Chapter 26 - Blood and Ink
The gravel gave way beneath my boots with every desperate stride, sending cascades of red dirt rattling down into the wash. A Winchester slug punched through the fleshy part of my left shoulder, spinning me half-around with a sensation like a red-hot branding iron, but the momentum carried me behind a stunted juniper.
Above me, Vance was leaning over a slab of basalt, levering a fresh cartridge into his rifle, his one good eye fixed entirely on the dry wash where Caleb was shouting.
"Bring up the kerosene, boys!" Vance shouted to his men. "Smoke 'em out of the ditch! Morrison wants the brother's head in a sack!"
I didn't give him the chance to find the match.
I leveled my Colt over the juniper branch and pulled the hammer back. The report was deafening in the narrow cut. The heavy lead slug caught Vance squarely in the hip, tearing through bone and muscle. The enforcer let out a high, wet shriek and tumbled forward over the basalt rim, crashing down through thirty feet of brambles and landing with a sickening thud in the gravel twenty feet from Caleb’s boots.
The other two outriders paused, their fire slackening as they realized their line was broken from the flank.
In that half-second of hesitation, a shadow moved across the rocks with terrifying, silent speed. It was Zora. She didn't stay behind the boulder; she came up the dry creek bed like an Apache warrior on a war trail, her Spencer carbine firing with mechanical, merciless precision.
One rider took a bullet through the collarbone and fell backward into the brush. The other dropped his Winchester, turned, and scrambled wildly back toward the horses tied on the upper ridge, his boots kicking up dust as he fled for his life.
The canyon went dead silent, save for the agonized groaning of Cole Vance, who lay twisted in the rocks, clutching his shattered hip while his lifeblood seeped into the sand.
I staggered down the scree, my left arm numb and slick with blood, my chest heaving.
Caleb walked slowly over to where Vance lay. He didn't look at me. He didn't look at Zora. He drew father's cavalry saber from its steel scabbard with a high, metallic hiss, the polished blade catching the midday sun.
"Caleb, don't," I gasped, holding my bleeding shoulder. "He's finished. He can tell the marshal in Prescott that Morrison sent him."
Caleb didn't even pause. With one swift, brutal downward thrust, he drove the point of the saber through Vance's breastplate, pinning the enforcer to the red earth like a beetle. Vance shuddered once, let out a bloody rattle, and lay still.
Caleb wiped the brass hilt on his gray sleeve, then turned his dead, gray eyes upon me.
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"Dead men don't talk to marshals, Jesse," Caleb said quietly. "And marshals don't need to know what Morrison promised this scum. Now... Silas, pick up that ledger. We have an appointment at the bank."
***
