And now…
She tried to move Nutmeg to the left. A rider, his face painted black, was there. She forced the horse to rear. Nutmeg pounded down to the right.
Then one of the men, laughing, leaped from his own horse to hers, dragging her down from Nutmeg.
Down, down, down…
Monsters had come.
CHAPTER 25
Hawk hadn’t ridden more than five minutes before he saw a familiar figure racing toward him.
Sloan.
He continued forward until they met; both men reined in hard. “Did you come in from Gold Town? Did you pass Skylar?” Hawk demanded.
“Skylar’s gone?” Sloan demanded in turn.
“She just rode toward town?—”
“She isn’t on the way to town. I would have seen her. Hawk, you have to listen to me. I overheard a conversation at the Ten-Penny. There’s been a bounty out on your wife. Huge money, payable in gold, for Skylar. Dead or alive. That weasel Abel was passing the word on it. There was money, and power, behind the offer.”
“Dillman!” Hawk muttered. “Dillman is in my house right now. He was trying to tell me Skylar is insane, that he was crippled because of her.”
“He might be crippled, but he has the dregs of the territory out to find her.”
“Did you see signs of a struggle anywhere?—”
“I wasn’t looking. I was trying to reach you.”
“Let’s look now. Time, Sloan, time might mean everything.”
They kneed their mounts, rocketing mercilessly out along the trail once again. As they rode, they could see a wagon coming in the distance. Hawk slowed his horse, nearing Sloan. “It’s Henry’s wagon. He must have Skylar’s sister with him. That’s why Skylar lit out of the house so wildly—she was afraid of Dillman getting his hands on her sister.”
“We’ll send him back to town.”
Hawk shook his head. “We’ll send him to the cabin.”
But even as they rode closer to the approaching wagon, riders burst out from the westward edge of the forest. Shots were fired. The wagon started careening wildly.
“The whole damned world has gone mad!” Hawk exclaimed. He was unarmed, except for the knife he wore in his ankle sheath.
Sloan pulled his Colt Army pistol from his holster. He fired off several shots, taking careful aim at the half dozen painted men shrieking toward the wagon. The attackers, looking to the north, hadn’t seen them observe the assault.
Hawk saw that Henry was no coward. He rose behind the reins of his small flatbed wagon, firing off his shotgun. Then he was hit in the shoulder. He fell back against the seat. The woman beside him, her face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat, shrieked, bending over poor Henry.
Sloan picked off two of the attackers with his Colt while they thundered down upon the wagon. Bullets sizzled by their ears in turn. Hawk would have been hit straight in the heart, but he had learned how to ride as a Sioux. When the bullet came, his body was on Tor’s side, and the lead ball of death hurtled on by him. He straightened and came upon one of the dressed-up white men in time to leap from Tor’s back and hurtle his opponent to the ground before the man could get off a shot. His wife’s life was at stake. His own life, now, too. He reached his knife in seconds.
He killed the man with merciful speed, then stole his pistol. It was out of date, but it had three shots left. He spun just as he heard a rustling behind him, shooting another painted white man who would have attacked him. He rose, just in time to see Sloan leaping atop the step of the wagon to kill the last of the attackers, a man now bent over the woman, trying to wrest her from the wagon. Sloan wrenched the fellow up to a stand with a grip upon his shoulder, then felled him with a blow against his neck. The man silently catapulted from the wagon.
The woman kept shrieking.
“Stop it!” Sloan shouted, holding her back taut to his chest, grappling her arms to her sides and twisting her around so that she faced Hawk. “Hawk, this isn’t?—”
“Hawk! You’re Hawk! Oh, my God, get this man?—”
“Sabrina?” Hawk said. She was striking. Auburn hair now wild and tangled around a beautiful face. Her features were something like Skylar’s, but her coloring was completely different. Her figure was an hourglass form. Together, the sisters were like a perfect pair of fairy-tale princesses, Rose Red and Rose White, perhaps.
