"WELL, Mr Conway, you're certainly getting some first-hand excitement," Lucia ventured with a nervous smile.
"More than I'd bargained for and at closer quarters." Clem shuddered. "The next death could be yours or mine!"
"Hush your yap, willya?" Joshua flagged a hand for silence but didn't turn
from his vigilant watch of the rocks that sheltered the outlaw gang.
"Mr Dillard!" Clem began huffily. "I don't like your –"
Then he broke off, for he heard it, too.
A puff of hot breeze rustled the dry grasses that poked up from the cracks.
And blown along on the breath of it, another sound came to the ears of the
trapped trio.
"Hoofbeats!" Clem exclaimed.
"Help is at hand!" Lucia the sometime actress cried dramatically.
Joshua Dillard's lips twisted cynically. "Jest one rider, ma'am," he reported.
"A start, I'll allow, but them jaspers across the way are gonna hear same
as us."
"You believe they'll interfere!"
"With bullets, Mr Conway. Why ever not? They've already killed three men to pull off this caper." Joshua's tone was laconic.
Clem waved his Colt. "The range is a bit far for a revolver to do much good,
but I must help you put up covering fire. These swine can't be allowed to
attack innocent folks."
"Damned right, Mr Conway."
Lucia shivered. "It makes me go cold to think that man out there might be riding unwittingly toward his death."
Whatever each of them expected – complication, salavation or both – the
rider's appearance at the head of the gulch brought a total surprise.
"Good God! It's a woman," said Clem.
"Watch out!" Joshua yelled.
Simultaneously, two rifles crashed.
A low-crowned stetson flew from the head of the startled horsewoman, holed
through the brim. The mop of carrot-red hair tucked under it burst free –
along with a virulent oath that would have blued the air in a Tombstone bar-room.
The Simich henchman who'd raised himself to fire was toppled back like a
tenpin among his cohorts, blood seeping into his bullet-torn shirtsleeve.
The girl's horse, a spirited black pony, reared, but the rider didn't attempt
to control it. She plunged expertly from the saddle and rolled across the
dusty trail. She went fast, making no effort to regain her feet till she
could dart in amongst the rocks.
As a crowning act of bravado, she then snatched a six-shooter from the low-slung
belt that circled her slim, jeans-clad hips and loosed off several shots,
having accurately picked the direction of her attacker.
The Simich bunch was seemingly stunned into passivity. No further fire came from their position.
Clem Conway was lost in admiration. "Good Lord! That was a spunky recovery."
"Coupled with a streak o' luck an' a hell of a nerve," commented Joshua.
"Who can the girl be? She should be in a Wild West show."
"I know her," cut in Lucia. "That kid's Dorothy-May from the way station. Old Ezra Pennydale's gel."
"Kid" seemed hardly the right word, Clem thought, from the confident way
she carried herself across to the group pinned down behind the stage. But
as she drew near he saw she was probably still in her teens, a slightly bony,
leggy figure with freckles spattered brightly like orange paint flecks across
her face.
She wore men's clothes careless, it seemed, of convention, fashion or condition.
The jeans were made from home-spun cloth and showed little evidence of patching
or mending but much of hard wear, including a few rips and tears. Buttons
were missing from the faded plaid shirt. Her riding boots were heavily scuffed
and out at the right toe.
She jerked a thumb at the smashed-up stagecoach. "Did that gunslingin' trash do this, too?" she asked, green eyes aglitter.
"'Sright. Get your head down, miss," advised Joshua. "It must stand out like
a beacon an' next time you're liable to get it blasted clean offa your shoulders."
Dorothy-May glowered but complied. "I told my old man the westbound was godawful
late, but he was kinda – uh – incapacitated, so I came out a-lookin' my
own self." Her sandy brows knit thoughtfully. "What were they after, mister?"
"The usual," Joshua clipped.
"Fifty thousand dollars in Wells Fargo money bound for the bank at Hellyer's
Creek," said Clem, who could see no reason for rudeness or secrecy.
"Hell's bells! An' y'mean to say they sent along a li'le bankin' feller like you to look after it?"
"Oh, no, there was another man from Wells Fargo. I'm not a banker."
"What gives with the funny store clothes then?" she demanded, wrinkling her freckled nose at Clem's crumpled pinstripe suit.
"Mr Conway is an author, child," said Lucia. "He is the famous Nate Ironhorn."
"What! You're joshin' me."
Clem wriggled with embarrassment. "Just the odd book to make a living, you know."
"But them yarns are won'erful. I've read
Deadshot Dan, King of the Border
Men a hundred times!" She shook her red head in amazement at her favourite
writer's appearance. "Wal, you're quite diff'rent from anythin' I imagined
. . ."
In truth, she was instantly seeing Clem in a changed, much more favourable
light. Nate Ironhorn's orange-covered dime novels were in her estimation
masterpieces worthier than the works of William Shakespeare.
But more urgent matters had to be addressed. "So where's this Wells Fargo
feller? And Whip O'Reilly and the shotgun guard?" she enquired.
"Dead. All three of 'em – in the dust back up the trail," spat Joshua, mincing no words.
Dorothy-May flinched, but only slightly.
"Mr Dillard here is holding the ruffians off till the forces of law and order
arrive," Clem said. "We'd only the one Winchester and one saddle horse, you
see. And he wouldn't let me make a break and ride for Hellyer's Creek."
He added the last apologetically, but Dorothy-May instantly leapt on his
words. "I should reckon not, fer God's sake! You're jest a greenhorn an'
all, despite all them grand adventures you've writ. Now me, I know the back
trails an' all the tricks. I kin git the scum goin' in circles like hound
dawgs chasin' their tails."
Joshua spared her a sidelong glance, his cool eyes taking in the lithe, athletic
fitness of her and the determined lift of her chin. She wasn't much more
than a slip of a girl, but why not? She'd already shown herself daring and
capable. She knew the country and she sounded as though she might know what
was what.
She was their best chance.
Her black pony had frisked off, trailing its reins, to join Joshua's chestnut by the junipers.
"If you're to fetch reinforcements, you'll need your cayuse. How'd you get
it back?" Joshua said by way of a noncommittal acceptance of her implied
offer.
"She'll come," the girl said confidently. "Jest make sure them mangy curs don't up an' shoot her!"
She suddenly put her fingers to her lips and a piercing, whistling call, like the cry of a bird, split the air.
The pony tossed its head and came instantly at a canter. Maybe the outlaws
were as astonished as Clem and Lucia, for they let the beast join the opposing
party without hindrance.
Colt in hand, Dorothy-May swung aboard the black behind the cover of the
stage and the rocks. "Don't fret yourself none, Mr Conway-Ironhorn, thet
posse ull be here in two jumps – wal, afore sundown anyways!"
As she broke into the open, Butch Simich rushed out to intercept her, six-shooter drawn.
Joshua Dillard swore mightily, fearful to shoot lest he hit the girl or her mount.
Simich fired straight at Dorothy-May's red head. Or where it had been. For
she was all at once stretched low along the horse's neck, heading straight
for him, her own revolver extended.
Her green eyes were ablaze with impish malice.
She triggered off a wild shot as the horse almost rode Simich down. The gun
went off that close to his head the crimson flash of it near blinded him
and the report was deafening. Scorched by the burning powder, he stumbled
back in utter confoundment, crashing into his two flabbergasted followers.
In just a few seconds, Dorothy-May had hit them like a cyclone and was gone.
*
The house was the finest in Hellyer's Creek, a two-storey
frame with tall, shuttered windows and wide verandahs both front and back.
It was painted a spotless, glaring white. For a decade or more it had been
the home of the pioneer Hellyer family, founders of the settlement and respected
general merchants.
Of late it had been occupied by the man who had procured most of the contrastingly tatty Main Street properties along with it.
Daniel "Dice" Sanders favoured the house as his residence because it represented
an unmistakable symbol of his status as the uncrowned king of Hellyer's Creek.
Its acquisition from the former owners had proven to the locals beyond doubt
that he'd arrived. But just as importantly it was conveniently situated across
the alley from the back door of the Silver Buckle Saloon, the palace of vulgar
pleasures that was the cornerstone of Sanders' recent fortunes.
Even now, he was taking full advantage of that convenience to exercise his
own pleasure while keeping a fat, beringed finger close to the pulse of his
small-town empire.
What had started as a handy bolthole for Sanders had turned into a prison
de luxe. Boredom with Hellyer's Creek and all it stood for had to be alleviated
somehow. Hence added reason for the constant procession of percentage girls
that passed through his saloon. The girls were often imported from San Francisco,
his former stamping ground as a professional gambler where he still had connections
as well as enemies.
Sanders was an insatiable sampler of his own wares.
"What a lovely home you have, Dice," said his bleach-blonde companion as
she rolled her well-rounded figure free across the showy expanse of a feather-mattressed
bed. "So much nicer than that hot little room back of your office . . . When
does Lucia return?"
Pouched little hog's eyes peered out shiftily from beneath the saloon-keeper's
hairless brows. What was it this girl brought to her work? Artlessness, honesty
or hard-headed practicality?
"Not till tomorrow, my dove," wheezed Sanders, who despite the room's comparative
coolness was sweating freely from his exertions. "But let's not think of
my wife, Cora; she doesn't understand me," he added. The stale excuse dropped
moistly from his thick red lips, as burnt-out as the soggy Havana cigar butt
he'd discarded into a cut-glass ashtray at the bedside.
She rolled back to him, plastered kisses and more rouge on his shiny bald pate, and her deft hands roamed.
"Sugar pie," she murmured; stupid lard-barrel, she thought. But she knew it would be a fool thing to buck power and money.
He chuckled rumblingly deep down in his bloated white belly.
Then an inert flaccidity reclaimed him with the sudden transfer of his interest
to matters outside. A pounding of urgent hoofs disturbed the hot afternoon
somnolence of Hellyer's Creek.
Unwrapping himself from Cora's enticing limbs, he heaved his fleshy bulk
off the groaning bed with surprising alacrity. He shrugged into a blue silk
robe.
"What is it, Dice?" Cora asked, assuming a hurt pout.
Sanders lumbered over to the open floor-length windows and pushed through
the thick red drapes onto a small balcony that jutted out from the upper
storey.
"It's someone riding in lickety-spit, an' I think I know why," he said, a new excitement thickening his voice.
From the balcony he could see a significant slice of Main Street through
the gaps between the buildings that flanked it and across the vacant
lot beside his saloon. He observed the rider and her lathered black pony.
"Yeah, it's that pants-wearing filly from the stage station at Pennydale
Ford an' she's gone pell-mell into the marshal's office," he reported smugly.
He rubbed his fat, immaculately manicured hands together, and stepped back
into the room. Gold glittered from the tooth fillings in his smiling mouth.
Cora sensed she had new and threatening competition for his interest. Her
experience of life had educated her in sure ways to recapture wandering male
attention. Sitting up, she lifted both hands to straighten her bed-tousled
hair, making her back an arch that thrust forward her big breasts in blatant
invitation.
Sanders, seeming to see and not to see her at the same time, laughed exultantly. "This calls for celebration!"
Then he lunged at her, tumbling her deep into the softness of the mattress, his sausage-like fingers groping and probing.
Beneath the crushing grossness of him, she wriggled ineffectually.
"Ow," she said.
*
"This is where we can start twisting their arms," said Joshua Dillard. Dorothy-May
had just gone from sight round the bend in the trail, and he was squinting
along the barrel of his Winchester, waiting for fresh movement from the outlaws' position.
He was tensed for action like a coiled spring, his finger on the rifle trigger.
"I don't quite follow, Mr Dillard," said Lucia Marques, a blankness registering behind the now-smudged paint of her face.
"This scum was waiting for us to quit or give 'em a chance to slaughter us,
so's they could grab the loot outa the wrecked stage. Right?"
"Exactly. And they still are," said Clem Conway, mopping his sweating brow. "Thank God they didn't kill that fine girl!"
"But now they ain't able to bide their time," explained Joshua. "They gotta
make the choice – fork their hosses pronto an' catch that gal, or storm
us an' shift the haul afore she has a posse out here. Get that Navy Colt
good an' ready, Mr Conway!"
The thrust of what Joshua said must have dawned on Simich and company about
the same time as it was sinking in with Lucia and Clem.
Yelled orders broke out, then the band made a dash for their three surviving
horses. It seemed they'd chosen to pursue Dorothy-May.
Joshua sprang to his feet and threw his rifle to his shoulder. A shell was
levered into the breech and he snapped off a rapid shot without hesitation.
The slug failed to hit a target but whined sharply between Simich and one of the other two, causing their nervous horses to shy.
While they struggled to regain control, Joshua darted to a new position,
from where he could command the trail out of the gulch, and effectively block
pursuit of Dorothy-May.
Clem scurried after him, clutching his derby to his head with one hand and brandishing the old Colt with the other.
"All right, fellers!" Simich raged, seeing how the business was panning out. "They're askin' fer it – let's get 'em!"
