The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) by Brad Dennison (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

down along his nose and dripping away. Rivulets of sweat made their way down Dusty’s face, and he felt it breaking out along his back beneath his buckskin shirt.

Dusty knew this could not go on much longer. Despite the fact that Kiowa was twenty years older, he was simply the stronger of the two. Then, an idea occurred to him.

Dusty suddenly stepped back, and as suddenly pulled the knife downward. The arc of the knife brought it down and into Kiowa’s own abdomen, and Kiowa’s strength drove the knife in deeply, burying the blade to the hilt.

He looked at Dusty, his eyes wide with surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, but all he could manage was a gasping groan.

Dusty curled his fingers about the hilt of the knife, and pulled it free, the blade dripping with crimson. Sam had told him years earlier if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to use a knife on a man, never leave it in him. Pull if free so he can bleed more freely. And many a mortally wounded man can be full of life right up until the last second, and Kiowa could possibly, though not likely, pull the blade free himself and use it on Dusty.

Kiowa sank to his knees, a blood stain growing about the hole the knife had made in his shirt. Dusty figured he was not only bleeding out through the knife wound, but internally as well. Kiowa’s eyes rolled back, and he fell face down into the grass.

Loggins hurried forward rolled Kiowa over, and lowered his head to press an ear against Kiowa’s chest. He then looked to Falcone. “He’s dead.”

Falcone looked to Dusty and nodded with approval, a smile breaking onto his face. “Well done.”

“Hold it,” the one called Stew said. “Where’s the other one?”

Falcone glanced quickly about, realizing for the first time Josh had disappeared. His brows dropped. “Yes. Where is he?”

Stew had been cradling a scatter-gun throughout the fight. He now brought the twin barrels to face Dusty. “Don’t you move a whisker until we figger out what’s goin’ on, here.”

Dusty raised the knife and let it fly in one quick motion. The steel blade sunk into Stew’s throat, and he fell backward a couple of steps, dropping the gun to clutch the knife handle protruding beneath his chin.

Dusty raised one foot and drove the toe of his boot into the jaw of Loggins, who was still kneeling by the body of Kiowa.

Dusty then turned and sprinted for the cabin door as Falcone drew his pistol.

Falcone squeezed off a shot, but his aim was high and the bullet buried itself into the wood of the door as Dusty pushed the door open and charged inside.

He didn’t slow his pace as he crossed the floor toward a window, which was no more than a three-by-three foot hole cut into the wall, with a small shutter that was at the moment open. Dusty raced toward it, raised his arms out before him, and dove through the opening, one shoulder grazing painfully against the corner of the window. His body cleared the cabin, and he rolled headfirst onto the grass outside to break his fall. His momentum carried him back to his feet, and he resumed running.

A thick grove of short pines stood thirty feet from the cabin, and he knew if he could reach them without being shot from behind, he might have a reasonable chance of escaping this canyon.

He wasn’t as quick afoot as Josh – a little taller and more heavily muscled – but he stretched his legs to their limits.

He charged into the thick boughs of the pines, and a gun fired from behind. He felt the breeze of the bullet as it passed inches from his left ear.

He dropped to the earth as more shots erupted from the cabin, the bullets cutting through the pines, snapping off branches and tearing off strips of bark. The shots were from a pistol, Dusty could tell by the sound of each report, and he figured it was Falcone who had followed him into the cabin was now firing from the window.

There was a slight pause, but Dusty remained on the ground, out of sight of the window. Falcone might very well have a second pistol. And that proved to be the case, as more shots exploded, Dusty counting six, tearing into the trees.

Then, when the shooting ceased again, he sprang to his feet and started running again, now blocked from the view of the cabin by the pines, but knowing it wouldn’t be long before Falcone had reloaded and would resume firing, or he and Loggins took up pursuit.

Dusty ran along a wooded decline that led to a stream, which in turn led to the water hole that served as the water supply for Falcone and his men, and where the women did their bathing. The stream was too large for Dusty to clear with one leap, but he found a spot a few yards downstream where a rock rose above the water part-way across. With a running start, Dusty leaped, stretching one leg toward the rock.

His foot landed on it to push away from it toward the far bank. The leather sole of his boot slipped on the rock, however, and he lost some of his momentum. The earth at the very edge of the stream was soft, and it was there that he landed, burying one heel and creating a footprint that would show Falcone and Loggins he had passed here.

The print could be covered, Dusty knew, by scooping some mud from the stream bottom to fill in the print with, and the current would quickly smooth the gouge this would create in the stream bed, but there was no time. At any moment Falcone or Loggins would appear with a gun aimed at him. He would simply have to be more careful.

This side of the stream formed a wooded incline, rising toward the canyon wall, which