plight.
It was understandable that they would give up, but from the looks of things, Leah was the only one who had so far. Once she realized that things weren’t completely hopeless—almost, maybe, but not completely—she might come around.
“Kid!” Kelly called in a whisper. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
For a second The Kid wasn’t sure what Kelly meant, but then he realized he’d been concentrating so hard on the women that he hadn’t noticed something very important about the Apaches.
There weren’t nearly as many of them as he’d expected.
It was fairly easy to make a rough count. The Kid came up with forty-two. That was still overwhelming odds against five men, but he’d been expecting to see seventy-five or eighty Apaches in the group.
Either the war party hadn’t been as big to start with as the reports Lt. Nicholson had gotten indicated, or else the Apaches had lost quite a few men in the raids they had carried out before hitting the wagon train.
“If we can wipe out half of them, they’ll cut and run for sure,” Kelly said. “Then we can pick off some more while they’re running. I’d have liked to get those other scalps, but this is all right.”
That was one way of looking at it, The Kid thought. He brought the rifle up and settled the stock against his shoulder.
“Wait until some of them have gone past us,” Kelly said. “That way the ones in front will be more likely to run.”
“What about Chess, Valdez, and Mateo?”
“They won’t open fire until we do.”
Impatience gnawed at The Kid’s nerves. Jess rode past, her head turning from side to side as she studied her surroundings. The Kid wondered if she was looking for an escape route. That would be just like her, he thought, checking for a way to make a run for it if she got the chance.
He hoped to give her that chance, very soon.
The prisoners were all in the front half of the column. Kelly let them go by. Then he looked over at The Kid and nodded as he lifted his rifle.
The Kid rested his cheek against the stock of his Winchester and peered over the barrel.
Kelly fired, and the head of one of the Apaches on horseback exploded.
An instant after Kelly’s rifle cracked, The Kid’s blasted as well. He had settled his sights on the bright red headband holding back the coarse black hair of one of the riders. The warrior flew off his pony like he’d been struck by a giant hammer as The Kid’s slug bored through his brain.
Even before the Apache’s body had time to hit the ground, The Kid worked the Winchester’s lever and swung the rifle toward another target, this time a warrior who was on foot. He drilled the man through the body. The Apache crumpled to the dirt.
It wasn’t a battle, at least not starting out. It was more like murder. The five men hidden on the slopes fired as fast as they could, pouring leaden death down into the gap between the two hills. The Kid glanced across the way and caught a glimpse of Mateo darting from tree to tree, killing another Apache every time he paused behind another bit of cover.
The Kid realized what the Yaqui was doing. His actions made it seem like there were more gunmen up on the hill than there really were. The Kid contributed to that illusion himself by dashing over to another tree and cranking off three swift rounds from there that dropped two more Apaches.
At least a dozen of the Indians were down already, and more continued to fall to the deadly accurate shots of the scalp hunters. As Kelly had predicted, the warriors leading the column kicked their horses into a gallop. The Kid saw that one of the Apaches had hold of the reins attached to Jess’s horse and was leading it. He swung his rifle and put a bullet in the man’s back, driving him forward over his mount’s neck. The reins fell free.
Jess’s horse was running loose now.
The Kid stopped shooting to watch as Jess leaned far forward and tried to retrieve the reins with her bound hands. Before she could manage to do that, the horse’s flashing forelegs tangled with the dangling reins, and suddenly the animal fell, sending Jess flying off its back and sailing through the air as the horse crashed to the ground.
The Kid’s heart leaped with alarm as he saw Jess land in a heap and roll over and over until she stopped and lay in a limp sprawl. He didn’t know how badly she was hurt, but she wasn’t going to have a chance to get away now ... unless he went down there and got her.
He was about to turn away and run for his horse when he saw one of the mounted Apaches racing toward Jess’s fallen form. The warrior looked like he intended to pick her up. The Kid snapped his rifle to his shoulder and blew the man off his horse.
The Apaches were starting to fight back. They peppered the slopes on both sides of the saddle with rifle fire. The Kid had to throw himself behind a tree as slugs whined and buzzed around his head. He heard more bullets thudding into the trunk. Pieces of bark and chips of wood sprayed through the air.
When the shooting let up enough for The Kid to take another look, Jess was gone.
Anger and disappointment shot through him. He looked past the gap to where a number of Apaches were fleeing across a broad stretch of open ground. He caught sight of Jess’s blond hair on one of the ponies. A flash of auburn told him that Leah Gabbert was still a prisoner, too. He couldn’t tell about the Price women.
“Son of a
“Don’t worry, Kid, we got more than half of them.” Kelly fired again and dropped one of the few Apaches still putting up a fight.
“But the others got away with the prisoners.”
“I told you, we know where they’re going. We’ll try to catch up to them before they get to San Remo, and if we don’t, we know we can find the women there.” Kelly looked over at The Kid with a shrewd expression on his rugged face. “You sweet on one of those gals, Kid? Is that why you’re so interested in them?”
“I just want to help them if I can,” The Kid replied. “But the scalps are more important.”
That was an outright lie, but Kelly seemed to believe it. He jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah, and there’s a bunch of them down there now, just waiting for Lupe’s scalping knife.”
The men on the opposite hill picked off the few members of the war party who hadn’t fled. After the shooting had been over for a few minutes, Mateo and Valdez cautiously made their way down the slope to check on the bodies and start the grim work of harvesting the scalps.
Kelly, Chess, and The Kid moved out into the open to stand guard while the other two men were busy. When they finally all rendezvoused, leading their horses, Valdez held up two bulging, bloodstained canvas sacks.
“Twenty-four more scalps,” he announced triumphantly. “We’re gonna be rich men!”
“Damn right,” Kelly said. “I counted forty-two of the savages. That means there are only eighteen of them left, and some of them are probably wounded. That’s mighty good work. I’m proud to be riding with you fellas.”
The Kid didn’t take any pride in associating with murderers ... but so far they had proven to be useful murderers, he reminded himself. He wasn’t sure they were any worse than he was.
He could brood about that when Jess and the other three women were free and safe, he thought.
“You know how to find this San Remo place, where Guzman’s headquarters are?” he asked Kelly.
“Sure,” the Irishman replied. “We’ve been there.”
“Well, if all the scalping’s finished, let’s get moving,” The Kid said. “There’s still work to do.”
Kelly grinned, but there was a steely edge to his voice as he said, “Don’t start giving orders, Kid. But I’ve got to admit ... I like your enthusiasm for the job!”
Chapter 22
Mateo had grown up in those rugged Mexican mountains and hills, so he led the way as the five men headed for San Remo. Not surprisingly, the Yaqui knew some shortcuts ... but the Apaches would know those same shortcuts, Kelly warned, so it was possible they would reach the village first.
“There’s something I was wondering about,” The Kid said as they rode. “You said the Mexican government
