“Can I put my hands down? I got bad cramps in my shoulders from the cold. You got three blasters on us.”
“Sure, skinner.”
He spoke to Ryan and Dean. “You two can relax some. No harm’s comin’ to any of you, if you don’t get triple stupe. But we’ll likely take the rig, skinner.”
Ryan lowered his hands, letting them settle comfortably in his lap, inches away from the butt of the SIG-Sauer. Dean did the same. The sides of the wag were high enough for Ryan to feel fairly sure that they hadn’t seen his own handblaster, but assumed he just carried the Steyr.
“Do I get the wag back when you’re finished with it?” Lemuel asked, his right hand fondling the stock of the long whip.
“Sure you do,” Joey said reassuringly. “We’ll arrange that in a while. Now, you’d best get down off the wag.”
Every one of the six people on the trail knew that the bandit was lying. Ryan had seen the half turn of the head and the nod to his companions, the nod returned from both of them. life for the trio of prisoners was now something to be measured in minutes.
Maybe in seconds.
The bandits would open up as soon as the three of them were clear of the rig, so that the shooting wouldn’t harm the valuable piano.
“Ready,” Ryan whispered to Dean.
“Mebbe those fellers might say something about losing their piano,” Lemuel said, pointing with his left hand farther up the trail, past the three robbers.
It was the oldest trick in the book.
All of them turned to look, taking their attention away for a vital half second.
The wag driver was fastest, with Ryan a nanosecond behind him, followed by Dean.
The whip cracked out with uncanny accuracy. Lemuel had picked Joey, with the rifle, as the danger man, and had gone for him. The steel tip of the lash caught him a fraction below the right eye, slicing open a fold of his cheek as neat and deep as a straightedge razor.
The man screamed in pain, dropping his rifle. He fell to the ground as both hands darted up to try to stem the flood of hot crimson from his gashed face.
The noise startled the horses, as well as the mule team, making them all buck and rear.
The result was total chaos.
Ryan had drawn his SIG-Sauer, leveling it at the bandit with the Harrington and Richardson, reasoning that the bigger blaster was the bigger threat. At less than forty feet, it was a safe enough shot.
But at the very moment that Ryan squeezed the trigger, the mules jerked the rig forward. The reins had fallen to the dirt, and the wag began to slew toward the sheer drop into the canyon on the right.
Ryan’s shot caught the pinto pony through the top of its head, above the eyes, so that the skull exploded into the man’s face, splattering him with blood, brains and splinters of bone. His shrill scream matched the dying animal’s, and he went down with it, trapped by its legs.
The third of the robbers fought for control over his horse, snapping off four popping shots with the little automatic. It was extreme range for shooting, and from the back of a rearing animal a hit was a thousand to one.
But Lemuel’s luck was out and the long shot came in. One of the .25-caliber Walther rounds hit him through the throat, above the collar of his coat, knocking him back on the seat. He’d just dropped his lethal whip and was fumbling under the layers of clothing for a hidden blaster.
Lemuel tried to shout, but blood flooded his lungs, choking him. He coughed, dowsing the rear pair of mules with a fine scarlet spray.
The smell of the raw blood spooked them even more, and they bolted. One of the leaders caught Joey with its shoulder and he went down, the front wheels of the loaded wag rolling over his stomach and thighs.
“Going over, Dad!” Dean yelled, his voice cracking as he fired twice at the man on the bay mare, missing both times.