against us, that husband o’ yours has put your life in danger, as well as your kid’s. If he ain’t gonna help us…”
He left the rest of it unsaid, but he was sure Mrs. Winslow knew what he meant. If the pilgrim wasn’t going to cooperate, there was no need to keep his family alive.
She had the sense to turn pale and look scared at least.
“Hey, Garth,” Gonzalez said suddenly. “Somebody comin’.”
Garth turned back around and saw a man staggering across the semiarid landscape toward them. Heat haze blurred him for a moment, but then he came closer and Garth recognized him.
So did the woman. “Ike!” she cried.
“Hang on to her,” Garth growled at Jeffries. Then he spurred his horse forward, followed by Gonzalez.
Blood had sheeted down the right side of Winslow’s face, giving him a gruesome appearance. He weaved from side to side as he walked, as if he could barely stay on his feet.
Maybe he had been wounded early in the fight, Garth thought. It was even possible that he had hesitated long enough to tip off the marshal and Thorpe had shot him. The important thing was that he was still alive and they might be able to get some use out of him after all.
Winslow stopped and stood there swaying as Garth and Gonzalez reined in. “What happened?” Garth demanded as he dismounted. “You were supposed to plug that damn marshal!”
“I…I tried,” Winslow said. “I had my gun out…but then the wagon…the wagon hit a rough spot in the trail… bounced so hard it threw me off the seat…I hit my head on something…” He winced and lifted his hand toward the big gash above his right ear, then lowered it without touching the wound. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything after…after that…”
Winslow’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and he dropped to his knees. As his wife screamed, “Ike!” he pitched forward on his face.
“Hold her!” Garth yelled at Jeffries. He knelt beside Winslow and rolled the pilgrim onto his back. Winslow’s chest rose and fell jerkily, so he was still alive, but he appeared to be out cold.
“I can cut his throat if you want, Garth,” Gonzalez offered. “Then we can have some fun with the woman.”
“Not until we get Joshua back from that marshal, damn it!” Garth stood up and gestured toward the unconscious man. “We’ve got extra horses now. Throw him on one and tie him in the saddle.”
Jeffries looked over the shoulder of the sobbing Maggie Winslow, who still clutched her infant son to her. “Why do we need him? He couldn’t even do a simple thing like killing Thorpe.”
“I don’t know, but it won’t cost us anything to take him along,” Garth snapped.
He was getting sick and tired of everybody questioning his orders. Joshua had made it clear that Garth was to be in charge if anything ever happened to him, but Jeffries and Gonzalez didn’t seem to remember that, and some of the other men were starting to cast dissatisfied looks in his direction, too.
He needed to do something to remind them that he was the boss, at least for now, and bringing Winslow along was part of that.
The other part was making a daring move to show them that he could come up with a plan. He said, “We’re gonna split up.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jeffries asked. “There aren’t as many of us as there were when we started out.”
Garth knew that, and Jeffries knew he knew it, the smug varmint. Garth said, “That wagon won’t get to the railroad until close to nightfall. We’ve got time to circle around and set up an ambush like I wanted to do all along. A dozen men will do that. The others will push the wagon right into the trap we set up. This time it’ll work,” he added, hating the sound of the defensive note that crept into his voice. If he could hear it, that meant the others could, too.
But all it would take was freeing Joshua, and killing that marshal—Bodine and Two Wolves, too—to make the rest of the gang forget all about their previous failures. Garth was going to do that if he had to fight to the last breath in his body.
“You know, Marshal,” Sam said, “you didn’t seem all that surprised to see Matt and me when we showed up to help you fight off those outlaws.”
Unexpectedly, a hint of a smile appeared on Asa Thorpe’s face. “That’s because I wasn’t,” he said.
The two men were on the wagon seat, with Sam handling the reins now as the vehicle rolled south toward Pancake Flats. His horse was tied on behind the wagon. Matt had the point about a hundred yards in front, with the remaining four outriders spread out to the sides and behind the wagon.
Sam looked over at Thorpe and said, “You’re going to have to explain that.”
“I don’t have to explain anything. I work for the United States government.” Thorpe shrugged. “But I don’t suppose it would hurt anything now to admit that things worked out pretty much like I planned, at least where you and Bodine are concerned.”
“All right, now I’m
“I’ve heard a lot about you two young hellions. You can’t stay away from trouble. You seek it out, even though you claim to be peace-loving hombres.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Sam said. “But close enough for government work, as they say.”
Thorpe grunted, and it was a second before Sam realized that the marshal had just laughed. Thorpe went on. “I knew that if I told you and Bodine you couldn’t come along, you’d be bound and determined to do it anyway. I figured that you’d follow along, thinking that you were putting one over on me.”
“So when the outlaws attacked, as you were sure they would, we’d be in position to hit them either from the side or from behind, taking them by surprise.”
