forward, doing a complete somersault. He struck the side of the mountain not ten feet from Longarm, bounced like a ball, and went careening end over end down the slope. The second man was the recipient of Longarm's second slug, and it caught him in the groin. He collapsed to his knees screaming in agony. Longarm knew he wasn't going anywhere, but Juan Ortega, the man with the cruel eyes, was quick enough to disappear before Longarm could get off a clean shot.
'Damn!' Longarm swore, knowing that Ortega would escape before there was any chance of killing the man.
Meanwhile, the second man was trying to drag his gun up and fire down at Longarm, but he was in too much pain. He cursed at the sky and fired into the dirt while Longarm holstered his six-gun and struggled to pull himself up and over the pine tree. Somehow, he did. Clawing and scrambling and tearing at rock and mud, he crawled up the Mountainside using every handhold he could find, and some that didn't appear to exist.
The wounded man, eyes glazing with death, watched him and kept trying to pick up his gun. But he was in such intense agony that his body would not obey his mind, and so he watched helplessly as Longarm finally scrambled over the edge of the cliff and rolled upon his back, chest heaving for breath.
Ortega was nowhere in sight, but Longarm could hear his fading shouts as he whipped one of the wagon team's horses on up the mountain road as fast as it could lumber through the muck. No matter, Longarm thought. The road to Denver, Colorado, leads back through Prescott and I'll find Don Luis's scheming brother somewhere.
The wounded man slowly twisted around to face Longarm. He gripped his right wrist with his left hand and, with his fading strength, managed to raise his six-gun a few precious inches.
'Hold it,' Longarm panted, yanking out his own gun and leveling it at the man. 'Just drop the gun.'
He wasn't going to do it. The gun was like a terrible weight in his hands, and his determination was heroic as he slowly raised it by fractions of an inch.
Longarm waited an instant longer, and then he put a bullet through the man's brain. He was rocked backward, and tumbled over the side of the cliff.
Longarm wasn't sure how long he lay gasping for breath with the rain washing the mud and blood from his eyes. Maybe it was a half hour, perhaps much longer. But finally, he pushed himself to his feet. The saddle horses were gone, as was his prisoner. His saddle, rifle, bedroll, and saddlebags were all crushed under what was left of his poor horse lying far below.
'Shit,' Longarm swore as he pushed himself to his feet and slogged through mud over to the freight wagon.
He had a pocketknife, and used it to cut one of the team horses free. Then he mounted the animal, plow-reined it around, and continued on down the hill toward Wickenburg.
He had only gone a mile when he came upon a dead man lying face-down in the mud of the road. Longarm did not have to puzzle about the man's identity, because he knew it had to be the driver of the freight wagon who had met this sad end at the hands of the three Mexicans.
Longarm slid down from the draft horse and went over to turn the freighter over onto his back. The fellow had been shot right between the eyes. He'd probably never known what hit him, and he'd most certainly had no warning.
Longarm dragged the body as far as he could off the road, feeling bitterness and anger rising in his throat. This man had not deserved to die. He hadn't done anything except be unfortunate enough to have a wagon that the Mexicans wanted in order to knock both Longarm and his prisoner to their deaths far below in the canyon.
Longarm searched the man for some identification, but found none. They had emptied his pockets. He looked to have been a young man, probably no more than thirty years old. It was a damn, crying shame.
'Mister,' Longarm said, squatting on his heels in the rain. 'It started with Don Luis, and now it's ending with a couple of his dead relatives, that snake Hal Brodie, and finally you.'
Longarm came to his feet. 'I promise that I'll get someone up here to move you just as soon as I can.'
With that simple but seemingly necessary explanation completed to the victim, Longarm rode on toward Wickenburg and a stagecoach that would carry him back to Yuma to wrap up this tragic series of murders.
Before he had gone a mile, Longarm met another freight wagon. He reined his wagon horse directly into the wagon's path, forcing the driver to pull up short.
'Hey!' the driver yelled. 'Don't you know how tough it is for these horses when you break a wagon's momentum?'
'I can appreciate that,' Longarm said, dragging out his badge and showing it to the man. 'I'm a United States marshal and there's a dead freighter lying beside the road just a short ways up ahead.'
'You kill him?'
'No,' Longarm said. 'He was murdered by three men who tried to knock me over the side of this mountain. They halfway succeeded.'
'You look like you been crawlin' in a swamp and whipped most to death, Marshal. You look real bad.'
'I'm alive,' Longarm said. 'I wish that I could say the same thing for the young driver that was murdered. How about picking him up and taking him on to Prescott?'
'Sure. Any idea who he is?'
'No,' Longarm said. 'But I'm sure that someone will be able to identify him and notify his next of kin.'
'What about them three that ambushed you?'
'Two are dead but one escaped. I'll be back for him later.'
'You tell me who it was, I'll get some of us freighters together and we'll settle the score.'
'I wish that I could let you do that,' Longarm said. 'But I can't. It's my job, and I'll take care of it when I return from Yuma.'
