.45-Caliber Widow Maker by Peter Brandvold Read Free Book Online Page B

cedar and a low boulder sheathed in tawny grass.
    He hunkered on one knee, listening to the fiercely sporadic cracks of the gunfire and the whining ricochets off rocks and the wagon’s iron-shod front wheels, while he considered the best way to offer a hand. Should he try to move around and flank the attackers, or just drop a little closer to the wagon and return fire at the creek from higher ground?
    With a solid two hundred yards currently stretching between him and the creek, he had little chance of hitting any of the well-covered shooters from here.
    He’d just decided to try to flank the attackers when movement on his left caught his eye.
    A mustached man in a long, cream duster, felt sombrero, and mule-eared, stovepipe boots stole out from behind a rocky escarpment humping up out of the slope about fifty yards below Cuno. Crouching, holding his rifle in one hand, the man directed his gaze toward the jail wagon as he stole down the slope and pulled up behind a triangular boulder sheathed in spindly shrubs.
    He was doing to the old marshal what Cuno had planned to do to the gunman’s compadres. Less than sixty yards away from the lawman, he had a clear shot.
    On the other side of the valley, amidst the angry, sporadic rifle cracks, a man cursed sharply. Cuno looked beyond the wagon to see one of the attackers down on a knee beside a boulder, clutching his thigh. The old marshal, who had scrambled around to the other end of the wagon containing the four snarling, cursing prisoners, snapped off another shot.
    The man clutching his knee by the tree jerked straight back and flopped down in the grass beside the stream, throwing his rifle high in the air. It landed in the water with a silent splash.
    Behind the wagon, the old marshal chuckled as he ejected the spent brass and levered a fresh shell into the chamber. At the same time, the man downslope and left of Cuno snaked his own rifle around the right side of his covering boulder to draw a bead on the marshal’s back.
    Cuno snapped his Winchester to his shoulder, squinted down the barrel, centered his sights on the side of the rifleman’s head, just above and behind the man’s ear, and squeezed the trigger.
    The rifle roared as the brass butt plate slammed against Cuno’s shoulder.
    The boulder in front of the gunman turned red, as though someone had slung an open can of paint at it. The man’s head jerked sharply sideways, then straightened, and he seemed to continue to peer downslope for a good three seconds before the rifle sagged in his arms.
    His hands opened, the rifle fell, and the man sagged forward on his face. He rolled awkwardly about ten yards down the hill before coming to rest on his back, arms and legs spread wide.
    The old marshal had just snapped off a shot toward the creek. Before he could eject his spent brass, he snapped his entire body around toward Cuno, his craggy, bearded face etched with fear.
    Crouching behind his covering shrub and racking a fresh shell into his Winchester’s breech, Cuno threw up an arm. He thought he saw befuddlement brush across the old marshal’s haggard, sweating features. The man’s chin dropped slightly as he looked at the dead rifleman sprawled on the slope below the triangular-shaped boulder.
    More shouts rose from the creek. Cuno took advantage of the attackers’ confusion—they’d no doubt seen the flanking shooter tumble down the hill—by bounding to his feet and scrambling down the slope past the blood-splattered boulder. He hurdled the rifleman’s corpse with its ruined head and bulging eyes.
    As he hit the bottom of the slope and started across the valley, running and angling right toward the wagon fifty yards away, rifles whip-cracked fiercely from along the creek. The slugs chewed into the grass on either side of Cuno’s stomping boots.
    He squeezed off two shots from his right hip, then, approaching the wagon with its prisoners snarling like circus lions and the marshal sitting with his back to the