Springfield 1880 by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2019-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 46

The roar of the Springfield rifle took Ben Masterson by surprise. It had come a little earlier than the former Army sergeant expected. Sinking behind a juniper, he brought the Colt Lightning up and aimed through the twisted branches of the tree. The blast of the big rifle still rang in his ears. Whoever had started the ball with the first shot was pretty damned close. Masterson had to grin. He was supposed to be up there trying to save Lieutenant Holden’s life, but the little pup of an officer had drawn the first shot. And that shot had likely just saved Masterson’s hide. Had he not have been warned by the shot, he most likely would have stepped right up to the man . . . who could have blown a hole through the former sergeant’s belly big enough to send a Baldwin locomotive through.

Another shot rang out from the other side of the canyon. A horse screamed, and Masterson frowned. Some dirty dog had just killed Lieutenant Holden’s horse, and that was the lowest thing a body could do. But that shot had been fired from the far side of the canyon, so it would be up to Sam Florence to kill that bushwhacker.

More shots boomed. Masterson listened intently. So, two men were up there, one just a few feet from him and the other at least a hundred yards up the trail. Probably even farther than that.

He concentrated on shots from the other side. If he could count right, that meant four men. Two for Florence. And two, Masterson thought with a grin, for me.

Masterson backed away from the juniper and inched his way closer to the drop-off, staying low enough that he’d be hard to spot by some gunman on the other side. He spotted the dead horse then looked back and found where the bullets were hitting a boulder. That had to be where Lieutenant Holden was hiding. If those ambushers were worth a tinker’s damn, they would be working their way around to catch him in a crossfire, and rip him to pieces with the heavy slugs. They didn’t have to see him to kill him. If they knew how to shoot, they could perforate the shavetail’s body with ricochets. More often than not, ricocheting bullets did a more thorough job of producing a corpse than head shots or shots straight to the heart. A ricochet could cut a man to pieces.

Even though his ears rang from the gunfire, Masterson could tell the man he wanted was in the rocks just a few yards ahead of him. He dropped to his stomach and began crawling to a little depression in the ground. Like a rattle-snake sneaking up on some unsuspecting jackrabbit, he moved quickly, but silently.

Once in the hole, he waited. He listened. The Lightning remained in his right hand, but he did not bother cocking the pistol. That wasn’t because the. 38 he held was a self-cocker. Unlike a single-action Colt, all a self-cocking double-action pistol required was to pull the trigger.

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