“Dash! You cover the boys working on my machine. Shoot Frost in the head if the sidewinder doubles back.” He gestured Dash closer, and added under his breath, “Don’t let Celere near my machine. Oh, by the way, I know your mother gave you that Colt. But I would take it kindly if you would allow my gunsmith to fix you up with a proper Browning.

“Texas Walt! You come with me!”

Bell jumped behind the steering wheel of Preston Whiteway’s yellow Rolls-Royce. Walt Hatfield piled in next to him with a couple of lever-action Winchesters, and they drove off the trestle and raced up the railroad tracks toward the foothills of the Coast Range.

After three miles of the grade steepening and scrub growth and clumps of low trees intruding on the grassland, they found the Thomas Flyer stopped in the middle of the tracks with two tires punctured by loose railroad spikes. Texas Walt spotted Frost’s trail, first from loose ballast where he had run down the railroad embankment, then from his trampling through the knee-high grass.

Bell covered the thickets and rock outcroppings ahead with a Winchester while Hatfield loped from a scuff in the sand to a bent blade of grass to a broken twig. Bell himself was an experienced tracker, but Texas Walt could read the ground like the Comanches who had raised him.

Above the hills, thunder muttered and lightning flickered inside the swelling storm clouds. The wind puffed cold in their faces, then hot.

A blue jay bounced up from a thicket of evergreen oaks a half mile ahead.

It was mighty long range for a rifle, but Bell snapped, “Down!”

A shot echoed off the hills. Walt crumpled beside him.

Chapter 40

40

BELL CUT TO THE RIGHT, seeking the shelter of a boulder. A .45-70 slug parted the air six inches from his cheek. Instead of diving for cover, he bounded past the boulder and into a narrow arroyo.

He raced silently up the dry creek bed, one eye ahead, the other guiding his boots around anything that would make noise. The arroyo veered more to the right—farther from Frost—even as it climbed the steepening slope. Bell put on speed. He ran flat out for a full mile, climbing all the distance. When he finally stopped to catch his breath, it was where a ledge would allow him to survey the ground he had put behind him. Slithering flat on his belly, he edged forward until he could see the back of the thicket from which Frost had fired.