If those bastards had hurt Maggie, he would kill them, each and every one of them, no matter what it took. A part of his mind was aware that it was ludicrous for an injured man with a baby on his hands to make such a vow, but he didn’t care.
If Maggie was hurt, they would pay. He would see to it.
Chapter 33
Maggie went up to her room in the hotel, struggling with the decision of what to do next. She had a pretty good idea what the outlaws would do. Any time now they would show up in Pancake Flats to find out what had happened. She knew she ought to warn the townspeople.
But if she did, if the citizens were ready and fought back, then Garth and the others would know who had alerted them to the impending raid. The outlaws were vicious and brutal, but they weren’t stupid.
They would regard her warning the town as a double cross, Maggie knew, and they could easily take out their anger at her on Ike and Caleb. She couldn’t risk that.
All she could do was hope that when they rode in and found out that Joshua Shade wasn’t here, they would ride out again in search of him.
If they did, she hoped they would take her with them. She never would have dreamed she would hope such a thing, but she wanted to be with her husband and son, wherever they were.
Maggie had been up in her room for only a short time when loud, angry voices in the street drew her to the window. She opened the curtain and peered out.
She wasn’t surprised to see the wagon that Sam Two Wolves had driven out of town at such a break-neck pace earlier in the evening. The vehicle was stopped in the middle of the street, with one of the cowboys who had pursued it now on the seat. He must have driven it back into town.
A large group of men was gathered around the wagon, some on foot and others on horseback. The riders were the ones who had given chase to the wagon, Maggie decided.
One of the other men shouted, “Are you sure there was no sign of Shade?”
“The wagon’s empty, I tell you!” the man on the seat replied. “Those bastards Bodine and Two Wolves fooled us.”
“Then where
No one seemed to know the answer to that question. Maggie wanted to lean out the window and tell them that they were fools, that Joshua Shade was probably miles from town by now, heading west toward Yuma along with Marshal Thorpe and the other lawman.
She didn’t do it, though. They could figure that out for themselves if they wanted to. If they had enough sense.
They didn’t have enough time to figure out anything, though, because at that moment the swift rata-plan of hoofbeats sounded loudly from both ends of the street, and suddenly more riders poured into town, bristling with guns.
“What the hell!” one of the cowboys yelled. He tried to claw the Colt on his hip out of its holster.
With a roar and a spurt of muzzle flame, one of the newcomers fired. The cowboy who had slapped leather doubled over in the saddle as the bullet tore through his guts. Slowly, groaning in pain, he toppled off his horse.
An ominous silence settled over the street following the shot.
Maggie recognized the man who had just gunned down that cowboy. He was Willard Garth, the leader of the outlaw gang while Joshua Shade was still a prisoner.
She saw Jeffries and Gonzalez as well, along with the other members of the gang. They had split up as they entered the settlement so they could catch the men in the street in a cross fire if need be.
This was exactly what Maggie had been expecting. The outlaws had ridden in to find out what had happened.
The ones she
Some instinct made Maggie clutch the windowsill as she looked out. Her eyes widened with shock and horror as she made a quick count of the outlaws. She gasped as she reached fifteen.
That was all of them. Wherever Ike and Caleb had been left, they were alone.
Maggie covered her mouth as the implications of that discovery soaked in on her. The outlaws had either abandoned an injured, unconscious man and a baby—or killed them before riding into Pancake Flats. Maggie shuddered at the thought of that awful Gonzalez and his knife…
All that passed through Maggie’s mind in a matter of seconds. Down below in the street, the outlaws still menaced the citizens with drawn guns as Garth demanded, “What happened? Where’s the prisoner who was in that wagon?”
“Your guess is as good as ours, mister,” the cowboy on the driver’s seat replied. “We would’ve sworn he was in here when we chased the blasted thing out of town, but when we caught up to it, it was sittin’ there empty, with nobody around.”
“Was the door still locked when you found it?” Jeffries asked.
“What?” The cowboy seemed confused.
“The door, damn it! The door on the back of the wagon. Was it locked?”
