Free The Tall Men by Will Henry Page A

sixteen hands of horse and bred by a people who had been doing nothing else since they had dabbed a riata on the first of Cortez’s wandering, Old World purebreds. He could go a distance at a quarter-mile clip or a furlong in fifteen seconds flat, and not be looking up the crupper of any Indian scrub anywhere in between.
    And right about now those big Sioux ponies were giving him as tight a chance as a white man would ever appreciate, to prove it.
    Ben rode the race the only way he saw it.
    He let them get close enough up on him so thatthey could not cut across on him when he made his swing, then shot the black up the riverbank and headed him for the grove. Once up the bluff, he opened him out and let him run. Halfway to the grove he had his lead stretched to two hundred yards and was easing back in the saddle.
    He didn’t ease very far back. Once again he had sudden cause to remember the tenth Indian. That buzzard in the black furs had gotten down off his blufftop and back to his mount just in nice time to see Ben make his swing for the grove. And to spur his fast steeldust pony across the open flat to cut him off.
    Ben cursed, flattened the black’s belly to the snow. That red devil had him. All he could do was run for it and hope to Ka-dih he didn’t get winged with a rifle slug on the way. His own Colt was useless at the range and the Sioux had at least one hundred yards to lever that Henry into him before he could get up to where the handgun would hold and hit.
    He cursed again, wondering why in God’s name those flat-hat fools in the grove didn’t open up and give him cover. The wonder was father to the wish. No more had he cursed, than somebody from the camp began cutting down on the Sioux horseman with a repeating rifle. Even as the hidden rifleman fired, Ben had time for a last angry thought. What the hell were the rest of them doing in there? They had all had guns, he had made sure of that before he left, even if he didn’t recall the repeater that was letting off now being among those guns.
    Anger as quickly gave way to admiration.
    Whoever was handling that repeater had his eye flat down the barrel and knew how to hold on an incoming bird. He saw the snow fly close in underthe racing feet of the Sioux pony on the first three shots, the mushrooming spurts beginning ten feet in front of the steeldust and walking dead into him. The fourth shot centered the pony, drilling him from brisket to breadbasket and dropping him, dead floundering, in his flying tracks. His rider rolled free, unhurt, leapt to his feet, ran doubled over for the shelter of his dying pony’s belly.
    Seconds later, the black was crashing Ben through the fringe trees, into the center of the emigrant camp. He was out of the saddle on the first slide, pumping fresh brass into the Henry as he ran toward the bunched wagons and the fur-clad figure of the lone rifleman beneath them.
    The next instant he was diving between the wheels and dropping beside him, his whole attention riveted on the dead pony out toward the river. He snapped three shots, all he had had time to load, at the trapped Indian, making him dive back behind his fallen mount, abandoning any immediate plans he had for rejoining his henchmen in their retreat to the Arkansas redoubt.
    “Cover the bastard!” he rasped to his companion. “I’m empty!”
    “The bastard, brother,” said the overcoated marksman quietly, “is covered. Load away.”
    Ben gasped. He twisted around on his propping elbow. He met and dropped his mouth open to the familiar, white-toothed flash of the cynical smile.
    It was Nella Torneau.

Chapter Nine
    With the main force of the Sioux once more behind the banks of the Arkansas and pinned there by his and Nella’s rifles, Ben had time to get his answer to the lack of fire from the emigrant camp. The place was a shambles. What his first-chance glance around it didn’t tell him, the low voice of Nella Torneau did.
    “They showed up about an hour ahead of