Chapter 18 - The Ambush in the Pines
"Down!" I roared, throwing myself from the saddle and dragging Zora from her horse just as a second heavy lead slug tore through the cantle of her saddle, ripping the leather to ribbons.
Silas was already off his mule, hauling Taza’s travois behind a fallen ponderosa log that was four feet thick. The horses screamed in terror, rearing and plunging until Silas slashed the lead ropes with his skinning knife, letting them bolt into the timber to keep them from being slaughtered.
"Who the hell is shooting a fifty-caliber?" Silas spat, crawling through the pine needles with his Sharps ready. "That ain't Morrison's ranch hands! That’s an elk gun!"
From a rocky knoll two hundred yards uphill, partially hidden behind a screen of mountain scrub, a plume of white smoke drifted lazily through the pine boughs.
"Morrison hired mercenaries," I said, my teeth clenched as I crawled to the edge of the fallen log and raised the Winchester. "He knew he couldn't catch us from behind, so he sent riders ahead on fresh horses via the stage road to cut us off at the pass."
Through the sights of my rifle, I caught a glimpse of movement on the knoll.
There were three of them. Not cowboys, and not deputies. These were border ruffians—hard, bearded men in long canvas duster coats, wearing broad-brimmed slouch hats. Men who killed buffalo for hides and hunted Apaches for bounties.
"Adam!" Morrison’s voice boomed down from the rocks above, magnified by the natural amphitheater of the mountain hollow.
He had caught up. He wasn't on the ridge himself, but his money was speaking through those heavy rifles.
"Throw down the ledger and step out into the clearing!" a harsh, unfamiliar voice called out from the knoll. "The Captain says he only needs the girl and the papers! The rest of you can walk back to the desert!"
"They're lying," Zora whispered, her hand gripping my forearm so hard her nails dug through the cloth. "If we surrender the ledger, they will shoot all of us and bury the bodies under the pine needles. No one will ever know we reached the mountain."
"I know," I said. "Silas, can you reach that rocky outcrop to our left?"
Silas squinted through his good eye at a jumble of gray granite fifty yards along the slope. "I can reach it if they ain't looking. But if that buffalo gun catches me in the open, it'll cut me in half."
"I'll make sure they're looking at me," I said.
I looked at Zora. Her face was pale beneath the mountain tan, but there was no fear in her eyes—only a fierce, indomitable will to survive.
"Take my Colt," I told her, slipping the heavy revolver from its holster and placing it in her uninjured hand. "Stay with Taza. If anyone comes over this log who isn't me or Silas, empty the cylinder into his chest."
She took the heavy gun, her fingers closing tightly around the walnut grip. She didn't say 'be careful.' She simply leaned forward, pressed her lips hard against my cheek for a single, breathless second, and whispered, "Come back to the high meadows, Adam."
I pulled three extra cartridges from my vest pocket, slid them between the fingers of my left hand, and took a deep breath.
"Silas," I murmured. "On three. One... two... three!"
I lunged out from behind the log, not running for cover, but sprinting directly toward a low depression twenty yards downhill, firing the Winchester from the hip as fast as I could lever the action.
The rapid fire cracked like firecrackers in the timber.
Immediately, the knoll erupted in flame. Two Winchester repeaters barked in rhythm, their bullets kicking up sprays of dirt and bark around my boots. Then came the terrible, deafening roar of the buffalo gun.
The massive bullet struck the ground two feet in front of me, throwing a shower of gravel into my eyes and knocking me sprawling into the pine needles.
Through the ringing in my ears, I heard Silas’s heavy Sharps roar from the rocks to the left—a deep, authoritative boom that shook the air.
A high, agonizing scream tore from the knoll above. One of the gunmen in the canvas dusters stood up from behind his rock, clutching his shattered shoulder, before tumbling headfirst down the steep scree slope into the brush.
"One down!" Silas howled like an old timber wolf.
I scrambled behind a pine stump, wiping the dirt from my face, and levered another round into my rifle.
The two remaining shooters realized their crossfire had failed. Above them on the ridge, I saw a tall, slender man in an officer’s broadcloth coat step out from behind the trees, holding a silver-plated revolver in his hand.
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It was Captain Morrison. He had ridden his horse up the back of the ridge, and he looked down upon our pinned-down position with eyes as cold and dead as winter ice.
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