by Jonas Ward
"They're drunk," Buchanan said. "Try to stop the wagon, they must have more damn dynamite."
Fay Whelan stretched out on the ground. "They'll have to run it right on over me. The fools, I could feel sorry for 'em."
"Don’t," said her husband. "They hired to kill us."
They had only three rifles. Buchanan wondered who was on the roof of the house and if the range would be good and how many wild drunks would be racing down the hill. He placed a box of cartridges beside him.
He said, "Rob, you start firin' when ready. Fay, you let him get off six shots. Then you start."
"Yeah. Then I can reload while you two are still shootin'," said Rob.
"If they get too close, it'll have to be the sixguns," said Buchanan. "I haven't got much faith in 'em, myself."
"Great in a saloon." Rob grinned. "Get it out fast, stick it in their ribs. That's what a Colt's for."
"Worse the luck," Fay said. "Killed more fools than the epizootic plague."
They were the coolest couple Buchanan had ever met. Something could be advanced in favor of early adversity, he pondered, watching the attack form; atop the knoll. They had seen hard times for so long that nothing could faze them. They had fought for no stakes at all. Now, at least, they had something for which to risk their lives for.
He thought of taking them back into the barn. The problem was that a direct fire could not be laid down from that position. They would be firing from a doorway, one at a time. To ward off this charge would be difficult enough as it was.
Rob said, "Reckon I got 'em, now."
The wagon was rolling, men trying to conceal themselves behind it and alongside it, not succeeding too well. The yells became clearer, the long Rebel, the Yankee hoot, a few Indian warwhoops.
"They aimin' to scare us to death?" asked Fay Whelan. At that moment, Rob began shooting. One man went down. There was a miss. He swore heartily and elevated his sights. A second man fell.
As he let off the sixth shot, Fay began firing. Buchanan watched closely, whistled beneath his breath. Fay was bringing them down as if they were tenpins, arming for the legs of the men behind the wagon.
He joined in the attack. The screams of the wounded began to mingle with the shouts of the drunken attackers. Men ran clear of the wagon, frenzied, unwitting.
The solid boom of the Sharps rifle came from the west. It sounded like the clap of doom, it struck to the very souls of the more sober attackers. Buchanan emptied his magazine, and now Rob was reloaded and firing again. A small group of men came crazed down past wagon, and now it was plain that the dead and wounded had piled up under the rear wheels, stopping its progress.
The Sharps sounded again and another victim fell.
Buchanan said, "Let's take out this bunch."
Fay and Rob began to shoot at the charging group.
Buchanan joined in, also aiming low, wanting to stop without killing them if possible. The men fell and roll
and still yowled their crazy song of defiance. These the most drunken, he thought, these were the poor fools who did not fully realize what they were doing.
Once more, the Sharps rifle of Dan Badger sent it zooming message across the prairie. And there was silence.
The charge was broken. Wounded men tried to back up the hill. There were curses and groans, and all the song and all the fiery spirit had collapsed and was more.
Buchanan said, "Okay, back to the barn." The three of them withdrew from their position. Shots were coming now, with better aim, as sober gunners over from the top of the knoll.
Inside the barn Rob said, "Didn't see hide nor hair of Dealer nor Morgan nor Brad. Not Pollard, neither, none of them."
"No," said Buchanan. "No chance, not on a suicide run like that."
"Maybe not never," Fay said. "But they stopped just in time. I'm runnin' low on bullets."
Buchanan said, "Want to make a run for the house, you two?"
"Some hot soup wouldn't hurt," Rob confessed. "And I got this here little nick."
Fay gasped but did not cry out. "Where?"
"Just in the ribs, like. C'mon, we'll go in and take a look at it."
Buchanan watched them go. Rob was walking straight and she was following. They broke for the house, and he staggered. She braced him, an arm about him. Amanda opened the door, and they made it to safety.
Safety for the moment, Buchanan added to himself. There would be more tonight. It was early. By dawn, they would come again, certainly more shrewdly, with better planning behind the attack. There had to be some brains among them. It was standard procedure that the hotheads and dummies would have their say. Proven wrong—or killed—they would shrink into the background, and the men who knew how to fight this kind of a battle would take over.
He settled down to watch and think . . . and wait. It was always the hardest part, the waiting.
They were loading the wounded into the wagons. Men went down and rescued their friends, at first fearful of attack from the defenders, then with boldness as no one to prevent them. The men with the shovels went back to the trench to bury the dead.
Sime Pollard said, "No way you're gonna get them to do that again. Forget the barn."
Dealer Fox raged, "If they'd just kept on goin'. That was Buchanan out there, I'll bet my life."
"Your life wasn't on the line," Pollard told him.
"You expect me and Morgan to go down there?" screamed Dealer Fox. "We're payin' for people to do that."
"Dead men can't collect," said Pollard.
"We ain't scared," Crane insisted. "It just ain't our job whilst we can hire men."
Pollard looked at Tanner and Geer. They shrugged, nodding agreement to his leadership. The foreman of the Bar-B turned his attention to the dead, the wounded, those who were left of the bunch behind the knoll. Torches burned low, there was a queasy expression on the faces of too many of them.
Pollard said, "So far it's been a dumb play. You want to listen to good sense or don't you?"
"We're the boss here," said Fox, but he had followed Pollard's inquiring survey, and his voice was weak.
"Then you go ahead and run it without Toad and Geer and me," said Pollard indifferently. "My boss seems to have lost interest. I'd as soon quit."
"Now, wait," said Fox. "That ain't no way to talk. Let's all have a touch of that good whiskey and talk things over."
"Don't need booze," said Pollard. "We can augur right here and now."
Geer and Tanner moved in. The three of them were formidable, and Fox realized that, under the circumstances, anything could happen both to him and to Crane, who was as drunk as any of them. His devious mind described a huge circle.
"Okay, Sime. Reckon you're right. Reckon we ain’t done any good 'til now." His voice was oily, he managed to grin. "Reckon we'll have to go in the next time. Show the men we're with 'em all the way."
"The dynamite," said Pollard. "We got to use it. Wagons and the dynamite."
"Can we do that?"
"I can do it," said Pollard. "I know about dynamite."
Morgan Crane was emptying the first barrel, still mouthing obscenities to the watching men. Fox away from him.
"Sime?"
"Yep."
"You pull it out. Then we'll talk real business."
"Like about Brad?"
"He's through, you know that. And look at Morgan. Only you and me are makin' any sense."
"You figurin' to do away with Brad?"
"It'll be an accident. Like when they drive out in their carriage. Maybe one of your sticks of dynamite?"
"Mebbe."
"Then you run the Bar-B."
Pollard shook his head. "Then I own the Bar-B."
"Now, Sime don't be a hawg."
"I own it. I been a drover all my life. Now you all got me into this. And I know where I stand. I'll take care of Toad and Dab. But I get to own Bar-B."
Fox looked at the hard-faced lean foreman, saw danger, saw raw ambition. He also saw intelligence, possibly a way to get through this dangerous s
etup.
He dissimulated. "Well ... if that's the way it has to be."
"That's the only way," Pollard said coldly.
"But first we got to finish this job clean."
"We let 'em sweat. Come sunup, we hit."
"You're the boss."
"Right," said Pollard. "And you go down there with us, you and Morgan."
"Agreed."
"Sure. Agreed. And I'm goin' to see you do it." Pollard's laugh was without mirth.
"Okay, Sime. It's your wagon."
"Wagons. Me and Toad and Dab. We'll convince them. We blow up the house from the wagons. Forget the damn barn, we only lose at the barn."
"And they'll expect us to hit there."
"You're catchin' on, Dealer." Pollard walked away.
There went a really dangerous man, Fox thought. Now he would have to think real hard. He could, of course, start down on the attack. There was bound to be confusion. He could slip away to safety.
No use to worry about Morgan. He had slid down to the ground, his head against a wagon wheel, snoring. Many of the men were sleeping, either from exhaustion or because of the booze.
He walked around the knoll and up to where he could look into the glade. The Bradburys slept against each other, but Miguel was awake and on guard with the shotgun. The man left to watch them was also partially awake. It didn't matter right now.
Dealer Fox looked up at the sky. He took a deep breath. He suddenly felt more alone than he had ever been before.
Buchanan awakened with the touch of Coco's hand upon is arm. He started. The smell of dawn was on the air. He was still in the barn.
Coco said, "The trees, Tom. They beginnin' to move in the trees."
“Who's on the roof?" "Them Whelans. He got a. bullet in the side, but he went up there with her. His wife. They mighty tough people, Tom."
"Mighty good people." He rinsed off his face at the water bucket, from which they had sipped water during all the previous day and night. "I had a dream."
"Good dream or bad dream?"
"I don't know. It told me they wouldn't try the barn, here, next time."
"Shoot, didn't need no dream for that. They got knocked out twice, tryin' it here."
"But we need cover here." He brushed the last vestige of sleep from his eyes. "Trevor. How's his arm?"
"He been shootin'. Him and Weevil. At them trees."
"Miz Day?"
"She fixin' food and all. She loadin' guns with me. Maybe she got an hour sleep or so."
"The Kovacs?"
"They just set. They'd do anything to stop it, I do believe. When the little old Injun gal went away, they was finished."
"Uh-huh. And how do you feel?"
Coco brightened. "Little old Injun gal, she done wonders for me. It hurts. .. but I can navigate."
"So we got Weevil and Trevor and the Whelans, four guns. Maybe Amanda to fire a few shots. We got Badger outside. Then there's you and me."
"I can't shoot no gun."
"I know." He weighed the odds in his mind. "We better get to the house before there's light to shoot us by."
"Me and Amanda, we brought out the other corpus," said Coco, pointing. "Put him there with his daddy. Them other two, couldn't get to them. They're in the yard where they fell."
"Amanda?"
"The Whelans was on the roof. Trevor's hurt. Weevil's got but one leg. The Kovacs, they just set and stare." Coco spread his muscular, huge hands. "Wasn't for my ribs, I'd be all right."
"You keep 'em bandaged tight. And come on, now." Buchanan led the way to the house in the deceptive light that precedes dawn. It was the time when all energies are low, when people cannot see the light after a long night. It was the lowest ebb of fortune.
Amanda held the door. There was coffee on the stove and a pot of hot gruel, a porridge of sorts. Buchanan swallowed the coffee, admiring the widow's coolness and courage.
A bullet came through one of the windows, missed a hanging mattress, skipped off the stone wall, whistled into the kitchen. Amanda pushed back a strand of hair as it clanked against the stove and fell harmless to the floor. There were dark hollows beneath her eyes.
"Pieter and Jenny have given up," she said, ignoring the flight of the deadly hunk of lead. "Weevil is exhausted. Trevor's wound is infected in spite of the Indian herbs . . . I may have applied them wrong."
Buchanan said, "Won't take a long while to decide it now. One way or another."
"I can see only one way," she said, low-voiced. "There are just too many of them."
"That ain't the way to look at it." He went to the closet where he had manufactured his dynamite bombs and began to stow them in his pockets. She followed him.
"We began this together." She stood very close to him. "Mainly because of me you're in it."
"Nope," he told her. "Just a notion of mine that people shouldn't be lynched. Nor beaten and jailed, like they did Coco and Weevil."
"Still, we were in it from the start."
"Uh-huh." He looked down at her from his considerable height. "I call it good company, no matter how it goes."
The tired eyes of the woman flashed. "Yes. Good company. Don't forget that, Buchanan."
"Couldn't forget it," he told her. "You been somebody else, all the way. Keep it that way."
"Isn't there anything I can do? To help?"
"Just what you been doin'," he said.
She nodded. She was disheveled and not too clean, but there was a wild beauty about her. "It seems we've been here forever. Doing what we can. All the killing. I can't quite take it in, not yet."
"Don't try," he advised her. He walked into the big front room, death in every pocket of his jacket and pants, death in his revolver, in his rifle. He looked at Trevor, then at Weevil.
"I'm bringin' down the Whelans," he said. "Coco and me, we'll take the roof."
"The barn?" Trevor was flushed in the light of the sheltered lamp. "What of the barn?"
"They'll be comin' right to us this time," Buchanan said. "It figures. They got the wagons. They'll have learned somethin' by now."
"Learned?"
"How to use 'em. The fools have died. Pollard's no dummy. This'll be the big one."
Weevil said, "Dynamite. They got to have more'n you took away from the first wagon."
"Right," said Buchanan. "So we'll need all the fire power here. If they go the other way, then the Whelans can swing out and I'll be with 'em."
"If they get close enough, we're goners," said Weevil.
"You might say it that way," Buchanan agreed.