El Lazo - The Clint Ryan Series

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  Ramón and Inocente were angry at themselves. They had ridden right into the Yokuts trap. Always before, Yokuts parties had hit and run, but their muskets had changed all that. Now three good men lay in the dust, and two more carried lead balls, one in his leg and the other in a shoulder. Five of twenty were out of the fight. And how many more if they could not run down their stock? Odds were, most of the horses were halfway back to Rancho del Robles Viejos, or what was left of it.

  “Should we try to work our way up into the rocks?” Ramón asked, thinking aloud.

  “I think we should wait until dark. We are at serious disadvantage with them holding the high ground.”

  “But you will ride on with me?” Ramón asked.

  “I told you I would, amigo. Unlike your friend, the Anglo, I will never turn from a fight. I ride for you, and for Don Estoban and Juana.”

  Rather than argue Clint’s mettle, Ramón remained silent. The more men he had with him, the more Yokuts blood he could shed. He settled down against a rock with his back to the Yokuts’ position and rolled a smoke. Far across the shallow canyon from where they waited, Ramón spotted three of their horses grazing among a stand of digger pine saplings. He carefully plotted the fastest route to them.

  Shadows became one, and only the mountaintops remained bathed in setting sunlight when they heard one the other vaqueros call, “They have moved out.”

  “Follow me,” Ramón said, taking off at a run for the place the horses had stood.

  Inocente ran along behind for half a mile until they reached the saplings; then they slowed to a chest-heaving walk and puffed along until they spotted the horses. Ramón’s and Inocente’s well-trained animals were among the five they found. They quickly mounted and headed back.

  By the time they returned to the spot where they had been pinned down, two of the other vaqueros waited with their horses, but the rest had not been found. They left three of the animals behind, instructing the two vaqueros to stay behind and get the two wounded men to Don Nicholas Den, who, with three years of medical school, doubled as the town doctor.

  With Inocente following, Ramón urged his horse up into the narrow trail leading into the rocks where the Yokuts braves had waited to rain down their deadly fire.

  Worried that they might be lured into another trap, he carefully picked his trail for the first few hundred yards. But there was no sign of the heathen, just the clear trail of eight or ten horses over the earlier muddled trail of one hundred.