Funeral By The Sea by George G. Gilman

of the man who was such an expert rifle shot did not matter. Hal Delroy and his men were a known and very real threat. And if he just continued to lay sprawled out in the bush, a hand fisted around a shotgun with both barrels already discharged, he was living on borrowed time.
    He moved his limbs tentatively, young face crinkling with a grimace of pain. But none of it felt sharp enough to signal broken bone.
    He rolled on to his side and eased his knees up to his belly. Saw his dislodged hat and reached a hand toward it. Heard the thud of many horses at the gallop beyond the slab of rock some hundred and fifty yards down the slope.
    Then heard the crack of a rifle. And snatched his hand, clutched to the hat brim, back to his side, as the bullet snagged through the brush and became buried in the dirt beneath. Just a fraction of an inch from where the hat had rested.
    A cackle of laughter came from out of the trees on the other side of the ravine to where Barnaby Gold lay, temporarily in the cover of the overturned wagon.
    ‘Get on your feet, stud! With your hands raised way up above your head! Because you ain’t got no chance at all of...’
    His voice trailed away, then he vented a scream, which competed with the thunder of galloping hooves and then for an instant with the familiar crack of another rifle shot.
    Gold risked raising himself up on to his knees to look across the underside of the wrecked wagon. In time to see the man on the far side of the ravine crash down through the foliage of the tree in which he had been stationed.
    Then a fast volley of rifle fire drew the gaze of his pain-filled green eyes to the high ground at one side of the ravine’s narrow entrance. Where a man, still in dark silhouette, stood on the skyline beside his horse. Aiming a repeater rifle from his shoulder and directing fire down the slope of the trail.
    The stream of bullets cracked through the air high and wide of where Gold knelt. And he wrenched his head around to locate the target - saw the billowing cloud of dust raised by abruptly halted horses and men leaping to the ground.
    With only seconds to go before the man providing the covering fire emptied his gun, Gold had no time to test if his hurting legs would bear his weight. And he did not even try to use the Murcott as a crutch in staggering to his feet. Then turned, almost fell, and forced himself to start for the trees on the ravine side, moving at a fast and clumsy walk - certain that if he tried to run the brush would trip him and send him pitching on to his face again.
    The fusillade of rifle fire came to a sudden end while he was still in the open and in full view of the cursing men at the foot of the ravine.
    He glanced in the other direction and was in time to see the lone rifleman back out of sight, his horse following him.
    And when he swung his gaze toward his pursuers not one was to be seen. Just snorting and ground-scraping horses, their riders having scrambled into cover.
    Only the shotgun-blasted Steve and, further up the trail, the man with no lower legs, were sprawled out inert in the morning sunlight.
    Gold did not pause in his painful progress up the brush-covered slope as he made this fast survey of the situation. And slammed into a pine trunk through not looking where he was going.
    He bounced off it and went down on to his back. An instant before a burst of rifle fire from below peppered the bark with bullets.
    This time there was no temptation to give in to his mental and physical demands for respite.
    The trio of sentries in the ravine were all dead and Hal Delroy and his men were concentrated down at the lower end of the slope.
    The marksman at the top end might or might not give him further help for whatever reason. But as he rolled over on to his belly and turned to crawl through the brush and into the high timber, Gold decided to discount the mystery man for now. He was no longer out in the open and no more of Delroy’s men stood between him and the way