Sam a reckless grin as he drew even. Sam returned the grin, and kept slashing at the mules’ rumps with the reins.
Guns kept flashing and banging behind them, but none of the bullets came close as far as Matt could tell. More than likely, the cowboys chasing them were blazing away with six-guns, and they weren’t going to hit anything at that range unless it was by pure luck.
Every so often, Matt stopped and threw a few shots behind them with his Winchester as Sam continued to follow the railroad tracks toward Bowtie Canyon. The pursuit fell farther and farther back.
Finally, Sam hauled on the reins and called, “Whoa! Whoa!” to the mules. Matt reined in as well and swung down from the saddle to untie Sam’s horse from the back of the wagon while Sam was climbing down from the driver’s seat. He untied the spare horses as well.
Matt pressed the reins into Sam’s hand and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
It went against the grain for them to ride away from trouble, rather than charging straight into it, but it was more important tonight that they rejoin Thorpe and Everett and make sure that they’d reached the water stop safely with Joshua Shade.
Leading the extra horses, Matt and Sam rode carefully across the railroad tracks, then headed south toward the border. They didn’t intend to go as far as Mexico, however. After a mile or so, they turned west, paralleling the Southern Pacific right-of-way.
There were no more shots. The blood brothers figured that the cowboys who had chased them from Pancake Flats would find the wagon and realize they’d been tricked when they discovered the vehicle was empty. By then, it would be too late. They wouldn’t be able to track Matt and Sam by starlight, and they’d have no idea where Joshua Shade really was.
All Matt and Sam had to do now was reach the water stop, rendezvous with Thorpe and Everett, and hope that nobody figured out where they were before the train came through in the morning. It was pretty simple…but there was still a lot that could wrong between now and then.
Garth knew something was wrong when he saw the muzzle flashes streaming out of Pancake Flats to the east. He and the rest of the gang were less than half a mile north of the settlement.
They had left Winslow and the kid alone back at the place where they had been camped. It was a risk, not leaving a guard behind, but with the way the gang’s numbers had shrunk since that damned Bodine and Two Wolves had poked their noses in, Garth wanted every man with him. Winslow was still out cold, and the kid was asleep. They weren’t going anywhere.
Now, as he listened to the shots and saw the orange spurts of flame trailing off to the east, Garth cursed bitterly under his breath.
“Those lawdogs must’ve made a break for it with Joshua,” he said. “Mount up! We’ll try to cut ’em off!”
“Wait a minute,” Jeffries said.
Garth whirled on him. He didn’t like having his orders contradicted, and he’d had just about enough of the dapper gunman anyway.
“What the hell’s the idea?” Garth demanded.
“We can’t get ahead of them,” Jeffries said. “Not from this angle. They’ve got too big a lead on us.”
“What do you reckon we ought to do then?” Garth didn’t bother trying to keep the anger out of his voice.
“The only reason for them to go east, away from Yuma, is if that they’re trying to catch the train before it ever gets to Pancake Flats. Marshal Thorpe must plan to commandeer the locomotive and highball it right through town instead of stopping.”
Garth frowned and chewed his mustache. What Jeffries said made sense, even though Garth didn’t want to admit it. As he thought about it, the glimmerings of another idea came to life in his brain.
“The train’s still got to go through Pancake Flats before it can get to Yuma,” he said.
“Exactly,” Jeffries agreed.
Gonzalez, who had returned earlier from spreading the rumor in the settlement concerning the reward or bounty or whatever you wanted to call it, said, “What are you two talkin’ about?”
Garth turned toward him and raised his voice so that the rest of the men could hear, too. “We’re gonna ride in and take over that two-bit town,” he declared. “Then, when the train comes through, we’ll stop it and take Joshua off of it.”
Murmurs of agreement came from the other outlaws. Garth nodded, confident again in his decision, even though so far his quarry had seemed able to stay one jump ahead of him.
“Those men who went chasing off after the wagon might actually catch it,” Jeffries suggested.
“All the more reason to get into town and take over,” Garth snapped. “If they come back with Joshua, we’ll be ready for ’em. If they don’t, we know what we’ll have to do.”
With that, the outlaws mounted up and headed toward Pancake Flats.
Maggie had recognized Matt Bodine as he galloped past the hotel, leading the way for the wagon, and she thought he had recognized her, too, in that brief instant. He hadn’t slowed down, though, even for a second, which came as no surprise. Bodine and his companions were making a break for it with their prisoner before the mob had a chance to storm the livery stable.
Or were they? Maggie saw the riderless horses tied onto the back of the wagon, and asked herself where Marshal Thorpe and the other deputy were. They wouldn’t be
That meant they were still in the barn—or maybe they had gone out the back with the prisoner while Bodine and Two Wolves were going out the front and capturing the attention of everyone in the mob.
Like a flash of lightning, the whole thing was crystal clear in Maggie’s mind. She knew what they had done, and as she watched the angry cowboys stream out of town after the wagon, she realized that the trick had worked. Like
