Renegade Riders (17 page)

“So who are they?”

“No idea, missy. Don’t like it, though, can tell you that. This whole business seems to get more and more twisted. Two men watching us, Comstock watching Trace, Slade, and you…Slade’s watching right back. That’s a lot of watching! I get this odd sense that Comstock is alone and feeling it, too. He can’t trust anyone, not even the men he’s paying. I don’t pretend to know what’s going on, so I’m just watching, too…”

There was no sign of the ranchers or the U.S. marshal, and Trace had given up trying to make the distant horizon
give birth to them. It was too late for them anyway, at least for today. Comstock’s men had already circled the mesa and the roundup had begun.

Though the rest of the outfit was made up of greenhorns and rattlers, Trace didn’t give the Indians a second thought. They had taken their places and knew what to do. There were no finer wild horse wranglers in the Arizona Territory than the Walapai. But danger rode on the edge of those storm clouds. He could taste brimstone, and he wondered what difficulties the weather would add to what they were trying to accomplish.

He hadn’t exaggerated when he spoke of Standing Thunder’s cunning. He had no doubt the horse was well aware of their presence. The animal could pick up his scent from clear across the canyon, and there seemed no question that he knew right where they were, what they wanted, and wasn’t going to give up easily.

For several hours they all played hide-and-seek among the rocks and fissures that led down from the mesa to the canyon floor. A glimpse of tail, a flash of mane tossed on the wind—a wayward wind that didn’t seem to have a direction, kicking up dust everywhere. There was never a sign of the herd, only the mighty broomtail stallion, who kept teasing them like a lightskirt stripping for her client.

Then Trace heard it: a roar so loud and constant it couldn’t be thunder rumbling through the canyon. No, this sound was made by horses—
hundreds
of horses, more than they’d initially thought—swarming over the mesa in a mighty show of force. Great clouds of rust-colored dust obscured their pounding hooves and
rippling flanks, churned up from the parched canyon floor; the air was thick with it. Standing Thunder was in the lead.

Trace covered his nose and mouth with his bandana and signaled the others to look sharp. One by one the riders fell into line; they made up two columns, one on either side of the herd.

“Steady!” Trace shouted. “Hold them in!”

Leaning over Diablo’s neck, he gave the horse its rein. Diablo’s great, long-legged stride carried him well ahead of the others, down over the rocky mesa and onto a path wild horse hooves had carved over time, a path Trace had scoped out earlier. It emptied onto the canyon floor below and was a different path than the rest were taking. The narrow shortcut gave him an advantage, and he came out ahead, with Standing Thunder within striking distance of Trace’s lasso.

Gunshots rang out, driving the herd faster. There were more horses than he’d anticipated: five…no, maybe even six hundred. Trace’s nose and throat were clogged with dust, the bandana being of little help. He could scarcely see the herd for the wind-and-horse-driven cloud. Out of the corner of his eye he spied Comstock wielding his blacksnake, and the man turned in a blur, driving part of the herd ahead of him, toward Trace and in the wrong direction. What was he doing?

“Son of a bitch!” Trace raged.

He lost sight of everyone else. Though it had to be at least midafternoon, the air around him was eerily yellow, though it was becoming orange with the mix of red rock dust from below. The gunshots had grown distant,
muted, drowned out by the hooves of the galloping herd. The horses’ screams grew louder.

A loud crack of thunder boomed overhead, and lightning streaked the sky. Trace glanced up, then back down, horrified. Part of the herd Comstock was controlling was spooked, spinning around and crashing into each other. Some went down with cries of agony. But the rest—thousands of pounds of unstoppable horseflesh—were pounding right toward him.

M
ae
stood up in the stirrups, staring at the steady stream of horses pouring down into the gap. She had been raised on a large working horse farm in Kentucky, but she’d never seen anything like this. She doubted if her grandfather had, either.

Her gaze moved along the canyon, though she couldn’t make out any of the riders clearly, except for Trace astride Diablo, and to the rear Comstock, cracking his blacksnake. His shirt was glaringly white through the odd pink haze that rose from the canyon floor. Trace landed a rope on the most magnificent creature she had ever seen: a stallion the color of wet red rock, with the most exquisite jet-black mane and a long tail that swept the ground. It was surely Standing Thunder, the horse Trace kept talking about. She could see why. He was a true rival to Diablo in both power and sheer beauty.

From her vantage, it looked as though Trace and Standing Thunder were in the middle of the stampeding herd. She assumed Trace was trying to gain control
of the stallion in order to turn the horses back into the box canyon. Only, Standing Thunder struck out with sharp teeth at Diablo. The black fought back.

Trace held his seat, despite the equine combat—her grandfather would love how the man sat a horse. Mae could neither watch nor look away. Her hands over her eyes, she peeked through her fingers and watched as horses flooded past Trace, and as the sorrel stallion deliberately pushed Diablo close to the steep wall. The cloud of dust was so thick that she lost sight of Comstock; there was only the two stallions locked in a duel, and Trace directly in harm’s way.

Diablo went down. Mae screamed and turned away, moaning Trace’s name. Her cry wouldn’t reach him, not with the rumbling of thunder from the coming storm and the deafening sound of the horses’ hooves on the canyon floor, but she muttered a prayer that something would protect him.

For a terrible moment there was nothing but the rumbling pandemonium of horses in motion, the cacophony of their wild shrieks, and the desperate whistles of cowboys fighting to keep from being trampled, all echoing through the canyon and carried aloft on the wind. Mae nearly fainted as she spotted Diablo again: this time he was running neck and neck with Standing Thunder—without a rider.

Without hesitation, Mae dug her heels into the sides of the packhorse and sent it rushing down the hillside to the canyon, praying to reach Trace before it was too late.

Maybe it was already too late.

The other riders, both Indian and white, scattered as the herd poured back through the narrow channel, leaping over broken corral rails, trampling the staved-in wood. Fallen from Diablo, Trace couldn’t see for all the blinding dust. He did the only thing he could—flattened himself to the canyon wall, finding a crevice where water had once flooded over the top of the cliff and cut its way through the rock face.

Trapped, pinned against a rocky fissure too small to hold his whole body, he dug his fingers and heels into loose dirt and roots, what ever he could get a grip on, in a desperate attempt to keep from being sucked back into the wave of galloping horses. They were crowding seven abreast in a space not meant to accommodate half that number, and he was continuously buffeted by the wind of them racing past. He crushed himself farther against the rocks, scarcely able to breathe for the pressure and the dust and the lack of air.

At last there was some relief. The equine flood had trampled down what remained of the makeshift corral, many streaking out through the grove of saplings and over the wash beyond. Trace sank dizzily to his knees. He still couldn’t see very well, but the distant rumble of the horses’ heavy hoofbeats vibrated through him. His heart sank. As if they had become one body, the wild herd were stampeding back through the canyon in a billowing cloud of dirt and then disappearing into the strange yellow twilight of the coming storm. Then they were gone, almost as if they had never existed.

Trace groaned again. He was alone. He’d lost. Again. The herd, Diablo, Standing Thunder…Damn, if it
didn’t feel as if Standing Thunder was almost thumbing his nose at him, having saved his herd and even stolen Trace’s horse. When he was small, his mama had told him bedtime stories about knights of old, of the magnificent chargers these men owned, how those animals fought beside their masters and never left their side in battle. If a warrior fell, his horse would stay and watch over him.

“Guess Diablo’s mama didn’t tell him the same stories.” Trace tried to laugh but choked on dust. “I’m beginning to take it personal.”

He struggled to his feet, stiff-legged and favoring his left arm. He tried to flex his shoulder and winced. There were no broken bones. It wasn’t dislocated, but the pain was excruciating. He wiggled his shoulder again, then wound his arm in cautious circles. There was a throbbing ache in the joint. He’d feel it tomorrow for sure, maybe a week or two to come, but the stabbing pain was already fading. Fortunately, it wasn’t his right shoulder, the one he’d need for his gun hand; he hadn’t forgotten the danger he was in.

He glanced down and noticed his pistol was missing from its holster. “Double damn.” He turned in a circle, trying to find the gun, kicking at the dust, but nothing. No telling when he’d lost it.

A prickly warning crawled over his skin, the survival sense that had saved him from death more than once. It warned him everything was out of control, that the trouble with the horses was merely a start. He turned just in time to see a whip unfurling toward him. His left arm burned as that lash coiled around it, and with a jerk, he was twisted around and nearly off his feet.

Despite the pain searing through his brain, Trace’s right hand reached out and caught hold of the braided leather and didn’t let go. Comstock gave a grunt of surprise. At the same moment, Trace gave a hard tug that was strong enough to drag Jared off his roan. But instead of falling to the ground, Comstock launched himself forward. Both men landed hard in the powdery dust, rolling around in the midst of the straggling horses still trying to escape the corral.

Trace planted a punch in Comstock’s belly, and air left the man’s lungs in a grunt. Good! He owed the bastard for beating Diablo. The second blow Trace struck was to that pretty face. It was for Mae. But another spate of horses came galloping through, rushing to catch up to the rest of the herd, and that ended his assault. Trace and Comstock were forced to roll apart to escape their deadly hooves, one of which barely missed coming down on Trace’s head.

Comstock took the moment to right himself, and he was on his feet a shade faster than Trace. In a blink, he’d drawn his gun, but Trace kicked it out of his hand. Jared’s hand went to his thigh, coming up with his bowie knife. Trace froze, considered his options. His gun was lost. His knife was strapped to his saddle, long gone with Diablo. The only weapons he had were his guile and wits.

A smile spread over Jared Comstock’s face. “Not such a big mouth on you now, eh, Ord?” He kept the knife held out before him while he moved to pick up his gun.

There came the sound of pounding hooves, this time coming from outside the canyon. Trace’s heart fell as he
saw Mae rushing toward him. Brave, foolish Mae. He loved her, but he wished her a thousand miles away.

She reined up when she saw the gun trained on Trace. She raised a derringer and pointed it at Jared’s chest. “You know, I’ve always hated your white shirts—you’re a pretty boy who never lifts a finger to work, just lets everyone else get dirty for you. My granddaddy always said never to trust a man who thinks he’s too good to get dirty. It’d be a real shame to stain it red, wouldn’t it, Jared?”

The muscles in Jared’s jaw twitched, and his eyes shifted to Trace. “If you so much as twitch, I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

“You’re not going to shoot Trace,” Mae insisted, “because I will kill you if you do, Jared. And you don’t want to die. Plain and simple.”

Comstock spared her a brief glance. “I never trusted your story that he was coming back with you. I’ve seen you watching him when you didn’t know I was looking. I know your feelings…But it makes no never mind. I’m your
husband
. You won’t shoot me. You won’t shoot your husband.”

Mae’s eyes flashed with fury. “Calling my bluff, are you? You were never my husband. Don’t think I’m so stupid. I found out about your little deception.”

Astonishment lit his face. “How? When…?”

“That’s moot now, though I’d love to know what you were thinking. Put down the gun.” When he refused to obey, she snapped. “Drop it!”

He shook his head. “I think I will shoot Trace, let you watch him d—”

In a quick movement she fired one shot. The bullet
struck the rock beside Jared’s head. “I warned you,” she said. “The next one goes right into that black heart. I swear it, Jared.”

Comstock’s expression changed. His facial muscles seemed to sag, and his eyes showed true defeat. “So be it, Mae. You win.” Jared’s hand started to lower the gun.

It was then Mae made her mistake. In that heartbeat, everything moved too slow and everything moved too fast. She risked a look to see if Trace was unhurt. Another horse clattered down the rocky canyon and came around the bend. Mae’s packhorse shied and began to dance sideways, even gave a small buck. She had to fight to stay in the saddle. Which was time for Jared to lift his Colt.

Trace felt the breath of death blow across him. He looked down that blue steel barrel, saw Jared’s finger squeeze the trigger. He flung himself to the side. Two shots rang out.

He landed on his shoulder. His teeth ground together as blinding pain transfixed him, and for an instant he thought Jared’s bullet had struck home. Then realization sank in that he’d landed on his injured left arm; Jared’s shot had gone wild. Trace blinked away the stars before opening his eyes. Comstock stood frozen, a red stain spreading across his shirt, just as Mae had warned. The man’s surprise was clear, and he stared mutely down at the vivid scarlet spreading across the white cotton. Then his knees buckled and he went down.

Trace glanced around. It wasn’t smoke from Mae’s derringer he saw; it was from Slade’s gun. Slade had shot Jared!

Not hesitating, the gunslinger rode over and knocked Mae’s gun from her hand, then wrapped an arm about her waist. He dragged her off the packhorse and across his lap. When she struggled, looking as though she was ready to scratch his eyes out, he growled, “Don’t. I’ll kill Trace.”

His warning stopped her cold. Mae’s head snapped around and she stared at Trace, reassuring herself that he hadn’t already been killed.

Trace tried to keep calm. This whole damn day had seemed to go from bad to worse. “You won’t be collecting your pay, Slade. Shooting the boss closes up the bank.” It was an inane thing to say, but he was fighting pain that was making him dizzy and struggling just to stay on his feet. Where was White Eagle? He wished now that he’d told Preacher to tag along. The old man had warned him that he’d need that Winchester at his back someday.

“Never figured on a payday from Comstock.” The gunslinger shrugged and turned his gun so that the barrel was under Mae’s jaw. “It’s your left that’s injured?” he asked Trace.

It took every ounce of willpower to remain composed. Trace gave a slow nod.

“So your gun hand is fine?” Slade grinned.

Trace coldly returned the expression. “Hand me a gun and I’ll be happy to show you.”

Slade laughed. “I think I’ll leave you to find your own gun. It’s still too busy down here in the canyon. I prefer a place where the dust don’t choke you or sting your eyes.” Lightning arced overhead, streaked along the canyon rim, and caused Slade’s horse to dance on
its hooves. “Catch me when you can. I won’t harm her. Might upset some people if I do. But if you want her back, you’ll have to earn her freedom. Don’t take too long or you’ll never see her again.”

With that, the gunslinger dug the spurs into his horse and galloped away.