And that usually meant trouble.
Conrad reined in his horse and Arturo brought the buggy to a stop. As they sat there watching, the dust column continued to move toward them. Conrad’s keen eyes made out a single figure at the base of the column. Then his gaze shifted and he lifted a hand to point.
“Even more dust back there,” he said.
“What does it mean?” Arturo asked.
“Means that fella in front is being chased by at least half a dozen riders,” Conrad said, “and I’ll bet they don’t have anything good in mind for him.”
Arturo’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he looked at Conrad and asked, “What exactly are we going to do about it?”
With a faint smile, Conrad said, “Now that’s a good question.”
He reached for his Winchester and drew it out of the saddle boot.
“I knew it!” Arturo said. “Whatever this trouble is, you’re going to get mixed up right in the middle of it, aren’t you? You can’t just let it gallop on past us.”
Conrad didn’t answer with words. Instead he heeled his horse into a run across the arid plains in a course that would intercept the fleeing rider.
2
Arturo yelled something behind him, but Conrad couldn’t make it out over the thunder of the black’s hoofbeats. He leaned forward in the saddle and urged the animal to greater speed.
He had been torn for a second between the two courses of action that lay before him. He and Arturo could have stayed where they were and allowed the pursuit to pass in front of them and continue on to the south. That probably would have been the smartest thing to do, since he was on an important mission of his own: finding his lost children.
Or he could give in to the part of him that didn’t like six-to-one odds. That was the urge that won the mental battle. He had gotten in the habit of sticking up for anybody who was outnumbered.
Of course, it was possible the fleeing rider was a killer or a train robber or some other sort of outlaw, and that could be a posse on his trail. In that case, Conrad could stop the fugitive and do a favor for the law.
First, though, he had to get an idea of what was going on. He didn’t hear any shots or see any puffs of powdersmoke from the pursuers. Evidently they weren’t out to kill the person they were after.
Conrad suddenly realized he needed to stop thinking of that lone rider as a man. He was close enough now to see long, fair hair streaming out behind the rider’s head. Some men wore their hair long like that, but Conrad’s instincts told him this was a woman.
A woman being chased by that many men was bound to be in trouble. Conrad hauled back on the reins and brought his mount to a stop again. He levered a round into the Winchester’s firing chamber and brought the rifle to his shoulder. Aiming high, he squeezed the trigger and sent a shot blasting over the heads of the pursuers, who were a couple of hundred yards away.
The woman was closer, maybe fifty yards from him. She changed course, veering toward him. The shot Conrad had fired at the men chasing her must have convinced her that he might protect her. Conrad levered the rifle and squeezed off another round.
The pursuers didn’t return his fire. They still had to be worried about hitting the woman. She flashed past Conrad without slowing down. He caught a glimpse of her pale, frightened face. When he glanced over his shoulder after her, he saw that Arturo had followed him in the buggy and was stopped a short distance behind him. Arturo had jumped down from the vehicle and stood there with a rifle in his hands, ready to get into the fight if need be.
Conrad turned his attention back to the pursuers, who slowed their horses and then stopped, evidently unwilling to charge right into the threat of two Winchesters. They were far enough away Conrad couldn’t make out any details about them except the broad-brimmed hats and long dusters they wore. The horses milled around as the dust cloud kicked up by their hooves started to blow away.
Seconds passed in nerve-stretching tension. Finally one of the men prodded his horse forward. Conrad stayed where he was, waiting in motionless silence, as the man rode slowly toward him.
“That’s far enough,” Conrad called when the man was about thirty feet away.
“Mister, I don’t know who you are, but you’re mixin’ in something that’s none of your concern.” The spokesman for the pursuers was a thick-set man with dark beard stubble on his face. One eye was squeezed almost shut, no doubt from the injury that had left a scar angling away from it. “That woman belongs to us.”
Conrad said, “You may not have heard, but it’s almost a new century. Enlightened people are starting to believe that women don’t actually belong to anyone except themselves.”
The man grunted. “It don’t matter what century it is. The law’s the law.”
“What law?”
“The law of God!” the man thundered.
With that, things became clearer to Conrad. “You’re Mormons, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Call ourselves saints,” the man said. “Or in our case . . . angels.”
Avenging angels, Conrad thought. Gun-packing enforcers for the leaders of the Mormon hierarchy. Conrad had heard stories about them, but these were the first he had encountered. When he’d been in charge of all the Browning business and financial interests—back in that other life of his before everything he held dear was ripped away from him—he had dealt at times with Mormon leaders. You couldn’t do business in Utah without dealing with the Mormons. But they had been businessmen as much as they were church elders, their religious beliefs tempered by the desire to make money. These gunmen were very different sorts.
Despite being outnumbered, Conrad wasn’t afraid of them. He said, “Chasing a scared girl across this wasteland doesn’t strike me as being very religious.”
