Chapter 8 - The High Ground
The dry air of the plateau seemed to tighten like a taut bowstring as Caleb waited for Tom Parker’s signal from down the canyon. Below, Vance's men were shifting nervously, muttering among themselves as the sound of clattering rocks and shouting voices echoed closer from the lower trail. The leader, a thick-set man with a ragged beard known around the basin as Red Gentry, stepped out from behind a boulder and raised his hand for silence.
"Hold your fire," Gentry hissed, his voice carrying up clearly through the still canyon air. "They're coming up slow. Let 'em get into the bottle before we drop the gate."
Caleb caught Aya's eye. She nodded once, her thumb pulling back the hammer of her revolver with a sharp, crisp click that sounded like a dry twig snapping in the quiet air.
"Now," Caleb breathed.
The twin cracks of their rifles split the canyon silence like a thunderclap. Below them, dust exploded from the dirt inches from Gentry’s boots, and a split second later, the grey horse carrying Vance’s scout reared back with a panicked squeal as a bullet clipped its saddle horn, sending the man sprawling backward into the sagebrush.
"Ambush! From the ridge!" someone screamed down below.
Panic rippled instantly through Vance's men. Unprepared for an attack from above, they scrambled wildly behind boulders and scrub oak, firing blind volleys into the limestone cliffs where bullets ricocheted off the rock face in a shower of screaming lead and gray sparks.
"Keep the pressure on!" Caleb called out, chambering another round and firing just over the head of a gunman trying to crawl toward a dry creek bed. "Don't let 'em regroup!"
Aya fired again, her shot clipping the brim of Gentry's hat and sending him face-first into the dirt behind a fallen pine log. The tactical advantage of the high ground turned the ambush inside out within seconds. Caught between Tom Parker’s feigned advance from the front and the invisible, punishing rifle fire raining down from the cliffs, Vance’s men broke rank. Two of them mounted their terrified horses and spurred them hard down the wash, while the rest scattered on foot into the dense brush of the canyon wall.
"They're running!" Aya called out, a fierce, triumphant light breaking across her bruised features.
"Let 'em go," Caleb said, lowering his rifle as the smoke drifted away on the wind. "They've got a long, hot walk back to the ranch house to explain to Marcus why six men got routed by a cripple and a woman."
They descended the goat path to find Tom Parker waiting at the bottom with a broad grin stretching across his weathered face, leading their spare mounts.
"Sounded like a regular war up there," Tom chuckled, swinging up into his saddle. "Saw two of 'em heading south like they'd seen a ghost. You folks all right?"
"We're fine," Caleb said, helping Aya back onto her horse and checking her girth strap to ensure she was secure. "But we just bought ourselves about two hours before Vance realizes we're still moving. We need to reach the stage station at Eagle Pass before nightfall if we're going to catch Judge Holloway."
They rode hard for the rest of the afternoon, the horses eating up the miles across the high-desert scrub as the sun began to dip toward the western horizon, casting long, purple shadows across the plains. By late afternoon, the timber-frame roof of the Eagle Pass stage station came into view beside a sluggish, muddy creek, a pair of matched bays tethered to the hitching post outside the front door.
Caleb pulled his horse to a halt by the water trough, scanning the yard. "That's the judge's rig," he said, pointing to the black-painted carriage bearing the territorial seal on its door panel. "He's inside."
As they dismounted and walked toward the batwing doors of the station, the door swung open, and a tall, silver-haired man in a dark wool suit stepped out, pausing when he saw the dusty, travel-worn group approaching. Judge Holloway looked from Caleb’s hard, sun-browned face to Aya’s bruised features and the official patent sticking out of Caleb's coat pocket.
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"You're Caleb Ror," Holloway said, his voice deep and practiced from years in courtrooms. "And you must be Marcus Vance's missing daughter. People down in Tascosa have been saying you were dead, Miss Vance."
"Not yet, Judge," Aya said, stepping up onto the porch with her head held high. She pulled the fraudulent land patent from Caleb’s hand and held it out toward the magistrate. "And if you take ten minutes to look at this paper, you'll see my father is about to commit a very expensive crime."
