“We can’t just ride around them and leave those soldiers to be slaughtered.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Wash replied with a sigh. “And you’re right, o’ course. Anyway, they might spot us, and when they was through with them soldier boys, they’d come after us. Best to deal with ’em now, when they ain’t expectin’ it.”
Jason nodded and started sliding back down the rise. “Let’s go tell the others and figure out what to do.”
When they got back to the posse, which was waiting a few hundred yards away, it didn’t take long for Jason to explain the situation. He wasn’t surprised when Salmon Kendall spoke up right away and said, “We’ve got to help those cavalrymen.”
Ezra Dixon leaned over in his saddle and spat to the side. “Them bluebellies got themselves into this fix. Let ’em get their ownselves out of it.”
“They would come to our aid if we were the ones who were trapped,” Saul argued. “I vote we help them.”
Matt said, “Putting it to a vote, are we? In that case, I vote that we help them too.” He glared at Dixon, all but admitting that he had chosen that course because the rancher advised against it.
“Nobody said anything about voting,” Jason snapped. “I’m still in charge of this posse, and I say we help the soldiers. If you don’t like that, Dixon, you’re free to ride on by yourself . . . but don’t look to us for help if the Apaches start stalking you.”
Dixon grunted. “Never said I wouldn’t go along with it. I just figure it’s a piss-poor idea, that’s all.”
Jason turned back to Wash. “How do you think we should do this?”
“Well . . . we can ride right up on ’em from behind and go to shootin’, but they’re gonna hear us comin’. We’ll get some of ’em, but they’re liable to scatter and some o’ those bucks will get away. They’ll go back to their camp and get some more warriors and then dog our trail all the way back to Fury.”
“Yes, and they’ll pick off some of us if that happens too,” Jason said. “We need to make sure none of them get away.” He looked at the butte, which was still visible from where they were. “I’ve got an idea about that.”
* * *
Sweat trickled down the back of Jason’s neck and dripped into his eyes. He paused for a moment, with his hands wrapped around jutting little projections of rock and the toes of his boots wedged into small openings in the rock face, and blinked to clear his vision. The sun’s heat blasted down on the butte.
But it had to be even worse among the boulders on the other side of the butte, where the cavalry troopers were pinned down. At least on this side, nobody was shooting at Jason and his companions.
Four men had accompanied him on this mission, circling far around the butte so that the dust from their horses’ hooves wouldn’t give them away as they approached from the north. They had tied their mounts to scrubby mesquite trees, slung their rifles on their backs by makeshift slings fashioned from lengths of rope, and started to climb. The rugged face of the butte provided enough handholds and toeholds to allow the men to make the ascent, but it was hot, hard, grueling work.
Once they reached the top, though, they would have a commanding field of fire. They would start picking off the Apaches as the rest of the posse attacked from the rear and flushed the Indians out of their hiding places. It was up to Jason and his companions to make sure that none of the Apaches escaped.
As he resumed climbing, Jason glanced over at the other men. He had picked what he hoped were the best marksmen among the group, but he had only their word for that in some cases since he didn’t know all of the men. He was confident in his own abilities and those of Wash Keough, but the others were unknown quantities.
One of the volunteers, surprisingly, was Alf Blodgett. The burly, middle-aged Englishman had explained that before becoming a saloonkeeper, he had been in the British Army in India. “Best shot in the Khyber Rifles, and that’s sayin’ a bit,” he had declared proudly.
Blodgett’s claims might well be true, but he was so red in the face that Jason worried he would have a seizure before he reached the top of the butte. Blodgett climbed pretty well for an overweight, middle-aged man, but he was still an overweight, middle-aged man.
The Englishman made it, but by the time the five men pulled themselves onto the flat top of the butte, he was puffing so hard and wheezing so loud that Jason was worried that the Apaches would hear him from all the way down on the flats. “Are you going to be all right, Alf?” he asked.
“Oh . . . sure,” Blodgett replied as he struggled to catch his breath. “It was hotter that day . . . in the Khyber Pass . . . when our lads took on . . . a group of rogue Sikhs.”
Jason didn’t have any idea what the Englishman was talking about, but he nodded anyway and said, “All right, stay low while we’re crawling over to the other side.”
The butte was only a couple of hundred yards wide, but that seemed like a long way to the men who were crawling over it. Tufts of grass grew here and there, as did a few small bushes, but for the most part the top of the butte was flat, rocky, and arid.
The popping of gunfire continued from the rocks below, but it seemed to Jason that the shots were fewer and farther between now. He wondered if the troopers were already running low on ammunition. It probably wouldn’t matter to the Apaches if they did; the savages would continue to play their cruel waiting game.
Jason, Wash, Blodgett, and the other two men didn’t unsling their rifles until they were almost at the butte’s brink. When they had the weapons ready, they eased forward, being careful not to let the barrels protrude too far over the edge. They didn’t want the Apaches to notice that they were up here until they were ready to fire.
“Pick your targets,” Jason said, “and make your shots count. We’ll only get one chance to take them by surprise.”
From up there, he could see several Apaches lying in shallow depressions they had scooped out of the sandy soil. Others crouched behind rocks or bushes, making themselves smaller than seemed humanly possible. Jason picked a fairly difficult target for himself. He could see about half of the Apache’s head behind a rock. A strip of red cloth bound the warrior’s raven-black hair. Jason drew a bead on that tiny bit of bright color.
“Everybody ready?” he called to the others, and received four affirmatives. “Let ’em have it,” Jason said as he began to take up the slack on his rifle’s trigger.
The weapon cracked loudly and kicked against Jason’s shoulder. As he worked its lever, he saw the Apache he had aimed at thrown backward by the bullet, a red spray of blood exploding from his head. The warrior landed on his back with his arms and legs outflung and didn’t move again.
Along the rim of the butte, more shots rang out. Those shots were the signal for the posse to charge into the battle from the rear, led by Saul, Salmon, and Matt. The four women would still be far in the rear, guarded by several of the wounded men who were left behind for that purpose.
Jason fired again, and saw an Apache’s arm jerk and then dangle uselessly, probably broken by the bullet. At that moment, the posse came galloping into view, yelling and shooting. Jason scooted forward until he could look down into the rocks at the cavalrymen who had been trapped there.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” he shouted. He didn’t want those troopers blazing away at the Apaches, because any of their shots that missed might pose a danger to the men from Fury who were attacking from the rear.
Jason spotted the wiry little sergeant kneeling behind a boulder. The lieutenant was sitting beside him with his back propped against the rock. A bloodstained bandage was wrapped around the young officer’s shoulder. At Jason’s shout, Sergeant Halligan twisted around and craned his neck to look up at the top of the butte. Jason snatched his hat off and waved it in the air so that the sergeant could see it and know that they were white men up here, not Indians.
Halligan grinned and waved back at Jason, then bellowed an order for the rest of the patrol to hold their fire. Jason
resumed firing. The Apaches were scattering now, just as he had figured they would. The posse men rode some of them down, and blasted others with rifles and handguns. Jason and his sharpshooters picked off others. The fight didn’t last long. Within minutes, all the Apaches were down. All but a couple of them were lying motionless, either already dead or mortally wounded. The two who weren’t hurt that bad were taken prisoner. Jason was glad to see that. He had issued firm orders before leaving the posse that none of the Indians were to be murdered if they were out of the fight, but he hadn’t been sure the men would cooperate and follow those orders.
Alf Blodgett stood up, pulled a bandanna from his pocket, and wiped his sweating face. “Blimey,” he said. “Now we got to climb back down the bleedin’ hill.” He grinned. “Still, ’twasn’t a bad fight while it lasted. A bit unfair perhaps.”
“What’s unfair is not doing everything you can to survive a fight,” Jason said.
“And a mite foolish to boot,” put in Wash.
By the time Jason and the others descended from their aerie, the troopers had emerged from the rocks and the women and their guards had come up. As the posse members and the cavalry patrol gathered at the base of the butte, Sergeant Halligan helped Lieutenant Carter forward. The wounded lieutenant looked around at Jason and the other men from Fury, and then his gaze lingered on the four women. Not out of admiration, though, as he made clear when he said, “You men are all under arrest.”
Jason stared at him, unable to speak for a moment. When he regained his voice, he said, “What the hell are you talking about, Lieutenant?”
“I know I owe you a debt of thanks for coming to our aid,” Carter said, “but I can’t ignore the presence of those women. Obviously, you men ignored my orders and entered Mexican territory without permission. You invaded a sovereign nation!”
“Invasion, hell!” Jason flared back at him, too fed up to keep his temper under control. “Alba and his bandits invaded Arizona Territory first! If you’re a big enough fool to try to arrest us, you can do it after we’ve taken those ladies back to Fury!”
“Lieutenant,” Halligan said, “with all due respect, sir, you might want to think about what you’re doin’. We lost a couple o’ men, but I reckon we’d all be dead if it wasn’t for these folks. They saved our bacon, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“But they broke the law and disobeyed a direct order—”
That was all Halligan could take too. “Beggin’ your pardon, Lieutenant, but were you such a horse’s ass before they pinned them bars on you, or did you get that way afterward?”
Carter could only gape at the sergeant, too overcome by shock and anger to speak. When he was able to talk again, he blustered, “Of all the damned insubordination! I’ll have you busted all the way down to private! You won’t see the outside of the guardhouse for months, Sergeant!”
“Good,” Halligan said. “Maybe I’ll get some sleep in there.”
“Now, see here—”
“No, you see! You got the makin’s of a fine officer, Lieutenant. Ain’t nobody doubts your courage, and you’re smart as a whip most o’ the time. But this ain’t one o’ those times.” Halligan waved a gnarled hand at the posse members. “You tell a bunch of Americans they ain’t got the right to protect them and their own, and of course they’re gonna ignore you! You tell ’em they got to sit back and let badmen run roughshod over ’em because o’ some rule or regulation some stuffed shirt back East come up with, and they’re gonna tell you to go to hell! They don’t care about the law near as much as they care about doin’ what’s right. And if they weren’t that way, well, I reckon they’d’ve rode off today and left us here to die, instead o’ riskin’ their own lives to help us. You get all that through your head, and you might be more’n a good officer someday, Lieutenant . . . you might be a good man too.” Halligan shook his head and blew out his breath. “That’s the longest piece o’ speechifyin’ I ever spouted in all my borned days. I’m done.”
Lieutenant Carter stared at him in silence for a long moment, then finally turned his head and looked at Jason. “You have my apologies, Marshal,” he said. His voice was stiff, but he was making an obvious effort to be more human. “And you and your companions have my gratitude as well. If there’s anything I can do to repay you for your assistance . . .”
“There’s one thing,” Jason said. “Ride with us back to Fury. It’s on your way to Camp Grant anyway, and we’ve got a good doctor there who can tend to your wounded.”
A smile appeared on Carter’s face as he nodded. “All right. Thank you, Marshal.”
Jason turned to the posse members and waved them into their saddles. “Mount up, men,” he called. “We’re going home.”
Chapter 33
It was the middle of the next day when the large group of riders came in sight of the settlement. Jason felt a wave of relief wash through him at the sight of Fury. They had made it the rest of the way without any trouble. Now all they had to do was ride in, and they would be home.
“It looks good, doesn’t it?” Megan asked from beside him.
Jason nodded. There had been a time—not all that long ago really—when all he had wanted to do was leave this town called Fury behind him. Now, although a small part of him still regretted that he hadn’t been able to further his education, either back East or in San Francisco, the warm feeling inside him left no doubt that he had come home.
The pretty redhead beside him probably had something to do with him feeling that way, he reflected. He looked over at Megan and smiled, and when she smiled back at him, he saw his future—and he liked the looks of it.
Jason grew puzzled, though, when no one came riding out from town to meet them. He figured someone would have spotted them coming by now, and he thought Ward Wanamaker or Dr. Morelli, at least, would want to know as soon as possible if their mission had been successful.
If he didn’t know better, though, he would almost think the settlement was deserted. As they drew closer, he didn’t see anyone moving around the streets. Maybe everybody was just taking a siesta, Jason told himself.
That was better than thinking about the alternative—that something serious was wrong here.
Jason wasn’t the only one to notice that there was something unusual going on—or not going on, as the case might be. With a frown on her face, Megan asked, “Does it seem to you like the town is awfully . . . quiet?”
“It does,” Jason replied.
“Do you think anything is wrong?”
Despite his intentions, Jason had been thinking about nothing but that for the past few moments. He considered several alternatives. Maybe an illness had struck the settlement, a sickness so bad that everyone was in bed trying to recover from it. Or there could have been an Indian scare. Maybe everybody had packed up and left for Tucson, where they would be safer. What about a gold strike? Jason had heard of towns that literally emptied out when word of gold being found somewhere else arrived.
None of those possibilities seemed likely, though. Jason couldn’t imagine an illness bad enough to make every single person in town take to his or her bed. Quite a few of the citizens of Fury had been through Indian attacks too. They were too tough and seasoned to cut and run. And he couldn’t believe that everyone in town would have the gold hunger bad enough to up and leave, abandoning all they had worked for here for the mere hope of something better somewhere else.
Wash, Saul, and Salmon trotted their mounts up alongside Jason’s. “Somethin’s wrong,” Salmon said. “Where is everybody?”
“We were just wondering the same thing. Wash, you and I better ride ahead and take a closer look.”
“I’m coming too,” Saul said.
“And me,” Salmon added. “I’m the mayor o’ Fury, gosh darn it. If something bad’s happened, I should’ve been there.”
“You had your hands full helping to rescue those prisoners,” Jason pointed out. “And if there’s any danger in town, I want you and Saul out here to help ha
ndle these folks, Salmon. Don’t let them go charging in, no matter what you see or hear.”
“What could it be?” Megan asked. “Where has everyone gone?”
“We’ll find out,” Jason promised. “Come on, Wash.”
As they rode toward the settlement, Wash said, “I notice you didn’t ask me if I wanted to come with you, Jason.”
“I figured you would,” Jason explained. “You’ve never been one to avoid trouble, Wash. You usually gallop right into it. But you can go back to the others if you want.”
“Hell, no! And miss all the fun?” Wash snorted. “Just ask me next time, all right?”
“Sure,” Jason promised.
They were close enough to town now to see that a couple of wagons were parked in front of the mercantile, and several horses were tied at the hitch racks. So Fury wasn’t completely deserted, after all. But no one was moving around, that was for sure. Jason hadn’t seen a soul on the streets so far.
They reached the edge of town and started riding slowly along Main Street. An eerie silence hung over the settlement. Not even a dog barked anywhere.
“Oh, now,” Wash said in a hushed voice, “I really don’t like—”
A man suddenly burst into view, running from an alley into the street and shouting. Jason barely had time to recognize him as Ward Wanamaker and realize he was calling, “Jason, go back! Get out of town!” before a shot rang out.
Ward jerked, stumbled, and went down. Jason and Wash reached for their guns, but before they could draw the weapons, the barrels of numerous rifles and pistols appeared in open windows and thrust over the tops of roofs. A voice ordered, “Hold it, Marshal!”
Jason’s hand froze as it hovered over the butt of his Colt. In a tense voice, he said, “It looks like they’ve got the drop on us, Wash, whoever they are.”
“Yeah,” the old-timer agreed. He lifted his hand away from his gun, and so did Jason. To do anything else would be to invite getting shot to pieces.
A Town Called Fury Page 40