Naturally, the next day the wind kicked up, so sand begun blowing in our faces all that morning as we pulled and cajoled and cussed our mules, our women, ourselves, the heavy Gatling guns, cussed everyone but Candy Crutchfield because she had that big knife. Noon come and went. We was too tired to eat. My hands was scarred and blistered, and I wondered if Candy Crutchfield would consider me a slick-handed card sharp now.
Jingfei, bless her, come by and rubbed some kind of salve on my hands. Did the same with Candy’s boy Zeke. Even Mad Dog John Milton’s. She didn’t say nothing, just rubbed the medicine, which did soothe a bit after it burned like hell. Course, she didn’t put salve on Peach Fuzz’s hands. She let Bonnie do that.
After our noon rest without much rest, and no grub, we attacked the next dune. By two or three in the afternoon, I figured I might as well just drop down and die. But Candy was saying that we had made it to the last dune, and I blinked, and coughed up sand, and shielded my eyes because the wind was really howling by that time, and I could hardly see nothing. Just made out Candy Crutchfield on her old nag, waving her hat atop the last hill we had to climb, probably spitting juice.
“We’ve . . . made . . . it . . . boys. . . . No . . . more . . . damned . . . hills of sand!”
Didn’t feel like celebrating. And then I seen something, something I couldn’t quite make out off in the distance. Atop the same dune Candy Crutchfield was on, but off to the east. It was a rider. No, two riders. And I thought to myself, At last, I’ve found Candy Crutchfield’s two missing men.
Quick-like, I knowed I was wrong. Because one of them riders shot Candy’s horse out from underneath her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Let’s see if I can describe this right. All that sand blowing, me wishing I had a pair of black-rimmed spectacles with smoked oval lenses, but only my bandanna pulled up over mouth and nose and hat brim pulled down low kept me from getting drowned by or blinded from sand.
Candy Crutchfield cleared her boots from the stirrups, hit the hillside, her horse rolling downhill, her tumbling right after it. Shots barked, but not all of them was aimed at our leader. Most of us remained below, having just gotten down the next-to-last dune, however, Peach Fuzz kept whipping those Percherons, driving the Columbus carriage up the hill. With all that howling wind and blinding sand, I don’t know if he could see what was happening or not. And a moment later, I couldn’t even spot him or that buggy. The sandstorm had swallowed them.
To make matters worser, the sky begun darkening like a monsoon was about to blow in.
I yelled out that we was being ambushed, but the wind carried my warning away. A few boys stood next to me beside the omnibus, and one of them, giggling like a schoolgirl, pointed at the somersaulting Candy Crutchfield and her tumbling horse. Reckon he thought that Crutchfield’s horse had lost its footing and had thrown the boss lady. Then bullets rained down on us, slamming into the ground, horses, men, even the omnibuses. Through breaks in the blowing sand, I could see what looked to be an entire army topping the ridge now.
“It’s Whip Watson!” yelled Crutchfield’s Zeke.
Then he doubled over, gripping his stomach, groaning, sinking to his knees. Still, game as he was, he kept trying to draw his revolver till another bullet caught him plumb-center, then he wasn’t trying to do nothing because he was dead.
I had been standing beside an omnibus, hoping to get some more salve rubbed on my palms by Jingfei. Realizing what was happening, I reached for my Colt or my Spiller & Burr, only to remember that I was unarmed. A bullet tore splinters out of the omnibus and sent a few of those splinters into my cheek above the bandanna.
So I yelped, and wiped my face, knocked clear the slivers of wood, felt the blood, and heard the women inside the coach screaming. I jerked open the door.
“Get out!” I yelled.
First girl out wasn’t a girl. It was John Milton, doctor, killer, coward.
“What the hell—” I had to duck as another bullet slammed off the iron-rimmed wheel. Candy Crutchfield’s orders had said only girls was to ride in the buses, and even then they could only ride downhill.
The doctor didn’t hear, but he found his backbone, and turned around to help the first mail-order bride out of the bus. Turned out to be Bonnie, who took off running up the hill, ignoring my shouts that she should crawl underneath the bus.
Next out was one of the red-haired twins, but I couldn’t tell them apart. Didn’t matter because the next girl was the other of those sweet-talking girls, and I helped both of them get under the wagon.
“Lie flat. Keep your hands over your head. Don’t move.”
While I was helping them get all situated, I saw one of the sombrero-wearing boys riding his chestnut Arabian up the far hill. Running. Damned coward. But a bullet caught him in the back, and he dropped from the saddle, and rolled back down, and that Arab just kept right on running, up the hill, over the ridge, out of sight.
One of the mules caught a bullet, and fell dead in its traces. I was backing out from under the coach when a girl stepped on my back. I flattened, groaning, and she fell. Quickly, I rolled over and gripped her hand, practically dragged her beside the two redheads. Didn’t bother to give her no orders. Once more, I backed from under the rig, getting to my feet before I got stepped on again.
The Gatling guns opened up. I turned to look, first at the top of the hill, but all I could see was the occasional muzzle flash of bandits shooting down at us. Something wet slapped my neck. I hoped it was rain maybe, and not blood. Back to the chore at hand, I jerked a real chubby blond-haired woman out from the bus. She kept screaming and clutching her cross, and I told her to calm down, but she just yelled at me in some harsh language that I didn’t understand at all. When I pointed, though, she got the general idea. Whilst she was crawling underneath the bus, the Gatling kept spitting out fire and smoke and lead and death.
Those words I’ve underlined aren’t words I thought up. I’m borrowing them from this Beadle and Adams five-cent novel, Massacre in the Mojave; Or, Whip Watson’s Duel With Death, a novel in which I appear, though this Colonel Wilson J. M. Drury changed my name to Michael and made Whip Watson a hero rather than a son of a bitch, and there’s not a whole lot of truth in the writing, but the boys here at Folsom find it entertaining, though I’d rather hear the lady read from Moby-Dick.
Flames, smoke, and more deafening racket came from the other two horse-buses, and I tried to tell the drivers to get moving, get them girls out of this death trap, but John Milton pointed out that was impossible. At least two mules lay dead in each of the harnesses. I looked at the omnibus I was unloading. Those lead mules was dead, too.
A body toppled over the side of our coach. A bullet smashed into the door.
Turning, I shouted up at that hill, “Don’t shoot the wagons! There’s women inside!”
Course, nobody up that hill could hear me, not with three Gatling guns barking—nope, only two now. The one off to my left must have jammed—the wind howling, women screaming, men screaming, horses snorting, mules braying, and rifles and revolvers cutting loose from Candy Crutchfield’s gang. It was pure bedlam.
I grabbed John Milton’s shoulder and slung him forward to the nearest omnibus. “Help those women!”
He turned around, staring.
“Get them out of that bus!” I yelled. “Get them on the ground, under the wagon!”
A bullet tore off his hat. That prompted him to move, and, to my surprise, he done just what I’d told him to do.
I went back to helping another woman out, hoping it was Jingfei, but it was some skinny woman with spectacles. I pointed her in the right direction, then helped the next lady.
Another body dropped right beside us. One of the boys working the Gatling, the top of his head blowed off.
The woman saw that, and her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted dead away into my arms. As she was not a slim woman, but another one of them plump ones, I fell backward, and my ribs groaned, and my back hurt l
ike hell, and I hit hard and farted, which, thankfully, none of the ladies heard. Had to dig myself out from underneath her, and wanted to drag her, but another woman was leaping out through the door, and she was about to bolt right up that hill—which, even money, would get her killed—so I tripped her, and she screamed, rolled over, and kicked me in the nose.
Not much I could do, but hold the bandanna over my nose. Tan Vest come by, though, and he took the woman, yelled something, pushed her to her knees, and practically shoved past me and underneath the bus. Then a bullet slammed through his back, came out through the front, and he fell hard to the sand.
I saw a revolver holstered on the late Tan Vest’s hip, and I started for the gun, but a figure exploded out of the blowing sand, and I saw him cocking a Winchester. I spun, dived, slammed into a brunette, driving her back into the omnibus. Climbed off her, yelled, “Stay down! Everybody, on the floor!” Rolled over, looked through that open door.
The rider reined up, dropped the reins over his horse’s neck, stood in the stirrups, and shot that Winchester as fast as anybody I’d ever seen, wounding or killing the men who had been shooting that Gatling atop our bus. Then he jacked another round into that rifle and aimed that long gun—my Winchester—at my head.
“Zeke!” I yelled. “Don’t shoot. It’s me!”
Whip Watson’s Zeke shot anyway, but the hammer snapped empty ’cause he had fired the last of his ammunition at the boys with our Gatling, and as he cursed, the Gatling—the last one that wasn’t jammed or had just got its gunmen all shot dead—opened up, and sand was spitting all around Zeke and his horse, and I wished the sand was blowing harder down here, because I seen and heard Zeke and the horse he was riding screaming as .45-70 slugs tore into their bodies, and I sure didn’t want to see that, so I shut my eyes and held back the bile rising in my throat, and rolled over, and covered my head.
Till the sound died.
“No!” yelled the brunette I’d knocked back into the coach. “Jingfei! Stop!”
That got my attention. I pushed myself up, having to breathe now through my mouth since my bandanna was soaked with blood over my nose and now caked with sand. Got only a glimpse of two boots with many buttons and a copper skirt outside the window on the far side.
“Damn it!” I reached, but the boots and legs disappeared.
Jingfei had climbed out the window and onto the upper deck. She was going for that damned Gatling gun.
Got to my knees, saw a few more ladies in addition to the brunette huddling on the floor. A bullet tore through the wood a few feet to my right, blowed out a chunk of wood, and slammed into the other wall.
“Just don’t move!” I told the ladies. Seemed a lot safer to keep them lying on the floor than getting out, which was what I was doing.
Only I was going after Jingfei.
Once through the window, hands gripping the railing along the roof, I started pulling myself up.
A bullet tore through my left arm while I was hanging there, and I cried out in pain, but didn’t let go. Blood rolled down my arm, soaked the sleeve, and I already knowed from experience just how hard it is to clean blood from a blue cotton shirt. Another sixty-five-cent shirt, which had cost me $2.50, ruined.
My boots got their footing on the bottom of the window, and I hauled my aching, bleeding, sand-battered body onto the top of the wagon. Come to my feet, crouched, sucked in another mouthful of air, started one way, tripped over one of the damned benches.
Realized I was going the wrong way, toward the coach. Behind me, the Gatling gun cranked out round and round. I came up, holding my bleeding arm, then tried to wipe some of the sand and blood off the bandanna. By this time, the sand had hit the valley harder. Something else hit me, too, and this time I knowed it wasn’t blood. But rain. Just a few drops for the moment. By this time, it was pretty dark.
Then I just made out the dead man in the driver’s box. One of the guards. What’s more, I caught a glimpse of one of his Marlin repeaters, so I hurried over, pried the rifle from his dead grip.
Holding the Marlin, I ran back toward the last row, careful to step over another dead body—Whip Watson’s Zeke had shot down the entire gun crew—and I dropped to my knees beside Jingfei.
She turned the crank, and the six barrels spit out lead so fast the heat felt just like I squatted next to a potbelly stove. Jingfei’s face tightened, the hair loosened and blowing in the wind. She tilted the gun up, cranked, and fired.
“Who in hell are you shooting at?” I yelled.
“Them!” she snapped.
Which I guess meant Whip Watson and his boys.
Only the guys at the other Gatling gun opened fire at us.
“Hey!” I was about to yell that we was their friends, which wasn’t the truth, since I didn’t count none of Candy Crutchfield’s boys as even acquaintances, but then I understood. Whip Watson’s boys had taken over that Gatling—the one that hadn’t jammed but had all its crew shot dead.
Bullets chewed up the seat in front of us, and sent splinters into Jingfei’s left leg.
She grimaced, slipped to her knees, but turned the gun toward them.
“No!” I yelled. “There’s girls in that rig, too!”
I don’t know if she heard me or not, because from all that shooting, I was practically deaf, and didn’t even hear my own shouts. Maybe she understood that she might kill some brides accidental at the same time I yelled. Whatever, she didn’t pull the trigger, but turned away the gun, and glanced at me.
I figured hers would be the last face I ever saw, and that wasn’t such a bad way to go, because their Gatling kept spitting out fire and smoke and lead and death, and I knowed we was dead.
She reached for me, Jingfei did, and here’s where things begun moving real slow, I mean so slow that I could almost count all the grains of sand as they flew past us, mixed in with raindrops, and .45-70 bullets from a Gatling. She taken my hand, and I dropped the Marlin, and we was both leaping over the edge as bullets and sand and rain zipped past us, and we fell, dropped past the omnibus, hit the ground, landing flat and hard.
Bullets stung as they slapped into my body, only . . . they wasn’t bullets. Taken a spell before I realized it was water. Rain. Icy, cold, bitter, stinging raindrops pelted me without mercy. My bandanna had fallen across my throat. I spit water out of my mouth, had to reach up to push up the brim of my hat—yes, even after all that, it was still on my head—so I could see better.
I reached for the Marlin, but it wasn’t there. Reached for Jingfei, who, thankfully, was there. Wet, but alive. She was sitting up, drenched by the soaking, numbing rain. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. I held my bleeding arm, but realized that my nose wasn’t bleeding no more. Realized something else.
No longer did I hear the Gatling roaring. In fact, I didn’t hear no gunfire at all, just pounding rain.
I got a handful of moiré, and pulled her into my arms.
“Are . . . you . . . all . . . right?” Had to space out my words so she could hear, the rain was falling so hard and heavy.
She answered in Manchu. I pulled her close, and saw a hand reaching out from underneath the omnibus. A girl’s hand. Then a girl’s head. It was one of the Irish twins from Georgia.
“Get . . . under . . . here!” she yelled.
Which sounded like good advice. I let Jingfei go, and pointed with my chin toward the wet ground.
She sighed, give up, whispered, “All right.” Couldn’t hear her, but I read those lips. Then that wet porcelain face of hers hardened once more, and she jumped on me, knocked me to my back, damned near broke those ribs that had previously only been bruised considerable, and was on top of me, and it was still raining, and I was cold, and my face was suddenly just inches away, and there was her lips.
After blinking rainwater out of my eyes, I turned my head away from those beautiful lips. Didn’t kiss her, damn it. Because even with the guns quiet, I knowed this was no time for romance. Through that wall of water I saw dead men, dead h
orses—one of those, damn it, was the other Arabian, its rider underneath him, also dead. As the rain slackened, I made out a figure running up the hill, and I guessed that it was Candy Crutchfield. She topped the rise. Then vanished.
Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. The rain moved on, and the buckets of water turned into a sprinkle, then nothing at all. The wind seemed to be dying down, and suddenly I knowed something else.
I saw boots all around us. And the legs of a dun horse. The battle, ambush, set-to, fight, whatever you wanted to call it, was over. For the most part.
“You two,” a voice said. “Get up.”
Jingfei pushed herself off me, and leaned against the large real wheel of the omnibus. I tried to sit, but couldn’t, so Jingfei and one of the Irish girls who had crawled from beneath the bus, eased me up. My eyes closed, and my head swam, and I thought I might just pass out, but the dizziness passed like the big thunderclap and sandstorm.
When my eyes opened, I hoped I’d be staring into Jingfei’s eyes, but, nope, what I saw was the entrance to a deep cave that I knowed was the barrel of a Colt revolver.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Whip Watson lowered that big pistol, and swung down from a dun horse. The .45 disappeared into his sash, and, grinning, he handed the reins to one of the dudes in two of the boots I’d first seen, then knelt beside me and Jingfei. His whip was looped around his saddle horn.
“You owe me one.” He grinned. “Almost shot you dead.” His black hat, tilted so that water poured off the brim and onto my trousers, lifted so that I didn’t get no wetter, and he smiled at Jingfei. “Good thinking. Getting her away from that Gatling gun. Thought I’d have to shoot her myself.”
Somehow, I managed to sit, and grabbed my left arm, slung it over into my lap.
“Why were you shooting at us?” Whip asked. “We come to rescue you.”
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