Of course, there was no way to avoid it. When he finally caught a glimpse of movement through the lower limbs of underbrush, what he saw was three horses, saddled and being held by someone who he could not distinctly make out at all.
He shoved his Colt forward, wriggled in as close as he could at the base of a particularly hardy stand of buckbrush, allowed a full minute to pass, during which he thought Jud and the old cowman would be in place, then he sang out.
“Chase! Fenwick! We’re on all sides of you!”
He had more to say, but a nervous trigger finger up through the brush fired a gun in the direction of Rufe’s voice, and the bullet made a tearing sound, clearly audible, but two feet higher than where Rufe was lying.
Rufe held his fire, intending to sing out again. From off to the east, far out, Evart Hartman fired; at least that shot came from the area where Rufe was certain Hartman had gone, but otherwise there was no way for Rufe to be sure who had fired.
This second gunshot, though, stirred up a hor-net’s nest. Two pistols and a Winchester cut loose in the same direction as Hartman had fired from. Rufe pushed his six-gun ahead, aimed as best he could at the ground beneath where those three saddled horses were being held, and tugged off a shot.
The noise was bad enough, but when that slug tore into the gravelly hardpan, causing an eruption of flinty soil and sharp little bits of stone, which flew upwards, striking the nearest horse under the belly, the animal gave a tremendous bound into the air, and snorted like a wild stallion.
A man swore as the other two held horses also violently reacted, and another man yelled for the horse holder to hang on.
Rufe fired again in the same way, his bullet exploding hardpan upward beneath those terrified horses, and this time two furiously swearing men fired back as they rushed over to help the horse holder.
Both those last two bullets also went high above where Rufe was lying. Nevertheless, it would only be a matter of moments before Chase’s riders figured out that Rufe was belly down out there. They would then lower their gun barrels, but right at this moment everyone through the brush was desperately seeking to control the frightened horses.
Rufe had no intention of allowing the men to get their animals under control, if he could help it. As long as they were fully occupied with their only means of escape, he was relatively safe from their wrath.
He wriggled away from his big bush and crept still closer. While he was crawling, Jud fired from southward, but high. So high, in fact, that the bullet clipped a dozen small branches from the tops of the bushes. Rufe saw this happen, saw the underbrush rip and tear as Jud’s slug bore through it.
It occurred to him that Jud was also thinking of Elisabeth’s safety, when he fired that high.
Rufe found another massive old bush, but when he pushed aside low branches to get into the protection of the trunk at ground level, he met an agitated rattlesnake, coiled in the shade to avoid the full day’s heat. Rufe began carefully reversing himself, began to crawl backward as surely as, moments before, he had crawled forward.
Evidently the snake was as willing to have Rufe do that as Rufe was because he neither rattled nor raised his flat, ugly-snouted head.
Hartman fired again, and this time someone through the underbrush swore at the old cowman, then ripped off two very fast pistol shots.
Jud fired again, still high, and Rufe added another gunshot. This time, the men up ahead did not return Rufe’s fire, and only one man let fly in Jud’s direction, and he fired too far to the east to endanger Jud.
For a couple of minutes there was absolute silence. Evart Hartman, who had not said a word until now, called forth in a tone of voice that was almost too calm.
“Hey, you fellers! So far, you’re not in any real bad trouble. At least, so far you ain’t done anything folk-s’ll want to hang you for. But you keep this up, and maybe hit someone, and you’re going to end up out back of the livery barn at the end of a rope. You sure it’s worth it?”
The silence continued after Hartman had called out. Rufe was hopeful. The long silence encouraged him in this. He reasoned that, if Chase’s crew was really fired up to kill, one or the other of them, at least, would have answered the cowman with gun-shots.
Finally a voice Rufe knew belonged to Fenwick called out: “We’ll make a trade with you fellers! We’ll leave Miz Cane settin’ here tied up, like she is, and we’ll take the horses and head on out…providin’ you fellers agree not to shoot, and not Tomake an at-tempt to interfere with us getting away. All right?”
Rufe answered quickly: “Send Miz Cane south-ward on her own first.”
For a moment there was no answer, then it came, apparently after a heated discussion by the men hiding in the underbrush.
“We got a better notion. We’ll take her along with us for a mile or two, just to keep you fellers honest, and, if you don’t go and try to interfere with us heading out, we’ll set her loose. And that’s the only terms we’ll talk about, so you either agree or don’t agree.”
Rufe sighed, waited for Jud or Evart Hartman to speak, and after a minute, when neither of them had made a sound, Rufe called out agreement to the terms.
XVI
Those agitated saddle animals were perfectly willing to settle down, once the gunfire ended. Rufe could see men’s legs in among the horses, but that was about all he could see, until two men brought up a third person. He recognized the high-topped dark boots and the riding skirt of Elisabeth Cane, and watched as Chase’s men put her astride one of the horses, then, by pulling back a few yards and peering over the tops of the tallest bushes, he could see her head and shoulders.
They had bound her arms behind her back, but with a short length of rope hanging loosely enough so that she had a little room to move her wrists, which struck Rufe as a charitable thing to do.
She sat her horse, looking scornfully around where the men were completing their arrangements to get astride, then she turned, looked over the tops of the bushes—and saw Rufe. He smiled and winked. She winked back, but did not smile, and a moment later she looked dead ahead, southward, as though she had seen nothing.
She looked regal, up there atop that horse, shoulders squared, head tilted just a little, her firm mouth set in an expression of acceptance without compromise. Rufe thought again that she was an unusually handsome woman, then a dry voice called from the east, but much closer than the same voice had sounded earlier, as Evart Hartman addressed Arlen Chase.
“As a matter of curiosity, Arlen,” said Hartman. “If you run for Mexico, you’re leavin’ an awful lot behind. If I was in your boots, I’d face it…and at least salvage something.”
It struck Rufe as good advice. Perhaps it also struck Arlen that way, but he certainly gave no indication of it. He did not respond at all, and moments later Rufe could see them getting astride.
They acted wary, once they were exposed atop their horses. It was an understandable reaction, only moments earlier they had been shooting at the unseen watchers around them, and those same watchers had been shooting back. Now they were sitting ducks, except that a verbal agreement had been reached. The men had guns in their hands and kept casting glances around, somewhat fearfully, as though they expected to see a gun barrel aimed their way.
The last man up held a Colt that looked very new. The bluing was not rubbed off in any place that Rufe could see. Rufe watched as this man looked left, then right. While he was facing in Hartman’s direction, he said: “Why are you worrying about what I’m leaving behind, Hartman, if you didn’t have some notion of comin’ up here after I’m gone, like a lousy vulture, and gleaning everything that isn’t tied down?”