“Let’s see who we’d have to fight first,” McCulloch said, and they rode through the dry wash until it started to spread out into the desert. Go farther, and someone might see them.
* * *
“What do you think?” Killed A Skunk asked.
Lost in thought, Broken Buffalo Horn sat quietly in the Comanche saddle on his horse as the wind blew his braids. His horse stood still as though asleep. Killed A Skunk’s pinto, on the other hand, seemed nervous or suspicious. Or maybe it just wanted to feel the wind, pound its hooves, and run like Comanche ponies were born to run.
“Should we smoke?” Lost His Thumb asked. His horse also felt something or smelled something in this strange, barren desert country of the Navajos. He knew they could not smoke. They were too close, and there was no time to fill a pipe with tobacco and make the correct offerings.
“We do not smoke,” the medicine man said. “We do not talk. We do not think. It is time to act. To be . . . Comanches.”
* * *
McCullough and Wooden Arm tied their horses to a clump of creosote, and crawled up the arroyo’s edge.
“What the hell?” McCulloch whispered then cursed himself for saying anything out loud. Whispers could be heard the same as gunshots. He studied the scene. A fair-sized wagon train had decided to fort up in the riverbed.
Dead River. He knew where he was. The hair on the back of his neck suddenly bristled. A few Indians—Navajos by the looks of them—rode in a circle around the besieged train. Off to the north, he saw what appeared to be more Indians on both sides of a slight knoll.
He pieced it all together. The Indians had attacked, but whoever had been leading that train—the very same wagon train that had stupidly left the stagecoach road—had some brains about him or had been incredibly lucky.
On the other hand, when was the last time Navajos had gone on the warpath?
No, that didn’t make a lick of sense.
McCulloch had to figure something else out. Like what the hell he was supposed to do. Save some damned fool greenhorns. Him, with a herd of wild mustangs—and some saddle-broke animals that some rustlers had bequeathed them—and two prisoners, even if he did think kindly for the woman. Against a bunch of Indians.
He caught Wooden Arm’s gesture. The boy was too smart to say anything, so once McCulloch looked at him, he pointed to the nearest Navajo circling the wagons, and signed, He no Indian.
McCulloch looked back, followed the rider, then looked at the one a few hundred yards behind that one.
That made sense. White men, traitorous white renegades, had painted themselves up like Navajos and ambushed this train. McCulloch felt his blood rising, practically boiling. He pointed below and dropped down without making a sound. Wooden Arm made it to the wash’s bottom, his face confused.
When McCulloch grabbed the reins to his black, the boy stepped up, and whispered in English, “We no fight?”
“Oh, we fight all right,” McCulloch said, “But we fight my way.” He swung into the saddle, waited for Wooden Arm to climb onto the pinto’s back, and then they eased their horses back in an easterly direction. Back to Breen, Keegan, Otto Kruger, Charlotte Platte, and some cantankerous horses bound for Fort Wilmont.
* * *
They had loaded their guns. Tightened their cinches. Emptied the flask of Uncle Zach’s. Hank Benteen grabbed the reins, put his left foot in the stirrup, and climbed into the saddle. He swung his other boot into the stirrup, then drew his revolver.
“You know what you’re doin’, right?” he asked the Hun.
“Ja,” the Kruger outlaw said. “I ride to vagon. Get mein Bruder, vait for you. Kill anyone trying to escape.”
“You got it.” Benteen spit and whispered urgently to the man behind the bush. “Damn it, Uncle Zach. Will you finish your business so we can get on with this before that Ranger gets back?”
The old contrarian stepped into the wash, buttoning his britches and spitting out tobacco juice. He looked up. “You wait till you ain’t no young whippersnapper no mo’, nephew.” He started wiping his hands on the fronts of his trouser legs. “You’ll learn that—”
He stopped talking, suddenly in shock, and looked down at the obsidian point sticking out of his shirt, just below the last rib.
He put his hands beneath the point as though trying to catch the blood spilling out of his body and staining his shirt. Benteen heard the second arrow as it struck Uncle Zach Lovely in the back and knocked him to his knees, spinning him around a bit so that the third arrow ripped through his throat. His hands flew up to grab the front and back of the arrow, blood coming out of his throat and mouth in torrents.
The first Indian appeared, screaming and waving a hatchet.
“Get the hell out of here!” Hank Benteen screamed, spurring his horse and climbing out of the wash as an arrow ripped so close to his neck he would have sworn he felt the tickle of the feather on the arrow’s shaft.
Hans Kruger needed no encouragement. He whipped the reins against his horse like he had been born on horseback, that he had been born a Westerner, that he had ridden for the Pony Express. He rode like hell to save his life. He rode even faster than Hank Benteen.
Both men screamed.
Three Indians followed them, yelling louder.
All of them raced their horses straight for a bunch of wild mustangs being herded by two men and a woman on horseback, following a slow-moving covered wagon driven by a man wearing chains.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
He rubbed his gloved hand over the short iron barrel of the twelve-pounder, and grinned. There were few things better, Don Marion Wilkes thought, than an 1841 mountain howitzer. Five hundred pounds of beauty on two wheels, pulled by horse, mule, sometimes even men. Oh, how well mountain howitzers had served him back in the war against Mexico. He wondered if old Zachary Taylor had truly believed him when he’d said that this particular weapon had been lost in the campaign at Burro del Vidaurri.
Wilkes grinned. “‘Shot or projectile,’ Captain Dickerson, my commanding officer said. He never thought we could use grapeshot in such a weapon, but I showed him. Just like I showed all those damned greasers . . . even when they came out of that church waving their white shirts and begging for mercy.” He nodded at Duncan Regret. “You, my segundo, will now show those Arkansas dogs the feel of iron.” He laughed, mounted his horse, and laughed again. “I shall watch from my perch on that mountain.” He pointed to the small knoll that no one, even in the flattest part of the continent, would have called a hill, let alone a mountain. “If you see them waving a white flag, remember, it is nothing but a damned Rebel trick, just like those greasers were trying to pull at Zaragoza.”
When Don Marion Wilkes rode away, Duncan Regret nodded at the mustachioed killer dressed as a Navajo, and that one grabbed the first canvas sack.
“Ever seen grapeshot?” Regret asked. The man grunted and handed the sack to another white man dressed like an Indian.
“We used whatever we could,” the mustached man said. “Glass. Horseshoes. Nails. Chunks of tin from a Southern roof. It did the job.”
“Maybe,” Regret said, and watched the other fake Indian shove the sack into the barrel. A third man took the plunger and shoved it down the angled, smooth barrel. “But nothing does the job of pure, lovely grapeshot. Three little iron balls held together by iron rings. All put together in bunches of three. Touch the powder off, hear that explosion, smell the beautiful smoke, and the balls separate from the rings and scatter like birdshot on the way to greet a quail.” He chuckled. “What I really loved—and Don Wilkes, he was the same way—were the screams we heard that followed. I could spend all day listening to that beautiful sound, watching all those Johnny Rebs get cut to pieces. Here I am again, years after the rebellion, and I get to butcher a whole lot more.”
He grabbed the torch off the small fire. “What makes this better, is it ain’t just Rebs from Arkansas I’m killing. Soldiers, I mean. I get to wipe out some women and children, to
o.”
He laughed, watched the man step aside, and asked, “What’s the angle and range, Private?”
The gunner stepped back, looking confused. “How the hell would I know, Regret? I deserted from the infantry, not the artillery.”
That made Regret laugh even louder. “Let’s find out,” he said, and touched the fuse with the flame.
* * *
The first thought that crossed Sean Keegan’s mind when he turned quickly in the saddle was famine or no, I never should have left Ireland for America. He saw three Indians chasing two white men and the mustangs thundering west. He figured that wherever you saw three Indians, a bunch of others probably were close.
He spurred his horse, leaned low, and raced out to the right. Damn his luck. That lucky bounty hunter had the left flank—the far side from those Indians. Keegan didn’t know who the two white men were, but figured they would have to take care of themselves. He had Matt McCulloch’s mustangs to consider, and that hard-rock horse trader would be mad at hell if Keegan and Breen let those horses run like hell.
Running like hell, though, seemed to be a damned fine idea.
He couldn’t see the woman. Looked behind, didn’t see her. Dust began to blind him, but he did see something ahead. It was the damned wagon, bounding all over the place, trying to outrun the horses. A second later, the horses were going one way, still in the harnesses, and the wagon was moving in another direction.
Keegan couldn’t worry about that, either. Still leaning low in the saddle, he wondered if he had tasted his last sip of Irish whiskey. It would have been a damned shame if his last drink had come from his water-filled canteen.
* * *
“Hell,” Jed Breen said, then squeezed his lips tight, and touched the spurs to his horse’s flanks—not that this animal needed any encouragement. As long as he didn’t step in a prairie hole, he might have a chance.
Those Indians . . . well . . . they’d likely cut down Sean Keegan first. If they stopped to scalp him, mutilate him, torture him if he were still alive, that also would work in Breen’s favor. The damnedest thing was . . . he liked the Irishman.
The woman rode ahead of him. She wasn’t the best woman in a saddle Breen had seen, but when you had to either hold on and keep your seat or die, people found a way. Kruger, on the other hand . . .
Seeing the team break free and the wagon bounce over boulders and dead cactus, Keegan remembered the time in that thespian’s wagon when he, Breen, McCulloch, and a few others were trying to get away from some rather mean, cruel and vicious Apaches down in West Texas. A similar thing had happened.
But Otto Kruger had no luck. The wagon’s front wheel hit a hole, pitching the killer far to the left. He landed hard as the wagon crashed, rolling over and over and over to the right. All that did was force the stampeding mustangs away from the wagon—and right toward Otto Kruger. The man’s head appeared briefly, then was lost as the hooves of fifty horses rode over the poor man. Well, not quite fifty, not as spread out as the animals were, but certainly enough to pound Kruger’s body into a pulpy mess of nothingness. If the coffee Charlotte Platte had flung into his face had not made his identification impossible, the mustangs had certainly done the job.
Jed Breen could kiss that reward money good-bye.
And if he did not ride like hell, he could kiss his own life and hair good-bye, too.
* * *
“Maybe they’ve run off,” Annie Homes heard Hawg say.
From inside the Stanton wagon she looked over at poor Mrs. Stanton, who was singing to herself, though death sounded like it whispered in her breathing. Annie lifted her head and decided she would climb out of the wagon to see for herself if the Indians were gone.
“What about it?” Mr. Wilkerson yelled. “Capt’n, do you think those Navajos have left us?”
Someone chuckled. “We sure put a hurt in them.”
“Hurrah!” Mrs. Primrose’s voice thundered. “Hurrah for the Forty-ninth Arkansas! Hurrah for the boys from Dead Trout!”
Winfield Baker, spying Annie at the front wheel of the Stanton wagon, removed his hat, waved it over his head, and yelled, “Hurrah for the women of Dead Trout!”
“Don’t let down your guard, men,” her father called out. “Don’t leave your posts. There are Indians still on that rise. I can see them plain as day. So do not—”
Thunder roared. At least it sounded like thunder. But Hawg, who had been looking after the livestock, stepped toward the sound and pointed out, “There ain’t no clouds nowhere. That—”
The whistling reached Annie’s ears, followed by zipping, the tearing of canvas, the splintering of wood. It was instinct that saved her life. The first rip of canvas, and she’d flung herself to the ground, looked up just as Hawg’s ugly face vanished in an explosion of red.
Animals screamed. Oxen fell. Mules brayed. Another man spun around and dropped to his knees before he toppled over and shrieked in utter agony.
“Everybody get down!” she heard her father cry out, and even Mrs. Primrose echoed his orders.
Annie flattened her face, tried to bury herself in the Dead River’s burning sand as all around her, leaden balls ripped through anything—wagon . . . man . . . canvas . . . animals—with no ounce of mercy.
It passed quickly, the deadly shot, and left behind just the shrieks of men, women, livestock, and the muffled echoes of the cannon shot, like the rumbling of thunder in the distance.
“Grapeshot.” That was her father’s voice. “Grapeshot.”
A moment later, the explosion rang again.
“Everybody on the ground! Cover your heads!”
She hadn’t even lifted hers and she ground her face lower into the sand, felt the grains cut into her cheek. She prayed that her father would do what he had just ordered. She prayed for her mother. She prayed for her soul.
The sickening sound began again. Ripping canvas. Metal plowing into wood or bouncing off the iron rims of the wagon wheels. And again, she heard animals screaming, falling into the river bed, kicking, screaming, and dying. She began sobbing.
* * *
“Got that double load in it for me this time, gunner?” Duncan Regret asked.
“Sí, patrón.”
“Good. Double charge?”
“Sí, patrón.”
“Well lower that barrel just a hair boys. Let’s give them a taste of Matilda’s wonders. And Jésus?”
“Sí, patrón?”
“Cut me a longer fuse for the next round. Another double load, double charge. Just so they’ll sweat a wee bit longer. And so I can savor every moment. Fellows, I haven’t felt this way since the war down in Mexico.”
“You’re insane!” said one of the white men dressed like Indians. “You’re madder than Don Wilkes.”
“Yeah. But if you want to see bedlam up close, ride off to that wagon train in the Dead River. And wait till Matilda speaks again.”
* * *
Wooden Arm looked over his shoulder as they rode east. McCulloch reined up, turned in the saddle, and looked to the west as the boom echoed faintly.
The Indian teen brought his horse closer and used his hands and fingers to sign, Thunder?
That was one word that hadn’t been used much in conversation. Not in this country. Not in this dry year.
“Hell,” McCulloch whispered to himself. “A cannon. Those peckerwoods have a cannon.” He started to spur his black harder when he heard something else, a rumbling to the east. Then he saw the dust rising, and the black started twisting, wanting to buck, wanting to run away.
He had a pretty good idea what that was, and Wooden Arm must have realized it, too.
“Hell,” the Comanche boy said.
* * *
The blast of the cannon sounded closer, enormously louder, and it did not take as long for that other sound—that even more horrible noise—to reach Annie’s ears.
The Stanton wagon shuddered, sounding like it might fall over and crush her, but at least she would escape th
is nightmare if she were crushed to death. Bits of wood cut her back, her legs. She cried out in horror, for it felt like no one could survive. Metal rang. Glass shattered. Some of the mules and oxen stampeded, ramming over one of the wagons—at least, that’s what it sounded like. A horse leaped over Annie’s head, and she didn’t know what she should do. Lie there, get trampled to death? Stand up, be shredded to pieces like poor Hawg?
There was no escape. When the ringing left her ears, when she realized she still lived—somehow—and when she heard her father’s voice, “Steady men. Keep praying, ladies,” she willed herself to raise her head. She could breathe, though her chest felt heavy, and she hurt from the cuts on her legs and her back.
There strode her father, the gallant Captain Walter Homes, weaving through the circling livestock. He had been standing when the grapeshot had ripped its last round. Standing like that Stonewall Jackson she had heard about. Standing, daring the cowards who fired metal balls into an innocent caravan of homesteaders seeking a better life. Daring them to try to kill him.
That’s what made Annie sit up. She was a Homes, too. She was no cutthroat. No coward. She—
Annie gasped, for she saw the riddled ruins of the Stanton wagon, perforated by the latest, more intense, more horrific round of grapeshot. The canvas hung by strips, and much of those strips dripped red.
“My God,” she whispered. She heard another scream. That one would have come from Betsy. Annie scrambled to her feet and moved to the wagon. She leaped up, looked into the back, and gagged. A rough hand pulled her away. She sobbed, somehow made out the face of Winfield Baker, who pulled her close.
Betsy sobbed. Her father groaned and fell to his knees. Annie’s father stopped talking like a soldier and began to pray, and Mrs. Primrose joined in.
“I-I-I—” Annie let young, handsome Winfield Baker lead her away. She made out Betsy, Mrs. Stanton’s daughter, sobbing on her knees, her head against her father’s. Mr. Stanton trembled, his face appearing whiter than the sands of the Dead River. But maybe that was due to Betsy’s tears.
“I should have—” Annie tried. “If I’d been inside—”
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