Jesco scoured their vicinity, but did not spot anyone else. “You can try with the rifle or a six-shooter if you have one.”
“Please, mister. I’m hurtin’, hurtin’ powerful bad.” Harvey’s fear was thick enough to cut with a blunt table knife.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“God Almighty.” Harvey rose on his elbows and looked about him. “All I want is to leave this place alive.” And just like that, he threw back his head and bawled, “Saber! Over here!” Simultaneously, he grabbed his rifle and swung the muzzle up. He almost made it.
Jesco cored him through the forehead. The blast had not yet faded when Jesco sprang into motion. Holstering his Colt, he rolled to his feet, snagged the rifle on the move, and flew toward the house. It occurred to him that he should check on Timmy. Something had gone wrong with their plan; the rustlers had never opened fire on Dunn’s body.
A shape hove up out of nowhere and a rifle boomed. Jesco returned the favor, emptying the Winchester, and it was the shape that crumpled, not him. He ran on, to the same side window he had slipped out of. It was open a few inches, and he was sure he had closed it. Worry lanced through him. He opened it high enough to hook his leg over the sill.
“Timmy?” Jesco whispered in the stillness of the room. The Colt firmly in hand, his elbow molded to his side, Jesco crept down the hall to the parlor. By then his eyes had adjusted. The first thing he saw was the overturned chair, and what appeared to be two bodies intertwined beside it. He took a bound, and was brought up short by the abrupt blaze of a lamp.
From behind the settee rose a lanky man in a buckskin jacket. He was holding the lamp. In his other hand was a Colt, pointed not at Jesco, but at one of the two sprawled figures on the floor.
Another man came out of the shadows near the front curtains. He had feral features and a vivid scar down the right side of his face. His Colt, too, was trained on one of the figures. “Do anything hasty, cowboy, and we give your young friend a new set of ear holes.”
Timmy was pinned under Dunn, his arms outspread, completely helpless. “Sorry,” he said.
“How in the world?” Jesco exclaimed, relieved to find him alive. Then, to the man with the scar, “Let me guess. You’re Saber.”
“What gave you the clue?” The outlaw leader nodded at the window. “I heard a lot of shootin’ out there. My other lunkheads?”
“Won’t be stealin’ any cows.”
“Damn.”
“Your scheme has failed,” Jesco told him. “There’s only the two of you left.”
The man holding the lamp snickered. “That’s what you think, mister. There’s still Hijino. By now he’s probably wiped out the Pierces.”
Saber glowered hotly. “Shut your mouth, damn it, Twitch. You talk too much. You always have.”
“Two or three, it doesn’t matter,” Jesco said. “There’s not enough of you to steal the herds.”
“Not now, no,” Saber said. “But those critters aren’t goin’ anywhere. I can send out word and in two or three weeks have enough men to replace those you’ve turned into maggot bait, plus extra.” A smug smile curled his scar. “All you’ve done is delay things a mite.”
Twitch raised the lamp higher. “We have you over a barrel,” he gloated. “Drop that smoke wagon, or else.”
Jesco looked at Timmy. If he set the Colt down, they were as good as goners. So long as he held onto it, they had a prayer. “No.”
“We’ll plug him,” Twitch threatened. “Me or Saber, one or the other. So help me.”
“Go ahead,” Jesco said, sidling to the left so he could watch both of them without having to turn his head.
“What?” Both Twitch and Timmy declared in disbelief, with Twitch going on, “You don’t care if we bed him down permanent?”
Saber swore luridly. “Of course he cares. But he’s got more grit than I gave him credit for.”
“I’ll shoot the first one of you who fires,” Jesco vowed. He was tense from head to toe with apprehension over what he had to do.
“We have us a standoff,” Saber said. “It’s what I get for thinkin’ this cowboy was no different from any other.”
“I’m just a puncher,” Jesco said to keep them talking. He was staring at them, but he was seeing the arroyo, and the scores of broken bottles. All that practice was about to pay off, or get him and Timmy killed.
“No cowpoke could do what you’ve done,” Saber said. “I always figured my boys were a match for fifty of your kind.”
“You figured wrong,” Jesco said, and shot him in the chest. Quick as thought, he shifted and fanned off two shots at Twitch’s face. Twitch’s right eye exploded, and his nose spouted crimson. In the same split second, another shot banged, and a slug dug across Jesco’s ribs.
Saber was still on his feet. “You’re mine!” he roared.
They fired simultaneously. It was Jesco who went on firing, fanning his Colt until it was empty.
Tendrils of gun smoke hung thick in the air. The thrashing and mewing ended, and as Jesco reloaded, he walked over to the bodies and nudged them to be certain.
“What about me?” Timmy impatiently asked.
Jesco twirled the Colt into his holster, and grinned. “I should leave you there. The boys can use a good laugh when they get back.”
Timmy Loring had learned a lot of cuss words at the Circle T.
Chapter 29
Dolores was a talker when she was mad, and Madre de Dios, was she mad now! Hijino listened to her go on and on, while secretly yearning for the moment when he could shut her up forever.
“We need more vaqueros! Lots of them!” Dolores was saying to Trella. “An army of vaqueros to crush the Circle T. To kill all the cowboys and burn all their buildings to the ground.”
The three of them were riding abreast under the star-sprinkled heavens. The Rio Largo was miles behind them—the rancho less than a mile ahead. A stiff breeze from off the mountains fanned the long hair of the two women, and the manes of their horses.
Trella was deep in the grip of sorrow. She had barely uttered three words since leaving the river. Hijino had made bold to lean over and touch her arm a few times, playing his part of the devoted protector, but she did not respond. Now, to Dolores’s proposal, she merely nodded.
“You must snap out of it, mi hermana. The fate of our rancho depends on us. Everything father and mother worked for, all their years of sweat and toil, will be for nothing if we do not keep our heads and do what must be done.”
In acute misery, Trella softly asked, “How could it come to this? How could our happiness be so quickly crushed?”
“You dwell on the past,” Dolores criticized. “On what we have lost, not the steps we must take to ensure our future.”
Trella looked at her. “How can you? Do you not have emotions? Our parents are dead. Our brothers, dead. The loss is almost more than I can bear.”
“Snap out of it, I tell you,” Dolores said harshly. “We will be dead, too, if you do not. We must plan, and plan carefully. We must foresee every contingency. Such as the one I fear the most.”
“What can be worse than what has already happened?”
“More proof you are not thinking clearly. For as terrible as things are, for all our loss and our sorrow, things can get worse.” Dolores paused. “They can get very bad indeed, if Paco and Roman and the rest of our men at the river are wiped out by the cowboys.”
“Paco will not let that happen.”
“A fantasy, sister. Do you think Father let himself be shot? Do you think our brothers let themselves be murdered? No. Bad things happen whether we want them to or not. We must be realistic. The cowboys outnumber our vaqueros. Unless Paco is very clever, the cowboys will win.”