News of the World(26)
The Captain crawled from under the wagon to the edge of the caprock and found a notch in it. He pulled out the revolver. Another shot from the right, different place. They had both been from the right. So where was the third man? He spat on his hand and then smeared it on his revolver barrel and then sifted dust over it. The Smith and Wesson with its long barrel was accurate but nowhere near as accurate as a rifle. And it didn’t have the range. Their rifles were good for two hundred yards or more. They could stay out of range and blast away at him till the cows came home.
The shotgun was good only for close work; he had only fifteen shells of light Number Seven, what they called turkey shot or dove shot, which would at most pepper somebody’s face with a permanent tattoo unless you jammed it right up against them at face-to-face range and that was a situation he would not be likely to survive. In the shot box were powder and caps and hulls to make up more shotgun shells, as if it mattered. He lay still and felt running tremors in his belly. Fear for himself, for the girl. Help me.
He turned and saw Johanna crawling toward him, dragging the box of .38 ammunition. She had got it out of the flour keg. It was covered with flour, so were her hands.
He took the box and then pointed sternly to the wagon. She wriggled back.
This was not the first time that someone had wanted to kill him but the other times had been what one might call fair fights. The two rifle shots sounded to the Captain as if they had come from Henrys. A Spencer made a flatter, barking sound. But it could have been the gunpowder they were using. He smelled the gunpowder smoke rising up from below in long windless strands that snarled in the cedar. His mouth was dry. They had been traveling the entire night and he was weary and the cloudy light was diffuse so it was difficult to see.
He had not thought they would turn so quickly to murder. He had thought if they caught up, they would bluster, threaten, offer a certain amount in silver, perhaps even claim they were the girl’s relatives. He saw himself pointing the long barrel of the Smith and Wesson into their faces and saying something like, Begone or I will blow you through. This was clearly not going to happen. Human aggression and depravity still managed to astonish him. He had been caught by surprise.
The girl was under the wagon. She was listening. Then she lifted her hands and whipped her long hair into a braid and tied it off with a piece of lace edging she tore from her skirt. She was not astonished. Not at all.
He lay still in the crumbled stone and blue-green agarita behind the protection of the caprock. He waited. He and Johanna were exposed to the wooded slope behind them, higher ground, but it was a good quarter mile away. Almay and the Caddos were coming up from below. The wagon must have been just barely exposed. He waited. The wind was cold.
He heard, remotely, the lever action of another Henry and then saw another puff of gunpowder smoke below, from behind a long slanting buttress of red stone on the right side of the ravine. Instantly afterward he heard a sharp, flat crack and the noise of the wagon being hit again. Splinters burst into the air and rained around him. Pasha fell back on his halter rope but it did not break so he came up straight again. He wasn’t hit. Fancy was more determined and tore her halter rope loose and went crashing away into the trees and stopped. She was hung up on something.
The Captain waited for the other, or two others if they were all armed with rifles. He had to hoard his revolver ammunition and watch for the best shot even if they were right in his face. It seemed his eyes would start from his head. He had to shut them for a moment. Then a .45 long Colt round struck to his right like a hammerhead, about six feet away and then he heard the muzzle blast. He didn’t turn his head but only noted where the smoke came from. It had also come from the right side of the ravine, farther down. Number three. The shot did not have that deep, biting bark of a rifle, so it was a revolver. They had all three come up single file on one side. Stupid. They were overconfident. They were up against nothing but an old man and a girl.
In some ways he wouldn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory. Seventy-one was a good long time to have lived. But then there was Johanna.
The mild, watery sun of early March poured down a shadowless light. Not many reflections. Another shot. It chipped the face of the dark, dense limestone to his left. He did not duck nor glance in that direction but watched for the smoke.
He saw it. Same rifle. Two, that’s all they had. The third man was the odd man out and had to make do with a revolver like himself.
Then he saw a man jump from one buttress of rusty-red stone to another to cross the ravine to the other side. He was carrying a rifle. The Captain fired three times, chipping the stone around the man, sending up sprays of cedar duff and the sumac leaves like little airborne ears. It was one of the Caddos. They were trying to nail him between two lines of fire; a rifle to his left and a rifle and a handgun to his right.
A brief glimpse; the Caddo was wearing a heavy leather glove on his left hand. So he was right, they did have Henrys. There was no floor arm on the Henry and its hot barrel and the magazine tube had to be handled with a glove. Another shot. He waited for the flash of a rifle barrel on his left, within the range of his revolver, saw it, fired twice and heard a yell and the rifle flew away and got wedged among the rocks.
Got him. At least he had knocked the rifle out of his hand. And now the stupid fool was going to go after it.
He aimed and waited. He was sure the Caddo was going to try to retrieve his precious expensive rifle. Go for it, man. Over on the other side of the ravine he caught a glimpse of the crown of a hat. He was too smart for that. It was on a stick.