Bullets sizzled through the air and whined off rocks. One of the slugs hit the bank just above Matt’s head and sent dirt and gravel spraying over his face. He jerked back and blinked as the grit stung his eyes and blurred his vision for a moment. The barrels of his Colts drooped.
Sam kept up his deadly fire. Through the haze of gunsmoke that floated in the arroyo, he had seen several of the attackers stagger and a couple of them had fallen. He wasn’t surprised when he heard a man bellow out a curse and then order, “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”
Sam knew that might be a trick, a tactic to make him and Matt think their enemies were giving up.
But when he stopped firing, he could tell that the other guns had fallen silent, too. Echoes of the thunderous blasts still bounced back and forth between the walls, but as they faded, Sam heard swift hoofbeats again. It certainly sounded like the bushwhackers were pulling out.
“You all right?” he called over to Matt.
“No new bullet holes, if that’s what you mean,” Matt replied. He had blinked most of the dirt out of his eyes and could see fairly clearly again. “Reckon they’re really gone?”
“I don’t know. We’d better wait and see.”
“I don’t want to cause a problem for you, Sam, but these holes in my side are still leaking.”
“Just hang on,” Sam said. “I’ll get you out of here and find some help for you.”
“Where do you figure on doing that? We’re out in the big middle of nowhere. There’s probably not a settlement within thirty miles. Maybe not even that close. Might find a ranch house somewhere, but that’d just be a matter of dumb luck.”
Sam flashed a grin at his blood brother.
“Well, then, you’ve got that going for you.”
“I’m gonna keep track of all these mean things you’re sayin’ to me while I’m hurt, so when I get to feeling better ...”
Sam motioned for Matt to be quiet.
“I’m going to go take a look.”
“Be careful,” Matt said, and the joking tone was gone from his voice now.
Sam came up from his kneeling position and stalked along the floor of the arroyo, turning his head constantly from side to side as he looked for any sign of the attackers.
He reached the area where the bank’s slope was gentler, and his keen eyes spotted several indications that the gunmen had fled this way. Carefully, he ventured up.
The plains on both sides of the arroyo were empty as far as the eye could see, which was pretty far in this flat terrain. The bushwhackers were gone, all right.
Sam hurried back to the place where he had left Matt. As he approached, he saw that his friend’s head hung forward limply, as if in death.
Chapter 4
Sam’s breath seemed to freeze in his throat. His heart slugged heavily in his chest. Fearing that Matt had died from the loss of blood, Sam ran forward and dropped to his knees beside his friend.
Sam put his hand to Matt’s throat and searched for a pulse. Relief flooded through him when he found one. Matt’s heart was beating fast but steadily. He had just passed out.
There was no time to lose, Sam sensed.
He checked the pieces of bandanna he had wadded into the bullet holes. Both of them were soaked, and more blood was leaking out around them.
Sam threw the sodden bits of cloth aside and cut replacements from Matt’s shirttail. When he had them in place, he fastened Matt’s belt around them to hold them there.
A whistle brought Sam’s horse back. The animal shied a little at the smell of fresh blood, but Sam calmed it with a quiet word.
He lifted Matt into the saddle. It wasn’t easy, since Matt was so much dead weight in his unconscious state, but Sam managed, then climbed on behind him.
Sam rode out of the arroyo, holding Matt in front of him with one arm and using the other hand to hold the reins.
They had been headed west when the bushwhackers opened fire on them, so he started off in that direction again. He didn’t know of anyplace he could get help that was within reach back the other way.
They had ridden about two miles when Sam spotted something up ahead. A moment later, he recognized it as Matt’s horse. The animal had bolted this far after Matt was shot out of the saddle, then stopped to graze on the sparse clumps of hardy grass that dotted the desert.
Finding the horse didn’t really help matters right now. With Matt out cold, they had to ride double so Sam could keep him in the saddle. But Sam whistled for the horse to follow them, anyway. They would need the animal later, he told himself, when Matt recovered from his injury.
Sam wasn’t going to allow himself to consider any other possibility.
They had covered another mile or so when Sam saw something else in front of them. A haze of dust rose into the hot air. Sam figured it was being kicked up by the hooves of several horses moving quickly over the plains.
He thought at first the dust came from the bushwhackers’ mounts as they put this area behind them, but after a moment he realized the cloud was moving toward him and Matt.
Of course, it could still be the bushwhackers doubling back to look for them, Sam reminded himself.
But it could also be a group of cowboys from one of the isolated ranches that could be found in this region, or
