Before Barlow could learn the decision the captain and Swift had made, the enemy was closing in again. Again, the defenders held their fire: but the Apaches had a surprise. They were not yet close enough to get the deadly raking that awaited them when they wheeled; and those among them armed with bows loosed a flight of blazing arrows.
The flaming shafts dotted the wagon sides and covers. Wind whipped the dry wood and dry canvas to fierce burning.
Covered by musketry, Barlow and others tore and slashed at the wagon covers, while, some fought the blaze with water soaked gunny sacks. Parker was busy trying to keep this one and that from wasting water on wagons ignited beyond saving.
Gusts of smoke rose high, and then, wind driven, flattened out to blanket the earth, and hide whatever the enemy might next do.
The sodbusters manhandled two wagons which were too well ablaze to be saved. This kept the fire from spreading to those which had been put out. Then came a wild yell, and a whip crack.
Kirby Swift, stampeding some twenty oxen, followed them through the gap. Crazed by excitement, they raced for the enemy, who was closing in again, this time through a wall of smoke. As he rode, Swift threw away his bullwhip and went on with a pistol in each hand. The stampede crashed headlong into the ranks of the converging Apaches. Swift followed through.
Buckshot and pistol ball broke the charge. The next rush, however, would settle things; Smoke and dust covered the field. There was no telling what had happened to Swift, but Barlow said to Sally, as they shared a dipper of water, “He could have got through; Pass the word along that he did get through! All we have to do is keep holding till help gets here! Tell ’em!”
He gave her a squeeze and then a shove, and turned to encourage those who looked as though they knew themselves good as done for. He caught a sodbuster and his woman crouching in the shelter of two water barrels. They had an old revolver. The way they looked at it and each other made Barlow step up, snatch the weapon, and slap them with the flat of his hand.
“Stand up and fight till you can’t be taken alive! What do you mean, you fools, fixing to waste cartridges on each other? Kill those devils out there instead!”
The two stared at him, half defiant, half ashamed. Then the haggard woman’s face changed. “We’re good as dead already!” she cried, hysterically; “Hear the trumpets and music! You hear it, Asa?”
Barlow’s thought was, “He couldn’t have found help so soon.” Then he caught the thin, far off sound, and yanked the woman to her feet. “Angels, my eye! That’s a cavalry trumpet sounding off!”
Either the wind shifted, or else the troop had come up out an arroyo that had choked the sound, for in a moment the call swelled, loud and fierce. There would be a charge—but not by renegades and Apaches.
The sodbusters heard, and shouted crazily. They helped speed the departing enemy. Barlow, resting a long barreled .45-90 on a sack of grain, unseated riders as far as he could hit them.
There was far off firing; but a squad of troopers led by a corporal came toward the wagons to take charge until the main party had done its work.
“Hell, no,” the noncom answered in reply to Barlow’s question, “we didn’t get any messenger. The skipper’ll tell you, maybe, when he comes in. It was funny business. What outfit were you in?”
And answering that question led to other things which kept them busy until the corporal cocked his head and remarked, “Sounding recall. Show’s over. Hey, where you going?”
“Someone I hope got knocked over. Renegade by the name of Lathrop. I’m going out to make sure.”
“No, you’re not! The skipper sent us to see no ‘dead’ Injuns came to life and raised sand whilst he was chasing those that ran out. You stay put.”
“OK, corporal. But there’s something else I want to find out.”
“It’ll keep. Another scalp you’re hankering for?”
“I did, right up till a little while ago. Now I feel different about that jigger.”
When he had told about Kirby Swift, the noncom shrugged. “One man couldn’t’ve got this whole outfit off the track if the captain’d been worth a second hand chew of tobacco. It’s everyone’s fault, not just the showoff’s—well—what’s that?”
A pushcart was coming up out of a swale. A longish bundle was lashed over the tarpaulin. “That’s Epstein,” Barlow said. “And for once, he didn’t get around to fixing things.”
But Barlow was wrong. Epstein’s odd cargo was Kirby Swift, and his two emptied Colts. Far behind him, a familiar horse loomed up: Alezan, apparently none of the worse. Epstein called, “Pete, it gives something back there I didn’t take the scalp from. It belongs to Swift.”
“Jed Lathrop?”
Epstein nodded. “He had a pistol, and from that far, you wouldn’t be pulling a pistol for using against these wagons. They shot each other up, Lathrop and Swift. What happened?”
“All of a sudden, Swift ran hog wild. Whether he meant to ride for help, or just had a hunch he’d get square with the skunk that led him into trouble, nobody’ll ever know.”
And then, when the cavalry troop came to the wagons, Barlow got the answer to the remaining riddle. Epstein dug into his cart and produced four small, framed mirrors. “Some of my bargains,” he said. “From a high spot I could see far off with the spy glasses. So with the mirrors I made signals. Like the army heliograph. General Crook used to use them, and I bet the captain here caught the flashes and read my bad spelling.”
Later, when the dead had been buried and the camp set in order, Sally came from one of the wagons and joined Barlow and Epstein. Her eyes were gleaming, and tears still trickled down her cheeks.
As she clung to Barlow’s arm, she said, “I’ve been with Laura Frazer. She’s all broken up about Kirby. Poor thing, she was playing up to you just to make him jealous. Anyway—thinking of how she and Kirby have been parted forever—”
Words choked in her throat. Barlow carried on, saying, “What Sally means is, she doesn’t want to wait another day or hour. With all your handiness with scriptures, you don’t happen to be a rabbi? That’d make it legal.”
Epstein sighed regretfully. “Look at me, do I have a beard? I ain’t even a justice of the peace.” He pounced for his cart, and as he rummaged, he said over his shoulder, “But I got a nice ring, brand new, solid gold, just the right size—I give you a bargain and it ain’t far to Red Fork and preachers.”
The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™ Page 35