still up in the rocks interrupted him. Blood splattered them both as bullets thwacked into the body of her dead horse.
“Stay down!” Jack commanded.
Ellen did as she was told, but was able to peek around the neck of the dead animal. She spied two riders, barreling down from the rocks above, revolvers firing wildly toward Jack and her. Ellen looked to her left as Jack’s rifle boomed, then boomed again, then again.
One of the riders tumbled from his saddle. Jack’s rifle fired a fourth time. The last of the desperados fell from his saddle, but sprang to his feet like some sort of Hollywood stuntman. He reached for the pistol worn crossdraw at his left side. “Jack! Look out!” Ellen Naile shouted.
There were two shots, almost simultaneous.
The bad guy’s knees just seemed to buckle, and he fell backward in a heap.
Ellen looked at her husband, his gleaming long-barreled Colt revolver held at full extension of his right arm.
As he holstered the gun, in his best deep voice, Jack intoned, “A wet bird never flies at night’—da-da-dadum.”
For a moment, Ellen Naile just stared at her husband, and then she started to laugh so hard that she almost pissed.
“Load your guns,” Jack told Ellen, already loading his. He set his rifle down and, without missing a beat, set to work freeing Helen. Ellen joined in a moment or so later. “So, you guys were able to repel them when they came against you at the house?” Jack asked Ellen in a measured, conversational tone. The Bledsoe girl was whimpering with every movement as they began to free her of the barbed wire with which she was bound.
“Who? Who came against the house? Nobody—”
“Oh, my God,” Jack whispered, looking suddenly frightened, visibly shivering, overwhelmed.
“Lizzie? And Clarence’s wife? More guys like these that tried killing us? They were going to attack the house?”
“Blake told me before he died. Take care of her, of Helen, as quickly as you can, Ellen. Tell me what I can do to help.” He cut away the last of the barbed wire with the Leatherman tool he carried in his saddlebags, then sat down and covered his face with his bloodied hands for a moment.
“I’ll help you round up some horses. You take a couple of them. You can leave us out here alone. There is no choice but to do that. I’ll get Helen back by myself.”
Jack looked up from his hands. His eyes looked as if he were holding back tears. Some of the Bledsoe girl’s blood was smeared on his face. “We’ll pick up the best of the guns these guys lost, so you and Helen have plenty of firepower if you need it.” The Bledsoe girl seemed somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness, had made no sound but those associated with pain. “Can you make it back with her?”
“She’s not comatose, just really hurting. I can make some of that better, get her back to the house so Clarence’s wife can take care of her. We’ll be fine. We can load a spare horse with all the rifles and handguns we can carry. With my hair stuffed under my hat, from a distance I’ll look like a guy. We’ll be fine,” Ellen volunteered again.
Jack nodded, mumbling something about getting his own horse as he jogged off.
The room was cold, kept that way, perhaps, to keep the computers—banks of them—running at peak efficiency. Alan Naile was freezing, but wasn’t numb. Almost every inch of his body hurt. When he’d awakened tied to a straight back chair as a captive of Bethany Kaminsky’s thugs, Lester Matthews had ordered, “Hurt him a lot, but not anything permanent yet. No bones or teeth. We’re not a hundred percent sure of how we’ll play this.”
Expertly, two of Matthews’ men began following their boss’s orders with egregious zeal, their blows leveled at muscle groups, at the abdomen, the groin, Alan sinking beneath the waves of pain, awakening and, in the next instant, the administration of pain beginning anew. It went on like that—the brutalization—for what seemed to him an eternity. Pain, unconsciousness, more pain. The only way to judge the passing of time was by the faces of his tormenters. They had both had average five o’clock shadows in their hollow cheeks when the pain began. When at last it ceased, their faces showed at least another full day’s growth.
They freed him from the chair and hauled him, still otherwise bound to his feet. He wet himself as he stood, but had