He had handed the lead rope of his pack horse to Angel, so Smoke was traveling light. He picketed his horse and patted him on the rump.
“Stand easy, old boy. Relax. I’ll be back soon. Right now, I got some work to do.”
He got into position and checked his rifle. Full up. He levered a round into the .44-.40 just as the point man for von Hausen’s group entered the broad meadow, all bursting with new life under the warm sun.
Smoke had every intention of leaving some old life on the meadow. Forever.
The point man stopped and Smoke sighted him in through long lenses. He was still a good mile off. The scout raised his arm, and turned his head to another rider, his finger pointed toward the hill and the timber. Von Hausen rode up and joined the two outriders. He uncased his binoculars.
Smoke lowered his field glasses and hunkered down. “Come on, you crazy son of a bitch,” Smoke muttered. “Be a big brave man and ride up with your scouts. If I can knock you out of the saddle, I’ll have half the battle won.”
When Smoke again lifted his binoculars, von Hausen’s group was swinging down from their saddles to take a rest and to water their horses at the narrow little creek.
“Good enough,” he said. “Take them north, Walt. Get them clear.” Smoke took a sip of water from his canteen and chewed on a biscuit. He waited.
18
Someone among them smelled the ambush. Smoke knew it was going sour when the group split up into three’s and four’s and began skirting the meadow on two sides, staying well out of rifle range of the timber on the hill.
Smoke watched them for a moment, and then wormed his way back into the timber to his horse. “Not our day, fellow,” he said, swinging into the saddle. “I’m not going to push you, boy. I know you’re tired. So let’s just lope for about a mile and see what we can come up with.”
Von Hausen’s group was right on his tail and the horse seemed to know it. If he was tired, he sure didn’t act it when they hit the flats. That big Appaloosa stretched out and was flying like a young colt, his powerful legs eating up the distance.
Smoke grinned, even through the race was deadly. He loved to sit a saddle when the horse loved to run and was doing so. Enjoyed feeling the power of a horse that was doing what he loved to do. Smoke hung on as the ’paloosa scrambled up a ridge and leaped into the timber. Smoke cut left and weaved through the timber, smiling when he spotted the ravine that the north boundaries of the meadow ran into. Far in the distance, he could see riders entering the wide mouth of the ravine.
He heard a shout, but it was too faint for him to make out the words. If those coming up the ravine heard it, they did not seem to pay any attention to it.
Smoke grabbed his rifle and found adequate cover on the rim. He eased the hammer back and waited.
Paul Melham didn’t like the looks of this ravine and told those behind him so, in blunt words. He ended with, “I’m tellin’ y’all I heard a runnin’ horse.”
“Then how come none of the rest of us heard it, Paul?” Cat Brown challenged. “I’ll tell you why: ’cause there wasn’t no runnin’ horse, that’s why. If Jensen was in that timber back yonder, he wouldn’t have come this way. That ambushin’ bastard would have flanked us and picked us off. Relax, Paul. He’s miles ahead of us.”
“If you’re so damn sure of that, then you come up here and take the point.”
“Oh, hell, Paul!” Cat said. “If you’re that skittish I might as well. You got fear sweat runnin’ into your eyes. You wouldn’t be able to see a grizzly if he reared up in front of you.”
Smoke pulled the trigger and Paul was nearly knocked out of the saddle. He managed to hold on with his good right arm. His left arm dangled useless.
Smoke knew he’d shot off the mark. A fly had landed on the end of his nose just as he’d pulled the trigger. Probably shot the man-hunter in the shoulder by the way he acted.
But the ravine was void of man-hunters now, except for their horses, and Smoke wasn’t about to shoot a horse. All in the group had left their saddles and found what protection they could in the rocks. Smoke smiled and started putting rounds close to the horses’ hooves. That set the already panicked animals off and running. The last he saw of them they were running hot and hard out of the ravine.
Smoke ran back to his horse, swung into the saddle, and was gone.
Paul crawled back to Cat and Utah, pulling himself along with his good arm. He was cussing to beat sixty.
“Fall back!” Cat yelled. “Stay close to the sides and get back out of range. Somebody holler for von Hausen to get the medicine bag.” He looked at Paul’s shoulder. “You’re lucky, Paul. Bullet punched right through. I don’t think nothin’s broken.”
“When we catch up with that damn Jensen,” Paul panted, his face shiny with pain. “I swear I’ll skin him slow.”
If any of us are left alive to catch up with him, Utah thought. That sudden thought startled him, for he’d never even considered quitting this bunch. He shook it out of his head. After killin’ them soldiers, he couldn’t quit. This was a race to the end—for all of them. Them who was runnin‘, and them who was chasin’.
“It’s a painful wound, I’m sure,” Gunter said, after cleaning out Paul’s bullet-punctured shoulder. “But nothing appears to be broken and there is only the expected bleeding. Can you ride?”
“I can ride,” Paul said grimly. “I want a shot at that damn Jensen.”
No one among them, it seemed, could speak of Smoke in any other manner except ‘that damn Jensen.’
“Let’s find us a way around this ravine,” von Hausen said. “He’s probably still up there, waiting.”
“He’ll just move when we do,” Hans pointed out. “He’s got the high ground.” That damn Jensen seemed to
