Delshay, who lay dead where he had fallen.
“Go now,” Nopoloto said. “You will not be harmed.”
“Come along, Mrs. Bixby. We’re going to have to ride double, I’m afraid,” Matt said. “But Spirit is a good strong horse, he’ll be able to handle it.”
“I have a horse,” Cynthia said.
“You have a horse?”
“It is one I have been riding,” Cynthia said. “It is my horse, is it not?” she asked Chandeisi.
Chandeisi nodded. “It is your horse,” he said.
“I told you the son of a bitch would find her,” Willis said when he saw Matt and Cynthia on the road returning to Phoenix. With him were two of the men who had been a part of his posse, Karl Lathum and Angus Pugh. “All we have to do now is kill Jensen and take the girl.”
“What good will that do us?” Lathum asked. “Bixby said he wasn’t goin’ to pay no reward. You heard that same as I did.”
“We ain’t takin’ her for no reward,” Willis said. “We’re takin’ her for ransom. All we got to do is tell Bixby that if he wants to ever see her alive again, he’s goin’ to have to come up with that ten thousand dollars.”
“Where are we going to hit Jensen?” Pugh asked.
“At Weaver’s Needle,” Willis answered.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Matt knew what it was as soon as he heard it—the whizzing sound of a bullet frying the air but inches away from his head. That sound was followed immediately by the bark of a rifle.
“What was that?” Cynthia said.
Matt didn’t answer. Instead, he leaped from Spirit and, in the same motion, grabbed Cynthia, pulling her from her horse. With one hand, he slapped the rumps of the two horses to get them out of danger, and with his other, he pushed the protesting Cynthia behind a rocky ledge. Two more bullets whipped by, one of them hitting a rock, then singing loudly as it ricocheted out into the desert.
By now, Cynthia realized what was going on, and she neither fought nor protested his action.
“Who is shooting at us?” Cynthia asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” Matt said.
He raised up to take a look and, just as he did, he saw the white puff of smoke from two rifles. Both bullets came uncomfortably close.
“Stay here and stay down,” Matt said. “No matter what you see, or think you see, don’t move.”
“All right,” Cynthia agreed.
Matt got up, then ran across an open area toward a ridgeline that was closer to the spot where the firing was coming from. As he expected them to, the assailants fired again; this time three shots were fired.
“Uhnn!” Matt grunted, grabbing his stomach as he went down. Cynthia screamed.
“Mr. Jensen, no!” she cried.
Willis, Lathum, and Pugh stared at Matt’s motionless body.
“We got ’im,” Lathum said.
“Maybe,” Willis replied.
“What do you mean maybe?” Lathum said. “You seen ’im go down same as I did. Besides, I had a perfect bead on him. I know I hit him. He’s deader’n shit, if you ask me.”
“I hit him, too,” Pugh said.
“Well, I’m glad I’m with two excellent shots,” Willis said.
“Hell, Willis, we don’t mean nothin’ by that,” Lathum said. “It’s just that we both know the son of a bitch is dead, and we don’t know why we’re waitin’ around up here. Let’s go down there and get the woman, then take her in town and get the money.”
“Yeah,” Pugh said.
“All right, go down there and check him out,” Willis said. “If he’s dead, we’ll get the girl and take her back, then get the money.”
“Now you’re talkin’,” Lathum said with a broad grin.
Carefully, the two men climbed down from their perch a short way up the wall behind Weaver’s Needle. Then, with pistols at the ready, they started across the rocky valley floor toward Matt’s prostrate form.
“Be careful now,” Pugh said.
“What’s there to be careful about?” Lathum replied. “You seen him go down, same as I did. Hell, he ain’t even twitched in the last five minutes. There can’t nobody lie that long without at least twitching if he ain’t dead.”
Matt heard the sound of boots on rock as the two men approached him. He had hoped his ruse would bring out all three, but if it brought only two, that would at least even up the odds between him and whoever else was shooting at him.
