Here by the Bloods

by Brandon Boyce

  The bulk of the Snowman’s gang tries to hold its ground, engaging the enemy in the type of bloody, close-quarter battle that claimed most lives in the War. Guns give way to knives, then fists, then, in close, teeth. This is a brawl on Dineh terms—a swarming, tenacious tide of blades and stones and bullets that neuters the superior firepower of the outlaws.

  Ahiga leads the charge, thrashing his ax with his right arm, my Spencer thundering from his left—a big noisemaker, mostly. The ax does the bulk of the damage.

  We keep ourselves hidden as the stream of Snowmen rolls down the hill, straight into the maw of the awaiting crank. I watch the bandits and Bix watches me, both his arms resting beneath the cylinder, ready to hurl it onto the rock. Delmer, with the calmness of a man unafraid, cradles the trigger end. The cigarette, steady as stone, dangles from his lips.

  The bandits draw closer, thirty yards, twenty, ten. I pick out a straggler, a gray-bearded bastard in a flat, black Stetson, and bringing the gun up, set my sights square on his chest. I squeeze the trigger, my eyes already leaping to the next target. I see, from the corner of my vision, the gray-beard lurch backward, stricken.

  In a fluid, synchronized motion, Delmer and Bix swing the crank gun over the edge of the rock. The stubby legs of the bipod tap once against the stone, then scrape slightly as Delmer makes the smallest correction. Bix drops down immediately, readying the next magazine while Delmer, cool as morning frost, shows all in attendance how he earns his keep for the Pinkertons.

  The nearest bandit lets out an audible gasp, a wide-eyed inhalation of understanding as the killing machine screeches to life. A sound like no other—a terrifying cross between a sputtering steam engine and a child’s whirling pinwheel—overwhelms the canyon as a seamless rope of lead shreds one outlaw after another.

  Casey rises from his cover, working the lever action of his rifle with unprecedented efficiency. I lay into the Winchester, the two of us picking off those that break from the pack with surgical, unyielding precision.

  Snowmen fall so quickly that their riddled corpses pile up in a grisly heap in front of the boulders. Within seconds the crank gun cuts their numbers, and bodies, in half. The stunning display of power freezes, for a brief moment, the Dineh warriors, even those in the throes of brutal, hand-to-face combat. And even their enemy—some mere seconds from death—take pause in the desperate struggle for survival.

  Thick knots of smoke belch from the Gatling’s barrels as steam ripples upward from the immense heat. The first magazine clicks empty. Delmer rips it from its socket—Bix is right there with the replacement, already chambered before Delmer can shift the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. But in that brief buckle of time, the remaining Snowmen scatter like roaches. Fresh pistols appear from boots and inner pockets and then, sensing the tiniest window of opportunity, the outlaws commence a swarming assault on the Gatling’s position.

  Unfazed, Delmer pivots the gun a few degrees and with a short, lethal burst, cuts down the nearest attacker. He swivels the gun left and fires another burst. I expose myself from the outcropping of rock and, with new urgency, defend the left flank despite the Winchester’s tendency to pull low and to the right—an annoying irritation that I overcome, finding the rifle’s sweet spot.

  Savage torrents of lead pulse from the crank, dropping the bandits where they stand and, in a staggering testament to Delmer’s artistry, leaving the Dineh unscathed.

  To the besieged outlaws, the Navajo warriors are a secondary threat. Neutralizing the relentless crank gun becomes their all-consuming focus. Their survival depends upon it. The desperados instinctively attack in a flurry of movement, never staying idle for a second out of fear for the dreaded Gatling finding a bead on any fragment of their flesh.

  How many of the bandits remain, I cannot say for certain—maybe half a dozen. Ten or twelve braves are left to chastise them from the rear while the four of us unload from the front.

  The arena of battle, once an entire canyon, is now decidedly more intimate. Bix, compelled to intervene, draws his revolver and empties six rounds into a pair of encroaching invaders, but a third man reaches the bunker and hurls himself over the boulder. Bix springs upward with his knife, spearing the attacker beneath the rib cage and falling backward to the dirt. Their momentum carries them back away from the Gatling, leaving Delmer to fend for himself on the reloads, which he does, albeit a whisker slower. And a whisker is all the Snowmen need.

  As Bix and his assailant wrestle for the knife, a figure rises from the ground, bloodied but not dead. I recognize his shape—the one called Finn, his silhouette burned into my brain from that night at the campsite. He wears a long, chestnut overcoat, from which he unsheathes a short-barreled four-ten. Delmer swings the crank toward him, bullets ripping the air, but the man dives the other way, causing Delmer to jerk the handle. The abrupt motion throws off his aim. Two Dineh warriors, crouching beyond where Finn had stood, crumble, their chests blown apart.

  The four-ten booms over the top of the boulder. Delmer winces, grazed by a passing fleck of buckshot, but then he steadies himself behind the trigger. I run to help him, firing off a round into the belly of an advancing outlaw—a young one, no more than twenty years. Grabbing the closest magazine, I reach up and touch the bolt of the crank gun. The searing heat blisters my fingers as I slam the cartridge into place.

  “Mother-scratching bastard!” Delmer barks, snapping the bolt closed with authority.

  “Watch left!” I shout. Delmer pivots the gun and snaps off a steady burst into the chest and skull of a bearded bandit. I come up blasting. Ahiga swings his ax into a man’s back and yanks it out again, just in time to parry the blow of a second, stronger adversary. Finn fires the shotgun point-blank into the face of a howling Dineh. The warrior’s skull vanishes.

  I hear Bix and the other man scuffling behind me. Turning, I watch as Bix buries his blade into the man’s chest. Bix collapses on top of him, utterly spent.

  The steady crack of Casey’s rifle turns to an ominous click. Undeterred, he leaps out from behind his rock and charges forth, his bayonet leading the way. A grizzled, hatchet-wielding outlaw is there to greet him. Casey slides left as the hatchet slices nothing but air. He spins back, clocking the butt of the rifle against the outlaw’s spine. The man grunts, winded. He tries to straighten up, but instead finds the red tip of Casey’s bayonet protruding through his vest. He sighs again and then slumps. Casey shucks him off his blade and turns back toward me, a thin, satisfied, smile spreading across his face. Then a quick flash of light blooms from up the hill, followed by a sudden, crisp pop. Casey’s head snaps to the side, a spray of pink mist erupting from his skull. He falls dead.

  “Sniper!” The cigarette flies from Delmer’s lips as he yells out the warning. I dive for safety behind the sandstone obelisk, the sniper’s bullets pinging off the rocks above me. I roll onto my belly and peer out around the edge. Far up the hill, a hundred yards at least, two granite slabs lean against each other, forming a natural stone shelter that serves the sniper as an elevated fortress from which to rain down his lethal fire. I take aim at the sliver of dead space between the two stones and squeeze off a round. The wind takes it right, judging by the wisp of dust that puffs off the granite.

  Delmer spits a volley from the Gatling but quickly cuts it short. “He’s out of range,” he says, shaking his head.

  Two of the Snowman’s men appear out of nowhere, sprung from their hiding places by the ray of hope shining off the barrel of their sharpshooting kinsman. The captain’s Winchester rifle, with its stubby barrel meant for close-up work, chokes empty, confirming its uselessness.

  The first man rushes Ahiga, who finds himself out in the open, a juicy target for the sniper. The unseen rifle pops again, narrowly missing Ahiga as he crouches to accept the impact of the charging desperado. The Navajo locks the man’s arm behind his back and, spinning him around, presents him toward the slope as the rifleman unleashes a round meant for Ahiga himself. The bullet c
atches the bandit square in the chest. Ahiga tosses the dead outlaw aside and reaches out to grab the second man as he passes. The bandit slips through his arms and runs straight for Delmer.

  Swiveling the gun hurriedly, Delmer sprays a hail of bullets into the air, but the man drops low, beneath the lip of the boulder, and then springs up and over the barrier. Delmer lifts the gun, wielding it like a shotgun—a last and desperate measure for any crank man. The attacker flies feetfirst at him, kicking the growling crank gun from Delmer’s grasp. It skitters across the ground, abruptly silenced. The kick sends Delmer onto his back. He fumbles for his knife, but the outlaw is quicker to draw his own. Delmer throws both his arms onto the man’s wrist, straining to slow a blade that works gainfully toward his heart. His muscles will give out before his grit. He does not have long.

  “I need a rifle,” I say, calling behind me. Bix squats behind a scrubby thatch of bramble that would not stop a sunbeam, much less a pulverizing slug from a bolt-action thirty.

  “I’ll come to you,” Bix says, racing toward me. He holds two rifles, one his own, the other newly acquired from his kill. He closes the distance, the relief visible on his face as he nears to within ten yards. Another pop rings out and his elation shatters. He collapses into me, clutching his side. The blood puddles through his fingers. I pull him behind the sandstone and his eyes start to glaze. “Shit, Harlan,” he says, the vigor fading from his voice. “I thought we had this one.”

  “Stay with me, Lieutenant.” But then his eyes take on the death stare and he slackens.

  “Harlan! Harlan!” Delmer lies on his back, the attacker straddling his chest. The man plunges the knife down, hacking his way through Delmer’s flailing, blood-streaked arms. I draw the Colt and aim at the man’s head. Delmer finds a fistful of sand and hurls it into his eyes. The bandit rolls off him, blinded. I fire into the rocks, nearly killing Delmer as he bolts upright. Delmer flips over and tries to stand. His assailant wipes the sand from his eyes and turns, with vengeful urgency, toward Delmer, the red-stained bowie knife jutting from his cocked arm. Pop! The bullet zings past my ear and I duck back behind the sandstone.

  “Shoot him. Shoot him!” cries Delmer, scampering on all fours away from the attack. The man lunges for him, bringing the knife down just as Delmer takes an evasive dive. But the blade connects, awkwardly—an unclean blow. Delmer howls. “Please, God. No!” He kicks at his killer, slowing the man for a brief moment. Then the outlaw raises the knife for the decisive thrust. I take aim, but once again Delmer springs into my line of fire.

  “Move, Delmer!” I shout. In his confusion, my words go unheeded, as if, in that moment, Delmer has chosen to stop fighting. But then, in a blur of motion, salvation comes to him from a most unlikely source. Ahiga. The great warrior hurdles the barrier, ax held high. With a single, devastating blow, the Navajo swings the heavy, steel blade into the neck of Delmer’s tormentor with such force that the head separates from the torso and careens into the rocks with a squishy thud. I can only watch, awestruck.

  “Thank you,” Delmer mutters, clutching the lower part of his rib cage. “Oh, God. Thank you.” Ahiga looks toward him, then to the crank gun smoldering in the dirt, then back to the dying Pinkerton. A fresh rage overtakes him. He brings up the ax and takes a menacing step in Delmer’s direction.

  “You kill my brothers with your fire-gun! You die!”

  “No!” Delmer says, raising a futile arm in defense. Ahiga hefts the blade high. I spring from my perch, ignoring the sniper.

  “Stop!” I shout. I think I hear the rifle pop, I cannot say for certain, but I land on my knees at the feet of Ahiga. For the third time Ahiga holds my fate in his hands. “It was an accident. I swear to it.” He considers me for a long moment and then lets his arms drop. The ax bounces harmlessly to the ground. “Get your head down!”

  Pop! Ahiga snaps into a crouch, startled. The sniper shoots again. Pop! The bullet dings off the rocks behind us and ricochets into the dirt next to Delmer, close enough to hear the whiz of lead.

  “Shit,” Delmer cries, slithering tighter against the rock, “he’s homing in.” Ahiga closes tight against the boulder and then rises up, firing the Spencer four times. I listen for the impact on the other end and when it does not come I know he is wasting precious bullets while the sniper rapidly solves the puzzle of our stony fortress. Pop—ching!

  A gasp escapes from the ground below me, followed by a sizzling inhalation of air through teeth. I look down and see Delmer pawing at his neck. Blood squirts from beneath his hand, steaming in the cold air. A pool of scarlet liquid turns black against the dusty ground.

  I spin toward Ahiga, brimming with anger. “Give me my goddamn Spencer!”

  The Dineh hesitates but tosses me the rifle. I flop straight to my belly and slide silently around the far end of the boulder, the Spencer cocked and poised for a quick release. Half a breath finds its way out of my lungs as the sights come into focus. Beyond the little metal tabs, the stone shelter is a muddled blur, but in the center of it, I come to rest on a dark streak of dead space. The trigger folds at my touch, followed by a familiar, explosive snap! Something flutters behind the stone slabs, then falls from view. “I got him.”

  I turn back to the others and see Delmer flat on his back, sucking in slow, shallow breaths that puff, gray and steaming, against the first flakes of a gentle snow. His left hand stays pressed up to his neck, coated with sticky redness, but in his right—tucked between his trembling, bloodstained fingers—is a folded bit of yellow paper. “Get this . . . to my wife.” Kneeling down to him, I take the letter and put it in my pocket. There is nothing else I can do for him.

  “I will.”

  “Bet you never thought old Delmer’d be the last white man standing,” he says, allowing a smile to come to his lips.

  “You are right about that,” I say.

  Delmer blinks a few times, staring straight through me, and then he stops fighting. The life goes out of him quick. Ahiga falls in next to me, eyeing Delmer with some curiosity. “Little man. Big gun.”

  “Yeah.”

  We pause a moment, Ahiga and I, and then, without another word, walk around the boulder and survey the carnage. Bodies lie strewn about the canyon in every imaginable state of contortion and dismemberment. A handful of Dineh pick through the remains, jabbing the occasional spear into the heart of a trouser-wearer for good measure. But all the white men—Pinkerton and outlaw—are dead.

  Ahiga moves out ahead of me, pacing himself, as if the business of collecting scalps is more chore than trophy. I methodically check the faces, my mind pulling from memory those eyes that stared down at me over a peacock-blue mascada in that orbiting pageant outside the jail.

  Before long I am halfway up the slope. I see the chief, atop his pony, cresting the lip of the ridge. The young scout is with him. Something about that boy’s presence eases the weight of what has happened today. The chief held him back and I am glad for it. The chief gazes skyward, his thin reedy voice choked with grief, his arms outstretched in supplication, and offers a lilting prayer to the Spirits. A good dozen of his men lie dead in the canyon.

  I feel Ahiga beside me. “He is not here,” I say. “The Snowman.”

  “Bandit chief, no.” Ahiga says.

  Flipping the Spencer around, butt first, I extend the weapon toward Ahiga. I cannot say the Dineh have much need for the White Man’s laws of ownership. Ahiga is no different. What he steals is his. But he dismisses the offering with a wave of his hands.

  “Gun, part of you,” he says. Then he holds up his weathered ax. “This, part of me.”

  I nod in gratitude and find my thoughts settling back onto the chief and the Snowman. Both men sent their soldiers forth to fight for them by proxy. It is not cowardice. It is survival of the species.

  Ahiga taps my arm and grunts—his preferred way of addressing me. Down below us, a figure crawls, belly-down, across the canyon floor. Making slow, labored progress, he leaves in his wake a blood-streaked t
rail from the stone shelter to the rocky berm where he now finds himself. The sniper. He wears a dark brown suit that I recognize. Not two days ago, I sat across from it at the Jewel. As we approach, he gives up on his escape and rolls over, sizing up both of us with a glazy stare.

  “Which one of you shot me?” he asks.

  “I did.”

  “Hell of a shot.”

  I step up to him and push his hat back off his face with the tip of the Spencer.

  “Your name is Jessup,” I say. “The Kansan.”

  He tries to laugh, but in his weakened state there is no sand to his breath. “I’ve gone by a lot of names in my day. I guess that would be one of them.” He is dying quick and I do not have much time.

  “Where is LaForge?”

  “Wish I knew. Can’t help you.”

  I drive the rifle’s muzzle into the lower part of his abdomen where the bullet caught him. A scream bleats from him—he sounds like a castrated lamb. “Listen to me,” I say, gesturing to Ahiga, who lowers the ax from his shoulder. “This fella here is going to cut your tongue out and feed it to you.” The Kansan’s face, already ashen from loss of blood, goes ghostly white, even against the ground where the snow has started to take hold.

  “Don’t let him do that. Please, we’re not savages, are we?”

  “Tell me where the meet-up is and he will kill you quick.”

  The Kansan’s eyes flip from me to Ahiga and back to me again. A lone tear leaks down his cheek and into the thin blanket of fresh powder. “The salt flats. Hour after sundown. If he finds out I told you, he’ll hunt down my wife and young ’uns. Don’t tell him it was me . . . tell him . . . tell him it was one of the old-timers.”

  “All right,” I say. I turn to Ahiga and nod him forward. “Keep his suit clean.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Snowmen had hidden their horses, nearly twenty in all, far down in the adjoining ravine, guarded by a single, broad-shouldered bandit with a ten-gauge shotgun and a Union carbine rifle. The Dineh chief shot him from the top of the ridge as the battle raged in the canyon. He was the silver-hair’s lone kill today.