“What’s he doin’ out here?”
“Who cares? Let’s get him!”
The riders galloped through the draw, bent on capturing or killing Falcon MacCallister.
A couple of the men in front thought Falcon made an easy target, so they pulled their pistols and began shooting up toward him as they rode. Falcon could see the flash of the gunshots, then the little puffs of dust as the bullets hit around him. The spent bullets whined as they ricocheted through the little draw, but none of them even came close enough to cause him to duck.
Falcon leaned over, almost casually, to light two fuses. A little starburst of sparks started at each fuse, then ran sputtering and snapping along the length of fuse for several feet alongside the draw. The first explosion went off about fifty yards in front of the lead rider, a heavy, stomach-shaking thump that filled the draw with smoke and dust, then brought a ton of rocks crashing down to close the draw so that the riders couldn’t get through.
The second explosion, somewhat less powerful, was located behind the riders. It, too, brought rocks crashing down into the draw behind them, closing the passage off. All twenty men were now bottled up inside the pass, and it was going to take them at least a day, maybe two days, to dig their way out. They were no longer part of whatever might happen in Higbee.
Leaving the trapped cowboys behind him, Falcon leaped onto his horse and urged it into a gallop. When he came galloping into Higbee from the west end of town a few minutes later, he saw everyone in position behind the barricade, and he knew that he had arrived before Clinton and his men.
“Here’s MacCallister!” someone said.
“Where’ve you been?” another asked.
“How did it go?” Garrison asked.
Only Garrison knew where Falcon had been, and why.
“I’ve got about twenty of them trapped in Elbow Pass,” Falcon said. “Another twenty will be coming from this direction. Is everything ready?”
“We’re ready,” Garrison said.
“Where’s the breach?”
“Right there,” Garrison said, pointing to a stack of barrels.
“You sure it’s wide enough?”
“Major, you may have come up with the plan,” Garrison said. “But I think I have the military experience to implement it.”
Falcon chuckled. “I would never question you, General,” he replied.
“They’re comin’!” someone shouted down from the roof of Moore’s general store.
“All right, men, get ready,” Garrison said. Then, spotting Denham, he scolded him. “Mr. Denham, what are you doing up here? I said I wanted only young men who could run up here.”
“I can get out in time,” Denham said.
“Get back there now before I shoot you myself,” Garrison said, pointing to the Golden Nugget.
“All right, all right, but don’t think for a minute I’m not going to write an article about overbearing generals,” he grumbled.
Falcon chuckled as he saw Denham moving back toward the Golden Nugget. Then, turning, he saw Garrison.
“General, you’re no spring chicken,” he said. “You need to get back there, too.”
“Since when does a major give a general orders?” Garrison replied.
“Go,” Falcon ordered.
“Hah!” Denham said as Garrison caught up with him. The two men went about fifty yards down the road, then stepped in behind the Golden Nugget.
Falcon watched them until they disappeared. Then he stepped up to the barricade with his pistol in hand.
“Are you boys ready?” he asked.
“Bring ’em on,” Tom said. Tom, Larry, and Frank, the three young men who had ridden as guards for the Thompson shipment of Garrison’s depot material, were among the five who were waiting behind the barricade with Falcon.
“Hold it up, men, hold it up!” Ike Clinton said when he saw the barricade stretched across the street in front of them.
Suddenly, a ripple of gunfire came from the barricade. Ike and the others started shooting back.
“Pa, should we dismount?” Cletus asked.
“Yes, dismount and take cover on the side of the road,” Ike replied.
Then a part of the barricade collapsed, and when it did, the shooting from the barricade stopped.
“Son of a bitch! Their barricade came down!” Ike said. “Mount up men! Mount up and charge! By God, we’ve got ’em now!”
“Now!” Falcon ordered. “Fall back!”
The five men with Falcon, all young, chosen for their youth and the ability to run fast, dashed down Front Street as fast as they could run. All five were faster than Falcon, who was considerably older than they were, and even before he got there, more wagons were being pulled into the street from alongside the buildings to form a second barricade. Falcon got there just in time to get behind the second barricade.
