Free The Killing Breed by Frank Leslie

behind the other.
     
     
    No. Not two men. A man and Faith. She wore her man’s Stetson and her buckskin mackinaw, as though she was heading somewhere. The man behind her held his hand out in front of his waist, as though he was holding a gun on her.
     
     
    Kelly said, “You recognize ’em?”
     
     
    Yakima’s voice was hard. “Nope.” He slipped his Winchester from its saddle boot. One-handed, he racked a shell and laid the rifle across his saddle bows.
     
     
    Yakima froze as he watched two of the strangers enter the corral housing the prancing mares and foals and, holding their rifles in one hand, move around behind the milling horses, working their way toward the stable on the corral’s south side.
     
     
    Near the cabin, Faith shouted something. She took off running toward the corral. The man behind her stuck his foot out, tripping her and sending her sprawling. The two men in the corral opened up with their rifles, shooting into the air over the heads of the mares and the colts.
     
     
    Yakima bunched his lips and glanced at Kelly. “Let’s go!”
     
     
    He rammed his heels against Wolf’s ribs, and the horse lunged into a wind-splitting gallop down the slope, weaving amongst the pines.
     
     
    In the ranch yard, Faith screamed again. The mares whinnied and the foals nickered and bolted through the open corral gate, their hooves lifting thunder and dust. As the men in the corral continued shooting and shouting, the long-haired man in the stovepipe hat holstered his pistol under his buffalo coat, picked Faith up like a sack of cracked corn, and threw her belly-down over one of the saddled horses tied at the hitch rail.
     
     
    Yakima’s vision swam with fury.
     
     
    Curling his index finger through the Yellowboy’s trigger guard, Yakima bottomed out in the hollow and raced through the last of the pines. Staring toward the yard, he saw that smoke issued not only from the cabin’s chimney but from the doors and windows, as well.
     
     
    Through the smoke he glimpsed orange flames leaping and dancing around inside the cabin. He hunkered low in the saddle as Wolf raced across the clearing, rising and falling over the sage- and cedar-tufted knobs.
     
     
    He galloped under the ranch portal. The mares and foals raced off to his left in a sifting cloud of adobe-colored dust, pitching and buck-kicking. The two men leaving the corral with their rifles resting on their shoulders turned as one toward Yakima and Kelly.
     
     
    The burlier of the two glanced toward the cabin. “Company, Temple!”
     
     
    The man in the stovepipe hat turned from the hitch rail, then shouted something Yakima couldn’t hear. He stepped between the horses and shucked a rifle from a saddle boot.
     
     
    The two men who’d just left the corral dropped to their knees and raised their rifles toward Yakima and Kelly, who flanked him. The other two men near the cabin grabbed rifles of their own, levered shells, and ran away from the horses to get a clear shot.
     
     
    Yakima extended his Winchester one handed and, hesitating, not wanting to risk hitting Faith, triggered a shot at the two men bearing down at him from in front of the corral.
     
     
    His slug plunked into the ground before the older, bulkier gent, making him lurch back on his heels. Kelly fired his Spencer, then tossed the rifle down and took his revolver in his right hand.
     
     
    Smoke and flames began stabbing from the interlopers’ rifles, the pop s and crack s echoing around the yard, slugs plunking into the ground around the horses’ pounding hooves and sizzling through the air around Yakima’s head.
     
     
    Kelly fired and yelled angrily, angling away from Yakima to head for the cabin. The half-breed triggered his Winchester twice quickly, cocking one handed and heading Wolf toward the two men near the open corral gate.
     
     
    The burly gent recocked his own Winchester and snarled savagely as he fired.
     
     
    The slug sliced past Wolf’s right