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Ambush
Ambush
Ambush
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Ambush

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The US Army and a brutal Apache chief prepare for an epic showdown in the New Mexico desert in this novel from a master storyteller of the West.

Ward Kinsman has done all he can to escape civilization, spending the summer in a desert mountain range, deep in Apache territory, sifting for gold and praying he never sees another settler again. After a month of backbreaking work, he sees a trail of dust in the distance, and knows a white man has come to find him . . . which means the Apache are right behind.
 
The Apache leader is Diablito, or the Little Devil, a warrior so vicious even his own men fear his rage. He’s clever and unpredictable, and he hates Kinsman. The US Army has Diablito in its sights, and they want Kinsman to lead them to him. But finding the Little Devil will mean putting Kinsman’s own neck on the line—and risking the life of the most beautiful woman in the territory.
 
Made into a 1950 MGM film starring Robert Taylor, this tense western adventure, considered one of the genre’s best cavalry stories, is a classic example of Luke Short’s fiction. From its daring lone-wolf hero to its sweeping desert landscapes, Ambush is the American West at its roughest, toughest, and most exciting.
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 18, 2016
ISBN9781504039772
Ambush
Author

Luke Short

Luke Short is the pen name of Frederick Dilley Glidden (1908–1975), the bestselling, award-winning author of over fifty classic western novels and hundreds of short stories. Renowned for their action-packed story lines, multidimensional characters, and vibrant dialogue, Glidden’s novels sold over thirty million copies. Ten of his novels, including Blood on the Moon, Coroner Creek, and Ramrod, were adapted for the screen. Glidden was the winner of a special Western Heritage Trustees Award and the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award from the Western Writers of America.   Born in Kewanee, Illinois, Glidden graduated in 1930 from the University of Missouri where he studied journalism.  After working for several newspapers, he became a trapper in Canada and, later, an archaeologist’s assistant in New Mexico. His first story, “Six-Gun Lawyer,” was published in Cowboy Stories magazine in 1935 under the name F. D. Glidden. At the suggestion of his publisher, he used the pseudonym Luke Short, not realizing it was the name of a real gunman and gambler who was a friend of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. In addition to his prolific writing career, Glidden worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He moved to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946, and became an active member of the Aspen Town Council, where he initiated the zoning laws that helped preserve the town.

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Rating: 3.73333334 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Easy to read predicable western.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ambush by Luke Short was originally published as a serialization in the Saturday Evening Post and ran from December 1948 to February 1949. This is an old time western, set on U.S. Army Fort in Arizona, the enemy are a band of renegade Apaches who have broken from the reservation under the leadership of a fierce war leader called Diablito. They had attacked a surveyor party and had taken a white woman as captive. I don’t know if this book was ever made into a movie, but I certainly pictured Randolph Scott as the lead character.Perhaps because it was stretched to fit the serial format, I found that it felt a little padded, it seemed to take a long time for the cavalry to actually leave the fort in pursuit of the Indians and there was a minor sub-plot that would have tightened the story had it been removed. Luke Short wrote many fine westerns, but I felt that Ambush was not the best example of how good he could be.

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Ambush - Luke Short

Chapter I

He had seen the smoke below an hour ago, a lifting pennant, gray against the mottled brass-bright desert. Because it came from a mesa top and not from the valley, it read to him and also to Diablito’s Apache lookouts on the mountain behind him, A white man just passed.

He had gone quickly into the tunnel, and packed his saddlebag with food and with the three pokes of coarse gold dust, his summer’s work. Along with the canteen he had been saving for just this emergency, he placed it near the mouth of the tunnel. His saddle and rifle he had lugged out the tunnel mouth, and by that time the faraway smoke was dispersed by the vaulting updrafts of the late afternoon’s furnace hot air.

Up and over the ridge behind him, his picketed horse lay in the shade of a piñon, waiting for nightfall and grazing. He had saddled him, tied him just short of the lip of the ridge, and returned for his saddlebag and canteen.

Now, with the thick piñon screening him from the dry boulder-strewn canyon below, he was hunkered down on his heels, rifle across his lap, a tall, dirty, ragged, and unshaven man, who occasionally scratched his knee through a rent in his trousers. Remembering the smoke and its import, he thought, Whoever they sent from the post will never make it to me. Even if he does, he’ll pull the whole swarm of them down on us both.

The edgy scolding of a jay down the stream-bed presently broke the late-afternoon silence. Softly, his glance still downstream, he turned his rifle over and levered a shell into the chamber with a big, large-knuckled hand, thinking, I wonder who I’ll see first—the messenger or the ’Pache?

The silence came again, and was broken only minutes later, when he heard the ring of a shod hoof on a rock. His upper lip—long and thin, in a tranquil, alert face—lifted in an expression of weary disgust.

Presently the horseman came into view, and Ward Kinsman, swearing softly, came erect from behind the piñon. In moving, he dislodged a pebble. As it rolled down the slope, the rider’s head tilted up; in the same movement he slipped out of the saddle on the far side of his horse, and, in still the same movement, his rifle came across the neck of his halted mount. Only his battered hat and a pair of frosty and faded gray eyes beneath thick roan eyebrows showed above the mane of his horse.

Ward stepped out from behind the tree, rifle dangling from his long arm, and came down the slope in a loose-limbed, long-stepping haste. The tail of his sweat-faded shirt was out. The horseman, seeing him, put up his rifle and came around the head of his horse. Ward stopped in front of him and, after a second’s bitter pause, said, You damned fool, Holly. You travel in open daylight and you don’t even bother to ride a barefoot horse. What does it take to scare you?

I’m scared now, Frank Holly said. He was an undersized man, shrunk with years and sun-blackened, and his cheekbones, barely visible under his short-cut ragged beard, were as cross-hatched with lines as leather. His glance barely touched Ward and shuttled to the near slope and then the far slope and then the back trail, before it settled again on Ward.

Why’d you come? Ward asked.

Major Brierly sent me for you, Holly said. Wondered if you’d come back and work as guide again. Seems some trouble is shapin’ up.

Holly looked closely at Ward, frankly gauging his temper. It lay deep below the surface, Holly saw, but it was in the hard set of the wide mouth and the muscles of his blunt beard-stubbled jaw; it burned bright and hot in the deepset amber eyes beneath the salt-rimmed chestnut eyebrows. It was, Holly decided, a mature man’s anger, controlled, fully diluted with disgust, but holding neither hurt nor condemnation.

So Holly asked, How about it? Will you come?

One sure thing, Ward answered grimly, I won’t stay here. Without waiting longer, he turned up the slope, his long legs driving into the climb. He’d already talked too long, he knew. Chances were that Holly, if he’d pushed, was only minutes ahead of the Apache lookout who’d signaled. And a half-dozen of Diablito’s band, reading the smoke, were already on their way down to investigate, patiently setting a trap.

He mounted his horse, and set him down the slope, and a hot resentment was in him. For a month now, he’d lived and prospected in the heart of this country, claimed by Diablito’s band, working under their noses, using the same waterholes that the band used. True, you couldn’t call it living; he hadn’t built a fire, hadn’t shot a gun, and hadn’t left even a moccasin track. He had faked enough bear tracks in this stretch of canyon for the Apaches to avoid it. His horse, unshod, had watered and grazed as any loose horse owned by the band. He had existed, hungry, thirsty, always alert, always careful—but he was alive. Up to now, he thought grimly.

Holly was still afoot when he reined in. Where to, Ward?

I don’t know. Get going.

Ward turned up the dry stream-bed now, and Holly mounted and dropped in behind him. The time for decision was close, he knew. As soon as the Apache trailing Holly came to the tunnel mouth, saw the new set of tracks, and read the story, he would call in the others for the kill. They would learn his identity soon enough from the gear he’d left behind, and after that hell would pop. Any Apache hated ridicule, and the fact that an enemy had lived among them for a month would gall them. But the fact that he, their personal enemy, had been the man would infuriate them. Yet, the thought of Diablito’s rage did not amuse him now. He looked at the sun and judged there would be another two hours of daylight. He must spend that desperately, staking everything on the reprieve of darkness.

Holly’s voice cut in on his thoughts. Ain’t you heading right at ’em?

So were you.

Bailey’s Peak, whose north slope they were climbing, was a vast, mashed-down cone whose base lay on New Mexico’s desert floor and whose summit was smothered with vaulting dark conifers. Between sand and pine, mile upon weary mile of waterless canyon maze leached out the mountain, giving reluctantly to altitude until, two thirds of the way up, a tougher rock took over to pinch the canyons tight and hold the soil for the trees. A city could be lost in any of a hundred canyons and the sum of the peak’s sprawling elephantine mass smothered an area the equivalent of two eastern counties. In the forest coolness near its summit was Diablito’s camp—the direction in which Ward was heading.

He rode alertly now, watching the scattered pine on each side of him, his rifle slacked across his saddle, not liking this. The clatter of Holly’s shod horse sawed at his nerves; each time the metal rang on the rock, he imagined the sound of it carrying to infinity.

The cracks of the distant twin gunshots behind them, when they finally came, were almost welcome. He heard Holly say softly, Oh-oh, and he reined sharply right, taking the slope of the canyon. Only when he was deep in the screening timber did he rein up and wait for the older man.

Ward held up his hand for silence and turned his head. His horse swung its head around slowly, ears pivoting forward, listening. Off in the timber, above and to the right, they heard the pounding of a horse running full tilt. The sound swelled in volume, passed them, and was lost below.

Wordlessly then, Ward wheeled his horse and headed west. Now that he had let Diablito’s men pull past him, he had gained, at the most, twenty minutes grace. With any luck, that would be enough.

They rode hard then, for fifteen minutes, making no attempt to cover their tracks in the scattered piñon and pine timber. Only when Ward came to long stretches of surface rock did he take to them, thinking grimly, With those shoes on Holly’s horse, they won’t even have to dismount to track us.

Later, when he paused to blow his horse, Holly pulled alongside him. They looked at each other in hostile silence, and Holly said uneasily, You know this country bettern’ me, Ward, but ain’t we headin’ for the Wall?

That’s right, Ward said curtly, and again put his horse in motion. Another pair of shots, far behind them, signaled the pursuit was on. In the next hour, if he could spend his advantage wisely, he would win his reprieve. For, as Holly had said, he was heading for the Wall, and once Diablito’s men were certain of that, they would be sure he was cornered.

His course turned more westerly now, and ahead of him the timber thinned, giving way to a long reach of broken upthrust granite. The sun was directly in his face, and as he picked his tortuous way through the rocks, he was occasionally in cool shadow.

He studied the tilt of the land then, and twice pulled off in a southerly direction, and finally, after the sun was full down, he came to the Wall.

Here he swung out of the saddle as Holly rode up to him, and now Holly hauled up and said dryly, It’s a long jump.

Some few yards behind Ward, the land fell away sheer; hundreds of feet below, the desert floor, sponging up the last light of day, lay in a vast smear of blue and gray and fawn, reaching far into Arizona.

Sit there, Ward jibed. Get an arrow in your back.

Holly swung down, saying, You ever get a horse down here?

Nobody has, Ward was slipping the bridle from his horse, watching the back trail.

Boxed yourself, hunh?

And you too, Ward said grimly. Now get your horse out of sight.

While Holly dismounted and led his horse behind one of the big granite thrusts, Ward chose his spot. It was a fairly large thicket of greasewood, and he found a stick and quickly beat the brush for snakes before he bellied down in it. Thumbing out a handful of cartridges, he laid them beside his gun and glanced over at Holly. The older man had chosen one of the granite upthrusts. Dusk was lowering now, and Ward lay still, carefully watching the back trail, considering this closely, considering behind that his own foolishness.

He had never made a particular secret around Fort Gamble of his whereabouts; in this instance, he had even questioned old man Hance and others at the sutler’s post about Rouf’s abandoned workings. He had got little information and lots of advice to stay clear of it unless he enjoyed dying the way Rouf died at the hands of Diablito’s band. His mistake, he knew, lay in asking quesions, in publicly betraying an interest. For Holly had remembered and told Major Briefly, and now Holly was here, pulling Diablito on them. I’ll learn sometime, he thought with a fierce disgust.

An ant crossed his hand, tickling the hair on his knuckles. He looked at it, and then lifted his glance and saw a faint movement in a branch of stunted cedar at the base of a rock beyond. He raised his rifle and shot, and saw nothing, and Holly called, Where?

Ward moved to the left, not answering him, smelling the close heat and the warm oily odor of the broken greasewood. Holly shot now. Ward watched a brown figure cut between two rocks in the dusk, the figure shadowy and swift and unharmed.

Ten more minutes, he thought quietly. They might try one rush before dark, he thought, but he doubted this. After dark, they would pull back, Apache fashion, and refuse to fight again until daylight. But they were sure of their quarry, backed against the cliff edge. Tomorrow, at first light, reinforced by more of the band, probably Diablito himself, they would attack. Ward smiled faintly, thinking of it. They’ll come like a runaway wagon, he thought.

Darkness slowly settled down, and there was a profound quiet, so complete that Ward could hear Holly scratching through his beard at his chin. The flight of a bird overhead was audible as it sailed into the warm updraft of air from the cliff and was carried aloft. There would be no shooting now, for cartridges were too precious to waste in useless boasting.

When it was full dark, Ward crawled out of the patch of greasewood, went over to his horse and took down his canteen and drank sparingly. He saw Holly approaching softly in the night, and he extended the canteen and said, Easy on it. They talked softly, out of sober respect for their trouble.

Holly drank and returned it, and squatted on his heels while Ward hooked the canteen to his belt.

Got a sling on your rifle? Ward asked then.

What for?

You’ll need both hands where you’re going.

Where am I?

Down the Wall.

There was an onrunning silence while Holly turned this over in his mind. You ever been down it here?

Up it.

There’s a difference.

Any kid who ever climbed a tree could tell you that, Ward said dryly. Cut a sling out of your scabbard.

What’s the difference between fightin’ it out up here and gettin’ caught afoot down there?

One’s later than the other.

Holly rose and moved off toward his horse and now Ward, standing silently, cast back in his memory. He had the right place, he was sure. Long ago, before Diablito first broke from the reservation to make the Peak his hideout, Ward had prospected below and above the Wall. In its nine-mile length, there was not a trail he had not used and did not remember, for the desert floor was waterless, and his water had come from up here. Short cuts were precious then, and this trail had been his own discovery, possible to climb, impossible to descend with a water keg. He doubted if Diablito’s men knew it, but he must take the chance.

Moving over to his horse, he removed the saddlebag. The jerky, which filled one side, he distributed in his pockets. The three pokes of dust he thoughtfully hefted, and then, untying the strings, he moved over to the closest rock and poured the contents in the crack between rock and dirt. He carelessly kicked dirt over it, knowing the Apaches would find it and leave it, since gold meant nothing to them. I’ll be back for that, he thought calmly, and then he moved back to his horse. Removing the saddle, he tied the reins to a low scrub mesquite.

He was doing the same for Holly’s horse when the old man appeared. Holly, rifle slung across his back in a crude leather sling, watched him a moment and observed sourly, Gift from the Army to Diablito.

Not the first one. Ward grunted, and moved quietly past him to the rim. He paused here long enough to tell Holly to stick close behind him until the trail began to pinch, after that, he would go ahead, and if all were clear, he would tap twice on the rock with his silver ring, which would mean to come ahead. Three taps meant Holly was to stay where he was.

Ward made two false starts before he gave Holly the signal, and then the descent, agonizingly slow, began. After that, it seemed only moments to Holly before he was poised on the sheer face of the cliff, with only a scant toehold and at times no hand hold on the sun-hot rock. The blessed darkness blotted out the gulf below him, although the wind, oven-hot and ceaseless, pushed up from below in steady pressure.

Cautiously, testing each foothold, Ward worked his way down, his mind clamped in patience. The trail crossed a stretch of scale now, that Ward could feel with his hands. Water had seeped in the cracks of the rock here and freezing, had loosened chunks of it. He crossed this stretch with utmost caution, and signaled Holly and warned him about it, and then went on, presently coming to another bay.

When Holly was beside him, and his breathing had quieted, Ward

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