Free Bloody Trail by Ford Fargo

as he did, a flock of
startled crows, cawing in alarm, burst from the trees alongside the
creek.
    “ Ambush!” Bill shouted. He peeled
off from the posse as a barrage of gunfire burst from the
brush.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Both deputies were shot out of their saddles
at the first volley. Spence Pennycuff was shot right through his
badge, shards of metal from it driven deep into his chest, along
with the lead slug. He toppled from his horse, rolled several
times, then lay face-down and unmoving. Bill Zachary took a bullet
in his side, and another in his leg. He landed in a shallow
depression, just deep enough to shield him from more gunfire. The
badly wounded deputy pulled himself along on his belly for several
yards, then collapsed on his face.
    Phil Salem, the stout young cowboy, only
twenty-two, had his horse shot from under him. His leg broken when
the horse crashed, Phil attempted to crawl to safety, leg dragging
uselessly, but was shot to ribbons by a hail of lead, which slammed
into his side and rolled him onto his back. Phil’s eyes, wide-open
in death, stared unblinking into the blazing sun.
    Sheriff Satterlee, Billy Below, Spike Sweeney,
Red Myers, Joe Montgomery, and Doctor Munro, as well as Mack
Haskins, swerved their horses hard to the right, racing for the
shelter of a low ridge. Reaching it, they quickly dismounted,
removed rifles and spare ammunition from their horses, and, with
slaps on the rumps, sent the mounts trotting away, hopefully out of
rifle range. After what had transpired back in Wolf Creek, they had
no illusions about Danby and his men not killing the animals. The
horses would be their first targets, leaving their riders stranded
and easy prey.
    Doctor Munro attempted to climb the slope and
reach the downed men, only to be pulled back by Sheriff
Satterlee.
    “ Sheriff, I need to try and save
those men,” Munro protested.
    “ I can’t let you do that, Doc,”
Satterlee answered. “You’d be cut down before you made ten yards.
Like it or not, you’re trapped here with the rest of
us.”
    Bill, flattened low over his galloping horse,
reached the safety of a deep, eroded gully. Close behind him were
Charley Blackfeather, Jimmy Spotted Owl, Derrick McCain, and Robert
Gallagher, the bespectacled clerk. They dismounted, grabbed rifles
from saddleboots, and took up positions along the gully’s wall,
where they were relatively safe, yet had a clear view of their
surroundings.
    “ Looks like the sheriff and a few
others made that ridge over yonder,” Rob Gallagher
observed.
    “ Yeah, but they’re pinned down,”
Charley answered. “Can’t move beyond either side of that rise, or
stick their heads up without gettin’ ‘em blown off.”
    As if in answer to Charley’s statement, Red
Myers rose from behind the ridge, and started to point his rifle in
the direction of the outlaws. Immediately, his head exploded in a
spray of blood and brain matter, when a rifle slug punched through
his forehead and ripped away the back of his skull.
    “ Well, hell,” Charley
said.
    “ Sharpshooter in that cottonwood
over there,” Bill noted. “Got to get him before he picks off all
those boys.”
    He lifted his Winchester to his shoulder,
aimed, and fired. A yelp of pain issued from the trees, followed by
the rustling of leaves and cracking of branches as the sniper
plunged to the ground, Bill’s bullet through his heart.
    “ Took care of one, anyway,” Bill
muttered. The others looked at him in disbelief.
    “ Thought you’d never handled a
gun, Torrance,” Derrick said. “For a man who supposedly wouldn’t
touch a weapon, that was some shot.”
    “ Had a little practice in the
past,” Bill answered. “Now, all we’ve gotta do is figure out how to
get out of this gully, and get the rest of those renegades without
gettin’ ourselves shot to pieces.”
    “ Seems to me we’re in a bad way,
with Danby and his men havin’ all the advantage,” Jimmy said. “They
can move out of that brush and ride