Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Caleb wiped the 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.
“Come for my king, fella,” he murmured.
In the silence that followed, Caleb could feel the shooter scanning the scene below him.
He played it out in his mind. If he’d positioned his hat and rifle in the right spot, the pursuer would soon see them.
Focus only on them. Put them alone in his sights.
Positioned at the top of the slabs, the gunman would figure he’d have a clear shot at him if he tried to make it to the firs.
All Caleb wanted was for him to feel that he was in control of this chess board. Confident that the chase was over. Sure that he was closing in for the kill. And then, move just one space too far.
He heard the scrape of a boot far above him. Caleb slowly turned and raised himself until he could peer over the rock and then eased back down. The shooter was set at the top of the bluff, positioned close to the edge. He was on one knee, his rifle fixed on the hat and gun.
Caleb judged he was about forty yards from his target. He’d only have maybe one shot. He took a breath, ready to make his move.
Funny thing about life, though. It ain’t chess. Caleb knew that well enough. Chess was a board game that pitted two opponents against each other. The rules were set. It was a contest of intelligence and strategy. There was no element of luck involved.
In the game of life, fate was bound to throw the unknowable at you. Often when you least expected it. Often when you could least afford it.
The movement at the base of the rock eight feet from him caught his eye just as he heard the rasp of serpentine skin on the grass and gravel.
Caleb went still.
A rattlesnake with a diamond-shaped head that looked mean and deadly as sin itself, slid into view beside the rock. Its scales caught the fading sunlight in dull bands of brown and dust-gray. The tail twitched once. Then came the warning rattle.
Under different circumstances, Caleb might have backed away slow and easy, leaving the creature to its business. The snake belonged to these mountains same as the firs and the stone. But at the moment, he had a rifleman above him, a drop behind him, and nowhere to go.
“Well,” he breathed softly, “ain’t this a fine turn.”