“You’re losing them, Wilder,” he said. “They’re bleeding out while you hide behind your crates.”
“You shut your cursed mouth!”
“Why?” Blaze asked. “Is the truth too loud for you?”
Wilder fired. The shot hit the beam inches from Blaze’s head, showering him with splinters.
Blaze crouched lower, teeth gritted.
“You should’ve stayed in the valley,” he said. “You could’ve lived quietly. Instead, you came digging your own grave.”
“Graves don’t scare me,” Wilder said. “But yours might.”
The words came with another shot. Blaze ducked. His hat flew off, spinning into the dirt.
The air hummed with gun smoke and heat. Then, from outside the mine, came a sound. It was distant, sharp, and rhythmic.
A rifle. Marisol.
Blaze almost smiled. “Guess I ain’t alone after all.”
Wilder looked toward the entrance for just a second. “What the hell?”
Blaze moved.
He came out of cover fast with his revolver raised and boots pounding against stone. The flash from his muzzle lit Wilder’s furious face.
“Stop him!” Wilder roared.
No one did.
The surviving Riders ducked and panicked. Bullets ricocheted in every direction, the whole mine roaring like a storm.
Wilder staggered backward, tripping over a crate, his lantern tumbling from his hand. It shattered on the floor. The flames flared across the spilled oil.
“Damn it!” Wilder shouted.
The fire caught quickly, licking up the wooden supports. The gold sacks gleamed in the flickering light like sin itself burning.
“Boss, the fire!” a Rider cried.
“Forget it!” he yelled back. “Just shoot him!”
Blaze fired again. The Rider fell.
Smoke filled the chamber, curling and thick. Blaze coughed, his eyes stinging. Through the haze, Wilder’s shadow loomed.
“You can’t win, Buckeye!” he shouted. “You hear me? You can’t kill what won’t die!”
Blaze reloaded one last time. “Then I’ll make you wish you could.”
The two men squared off through fire and smoke, each seeing the other like a reflection in hell.
Chapter 35
“Move your heads out where I can see them,” Marisol muttered.
Her breath misted in the cold dawn air as she pressed her cheek against the worn stock of her Hawken Plains rifle. From her perch above the cliffs, the world below was chaos. Gunfire flickered inside the mine mouth, echoing sharply like whipcracks.
