Bloody Trail by Ford Fargo Read Free Book Online

him and fired, his
bullet going wide. Piney barely aimed, but luck was with him. The
bullet caught the raider in the face and he tumbled backward overt
his horse to land face up in an expanding pool of his own
blood.
    At that very moment, Li Chang’s mice escaped
from his pockets and made a concerted bid for freedom through the
open door. Despite the combined cries of David Appleford and
Chang’s brothers, Chang chased after them, his mind numbed by the
horror of all he had heard. All he wanted was to protect his
precious mice. He dashed through the door into the street then
stopped when he saw the bloody body of a horse lying right in front
of him.
    He did not see the frightened, riderless horse
that had reared up as it lost its rider and then started into a
gallop. It ran straight into Chang, its full weight trampling him
into the ground, shattering his rib cage and instantly breaking his
neck.
    Ann Haselton had instinctively run out after
him, then stopped and stared in horror at seeing him trampled to
death. She ran to him as soon as she was able, not seeing the
panicking final gunman who had started shooting at anything that
moved. He shot her in the back. The bullet went straight through
her heart and she fell over the dead, broken body of her charge, Li
Chang.
    ****
    Spike and Emory had both been working hammer
and tong, without a word between them—which was normal—when they’d
heard the sound of gunfire. Each glanced at the other, then Spike
grabbed the Austrian .50 caliber he kept loaded and leaning on the
ladder to the loft, and headed for the wagon doors which stood
open. In seconds, he spun on his heel and yelled to his partner as
he passed. “Town’s under attack—least there’s a hell of a gunfight
going on. Grab the Spencer—I’ll take the side from above, you take
the front.”
    The north side of the blacksmith’s shop looked
out toward Torrance’s Livery, the front toward the school. The shop
was on the edge of town, not in its center, where the shots came
from. It was Spike’s thought that raiders, if indeed this was a
raid, would be looking for anything of value, and Torrance kept
some fine stock at his place. Spike, however, was more worried
about his own steel gray.
    He couldn’t imagine them bothering the school.
He was better armed than Em, and knew himself to be a better shot;
after all, he’d been four years getting shot at by some of Mr.
Lincoln’s finest, and other than a scar across his cheekbone—and
that from a blade—and a limp from a cannon blast, he was not much
the worse for the wear.
    Even though a lot more lead could be thrown
from the Spencer, the long rifled Austrian was a much more accurate
weapon at a distance, and he would lay down only fifty yards from
the livery. He could put one through a button on a man’s vest at
that range. He’d once dropped a Yank sniper out of a hickory tree
with the long Austrian, and then paced off the four
hundred-and-thirty-yard shot.
    As he’d suspected, and just as he got prone in
the loft, two riders he didn’t recognize approached the livery. To
his surprise, one of them drew and head-shot a horse tied at a rail
across the road from the corrals—the animal collapsed like he’d
dropped a hogshead barrel.
    Spike had no idea who the men were, but it
didn’t take more than that one gunshot to figure them up to no
good—the question was, did they deserve killing? He snapped the gun
to his shoulder, took a deep breath, squeezed, and shot the mount
out from under the lead rider—who hit the ground on the run, caught
the arm of the second, and swung up behind him. As Spike bit the
end off another paper load, they disappeared behind the houses at a
dead gallop.
    His own horse, Hammer, a steel gray dappled
gelding—cut proud enough that he still wanted to jump the fence
when there was a mare on the wind—was in that livery, and he and
Ham had been though a lot together. He wasn’t going to see him shot
down by some lowlife.