The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

shout or two, the cries of men hazing on laggers. It must be Kitchell on his way through to the border!
    A dust haze, rising like smoke. Then the foremost runner of the band appeared in the cut, the whites of its eyes showing, patches of foam sticky on chest and shoulder. Five…ten…an even dozen—but not a gray coat among them. One light buckskin had almost startled Drew into rising until he caught a second and clearer look.
    The leaders were through and a second wave was coming. Drew counted twenty more horses before the first rider appeared. His face was masked against the dust by a neckerchief drawn up to eye level. But, unlike the ordinary range rider, he wore an army forage cap in place of the wide-brimmed hat of the plains. As he spurred by below Drew’s perch he glanced up but seemed to have no suspicion that he was under observation.
    There came more horses, and Drew stopped counting. But the gray he sought was not among them. The shouts of the drivers were louder. And then, as three men appeared bunched, there was a crackle of shots. Two of the riders fell, one leaning slowly from the saddle, the other diving into the dust. The third tried to turn but did not get his horse around before a mule pushed into him, followed by another and another. The horse thieves were trapped. Drew could hear the sharp snap of shots along the pass. More than those three must have been caught in the ambush.
    The mules, braying and running wild, thundered on south after the horses. Then a saddled horse, riderless, galloped by with a second at its heels. Confused shouting rang out, without any meaningful words. This was as much a muddle, Drew thought, as any battle. You never saw any action except that immediately about you—mostly you were too busy trying to keep alive to care about incidentals. Come to think of it, this was about the first time he had ever sat out a fight, watching it as a spectator.
    The roll of firing was dying down. Anse grinned at him.
    “Takes you right back, don’t it now?” he asked when he could be heard. “Th’ Old Man, he’s got him some of th’ Gineral’s idears—work good, too!”
    “I didn’t see Shiloh in that band.” Drew stood up. “Couple of duns…no grays.”
    “Come to think of it,” Anse agreed, “that’s right! But lookit that bay down there.” He pointed to one of the saddled horses that had a dragging rein caught in a dead juniper stump and was trying to pull loose. “Got th’ RR brand! Some of these must be from th’ Range raid.”
    “Hey—down here—!” The hail broke down the pass from the north. Rennie climbed over his rock barricade, and other men came out of cover to move up the cut. Since no one tried to stop them, Drew and Anse went along.
    “Got us two of ’em ready to talk!” Jared Nye strode to meet his employer. “They’re Kitchell’s gang, all right. Only he ain’t with ’em.”
    “ Patrón —” For the first time since he had known him Drew saw Bartolomé Rivas run. He was weaving in and out among the fallen men in the pass. “They ride.” He was half choked by the effort to force his message past heavy gulps for breath.
    “Who rides?” Rennie demanded.
    “Three—four men…that way.” He waved a plump hand to the east. “They go like the wind, Don Cazar. And one—he rides the big gray!”
    Drew whirled. The big gray—there was only one horse to be named so on the Range. Some of the outlaws had escaped the trap and one was riding Shiloh! Drew found the horse with the tangled rein, jerked and tore at the leather strap, and was in the saddle when a hand caught at the rein he had just freed.
    “Where do you think you’re going?” Hunt Rennie demanded.
    Drew snapped the rein out from the other’s hold. There was only one thing he wanted now, and that was getting farther and farther away with every second he wasted here.
    “After Shiloh!” He used spurs on the horse and it leaped ahead. For all he knew any one of the posse might take a shot at him, so he rode low in the saddle. He heard startled cries, saw Bartolomé Rivas stumble as he got out of the path of the wild horse. There were rocks, sand, a body which the horse avoided in a leap, then there was free ground and Drew settled down to ride.
    A horse was coming up from behind—they need not think they were going to stop him now. Drew turned his head as the mount pulled level with his own. He was ready to fight if need be. Only the man in the saddle was Hunt