Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Page 20

  At last, she stood, comforted Hestia, and thought about the home and hearth for which the mare had been named. Hannah bit into an apple that she had put in the saddlebags, and shared it with her steed. She wished that she had thought to bring coffee.

  As Hannah waited for the light of dawn to penetrate the woods sufficiently for her to resume her journey, she tried not to think about the dead animal lying in her camp and cursed herself for initially forgetting that wolves hunt in packs. Fortunately for her, this one had come alone, or at least had come with easily frightened cohorts.

  Chapter 25

  FOR BLADEN COLE, THE THIRD DAY SINCE HE HAD LEFT Copperopolis dawned as dark and gloomy as had the second, though the snowfall had taken a momentary hiatus.

  He bade farewell to Jake Walz and his dogs, having poured the old man the first cup of coffee he’d had in months. Walz explained that his fear of claim jumpers kept him from straying far, and Cole wondered how he’d fare when he finally did leave here—if he ever left the side stream off Sixteen Mile Creek.

  Cole hoped that the color really would run bright and plentiful for the man come spring—but he believed that it would not.

  He could look into Walz’s eyes and tell that they did not see the same world that others saw. He had seen the same look in the eyes of gamblers down on their luck. He had seen that gleam of optimistic madness that expressed their firm belief that the next hand, just one more hand, would make them rich.

  The gaming tables were no different than Jake Walz’s place, except that with the gambler, there was frequently a cardsharp to ease him onward with colorful promises. This thought made Cole think of Sally Lovelace and the look that had been put into her eyes by the guileful Hubbard down in Colorado. It was a disagreeable train of thought which Cole wished not to pursue, and he forced his mind back to the task at hand.

  His father’s watch told him that it was almost seven as they forded Sixteen Mile Creek to get back on the main trail, and the bounty hunter breathed a tentative sigh of relief. After today, only one more sleep separated them from Gallatin City.

  There were tracks on the trail, laid down since the snow had ceased overnight, but they were headed the opposite direction. This, and the monotony and monochrome of the countryside were lulling. It was a landscape in black and white. The trees were black, and the thin covering of snow blanketed the hills and valley and merged into the clouds in a single shade of cold, bleak white.

  Cole hated himself for having succumbed to this hypnotic dullness—the split second that the first shot was fired.

  Porter and Goode, both riding ahead of him, jerked their heads up from their own respective daydreams at the sound, glancing around instinctively, looking for the origin of the shot.

  The men each saw it almost immediately, a bluish puff of smoke hanging in the still air high on a hillside slightly ahead of them.

  The sniper had chosen well, training his weapon at a place on the trail where the terrain offered no cover his targets might run for.

  “Hee-yaa . . . ride!” Cole shouted, kicking the roan into a gallop and swatting the flanks of Gideon Porter’s horse with his reins—though the two prisoners needed no urging to spur their horses into a run. Like Cole, they knew that the best reaction in a situation with no cover was to make themselves a moving target, and one that moved as fast as possible.

  If the sniper had done well in choosing the place of his attack, his execution left much to be desired. Having failed to hit anyone with his first shot, he waited too long to fire his second. By this time, his quarry was in motion. Only luck would guide his bullet now.

  Cole, of course, had problems of his own. He had lost effective control over two prisoners at full gallop on a snow-covered trail. If any horse stumbled and broke a leg in a snow-covered hole, it would greatly complicate matters. Meanwhile, there was the danger that Porter and Goode would escape. Though their being lashed together with forty feet of rope lessened the chances of this, it could not completely prevent it. Desperate men did desperate things, and both of these men had recently proven this axiom.

  By the third shot, they were out of range, and soon they had put the shoulder of a hill between them and the shooter. Cole was about to order Porter and Goode to slow their pace, when another shot rang out from a different direction.

  He heard the whiz of a near miss from a gunman who was a better marksman than his partner.

  “Dismount and take cover!” Cole screamed with as much authority as he could muster. At least there now was cover to take. He might have been a better shot, but fortunately, this second bushwhacker had not done as good a job in picking a place to do his shooting.

  Cole remained on the roan until both Porter and Goode had clumsily slid from their horses, then he grabbed his Winchester from his scabbard and leaped behind a nearby boulder, with his back to Sixteen Mile Creek.

  As with the first sniper, the position of the second was revealed by bluish puffs of burnt powder and by the muzzle flashes of his rifle.

  Having taken time to line up his own first shot, Cole squeezed the trigger.

  The round impacted the rock behind which the second sniper was crouching, hitting close enough to spit up debris that the man no doubt felt on his face.

  This apparently unnerved him somewhat, because he fired two shots in rapid succession which hit in the trees quite far from any of his targets.

  Cole fired a second time but cursed when his bullet again hit the rock.

  “Stay down,” Cole growled when he saw Jimmy Goode start to move.

  “He’s gunnin’ for you, not for us,” Goode shouted back.

  “You’re wanted dead or alive, you idiot,” Porter shouted. “You’re worth as much to him dead . . . and you’d be a helluva lot less trouble dead!”

  The impasse had the makings of a standoff.

  It had taken only a few minutes to establish that neither Cole nor the sniper could easily hit the other, but both were pinned down.

  Over the ensuing ten minutes, each side fired only as often as he thought necessary to remind the other that he was stuck where he was until the impasse was broken.

  Cole realized that this would happen as soon as the first bushwhacker appeared. If the two of them could get Cole into a cross fire, things would change abruptly in their favor.

  The bounty hunter’s eyes were compelled to constantly scan the hillsides all around for sign of the other gunman, while the second sniper had the good fortune of knowing where his targets were.

  * * *

  CHANGES OF FORTUNE OFTEN COME IN UNEXPECTED FORM.

  As Cole was studying the surrounding hillsides, he caught sight of a rider. What confused him was that this black horse was moving among the ponderosa on the hillside opposite the direction from which the other sniper was likely to come.

  It was hard to get a good look in the thick trees, until the rider paused briefly in a small clearing slightly above the sniper’s nest.

  Cole couldn’t believe what he saw.

  The rider was a woman. By her narrow waist and the drape of her riding skirt, there was no mistaking this. She picked her way across the hillside with such ease that it made her seem to be simply taking a Sunday ride.

  He was beginning to ponder the question of what a joyriding woman was doing out here when a gunshot answered his question.

  She had a rifle, and she had fired on the bushwhacker.

  As Cole had been watching for himself to be outflanked, it had been his opponent who was outflanked.

  The sniper turned and returned fire.

  As the woman was now behind the trees, Cole could not see exactly what was happening, but the gunman’s attention had definitely been diverted.

  Cole squeezed off another shot, coming frustratingly close without connecting.

  Suddenly, the man broke from his posit
ion and started running.

  Cole fired again and missed.

  He heard another shot from up on the hillside, and the woman emerged from the trees. Cole watched her put her rifle to her shoulder and fire again.

  The running man abruptly slowed to a limp.

  One of the woman’s shots had hit him.

  Seconds later, though, he was on his horse and galloping away.

  Cole watched as the woman squeezed off another shot and paused to study the terrain between herself and the fleeing sniper.

  Cole watched her maneuver the black horse near a deep ravine and apparently decide that it could not easily be crossed in time for a her to undertake a useful pursuit.

  She turned, looked down at where Cole was, and began urging her horse down the steep slope toward him.

  Cole had just caught his roan and was leading the horse back to where his prisoners were standing when she rode up.

  He recognized her immediately. It was Hannah Ransdell.

  She wore a snug-fitting, long-sleeved jacket over her black skirt, and a stylish, narrow-brimmed hat with a floral-patterned ribbon on it. Dressed in what ladies in Virginia would have called a “riding habit,” she did, indeed, have the look of a stylish lady out for a Sunday ride. Except for the Winchester ’73 which she carried in her gloved right hand.

  “You’re in trouble,” she said soberly. “Those men are out to kill you.”

  “Wouldn’t have guessed,” Cole said in a sarcastic tone.

  “I’m serious,” she said, bristling.

  “I believe you, Miss Ransdell,” he assured her. “By the way . . . you did arrive at a fortunate time. What brings you to these parts?”

  “To stop them from killing you . . . and Gideon Porter.”

  “So far that plan seems to have worked,” Cole nodded, looking at Porter, who for once appeared speechless. “But they are still out there.”

  “I know,” she said, studying the hillside. “But at least there’s two sets of eyes to keep watch . . . and two Winchesters to stop them if they show themselves again.”

  “You’re pretty good with that thing,” Cole said, nodding to the rifle, which she held muzzle high, the butt resting on her hip.

  “You mean good for a girl?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You thought . . .”

  “What I think is that you hit a man while he was on the run,” Cole interrupted.

  She said nothing more on the subject but merely looked back at the hillside.

  “What have you been doing to these poor men?” Hannah asked cynically as she observed Porter’s scarred face and Goode’s withered hand.

  “These two fared better than Enoch,” Cole said, nodding to the canvas-covered package tied to the last horse.

  “I figured that was him,” she said without emotion.

  “We best get moving,” Cole said as he mounted up. “Your hitting that one will not stop them, but at least it’ll probably slow them down . . . and we’ll want to get as far ahead of them as we can.”

  “We ought to be able to keep ahead of them if we stick to this trail,” she said. “As I have learned from recent experience, riding across these mountains makes for very rough going.”

  “That ought to force them onto the trail, where we might have a better chance of seeing them coming,” Cole suggested as he looked back down the trail. “But we need to get going and put some miles between us and them.”

  “Then let’s make some miles,” she said, touching the heels of her scuffed and muddied, though quite fashionable, riding boots to the flanks of her black mare.

  * * *

  THEY RODE THE FIRST OF THOSE MILES, AND MOST OF THE second, in single file because of the narrowness of the canyon, hurrying as much as possible without allowing the horses to get winded.

  As the valley broadened, Cole reined the roan alongside the mare. He was curious to know what lay behind the auspicious appearance of Hannah Ransdell, especially in light of what he had concluded about her father.

  “You said that you rode out here to save my hide and that of Mr. Porter there,” Cole said without looking directly at Hannah. “How did you know that we needed saving? Who are those men?”

  “Their names are Lyle Blake and Joe Clark,” she said. “They’re part of the same cesspool of town thugs that bred the likes of the Porter boys.”

  “How do you reckon that your friends were able to find us way out here?” he asked.

  “They’re not my friends,” she snapped, glancing at him. “To answer your question, I happened to overhear them talking . . . talking about you headed for Sixteen Mile Creek from up north.”

  “How’d they know that?”

  “They heard it from someone, who heard it from someone else, who saw you in a place called Copperopolis four days or so ago.”

  “So you followed them?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “I came across the mountains. I wanted to get here first by taking a short cut. I almost did.”

  “How did you find . . . ?”

  “It does not take a genius to figure how far someone would get after three or four days of riding from up at Copperopolis.”

  “Did your father send you?” Cole asked pointedly.

  “My father certainly did not send me,” she answered, her simmering irritability coming to a boil.

  “When I saw you, I guessed that he might have sent you to check up on me . . . check up on how I was doing with this job he gave me.”

  “Well, I guess you guessed very, very wrong, Mr. Cole.”

  “Why are you here, then . . . making yourself the target of two men who aimed to kill us three and probably now aim to kill you as well?”

  “Let’s just say that I have a strong interest in seeing justice done,” she said, looking at him with disdain. “Unlike you, Mr. Cole . . . I am not here because of a substantial sum of money.”

  “Well, I won’t say I’m not doing it for the money . . .” Cole began.

  “That’s because you can’t say that,” she finished, biting back. “At least you can’t say it with a straight face.”

  “If the only reason I have for being in this situation is the reward money, then I would have made what I’m doing a helluva . . . pardon me for my language in front of a lady . . . lot easier.”

  “Apology accepted, though I’ve heard worse,” Hannah said sternly without looking at him. “How?” Hannah asked after a long pause. “How, exactly could you have made this any easier?”

  “The warrant says ‘dead or alive,’” he began.

  “Yes, I’m well aware of that detail.”

  “Then you can probably imagine how much easier it would have been for me to bring Porter and Goode back like old Enoch. Without going through all the details, my life would have been a helluva lot easier with these cantankerous fools dead rather than alive.”

  “Why then, Mr. Cole?” she asked. “Why did you decide to do it the hard way?”

  “Let’s just say that I also have a strong interest in seeing justice done.”

  The canyon narrowed once again, bringing an interruption to their conversation which left many questions yet unanswered.

  Chapter 26

  “THANK YOU, MR. COLE,” SHE SAID CRISPLY, TRYING TO maintain her facade of practical aloofness.

  Late in the afternoon, the bounty hunter had offered her a slice of buffalo jerky. Hannah Ransdell was starving but tried her best not to appear so. She wished to deny him the satisfaction of knowing both how unprepared she had been for this venture and how much she appreciated his gesture.

  She had lost her appetite after the anxiety of shooting Lyle Blake, but pent-up hunger had overtaken her and had dogged her for the past several hours. The meat tasted really good.

  Hann
ah knew why she wanted Gideon Porter brought back alive, by why did Cole?

  She had ridden to her rendezvous predisposed to his being merely a mercenary craving a reward, but his words suggested that there was more to it than she had believed.

  It had surprised her greatly, and frankly confused her, that the bounty hunter had made a conscious decision to deliver at least part of the Porter boys’ gang alive rather than dead. In this, his purpose coincided with her own—but she could not imagine why.

  On the other hand, it annoyed her greatly to have heard him insinuate that she was the mere instrument of her father and that her motives in wishing to preserve the lives of Jimmy Goode and that detestable Gideon Porter were in the service of Isham Ransdell’s interests—when exactly the opposite was true.

  As the miles went by, the wind picked up, and with it a cold chill, although in its blowing it seemed to have parted the clouds, and there were now a few patches of blue showing.

  “If it’s any measure of consolation, Miss Ransdell,” the bounty hunter said, “I don’t think these men will try to attack us until after the sun goes down.

  “Did I say that I needed consoling, Mr. Cole?” Hannah asked scornfully.

  “The way that you’ve been biting at your lip when you look back at those yonder hills makes me think as much,” he said with a slight smile.

  As much as she resented the bounty hunter’s verbal prods, she resented herself more for interrupting her resentment to admire the way his beard was taking shape.

  “I would have to say that their presence in those hills concerns me a bit, as I suspect it does you as well,” she said.

  In fact, it troubled her greatly that Lyle Blake and Joe Clark were still out there somewhere stalking them. Her original plan, the plan which had taken shape back in Gallatin City when things seemed much simpler, had been to alert the bounty hunter and let him do whatever it was that gunmen did to relieve themselves of a threat. Instead, she too was now among the hunted.