those outlaws have shot at me, threatened me with death and worse, and killed innocent men.”
“They’ve done even worse than that before you joined up with us, ma’am,” Bill Gustaffson said as he helped his brother steady Nick Burton.
“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Lace said. “So I’m angry, Ranger Culhane, and I intend to do whatever I can to help deal with those villains!”
“I never was much of a hand for arguin’ with womenfolks.” Culhane sighed. “So I reckon you can come along, but for pete’s sake, be careful, will you?”
Lace smiled at him. “I’ll try, Ranger,” she promised.
The Kid wasn’t sure about that. Caution wasn’t a natural part of Lace McCall’s personality. But he would do what he could to keep her from being too foolhardy.
Anyway, there had been times when her recklessness came in mighty handy.
Culhane turned to Nick. “How about you, son? How are you doin’ now?”
Nick looked pale and shaken, but he was standing mostly on his own two feet again. “I ... I guess I’m okay, Mr. Culhane. My arm hurts where I got shot.”
“I expect it does, and it will for a while.” Culhane nodded.
“But I can get around all right,” Nick went on. “I think I can even ride a horse. If you want me to help you go after the others, I ... I’ll do my best.”
Culhane clapped a hand on the shoulder of the young man’s unwounded arm. “I know you will. Where’s your horse?”
“All of the horses ought to be around here somewhere.” The Kid whistled, hoping that would bring the buckskin to him. A moment later, the horse pushed through the brush, followed by the horses belonging to Lace and Nick.
When everyone was mounted, Culhane said, “We’ll work our way back to the head of the canyon and cross over to the other side there. Maybe they won’t see us comin’ and we can get behind the varmints.”
“That’s what Miss Morrison and I did on this side,” The Kid said. “It worked out pretty well.”
That was an understatement. They couldn’t hope to be that fortunate again.
The riders moved out through the trees. Culhane took the lead, followed by the Gustaffson brothers, then Nick, then Lace and The Kid bringing up the rear.
After they had gone a short distance, Nick dropped back a little so he was riding beside The Kid. “Mr. Morgan ... can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, Nick,” The Kid said.
“When ... when you shot that outlaw ... you were aiming at him, right, not me?”
The Kid smiled. “Sure. What reason would I have to tr y to shoot you?”
“It’s just that ... well, I swear, I
felt
that bullet go right past my ear ...”
“That’s because it did,” Lace said. “That’s the only way Mr. Morgan could kill that outlaw fast enough to keep him from killing you.”
Nick swallowed hard. “Then that was just ... I don’t think anybody’s ever made a shot like that before, Mr. Morgan.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” The Kid said, thinking of some of the stories he had heard about his father. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if sometime during The Drifter’s long and perilous career as a gunfighter, Frank Morgan had made a shot every bit as amazing ... or more.
After riding along in silence for a few minutes, Nick said, “I don’t remember much for a while after I got shot. One of you patched up my arm for me, right?”
“I did.” Lace smiled at him. “I also gave you a couple drinks of whiskey, and you went out like a light.”
Nick’s earnest young face flushed with embarrassment. “I’ve never, uh, had much to drink in my life. I guess I’m not used to it.”
“That’s all right, Nick,” The Kid said. “You’re young yet. You’ve got plenty of time.”
“I’m not
that
young,” Nick said with a scowl as he glanced at Lace. Clearly, he didn’t like the idea of her thinking of him as an inexperienced kid.
The ground started to climb under the horses’ hooves. They were getting close to the head of the canyon, The Kid thought.
Culhane turned around in his saddle to ask, “Ever ybody got plenty of ammunition?”
He got affirmative answers from the other five riders. A minute later, they came up out of the canyon and could see through the low hills back to the west, all the way to the plains where they had ridden for days on the trail of Warren Latch and his gang.
“The ground’s pretty rough over there,” Culhane said as they reined in. “We may have to dismount and work our way along that ridge on foot.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” The Kid said. “It’ll be quieter that way. Latch’s men will be less likely to hear us coming.”
Thad asked, “You think this man Latch will be with the rest of them? He’s the head of the gang, right?”
Culhane said, “That’s right, but I’ve got a hunch he ain’t with ’em. I’ll bet he left some of his men here to stop us while he and the rest of the gang kept goin’.”
“That’s the way I see it, too,” The Kid said. “We’ll catch up to him, but probably not today.”
“I don’t care how long it takes,” Thad said, “as long as he pays for what he and his men did.”
“You can count on that, son,” Culhane assured him. “Come on.”
The canyon was about a quarter mile wide. They started riding toward the far side, but they had only covered about half that distance when a flicker of movement caught The Kid’s eye.
Before he could call out a warning to the others, seven or eight riders came out of the trees up ahead, charging toward them with guns blazing.