Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter (24 page)

Luke broke into a run. He circled back to the trees where he had left his horse and untied the animal. Leading the horse, he hurried toward the back of the stone house.

He was counting off the seconds in his head as he moved. He knew he couldn't count on anything more than an approximation of the time the Rurales were supposed to wait before they fired those shots. By the time he reached 300, he was crouched next to an old shed behind the superintendent's residence. The house didn't have a back door, but there were a couple windows on that side.

Leaving the horse ground-hitched by the shed, Luke stole closer to the house. He pressed against the wall beneath one of the windows and listened. The room was dark and quiet, and after another minute had gone by, he reached up, gripped the sill, and hauled himself in.

Light came along a corridor from another room. He drew both revolvers and crept toward it, pausing outside the door.

The crackle of flames from around the corner told him there was a fireplace in the room. Someone had built a fire to ward off the chill of the mountain night. He heard voices talking in English.

Luke looked around. He was too much in plain sight. When the Rurales staged their distraction and the outlaws rushed out, he might be spotted. He eased into a doorless alcove that must have been some sort of storage area at one time. Hinges indicated that a door had closed it off once, but that panel was gone.

The only important thing was that the shadows inside the alcove were thick enough to keep him from being seen. He stood in stygian darkness and continued counting the seconds. He had reached 500 and was closing in on 600.

Three rapid shots hammered through the night, followed by two more. Shouts sounded inside the house. Swift footsteps rattled on the plank floors. A door slammed open and more shouts came from outside.

Then all hell broke loose. Gunshots, yelled curses, howls of pain . . . all the sounds of a battle going on out there.

That was his chance, Luke thought. He grasped both guns, stepped out of the alcove, and swung around the corner into the room where the light came from. Instantly, he spotted three men, leveled the Remingtons at them, and barked, “Don't move!”

Actually there were four men in the room, Luke realized a second later—Creighton, Kelly, Almanzar, and Lieutenant Sanchez. He hadn't seen the young Rurale officer because he was lying on the floor where it appeared Almanzar had been kicking him.

The little renegade stared at Luke in amazement for a heartbeat, then exclaimed, “You!”

“You know this bastard, Almanzar?” Kelly growled. He stood tensely in front of the fireplace as if he wanted to slap leather, but he and Creighton and Almanzar were all grouped together so that Luke could cover them at the same time.

“He seems familiar to me as well,” Creighton said in the voice that seemed so odd coming from an Apache warrior. “But I can't quite place—Rio Rojo! The man in the hotel window, correct?”

“That's right,” Luke said. “My name's Luke Jensen.”

“And you've been on our trail ever since then? Remarkable!”

Almanzar pointed a trembling finger at Luke. “He ruined everything for me in La Farva! We should kill him!”

“Feel free to reach for your gun, Captain,” Creighton said. “I'm sure Mr. Jensen would be glad to kill you . . . and that would give Gunner and me the time to kill him.”

“You'd be betting that I can't get all three of you,” Luke said with a ghost of a smile.

“It's a good bet,” Kelly said. Like Almanzar, he was shaking a little from anger and the desire to kill.

Creighton leaned his head toward the door. “I assume you're responsible for that disturbance?”

The shooting and yelling continued outside.

Luke said, “I figured it might be a good idea to have some sort of distraction going on while I got in here and found the lieutenant.”

“So you killed the guards in the barracks and freed the prisoners.” Creighton nodded. “A sound strategy. It would have been wise, too, to start shooting as soon as you stepped in here. Why didn't you?”

“A couple reasons,” Luke replied honestly. “I didn't know exactly where Lieutenant Sanchez was, and I didn't want him catching a stray slug. And the other reason, mister . . . is you.”

Creighton's swarthy face was as stolid as ever, but a flash of amusement twinkled in his dark eyes. “You're mystified by me, eh?”

“I heard you talk outside. I figured I had to find out how an Apache—Mescalero, right?—wound up with a Boston accent.”

“I prefer to think of it as a Harvard accent, since I spent a year there. And as for your guess, yes, I am part of the Mescalero band, but only half. My father was Alexander Creighton. Have you heard of him?”

“I can't say as I have,” Luke replied.

“He was a railroad man. A tycoon, some people called him. He had a mansion in Phoenix. My mother worked there as a maid. She was captured in a cavalry raid when she was just a girl and lived for years among the whites. Despite having a wife of his own, my father fancied her. . . .” Creighton shrugged. “When I came along he named me Sebastian and tried to see to it that I was educated and raised as white, even though he never officially claimed me as his own. He even sent me back east to college. Unfortunately, the other side of my heritage was stronger than he or even I realized. It came out one day during a disagreement with a fellow student. When he attacked me, I reacted instinctively.”

“You killed him?”

“Actually, no. I did scalp him, but he survived. The university tends to frown on behavior like that, however, so I was expelled. I had no choice but to return west. My father disowned me and I went to live among my mother's people, but they didn't want me, either.”

“So you turned outlaw,” Luke guessed.

Creighton's control slipped and he showed a flash of temper as he snapped, “I'll be much more than a simple outlaw before I'm through. I'll be the lord and master of this whole part of the country.”

“So you can show your father what his illegitimate son has done.”

“My father died two years ago,” Creighton said. “If I ever see him again, it'll be in hell.”

“You called yourself Dog Eater and teamed up with Kelly so everybody would think he was the one running things. You didn't figure anybody would pay attention to a half-breed.”

The shooting had stopped outside. Luke could only hope that the battle had ended with the Rurales having the upper hand. If the outlaws had won, the odds of him surviving the next five minutes were pretty slim.

“You're obviously an intelligent man, Mr. Jensen.” Creighton shook his head. “It's a shame you're not going to get out of here alive.”

“What makes you think that?”

Creighton nodded toward the doorway behind Luke and said, “Because you're about to be ripped limb from limb.”

Luke might have thought Creighton was trying to trick him, but at that moment he heard a heavy footstep behind him, followed by a bellow of rage. He twisted around in time to see Lopez lunging at him. The giant renegade had streaks of blood on him from various wounds suffered in the battle outside, but the injuries didn't slow him down any.

From the corner of his eye Luke saw Creighton, Kelly, and Almanzar grab for their guns, but Lopez was almost right on top of him so he had to deal with that threat first.

Luke fired both Remingtons. Flame spurted from the barrels as they roared. Lopez was too big a target to miss, but the bullets seemed to have no effect on him. He crashed into Luke and drove him back against a table left there when the mine was abandoned.

The wood was rotten and splintered under the impact as Luke and Lopez landed on it. They went down amid the debris. The giant Rurale fell on top of Luke, forcing all the air out of his lungs. Luke managed to hang on to the gun in his right hand, but lost his grip on the left-hand revolver and it slipped away from him.

Lopez's weight pinned him to the floor.

Luke gasped for air he couldn't get. Lopez had one huge hand wrapped around his throat and the other hand around the wrist of his gun hand. Luke couldn't breathe, nor could he bring the Remington to bear.

Lopez shifted his terrible grip on Luke's throat and twisted Luke's head to the side, almost like he was trying to rip it from his shoulders. Blood roared like a raging river inside Luke's head and a crimson haze dropped over his eyes. He knew he was only seconds away from dying.

Even if he could somehow survive Lopez's onslaught, Creighton, Kelly, and Almanzar had drawn their guns and were waiting to fill him with lead as soon as they got the chance.

Through that red haze, Luke saw something that the others couldn't. Behind them, Lieutenant Sanchez was forcing his bloody, battered form up from the floor....

That glance gave Luke a glimmer of hope. He flailed out with his free hand and closed his fingers around a jagged piece of the broken table. With his head held to the side by Lopez, Luke had to thrust up blindly, but he put all the strength he could muster behind the blow.

Lopez spasmed wildly. Luke felt drops of hot rain spray across his face. It wasn't rain, though. It was blood, and it came from the hideous wound the sharp piece of wood had torn in the giant's throat. Lopez's grip suddenly weakened, allowing Luke to tear free.

The huge Rurale had lost quite a bit of blood already from his other wounds, and his massive body had finally reached its limit. His big hands pawed feebly at the piece of wood stuck in his ravaged throat as Luke shoved him aside and rolled away from him.

A gun roared, but when Luke came up on one knee, gasping for air, he saw flame geyser again from the muzzle of the revolver in Almanzar's hand as the captain struggled with Sanchez over the weapon.

Almanzar was occupied for the moment, leaving Creighton and Kelly to try to kill Luke. Both fired as Luke threw himself flat on the floor. The slugs whipped through the air above him. He triggered the Remington he still held and put two bullets into Gunner Kelly's chest. The redheaded outlaw rocked back as his eyes widened in pain and shock.

Almanzar and Sanchez reeled into Creighton, upsetting the aim of the half-breed Apache. Luke fired and saw Creighton jerk around as the bullet clipped him on the right arm. Creighton's gun fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

The face of the bank robber and would-be emperor twisted in hate and insane rage as he jerked a machete with his left hand from behind the sash around his waist and leaped at Luke, savagely swinging the big blade.

Luke rolled aside desperately.

The machete hit the plank floor and stuck for a second before Creighton could rip it free. He swung a backhand at Luke as the bounty hunter came up. Luke went over backward to avoid it.

From the floor, Luke fired his last two rounds. The slugs punched into Creighton's belly and doubled him over. Screaming in pain, Creighton dropped the machete, clutched at himself, and stumbled forward a step before falling on his face. He lay there, huddled in a ball, as a pool of blood spread around him.

Across the room, Almanzar broke free of Sanchez and struck him across the face, causing him to fall down. Panting, with his back to Luke, Almanzar raised the pistol he still held and aimed it at the fallen Sanchez.

Luke saw that, but the gun in his hand was empty. He spotted the other Remington, well out of reach.

He snatched up the machete Creighton had dropped, drew back his arm, and whipped it forward in a last-ditch throw. The machete struck Almanzar with such force that the blade drove all the way through his body and stuck its bloody tip a few inches out from his chest.

Almanzar stiffened. His head tipped forward as he looked down at what he could see of the machete. Then the gun slipped from his fingers, his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he pitched forward onto the floor.

Luke scrambled to his feet. A quick step took him to the loaded Remington. He scooped it up and turned to cover the outlaws if any of them still wanted to fight.

They were going to have a hard time doing that, however. All four of them appeared to be dead.

“Sanchez,” Luke rasped. “How bad are you hurt?”

“I . . . I will be all right, señor,” the young officer panted. “What about you?”

“I think so. If you can stand up, you'd better grab a gun so we can check on what happened outside.”

“Sí. My men . . .”

“They jumped the rest of this bunch. I don't reckon you and I would be alive if they hadn't.”

Sanchez armed himself with a couple pistols from the dead men, and Luke picked up one of the guns as well, not taking the time to reload his empty Remington. They stepped out of the house to look across a scene of carnage.

Bodies lay sprawled under the moonlight from the risen moon. Rurales and renegades alike, none of them were moving. No one moaned or made a sound.

It was a field of death, Luke realized. The two groups had wiped each other out.

“Go get a burning branch from the fireplace,” Luke said. “We'll see if we can find any survivors.”

The search turned out to be futile. Everyone at the abandoned mine was dead except for Luke and Sanchez. The young officer muttered horrified prayers as he realized the rest of his patrol had been killed.

“What am I going to do now?” he asked, seeming to direct the question to the universe at large as much as to Luke.

“Go back to your superior officers and report that you and your men valiantly did battle with a gang of outlaws and killed them,” Luke answered. “Your men all died as heroes.” He added grimly,

“Maybe they'll get medals . . . posthumously.”

Sanchez shook his head. “Not in the Rurales. There will be no medals for them, or for me.”

“You get your life,” Luke said. “That's the best reward.”

And speaking of rewards,
he thought. He went back into the house and walked over to Almanzar's body. Reaching down, he grasped the handle of the machete and pulled it free.

Sanchez came into the room after him and asked, “What are you going to do, Señor Jensen?”

“I came down here below the border looking for a couple things,” Luke said as he tested the keenness of the blade with a thumb and eyed the necks of Creighton and Kelly. “I intend to take them back with me.”

 

 

Two weeks later, Luke rode into Rio Rojo. He no longer had the heads of Sebastian Creighton, alias Dog Eater, and Gunner Kelly with him, and he was thankful for that. They had smelled bad enough by the time he'd gotten to Tucson and had the sheriff there identify them. The lawman had sent the necessary wires, and Luke's reward was waiting for him.

He did have the money stolen from the bank in Rio Rojo with him in his saddlebags, but no one knew that except him. He had found it cached in the stone house at the abandoned mine and was able to pack it away without Lieutenant Sanchez being aware of it. Since then, Luke hadn't told anyone about the money because he hadn't wanted to have to guard it from would-be thieves all the way back to Rio Rojo. Word of such things had a way of getting around.

He had taken his leave of Sanchez at the Don del Oro after shaking the young officer's hand and thanking him for helping to save his life.

“I will be disgraced when I go back,” Sanchez had said, hanging his head. “I lost all my men.”

“You might be surprised,” Luke told him. “Your superior officers won't care about that as much as they will that you succeeded in wiping out those deserters, along with a bunch of other outlaws.”

Sanchez had frowned. “But you and your friends killed many of the deserters at that town called La Farva.”

“Well . . . nobody in Mexico knows that except you and me, now do they?”