before they show up.”
“I’ve got a derringer too,” she said. “When the shots were fired, I took it out of my purse and put it in my dress pocket. It’s still there, and I won’t hesitate to use it.”
“Let’s just hope that you don’t have to do that,” Longarm replied, not wanting to even think about what this kind of men would do to a woman like Miranda if she fell into their clutches.
“I want to stay too,” Trent said groggily.
“Get him out of here before I have to give him another hit across the head,” Longarm warned.
Miranda dragged the still-dazed Trent after her. Longarm was afraid that the young man had suffered a serious head injury. Probably a concussion. He was in no shape to use a gun, and was likely seeing double.
When they were gone, Longarm holstered his own gun and wedged Trent’s old percussion pistol under his belt, then began to climb up the fissure, knowing that it was absolutely imperative that he reach the top before the gang appeared. He was quite sure that he could kill at least two in the first volley, but after that, it was anyone’s guess what would happen. At the very least, he could hold them off until after dark. Then he would climb down from this big rock and try to find Miranda and Trent and lead them far enough down canyon to safety.
That, at least, was his plan, but it wasn’t one that gave him any great confidence. It was just the best that he could do under the circumstances.
Longarm had one hell of a bad time scaling the boulder. Miranda and Trent would never have made it. Most likely, they’d have fallen, because the rock was wet, slimy, and crumbly. It kept breaking away under Longarm’s feet, sending showers of rock cascading into the stream below. Longarm didn’t even want to think of descending the rock in the darkness. That would be almost impossible. What time was it? Mid-afternoon. Perhaps four o’clock. There would be another two or three hours of daylight at least.
Longarm crabbed his way across the crown of the boulder, staying low and moving as quickly as possible. It was capped with lichen and moss, and squishy to the touch. The entire gorge seemed to be shrouded in mist from this vantage point, and Longarm shivered in his wet clothing as the beginnings of a cool afternoon wind flowed down canyon.
The gang wouldn’t be far behind. He hated to think of them with Esther’s unprotected body. It seemed a sacrilege that they might even lay a hand on her while she lay there with a broken neck, pretty brown eyes staring up at eternity. Stop it, Longarm thought, there was no choice. We’d be dead by now if we’d stayed there to try to protect her body. What is important now is to protect the living. Especially Miranda. Dammit! I should never have let her talk me into allowing her to come!
Yet, even as Longarm argued with himself, he knew that he really hadn’t had any choice. Miranda had insisted on coming and she had been right—it was a free country.
“Come on!” he said aloud, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering. “Let’s get this over with!”
Longarm inspected his guns once more. Especially the Navy Colt. He’d fired percussion pistols like this for years, but he wouldn’t have imagined that his life would again depend on one. They were not very dependable in the rain or in this damned dampness. The Navy might shoot straight and fire correctly. Then again, it might not. Thank goodness he had found his own six-gun! Longarm had plenty of extra bullets in his cartridge belt, and he was very sure that he could hold off the outlaws until dark. Maybe, if he got very, very lucky, he could even kill or wound three of them. If he could do that, the other pair would surely call off the hunt and scurry out of this damned deep gorge before dark. Ambushers were, by the very nature of their act, a cowardly lot. They were men not given to bravery or risking their lives for anything but easy gain.
He had not waited more than a few minutes when he saw the leader cautiously emerge from behind a rock some thirty yards downstream. The man was big and made an inviting target. Longarm lay flat on the crown of his boulder and waited, wanting all of the gang members to be out in the open before he commenced to fire. He knew that he would only have a second or two to exploit his advantage of surprise, and he did not want to squander it on just one outlaw.
But the leader was smart. He saw the huge boulder, and must have realized it was an excellent ambush point. So he motioned his friends to stay behind cover. There was nothing that Longarm could do about that. He had no choice but to let the leader pass out of sight behind the safety of rocks very near his own boulder. But damned if he would allow any more of them to have the same safe passage.
The leader must have given his men a signal that they should come ahead because, suddenly, all four came into view. They were not cautious. They didn’t glance up at the boulder where Longarm waited, nor did they seem to be in any hurry, which was easy enough to understand. After all, how much of a threat could their quarry be after being trapped in a stagecoach that had rolled down a Mountainside? The outlaws probably figured that the survivors were badly injured and scared out of their wits.
Longarm had already decided to use his own pistol first because that was the one that he trusted. He took aim on the first outlaw and fired, nailing him squarely in the chest. In less than a second, Longarm shot a second outlaw, his slug knocking the man over backward into the stream. The third and fourth outlaws wheeled and ran for their lives but Longarm was able to get off one last shot. His slug struck one of them in the hip and spun him around. Longarm would have finished him off, but the wounded outlaw had the good fortune of falling between some rocks, howling like a dying dog.
Longarm grinned with satisfaction. “Three down and just two to go!”
Longarm waited. The wounded man kept screaming, his cries echoing up and down the deep, misty gorge. Longarm reloaded his own gun and stayed right where he was. If the leader was attempting to climb this rock, then he was a dead man, because he couldn’t do it without dislodging pebbles and rocks and making one hell of a racket.
“Come on,” Longarm whispered, staring at the place where the fifth man had taken cover. “Your friend is screaming his head off and probably bleeding to death! Don’t just sit there listening.”
As if his words were heard, the last outlaw poked his head up and then, very slowly, emerged. The man was a fool. He unleashed three blind shots up toward where Longarm lay in wait, then sprinted over to his wounded friend, grabbed him under the arms, and tried to haul him to safer cover. Longarm shot the fool in the head, and he fell twitching on the wet sand while his wounded friend lay screaming.
“Four down and one to go,” Longarm whispered to himself as he eased backward, then turned and crawled across the crown of the boulder to the deep fissure that he had used to gain this vantage point.
He peered downward and saw nothing at first. No movement. Nothing. So he gave the outlaw leader a few minutes more. Patience, Longarm had discovered, was about the most difficult but most important thing for either a
