Cotton's Devil (9781101618523) Read Online Free PDF Page B

more.
    He’d gone no more than another mile when his fears were realized. Up ahead, lying on its side in a ditch was the stagecoach. And a man was lying in the road. He wasn’t moving. Cotton kicked the mare into a run. As they approached the stricken coach, he reined the horse to a dusty stop. He jumped from the saddle and ran to the man. Dead. A bullet had torn much of his head off. Cotton spun around to check on the stage, or what was left of it, yanked open the door, and peered inside. Empty.
    It was obvious that someone had presented a threat to the coach and given chase when the driver tried to elude whatever danger had been thrust upon him. When the racing stage had come to a sharp curve in the road, it appeared to have lost its balance and slid sideways, dropped into the ditch, then turned over on its side, ripping a wheel off and shredding one side. Baggage was scattered everywhere, bags and valises ripped open, not by the force of the crash, but by deliberate intent from whoever had precipitated the attack.
    Indians! Damn! And Apaches at that!
    He looked around to see if he could pick out where the passengers might have gotten off to, or if they had beentaken hostage. He found tracks of four people where it appeared they had made a hasty retreat up a slight incline, but were not followed by the Indian ponies. At least not immediately. The team of horses pulling the stage had been taken, cut from their traces and led away.
That must have been what gave the passengers time to make their escape
, Cotton thought, or hoped anyway.
    Just as he was thinking he should get the body of the dead man into the ground, he was drawn to something that gave solid evidence of his greatest fear. The passengers were
not
out of danger. Gunshots could be heard coming from the other side of the foothills just ahead, foothills that led up the side of a mountain. He swung into the saddle to seek the exact location of the roar of the rifles. It didn’t take long to spot smoke from the Indians’ weapons being fired into the air, a dead giveaway that they had their quarry trapped and were preparing to go in for the kill.

Chapter 6

    C otton saw his only option placed by fate right in front of him.
    He rode like the devil himself was hot on his trail, pushing him straight into a battle he was woefully outgunned for. He dared not ride straight for the Indians, but instead he circled to the east to follow a ridgeline toward where the ground dipped into some trees. As he spotted a small rise, he headed for it, and reined in at its base.
    Cotton dismounted, with the intention of climbing the rest of the way up the ridge on foot. He didn’t want whoever was on the other side doing all the shooting to spot his silhouette astride a horse. With the sun at such an angle as to make that likely, he hunched over, keeping himself as insignificant as possible against the terrain, slipping and sliding up the tricky incline. When he reached the top, he dropped to one knee, keeping as close as possible to the larger of the boulders around him. He had pulled his field glasses from his saddlebags when he dismounted. He raised them to his eyes, focused the ring, and shook his head at what he saw.Below were about a dozen screaming Apaches firing at some people who had obviously sought shelter in a slight ravine in a copse of cottonwoods. They were protected by several large boulders that had at some ancient time broken from their brethren at the top of the mountain on the other side of the ravine. The huge hunks of granite and sandstone had come crashing down to land near a stream, thus giving the hapless souls trapped by the marauding Indians almost a fortlike cover from which to defend themselves. It took no more than one quick glance to know that the four people hunkered down were sadly outgunned and outmanned.
More’n likely those folks are from the stage
, Cotton thought.
    Cursing under his breath as he returned to his mare, he mounted