Sundance 12 by John Benteen

Author:John Benteen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nevada, wild west, old west, westerns, sundance, western ebook, john benteen, jim sundance, best western novel, western novel online
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Six

He had traveled on foot like a lobo wolf, keeping always to cover, eating distance with a steady trot. Now, after an hour spent in scouting, working from one ridge to the other, he had the layout of this part of the Skull Mountains firmly in his head. And he had seen some bleak and barren, raw, forbidding terrain in his time, from Canada to Mexico, but this sun baked Nevada range was as mean as any he had ever run across. Given a supply of food and ammo, access to water, there were a thousand places up here in which the sniper could hide ... He had bitten off a big chunk, Sundance thought. Especially if the madman with the big fifty turned out to be Jeff Galax, who, after years of hunting buffalo, would be an expert at cover and concealment.

Now, he worked down a shallow, cactus studded draw that led him back to the cluster of boulders in which he’d left Mercer and the horses. Instinctively, he was careful to make no sound, keep hidden, though there was no chance the sniper could be around. He rounded a bend in the draw, and now he could see, in the distance and down the slope, the top of the huge boulder that marked their hiding place. He halted, again with that lobo wariness, listening. The silence of the mountains was profound.

And then suddenly was shattered by a woman’s high-pitched scream. “Damn you, let me go! Sundance! Sundance!”

For a pair of seconds, the half-breed stood completely frozen. A stallion screamed savagely, a deep-throated fighting challenge—Eagle! Sundance’s paralysis broke. His hand swooped back, pulled arrow from the cougar-skin quiver, nocked it to the bowstring. Then, soundlessly, bent low, he ran down the draw. Within fifty yards he halted, the rock-cleft and its boulders in full view, now; and his lips curled back in a snarl exactly like a wolf’s as he took in what was happening down there, only two hundred yards away.

There were five of them, shabby, bearded, trail-stained men, each hung with guns and knives. One held their saddle horses and two pack animals. Three others stood, thumbs hooked in gunbelts, watching, as the fifth shoved Billy Mercer from the rock-cleft, holding the kid’s arm bent back in a hammerlock.

Again that womanish scream broke from Mercer’s throat. “Sundance! Help!”

One of the watching men stepped forward, swung a big hand in a backward slap that rocked Mercer’s head around. “Damn you, younker, shut up! Ted, Bill, you two go out and scout. That Sundance may be the goddam sniper! Keep a sharp eye, anything moves, you blast it!”

“Right, Horseshoe!” Their voices carried clearly in the silence. One went out to the right, the other headed for the mouth of the draw in which Sundance crouched. And the half-breed stared. The man scrambling upward toward him carried a fifty-caliber Sharps and had a belt full of ammunition for it around his thick middle.

Sundance’s eyes narrowed. The man going out to the right was armed the same way.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.