Stringer and the Deadly Flood by Lou Cameron Page B

miles apart. He started to turn back to Juanita. Then he spotted a chalky conch shell bigger than the one she’d found, and he bent to pick it up for her.
    The son of a bitch drawing a rifle bead on Stringer must not have expected him to duck like that. His .30-.30 round buzzed right through the air Stringer’s back had just been filling. Stringer did a forward somersault as the rifle squibbed again, winding up prone in a clump of greasewood with his own gun drawn. He spit out curses and pungent twigs while he tried to figure out what in thunder was going on.
    He lifted his hat on his six-gun barrel. But the unseen marksman didn’t fall for that. So he tried sticking his bare head up a few feet and almost got it blown off. He ducked at the sight of the muzzle flash before the sound and the bullet could cover the quarter mile between them. The bastard was good, Stringer decided. This was going to take some study. He started by crawling toward the gypsy cart and his Winchester, grateful that the recent rain had made the ground less dusty and trying to think like a lizard as he slithered through the knee-high brush, being careful not to move any of it. He heard another shot. It sounded as if the cuss was lobbing rounds into his old position for luck. He’d left his hat atop a bush back there. The bastard might be good but he sure was stupid, Stringer thought—nobody with a lick of sense would have put a light gray hat back on at a time like this.
    The rear of the cart, Dutch door and all, was exposed to the sneaky bastard who’d cut their trail. He’d have to get into the wagon from the driver’s seat. Juanita’s mule was tethered between the poles, and it showed him the white of one eye as he slithered out of the shrubbery toward the animal with a reassuring whisper. Fortunately, Juanita had tied it to a stout clump, so it had to just stay put, kicking its big hooves more in uncertainty than lethal intent as Stringer crawled under it. Nevertheless, Stringer took a couple of half-hearted kicks before he could get to the wagon and haul himself up over the dashboard to roll over Juanita’s seat to the inside.
    He scooped up his Winchester, levered a round in the chamber, and eased back to the rear door. He opened the bottom half just a crack and spotted two Spanish mules half a mile out. He had to stand and crack the top door before he could make out the two hats just visible above the slate-blue brush. His attackers were both hunkered smart from the point of view of anyone at ground level, but in the cart he was standing a good yard higher. One hat was Anglo, a peaked Arizona rider. The other was a more Mex sombrero. Even as he watched, both were moving in, spread about ten yards apart. He took a bead on the Anglo farthest away. Then he fired and levered his weapon to fire again as the one in the Mex hat made the mistake of rising to fire back at him. The other rifleman’s bullet thunked into the doorjamb near Stringer’s head. But from the way that sombrero went skyward, Stringer knew he’d aimed better. Heads seldom jerked that hard unless a gent had been spine-shot.
    That left the Anglo he’d first fired at, who was hit or playing possom but in either case out of sight. So Stringer swung the door wide open and dropped out and down. The rifle round that whizzed over the cart told him the bastard was still in business out there.
    Stringer started crawling again, with the Winchester cradled across his forearms. Had not it been for a similar incident down Cuba way one time, Stringer might have tried crawling in on the bastard’s last known position. But he didn’t. He’d learned as a war correspondent who hadn’t expected to fight but then had to, that one-third to fifty percent casualties inspired most men to retreat, and the average bushwacker wasn’t as brave as most men. So Stringer made for the mules he’d spotted tethered farther out.
    It worked.