Gunpowder Express by Brett Cogburn

Author:Brett Cogburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2019-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Newt traveled roughly three miles eastward, stopping a few times to check his back trail for any signs of pursuit. Yet, there was no sign of the gang that had attacked the stage. Again, he scolded himself for trying such a silly ruse. Apaches might make the dust thing work, but they would have several warriors dragging dust makers, enough to raise a big enough cloud to possibly fool pursuers.

But he was raising some dust. There was that.

The stage road climbed up a low saddle between two knobs that flanked it to the north and south, and he stopped there atop that rise. He dismounted and parked the Circle Dot horse off to one side in a small cactus thicket. The country was wide open with nothing but low-growing desert scrub and the occasional finger of a saguaro cactus or a Joshua tree rising up above it. He could see for a long ways back the way he had come, and so he waited.

He had all but given up hope that his ruse might have worked when he saw the riders coming in the distance. They were too far off to make them out with any detail, but there were several of them and they were coming fast.

Six, no, seven of them, he saw when they were nearer. The man riding in the lead was on a big sorrel horse that must have been every bit of sixteen hands tall. The horse’s red coat stood out plainly, even at such a distance.

Newt moved the Circle Dot horse until it was standing broadside and perpendicular to the stage road, and he rested his Winchester across his saddle. He waited until he guessed the riders were within five hundred yards or so, and until he could get a better look at them. Twice, sunlight reflected off steel, and Newt was sure that a couple of them, at least, were riding with rifles in their hands. Their pace and that flash of steel made him almost sure that they were the gang who had hit the stage back at Seymour.

He waited another span of breaths and let them come closer until he was sure who they were. The range was too far for Newt’s skill with a rifle, and he couldn’t get them all, even if he were such a long-range marksman. However, that wasn’t his intention. Either they had assumed the stage would stick to the regular road, or his dust trick had worked. No matter, his goal was simply to delay them, and to buy time to get the stage a head start. He slid the graduated elevator on the Winchester’s rear sight until it was set on the mark for four hundred yards. He squeezed off a round and the big-bore rifle bucked and bellowed, and his round scattered gravel thirty yards ahead of them.

The party of riders pulled their running horses to hard stops while he jacked a fresh round in the Winchester. Somehow, they must have spotted

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