They were mounted on lean, wiry ponies, riding without saddles, their torsos bare despite the cold. They held short carbines across their thighs, their heads turning constantly, reading the dark rocks with the instincts of hunting animals. They were reservation Apaches, men who had sold their tracking skills to the cattle syndicates for five dollars a day and a ration of government flour.
Behind them, twenty yards back, came the main body.
Ten men rode in a tight, cautious file. At their head was a massive figure on an iron-gray stallion. The man wore a wide white Stetson pulled low, a heavy buffalo-hide coat with the fur turned outward, and a pair of massive silver spurs that jingled faintly with every stride of his horse. In his scabbard rested a scoped Sharps buffalo rifle, and two ivory-handled revolvers hung low on his thighs.
Silas Vance.
Maverick felt his heart slow down, settling into the steady, mechanical rhythm that took over a man when life narrowed to the width of an iron front sight. He drew back the hammer of his Henry. The click was tiny, but in the hush of the canyon, it felt like an axe striking an oak log.
One of the native scouts at the front stopped instantly, his head snapping toward the southern ledge.
Maverick didn't give him time to shout.
He aligned the bead of his front sight with the center of the heavy buffalo coat on the gray horse, took a half-breath, and squeezed the trigger.
The Henry bucked against his shoulder with a deafening roar, a gout of orange flame illuminating the red canyon walls for a split second.
The heavy lead slug struck Silas Vance dead in the center of the chest with a wet, bone-shattering thwap. But the thick buffalo hide and a heavy steel liquor flask tucked inside the foreman’s coat deflected the bullet just enough to keep it from piercing his heart; the impact knocked the massive man clean out of the saddle, sending him crashing into the icy river water with a roar of pain and fury.
Before the echoes of Maverick’s shot could bounce off the northern spire, Hesper’s Yellow Boy barked from across the gap.
Her bullet took the last rider in the file through the throat. The man threw his arms wide, his carbine spinning into the rocks, and tumbled backward off his horse’s rump, dead before his shoulders struck the gravel.
"Ambush!" a voice screamed from the dark. "They’re in the rocks! Light 'em up!"
The gorge erupted into an inferno of gunsmoke, screaming horses, and blinding muzzle flashes.
The hired guns of the McCall syndicate were not green cowpunchers; they were seasoned border killers who had fought Comanches on the Staked Plains and outlaws along the Mexican line.
The moment the two shots dropped their leader and their rearguard, the remaining eight riders threw themselves from their saddles, seeking cover behind the immense boulders that choked the riverbed, slapping their horses on the flanks to send the terrified animals stampeding back into the desert.
Rifles opened up from six different positions below.
Bullets slammed into the limestone shelf around Maverick’s head, chipping off sharp fragments of rock that stung his cheeks and cut tiny lines of blood across his forehead. Lead screamed off the basalt with high, metallic whines that made his ears ring like church bells.
Maverick worked the lever of his Henry with furious, mechanical rhythm. Clack-clack. Boom.
He saw the muzzle flash of a Winchester beneath an overhanging boulder thirty yards below, held two inches above the flame, and fired. A man screamed in agony, dropping into the shallows and thrashing the water into bloody foam before going still.
Across the canyon, Hesper was firing with deadly, deliberate precision. Her Yellow Boy had a different, higher pitch than his Henry—a sharp, cracking report that echoed off the northern spire like a whip. Every time a gunman tried to lean out from behind a rock to bring a rifle to bear on Maverick’s ledge, a bullet from Hesper’s crevice drove him back, chipping the stone at his elbow or punching through his hat brim.
"Spread out!" a voice bellowed from the water—Silas Vance was still alive, his voice choked with rage and bruised ribs. "Flank that ledge on the south! Climb the shale! Two of you take the woman on the north side—she’s only got a carbine! Rush her between shots!"
Two men broke cover, scrambling across the open gravel toward the base of the northern tower where Hesper was pinned.
They were fast, crouching low, firing their revolvers with one hand and using the other to steady themselves on the slick river stones.
"Hesper! Below you!" Maverick shouted, leaning out over his breastwork.
A bullet from Silas Vance’s heavy Sharps took a three-inch gouge out of the rock six inches from Maverick’s elbow, showering his eyes with stone dust. Maverick blinked through the stinging grit, racked his lever, and fired twice at the men charging Hesper’s position.