The Jackals

by William W. Johnstone

  “Most everything, I imagine,” Keegan finished. “But nothing’s stronger than my word. I told Henderson I’d do my job. I aim to do it.”

  “Your word?” Griffin’s fist pounded the table. “Your word. The word of—”

  “Jackals?” Sir Theodore Cannon laughed.

  “I think they’re just greedy rats,” Griffin said. “They get their five thousand dollars a dying man said they could have. We get—”

  “To live,” McCulloch said. “If we’re lucky. If we manage to survive.”

  “Which,” Keegan said, “most likely . . . we won’t.”

  “And if Holy Shirt has his way”—Breen leaned back his head, and laughed—“they won’t take the money, either, because it’s been tainted by the white man.”

  “Poor Catherine Cooper,” Gwen Stanhope added. “She’ll die a widow. She’ll die poor.”

  “And some lucky so-and-so will find fifty thousand dollars,” Sir Theodore Cannon, “and maybe pay for a nice funeral for us.”

  Griffin fell silent and sulked away to the corner.

  Outside, the drumbeats sounded.

  * * *

  They had grown accustomed to the sound of the drums. Suffering intense pain, Sir Theodore Cannon sat on an overturned keg and looked down at the bloody mess that was his foot. Kneeling by him, Gwen Stanhope began rewrapping a bandage over the wound.

  “Perhaps I shall give Richard, Duke of York, a limp when next I play him,” the actor said, and grimaced as the blond woman tied off the bandage.

  After wiping her hands on the hems of her skirt, Stanhope looked in the direction of McCulloch and Keegan as Breen moved to the counter at the far side of the station. She asked, “If they’re going back to bows and arrows, anything without the taint of the whites, that gives us a better chance, doesn’t it?”

  Neither the Ranger nor the soldier answered. Breen fingered the cartridges on the countertop and said, “We still have to find a way out of here.” He did not turn around. “And that bomb I made means these are all the bullets we have left.”

  “How many?” Keegan asked.

  Breen turned his head and shook his head. “Just make every shot count.” His head turned another way, and he touched the double-action Colt’s grip. “Griffin, get your hands off that carpetbag.”

  The newspaperman turned around, laughed, and raised his hands. “I was just putting them together in a safe place.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Listen.” Griffin stepped back toward Keegan and McCulloch, stopping and bowing his head at the body of Harry Henderson, now covered. “All we have to do, as I’ve mentioned, is wait out the Apaches. Till help arrives.”

  “Help may never arrive,” Keegan said.

  “But—”

  “We’re low on lead, Griffin, and powder. The Apaches will come at us again, and once we’ve shot ourselves dry, by the time the Army does get here—if they ever get here—they’ll find our bodies looking like porcupines.”

  “We’re dead,” Stanhope said, and sighed.

  “Come now,” the actor said, “let’s show some fortitude here. ‘Fortitude,’ that grand Francis Bacon said, ‘is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.’”

  The men and the woman stared briefly at Sir Theodore Cannon and let silence fill the room until Breen’s boots sounded as he walked toward the door. He stopped, said, “the armor of the will,” and began pushing up the heavy bar.

  Keegan went to him and assisted. The former soldier drew his Remington, eared back the hammer, and opened the door.

  By the time Breen stepped outside, Matt McCulloch was standing beside Keegan and holding the Winchester. 44-40.

  “What the hell is he doing?” McCulloch asked.

  “Not a clue,” Keegan answered, and he reached up and pulled out a nail that was driven about an inch into the wood. “But that was some bomb the old boy gave us.”

  McCulloch looked at the dried blood that stained the ground and the walls, the bent and twisted nails littering the ground, and bits of Apaches—a finger here, an ear there—and carnage everywhere. Little remained of the Concord stagecoach, which had been blown to charred pieces by the keg of gunpowder and nails. The barn remained a skeletal wreck of smoking mess, and yet there was no sign of any Apaches. The dead and wounded had been carried off. At least, the parts of the bodies the Indians could find.

  After a minute that felt like thirty, Jed Breen walked back. He had not gone far, but he had felt the presence of Apaches watching him. When Holy Shirt decided to attack, they would attack. But at the moment, they were just watching, out of curiosity or making sure the men trapped like rats in Culpepper’s Station were going nowhere.

  Breen stopped at Sir Theodore’s wagon, which had some nails drilled into the side from the bomb and was blackened by the smoke and explosion. Otherwise, it seemed in pretty good shape. He opened the back, stared at it briefly, and then heard the voices of Apaches.

  He wasted no more time. Quickly, he shut the wagon’s door and hurried back onto the porch and through the door. McCulloch slipped in next, and as Keegan pulled the door shut, an arrow cut through the air and lodged into the wooden beam next to the door.

  “Did you see anything that struck your fancy, Breen?” McCulloch asked in an angry, sarcastic voice.

  “Yeah,” Breen answered. “You didn’t tell me, Sir Theo, that you had armor for a horse with all your goodies.”

  The thespian looked up, squinted as though trying to remember, and finally shrugged. “It comes in handy for promotion. When we first arrive in town, Sir Lancelot rides his trusty steed, Merlin.”

  “I don’t think that was his horse’s name,” Breen said, shaking his head.

  “What are you thinking?” Keegan asked.

  The bounty hunter grinned. “That Apache arrows won’t pierce a medieval suit of armor.”

  “Kind sir,” Cannon said, “I have only armor for one horse.”

  “Yeah.” Breen looked at the fireplace. “But I think I can rig something to protect at least one more horse.”

  “There’s one thing you’re forgetting, Breen,” Alvin J. Griffin said. “We don’t have one damned mule. We have nothing to pull that wagon. Unless you want to put armor on me and”—he looked around—“well, the sergeant’s strong enough. Is that what you plan to use for livestock?”

  Breen eyed the journalist. “I hadn’t thought of it. But now that you mention it—” He laughed, shook his head, and looked at Matt McCulloch. “But I think I know where we can find some horses. Well, I’ve heard enough stories about a Texas Ranger and horse wrangler who’s never far from a horse. Isn’t that right, Matt?”

  The drums fell silent. The chanting had stopped. And no one spoke or even breathed hard inside Culpepper’s Station.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “All right.” Keegan broke the silence. “Let’s get ready.”

  He and McCulloch walked to the body of Harry Henderson, pulled off the blanket covering his body, and carried him to the far window facing the front. They propped his corpse against the cross in the shutter, and McCulloch held up the dead man’s right arm, while Keegan found the hammer and nails. Holding some nails in his mouth, he fitted one in the center of Henderson’s forearm, brought back the hammer, and began pounding.

  “Good God in Heaven.” Alvin Griffin almost vomited.

  “Makes sense,” Sir Theodore Cannon said. “Plug up one hole. One less place from which those heathen savages can shoot at us.”

  They left Harry Henderson propped up on a desk they had moved to the window, his arms stretched out as though he had been nailed to a cross, which, in a morbid way, if you considered the cutout in the wooden shutter, he had been. His head slumped forward onto his chest. His bloody stomach had dried brown. No one looked at the dead man, the barricade, as McCulloch and Keegan walked back to what Sir Theodore Cannon had christened, “Fort Hopeless.”

  Having time to prepare, they had arranged the tables, whic
h they now overturned, so that they formed a V pattern, with the potbellied stove offering some protection, though not complete, at the base.

  McCulloch pulled open the trapdoor and nodded at the woman.

  She frowned.

  “We cut cards,” he lied. “You lost. Get in.”

  When she hesitated, Keegan said, “Lady, there’s not enough room for all of us to hide, unless you cram yourself into that hole. I promise you, we won’t take it for a privy.”

  “Nobody lives forever,” she said. “Put the newspaperman in there.”

  “Then,” Breen said, “we probably would use it for a privy. Get in. Before the Apaches start filling this place with lead or arrows. Get in.”

  “Before,” McCulloch said, “I throw you in.”

  Reluctantly, she sat down, pushed her legs into the opening, and dropped, bending her knees, and finding something hard to sit on in the cramped, damp but cool miniature cellar.

  “We’ve put all the ammunition down there,” Keegan said. “We can’t shut the door. So we’ll hand you guns when we need reloading.”

  “Which,” McCulloch said, “shouldn’t be much.”

  “On account that Keegan and I will be the only ones throwing lead.” Breen cocked the heavy hammer of the Sharps.

  “And there isn’t a whole lot of .45-70 government cartridges left,” Keegan said.

  “Nor Big Fifty shells for my Sharps.” Breen brought the heavy rifle up, used a table leg to steady and balance the weapon, and aimed at the opening of one of the shutters.

  Keegan aimed at the corner window.

  Sir Theodore Cannon lay on his belly, but his wounded foot hung over the opening. “The coolness eases the pain in my toe, or where my toe once was, madam,” he called out to Stanhope. “I hope I do not bleed on you.”

  Alvin Griffin hugged the far table, groaning at what he had just witnessed. “Jackals,” he whispered, over and over again. “Jackals. Beasts. Fiends. Warriors for Lucifer.”

  An arrow cut through the cabin, fired from the corner window, and lodged in a barrel of trash. Another arrow whistled past Keegan’s ear and thudded into the wall, shattering the shaft.

  “Holy Shirt won,” McCulloch said.

  Breen sank down behind the table. He had not fired his Sharps. “So you want to talk to me about those horses?”

  Keegan went down, too, his Springfield carbine still cocked, unfired.

  “Four,” McCulloch said. “In a slot canyon. A mile from here.”

  “Four?” Breen asked.

  McCulloch shrugged. An arrow bit into the table over his head. “Long story.”

  “Were you planning on ever telling us?” Gwen Stanhope asked from the pit below.

  McCulloch felt another arrow slice over his head and slid down as low as he could. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You’re one self-centered scum, McCulloch,” Sergeant Keegan said.

  “I could have run to those horses after I put Rourke out of his misery. Four horses would have carried me a long way from here, folks. I ran back here. So you best mind your manners. Because I’m the only one who knows where I left those animals.”

  Keegan spit, but remembered to turn his head before he sent saliva into the pit and onto Gwen Stanhope. “I best return fire, so the bucks don’t think we’ve all been called to Glory.” He did not lift the Springfield, however, instead pulling the Navy .36 from his waistband, took careful aim, and did not even blink when an arrow came inches from his ear. The gun popped, and he swore, thumbed back the hammer, and adjusted his aim. The second lead ball went through the arms of the cross. Outside, an Indian yelped.

  Keegan ducked again behind the table.

  “Can any of those horses pull a wagon?” Breen asked.

  McCulloch shrugged. “Well, I know mine hasn’t, and I doubt if the others are trained for the harness. But horses aren’t stupid, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d do just about anything. They know that Apaches like to eat horse meat.”

  An arrow splintered against the chimney of the stove then clanged off it. Keegan swore, cocked the Navy, and rose again, firing at the nearest window, then dropped again behind the safety, so to speak, of Fort Hopeless.

  “Four horses,” Breen said. “You couldn’t get them to us. Alone.”

  McCulloch’s head shook. “Not with Apaches around. I wouldn’t even bet on me making it with two horses. Not alone. But it’s our last chance.”

  “If we send him, he’d just ride off,” Alvin Griffin said. “Leave us to die. Then come back and take all that fifty thousand dollars for himself.”

  “That’s a possibility,” McCulloch said, “except I wouldn’t keep it for myself. I’d deliver it to Catherine Cooper in El Paso. And take my five thousand.”

  Breen spit on the floor next to the editor. “He’s already told us, Griffin, that he can’t bring back four horses. This job will take two men.”

  “Indeed,” Sir Theodore Cannon said. “Two men. Two horses.”

  “But there are four horses,” Griffin said.

  An arrow came down from the ceiling, it seemed, and dropped into the hole.

  “Gwen!” Breen yelled. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. But where the hell did that arrow come from?”

  “Indians have wised up.” Keegan cocked the Navy again and sent a .36-caliber ball through the main post of the cross cutout in the nearest window. “Angling their shots now. Smart devils.” He lowered himself again and looked at the smoking revolver in his right hand. “Two shots.”

  “Want me to let them taste my Sharps?” Breen asked.

  “Best save your lead,” McCulloch said.

  “You need to send four men,” Griffin demanded. “Four men for four horses.”

  “Sir Theodore’s wagon can hitch up only a team of two,” Breen said.

  “Then two others amongst us will ride hard and fast alone. In separate directions. To give us a better chance.”

  Keegan shook his head and spit again. “I suppose you’d be one of the riders, Griffin, going hell-bent-for-leather toward the Mexican border.”

  Rising on one knee, Breen aimed the Sharps and touched the trigger. The explosion left most of the ears inside Culpepper’s Station ringing. He sank back down, removed the spent cartridge from the breech, and lowered his left hand into the pit. “Sharps,” he called out.

  Gwen Stanhope, just a few seconds later, put the cold brass cartridge with the massive bullet into Breen’s hand.

  The .50-caliber bullet had silenced the Indians for a minute. Maybe Breen had managed to kill one, though he had barely aimed.

  “What do you think?” Keegan asked McCulloch.

  “Our friend in the newspaper business has a point,” McCulloch said.

  “Damned right I do,” Griffin said.

  “But I think we send two men, each to bring back two horses. Better chance of one of us getting through.”

  “I was thinking the same thing myself,” Breen said.

  “And if both of us manage to make it,” McCulloch said, “we tie up two horses behind the wagon. If things don’t work out, two of us ride out, try to make it. The rest of us make our stand.”

  “Our Last Stand,” Keegan said.

  “Yeah.”

  The room had turned silent, except for some sickening slicing noise.

  “What, by thunder, is that?” Sir Theodore Cannon asked.

  Keegan spit again. “They’re spearing Henderson’s back. Trying to push his body from plugging up that hole.”

  “My God!” Griffin said.

  “And I’m no hand when it comes to carpentry. They’ll knock him loose before long.”

  “You men are pathetic!” Griffin said, gagging again.

  “Well, old Harry bought us some time,” McCulloch said.

  Five minutes later, the body of Harry Henderson rolled off the desktop and slammed with a sickening thud onto the floor. An arrow stuck through the opening, but Sergeant Sean Keegan was ready. The Springfield sounded li
ke a cannon, and the Apaches began yelling again.

  Keegan sank down, ejected the shell, and called for a new bullet. He handed the carbine to the actor, and popped up again with the Navy Colt in his right hand. He sent one bullet through the arms of the cross on the corner window, and the last .36-caliber ball through the top of the cross carved into the nearest window. Then he threw the Colt like a tomahawk, and it thudded against the shutter.

  “All right,” Keegan said. “McCulloch goes out tonight for the horses. Who volunteers to go with him? And you ain’t volunteering, Griffin.”

  “Best wait,” Stanhope said from the pit, “till we see who’s alive come sundown.”

  “If anyone’s alive,” Matt McCulloch said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Here,” Gwen Stanhope said. “Let me help you, Sergeant.”

  Sean Keegan had slammed the desecrated, mangled body of the late Harry Henderson against the shutter of the middle window. He held the hammer in his left hand, and could not speak because of the nails he kept in his mouth, but he tried to, anyway.

  “Ma’am, I don’t—” Giving up, he shoved the handle of the hammer into his waistband and pulled the nails from his lips. “Ma’am—”

  “Sergeant”—she put her hands on her hips—“nobody has called me ma’am since I was fourteen. That was Bobby Turner, and he said it as a joke. Call me Gwen.” She drew in a deep breath and brushed against Keegan’s arm as she reached up, put both hands against the dead man’s black coat, and threw her weight into him as she tried to keep the corpse from sliding. “Hurry, Sergeant,” she said, straining.

  With muffled curses, Keegan turned around. McCulloch and Breen were guarding two of the other windows, and he knew he’d never be able to persuade the actor or the editor to do the sordid job. Slowly, he fetched a nail, drew the hammer, and went to work.

  “Oh, my.” Stanhope put a hand to her forehead. “That—”

  One knee buckled, and Keegan caught her arm. She smiled, but her face was turning paler with each second, and he guided the gambler to one of the chairs still standing. “Let me help you, ma’am.” He turned his head. “Griffin! Get your arse, you yellow-spined coward, to that window. Touch my carbine, and I’ll rip off your head and feed it to javelinas. Just keep an eye on anything that moves outside.”