The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [72]
Kujava held the riders up and turned in his saddle to see the patrol just entering the open area.
“Stretch your legs,” he told them. “They’re too far behind. That’s how you get cut off.”
The two outriders dismounted and led their mounts to the side of the trail where a clump of pines cast a triangle of shade. They sat on the ground and stretched stiff legs out in front of them.
Kujava turned his horse around. He slouched in the saddle, one leg hooked over the saddle horn, and watched the hazy line of blue approaching in the distance. He watched the patrol reach the midpoint of the pocket, and the unnatural silence gnawed at his brain and made the ring seem sharper in his ears. He swung his boot back to the stirrup, uneasy, wanting to be ready, and as he did so he heard the click.
Not wood, like a twig snapping. It was metal grinding against metal, and it was sharp and clear enough to send the flash of honest fear through his body and jerk him to the reaction of a man who knows combat. He yanked rein to drag his mount about sharply and tugged his carbine from its boot in the motion, for a Spencer will make that very click when the breech is opened, and the click is loud if the piece is rusted—rusted and uncared for, like the carbine an Apache would have!
He shouted and swung up the carbine, but the shout was drowned in a crash of gunfire and the motion was lost in the phantasm of a hundred impressions as the basin exploded its ambush and caught B Troop by the throat.
Kujava shouted and fired and shouted, and he saw his outriders sprawled in their triangle of shade. And he saw Bud Nagle still sitting his horse with both hands frozen to the saddle horn, his back a ramrod and his eyes popped open in white circles of fear and disbelief.
“Nagle, ride! Ride!” Kujava’s arm swung as he screamed at the stiff- bodied trooper and struck him across the shoulder.
“Get out of here—ride like hell to Bowie—before they’re on to us!”
Nagle moved and seemed to be suddenly drenched with the excitement so that it washed through him and took with it his nerve and his reason.
And the simplicity of Bud Nagle said, “I don’t know where it is.”
Strange things happen in combat. Kujava’s jaw dropped and he wanted to laugh, even with the firing—because of the firing, but it was only for an instant.
He swung his carbine against the rump of Nagle’s mount, sending it into a jolting start down the narrow trail.
“Ride, dammit! Ride!”
His hands were frozen to the saddle horn, his eyes still wide open, seeing nothing, as his mount broke through the rocky narrowness in a gallop, sliding almost sideways in the loose gravel, careening from one rock wall to the other until hoofs struck firm ground at the bottom and raced on, momentum up, along the timber-lined aisle.
He strained his eyes against the distance as if this would draw the safety of it closer to him; as if he would be shielded from the pressing blackness of the heavy timber by holding his neck rigid to look only straight ahead. In a way it was a comfort, but because of it he didn’t see the four ponies come out of the timber behind him. Four ponies painted for war and carrying Mimbreño Apaches.
He reached the end of the aisle and swung out onto the open plain, riding into the vastness, unsure of the direction, kicking his mount frantically toward the low horizon. Hoofs pounded packed sand and the sound vibrated against his mind to keep the knot tight inside of him, taking the place of the excitement of combat that was now a faint rattle far behind.
In his fear he was unmindful of time, his eyes straining against the distance. Then, in the haze, the horizon changed.
A dark line interrupted the monotonous tone of the plains, stretching and taking shape. It came closer yard by yard and finally