Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) by William W. Johnstone Page B

splinters that cut at his face. The boom of the shotgun got drowned in his curses.
    Ace plucked a splinter from his cheek as he turned to the other ruffians. “There’s at least two of them in there.”
    “Then we’d better think up some way of getting them out or us in,” Ducky Yoder suggested.
    Ace shook his head. “We ain’t gonna do that, just the five of us. Hank, can you ride well enough to go round up the Joiner brothers an’ Wally Eckert?”
    Hank winced. “I reckon. Iffin I can reach my horse.”
    “Might oughtta find Jake Brock an’ Jose Suarez, too.”
    Ducky Yoder put in his two cents worth. “Jeez, that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, isn’t it?”
    Ace blinked. “Ya mean Jose?”
    “Naw. I mean Jake. He’s a hopeless drunk.”
    The trio laughed. Ducky helped Hank to his feet. “Go out the side door an’ cut through the corral. Your mount is at the water trough,” he told Hank.
    “We’ll lay down cover fire,” Ace offered.
    Hank hobbled away at the best speed possible under the circumstances. When he reached the double door to the corral, he swung it wide, ducked as low as the pain in his leg would allow, and made straight for the far side. Ace and his companions opened fire. Hank made it to the rump of his horse when Smoke Jensen drew a fine bead and let go with a round from his Winchester.
    Hank’s head exploded in a shower of blood, bone, and brain tissue. He went rubber-legged and fell in a pile of smoking horse manure. From beside him at the back door, Morgan Crosby let go with first one barrel, then the other. Double aught buckshot slashed the plank wall of the barn.
    “You bastard,” Ace shrieked. “You put two pellets in my left arm.”
    In answer, he got three fast rounds from a Winchester. This was going to be one long afternoon, Ace thought bitterly.
     
     
    Smoke Jensen shoved cartridges through the loading gate of his Winchester. He had seen movement in the corral and tracked the wounded thug to his horse. He had managed to finish him and get back to the semi-detached kitchen in time to give the others a nasty surprise when one of them shouted at Morgan Crosby. Now if that saddle trash out there would only do something else stupid, Smoke considered.
    He weighed the safety of their position and made a suggestion in the form of a question. “Morgan, don’t you think we’re a little exposed out here? Those clapboard walls are nowhere near as thick as those of the cabin.”
    Crosby pondered on it a while. “Yep. I suppose yer right. But we’ve still got us at least two in the barn. Which reminds me, if it’s only two, where’s the other pair?”
    Smoke had already gone into motion. “Out front, no doubt.”
    He reached the front room of the log structure moments later. Right in time, Smoke discovered, to watch the man Ace had called Pauli Hansel get brave.
     
     
    When no return fire had come from this side of the cabin, Pauli correctly deduced that no one was guarding it. A recent immigrant from Germany, a former Bramen dock waif turned killer, he had fled from the German police. It had been natural enough for him to throw in with the criminal element in New York. Ace Delevan had proven a good leader, and when things got too hot, Pauli had agreed to move west with the gang leader. So far it had been easy.
    There were fewer stores to rob, but the banks bulged with gold. And people out here were all so trusting. Pauli compared it to stealing from children. Only this time they had come up against someone a whole lot tougher than most residents of the frontier, and a whole lot meaner. From his vantage point, Pauli had seen what happened to Hank Graves. When the firing increased from the back of the building, it convinced Pauli that he could close in on the defenders from their blind side and finish it once and for all.
    He had not counted Smoke Jensen into his equation. Pauli Hansel had taken three long strides toward the building when he saw a slight flicker of