Here by the Bloods

by Brandon Boyce

  More shouting rings out from the Snowmen, this time laced with urgency, as they scramble from the open cliff to the protection of the rocks along the ridge. A man screams, then a blur of color whizzes past the corner of my vision. A second later comes the thud of the bandit’s body slamming onto the canyon floor. Percy pauses from his execution duty to look behind him at his fallen cohort.

  The ground beneath me starts to level as he turns and I bring up the pistol. His eyes narrow, the door of recognition pounding open, his memory aflame.

  “Son of a bitch!” he howls, raising the shotgun. In one fluid motion I stiffen to a sudden stop, take dead aim, and squeeze the trigger. A small red dot appears on his forehead as the back of his skull explodes in soupy ropes of blood. His legs take a moment to get the message and then give out.

  I sprint past him and slide to my knees beside the fallen nag. “Delmer! Come on.” I reach under the horse and find what feels like a woman’s ankle. Delmer flails at the touch, kicking and panicked like a cornered badger.

  “No! No!” His legs churn in the dust as he tries to crawl away. I get a good grip on his belt and yank him back toward me. He rolls over, his stunned, terrified eyes meeting mine.

  “Two-Trees!” he yells. “I can’t hear nothin’. I’m deaf.” I grab him by the shirt and pull him up to me. His whole body trembles.

  “Can you run?” I say, slow and deliberate.

  “Run. I can run.”

  “Stay close.” I get him to his feet and turn back toward the hill. A fog of rifle smoke pools among the boulders where the Pinkertons lay down the covering fire that keeps us alive. When I glance back at Delmer, I find him cradling the gleaming rotary of barrels from the Gatling.

  “Forget the crank gun,” I say. Delmer kicks the crank’s stand in my direction and throws me a box of munitions. I know he cannot hear me, but when he levels those cold eyes at me I know he understands what I am saying.

  Delmer shakes his head. “You want to live or not?” he says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I load what munitions I can carry and turn back from the fallen nag. A thunderstorm of gunfire bellows from the top of the ridge, but it is not meant for me or Delmer. The bandits have regained the upper hand, flushing the threadbare Pinkerton squad from the boulders and sending them into retreat. Bix sprints down the canyon slope in our direction followed closely by Casey, firing his rifle one-handed at the advancing gang who venture from the safety of the ridge, smelling blood.

  Last to abandon the boulders are the Frey brothers. The heavyset middle boy charges from the rocks, only to catch a scatter gun in the ribs and lose his footing. He falls hard to the ground. The brazen youngest wails in horror at the sight of his injured kin and bursts forth to help him, stepping headfirst into a swarm of flying lead. The boy’s skull snaps violently sideways, his eyes rolling white in their sockets. He drops dead where he stands.

  I let my armload fall to the ground and draw both pistols. Darting out into the open, I move left, unloading both cylinders into the pack of marauding outlaws. I disrupt their offensive long enough for Jacob, the oldest of the siblings, to spring from his purchase and scoop up his wounded brother, who dazedly finds the strength to keep his legs churning. The youngest boy is too far gone to consider.

  Delmer skids to his knees behind me and starts to assemble the crank barrel into its swivel. Bix barely slows as he passes me, grabbing Delmer by the collar and yanking him up.

  “Run, Delmer! Run!” Casey hustles past me after Bix and I snatch up a Winchester rifle from the dirt—it looks like the one the captain carried. Thick, acrid smoke plumes from the barrel as I work the lever, pumping rounds into the loose cluster of outlaws. They know better than to hug too close. I aim for the middle and keep firing until the group splinters and I am looking at their backs.

  The brothers stumble down the slope, the heavier one wheezing, his skin white as a bedsheet. He is losing blood. I duck my shoulder beneath his arm and lift the left side. The three of us scamper along the trail, Bix and the others bobbing ahead. Voices rise behind us as the shooting trickles to sporadic, ineffectual spurts. We are out of range. The shattering silence of the aftermath provides the outlaws an opportunity to regroup and affords our meager numbers the chance to do the same. The peace will be short-lived, I fear.

  As we trudge forth, the steep, barren cliffs of the canyon give way to the pine-covered hills that roll back southward toward Heavendale. We find Bix and Casey hunkered down behind a knotted trunk just inside the canopy.

  Delmer collapses on all fours behind them, sucking in huge gulps of air. “I’m deaf! I’m deaf!” he cries.

  Jacob speaks softly to his brother in German, but the brother’s steps have slackened and we are mostly dragging him when he slides off my shoulder into the soft pine needles next to Delmer.

  “Hans. Hans!” Jacob falls to his knees, cradling his brother’s head in his hands. Hans gurgles a weak bubbling breath and then his eyes gloss over. His breathing stops. Casey aims his rifle back into the canyon, scanning the far slope for movement, but the bandits have withdrawn from view.

  “I’m sorry, Jacob,” Bix says, removing his hat. I remove mine as well. “We’ll get your brother’s body out of that canyon too. Just can’t do it now.” Jacob says something else to his brother, his voice cracking. Tears cascade down his cheeks, forging a clean path through the dust and smoky grime from the firefight.

  Bix pulls at my shoulder and we drift toward the tree, letting the brothers have their private moment. We replace our hats and crouch down behind the trunk, where Casey keeps sentry over the mouth of the canyon.

  “I did not see him. Did you?” I ask.

  “Who?” Bix says.

  “LaForge.”

  “Can’t say I would know him by sight.”

  “Stands about six foot, maybe an inch over. Black hair. Fancies the color blue.”

  “I saw no such cocksucker,” Casey says.

  “Me neither,” says Bix. “Not among them what came at us.”

  “Then he must be over the ridge, with the horses,” I say.

  “And the loot,” Bix says. “I reckon the Snowman cares more for protectin’ them saddlebags than he do his own men.”

  “What about our horses?” Casey says. “Them sumbitches likely to steal ’em, eat ’em, or both.”

  “You just keep that rifle pointed up at them boulders,” Bix says. “Anyone crosses the ridge toward our stock, you cut ’em where they stand. And if they come this way, you do the same.”

  “Aye, Lieutenant.”

  “They come this way, we are in trouble,” Bix says, confiding in me as he turns.

  “They will come,” I say. “Too few of us left not to finish off.”

  A hand tugs at my trouser leg. Delmer sits there on his haunches, looking up at me, scared. “Say something, Two-Trees. I hear a ringin’.” He shouts his words, unable to regulate his speech.

  I pull him to his feet to hush him up. “You will get your hearin’ back, Delmer. You are gun-deaf, is all.”

  His eyes light up as I speak. “I hear you!” he says. “I think it’s coming back. Say something else.”

  The canopy of trees shifts in the swaying breeze. Sunlight streams through the branches and dances across the fallen pine needles where Jacob Frey closes his brother’s eyes with a final brush of his palm.

  “Are we out of danger, Two-Trees?” Delmer asks. Something in the wind, a wisp of sound, sends the hair on the back of my neck to full attention. A patch of sunlight blooms over the chest of the fallen brother, only to be invaded by the shadow of a human figure. I turn and find myself staring into the muzzle of my old Spencer rifle.

  “No,” I say.

  Jacob sees the shadow too and, drawing his pistol, spins toward the trees behind us. A flash of brown sizzles the air. Jacob gasps and slumps forward, run clean through by the Dineh arrow. Three brothers dead in five minutes.

  “Easy,” I say. Bix and Casey pivot. Ahiga stands in f
ull view, unguarded by trees. For protection he has with him two dozen armed Dineh, their faces painted for death—a war party. They filter through the trees, revealing their numbers slowly. I raise my arms in surrender. Bix and Casey do the same and by then Delmer has figured it out as well.

  Ahiga keeps the Spencer trained at my head. The young scout who spotted us earlier now kisses the string of his bow tight against his lips, his arrow itching to fling forth into Casey’s belly.

  Letting the Colts drop to the dirt, I step away from the holster, careful to keep my movements slow and deliberate. The thud of guns hitting the ground follows in short order. Only when we are completely removed from our weapons does Ahiga step to the side, letting the chief clomp forward on his pony.

  The old silver-hair looks us over and then sighs, disappointed. The irritation he feels at our not possessing whatever it is he is searching for will hardly be salved by our imminent slaughter. He raises a hand, instructing his warriors to take aim. A chorus of bowstrings groans to within its final ounce of tension. It is cold comfort that when that hand falls again I will be one of the lucky ones to take it from a rifle.

  “Wait,” I say. And that is when I step forward to talk to the chief.

  The thing about an old silver-hair, his face will tell you less what he is thinking than the snakiest riverboat gambler who ever bluffed his way down the Mississippi. I do not know how long I stand there, watching his inscrutable eyes mull over my offer, only that the burning in my triceps means my arms have been up long enough. I put them down.

  Ahiga, the third man in our conference, spits and looks to his father, unconvinced. But the chief nods his head and turns back to his pony. Mounting with the agility of a rider half his age, he throws up a palm, the exact gesture as before, only now it inexplicably carries a different meaning. All at once, the warriors lower their weapons and retrace their paths back into the forest, leaving only Ahiga. He shakes his head and pulls his face close to mine. “If you are wrong about this, brother, I will slit you open and feed your insides to the wolves while you watch.” With that he turns and sprints off after the rest of his party.

  “What the hell did you just do?” Bix says with astonishment as I return to him and the others at the fallen tree.

  “Gave him what he wanted,” I say.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  We drag Jacob and his brother up against the fallen tree and cover them best we can with branches, no defense against the coyotes, true, but maybe it buys us an hour or two before the vultures get wind of a tasty dinner.

  The bodies of our dead, some just fragments of flesh and bone, are the furthest things from my mind, but they will have to be dealt with eventually. Not now, though. There is no time. I pick up the heavy cylinder from the crank gun and turn toward Delmer. He sits on the tree trunk, rolling a cigarette between thin, trembling fingers. “Delmer, what exactly can you do with this?”

  Delmer looks at me and strikes a match. The paper flares orangey-red as he sucks the smoke into his lungs and expels it into the air. A wave of calmness befalls him, underpinned by a confidence I have thus far not seen in the diminutive Pinkerton. “Shit, son. I’m not on this team for my muscle.”

  “What’s the best range for it?”

  “The Bulldog Repeater is most effective between ten and fifty yards,” Delmer says.

  “Where you thinking?” Bix says.

  “That boulder there,” I say, pointing to an outcropping of rock inside the canyon about a hundred yards from where we stand.

  “That’ll work,” Delmer says.

  “Best get that thing primed and ready, Delmer,” Bix says.

  “Oh, she’ll be ready.”

  “How much time you think we’ll have, once it starts?” Bix asks.

  “I reckon thirty seconds or so,” I say.

  Bix clucks his tongue and lets out a sigh. He does not care for the odds. I cannot say I blame him. “Sure would be nice to have a full minute.”

  “That it would.”

  “Forget the tripod, Delmer.” Bix says. “You can put her on the short sticks. One less thing to carry.”

  “You read my mind, Lieutenant.”

  Bix looks over at Casey. “How ’bout it, Case? You ready to run?” Casey dumps a carton of bullets into his coat pocket and slides the bayonet over the tip of his rifle. He snaps it into place.

  “Good a day as any to die.”

  “Well,” Bix says, checking the rounds in his pistol and rifle before slinging a heavy case of Gatling magazines over his shoulder. “Better to get shot than scalped.” I suspect the lieutenant is right about that, but death spends the same no matter how you sell it. “We go on your say-so, Harlan.”

  Up above, the cold, lifeless sun retreats behind the wintering sky, taking my shadow with it. A thick, gray blanket covers both earth and heavens. The vanishing division between the two beckons by way of a screeching condor’s call. I close my eyes and go to work with my ears.

  The woman stands before me in some unfamiliar doorway, holding our dark child to her breast. I push the thought of her out of my head. If I survive the next hour, I suspect I will see her one more time at most, and then never again. Such is the clarity that comes in the stillness before the slaughter.

  A hollow, rasping wind holds steady. The only other sound is the pounding blood in my ears. I focus my hearing on the ridge, demanding all of my senses to detect the slightest corruption of the silence. And then it comes, whirling at first, concealing its source as the sound waves ricochet about the canyon walls. But then I realize that the noise—a haunting, high-pitched yelp—emanates not from one direction, but from two. The Navajo have split, surrounding their quarry and approaching from opposite corners of the range. The faint pop-pop-pop of a rifle echoes from over the ridge, followed by the distant boom of a twelve-gauge. Indeterminate men’s voices fill the spaces between gunfire, all of it against the swelling, repetitive din of the Dineh war cry. Bix utters an opinion shared by all of us, and by anyone who has ever heard that terrifying sound. “Good God, it’s awful.”

  The crescendo of noise on the backside of the ridge, out of our view, builds to a fever pitch. The tide of thunderous gunfire finally drowns out the warriors’ bloodthirsty howls, only to succumb to the piercing screams of grown men as they endure the horrors of their own flesh being ripped from their bodies.

  “Hold,” I say. “Not yet.” I squint toward the ridge, awaiting the final visual confirmation before signaling the start of our maneuver. All at once, like a rising phoenix, the mass of white gun smoke fills the air, drifting upward, lipping over the ridge toward the sky.

  “Now!” I say.

  We spring from behind the tree and, burdened with the weight of all the crank gun munitions we can carry, sprint for the outcropping of boulder. The cacophony explodes as we enter the canyon proper, lending cover for the jangling of our bullets and bones that accompanies our mad dash for position. I see only the rock. It bounces larger in my vision as I run until I am able to dive for the base of it. A body lands on top of me, iron magazines digging into my back.

  We huddle in an uncertain mass for a moment and then I hear Bix’s voice through the noise. “Delmer?”

  “Here.”

  “Me too,” Casey adds. I squirm free and meet Bix’s eye. All present and accounted for. Clutching the Winchester, I peer around the edge of the rock. Smoke consumes the top of the ridge, but the fighters—neither white man nor native—have yet to crest the summit. Delmer, now sure of his range, makes his final adjustments to the Gatling, turning the sight screws with precise clicks.

  “We ought to spread out,” Bix says. “Casey, you and Harlan make for them rocks yonder.”

  “Who’s gonna load the crank?” I say.

  “Ain’t my first time as gunner’s mate. I need you two laying down cover.”

  “We’ll do more than lay it down,” Casey says, trundling past me and scampering behind a tall obelisk of sandstone a few yards ahead.

  �
�We are blind here, Harlan. We need your eyes as well. They got numbers on us, no sense in letting them have time to adjust.”

  “All right, then. I will call out when to throw it. Oh, and Delmer,” I say, almost as an afterthought, “if you cut down any of them Dineh, even by accident, them what is left will kill us for sure . . . . Okay, then.”

  I am about to roll back to the row of stones behind us when Delmer stops me. “You got a smoke rolled up? I’m all out.”

  “The smoke will give you away.”

  “I won’t light it. I shoot better with something to chaw on.”

  “It’s true. He does,” Bix says. I find my last cigarette and hand it to Delmer.

  “Much obliged,” Delmer nods. I squeeze his shoulder.

  Bix whacks my arm. “Go on now. See you on the other side.”

  I crawl back quick across the dirt and tuck up behind a tawny slab of siltstone. Casey crouches with his rifle to my right. Bix and Delmer are between us and the Snowmen, poised to hoist the crank. We are spaced enough apart so that a bad miss from the charging outlaws will not take out one of us by mistake. In a perfect world, we should be at different elevations, further confusing the enemy, but this formation will have to do. We are out of time.

  Pistol shots ring out from the top of the ridge. The raw clarity of the tone—free of the distorted echo found in distant gunfire—tells me the bandits have crested the nearest ridge. It also means they have depleted their rifles and switched to sidearms.

  The wall of indistinct shouting soon takes on real, decipherable words. Men bark orders, curse the heavens, and cry in pain as the retreating, backward steps of boots and trousers descend from the smoke cloud. I close my eyes, bring the rifle to my lips, and kiss it. I open my eye to a handful of escaping white men—the most feared outlaws in the West, so accustomed to being the hunters—wide-eyed with fear and firing haphazardly over their shoulders into a fog of gun smoke as the legs and moccasins of Dineh warriors churn toward them.