The Loner: The Bounty Killers (21 page)

Surprised silence greeted the shout. After a moment, Nebel said, “Who the hell is that?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” The Kid said. “The important thing is that I’ve got your boss in here, and if you try to come through that gate, he’s a dead man!”

Again, Nebel didn’t respond right away. Seconds dragged by before the gunman said, “You’ve got Guthrie?”

“That’s right,” The Kid said.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“Somebody took him right out of his own ranch house last night, didn’t they? And knocked out the cook while they were there. How would I know that if it wasn’t me who grabbed him?”

Nebel didn’t have an answer for that. When he spoke up again, it was to ask, “What do you want?”

“Turn around and ride away,” The Kid said. “Leave this canyon alone. If you bust in or try anything else, Guthrie will be dead long before you can get your hands on him.”

“You’ll die, too, you son of a bitch, you and whoever else is in there with you!”

“Maybe. So will a lot of your men.”

“That’s a dead end canyon. You can’t get out. You’ve trapped yourself in there, you fool. We can sit out here until you starve.”

“Guthrie will starve first,” The Kid pointed out. “You don’t think we’ll be sharing our rations with him, do you?”

“I don’t know for sure that he’s even still alive. I want some proof you’ve got him, damn it!”

The Kid had been expecting that. He looked over at Lace and nodded. She dashed back around the rock to the campsite, and when she reappeared, she was prodding Guthrie ahead of her at the point of her Winchester.

His feet were untied so he could walk, but his hands were still lashed tightly behind his back. He didn’t have a gag in his mouth, so when Lace poked him in the back with the rifle, he was able to yell, “Nebel!”

“Is that you, boss?” Nebel sounded slightly surprised to hear Guthrie’s voice.

“Damn right it’s me,” the rancher replied. “I want you to come in here and kill this bastard who kidnapped me! Not the girl, though. I got something special planned for her.”

Guthrie grunted in pain as Lace jabbed him hard in the kidney with the rifle barrel. “You don’t
have
anything special, you weaselly little varmint,” she told him.

“There’s a girl in there, too?” Nebel called.

“And she can shoot just as good or better than any of you,” The Kid replied. “If you don’t believe me, just try to get in here. You know now we’ve got Guthrie, so back off!”

Nebel hesitated again. “Boss?”

Guthrie sighed through clenched teeth. “Do what they say, I reckon . . . for now. They’re both loco enough to kill me.”

“You mean there’s only two? Where’s the old man? Is he dead?”

“No, he rode off—”

The Kid motioned to Lace, and she drove the barrel of her Winchester into Guthrie’s back again, hard enough to knock him to his knees as well as silencing him. She put a boot in his back and shoved him down onto his face.

The Kid didn’t want Nebel thinking too much about where Chester Blount might have gone, or else the gunman might realize Blount was fetching the law from Phoenix. To forestall that, The Kid called, “The old-timer was plenty glad to sell me his claim and be shut of all the trouble! He’s halfway to Mexico by now!”

He heard some muttering from the men outside the gate. They knew that Blount had refused Guthrie’s offer to buy him out, otherwise the rancher wouldn’t have resorted to attempted murder to get his hands on Dos Caballos Canyon.

But it was possible Blount could have accepted someone else’s offer, as much to spite Guthrie as anything else, so they couldn’t discount the possibility The Kid was telling the truth.

After a few minutes, Nebel called, “We’re leaving, but this ain’t over. If you’re smart, you’ll let the boss go and then light a shuck out of here! You might get clear with your lives that way.”

The Kid didn’t believe that for a second. Nebel would leave riflemen hidden in the trees to watch the canyon mouth. If he and Lace so much as showed their faces, they would be gunned down instantly.

Hoofbeats thundered away. Lace reached down, grabbed Guthrie’s arm, and hauled him to his feet.

“Now what do we do, Kid?” she asked.

“Now we wait,” he said.

The siege was on.

Chapter 28

By late afternoon, Guthrie was raving like a lunatic. He couldn’t stand being tied up and started cursing The Kid and Lace, spewing vile profanities. Even the threat of setting Max on him didn’t shut him up.

So The Kid stuffed the gag in Guthrie’s mouth again. He had to jerk his hand back to keep Guthrie from biting him.

“If I ever saw a man who could pass for a hydrophobic skunk, it’s him,” Lace said with a nod toward the rancher. “How does anybody get so twisted and evil?”

The Kid didn’t answer. In the days after Rebel’s death, he had come so close to giving in to his despair that he could have wound up just as warped as Guthrie. Clinging to the memories of his wife had kept him sane.

“I guess I shouldn’t talk,” Lace went on. “I was mixed up with Pronto Pike, after all. If anything, he’s even worse than Guthrie.”

“Hard to believe, but I’ll take your word for it,” The Kid said. “He’s quiet now, anyway. I’m grateful for that.”

Guthrie couldn’t do anything except make grunting noises through the gag, but his eyes continued to follow them around the camp, lit by the hellish glare of murderous hatred.

They kept guard most of the time, one watching the gate, the other scanning the tops of the canyon walls, looking for sharpshooters Nebel might send up there to try to pick them off.

The Kid was watching the opposite rim when he spotted movement. A moment later, his keen eyes saw the barrel of a rifle thrust around a rock. The bushwhacker leaned out a little to aim.

It was enough of a target for The Kid. His Winchester snapped to his shoulder and cracked. The bullet struck the rock only inches from the man’s head and made him jerk back, exposing more of him.

The Winchester’s lever was a blur as The Kid worked it and fired again, the bullet boring through the man’s head. He jerked as death claimed him and pitched forward, dropping his rifle and landing so his arms and head and shoulders hung off the edge of the canyon rim. Blood dripped in a steady stream from his shattered skull.

“Kid?” Lace called from the other side of the rock. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Keep an eye on the gate. They might try hitting us from two directions at once.”

After a few minutes, somebody The Kid couldn’t see took hold of the dead man’s feet and hauled him back, away from the rim. That was fine with The Kid. He didn’t need the grisly sight as a reminder of the danger he and Lace were in, and hoped the bushwhacker’s death discouraged any other gunman from trying the same tactic.

By nightfall, nothing else had happened. Not wanting to risk a fire, The Kid and Lace had a cold supper. They would build one in the morning so they could have coffee . . . if they were still alive.

Guthrie had settled down some, and when he made noises indicating he wanted the gag removed, The Kid obliged. Guthrie didn’t try to take a finger off.

“Don’t I get something to eat?” the rancher asked wearily.

“You heard Nebel. He’s planning on starving us out. We have to make our supplies last as long as they possibly can.”

“You know it’s not gonna come to that,” Guthrie said. “You sent Blount to Phoenix to fetch the law, didn’t you?”

The Kid didn’t see any point in denying it. “That’s right. He’ll be back in another three days or so, and your little reign of terror will be over, Guthrie.”

Guthrie laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know how you figure that. I’m an important man in these parts. The authorities won’t believe an old fool and a couple of drifters over me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Guthrie. My real name is Conrad Browning.”

Guthrie stared up at him in the darkness. “Seems like I’ve heard that name before.”

“You should have. I own an interest in a number of banks in Arizona Territory, as well as the railroad and several mines.”

A curt laugh came from Guthrie. “I’m supposed to believe that? You’re nothing but a fastgun saddle tramp!”

“Appearances are deceiving. Not only that, I’ve made an offer to Mr. Blount for half interest in Dos Caballos Canyon. We haven’t worked out the details yet, but he’s going to take me up on it. So for all intents and purposes, this is my land, too, and I’m not going to let you steal it.”

“You’re loco,” Guthrie muttered, but there was some doubt in his voice. He was starting to realize he might have bitten off a bigger chunk than he could handle.

A few minutes later, he tried to salvage the situation. “Listen to me. If you take me with you as a hostage, you can ride out of here in the morning. My men won’t have any choice except to let you go. I’ll order them to stay here and not follow you, and when you’ve got a five or ten mile lead, however much you want, you can let me go and ride on. You’ve killed some of my men and annoyed the hell out of me, but I’m willin’ to call it square.”

“I’m not,” The Kid said. “I hold a grudge.”

He knew that Guthrie was lying. The rancher would never let them go unscathed. One way or another, he would have to have his revenge, unless he was locked up.

Or dead.

Leaving Max to keep an eye on the prisoner, The Kid and Lace moved to stand guard on the gate. One of them would stay awake at all times to listen for anyone trying to sneak up. They used the pine trees for cover again.

They planned to alternate two-hour shifts. The Kid would stay awake first, letting Lace get a little sleep. He stood with his back against the tree, the rifle cradled across his chest, and listened intently. Guthrie’s men might be able to slip up to the gate on foot without being heard, but they couldn’t unfasten the latch without making the brush rustle.

The night was quiet, cool, and peaceful. It would have been mighty pleasant, The Kid thought, if he hadn’t been listening for a bunch of cold-blooded killers who wanted to wipe out him and Lace.

After a couple hours, she called softly, “Kid! I’m awake. Get some shut-eye.”

“Thanks,” he told her. He slid down to sit at the base of the tree with his back against the trunk. Sleep claimed him within seconds of closing his eyes.

He hadn’t completely mastered the trick of waking up when he wanted to, but he was able to come pretty close to the allotted amount of time. When he opened his eyes again, he was confident that not much more than two hours had passed. If he had overslept by too much, Lace would have called to him and woken him.

“All right—” he started to say as he got to his feet, but she shushed him instantly.

“Somebody’s out there,” she called in a half whisper.

He brought the rifle to his shoulder and swung around the tree so he could aim at the gate across the canyon mouth. He listened and didn’t hear anything at first, but a moment later the soft scrape of boot leather on the ground came to his ears. He knew Lace was right.

Somebody was creeping up on the gate, and they couldn’t be up to anything good.

A faint rasp and a sudden small flare of light sent alarm stabbing through The Kid’s veins like ice. Damn them and their fondness for dynamite!

Sparks sputtered at the base of the gate as The Kid dashed out from behind the tree and sprinted toward the canyon mouth.

He hadn’t anticipated them trying to blow up the gate, but he should have, he thought bitterly, racing toward the gate to reach the bomb and pull the fuse before it exploded.

“Kid!” she cried behind him.

“Cover me!” he shouted over his shoulder as he threw himself forward in a long dive that carried him to the bottom of the gate.

Lace sprayed rifle slugs over his head, through the brush tied onto the wooden framework. At the same time, Guthrie’s men opened fire from outside the canyon. Bullets whined around The Kid’s head.

Focusing on the bundle of dynamite and the sputtering fuse just on the other side of the gate, he shoved brush aside and thrust his arm through the opening he had created. The dynamite was just out of his reach. He threw his shoulder against the gate and stretched his arm out as far as he could, far enough that he felt bones creaking in their sockets.

His fingers brushed the burning fuse. He pushed aside the pain as sparks bit into his hand. The fuse was too short for him to pull, so he did the only thing he could.

He closed his hand around it, smothering the fire with his flesh.

The sparks died out, but a second later bullets began to smack into the ground around him. Guthrie’s men were trying to detonate the explosives by firing into them.

Not wanting to take the chance it might work, he strained forward again, and closed his hand around the three sticks of dynamite that had been tied together. He pulled them through the gate and rolled away from the slugs that were whipping around him. It was possible a few sticks of dynamite could come in handy later on.

He tossed them over to the far side of the canyon, then snatched up his Winchester, which he had dropped when he dove for the explosives. He scrambled back behind the pine tree and joined Lace in returning the fire of Guthrie’s men. In the dark, all they could do was aim at muzzle flashes. It was impossible to know if their bullets found their target.

After a fierce exchange of shots that lasted for several minutes, Lace suddenly cried, “Kid! On the rim!”

The Kid twisted and looked up, saw the flare of another match. They were going to try dropping dynamite from up there. He brought up his rifle and fired three shots as fast as he could, aiming at the lucifer.

A man staggered forward, silhouetted against the starlight. With a scream, he pitched forward off the rim, plummeting toward the canyon floor far below. An ugly thud, like that of a watermelon breaking open, silenced him in mid-scream.

The Kid held his breath for a few seconds, waiting to see if any dynamite was going to go off. When there was no explosion, he knew he had winged the man before he’d been able to light the fuse.

The shooting from outside trailed off. As Lace’s gun fell silent, The Kid took a chance and yelled, “Nebel! You out there?”