“One wrong move,” warned Burns, “and I’ll blow you plumb to hell.”
The gun belt dropped from off the man’s waist and the man himself plodded on ahead, hands half raised.
Behind him, Burns heard the soft, muffled thud of his own horse and the girl’s.
“When we get to the door,” Burns told Ann, “we’ll climb these ponies and hit the street full gallop. Swing to the west and keep on going. If there’s any shooting, don’t try to shoot back. I’ll take care of that.”
To the livery man, he said: “That’s far enough for you. Just stand where you are and don’t let out a yelp.”
Burns swung abruptly, leaped for the back of his horse. The animal, accustomed to a saddle, crouched in fright, then sprang for the doorway, burst into the street.
Deftly, Burns swung the horse around, brought his sixgun up to a firing position. Someone stormed out of a restaurant doorway, yelling at him and from far up the street a rifle started up with hollow coughing.
The sound of hoofs swept out of the barn and went past him. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught a quick glimpse of the girl, bent low on the saddleless horse, thundering down the street.
A bullet hummed over his head and another skipped along the sidewalk, like a stone on water, gouging out clouds of splinters as it went.
In front of the Longhorn bar men were running for their horses. Others were leaping for their saddles.
With a yell, Steve reined his horse around, taking the direction the girl had gone. Lighted windows spun past as the horse stretched out and ran as if his life depended on it.
Then the town of Skull Crossing was behind him and he was following the drumfire of hoofbeats that he knew was the other horse ahead.
The moon rode just above the eastern horizon and flooded the valley with a crystal light.
Burns frowned. If only the night could have been dark, Ann and he might have had a better chance. But with the moon almost full, pursuit would be easy. Soon the horses and their riders would be streaming out upon their trail.
The horse thundered down an incline, splashed across a shallow stream, plunged up the other bank and breasted the rise.
Ann and her mount were no longer to be seen, but the trail was plain and the horse followed it unerringly. If there’s a place to turn off, Burns told himself, she’ll stop there and wait for me.
The horse suddenly shied as a running figure came out of the shadows. Burns’ hand, snaking for his gun-butt, stopped short. The running figure, he saw, was Ann. She was stumbling down the trail in the moonlight, waving as if to stop him.
She had lost her hat and the shirt was ripped open at the shoulder. Dirt smudges marched across her face.
“The horse,” she gasped. “Threw me off. Scared of a snake…”
He reached down a hand and she grasped it.
“Up you come,” he said, and heaved.
The horse shied and reared, and Burns talked to it soothingly.
“Hang on,” he said to Ann.
Her arms tightened around his waist. “I’m all right,” she told him. “If I’d had a saddle he never would have thrown me. But he jumped so quick that I just flew off.”
“You hurt?”
“Skinned up some. That’s all. Landed on my shoulder and skidded.”
“We got to keep moving,” Burns told her. “There’s a big gang in town. Running for their horses when I left.”
“The Lazy K mob,” said Ann. “Egan must have sent for them.”
The horse was stretching out again, running with an easy lope that ate up ground.
“You’ll have to tell me when to leave the trail,” said Burns.
“I will,” she said.
They crossed another stream that tumbled from the hills down into the valley and the horse lunged up the bank.
“We sure got you in a mess,” said Ann. “I know Bob didn’t figure it this way. He just wanted to talk to you. Wanted to get you straightened out. Didn’t want you to ride away thinking he had taken to robbing banks.”
“I would have dealt me a hand anyhow,” Burns told her, “just as soon as I got the lay. Didn’t like Carson from the very first. A greasy sort of hombre.”
They rode in silence for a moment.
“I came to see Bob anyway,” said Burns. “Got a letter from him a couple of years ago. Said he needed a partner. Figured maybe that he still did. Figured maybe I could find a place where I could hang up the guns.”
He laughed shortly. “Guess I’ll need them for a while.”
For a long while nothing further was spoken, then Ann said: “I hear something.”
Straining his ears, Steve heard it, too. Heard it above the whistle of wind in his ears, the steady beat of the pony’s feet—a distant drum of hoofs.
“That’s the posse,” said Burns. “I was hoping they’d hold off for a while.”
At the end of ten minutes they turned off the trail, plunged into the tangle of hills that crowded against the valley.
The horse stumbled beneath them, regained his stride. But it was not as smooth and firm as it had been before—nor quite as fast.
Behind them the drum of hoofs was closer, louder. Once a man yelled and the yell cut above the rolling sound of pursuit.
The horse stumbled again, then went on, but this time the stride was broken, limping.
Burns pulled to a halt and slid off.
“Go on,” he yelled at the girl. “Tell Bob I’ll try to hold them off.”
“But, Steve …”
“Go on!” he yelled. “Ride!”
He hit the horse with his hat and the animal leaped away. The girl, he saw, had grabbed the reins, was bending low. Then the hoofs clattered up a rocky gorge and pounded into the distance.
For a moment Burns stood at the mouth of the gorge, eyes taking in the scene. Not too bad a place to make a stand, he told himself, and yet it could be better.
But there was one thing clear. He had to stop them, hold them up a while for Ann to make her getaway. Had to try to hold out until Bob Custer could send his men sweeping down upon the posse.
Swiftly he ran up the gorge, dodging around the boulders, heading for a tangle of rock and juniper to one side of the gorge. As he ran he heard the nearing thunder of the posse.
Jerking loose his guns, he leaped behind the rocks and junipers, crouched waiting, breath whistling in his throat.
Suddenly the horses and their riders burst over the brow of the hill, stormed down toward the gorge. Twenty five or thirty of them, Burns made out, counting swiftly. Too many—more than he’d thought there’d be.
Moistening his lips, he lifted the guns. The palms of his hands were wet and he wrapped his fingers with a tighter grip.
They charged up the gorge in a massed bunch and Burns tensed in his hiding place. Slowly, deliberately, his trigger fingers tightened.
The first rider reached the boulder that he had marked and Burns’ guns were hammering in his grip, spitting fire, blasting the night wide open with their talk.
Screams and yells burst out and the posse swirled madly for a moment with horses rearing and fighting the bits, men fighting to break free from the riders who were packed around them.
One man threw up his arms, his scream was drowned by the gurgle of blood welling in his throat. A horse jack-rabbited up the hillside, kicking at the bouncing thing that dragged beside it, foot caught in the stirrup.
Then, suddenly, the gorge was clear—clear except for three sprawled figures. One was bigger than the other two and that one, Burns knew, was a horse that one of his bullets had caught.
Horses were galloping wildly, reins dragging, while men raced like scurrying shadows for a patch of undergrowth, for a boulder, for anything that might serve as shelter from the storm of lead.