.45-Caliber Firebrand Read Free

Rasmussen to fort up and return fire. In their lumbering wagons, jerking along too crazily for accurate shooting, they were easy pickings.
    Horse and rider dropped into a depression behind a high, shelving dike. When they came out the other side, an arrow cut the air a foot in front of Cuno’s head—so close he could hear the windy buzz. Renegade whinnied.
    Cuno looked in the direction from which the arrow had careened and saw one of the braves angling toward him at breakneck speed. Cuno swung his rifle at the oncoming buck and triggered an errant shot.
    As he jacked another round one-handed and kept Renegade chewing up the terrain before him, angling toward the trail and the wagons, the Indian nocked another arrow. The tall, war-painted brave aimed and let go.
    Cuno timed his duck just in time. The arrow cleaved the air where his head had been. Probably would have drilled him through his ear. These warriors were more accustomed to shooting from a moving mount than Cuno was.
    Cuno took his reins in his teeth and raised the Winchester to his right shoulder. He planted the rifle’s bobbing sights in the middle of the brave’s jostling form. Their horses were on an interception course. The brave reached behind for another arrow.
    Cuno fired. The brave jerked his head up as though startled. Cuno cocked and fired again.
    The brave threw his arms out to his sides, tossing the arrow out in one direction, the bow out in the other as he flew back off his brown-and-white paint’s lurching right hip. As the horse continued forward, Cuno saw the brave bounce off a boulder and hit the ground rolling in a broiling dust cloud.
    Lowering the Winchester, Cuno hauled back sharply on his reins. Renegade whinnied again and sank back on his haunches, rear hooves skidding and kicking up dust and bits of sage and juniper. The Indian’s paint raced past, a foot in front of Renegade’s nose, and continued on up the slope toward the rocky northern ridge.
    Cuno dropped into another depression. When he came out of it again, he glanced toward the trail. Two of the three Conestoga freighters, with Philadelphia sheeting drawn across their high-sided beds, had pulled off into the brush on the far side of the trail. Behind them, four Indians were milling, no longer closing the gap between them and the wagons but continuing to yowl and loose arrows at the already pincushioned oak sideboards.
    Cuno slowed Renegade to a fast trot and glanced back along the dusty trace.
    The third wagon, driven by Dutch Rasmussen, had disappeared amidst the gently rolling, boulder-pocked scrub. Gunshots rose from that direction—no doubt Rasmussen himself trying to hold off one or more of the braves who’d likely driven him off the road.
    â€œShit!” Cuno headed Renegade straight for the two wagons, raising his Winchester to dispatch one of the harassing braves and silently cursing his fate. He and his men had come within twenty miles of the Trent headquarters to get hornswoggled and tail-knotted by a half dozen mooncalf Ute younkers likely out on a whiskey-inspired tear.
    Cuno had a thousand dollars tied up in those wagons, mules, and in the freight—a winter’s worth of food and dry goods—intended for Logan Trent’s Double-Horseshoe Ranch at the base of the Rawhide Range. He and Serenity had had too good a year of freight hauling for Fort Dixon and local ranches to lose it all here at the start of winter. They needed the Trent payout to get them through the snow months, without having to swamp Denver saloons, which he and Serenity had been forced to do last winter while building up a stake for wagons and freight.
    Cuno triggered his Winchester over Renegade’s head.
    An Indian who’d just loosed an arrow at Serenity’s wagon jerked and sagged sideways in his saddle. Two rifles spoke around the wagons, the twin powder puffs rising nearly simultaneously, and the brave was punched straight back off his saddle