Lying on his belly, Bo propped himself on his elbows and snugged the butt of the Winchester against his shoulder. The rifle already had a bullet in the firing chamber. He took a deep breath, settled his sights on the first man he was going to try to take down, and squeezed the trigger.
Before the whipcrack of the shot could even start to echo through the canyon and join the echoes of all the other shots, Bo had worked the Winchester’s lever and shifted his sights. A second shot blasted out. He didn’t take the time to see if his bullets found their targets. Instead he jacked the lever and fired again and again and again, so that the shots formed a continuous roar.
Bo didn’t stop shooting. He had reloaded the rifle before starting his climb, so he’d had a full sixteen rounds in it, one in the chamber and fifteen in the magazine. He fired all sixteen shots in that many seconds, maybe a little less. From this angle, even the outlaws he couldn’t see were in danger from the storm of lead because the bullets were bouncing around among those rocks on the other wall.
Bo counted off the shots, and when the Winchester was empty he quickly scooted backward, knowing that the Devils would return his fire. Dirt and pebbles leaped into the air as bullets chewed into the edge of the rimrock. Bo stayed as low as he could. He heard slugs whining through the air just above his head. Where he was, though, they couldn’t reach him.
Of course, he couldn’t stick his head up, either, not without getting a bullet through the brain.
While he was lying there, he thumbed fresh cartridges through the Winchester’s loading gate. A sudden outburst of firing from the opposite wall of the canyon made him glance in that direction. For a second he thought some of the Devils had moved down there to get better shots at him, but then he saw a familiar figure kneeling behind a rock on that side and directing his fire toward the outlaws.
Scratch!
The silver-haired Texan ducked lower behind the rock as his rifle ran dry. Bo shouted over to him. “What in blazes are you doing up there?”
Scratch flashed a grin back at him. “I was always a better climber than you!” he called. “Figured if you could do it, I could, too, and we could lay into the varmints from two directions at once!”
Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea, Bo thought, although Scratch was in more danger because he was on the same side of the canyon as the Devils.
But it appeared they had the outlaws on the run again. The shooting had died down, and when Bo risked a look, he spotted several of the figures in their long coats dashing away from the edge of the canyon. He opened fire on them again, hoping to bring down one or two more, but they were out of sight too quickly for that.
“Varmints are lightin’ a shuck!” Scratch called as hoofbeats sounded.
“I know. Did you see how many of them got away?”
“Half a dozen, I reckon. Maybe one or two more.”
They had to have wiped out at least half the gang, Bo thought. But that left a number of them still on the loose, free to raise more hell. Also, there was no way of knowing how many confederates the Devils might have who were still back in Deadwood.
Right now, though, since the shooting had stopped, the immediate problem was helping the survivors of the avalanche. That meant climbing back down into the canyon.
“I’ll keep an eye out in case they double back,” Bo called across to Scrach. “You can climb down first.”
Scratch reached down to the ground and lifted a coil of rope. “I brought my lariat with me,” he responded. “I’ll tie it on to something and get down that way. Won’t take long.”
“Good idea,” Bo told him. He held his rifle ready and scanned the opposite ridge while Scratch made the rope fast to a rock and went down it hand-overhand, using his feet to hold himself away from the canyon wall.
When Scratch was down, Bo went back to the spot where he had climbed up. Since he knew all the handholds and footholds now, the descent went slightly faster, but he still had to take it slow and be careful. He didn’t want to fall and break a leg or worse now that the fight with the Devils was over.
By the time Bo reached the canyon floor, Scratch had already gone to see what the situation was at the site of the avalanche. Bo joined his old friend and found Scratch talking to Sgt. Olaf Gustaffson. Relief went through Bo at the sight of the non-com, who had a bloody scratch on his head but otherwise appeared to be all right. Several of the troopers were nearby, searching through the rockslide.
Gustaffson gave Bo a curt nod. “Glad to see you’re all right, Creel. And thanks for giving us a hand like that. If you hadn’t come back to help us, those outlaws would’ve sat up there like buzzards and picked us all off sooner or later.”
“I’m glad you made it, too, Sergeant,” Bo said. “Where’s the lieutenant?”
Gustaffson grimaced and nodded toward the huge pile of rocks in the center of the canyon. “Under there somewhere. His horse went down while we were making a run for it. I turned back to try to pick him up, but before I could get there, a bunch of rocks swept right over him.” Gustaffson sighed. “I didn’t like him, but Lord, I wouldn’t wish something like that on anybody.”
“You and those other men are the only ones who made it?”
“Yeah. Less than a third of the patrol. And it was pure luck that we survived. The edge of the slide didn’t miss us by more than ten feet. Some of the smaller rocks pelted us.” Gustaffson gestured toward the cut on his head. “That’s how I got this. The other men are beaten up, too. But we’re alive, and that’s more than you can say for anybody who got caught under that. I told the men to look for more survivors, but between you and me, they’re not going to find any.”
Bo had to agree with that grim assessment. He asked, “You have your horses?”
“Yeah, our mounts got clear with us.”
“Then you can get back to Deadwood. With the canyon blocked off, you may have to go a long way around, but you should be able to make it.”
“What about the two of you?” Gustaffson asked.
