CHAPTER 15
'You'll never make this stick,' Hal Brodie snarled as they rode down the muddy Mountainside in a heavy rain. 'And Marshal, before I'm finished, I'm going to make you sorry for the day you were born.'
Longarm had tied the man's hands behind his back and his boots to his stirrups. He was leading Brodie's chestnut by a rope tied fast around his own saddlehorn. They were slowly descending a steep grade and, because of the rain, the footing was extremely treacherous and sloppy with mud. Off to his right stretched a vast gorge, and the drop-off from the road was at least two hundred feet almost straight down the Mountainside. Every quarter hour or so, they would meet a wagon churning mud up the steep grade. The poor horses would be slipping and clawing for footing, and the road was corkscrewed and dangerous even under the best of conditions.
Longarm pulled his hat down low over his eyes. It didn't rain a whole hell of a lot in Arizona, but when it did, it really poured. 'Why don't you save your breath,' Longarm said cryptically. 'Tell Judge Benton about how you're going to get even with a United States deputy marshal. That will impress the hell out of him.'
'You've got nothing on me but the word of a Mexican maid. A nobody!'
'If I have to,' Longarm said, 'I'll come back to Prescott and shake the truth out of Don Luis's relatives. I expect that they figured to cash in almost as much as you.'
Brodie cursed and stammered, 'You're just barking up the wrong tree.'
'I don't think so,' Longarm said, 'and neither did Judge Benton when he instructed me to come and arrest yOU.'
'He did that?' Brodie asked, clearly stunned.
'You bet he did.' Longarm couldn't help but smile. 'The judge believes Maria and so will a jury.'
Brodie fell into a brooding silence. He was no longer the handsome, debonair fellow he'd been when Longarm had first met him. Now he was sullen, and sat hunched over in his saddle as they endured the rain.
'Damn,' Longarm swore, peering ahead. 'Another wagon.'
it was a big, high-sided freight wagon and it was hogging the center of the road, just like most of the others had done when Longarm had been forced to ride far over to the side. 'Hey!' Longarm shouted angrily as the wagon grew nearer. 'Move over!'
But the driver's hat was pulled far down over his eyes and his head was bent low. Off to the east, thunder rolled and lightning cracked. Longarm guessed he had not been so wet, cold, and miserable in a good long while.
'Hey, dammit! Pull over!'
Suddenly, the driver did pull over, but to the high side of the road. Longarm had no choice but to rein his horse and go to the downside. He wasn't a bit happy as the freight wagon started to brush past, and he meant to give the driver a good piece of his mind. 'You stupid...'
Longarm's insult died on his lips as the driver sawed on his reins and the front wheel of his wagon veered sharply toward Longarm and his mount. He tried to spur his horse past the big freight wagon, but there just wasn't time as Brodie's chestnut panicked and attempted to whirl.
Longarm heard Brodie scream as his chestnut's hindquarters dropped over the edge of the cliff. For a terrible instant, the chestnut clawed with its forelegs and Brodie tried to unload, but he was tied to his stirrups and helpless.
Longarm heard Brodie scream, 'No! God, no!'
And then the man's horse vanished. Longarm instinctively reached for the lead rope attached to his saddlehorn, but there wasn't nearly enough time to untie it. His own stout gelding planted its hooves in the mud and tried to fight the terrible weight that was dragging it over the side of the mountain, but the mud was just too slick to get purchase, and Longarm felt his horse being yanked right over the edge of the cliff.
There was nothing for Longarm to do but bail out of his saddle, and that was when two riflemen opened fire from the back of the passing freight wagon. Longarm heard a bullet whip-crack past his ear, and then he was tumbling over the cliff along with Brodie and their horses.
Longarm kicked out of his stirrups. He struck a boulder and then crashed into a small pine tree jutting out from the side of the mountain at a forty-five-degree angle. In a desperate attempt to keep from plunging to his death, Longarm clamped a fist on the tree and managed to arrest his fall. He glanced downward to see Brodie and their horses tumbling wildly down the Mountainside. Longarm knew they were all dead long before they plummeted to the rocks far below where a stream ran full with muddy rainwater.
It had all happened so suddenly that Longarm was dazed. He pounded the toes of his boots into the crumbling Mountainside and found purchase. Hanging onto the pine tree, which was about four feet tall and jutting out from the side of the mountain, Longarm knew that he was all but invisible from up on the road even though it was only about thirty feet overhead.
Longarm's face was numb, and he had to blink both blood and rain from his eyes. He hooked his left arm tightly around the trunk of the tree, batting branches and pine needles out of his eyes. He was covered with mud, his clothes torn and twisted around his body. But when he reached down to his side with his right hand, he found that he still had his six-gun jammed deep into his holster.
Longarm heard shouted voices from up above. He drew his six-gun, peered through the pine needles, and saw Juan Ortega and two other men who he figured were Don Luis's other relatives starting down through the driving rain toward the rocks far below. With thunder rolling across the mountain and rain pelting his scratched and bruised face, Longarm couldn't hear what the three were saying, but they were definitely excited. They kept pointing and squinting, probably trying to locate human bodies somewhere on the canyon floor.
Longarm cocked back the hammer of his gun. The three relatives of the late Don Luis had given neither him nor Brodie any chance to survive, and Longarm knew they'd kill him in a heartbeat if they happened to see him hanging from this pine tree, helplessly exposed to their fire. That was why Longarm knew that he could not afford to hope that they would not see him. After all, they showed no sign of leaving the edge of the road above until they were well satisfied that both their intended victims were dead. In fact, one of them actually came over the lip of the road and down a few yards, despite the warnings of his excited companions.
Longarm wiped his eyes clear with the back of his soggy sleeve, and then he took a deep breath and began to fire as rapidly as he could. His first bullet hit the first man dead-center in the chest, and he howled and pitched
