The breath came out of her as she felt like she had been kicked in the back by a mule. Coughing, she cringed, almost cried, and felt a great weight rise off her back.
“Stay down,” the voice whispered. Just lie here. We’ll be all right.”
It was Winfield Baker. She caught just a glimpse of him as he ran away, toward the nearest wagon, carrying that long rifle of his.
The air became alive with bullets. That dust—the dust she’d prayed would not return—swept upon them. It was a land of dust, of gun smoke, of screams, of horses. It was a land that must have been worse than Hell.
Annie felt her resolve leave her. She thought Here is where I die. Here is where we all die. At the Dead River.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Leaping off his horse, Linton grabbed his revolver and fell to the ground. “Take cover,” he shouted. “There must be two hundred of them red Navajo devils.” He scurried under the wagon, rolled behind the rear wheel, and laughed to himself as six of Don Marion Wilkes’s gunfighters—dressed like they were Navajos when every one of them was as white as Linton—rode toward the camp. It would be over in a few minutes, and the only thing he had to worry about was if that rancher Wilkes planned to double-cross him. Kill him with these dumb pilgrims.
Not that Linton thought that would happen. The old don needed a witness, someone who could say that Navajos started the attack. He grinned—yeah, Annie Homes, the pretty girl with the attitude—would make a perfect witness. With her ma and pa dead and scalped, well, hell, she just might lose that uppity attitude that made her think she was holier than thou, or at least, holier than Linton.
Which, of course, she was. But she wouldn’t be for long. Linton grinned again. If she troubled him, well, her hair was so black, it could pass for an Indian’s scalp, too.
They came, riding like hell, ready to do some fine butchering. He laid his revolver on the ground, just so none of those killers mistook Linton for some Arkansas hero.
The lead bunch, six men with repeating rifles, closed in. Others circled to the side. He watched those coming straight ahead. A hundred yards. Eighty. Sixty. Forty . . .
A fierce volley sounded behind him. Four men and two horses slammed hard into the ground, sending clouds of reddish dirt into the sky. One of the horses, a pinto, threw its rider hard, and Linton could tell by the way that dude hit that he wouldn’t be getting up again, not the way his head tilted. Poor soul was likely already burning in Hell.
The other man came to his knees, blood gushing from his nose and his split lips, sand and cactus spines covering his face. He weaved to his left, then to his right, then fell hard after a geyser of red exploded from the center of his chest. His horse got up, sniffed, and took off at a gallop toward the Painted Desert.
“What the hell,” Linton said, and rolled over. He heard the crash of musketry, then someone saying smartly, “Calmly. Fall back, Second Squad. First Squad, forward. Ready. Let them come. Remember, aim low. Steady men, steady. Fire at will.”
Gunfire erupted again, and Linton realized others on his left and his right were shouting. He started to crawl back from underneath the wagon, only to remember his revolver in the sand. He turned, snatched it, and looked again at the dead men lying in the dirt, soon obscured by more clouds of dust.
When Linton popped his head from underneath the wagon, he saw legs, legs of men, and the stocks of muskets of all kinds. Six men stood before him—no, six kids. Six boys with snot running out of their noses. They quickly, expertly reloaded their muzzle-loaders or breech-loading rifles.
“Fire at will,” a voice barked, and Linton turned as more long guns cracked, leaving white smoke rising above the open space between two wagons.
“Fall back,” the voice spoke sharply, “And reload. Come on, boys. Give them hell. Remember you’re from Arkansas!”
The man yelling, the commander of these kids, was that uppity all so high-and-mighty Walter Homes.
Linton climbed to his feet, looked around, saw more men, more muskets, more gun smoke. He heard volley after volley, and realized that these dumb hicks from western Arkansas were armed. Shooting like they were in some damned war. Hell, wasn’t that the preacher’s widow—the wife of the man whom Linton had led out to be murdered—commanding some boys, marching around, raising a spatula rather than a sword?
“Fire!” she commanded, whipping down the hand that held the spatula.
Rifles roared. Smoke rose.
“Fall back, boys,” she barked. “And reload!”
“Mistah Linton. . .”
He turned, saw Walter Homes a couple of yards before him. “If you have a long gun, you would do better with it, suh. If not, I suggest you stand ready in case any of those riders breech our lines.”
Linton blinked. Heard another crash of muskets and rifles. Heard the strangest, wildest, eeriest yell that ever reached his ears. More coyote than human, more monster than man.
Walter Homes leaned back his head and laughed. “By God, boys,” he told the teens. “Did you hear Mr. Stanton? That, children, is what a Rebel yell sounds like.”
“What do you think you’re doin’?” Linton heard himself asking.
Homes was busy at the moment, having one set of six boys step back to reload, while the others went forward to aim and fire whenever they damned well felt like it. The greenhorn spun around, eyes wild with excitement and fury. “What am I doin’, suh?” he yelled as the boys squeezed their triggers. “I’m doin’ what I was doin’ when I enlisted in the Confederate Army, suh. I am protectin’ my family, my home, my country.”
* * *
At the top of the small rise, Don Marion Wilkes lowered his binoculars, and sighed.
“Linton said they was nothin’ but a bunch of spud diggers,” said Duncan Regret, who sat in the saddle of his horse.
“Apparently, our friend Señor Linton underestimated them,” Wilkes said. “Bring them back in, my loyal friend. Leave about a half dozen to keep circling the wagon train, but for the love of God, tell those idiots to stay out of rifle range. Those spud diggers shoot like sharpshooters.”
“Arkansas,” Regret said. “Hunters, most of them.”
“Indeed.”
By the time Regret rode back, leaving six white bandits dressed up like Navajos, riding around the train but keeping a great distance, Don Marion Wilkes was grinning. “Southern gentlemen, I see. Let’s see how honorable they are. Indians generally carry off their dead. Send six men, one holding a white scarf tied atop his, ahem, war lance, and let us pick up our dead and wounded, and bring them back.”
“I ain’t sure the boys will go for that,” Regret said.
Wilkes’s eyes became narrow and evil. “They will go for it or they will be shot dead by you, my loyal segundo. We can’t let anyone discover that those Navajos are not Indians. See that my orders are carried out, Regret, or you will be holding the flag of truce yourself.”
* * *
“Capt’n Homes.”
Annie stopped, turned, and saw her father walking across the yard toward Betsy Stanton’s pa. She didn’t remember that much about the late war, but knew her dad had served in the Confederate Army. She always pictured him as the polite farmer, but now she had seen him as he must have been all those years ago. A hero. A leader of men. And now she knew he had been an officer. A captain.
You just never knew.
She had a job to do, too. She had to deliver water to Winfield Baker and those other teenage boys who had hunted in the hills, along the creek beds, and in the Ouachita Mountains back home. Now they had fired rifles at men. Men—savages—who were bent on killing them all.
They had turned them back, these boys, these old men, these gallant Arkansans. Yet there had been a cost. Bullets had hit some of the livestock. Hawg’s left earlobe had been shot off. Mrs. Randall had taken a ball through the meaty part of her arm.
The boys drank, thanked her, and Annie picked up the bucket and hurried across the compound to where her father stared through the o
pening.
“They carry a flag of truce,” she heard her father say. “They must want to carry away their dead, their wounded.”
“We could pick ’em off right easy, sir,” Hawg said.
“Yes, we could,” Captain Walter Homes said, “If we were savages. If we were not men, if we did not believe in God. Let them care for their dead, their injured. Maybe they will realize the fruitlessness of their assault and ride away. Let us continue our journey.”
“Do you think,” Mr. Preston said, “That they would let us bring in the reverend’s body?”
The captain’s head shook slightly.
“Even if we flew a white flag?”
“It’s too risky. The reverend is in a better place now. He watches over us. He would not want one of his flock to risk his life just to bring in his earthly remains.”
Turning, he smiled at his daughter. “They have water here, sweetheart.” He nodded to the north. “Take those some. That is where the heaviest assault was . . . this time. I must check on the others.” He stepped away, turned, and said, “But keep your head down. And if they attack again, stay with Mrs. Stanton. She is sick, and I fear in the confusion, she might be frightened out of her wits.” He winked. “Like the rest of us, especially me.”
She took the water to the northern point of camp, and felt revulsion filling her mouth when the first person to grab the ladle and drink was that evil man, that worthless guide, Linton. He was dirty and sweaty, but she smelled just his sweat and stink, not gun smoke. She figured, coward that he was, he had not even fired one shot. He had hidden underneath the wagon, gutless coward that he was.
* * *
He was right, of course. Don Marion Wilkes had never made a mistake. Oh, what had happened on this day was a bit of an inconvenience, not a mistake. They would still wipe out the Arkansas spud diggers, in due time.
The dead were loaded into the back of a wagon. Two men were badly wounded, but Wilkes took care of that by ordering their throats cut. That, he figured, would put some backbone into the gunfighters he had hired. No quarter for the enemy, and no quarter for anyone who got too hurt to cut down those homesteaders so that the Dead River flowed again . . . with blood.
“What do you think?” he asked Regret.
“They’re dug in pretty good. Being in that riverbed is to their advantage, unfortunately. Offers them more protection when we’re riding around.”
“I thought armies always wanted to occupy the high ground.”
Regret drank from a tequila bottle. “Ground ain’t that high, Don, sir.” He corked the bottle and pitched it to one of his men, a man wearing a black wig with his face and arms lathered with grease to make him look like a red savage. “Plus, those ol’ boys know how to shoot. My guess is every one of them old enough fought in the war. And the boys who were too young to have seen the elephant, they been shooting squirrels to put supper on their plates since they was knee high to a grasshopper.”
“So we can’t wipe them out playing cowboy and Indians?” Don Marion Wilkes frowned.
“Well, they ain’t goin’ nowhere. And they ain’t got water except for what’s in their wagons. But you ain’t got time for no siege.”
He sighed, shook his head, and looked at two of the white men dressed as Indians. “I guess we shall have to rely on our friend. Go fetch Matilda, boys.”
“Boss,” Regret said with caution. “That’ll be hard to explain to the army, if you use that thing. Navajos—hell, no injuns that I know of—ever used a cannon before.”
“We shall fire grapeshot,” Wilkes said, “Not iron balls or explosives. And when all the wagons are burning, there will be no sign that artillery was used.”
“That scalp hunter, Linton, might bet cut to pieces, too.”
“I know, but he would have been cut to pieces, anyway, once he had completed his service.”
“Then who will scalp the bodies?” Regret asked. “The scalps you need to plant in Navajo villages so you can get their land?”
“I am sure you or one of your men will sell your morals for five hundred dollars a scalp. Just a dozen or so bodies, a few children, more women. The rest of the dead we will burn in the wreckage of wagons. Is that satisfactory?”
“Reckon so,” Regret said.
Wilkes looked back at the two white men in Navajo disguise. “Bring back Matilda, boys. And do not tarry.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The mustangs turned skittish, nervous, as though they smelled something in the air, felt something. Matt McCulloch had been around horses long enough to trust most of them.
“Wolves?” Jed Breen called out.
“Maybe,” McCulloch answered, but he didn’t think so. Nor did he think the animals felt a change in the weather. Hell, this was Arizona Territory. The weather never changed this time of year. “Stay with them. Don’t let them run,” he yelled to Breen, Keegan, and Charlotte Platte. “Keep them here. I want to ride a ways and see what’s over that rise. That seems to be what’s spooking them.” He turned his black around, and it did a bit of a stutter step. Maybe the mustangs’ actions had pricked the gelding’s nerves. Maybe it heard or smelled or felt that same thing.
McCulloch got the animal under control and looked at the Comanche boy.
“Come with me,” he told the Indian.
The teenager grinned. “You bet,” he said in English.
They trotted off at first, just so the mustangs didn’t get eager to run, then rode past Otto Kruger on the wagon. Out of decency, McCulloch told the murderer, “Might be some trouble up ahead.”
“Might be, mein Bruder,” the ugly man said with an even uglier grin.
“Might be you won’t live to find out.” McCulloch spurred the black, and loped away with Wooden Arm, one arm still confined by that outrageous splint, keeping pace without losing his grip as his pony kept pace with McCulloch’s big animal.
* * *
Hans Kruger lowered the binoculars and turned toward Uncle Zach and Hank Benteen. “The big one and dummkopf red devil leave.”
“Yeah,” Benteen said.
The leader of the Benteen gang and his crazy old uncle slithered up to the top of the arroyo to look at the mustangs and the outfit. Turning to Uncle Zach, Benteen said, “That’d be the Ranger.”
“McCulloch.” Uncle Zach spit, wiped his mouth, and grinned. “That means that son-murderin’ coward’s pushin’ ’em fool ponies.”
“With the bounty hunter,” Benteen said. “Something’s spooked those mustangs. Bounty hunter won’t be able to shoot that long-killin’ buffler gun of his on a skittish hoss.” He frowned. “But if we go chargin’ in there, those horses is like to scatter in twenty-two-and-a-half directions.”
He sighed. “But this trail’s been a hard one, a hot one, a dusty one, and we ain’t likely to get a better chance. Get revenge on that wanna-be hangman and arsonist.”
“Have some fun with that gal they got, too,” Uncle Zach said with a lecherous chuckle.
Wetting the tip of his right pointer finger, Benteen raised his hand, then lowered it with a smile. “Wind’s comin’ from the west. We let that Ranger and injun ride a bit, likely they won’t hear our shots. If we hit ’em fast and quick, we can kill ’em before they have a chance to fight too much.”
“And maybe we can find some of ’em mustangs . . . after we done all that needs doin’ here,” Uncle Zach said. “Get our revenge and see what that gal’s like.”
“We might have to kill the gal with the others.”
“Or take her with us.”
Uncle Zach, Hank Benteen had always known, could be obsessed with one thing if that thing wore petticoats. He turned to the German. “You good with that plan?”
The Hun nodded.
“We ride in fast, kill the two men left behind. You get your brother. We’ll see what we have to do with the girl.”
“Goot plan,” the foreigner said.
“All right.” Benteen nodded to where they had tied up their horses. “Let�
�s tighten the cinches and get to revengin’.”
* * *
McCulloch reined up hard and turned to the Comanche boy. Wooden Arm’s face told the one-time Ranger that the kid had heard the same thing.
Gunfire. Like a war.
“Stay here,” McCulloch said as his horse twisted and squirmed and refused to obey bit and reins. The black was a good horse—hell, he wore the McCulloch brand, and that meant something—just acting squirrely because of the violence in the air. “Stay here,” he told the boy again.
McCulloch was already galloping away, but he heard Wooden Arm’s voice. “No.”
He looked back once, saw the teenager with a busted arm and a hard-charging pony riding right behind him. McCulloch knew he couldn’t do a thing about it. White men didn’t often win arguments with Comanches, no matter how young the warrior might be.
Gunfire had quieted by the time McCulloch and Wooden Arm had covered the last mile, slowing their horses to walk, looking in all directions. They found an arroyo that cut south, then turned back northwest, and entered it, moving with caution. Both horses sensed danger. McCulloch stopped his horse and turned to the teen. He considered what he was doing, then chuckled and reached behind him to unstrap one of the saddlebags. Everyone in Purgatory City, everyone in Texas, maybe every son of a gun in the Western United States would give him hell for this.
He found the old cap-and-ball-percussion Navy .36, which he had converted into a .38-caliber centerfire, checked the loads, then lowered the hammer, and extended the pistol to Wooden Arm.
McCulloch imagined Sean Keegan’s face and what he’d have to say about it. “Giving a red devil a revolver? Have ye lost ye blithering mind?”
The boy smiled, dropped the hackamore over his horse’s neck, felt the balance of the revolver, nodded with approval, and shoved the gun inside the top of his breechcloth. “We fight?” he asked in English.
Stand Up and Die Page 24