by A. W. Hart
He turned to his sister.
“Sara, I have never begged you once in our lives. I am begging now. Voluntarily give John your guns and Bowie knife and step into a cell. I don’t want you there in Wickenburg. Worrying about you will mess up my concentration. And if you promise you will stay here, the cell will guarantee you won’t change your mind.”
“George Washington Bass, have you completely lost every speck of sense in your thick head? I’d rather fall beside you shooting than hear about your death alone and have to remember not backing your play for the rest of my life. We’re pards. We are more than pards. And you need my guns. I might pull a number to throw them off balance enough for us to bring down a few more gun thugs. I’ve been thinking about a trick,” she added.
“I have to wire Mayor Coggins and warn him what will happen in his town at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and I have to send a wire over to Fort Whipple and let Hickok know as a courtesy. I don’t want him all hot and bothered and coming for me with those Navies of his. And he would,” John said.
“Do what you have to. I wish you wouldn’t wire Wild Bill, though. He hurt himself coming here to help us. He and Holmes have history from the war. I fear he’d get on a horse and try to ride to Wickenburg and help. I think the trip would kill him before any bullet could.”
“I guess you two have to hit the trail west. I’ll think about your request on Wild Bill. I don’t have no choice on Mayor Coggins, though. I have to wire him, and you know I do, Reno and Sara.” Both sadly nodded, shook his hand, and headed to the street. Reno turned and went back in for a minute as Sara mounted.
“John, if this goes real bad, you take Thunder. He’s in the livery with some of our gear. You can have both, okay?” Reno whispered, “And look after Apache? He’s a great dog.”
“Reno, I—”
The bounty hunter held up his hand, silencing his friend. He turned and mounted Jack. They checked out of the hotel and put minimal gear in their saddlebags. It was a seven-hour ride to Wickenburg. They would camp in a hidden location both remembered, then break camp and ride into town around seven.
Deputy John Hite did not rethink or hesitate, after what he worried had been a final goodbye. He did what he thought was the best thing. He immediately sent two telegrams advising one mayor and one legend of what was getting ready to happen in Wickenburg, Arizona Territory. He truly hoped he would not soon have a legacy mule named Thunder and a black dog named Apache.
Sara and Reno rode all night. They set up a cold camp in a secluded spot in a bunch of cottonwoods. The horses were hobbled closely. They chewed on jerky and had canteen water for dinner. When they were close, they took the time to check their guns.
They looked at the percussion caps on the nipples of their Colt Navies. All were firmly set. The 1866 Winchester Yellow Boy carbines were fully loaded, with their fifteen round tubular magazines full and one in the chamber. Hammers were set on half-cock. Usually, there was no need for the safety cock since they rode with the rifle chambers empty. Reno passed the four-shot derringer to Sara for additional backup.
They discussed the probability of having a larger group of adversaries at one time than ever before. Reno’s former guns, the two .44 Remingtons, were loaded, as were Sara’s Remington .36s. Each placed their pair of Remington revolvers out of sight under their jackets, tucked into the backs of their gun belts.
The cap-and-ball revolvers had a feature not carried over to successive cartridge models. The firing pin on the hammer could be placed in a notch between loaded chambers to prevent resting on a live cap. This allowed carrying all six chambers loaded. Both had access to twenty-four serious-caliber shots before picking up their rifles and adding sixteen rounds each to the game.
They planned to get into Wickenburg just before dawn broke and stay out of sight.
“I reckon Holmes is already there, don’t you?” Sara asked.
“I ‘spect he is. Probably getting up from a feather bed and thinking about coffee and some ham and eggs,” Reno replied as he handed his sister a piece of beef jerky.
“You know what’s funny, Reno?” she asked.
Without waiting for a response, she answered her own question.
“He is a smart, successful businessman. Sally told me I was the only girl kidnapped. The rest came from bad homes or marriages by their own choice. I guess it beat being a whore like Augusta had to be for a while. They dance around semi-naked in a totally protected environment, nobody abuses them, and they are fed and clothed. I don’t believe any of them would have left with us if we’d begged them. They are very content with their lives with him.
“The only problem with Holmes seems to be his need to kill a woman he’s seeing. It’s like he is punishing somebody we don’t know about, Reno. You know what else is funny, Reno? Dona Felicia. The woman who runs the show. She has a lot of sway over Holmes, like she is his mother or something.”
“I don’t doubt it’s all true. Just don’t develop a soft spot for him today. Today he is another Black Bob Hobbs to us. He’s one of the Devil’s Horde. He has to die to keep us from dying.”
They could see the town of Wickenburg looming on the horizon.
Sara guided Grace over to Jack’s side and reached out and took her brother’s hand.
“Reno, no matter how this goes down, just remember nobody will ever love you as much as I do.”
He squeezed her hand.
“I love you too, Sara. I just wish you’d turn and ride back to Prescott. If I go down, I don’t want you to see me die,” Reno said.
“You won’t die. I feel it in my bones. And I won’t turn around. We are in this for better or worse. If you were to go down, I’d go down, but only after killing the sumbitch who shot you. But none of it is going to happen. I have been too happy to let this life slip away. A lot of people are going to die this morning, but none of them are going to be named Bass. You’ll see.”
They circled around the town and entered from a side street. It had a livery stable, and they put up their two horses. They took the Winchester carbines from the scabbards and put a box of cartridges each in their coat pockets for reloads.
The town was dead. Usually, some people were moving around, wagons coming in and such. Not today. It was like nobody was home in Wickenburg.
There was a small boarding house facing a side street on the corner with Frontier. They sat on the porch in rockers turned to have a view of the street where they would be busy in an hour. Reno and Sara sat with their rifles across their laps. An eerie calm had settled on both. They were able to rest from the ride from Prescott. Relaxing was out of the question. Maybe later.
The funny thing was, the sun was up, and the streets were still dead. Had Deputy John Hite’s telegram to Mayor Coggins caused him to alert everybody to stay off the streets? Couldn’t be the whole town was lazy today, and all had slept in.
Sara and Reno studied the sun. It would not favor either side. Nobody had to look directly into it.
Reno looked at his father’s pocket watch. It was ten to eight—time to be present and accounted for. He nodded at his sister. She mouthed, “I love you,” he nodded again, and they both got up.
They turned left and walked the fifty feet to Frontier. Being at the end, they turned right and began to walk slowly up the street.
“Transfer your Winchester to your shootin’ hand. When we see him and stop, drop it so you can grab it and bring it into action with the proper hand. I’ll do the same. Hopefully, they will all be dead before we need long guns,” Reno said.
Sara heard Reno say, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death,” then they saw them.
Holmes was in the middle in a black suit. He had on a silk brocade vest and a black hat. His boots were highly shined.
There was a Mexican on either side of him. Both wore large sombreros and embroidered short jackets. Two more men were on either side of each of the Mexicans.
“Seven to two. We’ve had worse, Sara,” Reno said in a low
voice.
“We can do this, Brother. We can,” she said.
They stopped forty feet apart. The three men on either side of Holmes spread apart.
Sara and Reno heard a horse gallop up on the street perpendicular to them. They could not take their focus off the men in front of them.
“I will watch Holmes, Sara. Take a quick glance and see if he’s a threat.”
She eased her head to the side.
“Reno. Did you pray to God for an angel to come down from heaven to help us?”
“I sure did.”
“Your prayer was answered.”
Reno, Holmes, and the six men with Holmes all had their eyes locked ahead. Nobody could see the man dismounting on the side street.
“Well, Basses. I see you accepted my invitation to come and play. Let me introduce the gentlemen on either side of me. On my right is Señor Tomas Martinez. On my left is Señor Jaime O’Hanlon. They are the two deadliest shootists in all of Mexico. Except for me, of course. I will not introduce the others. You won’t live long enough to make their acquaintance anyway,” Holmes said as if introducing a new show.
“While we are introducing,” another voice said from the side, “my name is James Butler Hickok, but you can call me Wild Bill.”
The tall man in buckskins walked stiffly up to the Basses. On the cool morning, he had sweat dripping down his face. He was shaky, but he was still one of the most dangerous men who’d ever lived. His coat was open. He had a red sash around his waist. Under it, but not impeded by it, were two holstered Colt Navies, walnut butts forward.
He shook his arms, loosening them.
“Well, James. It’s been a long time since we first did this. I’m glad you came to the dance,” Holmes said.
Sara reached up and knocked her black hat off into the street. She shook her long strawberry-blonde hair loose. It glistened in the sun on her shoulders.
She opened her coat.
Neither Reno nor Wild Bill could see what the men across could.
A little bit of La Pelirroja had returned. Her shirt was wide open, and her flesh was as white as the snow on a mountaintop.
She blew a kiss at Martinez, and he awkwardly grabbed for his gun. Sara started Holmes’s dance, and it proceeded like it was in slow motion for all the participants. She dropped Martinez.
Holmes saw his man move and began his draw.
Before Wild Bill cleared leather, Reno drew and fired at Holmes. He hit him in the chest, turned to O’Hanlon, and fired as the Irish-Mexican did. O’Hanlon, stunned for the crucial second by Sara’s bosom, missed. Reno did not.
Wild Bill saw his old enemy was hit. Hit hard.
Holmes stood there, gun still in his hand. He had a very confused look on his face. He looked up as a virtual war was going on in the street and locked eyes with Wild Bill Hickok. Wild Bill smiled at him, raised his left Navy, and with a flick of his left thumb and press of his left trigger finger, gave Holmes a one-way ticket straight to hell. He then turned his attention to what was going on around him—all of this in less than a second.
Sara, Reno, and Wild Bill were all firing both guns.
The Basses dropped the empty Colts and went for their Remingtons. Reno tossed one of his to Wild Bill, who caught it in mid-air and fired as soon as it hit his palm.
One of the unnamed fighters shot Sara. It hit her somewhere around the hip, and she uttered a quiet noise of pain and folded. Reno saw it and shot the man in the shoulder with his last bullet. He pulled the Bowie and rushed the man, totally disregarding the bullets flying in both directions around him. He screamed the Reno Bass version of a war cry, sounding more like a Comanche war chief or a Highlander charging the English than a Scripture-quoting bounty hunter. It was primal and scary.
They closed, and both went down in the dust. A massive blade flashed in the sun and landed with an unmistakable butcher-shop wet thud. Reno stood, covered with blood, and looked for somebody else to kill.
But Wild Bill had punched the dance cards of everyone else at Holmes’s little fait de dou.
Reno ran back to his sister, pulled the jacket over her bare torso, and buttoned it.
He looked at her hip and used the Bowie to cut away her pants. The bullet had creased her. She would have a scar on that snow-white hip, but no permanent injury, he thought. Reno took out his kerchief, padded it, and pressed it down to stop the bleeding.
All of a sudden, a rifle shot rang out and hit the bell on the church in the middle of the street. It clanged loudly.
Holmes had a backup plan in case the gunfight did not go his way.
Tactics.
Classic military tactics.
A pincer movement.
Hearing the pre-planned alarm, a group of eight to ten horsemen—nobody was sure until it was all over—galloped toward the three living people in the wide dirt street. Another group of a similar number rode at a gallop toward them from a connecting street. They were attacking from both sides.
They were firing their revolvers as they rode.
Reno and Wild Bill each grabbed a Winchester from the dirt and began to return fire. Reno knelt in front of Sara to protect her as much as possible. Wild Bill just stood and dispensed death with every shot.
But then there was a loud crack. It sounded like a buffalo-killing Sharps Big-50. A rider was bowled off his horse and run over by the horseman behind.
The big fifty-caliber Sharps was joined by a ten-gauge shotgun, a variety of Henrys, Spencer rifles, revolvers, Army muskets, and anything else the citizens of Wickenburg could stuff powder and balls into.
Eighteen additional men, and unfortunately, five horses, lay dead on the street within minutes. No citizens, bounty hunters, or legendary scouts were harmed in the melee.
Mayor Coggins stepped out of a store, his Sharps at the ready.
“Don’t mess with Americans on their home ground,” he said. “My little hastily assembled militia are all veterans. From both damn sides. But today and forevermore, they are ‘Mericans.”
Reno could have hugged him, but he had Sara on the ground, hugging his left knee and trying to prop up against his leg. His right arm was around Wild Bill Hickok, who was leaning against him so he wouldn’t fall over from weakness and exhaustion.
“Mayor, I think we need a doctor. Or two. And a passel of undertakers. Seems like we got twenty-five or so dead bodies,” Reno said.
“Yup. Looks like Chickamauga,” the mayor said, blowing smoke off the half-inch-wide muzzle of his buffalo gun. “Just wish my two boys had been here to see it. But they are still watching you-know-who on the way to you-know-where.” He winked.
“About the doctor?” Reno reminded. “I’m not sure I can hold my sister and my friend up too much longer without falling on top of them.”
The doctor had a bed in his surgery. Reno refused to leave Sara there after her wound had been stitched and bandaged. She asked Wild Bill for some of his arrow-in-the butt salve, but he had forgotten it in his haste to get to Wickenburg.
Hickok took the bed in the surgery, and Sara limped on Reno’s arm to the hotel.
“So, at least this time, you get to lay on your right side instead of your stomach,” Reno noted.
“I want some of Wild Bill’s salve and for you to put it on like you did my arrow wound. It healed it right up,” Sara intoned to Reno. “And I think I might be able to lay on my back if I kinda favor the left side.”
“I will try to find you some sort of salve. I wish Apache was here to guard you, but I was afraid to bring him. He was safer with John.” She knew his real reason and did not say anything.
“I guess I know what your secret plan was. I thought about fussing at you, but it was pretty effective. You bought me enough time to plug Holmes before he could kill James. Our friend is off his feed. He shot straight and was deadly, but Holmes was already ahead of him on the draw when I killed him,” Reno said, thinking back.
“You really are faster than Wild Bill Hickok, Reno. If you being faster g
ets out, every little gunsel so stupid he wears his union suit with the crapper flap in front will come after you.”
“If I’m faster than James, it’s only on his worst day. He almost died just getting out of bed at the infirmary and riding all night. He wasn’t much behind us, Sara.”
“Reno, you are faster. We don’t need you to have the reputation it would cause.”
“I guess your reputation as the Beautiful Angel of Death soared up into the stars today. Both the beautiful and the death parts,” Reno said.
“You couldn’t see me. About everybody close enough for a good look is dead now.”
“Who do you think buttoned your shirt back up when you were laying in the street, Señorita Pelirroja?” Reno asked.
“It would have been more dramatic if I’d had the red wig, wouldn’t it?” she asked.
“Well, it was dramatic enough to save our bacon.”
She smiled.
“See, my freeness has benefits,” she said.
“Is ‘freeness’ even a word?” he asked.
“George Washington Bass, you know exactly what I mean. And if ‘freeness’ isn’t a word, it ought to be.”
“I guess it does have benefits, Sara. It makes you happy,” he said. ”And nothing else really matters to me. I’ve reloaded the guns. Take your Navies, and I’ll check on Grace and Jack and see if I can find you some more salve. I will also check on James.”
“Be safe out there. Holmes rose from the grave with one big surprise. He may have another hidden away, Reno.”
He reached over and lightly swept the hair out of her eyes, smiled, and walked out. She knew, as tough and quick on the draw as she was, she always had her Protector. And he was invincible.
The general mercantile did not have any of the right salve, so he visited the doctor’s office. The doctor had a brass can of lavender-based ointment with a screw top. Reno recognized the can as one made for holding gun grease and leftover bacon grease.