Dorm picked up a noise to his left. The unmistakable sound of a stock sliding back, of a round being chambered. He drew a deep breath.

Someone was out there.

He had to take this slow. Not give any sign that he knew someone was there. He slowed down his horse and dropped back alongside Samul.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered to Samul.

The big man nodded faintly his hand inching almost imperceptively slowly towards the gun at his belt.

Ahead of them Nate lifted his head up. He’d heard it too. Dorm saw what he was going to do.

“Nate, No!”

The other mans head exploded in a spray of red and white, his gun not even halfway out of the holster.

Dorm kicked his horse in the flanks, spurring it forward and ducking low as he drew his pistol. Guns chattered to life the trees lighting up with the flashes of gunfire, the air tearing apart with bullets. He fired off two shots into the jungle hopefully putting someone’s head down.

It wasn’t Degens he knew that much. Degens were too much animals to use guns and they didn’t hide in the jungle. No if it was Degens Dorm would be fighting for his life up close instead of ducking bullets. No it was someone else.

Bullets were ripping into the Bandits, felling person and horse alike. Most of those who could were off their horses dashing into cover of firing wildly into the jungle. Dorm rode past one of Samul’s men slumped forward over the saddle, a gaping hole in his chest. One of the big fistmen, Dorm couldn’t tell whether it was Jon or Philip, was down and screaming his leg a bloody ruin.

Dorm jagged sideways on the reins as he caught glimpse of metal to his left. A hail of bullets ripped past his ear and he snapped off a shot at their source. A man cried out and dropped, but Dorm didn’t wait to see if he’d killed the man, leaping off his horse and pulling the six-shooter from his belt in one smooth movement. Staying mounted made him too much of a target, made him to vulnerable.

Beside him Pat was hunkered down behind the prone and bloody corpse o