Chapter 11 - The Phantom Outlaw of Fort Lowell
The answer didn't come from the brush; it came from the bell tower of the mission.
A single rifle shot cracked from the high belfry. The slug caught Jesse Cole in the shoulder, spinning him into the mud.
Silas Kane hadn't stayed at the adit. He had ridden the river trail on a fresh horse while Ethan and Nahimana were crawling through the bowels of the mountain. He was perched between the two bronze bells, fifty feet above the courtyard, using the heavy adobe parapet as a rifle rest.
"Scatter!" Ethan roared, diving toward the edge of the cemetery wall as a second shot tore up the clay three inches from his boot.
The mob broke like sheep before a wolf. The town men weren't soldiers; they were storekeepers and mule-skinners who had come for an easy hanging, not an Apache ambush from a church tower. They scrambled for the wagons, horses screaming as the teamsters lashed them into a run down the Tucson road.
Judge Crane fell behind the well, his ledger scattering sheets of official county paper across the dust like dry leaves.
Vogel didn't run. He drew a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson from his coat pocket and lunged at Nahimana, who was still standing in the open courtyard, her eyes fixed on the belfry.
Ethan fired from his hip.
The .44 bullet caught Vogel in the right knee. The storekeeper shrieked, his leg folding beneath him, and he crashed into the stone curb of the well, his revolver skittering into the dark water below.
"Miller!" Kane shouted from the tower, his voice distorted by the bronze bells. "You can't get out of this yard! I’ve got the road covered, the river covered, and the cavalry from Fort Lowell is forty minutes behind me! When they get here, you're the one holding the smoking iron!"
Nahimana didn't run for cover. She walked straight to the fallen Vogel, snatched the heavy key ring from his belt, and turned toward the low, heavy cedar door that led into the mission’s interior.
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"Ethan!" she called, her voice cutting through the panic. "The choir loft! There is a stair behind the altar!"
Ethan rose from behind the headstones, keeping low, and sprinted for the church entrance as Kane’s third bullet gouged a four-inch furrow out of the mission's arched lintel.
