Free Sidewinders by William W. Johnstone Page A

around the bend. No bullets whistled after him, and he took that as a good sign. After splashing across the creek, he stopped to lean against a slab-like boulder for a second and catch his breath. Not for the first time, he thought that he was getting too old for dust-ups like this.
    He recovered quickly and started up the slope. From time to time he had to grab hold of a bush or a narrow tree trunk to help pull himself up. When he judged that he was about on the same level as the bushwhackers, he turned west and began making his way in their direction.
    He still heard a lot of rifle shots, but the distinctive booming of Scratch’s Remingtons had slowed. That probably meant Scratch and Chloride were running low on ammunition, Bo thought. He needed to make his move soon.
    He was almost in position. The whip cracks of the rifles were close now. Bo drew his Colt and slid forward from tree to rock to tree. He could look across the creek now and see the place where his friends had taken cover.
    As he crouched behind one of the pines, he peered around the trunk and saw four men kneeling behind rocks and firing across the stream with their Winchesters. Bo was a little surprised when he saw that all four wore bandanas tied around the lower halves of their faces and had their hats pulled down low. They were taking pains to conceal their identities even now. He had good shots at a couple of them, but the others would be trickier. He had hoped to get the drop on all the ambushers and force them to surrender, but that wasn’t going to be possible.
    No shots had come from across the creek for almost a minute now. That meant Scratch and Chloride had run out of bullets—or that they had both been wounded, maybe killed. Thinking about that possibility caused a grim, angry cast to steal over Bo’s weathered face. He took a deep breath, gripped the Colt tightly, and swung out from behind the tree.
    He didn’t call out to the men and give them a chance to surrender. Bushwhackers didn’t deserve that sort of consideration. Instead Bo leveled the Colt and fired, squeezing off three quick shots. The first one smashed the arm of the closest rifleman, making him drop his weapon, pitch to the side, and howl in pain as he clutched at the injury. Bo’s second bullet struck a rock and whined off harmlessly. The third one ripped through the body of the other gunman he could see.
    The other two masked men wheeled around, thrust their rifles past the rocks they were using as cover, and opened fire on the unexpected new threat. The slugs whipping around his head made Bo duck behind a tree again.
    Across the creek, the two Remingtons again began to roar. Scratch and Chloride had been biding their time, waiting for Bo to get in position and launch a counterattack. Now they sent bullets ricocheting into the rocks where the bushwhackers were hidden. As Bo thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt to replace the ones he had fired, he heard one of the men bellow an angry curse, then order, “Let’s grab the others and get out of here!”
    Bo didn’t want them to get away. He knelt, leaned out from behind the tree, and sent a couple of rounds whistling past the rocks. A veritable storm of lead lashed back at him as one of the men started cranking off shots as fast as he could work his Winchester’s lever. The barrage forced Bo to hunker down and try to make himself as small a target as possible.
    When the shooting stopped a few moments later, he heard men forcing their way through the brush. A quick look told him the two men he had wounded were gone. The one with the busted arm might have been able to get on his feet and flee without any help. One of the other two men must have dragged the more badly wounded hombre away.
    Bo knew he could go after them, but he had already pushed his luck considerably by taking on four-to-one odds and he knew that, too. Even though he had wounded two of the men, he couldn’t be sure