Dark Night of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2023-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Although Graham Blake had promised Kramer and Bennett that the rest of the gang wouldn’t go off and leave them behind, the thought had crossed his mind. They had the loot from the bank robbery, after all—what there was of it—and it would be easy enough to slip away from the two bushwhackers instead of waiting for them.

Blake wasn’t the only one who had considered it. As they rode across the pine-dotted bench toward the mountains, Frank Holt brought his horse alongside Blake’s and asked quietly, “Are we really going to hang around until those two catch up?”

“We said we would . . .”

Blake put a little hesitation in his voice to show that he might be willing to be talked out of it.

“You know there’s a chance they won’t even survive that ambush,” Holt went on.

Blake shrugged. “As long as they slow Jensen down long enough for us to get away, that’s the main thing I’m worried about.”

“If we keep going higher, we can hole up somewhere they’ll never find us.”

Blake glanced at the sky and said, “The problem with that is we don’t have a lot of light left. Night might catch us still on the trail, and we don’t know what it’s like up there. We might ride into a ravine and not ever see it. I think we’re going to have to find a decent place and make camp whether we want to or not.”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s the smart thing to do,” Holt said, with obvious reluctance. Blake knew he was thinking that a four-way split was better than divvying up the loot six ways. Nobody could argue with that.

Blake didn’t want to double-cross Kramer and Bennett, though. It was hard to betray somebody who had ridden with you through danger and hard times . . . although thinking about it never hurt anything.

The sun was touching the peaks to the west and throwing a magnificent golden arch upward into the sky when the four outlaws reached the far side of the bench. A thickly wooded, fairly steep slope led upward. As the riders stopped, Blake’s eyes searched for a good trail, but in the fading light, he couldn’t see any.

“I think we’re going to have to stop here and wait until morning to push on,” he said.

Holt looked like he wanted to argue. “You think Jensen and that posse will stop—” he began.

At that moment, gunfire sounded in the distance. All four men looked around.

“That’ll be Bob and Ken cuttin’ down on that posse,” Stoughton said.

“I hope they kill every last one of those damn townies,” Deere said. “Especially the one who put that buckshot in my leg!”

“We don’t know that he came along with the posse,” Blake pointed out. He was listening to the sounds and had heard both the sharp cracks of rifle fire and the heavier booms of a revolver.

The flurry of shots ended quickly, though, which caused Blake and Holt to exchange a worried glance.

“That didn’t sound like enough shooting to wipe out that posse,” Holt said.

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