Chapter 28
“I think something’s wrong,” Blaze said.
Marisol tugged the reins, slowing her stallion to a stop. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer right away. The air had gone still. Too still. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath.
The foothills ahead rolled out in quiet, pale slopes. The late afternoon sun stretched long shadows across the rocks. But Blaze’s gut was uneasy, and it wasn’t saying anything good.
Graycloud shifted in his saddle beside him.
“Tracks went this way,” he said, pointing toward a dry ravine. “Fresh. Maybe three or four riders.”
“Or a dozen,” Blaze muttered.
“Could be scouts,” Marisol said, shrugging.
“Could be a trap.” Blaze scanned the ridge. “Either way, we’re not riding straight into it.”
He slid off his horse, boots crunching on gravel. The others followed, crouching low. Blaze touched the Colt Navy revolver at his hip, feeling its weight. His father’s old Colt.
The one thing that hadn’t failed him . . . yet.
Graycloud knelt nearby, running a hand along the dirt.
“They came through fast,” he pointed out. “Hooves dug deep. You can tell.”
Blaze glanced down at the ground. The Indian was right. The hoofprints looked like craters.
“How long ago?” Blaze asked.
“Hour, maybe less.”
Blaze’s eyes narrowed. “Then they’re close.”
“Closer than you think,” came a voice.
The crack of a rifle split the air. A bullet hissed past Blaze’s head, snapping a twig behind him.
Horses screamed. Dust exploded from the rocks.
“Down!” Blaze shouted.
He dove behind a boulder as another shot rang out. Marisol hit the ground, rolling for cover. Graycloud crouched lower, pulling his knife.
Everything happened all at once. It was so fast that Blaze could not figure out who was attacking him.
But it was obvious. There was only one group in Nevada as ruthless as the devil himself.
The Hollow Creek Riders burst from the ridge. They were dark shapes against the sun, guns flashing. The roar of hooves thundered through the canyon.
“Marisol, left ridge!” Blaze shouted.
“Already on it!” she yelled back. Her Hawken Plains rifle barked, the sharp crack echoing through the hills. One Rider toppled from his horse, tumbling down the slope.
Graycloud sprang from cover, hurling his knife. It spun once, twice, and buried itself deep in a man’s chest. The Rider gasped, clutching at the handle as he fell.
Another bullet slammed into the boulder near Blaze’s head, showering him with stone fragments. He ducked, teeth gritted. Then, he leaned out and fired twice.
One shot missed. The second hit a bandit square in the gut.
“Keep moving!” Blaze called. “Don’t give them a clean shot!”
Marisol dropped another man. “Running low on bullets!”
“How low?”
“Three shots!”
There must have been around six men attacking them. It was hard for Blaze to count; all he could see were shadows. He had to rely on his peripheral vision.
Blaze’s revolver barked again . . . and then jammed. The hammer clicked uselessly.
He did not have time to figure out what was happening. He was in the line of fire and had to move.
“Stupid thing!” Blaze said.
He ducked back as bullets ripped through the rocks. He hit the gun against his boot, trying to free the cylinder, but it wouldn’t budge.
Graycloud was already moving, charging at a Rider who’d dismounted to flank them. The two men crashed together in a blur of motion and grit. Graycloud’s blade flashed once, then again. The Rider went down.
“Out of rounds!” Marisol shouted from her position.
He looked up just in time to see a bandit closing in on her with a pistol raised. Blaze grabbed the nearest thing within reach, a jagged rock, and threw himself forward. He smashed it into the man’s skull with a sickening crack. The bandit went limp, blood streaking down his face.
Quickly, he dropped the rock and took out a knife he had found on one of the bandits’ bodies after the previous shootout.
If he didn’t have a gun, he needed a sharp weapon. After all, it was working for Graycloud.
Another man lunged at Blaze from behind. That was when Blaze spun, driving his knife up into the Rider’s stomach. The man staggered, eyes wide in disbelief before collapsing to his knees.
The Colt finally gave, the jam clearing with a metallic click. Blaze thumbed back the hammer and fired once, twice, three times . . . dropping the last two Riders before they could reach him.
Then, silence.
Smoke drifted low through the canyon. Horses screamed in the distance, then faded. The only sound left was the wind scraping across the stone.
Blaze straightened slowly, his chest heaving. The ground was littered with bodies. A dozen men, give or take, were scattered like broken shadows across the dirt.
“Everyone alive?” he called.
“Still standing,” Marisol replied, pushing herself up from behind a fallen horse. Her hat was gone, her hair was loose and tangled, and her face was streaked with dust. She kicked a spent cartridge aside. “That’s the last of my rounds.”
Graycloud wiped his blade clean on a Rider’s coat.
“They were waiting,” he said.
“No doubt about it,” Blaze replied.
Marisol spat in the dirt. “Reckon Wilder sent them?”
“Who else?” Blaze reloaded his revolver, each bullet sliding in with a hard click. “They must have been tracking us. They knew we were coming.”
Graycloud crouched beside one of the fallen men, rolling him over. The Rider’s coat was torn, his bandana marked with a black serpent stitched into the cloth.
“I’ve seen this symbol before,” Graycloud said. “It’s definitely the Hollow Creek Riders.”
“They’ve been busy,” Blaze said.
Marisol picked up a fallen rifle and checked the chamber. “Nothing left in it.”
“Take what you can,” Blaze said, holstering his revolver. “We’ll need it.”
He scanned the scene, taking in the sight of the dead bodies. It no longer bothered him. It was strange how quickly he had become accustomed to it.
Marisol and Graycloud were the same. They didn’t bat an eyelash.
“Where to now?” Marisol asked.
“Out of the open,” Blaze said. “Before more of them show up.”
Graycloud glanced toward the horizon. “Foothill trail curves east. There’s a gully, a dry stream bed. Could use it to cover our tracks.”
“Do it,” Blaze said.
They began gathering what they could—guns, cartridges, a half-torn map from a saddlebag. Anything. Everything. The air still stank of black powder. A vulture circled overhead as if waiting for them to finish.
Marisol kicked one of the bodies as she walked past.
“Reckless fools,” she muttered. “You’d think they were drunk.”
Their horses had started to approach them again. Every single one had been spooked by the gunfire. Now, they were regaining confidence.
Even Shadow was walking back to Blaze instead of fleeing. Even he knew that he did not belong with the Riders.
Blaze crouched beside another corpse, studying the man’s face. He was young—couldn’t have been more than twenty. His fingers still clutched a scrap of paper.
Carefully, Blaze pried it loose. It was a piece of a wanted poster, its edges torn and the ink smudged . . . but the face printed on it was his own.
Marisol froze. “That’s—”
“Yeah,” Blaze said quietly. “That’s me.”
“I can’t believe Wilder’s put a price on our heads,” Graycloud said. “We need to watch our backs.”
With a sigh, Blaze folded the paper and shoved it into his coat. It wasn’t his first time seeing his face on a wanted poster.
It wasn’t going to be his last.
He didn’t know how much effort Wilder had put into this ridiculous campaign. He must have had a lot of men at his disposal.
These posters could be spreading outside the county. One thing was for sure: it was going to be almost impossible to show his face out in the open soon.
“How much was that one for?” Marisol asked. “Is he changing the price?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Blaze said. “It was enough to turn folks against us, I’d bet.”
“We should burn the bodies,” the Indian added. “Send a message.”
Blaze shook his head. “No time. The smoke will bring more. Besides, it won’t do any good. Wilder doesn’t care about his men.”
He looked east as the sun slipped behind the ridge, painting the desert in bruised gold.
“We move at dusk,” Blaze said quietly. “If Wilder’s men know this route, we’re already behind.”
Marisol stood beside her horse, one hand resting on the saddle horn, the other holding her rifle across her arm. “You think he’s coming himself? Or is he just gonna send his hounds to do his job?”
Blaze’s eyes traced the bloody trail ahead, jaw set hard.
“If he’s not here yet, he will be,” Blaze replied.
Graycloud tightened a strap on his saddlebag and adjusted the reins. “Then we’d best be ready.”
They stood there a long while, the silence pressing close. The horses shifted uneasily among the corpses, snorting at the smell of death. Every creak of leather and every buzz of a fly seemed too loud.
Finally, Marisol broke it. “You ever think about what happens if we run out of luck, Blaze?” she asked.
He didn’t look at her. “Luck’s for men without plans.”
“Then what’s ours?”
“To live long enough to make Wilder regret breathing,” Blaze said.
Marisol grinned faintly. “Sounds like a plan I can ride behind.”
“The spirits favor those who endure,” Graycloud added.
Blaze said nothing.
His gaze remained fixed on the sinking sun. His mind was racing. He could feel it . . . the storm building ahead, the trap tightening. Wilder’s reach stretched farther every day, and now the whole frontier thought Blaze Buckeye was the villain.
He drew a slow breath, feeling the heat and dust cling to his skin.
“Let him come,” he muttered under his breath. “Let him come and see what’s waiting.”