His breath plumed in the frigid air. He risked a fleeting glance over the splintered sill of the shattered window. 50 yards out, hunkered behind a massive, frost-rimed granite boulder, were four men. They were heavily bundled in thick wolfskin coats and canvas dusters.
Their Winchester repeating rifles were leveled at the cabin. The gun smoke from their initial volley hung over the pristine snowdrifts like a pale shroud. "I'm giving you to the count of three, Hayes," Wyatt roared. His grating voice sliced through the biting winter wind, echoing off the valley walls.
He stepped marginally out from behind the rock, a hulking silhouette clutching a heavy Sharps buffalo rifle. A nasty scar jagged through his frozen, snow-flecked beard. "Send the Indian girl out with what belongs to Mr. Trent. Do that and maybe we let you live to see the spring thaw.
One." Caleb didn't wait for two. He swung his Winchester up, rested the hot barrel on the broken window frame, and fired blindly into the snowdrift mere inches from Wyatt's boots. The explosive crack of the rifle was deafening inside the tight confines of the cabin.
Wyatt cursed violently, ducking back into cover. Instantly, a torrential hail of lead rained down upon the homestead. Bullets chewed mercilessly into the cedar logs, sending lethal splinters of wood and chunks of frozen chinking flying across the room. The deafening roar of relentless gunfire choked the air, filling Caleb's lungs with a sharp metallic stench of sulfur and black powder.
"They are trying to lay down cover fire," Cora shouted over the chaotic din. She remained crouched behind the overturned oak table, her dark eyes darting toward the heavy back door. "They will try to flank us through the barn. Watch the rear," Caleb yelled, racking the lever of his Winchester.
A spent brass casing clattered onto the floorboards. He squinted through the thick acrid smoke. One of Trent's hired guns broke cover, sprinting desperately toward the small barn where Caleb kept his horses. Caleb tracked the running figure, exhaled smoothly, and squeezed the trigger.
The man dropped instantly, tumbling forward into a deep snowdrift, his rifle cartwheeling into the white powder. "Three left," Caleb shouted, but Wyatt was a hardened killer, a ruthless veteran of countless border skirmishes. Realizing a frontal assault across the snow was sheer suicide, he bellowed a new command. "Burn them out.
Get the pitch." Caleb's blood ran cold. If the dry cedar shakes of the roof caught fire, they would be roasted alive or gunned down as they fled the flames. A moment later, a second man sprinted from the dense pine tree line toward the blind side of the cabin, brandishing a blazing pitch pine torch.
Caleb swung his rifle, but the angle through the shattered window was impossible. Boom. The thunderous roar of the heavy Smith & Wesson Schofield erupted from the back of the cabin. Cora stood beside a narrow gap in the logs, her arm fully extended, the heavy revolver kicking violently upward in her grip.