“Where do you think you’re going?”
He swung the log. Faith ducked. The log sang through the air over her head.
Twisting around, she slammed her right elbow into Thornton’s right side, evoking another thundering howl, and, using both hands and moving quickly, wrenched the log free of his grasp. She swung around toward Thornton, arms stretched out in front of her, both hands on the log.
The end of the log caught Thornton low on his left cheek and carved a long, deep gash across his lips. Thornton’s head flew sideways.
“Butcher!” Faith cried.
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she swung the log back in the opposite direction, and it caught Thornton straight across the mouth. Lips bursting like a ripe tomato, Thornton’s head jerked up, and he gave a muffled, exasperated “Hnghah!” as he stumbled back, hands flailing toward the desk edge.
Holding the edge of the desk with one hand, he teetered slowly sideways toward the floor, his eyes fluttering.
Feeling blood dribble down the side of her head, Faith moved toward him, raising the club once more with both hands. She gritted her teeth and savored the sight of the man—bloody faced and horror-struck—staring back at her beseechingly.
Only his eyes begged for mercy. His jaws slid around brokenly.
“I’m no witch,” Faith snarled, her own voice reaching her ears as if from far away, the roadhouse manager’s image shifting this way and that before her. “All your bad luck you brought on yourself, you simple son of a bitch!”
With that, she raised the log above her head.
Thornton’s eyes grew wide as he silently begged for mercy. His mouth opened but only blood spewed across his lips.
Faith smashed the log down across his skull with a resolute thud. Thornton fell heavily to the floor at the base of the desk—screamless, his slender legs spasming and his broken jaws clattering as they opened and closed of their own accord.
Faith grabbed her pounding head and glanced around. The flames had spread to three walls and were snaking across the ceiling toward the wall bordering the hall.
Smoke hung thick as dirty cotton, stinging her eyes and nostrils.
She turned away from Thornton’s still-spasming body and began moving toward the door. She made it only halfway before her eyes went dark, her knees turned to putty, and she dropped with a gasp.
Chapter 25
Yakima smelled the smoke on the cold wind.
Galloping west along the trail cleaving Thornton’s Canyon, he glanced back at Brody Harms hunched atop his mustang. Since it was twilight, the half-breed couldn’t see much but the last light reflected in Harms’s glasses and his exposed white teeth as he leaned forward with a pained grimace to clutch his wounded thigh.
“I’m gonna race on ahead!”
“I’ll be right behind you!” Harms shouted, his voice taut with resolve.
Yakima heeled Wolf into a ground-eating gallop, firs and pines passing in a blur along both sides of the trail, the silver-glinting stream rushing over rocks and deadfall logs to his left. He passed an abandoned prospector’s cabin grown up with shrubs, and braced himself as he traced what he recognized as the last, long curve in the trail before the clearing in which Thornton’s Roadhouse sat.
An anxious scowl bit into his forehead as he peered skyward, the low, dark clouds touched with flickering umber and tendrils of white smoke. Hunched low in the saddle, he and Wolf raced around the last dogleg in the trail, bringing the clearing up in front of them.
Thornton’s sat to the right, flames licking out a second-story window with white smoke pouring out around them. The flames were leaping up above the window to the roof and down the wall toward the porch below it. Wan light lit the first-story windows, including the large one left of the door and under the porch’s sloping, shake-shingled roof.
Yakima’s chest tightened and his gut rolled as he turned the horse to the roadhouse. Wolf was still lunging forward when Yakima leaped out of the saddle, lost his footing, fell, and rolled.
He came up pulling his .44 out from beneath his coat and running in long strides toward the roadhouse, the dragon’s breath of the flames wheezing and roaring above his head.
He could hear men shouting inside as he leaped up the porch steps in a single bound. Thumbing his Colt’s hammer back, he tripped the front door’s latch perfectly as he smashed his shoulder against the door panel. The door flew open, slamming back against the wall, and just over the threshold, Yakima dropped to his knee and raked his eyes around the dim room into which the smoke from upstairs was seeping.
“Hey!” a man shouted in surprise—a shadowy figure wheeling toward Yakima from near the large, bullet-shaped woodstove.
Cold steel flashed low on the man’s silhouette, and Yakima’s Colt barked and leaped in his hand. The man screamed and stumbled backward, twisting sideways, his own revolver exploding into the ceiling. Another figure at the top of the stairs, wheeling toward Yakima, angled a rifle down the stairs.
The rifle flashed and cracked. The slug barked into the puncheons three feet in front of Yakima. Yakima rolled as another explosion followed the rasp of a cocking lever. The second slug tore into the floor to Yakima’s left.
Yakima rolled onto his belly, angling his Colt straight out from his chest and aiming up the stairs.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
The .44’s explosions echoed around the saloon hall. At the top of the stairs, the man with the rifle grunted. There was a smashing clatter as the rifle hit the floor and the man rolled down the stairs, cursing.
His voice trailed off as he followed his still-rolling rifle down the stairs. He was still rolling when Yakima scrambled back to his feet and bolted forward, yelling, “Faith!”
The dead rifleman hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Yakima leaped over the man’s bulky body, gaining the stairs on the third step and taking the rest three at a time, holding his cocked revolver out before him.
He turned at the top and ran down the hall, yelling for Faith and squinting against the smoke and flames seeping around a closed door halfway down the hall. Turning the doorknob quickly, he pushed the door open.
The blast of fresh air from the hall made the burning walls and ceiling inside the room growl like a suddenly aroused lion, instantly gaining intensity. The searing heat pushed against Yakima, soaking his shirt with sweat.
“Faith?”
Crouching, he darted into the room. Two figures lay on the floor—one belly-down, blond hair fanned across her head. Thornton lay beyond Faith. The roadhouse manager was on his side, mouth half open as though in midspeech, his death-glazed eyes orange with leaping flames.
Yakima dropped to a knee over Faith and touched her shoulders. She jerked with a start and a muffled gasp.
“It’s Yakima.” Gently, he turned her over, winced at the blood streaming down from her right temple. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Yakima snaked one arm under her neck, the other under her knees, and rose. Tears and sweat from the heat and smoke streamed down his face as he hurried to the hall door. He started out, stopped, and turned back into the room, where Thornton lay seemingly staring at him with glassy, orange eyes.
“Burn in hell, bastard.”
With Faith in his arms, Yakima turned and went out, striding quickly down the smoke-filled hall, then down the stairs, holding Faith secure in his arms. She groaned and turned her head and tried lifting a hand to his face.
“Easy,” Yakima said as he gained the bottom of the stairs.
He stepped over the dead rifleman and, glancing at the tattoo-faced man lying prone near the stove, continued across the saloon hall, out the front door, and onto the porch. He eased down the steps and walked into the hard-packed yard lit by the growing fire in the roadhouse’s second story.
He gently eased Faith onto the ground and leaned over her. His face only inches from hers, he slid her hair back from her cheeks. “Faith. Can you hear me?”
She groaned and coughed as her chest spasmed. Her eyes opened partway. They had a confused, faraway look before they finally focused on Yakima. The corners of her mouth rose, and her gaze softened.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have bought us more time.”
Yakima shook his head and kissed her cheek. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. We have plenty of time. I’ll get you back to Denver, look up a sawbones.”
She placed a finger against his lips. “I love you, Yakima. I always would have.”
“We’ll go back to Arizona, rebuild the cabin.”
She smiled up at him. Tears shone in her eyes.
“Thornton’s dead. You got him.” Yakima slid his hands under her once more. “I’m gonna get you on a horse, and . . .”
As he began to rise from his knees with Faith in his arms, her head wobbled to one side. Her eyes fluttered and turned glassy. Yakima stared down at her, his tongue dry, his mouth open as if to speak but not saying anything until finally her name brushed over his lips like the rustling of a parched, inner breeze.
She lay slack and silent, her head tipped slightly to one side as though staring up at the room in which Yakima had found her.
He shook her slightly. “Faith?”
Her head wobbled and her arms, hanging slack, jostled, her fingertips brushing the ground, her boot heels making a soft scraping sound in the dirt.
Yakima knelt stone-faced with shock, staring down at Faith lying still in his arms.
Vaguely, as though the sounds came from another plane, he heard a man shout, “Breed!” Boots thumped above the roar of the flames spreading down from the second-story window to the porch roof.
Another voice that he absently registered as that of Brody Harms cried, “Yakima, look out!”
There was the crackle of gunfire behind him and ahead. Yakima did not respond to the shots. He continued staring down at Faith, his heart thudding dully.
Boots thumped and spurs rang like cracked bells.
Again, guns flashed in the night. A man groaned. Yakima turned slowly to see a figure stumble down the porch steps and fall facedown in the yard.
The man’s head rose from the ground, the cross tattooed into his forehead seeming to pulse and glow, and then there was another gun flash and bark.
The man’s head dropped like a stone.
Yakima turned back to his woman.
“Faith?” He supported her head with his knee and one hand while smoothing her hair back from her temple with the other.
Scuffing sounds rose as Brody Harms, holding his smoking revolver down low in his right hand, ambled toward Yakima, dragging his wounded right leg. The man dropped to a knee. His broad chest rose and fell sharply as he breathed. He said nothing.
Yakima looked at him. The fire danced in the Easterner’s dusty spectacles, but they could not conceal the lines of horror etched like spokes around his eyes. He reached out to lay a finger to Faith’s neck. After a moment, he raised his stricken eyes to Yakima.