Free The Bells of El Diablo by Frank Leslie Page B

before he set sail for Glory. The man with the eye patch rammed his Henry’s butt hard against James’s back, and he stumbled down the steps and into the yard.
    He was about to turn and lift a vicious kick to an unprotected groin, but stopped, staring straight ahead of him. The three men behind him must have seen it, too—the thin shadow of a man sitting a horse a little ways out from the parked wagon. All three froze, one giving an incredulous wheeze. There was another horse behind the rider’s horse, and just as James recognized his chestnut rabicano in the silvery darkness, a familiar voice said, “
Down, Jimmy!
”
    James dropped to his knees in the dirt, and ducked his head. A gun flashed and roared atop the lead horse before him. It roared two more times, the echoes of theblasts dwindling and falling beneath the groans of the riflemen now twisting and dropping behind James.
    James recognized the shrill report of Crosseye’s Lefaucheux, and grinned. “You crazy catamount!”
    “Haul your skinny ass over here, ye shaver!” Crosseye’s horse, a big Western-bred roan he’d traded his mule for, curveted.
    James lifted his head and squared his shoulders, working against his tied hands as he heaved himself to his feet with a grunt. Hearing men yelling in the saloon behind him and the others continuing to groan and gurgle where they’d fallen, two on the stoop, the man with the eye patch on the steps, James ran over to Crosseye and swung around. The old frontiersman leaned down, and James felt the tugging of the knife blade sawing through the rope binding his wrists.
    “Let’s go!” the older man rasped when the cut rope dropped.
    “I’m right behind you!” James bolted forward and grabbed his cartridge belt and holstered Griswolds off the steps, where the one-eyed man had dropped them. He also grabbed the sleek Henry repeater before sprinting over to his chestnut that pranced in place, reins dangling.
    Crosseye swung his big roan around to face the direction from which he’d come, the lights of Denver winking dully across the black sloping plain, then stopped once more behind James’s chestnut. His Lefaucheux roared, flames lapping from the barrel, the twelve-millimeter slugs plunking into the front of the saloon, one on either side of the batwings, sending another of Stenck’s men wheeling back through the doors with a yelp.
    “Let’s go, Jimmy!”Crosseye screeched as James hurled himself into the saddle from the off-side.
    The chestnut whinnied shrilly and buck-kicked as James swung it around, then ground his cavalry heels into the horse’s flanks. With another whinny, the chestnut leaped off its rear hooves and flew off in the direction of Crosseye’s jostling shadow, hooves thudding loudly on the hard-packed trail.
    Beneath the rataplan James could hear Stenck’s shrill voice shouting orders. The captain from Texas would not let him go without more of a fight, he knew. Stenck had brought him there to kill him, to keep him from continuing to ask around about the McAllisters, and he’d try his damnedest to accomplish the task. Stenck might have run from one war, but this one was just his size. James had to assume he had more gun hands than the small number he’d seen tonight.
    James crouched low over his chestnut’s buffeting mane as the horse galloped down a gradual grade, following the trail that was a curving pale line in the darkness. Crosseye was about thirty yards ahead, starlight glinting off his hat with its turned-up front brim, and off his saddlebags flapping like small wings. They dropped down into the brush-bottomed canyon, and Crosseye stopped his horse, curveting the blowing, prancing mount.
    “How’d you find me?” James asked the old frontiersman.
    “I saw the whole thing from the flophouse window, but by the time I got down to the street, they was rolling you off in that wagon. So I went and saddled our hosses and shadowed you.” Crosseye spat, and chawsplashed on a rock