boulders.
«You little fool!» Caleb said savagely. «You could have been killed!»
«I —» The need to breathe shut off Willow’s words. Panting from a mixture of altitude, exertion, and fear, she fought for oxygen.
Caleb took the short-barrelledshotgun from Willow’s hands, pointed itdownslope, and waited for movement. When it came, he let go with both barrels. He didn’t expect to kill anyone at that range, but he sure could raise welts on their hides withdoubleaught buckshot. At the very least, theComancheros wouldn’t stick their heads up for a minute or two.
When Caleb reached into the saddlebag for more shotgun shells, the correct box was thrust into his hands. He reloaded quickly, fired, reloaded, and glanced back to see how Willow was doing. She had two other boxes of ammunition out and opened, ready to be used, and was puzzling over how to reload his rifle. Though she tried to conceal it from him, her hands trembled when she wasn’t actually using them.
«I’ll do that,» Caleb said. «Take the shotgun and sit with your back to me. If you see anyone sneaking up, don’t waste time telling me about it. Just shoot.»
Willow nodded and took the shotgun, relieved to have something to do with her hands. She sat cross-legged and looked from side to side, hoping she wouldn’t see a man creeping up on them.
They aren’t men. They’re coyotes jumping around on their crooked hind legs.
Silently, Willow repeated Caleb’s grim reassurance and watched for movement. At the back of her mind she counted the shells Caleb was loading into his rifle with a speed that spoke of great familiarity.
«Youarea one-man army,» she said finally.
«You’re not half as surprised as those raiders were,» Caleb said, smiling wolfishly. «They were sure they had me after I fired that one lone shot. It won’t last, though. Sooner or later they’ll find someone to sell them repeating rifles. Then the civilized folks will be in a hell of a mess.»
Rifle fully loaded once more, Caleb shifted position until he could peer through a notch between two boulders. The raiders’ wiry, ugly little ponies were scattered across the meadow, feeding eagerly, indifferent to the booming of guns around them.
«How bad is Deuce?» Caleb asked.
«He’s burned across the chest. His left foreleg is swelling, probably strained when he fell. I don’t think he’ll be able to take a rider very far.»
«You’d be surprised, honey. Is he bleeding much?»
«No.»
«Any other horses hurt?»
«The mares are done,» Willow said, trying to keep her voice as unemotional as Caleb’s. «They’ll follow as long as they can, but —»
A big hand squeezed Willow’s shoulder gently. «What about Ishmael?»
«He’s tired, but still strong enough to take me anywhere I tell him to go.» «That’s one game stud,» Caleb said admiringly. «Makes me understand why Wolfe is so set on mustangs.»
«What do you mean?»
«Mustangs are descended from the Spanish horses, which came from Arabian stock. Don’t judge all mustangs by those ponies out there. They’re as mongrel as their riders. Tough, though. Damned tough. Give them a hatful of hay and less water and they’ll go a hundred miles a day for weeks at a time.»
While Caleb spoke, he reached into one of the saddlebags and came out with the spyglass. Methodically, he began covering the ground in front of him, quartering from side to side. The glass brought up each blade of grass, each shift from sun to shade, each suspicious bit of color or movement. Caleb looked up from the glass, then through it, mentally marking the spot of every raider the spyglass picked out.
The glass confirmed what Caleb had already suspected. TheComancheros were scattered out in such a way that there was little or no chance of sneaking through them to the pass trail — especially with seven tired horses.
Caleb turned and began studying the land behind him through the spyglass, seeking anything that looked like a possible route out or enemies sneaking up. He saw nothing human moving, even after several very careful sweeps. Yet something kept nagging at his mind, something about the shape of the land itself.
«Dad’s journal,» he whispered suddenly.
«What?»
«Switch places with me.»
Willow scrambled around Caleb.
«If something starts movingdownslope, shoot,» he said.
While Willow kept an eye on the raiders, Caleb pulled his father’s journal out of the saddlebags and flipped through the pages quickly. He studied first one page, then a second, then the first again, flipping back and forth and checking the peaks rising behind the boulders.
«There’s another pass,» Caleb said in a low voice, reading quickly. «It’s a righteous bastard, eleven thousand feet and then some, but it can be climbed by a horse.»
«Do theComancheros know about it?»
«Doubt it. According to Dad, no one had used the route for a long time when he saw it. It’s from the time before Indians had horses, when going twenty miles out of the way for an easier pass meant losing a lot of travel time.»
The silence was destroyed by a single shot that whined off the rocks shielding them. Despite herself, Willow flinched and made a low sound.
«It’s all right,» Caleb said, setting aside the journal and sighting down the barrel of his rifle. «They just want to see if we’re still awake up here.»
The rifle leaped and a crack of sound made Willow flinch. Even before the echo reverberated, Caleb shot again and again, pouring bullets into the areas where he had seen raiders through the spyglass. He fed shells into the rifle in the pauses between shots, mentally thanking Winchester’s cleverness in making a weapon that could be reloaded almost as fast as it could be fired.
Several choked screams told Caleb that his aim had been good. He kept firing until one of the raiders broke and ran for better cover. Carefully, Caleb shot once more. The runner took a step and fell face down. He didn’t move again. Two shots came in return, but only two. The remainingComancheros weren’t in any hurry to collect the bounty on Caleb’s scalp.
Sound cracked through the area, making Willow flinch in the instant before she realized that it was thunder rather than rifle fire rolling down the mountainside. Before she could take another breath, a barrage of water pelted down, announcing the beginning of the afternoon thunderstorms. Within minutes it was raining so hard that she couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in any direction.
«Take the shotgun and run for the horses,» Caleb said as he fireddownslope once more, hoping to discourage theComancheros from coming up the slope under the cover of rain.
«What about you?»
«Run,» he commanded.
Willow ran.
Caleb’s shots rang out behind her, yet by the time Willow saw the horses, he had caught up and was running right beside her.
«Watch for raiders,» Caleb said curtly.
While Willow watched theirbacktrail, Caleb yanked the riding saddle off Deuce, relieving the injured horse’s burden. For a moment he considered using one of the mares as a pack animal, but a single look at their hanging heads and the lather dissolving on their coats beneath the driving rain told Caleb the mares were worse off than Deuce. Working quickly, he transferred as much equipment as he could to the saddlebags and bedrolls tied on behind the riding saddles. When he was finished, Deuce was carrying less than thirty pounds, none of it vital for their survival.
Caleb pulled on hisshearling jacket and lifted Willow into Ishmael’s saddle.
«It will be a hard, steady climb,» he said in a low voice. «Stick with it even if Deuce and the mares don’t. Promise me, Willow.»
Biting her lower lip, Willow nodded.
