Nor could the mares carry Caleb. Not right away. They were still breathing hard, trembling, all but run into the ground. Ishmael was hard used. So was Trey, but of them all, Trey was in the best shape.
Don’t think about the horses, Willow told herselfgrimly. Youcan’t do anything for them now. What you can do is get these cartridges to Caleb.
As Willow dug quickly through the heavy saddlebags, she found five boxes of ammunition. Two contained shotgun shells. Three contained cartridges, but one of the boxes had a different size of ammunition than the other two. She didn’t know which would go with the rifle and which with Caleb’s pistol. There was also the spyglass, a compass, and other miscellaneous personal items.
In the end Willow decided to take everything, not knowing what might be useful to Caleb. She grabbed the saddlebags, dragged them into place on her shoulder, picked up the shotgun, and walked cautiously to the edge of the trees. Caleb was a hundred feet away from her at almost the same elevation, separated from her by a low runoff channel. The distance was too great for her to throw a box of ammunition, much less the saddlebags. But if she crawled and was quick about it, she shouldn’t be visible from below for more than a few seconds.
«Caleb,» Willow called softly, «I’m coming in behind you.»
He spun around, ready to tell her to do no such fool thing.
It was too late. She was on her hands and knees already, crawling toward him with no more cover around her than the low ditch could provide.
Swiftly, Caleb turned back and began firing at places where raiders had gone to ground, hoping to pin them down while Willow crossed the trough. Realizing what he was doing, Willow scrambled to her feet and raced toward the rocks. Just as she threw herself down beside Caleb, bullets began whining off the nearby 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.