Authors: P. A. Bechko
Amanda’s gun barked again. Old Ben’s attention had to be centered on her now and Hollander broke from cover, running with long, ground-eating strides for his destination. The time was too short. He slid into the dust and thin brush as Amanda stopped shooting the second time to reload. Nothing came his way. Amanda was taking the heat, lead flying her way in a swarm. He’d make the slot between the hills on the next run.
She was sweating and she hugged rock like she was about to meld with it. Gunfire came steadily from that hilltop. Bullets clipped near enough to make her heart flutter. Nonetheless, she drew a steadying breath and broke cover to interrupt the deluge of lead he laid down from the opposite hillside with a vengeance of her own.
Her first couple of shots snapped off close together as Hollander made the notch, sliding down the opposite side. He holstered his weapon to scramble along the down side of the ridge.
Gunshots echoed in his ears a bit slower now. She was conserving their ammunition and keeping herself tucked in.
Hollander cut a path toward where the outlaw lay in the shelter of some large boulders and thick scrub brush. He spotted the man’s horse tied half way up the slope, ready for a quick get-away and put himself between Miller and his horse.
Jaw clenched, Hollander edged up close to a twisted old tree, drew his gun and leveled it at the rankly attired highwayman sprawled in the dust.
“That’s enough,” Hollander said with quiet authority. The weapon in his hand clicked sharply as he cocked it. “Drop your gun and push it away from you.”
Hollander’s words froze the outlaw where he lay. He hung on to his gun a few moments longer, exposed to his enemy, weighing the odds.
He wasn’t stupid or suicidal and he wasn’t dead yet. He had a few tricks of his own and there’d be another time. He laid down the six-gun, withdrawing his hand before he rose to his knees to face Hollander.
“Mister,” the outlaw said, “if you think you’re going to take Ben Miller in for some reward somewhere, you can forget it. Why don’t we just separate now and call it quits?”
“Reward would be a nice bonus for our time and trouble,” Hollander admitted, “but that’s not the reason we’re taking you in.”
Miller squinted small, dark eyes at Hollander. “I know you from somewhere?”
Hollander retrieved the outlaw’s gun, keeping a sharp eye on him all the while, then fired two quick shots, to signal Amanda before showing himself on the hillside from where his prisoner had been firing.
“I got him,” Hollander called down to Amanda. “Bring the horses around and come on up.”
Amanda emerged from the cover of the cluster of rocks and waved, then started toward the horses.
Chapter 16
“Stay where you are,” Hollander warned quietly as Miller started to rise up off his knees. “You just keep pondering where you’ve seen me before. It’ll come to you.”
Glaring at Hollander, Miller sank back until he sat on his heels, his obsidian eyes fixed on Hollander who stood over him, gun never wavering.
Amanda barely glanced toward the dark, stocky outlaw when she walked up, leading the horses. She stopped a prudent distance away in spite of the fact the outlaw was on his knees. She gave her full attention to Hollander, unable to resist a smile with a faint touch of smug satisfaction.
“We’ve got him!”
“Just have to get him back to Phoenix.”
“What the hell,” Miller muttered under his breath, “It’s a woman! You think you’re getting me all the way to Phoenix with a woman for a partner?”
Miller started to laugh, a grating hee-haw of a sound.
“See if the money is in the saddlebags,” Hollander told Amanda.
Miller was still laughing, shaking his head. “She all that was down there shooting at me? A woman?”
When she stretched and stood on her toes to peer inside the saddlebags, he managed a closer look. Her hair was a wild tangle of black caught beneath what Miller recognized as Julio’s old hat, the one that had been shot off when they had tried to rob the stage. The face was delicate, like fine porcelain, but the skin was darkly tanned. And the eyes, there was something distinctively familiar about the eyes.
“The gawddamn bank!” Miller’s memory came back in a flash. “You was working at that bank in Phoenix!”
“There’s quite a bit of the money here,” Amanda ignored the outlaw’s outburst, addressing Hollander. “Of course Berglund’s share and the other man’s are missing.”
“Little girls shouldn’t carry such big guns,” Miller prodded. “Sheet, they shouldn’t tote no gun at all.”
Amanda turned her frosty gaze upon him. “Because of you we were supposed to hang for murder and bank robbery. We didn’t happen to like the idea, so we came after you.”
“Wasn’t just me. I had my boys and a little help from the inside, if you know what I mean.”
Amanda exchanged looks with Hollander. “We pretty much know it all.”
“Know Berglund planned the whole thing, do you? Know he wanted that bank of his to go under? That banker’s one smart hombre. Had it planned out real good. You know he even figured to leave town in disgrace after the bank folded and set up to do it again somewhere’s else?” Miller started to laugh.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you. We’re dragging a good share of the money and your warm carcass back to Phoenix, the very sight of which should send Berglund into a panic.”
“Don’t bet on it, Missy. He’s a cool one that son.”
“Exactly why he’s going to want you dead and in the ground real fast, so I wouldn’t count on him helping you. He’ll probably help form the lynch mob that’ll hang you.”
“There’s a lot of desert between here and Phoenix,” Miller growled. “Besides, I didn’t kill nobody. That was Rafael, and he’s probably down in Santa Cruz by now. Got hisself a woman there, and all that money to spend.”
Miller grinned. “You figure to go after him too? Go on ahead. I’ll just wait for you here.”
He didn’t worry about giving away Rafael’s location. It was a good stall. Now he needed to get at the hide-out gun in his boot. He’d take the man out fast, before he had time to think about him maybe having such a thing tucked away. There’d be time for the woman later. He’d bank on the fact that she damn sure wouldn’t have the stomach to face another gun head on.
“On your feet,” Hollander snapped.
Miller was uneasy. The fella with the gun was the cautious sort. He’d have to move quick when his opportunity showed.
A heavy black cloud rolled across the sun as the bank robber climbed to his feet and a distant roll of thunder rumbled across the parched land. He grinned again. A spring storm was headed their way. They came quickly here, almost instantly. Opportunity as about to knock.
Ground tied with nothing to hold them fast, the horses shied uneasily. Hollander growled an oath.
“Get a hold of those animals,” he said to Amanda. “And be quick about it.”
Amanda frowned, but she turned quickly, laying her hand on the reins of two of the horses the same instant thunder boomed loud as cannon shot vibrating the air like the skin of a drum.
The horse Amanda didn’t have a hold of bolted. The other two reared, tugging frantically in opposite directions, striking out with their hoofs until she dropped the reins and jumped back.
Hollander’s attention strayed toward her and gave Miller that single moment of distraction. His grabbed the butt of the abbreviated .38 hideout gun in his boot and didn’t bother to consider that there might be a better time.
Amanda’s newly discovered instincts were right on the money when she tore her gaze from the scattering horses to glance quickly in Miller’s direction . The pale, light hair on her forearms rose like wheat before the wind when she spotted that snubbed up hand gun aimed right at Hollander. Lightening flashed and the shiny metal of Miller’s gun gleamed in the sizzling light as Amanda’s hand dropped for the six-gun in her holster. Time shuddered to a mind-numbing crawl.
Amanda was at a bad angle, off balance, and on a steep hillside. But reflex took over when she drew the gun. She braced, shifted, dropped the barrel a hair, loosened muscles to cushion the recoil and squeezed the trigger in the same instant, her weapon’s roar competition for the building storm.
Hollander saw it coming. He cursed himself for seven kinds of a fool and grabbed for his own gun. It was already too late, but he was just too bull-headed to accept that was possible. He could almost see the knuckle of the outlaw’s finger turning white as it squeezed the trigger. Guns exploded simultaneously, a cacophony of little import against the backdrop of rolling thunder.
Hot, searing pain ripped through Hollander’s left shoulder, spinning him around and cursing his aim. He twisted in mid-air looking for a clear shot and watched in disbelief as the outlaw pitched backwards, a startled expression on his face, hide-out gun clattering down the hillside though Hollander hadn’t fired his weapon.
Doubled over in shock at the pain, Hollander stared at the fallen gunman where he had dropped. The man was dead, no doubt about it.
Amanda gulped breath, the smoking gun still clenched in her hand. Her gut wrenched and she spun away, afraid of bringing up what she’d had for lunch while a warning bell of alarm clanged at the back of her mind. How many times had Hollander warned her? Don’t turn your back on a wounded man. Jesus! She couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet from Miller when she had fired. She’d seen the blood and the way he’d gone down. She wasn’t turning her back on a wounded man. He was dead.
She had killed a man. Horror and revulsion arose, twin phantoms, to plague her. Then she began to pull herself together. With trembling hand, she holstered her weapon, then turned back to face squarely what she’d done.
Neckerchief pressed tightly to the wound in his shoulder, Hollander approached the outlaw sprawled in the dust. He bent over the body, then rose with a sigh, facing Amanda who could not keep her eyes off Miller.
“He’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Well, dammit, I thought I taught you to shoot better than that,” Hollander growled, holstering his gun. “You just killed our only live witness.”
A little dazed, Amanda stared at him in disbelief. “We still have the money,” she managed, “that should prove something.”
“What? That we’re in possession of the money they say we stole?”
“I just killed a man and I did it to save your life. Could you stop criticizing long enough to at least admit you’re glad to be alive?”
Sympathy, Hollander knew well, was something she needed none of at the moment. Besides, though it wasn’t her fault. the way things were going, he wasn’t sure he wanted to give it anyway.
“What are we going to do about your shoulder?” Amanda asked tartly.
“As soon as I take care of him,” Hollander gestured in Miller’s direction, “you’re going to dig the bullet out.”
“But I never . . .”
“Just think of it as another one of your lessons. It’s high time you learn,” Hollander said with his usual directness.
“I think I better help you with him—your shoulder.”
Gazing down into her pained green eyes, he nodded. “All right.”
Together, they found a place in soft sand and buried their once only live witness, outlaw Ben Miller. They gave him the respect he didn’t deserve, stacking some rocks over the grave to discourage desert scavengers.
Some distance away from where the man was buried, they set up camp and Amanda got her first stomach-wrenching lesson in separating a piece of lead from human flesh. Her only surgical instruments a very sharp Arkansas toothpick and her fingers and Hollander’s only concession to the pain a bit of wood he found to bite down on, she accomplished it. Her fingers slippery with his blood, her forehead drenched in sweat, she laid the knife aside and fervently hoped to God she’d managed it without tearing up something vital inside his shoulder. Something which would leave him crippled and cursing her for life.
She had barely tossed the misshapen chunk of lead aside when the storm broke upon them with all its fury, ran slashing with the force of wind-driven needles and lightning illuminating the sky in a continual, pulsating glow. At the first onslaught, Amanda lay half across Hollander trying to break the force of the wind-driven rain. Hollander curled up in a ball against the pounding fury, groaning imprecations against an unkind nature that flung this at them at such a time.
After the first startling moments Amanda realized her efforts were puny against the storm and leapt to her feet snatching their bedrolls from behind their saddles. She flipped the canvas ground cloths from their bedrolls and, working swiftly, tossed a blanket over Hollander, then stretched the canvas over him in a double layer. She tied the horses fast, then peeled the saddles off them one at a time, using the bulk to weigh the edges of the canvas creating a snug cave.
When she crawled in, they were both pretty much drenched. The canvas stank and they sat hunched beneath its damp shelter listening to the rain fall above their heads for a long time. The silence between them was as heavy as the air they breathed. They had come too far to give up now. Amanda gave a deep sigh.