Jessie nodded. "I would never have brought this many men if Jed and Kate hadn't ganged up on me and threatened to follow us." She shook her head. "A few good hands are all we really need."

"It's a lot like trying to move an army without anyone noticing,"

Vance said. "It's far more effective to send advance skirmishers to secure an area and then bring up the main body."

"I guess you've been in situations like this before," Jessie said, slowing Star to a walk. The sun would be up within minutes, and any advantage of surprise they might have would be lost.

"A few times. Usually I stayed with the battalion, but when heavy forward skirmishes were anticipated, I went with the men."

Jessie turned in the saddle and motioned for Charlie to join them.

"Tell four or five of the boys to wait here. The rest should work their way down into the valley, staying below the ridge line, so they can cut off any escape if the bastards decide to run. You, Vance, and I will go on up ahead so we can get a look over the rim of the valley. You can show us where you last saw them, and if we're lucky, they'll still be there."

"The boys won't take lightly to being left behind," Charlie observed conversationally.

"Maybe not. But I don't want to spook this bunch before we get a fix on their position."

Charlie nodded. "Makes sense, I guess. I'll tell them."

As he rode back to the group, Vance and Jessie trotted ahead. Just before they reached the top of the trail that bordered the valley below, Jessie slowed again. "You might want to think about staying back, too.

We'll be visible on this ridge now that the sun is up, and if it's the same bunch as before, they won't waste any time shooting at us."

"I didn't come all this way to miss the action." Vance shrugged and grimaced as pain shot through her left shoulder and chest. The gray morning air hung thick with mist, and her leather duster kept the moisture but not the cold from settling into the damaged tissues. "Is it your plan to kill these men?"

"Might have to." Jessie regarded her pensively. "Is that going to be a problem for you?"

Vance held Jessie's steady gaze. "It wouldn't be if I knew they were the men who ambushed you and Jed. Attempted murder and horse thievery are hanging offenses."

"But we don't know for sure," Jessie said, spurring Star up a small rise off to one side of the trail.

Vance guided her horse up beside her, and together, they surveyed the valley below. "I'm not suggesting a friendly parlay. But once we find them, we might want to wait a bit to see if they're actually stealing--"

The small puff of smoke appearing from a clump of rocks two hundred feet away, the sound of the shot, and Jessie's horse rearing seemed to happen all at once. Then Jessie was falling and Vance was diving after her, her saddlebag clutched in her hand. Vance tucked her chin and rolled over her right shoulder, tossing the bag in front of her and pulling her revolver as she came to a teeth-jarring halt in the loose stones next to Jessie. A boulder blocked her view of the spot from which the shot had come, which also meant they couldn't be seen.

Even if the shooters climbed up to their location, it would take them a few minutes.

"Jessie," Vance said urgently, a sick feeling clamping down on her throat. There was blood spatter on the ground, and Jessie had not moved since she'd landed. "Where are you hit?"

"Leg," Jessie said through gritted teeth, slowly turning onto her back and pushing upright against the largest rock with her right leg.

"Just winged my thigh, but I think Star might have been hit. Bastards.

I'll kill every one of them if they hurt my horse."

"I saw her bolt away. If she's hurt, it's not bad. Now let me see your leg." Vance jerked open the flap on her saddlebag and pulled out a trail knife. She slit Jessie's chaps and denim pants in the area of the bloody tear on the outside of her left thigh. Jessie winced but made no complaint. "It looks like it's skimmed you, but didn't lodge in the muscle or bone." Carefully, Vance palpated Jessie's thigh, pressing along the length of her femur and eliciting no increased pain or movement. "It's not broken."

"Just bind it up so we can climb up there and get a shot at these rustlers," Jessie said. "And don't tear my pants up too much while you're doing that, because Kate is going to be mad enough as it is."

"Just make sure you don't get any more holes in your clothes, and Kate will probably only take a few swats at you," Vance said as she withdrew a length of cotton from her bag. She folded the end and applied it to the slowly oozing wound. "Here. Hold this end so I can wrap it around and stop the bleeding."

A minute later, Jessie tested her leg. "Doesn't feel much worse than when one of my stallions kicks me. I can walk on it."

"Keep your damn head down," Vance said, her relief giving way to anger at whoever had shot at them. She turned at a sound behind her and saw Charlie and another man, Johnny probably, crab-walking up the slope toward them, guns drawn, faces grim. She pointed to the ridge. "The shooter was probably a lookout, hoping to scare us off.

The rest are probably down the other side, waiting to see if we'll keep coming." She looked to Jessie, who nodded agreement, then pointed Charlie and Johnny toward the right. "You two see if you can get over to that outcropping...there, and Jessie and I will work our way around this one here. Then we should have them in a crossfire down below us."

The two men glanced at Jessie.

"It's a good plan, boys. Let's do it."

The few minutes it took to reach the ridge felt like an hour to Vance as they cautiously darted from one outcropping to the next, half expecting gunfire from some quarter. She breathed a sigh of relief when she and Jessie reached the top without further shots being fired.

From where they crouched behind a cluster of barrel-sized rocks, they could just make out Charlie and Johnny in a similar position partway around the ridge overlooking the deep narrow valley below. Scanning the area, she could make out portions of the herd grazing on the short grass that bordered a tortuously winding river. It wasn't surprising that the rustlers had chosen this location. Fifty prime mustangs grazed in the valley below, mares watching over their still-wobbly-legged foals as they ambled innocently beneath a clear dawn sky. Vance had seen bucolic scenes like this before erupt into gunfire and death in the blink of an eye. While a small corner of her mind noted the beauty, all of her senses were focused on detecting any sign of the enemy. She sniffed the crisp, sharp air and smiled, inching closer to Jessie.

"Cigarette."

"Where?"

Vance squinted in the sunlight and caught a puff of white out of the corner of her eye, come and gone so quickly it might have been a mirage, but she knew it wasn't. "There. Halfway down and just to the right of that lone pine."

Without moving, Jessie stared and, after a few seconds, saw the telltale whiff of smoke. "That's one. How many more do you think?"

"Charlie said they'd seen four men yesterday, right?"

Jessie nodded.

"Then they're probably all still here."

"Damn fools if they think they can ride onto our land and ride out with our horses." Jessie shook her head, then glanced at Vance. "Killing a man doesn't come easy to me."

"I understand. It might not come to that."

"I guess we'll see," Jessie said, eyes narrowing as she watched a prong-horned antelope bolt from behind a clump of sagebrush and gracefully dance down the rocky slope. She pointed. "Over there."

Vance followed her direction in time to see sunlight glint on a gun barrel. Then the air exploded with gunfire, and she was shooting back into the clouds of dirt and rock chips being kicked up by the fusillade of bullets from Jessie and the hands. She had one clear shot when a man ran across an open space between two rock formations, but before she could fire he went down and did not move. From Jessie's grim expression, she knew it had been her bullet that stopped him.

"Two of them are running," Jessie shouted.

Vance peered around the rocks and saw two men well down the valley pulling whinnying, nervous horses from behind a stand of juniper. "Your men will pick them up farther down the valley."

"One more up here, then."

"Maybe. Maybe he already left." Vance had barely gotten the words out when she was knocked onto her back. It felt as if a giant fist had punched her in the shoulder, and she immediately felt the familiar fire in her chest and arm. "I guess not," she grunted, pressing her hand to her left shoulder. She blinked the smoke and sweat from her eyes and saw her left hand lying useless in her lap, the arm bones shattered, the crimson pool gathering on earth so drenched with blood it could hold no more. Milton sprawled beside her, his sightless eyes accusing her.

The sound of a thousand marching men bore down upon her, and for just an instant, she welcomed death.

"Don't think about going anywhere," Jessie said sharply as she shielded Vance with her body. "Mae will have my hide and then some."

Mae. Mae will be angry. Worse, Mae will be hurt. Vance took a deep breath and moved her right hand slowly over her shoulder and down the upper portion of her amputated arm. "I don't think it got much of me."

"Let me just get a look."

"Hand me my gun," Vance said, biting back the pain. "Dropped it."

"Here." Jessie put the revolver in Vance's surprisingly steady hand, then signaled for Charlie and Johnny to fire into the valley to give them some cover. She knelt beside Vance, shoved the duster aside, and ripped open her shirt. "Got a bit of a hole just above your collarbone.