by Ralph Cotton
“You are right, Sergeant,” said Captain Oberiske, letting out an impatient breath. “It is not your place to say anything! It is your place to observe and learn, if that is at all possible! It is my place to teach you how to lead troops and develop this savage, godforsaken wilderness!” The sound of horses’ hooves thundering closer into the valley caused him to stop and turn his attention from Sergeant Hervisu to the darkness stretched before them. “Here they come! Prepare your men to rise up and charge, Sergeant!”
Fifty yards inside the towering rocks, the Peltrys’ men knew what to do. The supply wagon and half the men had already broken away in the darkness and taken another trail, one leading wide of the river valley and around the line of foothills toward the Peltry hideout in Dead Horse Pass. The rest of the men still riding ahead of the gun wagon cut away swiftly and doubled back at the last second, their only purpose being to let the Federales hear the sound of their horses’ hooves in the darkness. As they doubled back and beat a hasty retreat out of the valley, the gun wagon swung around fast and began pelting rapid gunfire across the soldiers’ positions.
“Holy Mother of God!” shouted a young soldier, one of the first to gather quickly on the river valley trail to meet the oncoming riders. But now there were no oncoming riders, only an endless spray of hot lead as bullets sliced through the black air and through the flesh and bone of man and horse alike.
“It’s a trick!” shouted Sergeant Hervisu. “Retreat, men! Run quickly!”
“No, you fools!” Captain Oberiske screamed above the exploding gunfire. “Get off the trail! Back into the rocks!”
But the men were not retreating. Nor were they taking to the rocks. Instead, they were bunched up mid-trail, seemingly stuck there, melting into a dying, tangled pile of flailing limbs and horseflesh beneath the insistent pounding of the machine rifle.
Then the firing stopped as abruptly as it had started. A voice from the gun wagon let out a long rebel yell in the darkness as a wagon whip cracked and the team of horses whinnied loudly and thundered away.
“They’re running! Charge them!” screamed Captain Oberiske, crawling over a dead horse and its rider in the middle of the trail. His hand caught onto the stirrup of a spooked horse, and he managed to pull himself upward and grab the horse, settling it enough to throw himself across the saddle. “Do not let them get away! We must have that machine rifle!”
“Like hell you will!” came a taunting reply in the darkness. And the chase was on.
On the speeding gun wagon stood Mort Spears with both hands holding firmly onto the machine rifle. He stayed crouched low, bracing himself against the bucking wagon floor as he rounded two full turns on the gun’s crank, leaving a stream of fire in the darkness behind him. “Yiii-hiiii!” he yelled. Beside Spears stood Monk Dupre, one hand holding onto the gun stand for dear life, his other hand planted down atop his hat to keep it from blowing off. Driving the wagon was Elmer Fitzhugh.
“Let me know when to hightail it out of here!” Fitzhugh shouted over his shoulder. He rode leaning forward from his bouncing driver’s seat, the long reins slapping steadily in his left hand. In his right hand he wielded a long whip above the backs of the team of horses. On either side of the racing wagon, the riders had begun to cut away. They raced off into the night to join the Peltry brothers and Doc Murdock on the other trail around the foothills.
“Stay on the trail for now!” Spears shouted. “I’ll let you know when to cut out of here.”
A half mile away on the other trail, Moses Peltry, Goose and Doc Murdock stopped their horses. Having heard the last blast of gunfire, followed by the sound of hooves drawing closer to them in the night, Moses smiled in the thin moonlight. “That should give them all something to do the rest of the night,” he said.
“Think the posse will fall for it?” asked Murdock.
“What is there to fall for?” Moses chuckled, stroking his long beard. “When someone rides at you in the dark, shooting at you head-on, your choices are pretty simple. You either shoot back or die.” He laughed quietly. Goose and Doc Murdock joined in, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves slow down and draw closer until finally the approaching horses stopped, and a voice called out.
“Moses? Goose? Is that you?” asked Bert Smitson.
“Yeah, Smitson, it’s us,” Goose replied. “Get on over here so’s we’ll know who’s who as you men ride in. Who’s that with you anyway?”
“It’s me, Flat Face,” said Chinn.
“And me, Comanche Killer,” said Brayton Cane.
“Handy Phelps back here,” said another voice. “And there’s more not far behind me.”
“Yeah, I’m back here,” said Pip Magger. “Man oh man, you ought to heard them soldiers screaming! That machine rifle ate them up and spit them out like soft goat meat! I got to get me one of them guns someday just to chase jackrabbits with, if nothing else.”
A chuckle rose above the gathering men. More scattered hoofbeats came in along the dark trail. In the distance, another rapid volley erupted from the Gatling gun. “Damn, I hope your man Spears don’t melt the barrel,” said Goose. The blast of gunfire died down. Then sporadic rifle and pistol fire resounded from the soldiers chasing the wagon along the black trail.
“It won’t be much longer, men,” said Moses Peltry, listening closely for any change in the firing. The men fell silent for a moment until they heard return rifle and pistol fire coming from farther down the trail. “There comes our posse now,” Moses grinned. But his grin would have faded fast had he been able to see what had just happened to the gun wagon.
As soon as the Gatling gun had done its job and drawn fire from the Federales, Elmer Fitzhugh had turned the wagon sharply off the trail and sped it across the rocky dirt toward the other trail where the Peltrys and Murdock’s men were waiting for them. Behind Fitzhugh, Monk Dupre and Mort Spears held on tight to the side rails of the gun wagon. “Slow down a little, Fitz!” Monk Dupre shouted. “Before you break a whee—”
His words had cut short as the spokes of the right front wheel splintered inside the steel band. “Oh no!” shouted Dupre as the front edge of the wagon began breaking apart. In the darkness, Dupre caught sight of Elmer Fitzhugh sailing off the driver’s seat with the reins still in his hands. Then Dupre saw nothing but a swirl of darkness and dirt as he and Spears went tumbling through the air.
“Look out, Spears!” Dupre bellowed, sailing high from the crashing wagon.
The two men rolled and bounced across the flatlands, the Gatling rifle and its stand ripping loose from the wagon bed and keeping right up with them. Six shots exploded as the gun’s crank hit the ground and turned. Then the gun collapsed in the dirt with its barrels smoking. In the silence that followed, Monk Dupre let out a groan and said “Fitz, you crazy…sumbitch. Moses is going to kill you.” But Fitzhugh didn’t answer. His right wrist and left leg had become tangled in the long reins. His broken body bounced along in a wake of dust behind the fleeing team of horses.
Farther back along the trail, at the first sound of oncoming gunfire, Sergeant Teasdale had sensed something was wrong. But without hesitating, the possemen began returning fire at the sound of the Gatling rifle exploding on the trail coming toward them. “Hold your fire,” shouted Teasdale as soon as he realized there were no bullets streaking past them in the darkness. “They’re not firing at us!” But by the time the men heard him and stopped shooting, the gun wagon had already cut off the trail and gone on to its fate, leaving the two groups of riders facing one another in an onward rush.
Rather than face the Gatling gun bunched up in a long single column, the Federales had spread out abreast on the flatlands and charged forward relentlessly, knowing that they had to strike hard and fast while the deadly machine rifle was still silent. From where the possemen stood, the land before them came alive with blossoms of gunfire, bullets whistling past them like angry hornets.
“They damn sure are firing at us!” shouted Edmund Daniels, a shot grazing his forear
m as he ducked low in his saddle. Another bullet grazed his horse’s ear. The animal nickered wildly and bolted away. As the air filled with streaking lead, the other horses attempted to do the same.
“Do not return fire!” Teasdale demanded.
“Sergeant, they’ll cut us to pieces,” shouted Abner Webb through the sound of gunfire and pounding horses’ hooves.
“Not if they can’t see us,” said Will Summers. “Do like he says.”
At first it appeared that Sergeant Teasdale had done the smartest thing by getting them to cease fire in the darkness. In doing so, the possemen were no longer making targets of themselves through their muzzle flashes. For a moment, the gunfire began to slacken. But the hoofbeats never let up. Teasdale shouted for the men to turn their horses and clear the trail, knowing what was about to happen next. But it was too late. The men couldn’t act quickly enough to prevent it. The oncoming light Mexican cavalry patrol closed ranks as it charged and slammed into the mounted possemen head-on in the darkness.
In the melee, both sides sought one another out blindly with pistol and knife. But Will Summers managed to move away from the throng at the core of the skirmish and fight his way toward the flat stretch of land on his right, the direction where he’d last heard the short burst of shots from the machine rifle. “Summers, down here!” shouted Sherman Dahl from the ground. Looking down quickly, Summers saw the dead horse lying at Dahl’s feet. He threw out his hand to Dahl, felt the young schoolmaster grasp it firmly and swing himself up behind him.
“Go!” said Dahl, his pistol coming up and firing as the horse bolted forward. Warm blood splattered on his and Summers’ faces. A Federale trooper fell away from his horse with a bullet hole in his forehead. Dahl snatched the horse’s reins and pulled it along behind them. A young Mexican came charging alongside them swinging a saber, but Dahl raised a boot and kicked him from his saddle as the sharp edge of the blade sliced dangerously close to his head. “Circle and come back!” Dahl shouted. “We’ve got to help the others.”
“No! Follow me,” Summers demanded as they cleared the edge of the fighting and Dahl leaped onto the other horse. “I think I heard the gun wagon crash! We can do more good if we can get our hands on that machine rifle!”
“I’m right behind you,” shouted Dahl, firing two shots into the Mexican uniforms gathered around the possemen. He caught a glimpse of Abner Webb and Edmund Daniels fighting from their saddles, their horses pressed together against overwhelming odds. But he forced himself to look away and follow Will Summers. They rode hard and fast across the stretch of flatlands, following the blanket of dust looming above the wagon’s tracks. In a moment, while the battle raged behind them, Dahl cut away from beneath the drift of dust and called out, “Summers! Over here! Quick!”
As Will Summers reined his horse over to Sherman Dahl, he saw the first scraps of broken planks from the wagon bed. He saw an empty boot. Then, a few feet farther, he saw the big Gatling gun lying in the dirt without its stand. Dahl had just leaped down from his saddle, grabbed the gun and hefted it up into his arms. “Hold it still, schoolmaster,” said Summers, leaping down from his saddle and running up to Dahl. “I’ll turn the crank.”
“Be careful not to aim it at our men,” Dahl cautioned as Summers straightened the bent crank in his gloved hands.
“I’m not going to shoot it at anybody,” said Summers. “I just want to get their attention.” He helped Dahl swing the barrels out along the dark trail as he turned the crank hurriedly and sent a string of bullets streaking out into the night. The recoil jarred Dahl to his bones, but he held tight, the smell of burnt powder rising into his eyes. Summers turned the crank another two full turns, then said, “Come on—that’s enough for now. Let’s load it up and get out of here. The Peltrys just had a little fun at our expense. Let’s see if we can turn it around on them.”
Chapter 16
At the first burst of fire from the Gatling gun when the wagon crashed and tumbled across the flatland, Moses and Goose Peltry had looked at one another, stunned. “What’s keeping that wagon so long?” asked Goose. No one responded. But moments later, as they formed the men into two short columns and waited, listening to the sound of the battle raging less than a mile away, Moses looked back and forth between Goose and Doc Murdock.
“That gun wagon should have been here by now,” said Moses. “Something ain’t right out there.”
Goose and Murdock nodded, looking concerned. Still, they waited until the sound of the Gatling gun exploded again. Not realizing that the gun was now in the hands of Dahl and Summers, Goose Peltry said, “Do you suppose Spears and Dupre got into trouble out there? I always said Fitzhugh can’t drive a wagon worth a damn.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Moses, “but we better get out there and find out.” He circled his horse quickly, drawing his saber, and said to the men, “Follow me! Everybody spread out as soon as we hit the flatlands.”
The riders pushed hard and fast across the dark flatlands, hearing the rifle and pistol fire of the Federales lessen in the distance and seeing less and less of the blossoming streaks of fire.
“Here they come,” said Will Summers, looking through the darkness to his right toward the sound of the Peltry Gang’s horses’ hooves. To their left, where the battle had all but stopped, the sound of hoofbeats also pounded toward them in the darkness. “Let’s give them one more volley just to keep them interested.”
A half mile away and closing fast, Captain Oberiske and Sergeant Hervisu rode side by side at the center of the Federales. When the burst of fire erupted from the machine rifle ahead of them, Oberiske called out to his men, “Spread out and concentrate on that position! Fire at will; kill them all. They are nothing but lawless American criminals!”
Hervisu shook his head but said nothing, knowing that whatever advice he offered Captain Oberiske would go unheeded. As the Mexican soldiers began firing in the darkness, revealing themselves by the rifle and pistol flashes, Sergeant Hervisu kept his pistol silent and veered farther away from the captain, saying to several of the men as he passed them in the dark, “Quickly, get over near Capitán Oberiske. Give him some covering fire!” Hervisu rode away, leaving Captain Oberiske in a storm of gunfire.
But Oberiske soon saw he’d made a mistake. As the Federales around him began to fall, their positions betrayed by their own muzzle flashes, Oberiske shrieked, “Cease fire! For the love of God, cease fire!” Bullets whistled and hummed. He spurred his horse to his left, in the direction that Sergeant Hervisu had taken, and shouted over his shoulder to his men, “Follow me!”
Three hundred yards away, the Peltry Gang slowed their horses and began holding their fire as the darkness seemed to close back upon itself. “Who were they? Where the hell did they go?” Goose shouted to Moses, who rode beside him.
“I don’t know!” Moses replied. “But whoever it was, if they had their hands on that machine rifle, they would have used it!” He pulled his horse back and forth, looking all around in the darkness. “I think we’re being tricked! Fall back to the valley trail.”
Across the flatlands, Captain Oberiske and Sergeant Hervisu listened to the sound of the hooves turn and ride away. “All right, Herr Sergeant,” said Oberiske, fingering a bullet hole through his shirtsleeve, “you know this country better than I. What do you propose we should do?”
As the frightened young soldiers drew their horses up around the two leaders, Sergeant Hervisu said, “Leave a small patrol here to round up any survivors, Capitán. If we want the machine rifle, we must be where these men do not expect us to be. To do this, we must hurry.”
“What about our dead lying back there?” Oberiske asked.
“For now, the dead must bury the dead. The patrol will find them in the light of morning.”
“Where exactly are you talking about going, Sergeant?” Oberiske demanded.
Sergeant Hervisu did not answer. Instead, he kicked his horse forward. The men fell in behind Hervisu in a loose col
umn of twos and rode past Captain Oberiske in the darkness. Oberiske cursed under his breath and hurried to catch up.
On the flatlands, a thousand yards behind the Federales, Abner Webb lay against the body of a dead horse with his pistol in his right hand and a long boot knife in his left. He listened in silence to the moaning of a dying Federale and the low, painful nicker of a wounded horse. He dared not make a move or a sound until he knew for certain that all the Mexican soldiers were gone. But as he lay there, hearing the sound of gunfire in the distance and the horses’ hooves pounding away across the flatlands, he heard a cautious voice whisper, “Is anybody alive here but me?”
“Daniels?” Webb whispered in reply. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” said Edmund Daniels. “Is that you, Webb?”
“Yes, it’s me,” said Abner Webb. “We must be the only ones left.” As he spoke, he belly-crawled around the dead horse toward the sound of Daniels’ voice.
“That figures,” Daniels said in a flat, disgusted tone. “It had to be me and you left out here.”
“At least we’re alive,” said Webb. “Are you hit?”
“Hell, yes, I’m hit. My leg’s shot all to hell. How would a man get through a scrape like that and not get wounded some?” In an afterthought, he asked, “Aren’t you hit?”
“No, not a scratch, far as I can tell,” sad Webb, sounding almost apologetic about it.
“Well I’ll be double dog damned,” said Edmund Daniels, letting out an exasperated breath at the unfairness of it. “I suppose that figures too.”
Webb started to crawl all the way up beside the dark figure he saw in the pale moonlight. But then, hearing Daniels’ tone of voice, he thought better of it and stopped and shoved the big knife down in his belt. He checked his pistol; there were only two rounds left. “I suppose we better fix that leg wound up…. Then we need to move around here, see if all the others are dead.” He kept an eye on Daniels’ dark outline as he took bullets from his pistol belt and reloaded.