Bushwhacked

by C. Courtney Joyner

  Chaney spit, “Jesus, another losing game.”

  Beaudine’s words tumbled. “You’re not in a position to be saying these things—things like this. Testing me is foolish. You, of all people, should know that! Howard, do you want your share? Ready to take it?”

  Howard held up the dynamite bundle in one hand and the lit cigar in the other. “How many times you gonna ask?”

  “That dynamite? Every shack. You’re surrounded by it. Mr. Howard has made sure this entire place could be blown straight to Heaven.” Beaudine turned the long cleaver in his palms, as he had that winter night. “We’re all prepared to do what we need to do, so I’d think you’d stop flapjacking, and start cooperating!”

  Bishop used his old bedside manner: “You need to stay calm, think, think of your officer’s training. Get yourself clear.” He adjusted his shoulders, tightening the line to the triggers. “Look around you. This didn’t go as planned. These aren’t Creed’s men, so you tell me—vigilantes? Someone sent a damn army after you, Major.”

  Beaudine’s voice jumped. “And we’re victorious! We walked through the gates of hell for that gold, and it’s ours! Are you saying you’re not going to surrender it? Play that game again?”

  “The gold’s not here.”

  Chaney called out, “Then you take us to where you got it buried, or whatever. What’s this stall for?”

  “These aren’t the only Red Hoods! They were riding down on us when we came into this canyon.” Bishop yelled out to Lem, who had tied a belt above his knee to slow his bleeding, “You think this is over?”

  Lem strained, “Going to help me, Doc?”

  “Tell Beaudine what you think.”

  Lem threw it out, “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

  Beaudine shook his head, thoughts breaking. “No, no. We won this battle, and you’re my prisoner, and you better damn well start acting like it!”

  Bishop hit hard: “In truth, you’re the prisoner. You believe I have this gold? If you don’t follow my orders, you’ll never see a bit of it.”

  Beaudine closed his eyes, sorting thoughts. Chaney stepped from behind the shed, arms outstretched. “What the hell do you want, then? This standoff isn’t taking us no place.”

  “Beaudine, the bastard with the blind eye, and the big one. I don’t know the rest of you, I don’t care. Ride on.”

  Chaney said, “We’re here for gold.”

  “We can talk about that, after I’ve settled my business.”

  Beaudine raised the cleaver, throwing away a laugh. “You are a man who refuses to accept his circumstances, and we will get that gold, one way or t’other.”

  White Fox stood, the bow drawn tight, the string slicing her fingers. A hint of sun highlighted the jagged edge of the arrowhead.

  Bishop said, “The offer stands. The rest of you can ride out. Now. Maybe have a chance at that gold, but as long as this man’s alive, you get nothing.”

  Lem quieted his moans, and Chaney was gun-ready. The last of the new boys looked to each other, not sure about their next move. One of them shifted on his feet, about to bolt.

  Bishop didn’t even blink, staying steady on Beaudine: “Just so we’re clear: I came here to kill you. How many other enemies you have doesn’t matter, because it’s going to be my privilege to end your life.”

  Beaudine cleared his throat, and his mind: “Quite a declaration, Dr. Bishop. Not quite the Hippocratic oath, is it?”

  Howard topped everyone: “What about our goddamn money! You’re gonna come across this time!”

  That’s when the hammer dropped.

  The black powder flamed on the Prussian needle rifle, sending the acorn-shaped bullet to find its target.

  Time slowed on impact; the first shot hit one of the new boys in the neck, and traveled through to his partner standing next to him. The bodies were falling to the ground, pistols out of their leather and arms flailing, as all eyes turned toward the shots.

  The Fire Riders, ripped into the canyon pass at full thunder on white-skulled horses. There were about twenty Red Hoods in the wave, attacking the Goodwill with rifles blazing.

  White Fox let fly the first arrow, tearing into a Red Hood as he rode by shooting at Bishop with a pair of barking Colts. The arrow cut through the Hood’s leg, his horse wailing back, as he fired. Bishop blasted him out of the saddle with a single barrel, turned around, and used the second on a Hood who was swinging an ax.

  Bishop snapped the rig, loaded fresh shells, as the first stick of Howard’s dynamite spun through the air over his head, fuse burning down. It landed between the Riders, the explosion erupting beneath Hoods and horses, catching them running, tossing them, slamming them down.

  Fox whipped arrows in quick succession, hitting two more Red Hoods, as Bishop jumped over the barricade, and ran for Beaudine. Howard threw more dynamite, the explosion pushing Bishop to the ground, raining ice and bloody mud.

  The Red Hoods rode in a wide circle around the small canyon, closing off the Goodwill, wiping out Beaudine’s new men with rifle fire. They were knocked off their feet, sent spinning, landing dead.

  Two of Beaudine’s outlaws ran for White Fox, laying cover fire, diving for the barricade. Her war club shattered one in the temple, then she spun with a battle knife in her hand, opening the other one’s throat. One tried to ask something before he dropped. She kicked both bodies against the rail ties, adding to her shield.

  Bishop pulled himself up from the ground to see Beaudine through a veil of blowing smoke: slashing at the masked riders with the cleaver, laying open their chests or knees, whatever he could catch with the blade, as they rode down on him. His screams were louder than theirs, hysterical rage, as he battled his way past them.

  One of the Red Hoods put a pistol to the back of Beaudine’s head. Beaudine turned, with his blade, facing the gun. Another explosion tore the ground around them.

  Howard lit one, then another, stick of dynamite, throwing each to opposite ends of the canyon. The blasts sent old lumber, hooded men, and horses scattering wild. Bishop rolled out of the way of two skull-headed stallions, their hooves just missing him.

  Bishop stood and shot one Fire Rider off his horse, and he went down, firing back. He missed. Slugs from somewhere else finished the Rider off.

  Lem Wright yelled to Bishop, “Think that came from one of us! Maybe you don’t know who your enemies are, Doc!”

  Bishop moved to Lem, still with one shell in the rig, and pointed directly at his head. “I know.”

  Lem cocked his dead eye. “If one of us just saved your bacon, then you’d be obliged. You see Beaudine?”

  The smoke of the fires and dynamite blasts was blown aside by a whip-snap of cold wind, revealing hooded riders still tearing wild, guns roaring, a few men crawling before dying, but Major Beaudine was nowhere to be seen. There were just more casualties of battle, more bodies.

  “He isn’t hiding out here, if that’s what you’re thinking. You really want Beaudine or not?”

  They both ducked Red Hood gunfire, before Chaney stopped it with five shots from behind the old shack. They heard a body crash.

  Lem called out, “Good work, gambler!” Then, back to Bishop, “See? It just takes one, and you’ll never get what you want.”

  “Where is he?”

  Lem’s pain was a whispered, “Help me, damn it.”

  Bishop was next to Lem, and used his left to unhook the belt around the damaged leg, with Lem watching through his good eye and gritted teeth. “That little Cheyenne can do some real cutting. I’d watch my back.”

  Bishop rewrapped the belt inches from the wound, and pulled it tight with his one arm, stopping the bleeding. “You had this in the wrong place, lost a lot of blood.”

  “Tell me I’m going to make it, at least to ride out of here.”

  Bishop didn’t say a word; all around them was the sound of a new attack and retreat. Lem took a deep breath, and ran his hands over his leg, rubbing some feeling back into it. “Son o
f a bitch, that pains!”

  “The nerves are getting blood again. You might pass out.”

  “But I be alive. We’re in the middle of a battle, and you can’t help being a doc. You want Beaudine? He had his escape all planned out, just in case. He’s loco, but he knew.”

  “Help you, and let you go?”

  “Then, I’m staying alive?”

  “You need that leg sewn up right away, and my med kit’s in my saddlebags.”

  “So I’ll be fine? You haven’t said it yet!”

  By the canyon entrance, Howard puffed his cigar before lighting another bundle, and hurling it toward one of the buried charges. The ground blew apart, driving a posse of Fire Riders away from the old mine, their horses tossed off balance. The sound of the blast was trapped against the walls, and pounded back, over and over. One explosion became an echoed dozen.

  Howard tossed the dynamite as grenades, every blast tearing through the Fire Riders.

  A few Riders opened up on the slag heap, punching it with bullets. Howard shot back with Betsy, but stayed low after every trigger pull, their return fire slicing damn close. He drew deeply on the green cigar, eyes watering, before leaning close to the exposed end of the fuse to the dynamite bundles planted around the mine perimeter.

  Howard sneezed out half his nose with the green smoke, then lit the fuse.

  Lem Wright angled over in pain. “I can’t sit a horse like this. You’ve got to do more.”

  “Where’s Beaudine?”

  Behind them, Chaney was belly-crawling from the old shack, stray slugs ripping around him.

  Lem cried, “Think about that night! You know I didn’t raise a hand to hurt your wife or son.”

  Bishop drew the trigger line tight. “Where?”

  “This is worse than it was before!”

  Bishop pressed the double-barrel rig against Lem’s chest, boiling. “Where’d he escape to?”

  “I’ll show you, but—but you’ve got to fix me!”

  Lem continued his begging, but Bishop wasn’t hearing it. The outlaw’s voice had been replaced by the screams of his wife and son. No words, just their sound, filling his head. Bishop felt his own blood pulsing, boiling through, as their painful cries grew louder and louder in his mind.

  He leaned harder on the rig, busting one of Lem’s ribs.

  The bullet from Chaney’s gun exited out of Lem’s dead eye.

  Bishop fell back, as Chaney moved on him, a Wesson two-shot Blade Derringer in his hand. “They call it the Gambler’s Gun, and wasn’t Deadeye surprised? Now, you’re my prisoner, and going to take me to that goddamn gold.”

  The blast of a dynamite bundle shook the ground with cannonball force, tossing more Riders, setting one of them aflame. Their skull horses ran from the canyon, dead men dragging in their stirrups.

  Bishop and Chaney faced each other’s guns and eyes, the battle around them raging someplace else. Bishop said, “I’ve got no interest in you. You weren’t with Beaudine the night this all happened.”

  Chaney flicked his gold tooth. “I ain’t with him now. This is strictly a two-person game, and no one’s sitting in.”

  Bishop eyed the palm-fit gun. “Give yourself a chance, son. Ride out. I’m on my own mission.”

  Chaney held out the Derringer. “You forget, I seen that thing in action,” he said before plugging the shotgun barrel with the gun, and pulling the trigger. The small caliber bullet screamed up the barrel, before ripping into the black powder shell in the chamber, blowing the weapon apart at the breach.

  Bishop spun off his feet as if he’d been hit with a sniper’s bullet, his jacket and the rig’s leather harness in shredded pieces. Blood began soaking the sleeve of his half-arm. Bishop tried standing, fighting against the numb feeling that was blanketing him, that he knew was shock.

  Chaney said, “You don’t even have an arm, and right now it hurts like hell.”

  The echo of the shotgun’s bursting apart hid the sound of the arrow as it struck Chaney between the fourth and fifth ribs. He lurched in surprise before collapsing, the gun snug in his hand.

  White Fox leapt the painted over Chaney, the reins to the bay in her teeth. She dropped from her own horse as Bishop tied off his bloody sleeve, the destroyed rig hanging loose from his elbow joint. He stumbled. She put her arms under him, giving him a boost onto the bay. Both horses snorted, ready to run.

  Bishop had settled onto his saddle when the first set of mine supports along the canyon wall exploded, the force of the blast a sledgehammer blow to anyone standing.

  The buried fuse burned from bundle to bundle, each support shattering with their detonation, sending burning wood, and metal in a wild burst across the mine, the four-by-fours becoming flying battering rams. Riders in red dove for cover, their horses cutting loose.

  The old shed was next, the roof thrown into the air, then coming down on two Fire Riders, shards ripping them as jagged darts, a flaming cave-in from the sky.

  Another blast tore the mine walkway from the canyon wall, huge sections tumbling, crashing to the ground, bringing tons of stone and gravel with it, blowing a hole in the earth.

  White Fox and Bishop galloped through a thick curtain of violent dust, dodging the fallen and the debris, riding blind for the canyon entrance.

  Howard took a draw on his cigar, and lit the fuses on two sticks of dynamite, before thumb-stubbing it out. He held the sticks as they burned down, watching the red glow eating the fuse, when a cry erupted from his massive chest; first it was a laugh, then a scream for “goddamn gold!” that became a wild animal howl that was beyond words.

  He leapt from behind the slag heap and tossed the two sticks, holding back the Fire Riders with their explosions, as he ran for the open shaft of the old silver mine. He dove away from their rifle fire, scrambling on his feet, always moving.

  Chaney managed his knees, breaking part of the arrow from his side, the pain eating him. He yelled, “You going to leave me in this Hell? I’m your partner!”

  Howard’s broken-by-laughter howl continued.

  On the road to the canyon, the howl was just another distant note, followed by more explosions and cries. Bishop and White Fox broke clear of the Goodwill, those damned sounds fading, before another huge blast rocked the ground.

  The dynamite quake shook boulders from the top of the canyon until they slid down the walls, breaking apart into huge chunks, blocking the entrance in a dust and gravel eruption.

  The sound was louder than the hundred blasts that had come before it.

  Bishop and Fox looked back at the Goodwill, half buried, as their horses ran hard toward the down-sloped trail off the mountain. The Fire Rider sentry, guarding the way out, charged them, firing warning shots. Fox drew, and hit him with a warning shot of her own, the arrow puncturing the meat of his shoulder. It was pure whip-fast movement, and perfectly accurate.

  The Fire Rider’s red hood garbled his howling as he pulled back on his horse too hard, tangling his footing. They tumbled hard into the ditch alongside the canyon road.

  The Rider kept swearing at Bishop and Fox as they leapt down an ice-slick hill, to a small cut in the trail. Not more than a break between rocks and dead trees, but it was a door to the other side of the frozen Colorado.

  He pulled off his hood, and watched the last burst of flames and black smoke erupting from the Goodwill, feeling the sound of those final explosions, then shook his head. “God Almighty.”

  He bit off a plug of hard tobacco, ignoring the arrow protruding from his shoulder. He wasn’t entreating the Lord, or seeing the Goodwill as a Biblical pit of sulfur, or doing any damn thing, but just sitting.

  Having a quiet chew at the end of the day, a hundred yards from an open grave stacked with corpses.

  * * *

  The opium smoke was gossamer, a light fog that hovered close to the ceiling of Widow Kate’s office. The dragon pipe next to her was lit, but she didn’t draw from it, just took deep breaths of the air, working at her desk. She carefu
lly wrote half of the last zero of “100,000,” then urged the ink into the tip of her new Waterman with a quick shake, to complete it.

  The columns of figures in the ledger were neatly entered, and their total was her testament. Kate took satisfaction from just looking at the numbers, not thinking about the money, only seeing that each total was greater than the last entry. She could lose herself in numerals.

  The knock on her office door was precisely three times, and there was a wait until Kate called, “Enter!”

  Soiled Dove slid the doors open, and closed them behind her before saying a word. She placed five stacks of bills, each with a name written on a small slip of paper on top, on Kate’s leather desk blotter.

  “I double-checked every girl, makin’ sure they wasn’t holding out nothing. That’s everything, to the dollar.”

  “Any gold? Silver?”

  “No, ma’am, this was strictly a paper day.”

  Kate smiled as she gathered the cash, counting it for herself. “You’re doing very well, girl. This place is running like clockwork, and I’m obliged, since I still can’t get up and down those stairs.”

  Soiled Dove nodded. “I just want to be of help. Here.” She held out White Fox’s torn skirt and top that had been wrapped and tied around something small.

  Kate took the bundle. “I was just thinking about those two, wondering if they did what they set out to do. Or maybe got killed. That would be a shame. You should burn these.”

  “Yes ma’am. There’s something inside.”

  Kate unfolded the bloody clothes, revealing an earthen jar of salve with something written on its side: For your scars.

  Kate stroked the bandage protecting the stitches along her massive side, luxuriating in the opiate fog, and said, “Now, I’m obliged to the Cheyenne.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Escapes

  The explosion gut-punched Howard, Chaney, and Beaudine against the mine wall, pieces of the rotting ceiling beams falling around them, followed by broken chunks of rock and tarry mud. They kept their heads down as the force pushed past them, grit raining into their eyes. The grit shimmered, with a taste of silver fog.