“You’d be dead like her,” Winfield said. “And if you had been killed, I, too, would have died.”
The horses and oxen ran past them, stepping over the carcasses of other animals.
Annie and Winfield had reached the far side of the circle of wagons, but even those wagons bore the scars of grapeshot. Men and women—even a little girl—sat or lay underneath the wagons, sobbing, bleeding, waiting to die. They prayed that this nightmare would end—even if that meant their deaths, for that would end the brutal, merciless assault.
She stopped, pulled away from Winfield as she heard her father begin to pray again.
“Our Father . . .”
Winfield looked at her. “Annie, what . . .?”
She was about to tell him what she knew. She was about to say, “Winfield, we are all going to die. We are all going to die,” but something changed. She heard—no, she felt . . . Annie looked at her feet.
Then she looked up into the young man’s eyes.
“Winfield,” she whispered, “The earth is trembling.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Seeing the lead mustangs and the rising cloud of dust, Matt McCulloch jerked the big black to a sliding stop. Well, he thought, this is sort of the plan you had in mind. Keegan and Breen—or maybe the horses—oh, hell.
Yeah, it had to be the horses’ idea. They just got a head start . . . which, it suddenly struck him, might work even more to his advantage.
The horses ran hard with that fine pinto, Black Heart, leading the way.
Turning quickly, McCulloch found Wooden Arm just a few yards away from him and spoke slowly in English while using sign language to make sure there was no misunderstanding.
“You take the north flank, my young friend. I’ll ride on the south side. We have to keep the horses going . . . straight into those bad white men who are dressed like Indians.”
His horse started dancing, and he needed both hands on the reins. He shouted, “Do you understand what I tell you?” He could not use his hands this time.
“I hear you,” Wooden Arm yelled. He had trouble with his pinto, and the boy had only one good arm. “I know what you say.” He kicked the pinto and rode off to the northern side of the approaching swirl of dust and the thundering hooves of McCulloch’s treasure.
“Oh hell. I sure hate to use good animals like this.” McCulloch stood in the stirrups, just to get a better view.
One rider on the north side. He could barely make that person out because of the wind and the dust. Two on the south. One of those he could tell was Charlotte Platte, slapping her hat against the side of her horse, and her long hair blowing in the wind. The wind suddenly whipped the hat out of her hands. But, damn, didn’t she look good? Like a Texas woman, riding hard, red hair blowing . . . utterly fearless. For a moment, he forgot about all the men she had poisoned.
McCulloch was galloping, thinking while he rode, trying to figure out the best way. The way Keegan, Breen, and the murderess had flanked the herd might work to his advantage. He needed to turn them north, north toward that hill. He heard the cannon behind him.
Remember that sound, McCulloch told himself. That’s where we’ll need to take the horses. Remember it. Figure out where it is. He spurred his horse—as though the black needed any encouragement—and rode southeast. Three riders on the south side, two on the north once Wooden Arm got there. That might work. It was a long shot, but it seemed to be his best chance.
* * *
“What is taking him so long?” Don Marion Wilkes asked to no one in particular. That last shot had been a beauty. He just wished he could see better, but he had given his telescope and pair of binoculars to the artillery men who fired wonderful, courageous Matilda. Don Marion Wilkes could see only with his own, aging eyes. But he could smell victory. He could smell death.
One man’s horse bolted, and Wilkes turned his wrath on the idiot whose wig came flying off as he waved his hand in the air, his palm already ugly from the rip the reins had caused when the horse jerked away.
“Boy, you ride with me and you cannot control your horse. Confound it—”
Another horse tossed its Navajo-disguised rider and galloped back toward Wilkes’s hacienda to the southeast. The man sat up, his wig askew, and looked at Don Marion Wilkes with fear in his eye. As well he should have, Wilkes thought, because, by thunder, he was about ready to shoot the next man who couldn’t control his horse. He was . . .
The man on the ground shivered. “Don Marion. The earth . . . it moves. The earth . . . moves.”
* * *
Old Matilda, that glorious grand dame from the Mexican-American war, had left Duncan Regret deaf, but the self-styled rapscallion didn’t mind not hearing. He could smell the powder, see the smoke, and observe all the destruction he and Old Matilda had wrought. It made a man proud. It made a man terrifying. It made Duncan Regret feel like he was as powerful as God Almighty himself.
“Hell, Jésus, how long a fuse did you cut?” Regret yelled, laughing, even though he couldn’t hear his own words or the reply the Mexican gunner told him. Suddenly Regret realized the gunner hadn’t finished his answer. His eyes widened, and his mouth hung open, but no words came out. Then he crossed himself, stumbled, and stood up quickly. Another horse tossed its outlaw playing Indian. Jésus climbed out of the embankment.
Regret drew his revolver.
“Stop, you damned deserter!” he yelled, or at least his mind told him those were the words he issued. But a moment later, he was on the ground, shaken by some unholy force that made the ground quake. Earthquake? He had heard of those, but had never been in one. Rolling over, he spit and saw dust, a cloud of Arizona dust rising higher in the sky than the smoke from Matilda. A moment later, he felt himself bouncing on the ground, and he grabbed a spoke on the north-facing wheel of the cannon.
The sense of hearing returned. He heard the thunder, the roar. But he didn’t hear himself scream when the horses appeared. Their hooves drowned out everything else around him.
He lunged underneath the mountain howitzer, reached out, and grabbed the spokes to the far wheel, trying to pull himself under the cannon. Hooves tore into his calves, his ankles, and he felt the bones in his feet smashing and breaking. He knew blood had to be pouring from the rips the hooves caused, knew he had just become a cripple, and he knew this damned cannon would soon be detonating a double-charged, double load of grapeshot. The recoil would send Matilda over his body, perhaps breaking his neck, shattering his spine, or both.
He choked on the thick never-ending dust.
* * *
When Sean Keegan realized what Matt McCulloch planned on doing, he slowed down his horse, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. The animal was as scared as all those running mustangs, and maybe even as petrified as Sean Keegan. As he drifted back, he could barely make out anything through the thick, choking, blinding dust. He was a horse soldier, nailed to the seat of his McClellan saddle. He had ridden into battle against men in gray, men in buckskin, men in breechcloths, and had tasted battle and seen the elephant more times than he could count. And he hadn’t been scared until now.
He turned his horse more north than west, and eventually rode out of the dust to find horses scattering, men riding, and men running—red-skinned Navajos, by the look of one. He saw one afoot, and Keegan put both reins in his teeth, clamping down hard. His right hand held the Springfield as his left reached down and grabbed one of the running Indians.
The plan was simple. Grab the Indian’s head, jerk him up, slam him into the back of his horse, breaking his neck or back, and dropping him into the sand and cactus.
Bloody hell! Keegan thought as he stared at the hair he had ripped off the running Navajo. Scalped him alive. Without even opening a blade on his Barlow knife. Only . . .
He dropped the scalp and grabbed the reins as he spit the leather out of his mouth.
“A wig.” He found another Indian ahead, but that one had already lost his wig and his horse. He still held a repeatin
g rifle, though, and he worked the lever while dropping to his knee. Keegan saw the smoke, though he never heard the report of the Winchester. By that time, he had the Springfield butted against his shoulder.
The fake Indian again pulled the repeating rifle’s trigger.
Then his Winchester went flying to the south while he was blown fifteen feet into some brush by the force of the Springfield’s lead slug that drilled him through his chest.
Keegan reached into his blouse and began to reload while he galloped, reins dragging on the ground. He had no way to control where his horse was going, but he had plenty of men all dolled up like Navajos to fill his gunsights.
* * *
The powerful black leaped some twenty yards from the rest of the wild, powering mustangs. McCulloch almost lost his rifle and his seat, and just got a glimpse as all those beautiful, wonderful, wild-eyed mustangs plunged into, over, and all around the cannon and whoever had the stupidity to not abandon his position. What he saw before the black carried him away was horses falling, being trampled by other horses, and the cannon being shoved forward into an embankment. Screams of animals, injured, dying, or still moving like the wind, filled his ears as he kept riding.
A man appeared before him, running south, stopped, and looked up. The black slammed into him, jarring McCulloch again, but he rode on. He did not look back at the man the horse had smashed. He knew the last thing that man had seen on this earth was Matt McCulloch and the wily black horse that had probably broken every bone in his upper body.
He turned away from the stampeding mustangs and looked over his shoulder. Taking reins and carbine in his left hand, he waved at Breen and the others with his right, beckoning them to follow him. He didn’t do that for long, though. He had to get his horse under some semblance of control. For the better part of a mile, likely a whole lot longer, McCulloch had realized he had no control over his horse. It was about time to get back that control. Or he might be swimming in the Pacific Ocean before he knew it, all the way to the Sandwich Islands.
Looking over at the companions trailing him, also pulling away from the scattering mustangs, McCulloch waved at them to follow him. A bullet zipped past his ear. Jerking his head around, he saw a white man wearing Navajo silver and a black, battered, open-crowned Navajo hat. He desperately worked to reload his muzzle-loading rifle. McCulloch swore, brought the Winchester up with his left hand, keeping the reins in his right, and touched the trigger.
There was no sound, no smoke, no kick of the rifle, and he knew it was empty. The black powered forward. The man capped the nipple of his rifle. McCulloch had no chance to draw his revolver and fire, so he just rose, and cut loose with a savage Rebel yell.
The shrill scream caused that fraudulent Indian to jerk his arm and rush his shot. Smoke belched from the barrel, but the leaden ball never came anywhere near McCulloch or his horse. The man rose, cursing, tried to shift the rifle around and use it as a club.
McCulloch already had that idea, and his rifle barrel caught the man in his throat, sending blood gushing from his mouth as his legs flew out in front of him, and he crashed spread-eagled and unmoving on the ground.
McCulloch kept riding, and saw one of the wagons being pushed back, creating a wider opening. Those emigrants who had rolled the old Conestoga quickly slipped under the wagon, while another man waved his black hat before stepping back and out of the way.
It was like family, the former Ranger thought, welcoming a prodigal son home.
CHAPTER FORTY
Duncan Regret could not believe that he was still alive. His legs hurt like hell. So did breathing. Even opening his eyes, pained him, but he could see, and even though each breath caused him to grimace or gasp, he had survived. His hearing had returned. Horses lay around him, legs broken, some screaming, others already dead, and he felt the weight of Matilda’s barrel against his left hip. He lay on his side, half buried in the sand, but those horses—and the dirty rats who had driven those crazed beasts—had failed to do something many others had failed to do. They hadn’t killed Duncan Regret. And they would pay with their lives.
He was crippled. He hurt all over, but he . . . he . . . he . . . smelled something. He heard something. Beyond him came a shot. Another. But that wasn’t what he’d heard. It was something closer. It whispered. No . . . it sizzled. Craning his neck, he looked up at the barrel of Matilda, the mountain howitzer. It was hard to see because of the pain throughout his body and the sand in his eyes, but he thought he saw traces of smoke. And the sound? The sound?
“Oh, hell.”
Panic seized him. The fuse. That fuse. All those mustangs, overturning the cannon, killing other animals, wrecking Matilda. And destroying his dreams . . . and those of Don Marion Wilkes. Someone had failed to stamp out the fuse.
His head turned toward the barrel’s opening, and he saw it buried deep in the Arizona sand along the Dead River. So deep, he realized what would happen if that fuse burned to the powder. The barrel would rupture, and the charge would split the barrel, sending its contents—two bags of grapeshot—all over the place.
Duncan Regret would be blown to pieces.
“No,” he screamed. His hands desperately and furiously began digging at the sand. He gave up, reached out, tried to pull himself from underneath the sand. At that point, he was sobbing without control, choking on his tears, tearing his fingernails out because the ground was so hard. And the sound of the burning fuse almost burst his eardrums.
“No. No. No. No. Nooooo!!!!!!”
When he paused to catch his breath, he heard an eerie silence. The fuse, he thought with great relief, has burned itself out.
The explosion would have told Duncan Regret just how wrong he was had he lived to hear the detonation and destruction that ripped his body into pieces the ants and ravens would enjoy for days upon days.
* * *
“By the saints, man, we would have shot you off that horse had you not cut loose with that Rebel yell!” The thin old man was walking straight toward Matt McCulloch after he leaped off his horse and started to take a position behind one of the wagons. McCulloch caught a glance at the man holding one hand out, his other gripping an Enfield rifled musket.
The boys from the train were starting to push the wagon back, sealing off the entrance.
“Not yet!” McCulloch’s voice boomed. “I got friends out there. They are with me!”
The man who wanted so badly to shake McCulloch’s hand stopped. The boys looked at the old gentleman. Another one of the young men, however, who was sitting in the driver’s box, raised up his musket, and yelled, “There’s a crazy red devil chasing them!! He’s almost at them!!”
Shooting a quick glance, McCulloch realized what the boy saw.
“No!” he yelled. “No! That’s a fri—” He lunged toward the kid and the wagon.
Reaching out, McCulloch dropped his weapon, oblivious to the galloping horse of Jed Breen’s. He had to stop that kid from shooting Wooden Arm out of his Comanche saddle. The entire world—from McCulloch’s legs and arms to his voice, to the sounds of the battle all around him, to the beating of his heart—slowed into an eternal crawl. And McCulloch knew he’d never be able to reach the kid in time.
Suddenly, he was lifted off his feet and slammed back hard, with a fury he had never felt in all his years. He crashed hard into the old gent who had so wanted to shake his hand.
* * *
Annie Homes lay on her back, metal chimes ringing somewhere deep in her head. Her father had been walking toward a dark-clothed man who had ridden a horse that might have come out of the deepest part of Hades. What then? She tried to clear her thoughts, her mind, but the most likely guess as to what had knocked her into Winfield Baker’s body was . . . a volcano had erupted. She saw black smoke rising high over the canvas coverings of most of the wagons, but that was drifting, fading. It could not have been from a volcano.
“Annie?”
She heard that, which meant she was not deaf, maybe not even dead
.
Winfield Baker’s face appeared before her.
“Are you all right, darling?”
She blinked. She thought. She heard the pounding hooves of horses. Winfield Baker brushed sand and ash off her forehead and slowly lifted her to a seated position.
“Riders are coming in,” he told her. “They are shutting the gap.”
She was in his arms, but she did not know how that had happened. The faces of men and women she knew, even Mrs. Primrose and Betsy Stanton, passed by. She felt herself being laid onto blankets in the shade and saw his face come closer, and closer, and closer, and felt something cool touch her forehead.
His lips, she thought. He has kissed me. Just on the head but . . .
“You rest,” Winfield Baker told her. “Just rest. I’ll send Mr. Randall over to see you.”
That would be the barber from Dead Trout, but he had been known to patch a few cuts and set some busted bones, and he had even tried to cut out Josiah Armagost’s appendix two years back, although Mr. Armagost had not survived the surgery.
“Winfield?” she said softly.
His face came back into view.
“Who is that man who rode up?”
“I don’t know, Annie.”
“He looks like the devil.”
He smiled. “That devil might have saved us all.”
Winfield Baker walked away, and Annie Homes drifted off into a deep, peaceful, wonderful sleep.
* * *
“We have those men surrounded still,” Don Marion Wilkes told the men, most of whom no longer looked anything remotely like a Navaho Indian. “We have water, and they are trapped. We have demoralized them.”
He looked at the men still with him, those not dead, or not high-tailing it for safer climes. Matilda had been blown to Kingdom Come. Clouds of black smoke drifted across the Dead River country. This Indian massacre, so carefully planned, had not gone anywhere near the way it should have gone, but Don Marion Wilkes was not about to quit. “We have killed their leader and several of their men. They have not enough horses to pull their wagons out. And will remain in the Dead River. No one will travel this way. No one will come to their rescue. We shall starve them out. We shall negotiate a truce, and when they accept our truce, we shall smote them all.”
Stand Up and Die Page 26