The Thunder Riders Read online

  One horse bounded past Yakima, and the other swerved so sharply right that it fell in the loose gravel. It scrambled to its feet and galloped away. Behind it, dust sifted and gun smoke webbed. The fallen desperadoes thrashed and groaned. The nearest one heaved onto a knee and clawed a revolver from a shoulder holster.

  Yakima stood and drilled a round through the man’s chest, punching him back in the dust with a clipped grunt. He fired two more rounds into the other man, stilling him as well.

  Hearing guns popping in the ruins behind him, Yakima dropped to a knee and began reloading the Winchester from his cartridge belt. He’d risen and turned toward the ruins when the rake of a sharp breath rose on his left.

  As the clouds scudded away from the moon, casting a pale radiance across the night, he jerked his head around. A big man with long black hair leapt off a boulder, gritting his teeth as he plunged toward Yakima, a revolver in one hand, a wide-bladed bowie in the other. Knowing he had no time to bring the Yellowboy to bear, Yakima dropped the rifle and threw his hands up.

  The revolver in the man’s right fist barked. The slug tore across the top of Yakima’s right shoulder. At the same time, Yakima grabbed the man’s left wrist, jerking the knife wide.

  Yakima fell straight back. The man—a half-breed by the look of him—fell on top of him. He released the revolver and hammered Yakima’s face with his left fist, then wrenched his knife hand free of Yakima’s grip. As he raised the knife for a killing stab, Yakima plunged his flattened hand, palm down, fingers out, wrist-deep into the man’s gut. He angled it up toward the heart.

  Unlike the Chinaman who’d taught him the maneuver, Yakima had never been able to snatch the beating heart from a man’s chest. But his own hand was nearly as effective. The big half-breed raked a hoarse breath through gritted teeth and froze, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. His fingers uncoiled around the knife handle.

  As the bowie hit the ground near Yakima’s shoulder, Yakima slid his .44 from its holster, rammed the barrel into the half-breed’s gut, and fired twice.

  The man sagged forward. Yakima shoved him aside and got to his feet. He picked up the Henry and looked around the moonlit scrub as he thumbed more shells into the rifle’s loading gate. His chest rose and fell sharply, and his breath puffed visibly in the air before his face.

  Behind him more shots rose from the other side of the ruins.

  With one more glance around the quiet scrub, he wheeled and sprinted across the trail toward the cathedral, following the erratic reports to the north front corner of the hulking ruins.

  Thirty feet beyond lay a low adobe wall. Two men crouched on Yakima’s side of the wall about fifteen feet apart, triggering rifles over the wall’s lip and into the small cemetery beyond.

  As a gun barked among the silhouetted shrines and crosses limned by the milky moonlight, one of the men behind the wall cursed and sucked air through his teeth. “Son of a bitch damn near took my ear off,” Speares yelled.

  To his left, Patchen triggered his Henry repeater over the wall, then ducked down and glanced at the sheriff. “What did you think they were gonna do—shower you with roses?”

  He jerked up again and triggered two more quick shots, eliciting a sharp curse from deep in the cemetery’s shadows.

  Yakima ran crouching toward the wall, announcing himself to the lawmen. He ducked behind the wall between them, pressing his back against the crumbling adobe bricks.

  “Shit,” Speares said, thumbing fresh shells into his Winchester’s breech. “I figured you was dead.” The shells clicked on the rifle’s loading gate as the sheriff stared at Yakima. “You find my girl?”

  Yakima glanced at him, lips parted, hesitating. He was glad when Patchen cut in: “You kill all them sonsabitches on that side of the church, Yakima, or do we gotta watch our backsides?”

  “I killed all the ones that tried to kill me,” Yakima said, pausing to return a shot from the cemetery with three from his Yellowboy. When the shells had clattered into the dust behind him, smoking, he levered another fresh round. “That isn’t to say I got ’em all.”

  “We accounted for two over here,” Speares said, reloading his Winchester as Patchen fired behind Yakima. “But three more pinned ’emselves down in a stable yonder.”

  Yakima thumbed the last of his .44 shells into his Yellowboy and squatted on his haunches, looking up and down the wall. “I’ll try to swing around behind—”

  A man called from the shadows, cutting him off. “Hey, assholes!”

  Patchen chuckled. “Speares, I think you’re being summoned.”

  “Funny.” Speares edged a glance over the wall’s lip, toward a ruined stable hulking up at the far end of the cemetery. “Are you assholes ready to give up?”

  “Don’t count on it, friend,” the desperado yelled. “But we are tired of hunkering down out here like greaser cowards, using up all our ammo. What do you say we all show ourselves like real men, finish this thing out in the open?”

  Yakima turned toward Patchen, who was crouched behind the wall, his hat off, staring toward Yakima. Yakima looked at Speares. The sheriff shouldered up to the wall, rammed a fresh shell into his Winchester.

  Yakima edged a look over the wall toward the stable. The pearl moonlight angled over the thatch roof, silhouetting the two small windows. “No one starts shooting until we’re all out in the open?”

  “Square’s square,” rose the reply.

  “Hey, Yakima,” Patchen said. “You got a couple extra .44 shells?”

  Crouching, keeping his head just below the wall’s lip, Yakima moved down to where Patchen sat in the dust, his back against the wall, his hat on the ground beside him. A bullet had burned a bloody line across his right cheek.

  Yakima ejected two shells from his Yellowboy. He held them out to the marshal, who plucked them off the palm of his gloved hand, then shoved the first shell into the Henry’s loading tube.

  He squinted one eye. “Sorry about the misunderstanding at Saber Creek, huh?”

  Yakima glanced over the wall, spying a couple of moving shadows near the stable. “Just don’t be late with that Henry.”

  He stood, stared across the cemetery. The three men were moving out from the stable, one with his rifle barrel resting on his shoulder. The other two carried their rifles at port arms.

  Yakima swung a leg over the crumbling wall. To his right, Speares followed suit, moved up beside Yakima. Patchen stepped up on his left.

  Moving out, the three matched their strides to those of the three desperadoes walking toward them, the moonlight dropping down over the outlaws’ hat brims to limn their unshaven faces and deep-set eyes. The one on the left wore an eye patch and bowler hat, and had two pistols strapped low on his thighs. The man in the middle had long hair and silver hoops hanging from his ears. The right side of his face was badly scarred, that eye as white as the moonlight pooling on his broad hat brim.

  As the three moved to within twenty feet, the short man on the right passed under a leafless sycamore, and the moonlight angled across his hatless head to reveal a Mexican woman’s plump, round face and her flaccid breasts jiggling behind her heavy tasseled poncho.

  Her expression was as hard as any man’s, and she carried a carbine repeater in her gloved hands.

  “Just my luck,” Speares grumbled. “I been wantin’ nothin’ more than to drill a pill through Jack Considine’s forehead, and here I am facing a woman.”

  “That’s no woman,” Yakima said. “That’s a killer.”

  When the desperadoes were about fifteen feet away, the man facing Patchen stopped suddenly, jerked his rifle up, and swung the barrel forward. The man with the hoop earrings stopped and crouched a half second later, grinning savagely as he spread his feet and snapped his Winchester toward Yakima.

  As the man with the bowler fired at the marshal, smoke and flames stabbing from his rifle, Yakima snugged the Yellowboy to his right hip and fired, the Winchester leaping in his hands. The man with the hoop rings fired
his own Winchester twice in the time it took Yakima to squeeze off three rounds.

  As the woman shrieked and hurled Spanish epithets amid the gunfire that she and Patchen exchanged, Yakima fired two more shots at the man with the hoop rings. Concentrating solely on his own target, he continued striding forward through the smoke and echoing reports and gun flashes.

  The man with the hoop rings shrieked and dropped to one knee, firing his own rifle one-handed, the bullet plunking into the ground three feet in front of Yakima. The gun flash revealed bloodstains in his torn duster and a gushing wound in his right cheek.

  As Yakima moved forward, his rifle clicked. Calmly, he set the empty Yellowboy down against a wooden cross, then, hearing shouts and rifle reports behind him, slid his Colt from its holster and thumbed back the hammer.

  The man with the hoop rings fired another errant shot, pushed to his feet, and ran staggering off toward the stable, his bloody duster flapping like wings around his legs.

  “Turn around,” Yakima said.

  Behind him, Speares yelled above the sporadic shots behind him, “Why won’t you die, you bitch?”

  The man with the hoop rings dropped his rifle and continued past the stable. Near a cluster of pecan trees, he dropped to his knees, facing away. Suddenly, he spun, aiming a revolver.

  Yakima continued walking toward him, firing once, twice, three times. The outlaw jerked with each shot, triggering his own revolver skyward. Yakima’s last shot blew the top of the man’s head off.

  He fell on his side, kicking for a long time before he lay still.

  Holding his pistol straight down at his side, Yakima turned. The shooting had stopped. A couple of figures were slumped amid the stones and crosses. Striding back through the cemetery, he saw the woman lying on her side to his left. To his right, the man with the bowler hat lay slumped forward over a gravestone.

  Continuing forward, he found Speares lying on his side, clutching his chest with one hand, his upper left thigh with the other. His hat was off and his hair flopped in his eyes.

  “Bitch shot me!”

  Yakima knelt beside him, ripped the sheriff’s neckerchief off his neck, and wadded it up. As he stuffed the cloth into the hole in Speares’s chest, footsteps rose on his right. He turned to see Patchen staggering toward him. Blood shone on the marshal’s forehead, above the previous bullet burn. He cradled his left forearm across his chest, wincing, sucking air through his teeth.

  The marshal glanced at Speares. “How bad he hit?”

  “Can’t tell,” Yakima told him.

  Patchen looked down at Yakima. “How is it you always make it out o’ these scrapes clean as a whistle?”

  “Not this time.” Yakima closed his hand over the throbbing wound in his upper right arm. He had several more burns—one along his side, another along his neck— but the shoulder wound needed tending first or he’d bleed to death.

  Wincing and squeezing the wound, he looked around, listening, wondering if any desperadoes were still alive and lurking.

  As if in reply to his silent question, a horse whinnied shrilly somewhere off in the darkness. Yakima whipped his head around, trying to get his bearings. As he did, another scream lifted. A girl’s scream.

  Anjanette.

  Yakima wheeled, stumbled over a gravestone. Shoving the pain in his arm to the back of his mind, he hobbled and skipped over the graves, making his way toward the adobe wall. As he leapt the wall, a revolver popped in the distant hills, and the horse screamed shrilly.

  His gut tightening, Yakima sprinted west around the cathedral, striding through the chaparral, heading back toward the shelf where he’d left the horse and the girl. As he ran, he levered the Winchester, but the magazine was empty. He dropped his hand to his cartridge belt, but all the loops were empty as well.

  He paused to set the rifle down against a boulder, then, grabbing his revolver from his holster, continued to sprint through the chaparral, leaping cacti and rocks and deadfall branches. When he came to the shelf where Anjanette and Wolf had been, he stopped and aimed the revolver straight out from his shoulder.

  Only rocks and gravel and the several gnarled piñons.

  A horse snorted to his left. Yakima bounded that way, leaping an ocotillo. He stopped suddenly. A long black shape lay in the galleta grass before him. Yakima felt as though a lance had pierced his ribs.

  Wolf was down, his sleek black coat glistening in the starlight. The horse was on his side, breathing hard, the right stirrup rising and falling rapidly. As Wolf’s eyes rolled back toward Yakima, Yakima spied the dark fluid gleaming behind the horse’s ear.

  Yakima moved forward slowly, suddenly feeling as though his moccasins were filled with lead. The horse snorted again, jerked his head as though trying to lift it. Blood gushed from the wound behind his ear.

  “Easy, boy,” Yakima whispered.

  The horse stared up at Yakima, beseeching, sliding one hoof forward, but slowly the lids began to fall.

  Yakima held out his hand, knees trembling as he crouched down beside the black. A revolver popped ahead, the flash puncturing the darkness about fifty yards away and up a slight rise. A girl groaned.

  A man yelled, “Sorry about the horse, but he’s been trouble since the day we met! I don’t know how you ever put up with such a contrary beast!” The mocking laugh died suddenly. “If you want the girl, you’re gonna have to come and get her.”

  Anjanette gave a clipped, anguished cry.

  Yakima straightened and peered up the rise. Two shadows stood side by side against the stars. As Yakima strode toward them, leaving the dying horse behind him, unable to put Wolf out of his misery, rage fueled a strange calm inside him. Keeping his eyes on the pair at the top of the rise—Anjanette and a man in a funnel-brimmed Stetson decorated with silver conchos—he picked his way through the brush.

  In his right hand he squeezed the stag grips of his .44, keeping the barrel aimed at the ground.

  Anjanette’s voice trembled. “Don’t come any closer, Yakima. He’ll kill you.”

  Yakima moved slowly up the slope, the two figures growing and sharpening before him. One arm crooked around the girl’s neck, aiming a revolver at her temple, the man was grinning, white teeth gleaming beneath his mustache.

  A handsome, dimple-cheeked devil in a string tie, checked vest, and gaudily stitched deerskin coat: Jack Considine.

  As Yakima topped the rise and closed the gap between himself and the desperado and Anjanette, the man’s eyes narrowed nervously. He shuffled straight back, pulling Anjanette along with him. Her boot clipped a stone, and she stumbled, but Considine held her tight against him, pressing the barrel of his revolver against her right temple.

  She stared at Yakima, her eyes bright, teeth gritted. The silver crucifix nestled in her cleavage winked in the starlight.

  As Yakima stopped ten feet from Considine and the girl, the desperado’s smile grew cold. He looked Yakima up and down, spat to one side. “So you’re the bastard after my gold and my woman.”

  Yakima gripped the Colt so hard his knuckles throbbed. He no longer felt the wound in his left arm. “The woman and the horse. I have no use for the gold.”

  Considine’s right eye narrowed slightly, then both eyes dropped to the gun in Yakima’s fist. “Drop the gun and I’ll turn her loose. Don’t drop the gun and I’ll kill her.”

  “Her life for mine?”

  “That’s right. Hold on to that gun, and you’ll both die.”

  Anjanette snarled a curse as she struggled against Considine’s arm, curled taut around her neck. Tears welled from her eyes, dribbled down her bruised, dusty cheeks. “Don’t do it, Yakima.”

  Yakima held Considine’s gaze with an implacable one of his own. He squeezed the Colt’s grips, slid his index finger back and forth across the trigger. Hot blood coursed through him. Several times, standing there, he felt his hand begin to lift the revolver, and in his mind’s eye he aimed at Considine’s head and pulled the trigger.

  He looked
at Anjanette, her chest heaving as she stared back at him.

  Considine slowly uncoiled his left arm from around her neck and shoved her out in front of him, holding the revolver behind her back. He extended his left hand toward Yakima, palm up, and dipped his chin slightly. The corners of his mouth lifted, the dimples in his cheeks deepening.

  Yakima wanted to lift his hand and turn over the gun. But he kept seeing Wolf lying dead in the grass behind him. His grip on the revolver wouldn’t loosen. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d jerked the Colt up. He aimed straight at Considine’s head, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger.