TWENTY-EIGHT
“I ain’t done with Jimbo Turlock yet,” Johnny Cross said to the surviving Hangtree raiders during a stop along the trail. “We already gave the hornet’s nest a hell of a clubbing, getting them good and mad. We lost some good men doing it, but it had to be done. We had to get Jimbo so mad he’ll come straight on to the ranch through the cut instead of going the long way through the Notch. You know why.”
The others nodded, murmuring agreement. They did know why.
“I want to give him one more whomping, just to seal the deal,” Johnny continued. “I mean to do it no matter what, by my own self if I have to, but I wanted to ask y’all first to see if you wanted to join me.”
When he got no immediate answers he asked, “Well, what’s it to be?”
“Quit trying to hog all the fun for yourself. That’s what I say,” Wiley declared.
“That’s a hell of a way to treat your friends,” Vic said.
“Maybe he thinks he’s too good for us,” Baldy grumbled.
The others all said pretty much the same in their own various ways. To a man, they wanted in.
Johnny grinned. “I figured that’s what you’d say, but I don’t take nothing for granted.”
“Just try keeping us out of the play,” Fritz Carrados said.
“It’s a go,” said El Indio Negro.
“I hate leaving something unfinished,” Mick Sabbath said.
“Good. Let’s get to it,” Johnny said.
They were giving their horses a rest, standing around at the western mouth of the pass where Cross’s Cut opened on to Wild Horse Canyon. Positioned just inside the pass at its south end, they were out of sight of anyone approaching via the canyon’s northbound road. Some of them were smoking.
“All this hoopla, fussing and fighting, bombs exploding—it’s enough to scare the mustangs clear to Comancheria,” Wiley said.
“Be a long time before Wild Horse Canyon sees wild horses again,” El Indio agreed.
“Looks like I got into the cattle business just in time,” Johnny said.
Vic rummaged around in his saddlebags. “Hey, look what I found!” He pulled out a stick of TNT. “Turns out I had a spare left. I’ll have to put it where it’ll do some good.”
“I’ll tell you where you can put it,” Baldy said, all sour-like.
“Yeah? Where’s that?” Vic said menacingly, squaring his broad shoulders, his big hands fists. He loomed over the raider, taking a step forward. “Why don’t you tell me just where I can put it, amigo?”
Baldy changed course hastily. “You can stick it up Jimbo Turlock’s—”
“Hey men, here they come!” Carrados called out from the end of the pass where he was peeking around the corner to Wild Horse Canyon road. He’d lost his straw hat and his once-white suit was anything but, grimy, soot-smeared, ripped, and torn as it was. His watery pale blue eyes seemed to be bulging even more than usual.
The raiders knew what he meant. They mounted up, turning their horses’ heads west toward the end of the cut.
Kev Huddy was pale, but standing on two good legs. The holes in the top of his torso and his upper left arm had been patched up with gauze bandages and tape from a first-aid kit Carrados carried in a saddlebag.
Taking a deep breath, Huddy gripped the saddle horn with his good right hand and put his left foot into the stirrup. With one intense exertion, he stepped up and straddled the saddle, though not without a curse and a stifled groan. Holding the reins in his right fist, he looked paler and more white-faced than before.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Johnny asked.
“I bought a ticket to the show and I aim to see it,” Huddy said, stubborn and defensive.
“You’re buying yourself a ticket to Boot Hill, ya danged fool!” Baldy said. “Hell, you tell him, Johnny. Nobody around here listens to me nohow.”
“That’s because of your sunny disposition,” Mick Sabbath said.
“Huh?”
“Never mind, Baldy.” Sabbath gestured as if waving his comment away.
“Don’t try talking me out of it. I’ve still got one good hand,” Huddy said.
“You need that to hold the reins. What’re you going to shoot with? You can’t even throw rocks at them,” Johnny pointed out.
“I reckon you could cuss ’em out. Call ’em a lot of dirty names and such. That might get ’em riled up some,” Wiley said.
“I know you want to take the ride, Huddy, but face the facts,” Sabbath said. “With those holes in you and one wing down, you’re more liability than asset. All you can do is get yourself killed or worse, taken alive by the marauders. Then some of us will get killed trying to save your ass, so why not do yourself and us a favor by sitting this one out?”
“Instead of getting yourself or one of us killed—or even worse, me killed—you could do some real good by riding back and tipping the others back at the ranch that the Free Company is here,” Johnny suggested.
“Johnny talk sense. You listen,” El Indio said sternly.
Huddy thought it over, eyes bright, feverish. “Oh hell. Reckon I’ll have to play hero some other time.” He smiled weakly.
“Go on then. Get to it before it’s too late,” Johnny said. “The boys back at the ranch are cooking up a powerful surprise for the marauders, and I’d hate to see it spoiled.”
“All right,” Huddy said. “Good luck and give them hell!”
“Pure hell is what we surely intend to dispense,” Sabbath said.
Huddy turned his horse toward the east end of the pass and put heels to its flanks. The horse leaped forward swiftly, speeding along.
“Hope he don’t fall off,” Baldy said, watching him go.
Wiley scratched himself. “Cheerful cuss, ain’tcha?”
Huddy stayed on the horse, which was soon out of sight.
“Come on. Let’s ride!” Johnny urged.
Jimbo Turlock wasn’t much for military strategy and tactics, but he knew enough to send out scouts and skirmishers in advance of his main body of troops.
A platoon of forty or so advance gunmen patrolled the Wild Horse Canyon road ahead and out of sight of the rest of the Free Company’s long column. Rowdy, sullen, and ill-tempered, they rode bunched together in a mass rather than maintaining a proper distance, sending no single or double teams of scouts ahead to see what lay farther up the road.
Truth be told, the earlier raid had left them demoralized and in low spirits. Each man took comfort in the nearness of his fellows, and no one in the platoon wanted to separate from the group.
Ahead on the right lay the western mouth of Cross’s Cut, their destination.
Suddenly without warning, a small party of riders burst out of the pass, turning south to charge straight at the platoon. Riding full tilt, they were the last of the Hangtree raiders. Whooping wild rebel yells, they came on, shooting into the mass of forty Free Company skirmishers.
Each raider was a crack shot, as deadly accurate charging on galloping steeds as they were standing with both feet planted on solid ground. They rushed the foe as if they were the superior force outnumbering the other side, crashing into the Free Company vanguard.
The robber bandit skirmishers were taken by surprise. An attack was the last thing they expected. The sound of gunfire was a roaring racket as clouds of gun smoke engulfed the combatants.
Johnny Cross was at the fore, both guns blasting, knocking men out of the saddle left and right.
Vic Vargas swung wide to one side of the point of the platoon, sweeping south along their left flank toward the rear. He gripped the last bundle of dynamite and lit the short fuse. With an overhand throw, he tossed the bundle over the heads of the bandits, dropping the TNT into the rear of the platoon, far from his own men.
He turned his horse to the right, peeling off and away.
The TNT blew up, wreaking terrible havoc on the skirmishers. A space was cleared in the center of the blast, the ground littered with the bodies of men and h
orses heaped in smoking ruins.
That did it! The rest of the platoon broke and ran, turning their horses back the way they came and galloping for their lives, full speed down the road.
From behind them came mocking derisive hoots and hollers, sparked by triumphant rebel yells. The Hangtree gunhawks reined in, leaning forward on their horses and peering through the smoke to watch the flight of what was left of the robber bandits’ vanguard.
Johnny grinned, having counted on the success of such a bold attack.
Quantrill and his mounted guerrillas had learned early in the war that the best defense against superior numbers was to go on the offense. Charge straight-on with no hesitation and go in shooting, and more often than not the foe would be so startled by the savagery of an unexpected assault that they would rather run than fight.
Jimbo Turlock just about blew his stack when the advance guard platoon came galloping into view. The fugitives were in a blind panic, whipping and spurring their horses to greater speed in a frenzied effort to escape. The horses were wild-eyed and sleek with sweat, some foaming at the nostrils and mouth from exertion.
When the retreating force reached the Free Company column they didn’t bother to stop. They peeled off to the flanks, riding south on the left and right of the line of march and racing past mounted men who stared at them with open-mouthed amazement. They kept on going—past the long snakelike line of foot soldiers and camp followers who brought up the rear—until they were out of sight.
For all that is known, they might have kept going until they reached Mexico.
Recovering from his astonishment, Turlock snapped orders to have some of the fleeing men brought back for questioning.
This was done with difficulty—the platoon was running so fast—but a few at the rear were bagged and taken to the commander. The spooked skirmishers babbled of having been struck by an overwhelming force of fierce fighters who outnumbered them five-to-one. No, ten-to-one!
Turlock knew better. Had there been an enemy force of that size, they surely would have fallen on the Free Company at Sidepocket Canyon like the wrath of God and wiped them out to the last man. More, there was no towering dust cloud on the northern horizon that such a large-sized force would have raised.
From Missouri, Turlock was a product of the vicious guerrilla warfare that wracked the border states for a decade before Fort Sumter. He well knew the tactics of such men as Quantrill and had more than a suspicion that his advance force had fallen prey to some of the same.
He sent more scouts forward. They quickly returned to report that just over the hill lay a group of about a half-dozen riders who mocked and jeered them.
“What I thought,” Turlock said grimly. “Inform the troops that we will attack at once and in full force, Sgt. Quarles. We will proceed ahead at full speed through the pass and take the Cross Ranch, killing any and all we encounter who are not of us. Tell the men to raise the Black Flag, Quarles. Take no prisoners—no quarter to the foe!”
Quarles did as ordered and reported back to his commander.
At the head of the column, Turlock stood in his saddle, pointing his rifle toward Cross’s Cut. He would lead. “Charge!”
The Free Company marauders put spurs to horses and started forward. The entire column was on the move, surging into action.
Drumming hoofbeats hammered the hard-packed dirt road of Wild Horse Canyon. Long untrimmed manes streamed in the air behind horses like banners. War cries and oaths of death and destruction to the enemy echoed off canyon walls.
Once the marauders saw the insignificance of the foe facing them, they would come back into their own. Their murderous instincts would be stoked when they learned how they had been fooled and run ragged by so few men—men they could easily obliterate once they set themselves to the task.
The column of mounted men pulled away from the foot soldiers. The spearhead of the horse troops crested the hill.
Instead of an opposing army arrayed on the north road, they saw only a handful of riders.
The Free Company charged, venting blood-chilling war cries. Gunfire crackled as they opened fire.
Johnny Cross and the other raiders turned, fleeing into the pass and out of sight.
The marauder column rushed downhill, turning to the right to enter Cross’s Cut. Several hundred yards ahead of them, the Hangtree raiders could be seen racing for the east end of the pass.
The robber bandits poured into the cut. The effect was like a stream suddenly entering a narrow channel. They were packed close together in a tight bristling mass that slithered and squirmed its way through the cut like a giant snake. On either side rose the cliffs, some several hundred feet high.
Rocky walls bulged with arches, ledges, and overhangs that blocked off much of the narrow strip of open sky at the top of the cut. At its most narrow, the pass was only about a hundred feet wide.
The Hangtree raiders reached the end of the pass, flashing through it to the open range of the Cross Ranch.
The Free Company column was close behind.
TWENTY-NINE
Jimbo Turlock waved a cavalry saber whose curved gleaming blade struck glints of reflected sunlight. He was at the point of an Honor Guard platoon of his personal bodyguards, hard men riding six riders abreast on either side of him.
The column extended far behind, deep in the pass, marauders crowding and hurrying. They shouted, whooped, and hollered, brandishing pistols and rifles, shooting them off though there were as yet no targets at which to shoot.
Rock walls fell away, flaring outward like the mouth of a trumpet, then ending abruptly as the head of the column broke out of the pass and into the open.
Their speed was great, their momentum well-nigh irresistible. They poured out of the pass, streaming down the gentle slope at the foot of the cut, onto the land of Cross Ranch.
On the knoll across a shallow hollow were Sam Heller, his crew, and the howitzer the Free Company had looted from Fort Pardee and which Sam and friends had stolen back from the marauders. The field piece’s barrel was leveled at the charging vanguard of the Free Company column.
Lookouts and snipers posted on top of the summits of both sides of the cliffs bordering the cut spotted the raiders coming home pursued by the Free Company. They waved red flags to signal their fellows below to be ready.
Ready they were.
Johnny Cross and the other raiders galloped hell-bent-for-leather, quickly swinging to the side to get out of the line of fire of the howitzer on the knoll.
The Free Company vanguard streamed out of the pass and were charging down the slope when they realized what they had rushed into.
Jimbo Turlock shouted, “It’s a trap!”
Sam touched a piece of hot fire cord to the touch hole in the side of the squat blue-black howitzer barrel. A spark ignited the primer in the touch hole, igniting the gunpowder charge loaded in the howitzer. The gunpowder detonated, spewing fire and smoke, hurling a cannonball into the head of the Free Company charge.
The howitzer rocked back on the carriage of its wheeled framework from the mighty recoil. The gun crew were careful not to stand behind it, having been thoroughly schooled by Sam on its dangers.
The blast was deafening. The very air seemed to shimmer and shake from the concussion.
Sam was firing canister shell loads. The disintegrating shell loosed 148 white-hot .69-caliber lead musket balls traveling at ultra-high velocity. It was the artillery equivalent of a giant sawed-off shotgun and served a similar purpose—to inflict maximum damage at close quarters to as many combatants as possible and terrorize the survivors.
It performed both functions superlatively well, stopping the Free Company charge dead in its tracks.
Rows of mounted horsemen were cut down, falling in smoking heaps to the ground. The devastation was awesome.
Combat veterans had learned the maxim You never hear the shell that kills you. Truly, Jimbo Turlock heard the shrill shrieking scream of the canister shell as it tore into the r
anks. And it didn’t kill him. The wide fan spray of sizzling white-hot musket balls missed him. He felt the wind and heat of their passing as they killed and maimed the cream of his frontline cavalry troops.
With cannonballs passing harmlessly over their heads, a platoon-sized group of Hangtree riflemen hid among the weeds and rocks and rills of the hollow fronting the knoll. Veterans and hunters whose aim was true, they opened fire from the prone position. The reports from several dozen rifles firing at once made a great crackling noise . . . like a giant sheet tearing. It tore into the massed ranks of mounted marauders on the slope and in the mouth of the pass, sweeping dozens of Free Company marauders from their saddles.
Other groups of shooters were posted on the left and right flanks of the center group. Their weapons spoke, entering the fray as they opened fire. Streaming sheets of lead ripped through the Free Company ranks like a hailstorm tearing down a field of cornstalks.
Sam Heller and his gun crew were hard at work readying the howitzer for another round. Otto Berg worked a ramrod with an oversized water-saturated swab at the business end, thrusting it down the bore of the howitzer’s barrel to extinguish any remaining sparks or embers within, which otherwise might disastrously touch off the fresh charge of gunpowder about to be inserted.
Luke Pettigrew handed off a gunpowder charge bag, pre-mixed, pre-measured, and self-contained, passing it to Tonk. Tonk scrambled up the knoll, loading the charge into the receptacle at the base of the howitzer’s barrel, sealing it closed tight.
Once the needful wadding was in place in the bore, Noel Maddox and Otto Berg, with no small amount of heaving and straining, manhandled a canister round into the barrel.
As enemy bullets whizzed past the top of the knoll like a fusillade of vicious metal wasps, the gun crew completed their tasks, dropping flat to the ground at the sides of the howitzer.
The first blast had broken the back of the Free Company’s charge, but the pressure of massed cavalry still in the cut and the teeming horde of camp followers and foot soldiers who had followed the mounted marauders into the pass pushed fresh ranks of cavalry to the eastern mouth of the pass and down the slope.
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