Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957) by Frank Leslie

after the breed lit out, so we know you’re after him. What we’re thinkin’ is, you see, is you and him got the gold!”
    Yakima wished he could get a better fix on the three or four, possibly five men before him. It was too dark in this notch in the rocks and brush, and all he could see were the occasional flashes of moonlight off gun steel. Trudy must be holed up in a particularly thick snag, because it seemed her stalker had only a general idea about where she was.
    â€œGot the gold and were plannin’ on meetin’ up someplace,” said another man off to Yakima’s right.
    A gun blasted, flames stabbing skyward. Yakima heard the screech of the ricochet off a rock somewhere high on the scarp. Trudy screamed again, and shouted, “Stop shootin’ at me, goddamn your eyes. You got no right to be stalkin’ a girl alone out here when she’s tryin’ to get away from her drunken old man!”
    One of the men chuckled and said as though to one of the others: “She’s got a point, boys. Maybe we oughta let her go.”
    â€œ
You
let her go, if you’ve a mind,” said another man. “The way I see it, it’s too damn dark to track the breed, but I know this little Injun-lovin’ whore knows where he’s headed and that they planned to take all the gold fer themselves and meet up somewheres.”
    â€œI got her!” one of the men shouted amidst a loud thrashing and crackling of brush.
    Trudy cursed shrilly, and then all the shadows appeared to converge on a spot somewhere ahead and right of Yakima. The half-breed had waited long enough. He stepped forward, dropped to a knee beside an aspen, and said loudly, “Let her go. The jake you’re after is right behind you.” He’d spoken softly but loudly enough to be heard above the thrashing in the brush ahead of him.
    The thrashing stopped.
    â€œYakima!” Trudy cried.
    Suddenly, the darkness in front of Yakima lit up like Saturday night in Sonora. He pulled his head back behind the tree, shouting above the thunder of what sounded like four pistols, “Trudy, get down flat and stay there!”
    The slugs chewed bark from the far side of the tree. The flashes gave him a pretty good idea where each man was shooting from, so as soon as there was a lull in the fire, he stepped out from behind the tree and, hoping like hell that Trudy was following his orders, cut loose with the Yellowboy. He aimed as high as he could while still hoping to hit his targets. From the grunts and groans and clipped squeals as well the crackling of brush beneath falling bodies, he was doing all right.
    He kept shooting until the Yellowboy’s hammer pinged on an empty chamber. He ejected the last spent cartridge, heard it clatter into the brush behind him, then lowered the rifle and palmed his Colt, ratcheting the hammer back. One of the men was groaning. He heard another give a wheeze, and then there were the thuds of someone running off, stumbling through the brush to Yakima’s left.
    He dropped to a knee, aiming the pistol straight out in front of him, half expecting one of the shooters to fire another round at him. He had no way of knowing just how well his ploy had worked, though he suspected he’d given them all at least one pill they couldn’t digest.
    â€œTrudy?” he said.
    â€œUh-huh,” came the girl’s thin reply.
    â€œFollow my voice. Come to me, get around me fast. Don’t dally.”
    He heard her give a grunt and a groan and there was more crackling of brush as she gained her feet. A slender shadow moved before him, and then he saw her in her man’s felt hat and torn, knee-length buckskin coat stumble toward him, breathing hard. She stopped beside him, turning toward her fallen stalkers, and then Yakima shoved her back behind him and opened up with the Colt until he’d fired four more shots. He heard Trudy leap back away from him with a gasp.
    The