'Must get back to ranch now,' said Wing as he slapped the reins against the backs of the mule team pulling the wagon.
'What's your hurry?' asked Longarm.
'Mr. Kinsman, he want peach cobbler for supper tonight. Take long time get ready and cook.'
Longarm's culinary skills began and ended with biscuits, beans, bacon, and a few other items of trail food, so he didn't dispute Wing's statement. All he knew about peach cobbler was that he liked to eat it, not how long it took to prepare it.
Wing kept the wagon moving at a brisk pace as they left town on the trail that ran to the north, roughly paralleling the mountains and twisting among the foothills. Longarm rocked easily with the vehicle's motion.
They had covered about half the distance between Timber City and the Diamond K when Wing hit a particularly rough stretch of trail. Longarm was jolted heavily.
As his head jerked to the side, what sounded like a giant bee whipped past his ear.
Longarm knew that sound, knew it all too well. Hard on the heels of it came the crack of a rifle. Longarm lifted the Winchester and worked its lever, jacking a shell into the chamber, as he called out to Wing, 'Whip up those jugheads! Somebody's shooting at us!'
Wing let out a startled yell and began flapping the reins harder. Longarm had no idea where the first shot had come from, but as a second bullet buzzed past his head, he saw a puff of smoke come from a thickly wooded knoll about two hundred yards ahead of them, to the left of the trail. Which meant as the wagon careened along, it was actually drawing closer to the bushwhacker--or bushwhackers, because there might be more than one.
Longarm snapped the Winchester to his shoulder and fired three times as fast as he could work the Winchester's lever. He didn't expect to hit anything--the spring wagon had a gentler ride than a plain buckboard, but he was still bouncing around pretty good--but maybe the return fire would distract the hidden rifleman a little anyway.
A slug chewed splinters from the narrow patch of wagon seat between them, making both of them jump and Wing yell, 'Son of a bitch!'
Longarm threw another shot at the knoll. The trail was too narrow for the wagon to be able to turn around easily, so the best course of action--the only course of action, really--was to rush straight ahead just like they were doing.
The mules were running flat out now. Mules were sometimes difficult to get started, but once they began running there was no stopping them for a while. Longarm was jolted again, and had to grab the small iron railing around the outside of the seat to keep from being thrown from his perch. Beside him, Wing was still yelling and whipping the mules, though it was no longer really necessary considering the way they were already galloping.
Another sharp crack sounded, but this time it didn't come from a hidden gun. It was much closer, right underneath them, in fact. Longarm recognized it as the sound of an axle breaking. 'Look out, Wing!' he yelled as he felt the right front corner of the wagon dip drastically. Then the wheel spun off, and the body of the wagon crashed into the rutted trail.
Longarm kicked himself upward off the seat, trying to throw himself clear. Somehow he managed to hang on to the Winchester as he sailed through the air and then slammed to the ground next to the trail. Luckily, the grass there was thick enough to break his fall, at least slightly. As he rolled over and over, he heard a grinding crash that he knew was the wagon overturning. He came to a stop on his belly and shook his head, trying to clear away some of the cobwebs that had gathered there during the last few perilous seconds.
Wing had jumped clear of the wagon too, Longarm saw. The wiry little Chinaman was scrambling to his feet on the other side of the trail. He darted toward the wrecked wagon, clearly intending to use it for cover from the ambusher's fire. The hidden gunman on the knoll wasn't shooting at Wing, however. His target was Longarm, who surged up onto hands and knees as slugs thudded into the ground around him. He flung himself toward the trail and the overturned wagon, sprawling behind the wrecked vehicle as more lead whined around him.
Wing crawled over next to him, and Longarm said grimly, 'You might be safer staying as far away from me as you can, old son. It's me that damned bushwhacker's after.'
'Yeah, but it's my wagon that bastard made me wreck!' Wing shot back, his singsong accent vanished now. 'Gimme a gun, Custis!'
Longarm didn't have time to ponder the transformation in the cook. He just slid the.44 from the cross-draw rig at his waist and extended it butt-first to Wing. 'Pepper the top of that knoll with this,' he said. 'You can't really reach it from here with a handgun, but maybe it'll keep the son of a bitch occupied for a minute.'
'What are you going to do?'
'Try to get behind him.' Longarm had already spotted a gully that ran from near the trail to behind the knoll. If he could reach it, he could work his way along it until he might have a shot at the bushwhacker from a different angle.
Wing reached into the pile of supplies that had been tossed helter-skelter from the back of the wagon. He grinned as he brought out a box of.44s. 'With these extra cartridges, I can keep that low-down skunk hoppin'!' he promised.
Longarm nodded, then moved to the other end of the wagon and waited in a crouch. Shots were still coming from the knoll, the bullets smacking into the thick wood of the wagon's body but not penetrating. After a moment, Wing raised up enough to stick the barrel of the revolver over the edge of the wagon. He blazed away at the knoll.
At the same instant, Longarm launched himself into a run that carried him toward the beginning of the gully. It was about twenty yards away, and Wing's covering fire allowed Longarm to cover fifteen of those yards before the bushwhacker realized he was in no danger from the handgun. A couple of slugs kicked up clods of dirt around Longarm's feet as he raced for the gully, but all they made him do was run faster. He threw himself forward in a dive that carried him out of the line of fire.
Wing had reloaded and was shooting again. The rifleman couldn't ignore him completely. Accuracy was impossible at that distance with a pistol, but pure dumb luck was always within the realm of possibility. Chance might carry one of Wing's shots that far and pose a danger to the ambusher.
Pushing himself up into a crouch, Longarm ran along the bottom of the gully, using the barrel of the Winchester
