“I don’t like it either,” Garth snapped, “but we don’t have much choice. We’ll get him loose, but we got to wait until the time is right.”
“How are we going to know that?” Jeffries asked.
Garth chewed on his mustache where it hung over his lips. “I wish the boss hadn’t killed that old prospector. We could’ve sent him back in to spy for us, like he did before.”
“Maybe what we need to do,” Jeffries said, “is to find another spy.”
Gonzalez looked over at him. “Where we gonna do that?”
“There are ranches around here,” Jeffries said with a shrug. “Find a small one where it’s just a man and his family, maybe a hand or two, and take it over. A man will do whatever you tell him to when it’s a matter of protecting his wife and kids.”
That was a good idea, Garth realized. He wished he had thought of it himself. But he couldn’t afford to ignore the suggestion just because Jeffries had come up with it.
“All right,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do. Half a dozen men ought to be plenty. The rest of you stay here and patch up any wounds you got during the ruckus in town.”
Jeffries and Gonzales volunteered to go with Garth, who quickly picked out three other men to accompany them. The six of them mounted up and rode off into the night.
“I don’t like the way you said the rev’rend made a mistake by killin’ that old man,” Gonzalez grumbled. “He thought he was doin’ the right thing.”
“I didn’t see any reason not to kill that desert rat either…at the time,” Garth said. “It just goes to show you that nobody can think of everything, at least not all the time.”
“The rev’rend can,” Gonzalez insisted.
If that was true, thought Garth, then Shade wouldn’t be sitting in some little cow country jail right now. He kept that sentiment to himself, though. No point in making the Mexican even proddier than he already was, or in encouraging Jeffries to be even more ambitious.
He was going to have his hands full running the gang, Garth told himself. He just hoped that he would be up to the job until they freed Joshua Shade so that he could take his rightful place as the boss outlaw once again.
Garth hoped that day came soon, too.
The dogs barking woke Tom Peterson. His wife Frannie stirred in the bed beside him. They were spooning, and it felt good when her rump moved against him.
He couldn’t think about that right now, though, because the dogs were upset about something. Might be a wolf or a bear had wandered down from the mountains and was nosing around the stock.
Better get up and check, Tom told himself. It would be a lot more pleasurable, though, to just lie here, maybe wake Frannie up the rest of the way for a little slap an’ tickle. The young’uns were sound asleep in the loft.
With a sigh, Tom moved away from his wife and swung his legs out of bed. Wearing long underwear, he stood up and moved across the darkened room to twitch aside the curtains over the window. Frannie was mighty proud of those curtains, having bought the material for them at one of the mercantiles in Arrowhead.
A lantern was burning in the little shed next to the barn where Felipe slept. The old vaquero was the only hand Tom had hired. He and Felipe took care of things around the spread by themselves, helped a little by Tom’s boys, who were eleven and eight and turning into pretty fair hands themselves.
Felipe would see what had the dogs so stirred up, Tom told himself. He turned to go back to bed.
Before he could get there, he heard one of the dogs give a yelp of pain.
Frowning, Tom swung toward the door instead of the bed. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t ignore the fact that something was going on. He took down the Henry rifle from the pegs beside the door and levered a round into the chamber. Then he pulled the latch string and pushed the door open.
As the door swung back, Tom heard Felipe’s voice start to rise in a startled shout. It was cut off a second later, and the abruptness of it made Tom’s heart thud heavily with fear. He rushed outside, holding the gun ready.
Something cracked across his ankles. He cried out in pain and dismay as he felt himself toppling forward. The impact as he hit the ground jolted the Henry out of his hands. He reached for it, only to have a boot come down hard on his fingers. He yelled in pain.
“Tom?” Frannie’s sleep-fuzzed voice came from inside the house. “Tom, what’s going on out there?”
He wanted to call out and warn her, but someone grabbed him by the hair, jerked his head up, and pressed the keen blade of a knife against his throat.
“Not a sound, Senor,” a voice hissed in his ear.
A second later, Frannie cried out, and only the knife at his throat kept Tom from moving. He felt a warm trickle of blood down his neck, and knew that the least bit more pressure would send the blade slicing deeply into his flesh.
“Get him up,” a rough voice ordered.
A hand tugged on Tom’s long underwear, urging him upright. The knife remained at his throat as he climbed to his feet. To his horror, he saw his wife in the moonlight with a man standing behind her, one arm around her throat and the other hand holding a gun to her head.
“Do what we tell you, hombre,” the man said, “and nobody’ll get hurt. But if you give us any trouble, we’ll just kill everybody on this spread and move on.”
“But not before we have some fun with this pretty little wife of yours,” another man said as he came forward, and as Tom’s eyes gazed around wildly, he saw several other shapes emerge from the darkness. He was surrounded. Helpless, not only because he was outnumbered, but because these strangers were threatening Frannie.
