The truce-seeker was still talking when Stovepipe Hat levered a cartridge into that Winchester and—easy as you please—put a bullet square into him.The second man stood frozen, unable to move.He didn’t stand there for long.Before that white kerchief floated halfway to the ground, the Winchester again spit fire, sending him spinning out of sight.
The blackguard then swung his rifle around and took leisurely aim at the third man.He figured he’d just drawn an inside straight.
But that was one card too many for Caleb, and his bullet was on its way before the dog could pull the trigger.The shot was rushed, but he didn’t miss.The stovepipe hat tipped up slightly on the man’s head, and the man dropped hard behind the rock.
The man in the sombrero spun around, looking for the new player in the game.Caleb fired again, catching him solidly and knocking him backward.The Sharps in the man’s hand tipped forward and dropped as the shooter slumped to the ground.
Caleb felt no satisfaction in it.Only the old, cold certainty that some men mistook mercy for weakness until someone stopped them.
As the echoes died away, Caleb turned his eye toward the remaining three shooters.
Suddenly, a bullet ricocheted off the boulder so close to him that a stone chip took a chunk out of his face.The shot had come from above and behind him.Whoever it was, Caleb wasn’t about to give him a second chance.
When he crawled out onto this rock, he hadn’t decided whether to get involved or whose side he was on.
Rolling for cover, he realized his decision had been made.
ChapterFifteen
Caleb wipedthe blood from his face with the back of his hand and pressed himself as flat as he could manage into a shallow depression in the rock face.Bullets from the gunman above him were chipping away at the stone a foot in front of his boots.Where the slugs struck just over his head, dust and gravel rained down.
He cussed at himself as he loaded cartridges into his Winchester.When he’d realized that one of these boys had a brain, he should have considered that they’d leave someone up with their horses.That fella was also watching their flank.Caleb was fortunate that the knothead hadn’t been on target with his first shot.
Peering over the edge of the boulder at the ridge below, he knew he couldn’t stay where he was.Three guns remained down there, but they wouldn’t wait for sunset to move.It wouldn’t take much for one or two of them to get to a place where they had a clean shot at him.And with this blackguard above keeping him pinned down, Caleb wouldn’t have much chance.
He had to move now.
Turning slightly, he fired two shots up the bluff and two quick ones in the general direction of the gunmen below.Not to kill so much as to keep their heads down long enough to buy himself a few precious seconds.Hoping that was enough to hold them off, he scrambled back the way he’d come.
Bullets pinged and thudded into the ground around him, but he made it into the cover of the brush and kept going.The gunman above him was moving too, following along and taking potshots as he went.
Caleb had very little cover as he cut across the steep hillside, but he used what he could.The fir trees below him and the dark shadow they threw looked tempting, but going straight down to them would expose his back.Bullets continued to cut through brush and saplings, and he didn’t want to push his luck.
Besides, he had an idea.
Sometimes, when they had the chess board set up in the parlor of Doc’s house, he’d find himself with his own king on the run.Damned if old Burnett wasn’t relentless in chasing him when that happened.Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—he would gull that medical man into moving too quick, committing himself where he shouldn’t, and then Caleb would strike, leaving Doc scowling and cursing at his own impetuousness.
The memory came to him clear as sunlight on snow.Warm lamplight.The smell of coffee brewing on the stove.Doc grumbling over the board.
For one brief instant, the thought of that quiet room felt farther away than the moon.
Caleb knew his idea wasn’t a great one, but this was a deadly game they were playing, and his moves were a mite limited at the moment.
Moving on an angle down from his pursuer, Caleb spotted the thirty-foot-high stack of rock slabs and raced to get to it.Then, halfway across open meadow, his boots dug into a soft spot, and he tumbled what felt like a mile down the hill, coming to a stop when his ribs made themselves at home against a boulder sharp enough to cut rope.
Pain shot through his side hard enough to make his vision blur.
“Damn fool,” he muttered under his breath, more annoyed with himself than hurt.A man who wanted a future had no business getting himself killed on a mountainside.
Trying to force air into his lungs was about as easy as stuffing a bobcat in a sack.It didn’t help that he had bullets thudding into the ground and raising sprays of dirt all around him.
Grabbing his hat, he limped and ran as well as he could until he reached the score of rocks that lay half buried in the grassy slope below the jagged cliff face.As he recalled, most of them were bigger than a man.
The top of the bluff shielded him from the shooter, but it wouldn’t be for long.In a few moments, that bastard would be standing on top of the cliff.He’d have a commanding view of the slope.That’s what Caleb was counting on.
Quickly propping his hat and rifle up near the top of one of the jutting rocks, he raced to another jagged boulder twenty yards beyond it and took cover.With his back to the boulder, Caleb drew one of his Colts and waited.
Less than a minute later, he heard gravel and sand come tumbling down the face of the cliff.
