The Killing Breed Page 14

  Yakima checked the Indian pony down behind a lightning-topped fir, and swung down from the saddle. Harms reined down his own two horses and shucked his Spencer from its saddle scabbard.

  He scowled red-faced at Yakima. “You think . . . ?”

  “It’s one o’ them.” Yakima slid his Yellowboy from its scabbard. “I want him alive.”

  He racked a fresh shell, then quickly tied the Indian pony to a fir branch. Harms did the same and then both men jogged back down the slope toward the scarp.

  “Move around from the right,” Yakima said. “Make some noise but stay out of sight.”

  He bounded up the wall of the scarp, using clefts and cracks to pull himself up. The scarp was low, and he made the crest in seconds, crouching as he took his rifle in both hands and stared down the other side.

  The stocky blond man was down on an elbow, jerking looks toward both ends of the scarp, his cocked pistol in his bloody right hand. A stone arced out from the right side of the cleft, landed with a soft bark, and rolled a few feet, drawing the outlaw’s attention. Turning toward the rock, he held still long enough for Yakima to draw a bead on the hand holding the pistol.

  The Yellowboy cracked.

  The blond gent howled and dropped his revolver, grabbing his right hand with his left. Blood oozed from the bullet hole and dribbled into the dirt. The hardcase glared up at Yakima, who lowered the rifle and leaped down the scarp to stand in the clearing near one of the dead Rangers.

  Shivering with pain and fury, the blond gent lay back on an elbow, squeezing his hand and cursing between clenched teeth. As he studied Yakima, recognition sparked in his eyes.

  Yakima reached down, grabbed a Colt from the blond’s second holster, and tossed it away. He planted the sole of his moccasin boot against the man’s chest, and pushed him back against a rock. “Is my woman all right?”

  The blond stared up at Yakima, tears of pain rolling down his cheeks, lips quivering. A savage smile quirked his mouth corners. “Yeah,” he drawled mockingly. “She’s just fine.”

  “Where are they taking her?”

  Through the sharp fog of pain, the blond mulled his answer. He sucked a sharp breath through gritted teeth and renewed his grip on his shaking right hand, which was dribbling scarlet blood into the darker stuff sopping his belly. “Thornton.”

  The answer made his eyes dance briefly as he stared up at Yakima.

  The name grabbed Yakima like a fishhook deep in his belly, and he nodded. “Had a feelin’.”

  The blond tipped his head back, eyes rolling back into his head. “He’s . . . got plans for her . . . Thornton does.”

  Harms said, “Who’s Thornton?”

  “An old friend of ours—Faith’s and mine.”

  Yakima looked down at the outlaw writhing before him, and pressed his boot more firmly against the man’s chest. “Thornton still in Colorado?” There was the chance the pimp had made the trip to Arizona, was holed up waiting for Faith in Phoenix or Prescott.

  The blond gent nodded and ground a boot heel into the dirt, groaning.

  Yakima jogged past Harms on his way back toward the horses, yelling over his shoulder, “They’re heading for the train rails north of here!”

  “This, uh, Thornton . . . ,” Harms said as he jogged, breathing hard, behind Yakima. “I assume he has a bone to pick?”

  “I should have gone back and killed the bastard,” Yakima growled.

  He switched saddles quickly and leaped onto Wolf’s back. As he and Harms galloped down the slope and onto the trail where the dead Rangers lay around the wounded blond, the bounty hunter screamed, “Breed!”

  Yakima glanced over his shoulder. The blond man was reaching for the revolver Yakima had tossed into the trail. The gun was about two feet beyond his reach.

  “Kick that gun over here, will ya? Last request of a dead man.”

  The man wanted to end his suffering.

  Yakima nodded at the hide-wrapped bowie handle jutting from a sheath on the bounty hunter’s left hip. “Use your knife, you son of a bitch!”

  Then he and Wolf and the Apache bronc tore off down the trail, the dying outlaw raging like a trapped coyote behind him.

  Yakima pushed Wolf hard. Harms pushed his own mustang just as hard, and they split the wind, angling down the pine-studded cordillera, across a wide canyon, then up onto a relatively flat stretch of high desert.

  It wasn’t long after leaving the canyon that they came upon a stage trail. The outlaws’ prints marked the trail, and judging by the texture of the horse apples, they were only about an hour ahead. But if they hopped a train, they’d be out of reach in no time.

  Yakima ground his heels into Wolf’s flanks, and he and Harms shot down the trail through the cedars, sage, and occasional cottonwood thickets, until they could see a town ahead, bleeding purple shadows onto the coppery plane. He didn’t know the town’s name—if it had one. It had probably sprouted up with the coming of the rails. Steeple Rock, blue and misty, its west side touched with gold, loomed just beyond.

  Yakima couldn’t see much except a few corrals and brick walls jutting above the cedars, but when he and Harms topped a rise he saw the rails— freshly laid on their cinder bed and stretching from east to west like twin streams of quicksilver over the low, toffee-colored hills.

  At the town’s east end, inky black smoke bled into the air. At the base of the smoke hulked a bulky black Baldwin locomotive with a diamond-shaped stack.

  Yakima’s shoulders tightened. The thickening smoke meant the fireman was stoking the boiler, preparing to pull out.

  Yakima released the Indian pony and leaned low over Wolf’s head. “Giddyap, Wolf! Haul ass!”

  The black stretched his stride, blowing hard, pasting his ears back against his head. Yakima, crouched low and forward, felt the muscles rippling like snakes beneath the saddle, saw the black withers slick with silver lather. Brody Harms and the Indian pony dropped gradually back on Yakima’s right, as Yakima and the black stallion shot up the trail, lifting the town out of the salmon-tinged rocks and scrub before them.

  Wolf dropped into a low area, and Yakima gritted his teeth when he heard the locomotive’s dinosaur wail. Rising out of the hollow, he looked east. The train was crawling forward, great clouds of black smoke and glowing cinders wafting from the stack, steam rising from the heavy iron wheels.

  Yakima cursed as he approached the town’s first corrals and plank-board, tin-roofed shacks and cow pens. He checked Wolf down and turned as Brody Harms thundered up behind him, the Easterner’s dusty bowler tipped low over his equally dusty spectacles.

  “I’m gonna try to catch it!”

  Yakima turned Wolf off the right side of the trail and into the scrub.

  “You don’t know for sure they’re on it!” Harms yelled, his words dwindling into the distance behind Yakima, as Yakima and the black stallion pounded through the cedars and scrub junipers.

  They angled around the few stock pens and shacks outlying the town, and the tent frames remaining in the wake of the railroad crew, and traced a northeastward arc toward the screeching, panting locomotive. The glistening iron horse was pulling a tender car, a couple of flatcars, and four passenger cars, with a bright yellow caboose bringing up the rear.

  The engine continued to blow its shrill, bugling horn, black smoke broiling from the wide-mouthed stack as though from a barn fire. Yakima hardened his jaws as it increased its speed, singing in an ever-increasing tempo—Whoosh-whoosh-chug! Whoosh-whoosh-chug! Whoosh-whoosh-chug! as it slipped off away to the east, the caboose opening more and more space behind it and the freshly painted depot building and the pole corrals, which were so new that Yakima could still smell the pine resin.

  The train slid away as though drawn by a giant, invisible string.

  Yakima hunkered low over Wolf’s neck, slitting his eyes as the wind blasted his hat brim against his forehead. “No,” he spat between gritted teeth as the train gradually outdistanced him. “Goddamnit, no!”
/>   Chapter 16

  Wolf must have thought Yakima yelled “Go!” instead of “No!” because from somewhere deep in his wild heart, the stallion found another reserve of bronco strength.

  Bounding out over the sage and plowing over stunt piñons as though they were paper, he widened his stride a few more inches, phlegm and spittle flying back from his nose like rain, hooves hammering like the locomotive’s own steel pistons.

  Chewing his lower lip, his green eyes blazing with a savage fire beneath his bent hat brim, Yakima watched the train suddenly stop stretching out away from him and, as though the locomotive had suddenly been shoved into reverse, fall back toward his left.

  “That’s it, Wolf. That’s it, boy,” Yakima ground out through gritted teeth as he and the stallion approached the train from ahead of the caboose, slanting toward the third passenger car.

  Inside the second car, sitting next to the window and facing Lowry Temple and the car’s rear, Faith sat still as a statue, numb by all that had happened.

  A voice rose above the rumble of the heavy wheels beneath her feet and the low hum of conversation around her. “Jesus Christ, some crazy damn cowboy . . .”

  Faith opened her eyes and glanced out the soot-stained window, and a frown bit into her forehead.

  “Look at that,” said someone behind her. “What’s he tryin’ to do—board without payin’?”

  “That’s one way to do it!” laughed another man.

  Faith saw the rider behind the thin veil of wafting steam and wood smoke, racing toward the train on a blaze-faced black stallion.

  “Gonna kill that horse,” someone muttered on the other side of the car, as the horse and rider closed on the train to ride parallel, falling back gradually while inching ever closer to the tracks.

  The smoke wafted away from the rider’s low-canted head around which a white bandage was wrapped, and the black brim snapped up to reveal two jade green eyes in sharp contrast to the high, wide cheekbones and coffee-colored skin. Faith’s heart rolled, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d leaped to her feet and bounded over Kooch Manley’s knees to claw at the window, which had been closed against the flying soot and cinders.

  She got it down quickly and poked her head out. “Yakima!”

  The wind, rife with wood smoke, tore the scream from her lips.

  “Dios!” Garza barked. “What the hell?”

  “It’s the damn half-breed!” Temple had lunged to his feet and now, peering out the window, jerked Faith back with one arm and threw her brusquely into her seat.

  He grabbed a revolver, thumbed back the hammer, and stuck his arm out the window. He angled the gun back along the train and slightly out to where Yakima and Wolf were still inching toward the thundering train car. They’d fallen far enough back that Faith could see only Wolf’s bobbing, blaze-faced head.

  “No!” she screamed, bounding back up from her seat, clawing at Temple’s back. Garza smashed the back of his hand against her face, throwing her over her seat’s outside armrest and into the aisle.

  Outside the train, Yakima saw the arm snake out the window, the silver-plated revolver glistening faintly in the day’s waning light. He jerked his head down as the gun barked, sounding little louder than a hiccup amidst the rumbling of the car and the clattering of the wheels over the seams.

  Yakima ducked again as once more the revolver stabbed flames toward him, puffing smoke. Wolf jerked to one side.

  Yakima glanced at the caboose drawing up on his left. A brass rail ran along the top. As the cutthroat’s gun belched once more, the slug piercing the crown of Yakima’s hat, the half-breed crawled up from his stirrup to set both his boots on the saddle. In one motion, he dropped Wolf’s reins and threw himself up and left toward the pitching caboose’s roof.

  He found the cool, brassy rail, and he tightened his fingers, glancing down as Wolf fell back and swerved away from the thundering train. Yakima’s knees slammed against the caboose’s wooden panel, and he winced at the pain shooting up and down his legs.

  He looked up at the rail and clenched his teeth as he drew himself toward it, the long muscles in his forearms bulging, his biceps swelling to the size of wheel hubs. The pistol barked twice more, one slug tearing into the side of the caboose while the other drilled the slack of the half-breed’s right cuff.

  When he got his chest above the caboose’s roof, he swung his legs up and over the rail, closing his mouth as the wind sucked the air from his lungs and nearly tore his hat from his head, whipping his hair around wildly. He palmed his Colt and tugged his hat down lower on his head, looking up at the roofs of the other cars jostling to and fro under the wisping wood smoke.

  “Well, you made the train . . . ,” he growled uncertainly, on his hands and knees, steadying himself with the rail to his left. The wind hammered his cheeks and eyes.

  Faith’s captors were in the car just ahead. He’d try to get into the first car in the train’s combination, then make his way back.

  Yakima started forward. As he gained the vestibule between the caboose and the passenger car, he rose to his feet and glanced into the narrow gap between the cars below.

  The cutthroats hadn’t come out after him. He drew back, then lurched forward, easily leaping the gap between the cars and landing atop the roof of the next car, bending his knees. Crouching and holding his arms out for balance, he strode forward along the narrow iron walkway. He moved quickly, fighting the wind and balancing himself against the car’s violent sway.

  Below, the wheels hammered, clattering over the seams.

  He was near the middle of the car when he stopped suddenly. A head rose over the car’s far end, at the top of the left-side ladder. A dark, pocked face appeared, and the Mexican’s lips stretched back from his teeth. He snaked an arm over the top of the car, aiming a long-barreled Remington at Yakima.

  Crack!

  The bullet sizzled over Yakima’s head, and he dropped to a knee, quickly aiming his Colt and firing. His slug sparked and clanged off the ladder, and the half-breed pulled his head down out of sight.

  Yakima looked behind.

  Another head appeared over the top of the ladder at the car’s other end—the big, round, balding head of a middle-aged man. He flashed a silver eyetooth, his little eyes sparking as they found Yakima, and he began snaking his own pistol over the roof.

  Before the man could level his revolver, Yakima whipped around and snapped off another shot. That slug ricocheted off the riveted tin at the edge of the roof and flew wide. The older gent flinched and triggered his pistol, the slug whining an inch over Yakima’s head.

  Yakima fired two more shots, the first one sailing wide as the car lurched, fouling his aim. But the second slug must have torn into the big man’s ear, because he howled and, jerking his head sideways, dropped straight down the ladder and out of sight.

  Behind Yakima, another pistol barked, and he clamped his jaws together as the bullet burned across his right shoulder blade, tearing his shirt. He whipped around, dancing sideways, as the Mexican fired again from the car’s other end, the bullet sailing off into the wind and landscape whipping past in a tan blur.

  Yakima triggered a return shot, his anger and the pain in his shoulder throwing his aim off. The slug skidded off the first car farther up the swaying, rumbling line to ping off the locomotive’s smoke-stack.

  Automatically, he fired again, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

  He cursed. His only other weapon was the Arkansas toothpick in the sheath thonged around his neck and hanging down between his shoulder blades.