“All right,” Longarm growled as he checked both weapons and determined that they were still functional. “Now we’ve got a fighting chance!”
He zigzagged his way back down the slope to Miranda, dodging bullets every step of the way. Trent was fully conscious but dazed, and he was cradling his young wife in his arms with tears streaming down his cheeks.
Longarm glanced at Miranda, who said with a sob in her voice, “Esther just died. I think she must have broken her neck in the fall.”
Cold fury washed over Longarm. Esther had been a fine young lady who wouldn’t have hurt anyone. She’d deserved a whole lot better than this tragic fate and Longarm felt partially responsible. He should have advised the Roes not to journey to Durango just because he was on board the coach. Charley Blue was dead, and now this girl. That was enough, gawddamn it!
“We’ve got to move downstream and find a place to ambush this bunch,” Longarm said.
Trent looked up at him, eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t leave Esther!”
“You’re going to have to,” Longarm gently told the grieving young man.
“No!”
Longarm knelt beside Trent and placed his hand on the journalist’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but getting yourself killed is not going to bring Esther back and it’s not what she would want you to do.”
“Custis is right,” Miranda said. “She’d want you to try and survive this nightmare … just like you’d want her to survive if you’d been killed instead.”
Trent choked deep in his throat. He looked up at Longarm, and then stared at the pistols he held in his hand. “You found my Navy Colt. Give it to me!”
Longarm stepped back, shaking his head. “No,” he decided out loud. “I don’t think that would be a good idea given your state of mind.”
Trent lunged for his pistol, but Longarm was too quick for him. “You come with us downstream and when we find a good place to make our stand, then I’ll give the pistol back.”
“It’s mine and I’m going to kill them!” Trent screamed, jumping for the gun.
Longarm had no choice but to pistol-whip him across the top of his head. Not real hard, Not nearly hard enough to knock him out cold, but hard enough to drop Trent and convince him to stop his foolishness.
A rifle bullet whistled by them, and it was uncomfortably close. “Let’s help him up, Miranda. We’re running out of time!”
Longarm could see that the outlaws had already reached the overturned stagecoach. One of them must have been at least half human, because he dispatched the two injured and suffering animals with rifle bullets to their heads.
“Let’s go!” Longarm said, grabbing Trent and helping Miranda support him as they hurried along the stream bank.
It was tough going. The brush was thick and the rocks were slippery. They kept falling and struggling along, searching for someplace to hide, or at least a good defensive position.
“There!” Longarm said, pointing to a massive boulder that was bigger than a cabin and that diverted the entire stream around it. They can flank us and we’ll have a big advantage.”
Miranda stared up at the immense boulder, which was at least twenty feet high. “How in the world are we supposed to climb that given the bad shape we’re in?”
A random bullet fired by the outlaws punctuated the urgency of their situation. Longarm knew full well that the gang would be coming, if they were not coming already.
“I dunno. Maybe we can’t,” Longarm replied as his eyes searched every inch of the giant boulder, seeking a crevice or some footholds that would allow them to scale the monolith, but finding nothing. “Let’s wade into the stream and around the rock. Could be there’s a way up on the downstream side.”
The water channeled swiftly around the boulder. So swiftly that, when they tried to flank it, they were swept off their feet and spun around like leaves on a pond. Fortunately, they could all swim, and the current died as soon as it passed the giant rock. Longarm managed to keep his guns dry, especially the old Navy Colt, whose black powder would be useless had it been soaked. “Look! We can climb up that fissure to the top-“
“You can, but I can’t and I’m sure that Trent can’t either, thanks to that pistol you used on his head.”
“He would have gotten himself killed,” Longarm said, detecting accusation in Miranda’s voice. “There was no other way to change his mind in a hurry.”
“Oh?” Miranda didn’t look convinced, but Longarm had neither the time nor the patience to argue the point.
“Are you sure that you can’t make it to the top?” Longarm asked.
“Positive.”
“All right, then. I’ll go myself and try to take out as many as possible. You and Trent keep moving downstream just as fast as you can. If you see a good hiding place, try to reach it by first wading in the water to wash away your tracks.”
“I thought you were-“
“There’s five of them, Miranda. They’ve got rifles and I’ve got just a pair of pistols. I might not be able to stop all of them. So go on!”
Miranda forgot about being angry at him for pistol-whipping Trent. She threw her arms around Longarm’s neck and hugged him tightly. “I don’t want to leave you to face them alone.”
“It’s best,” he said. “I’m the one that can put every bullet where I mean to, and we’ve none to waste. So go on
