Chapter 13 - The Trap at Dead Man’s Drop
The scree slope was treacherous. For every two steps forward in the crumbling shale, their boots slipped back one, sending small cascades of red gravel rattling into the gorge below.
Elias kept his Winchester clamped in his right hand, using his left to haul himself upward by grasping the tough, woody roots of mountain mahogany. Beside him, Mara climbed with a lean, fierce economy of motion, her breath coming in ragged, silent gasps.
The sun had sunk behind the western cliffs, plunging the canyon into cold purple twilight, though the heat still radiated from the rocks around them.
A sudden, sharp report echoed through the stone chasm—the unmistakable whip-crack of a small-caliber rifle.
Elias froze, pressing his back against the stone face.
A second later came the heavier, deeper roar of a Sharps buffalo gun, its concussive blast shaking the air in the gorge.
"That's Mateo's squirrel rifle," Mara whispered, her eyes wide. "He's firing from the boulders beneath the upper bench. Vance is pinned down in the wash."
"Or Vance is pinning them," Elias cautioned.
They scrambled the remaining fifty yards to the crest, scrambling on hands and knees over the jagged limestone caprock until they could peer through the dwarf pine branches down into the canyon floor.
Below them lay the bottleneck known as Dead Man’s Drop.
At this point, the canyon narrowed to barely thirty paces across, choked with granite boulders that had calved off the upper rim a thousand years ago. In a shallow limestone alcove halfway up the opposite wall, Elias spotted the gray hide of Elena’s pack mule, tied low behind a natural parapet of rock.
A wisp of white smoke drifted from the mouth of the alcove. Mateo was there, pinned down, his old muzzle-loader or rimfire completely outmatched by the long-range rifles below.
Down in the wash, spread out behind three massive boulders, were Vance’s men.
Elias counted five horses tethered out of range behind a bend in the creek bed. Three men were firing methodically at the alcove, keeping the old man’s head down, while two others were creeping forward along the dry gravel bed, carrying revolvers and short clubs of mesquite wood wrapped in kerosene-soaked rags.
They didn't just want to shoot Mateo; they wanted to smoke the alcove out and force Nia into the open.
And then Elias saw Vance.
The rancher was standing fifty yards back, leaning casually against a cottonwood trunk, a heavy lever-action rifle resting in the crook of his arm. He wasn't firing. He was watching the assault with cold, arrogant detachment, like a man overseeing the dipping of sheep.
"Vance," Mara growled under her breath, aligning her rifle barrel through the pine needles.
"Hold," Elias said, his hand coming down gently over her rifle’s receiver. "You're eighty yards out, shooting downhill in failing light. If you graze him, the rest of them rush the alcove before we can cycle another round."
"I won't graze him," she hissed.
"We take the two men creeping with the torches first," Elias countered, his tone calm, steadying the wild anger in her eyes. "If those torches reach that brush below the cave, the draft will pull the smoke straight into Nia’s face. Take the man on the left. I'll take the man on the right. On three."
Mara adjusted her aim, shifting her rifle sights toward the crawling outlaw on the left flank. Her breathing slowed. Her shoulders dropped an inch. The hunter’s instinct took over.
"One," Elias whispered.
The man on the right paused to strike a sulphur match against his trouser leg.
"Two."
The match flared, casting a yellow glow over his rough, unshaven features.
"Three."
Both rifles cracked in near-perfect unison.
The man with the match vaulted backward into the gravel, the flaming stick spinning into the dirt. On the left, the second crawling man dropped his unlit torch, clutching his shoulder with a shriek of agony that ricocheted off the limestone bluffs.
In an instant, the tactical balance of the canyon shattered.
"Riders on the rim!" someone screamed from behind the boulders. "They're above us!"
Vance reacted instantly. He didn't look up to fight. He dove sideways into the brush behind the cottonwood, scrambling for the horse line.
"Cover Nia!" Elias shouted, throwing three rapid shots into the gravel at the feet of the men behind the boulders, sending fragments of stone and lead screaming through the dry wash.
Mara was already levering her rifle with rhythmic precision, driving the two remaining gunmen back into the shadows of the creek bend. Down in the alcove, Mateo recognized the rescue. The old man leaned out from behind his parapet and fired another crack from his light rifle, catching one of the retreating outlaws in the calf.
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"Come on!" Elias yelled, breaking from the lip of the rim toward the steep scree trail that led down into the throat of the wash.
They slipped and slid fifty feet down the rock face, hitting the dry gravel bed just as the sound of pounding hooves signaled that Vance’s survivors were retreating south into the deepening night.
