A Good Day to Die (33 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: A Good Day to Die
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A running brave angled southwest across the street. Duncan raised his rifle but a section of the barricade blocked the shot. He sidestepped into the street, swinging the rifle barrel in line with the brave's muscular, delta-shaped back and drilled him between the shoulder blades.
A Comanche bowman on the roof of the Golden Spur launched an arrow at Duncan, hitting him in the right breast. Duncan stood in place, weaving slightly.
The bowman sped a second arrow at him. It took Duncan sideways through the right ear, piercing his skull. Down he went.
Seeing it, Lord cried, “Dirty stinking redskin!” and pointed his rifle up at the archer.
A Comanche at ground level stepped around the corner of the Golden Spur, rifle leveled at Lord. Kev Huddy shot him.
Lord did a double take. A second report from Huddy's gun fell swiftly on the echoes of the first. Lord looked up.
The bowman on the Spur roof was hit, lurching sideways. He ran out of roof, pitching into empty space and impacting the street with a loud booming
whoomp
.
Huddy grinned at Lord over smoking pistols that had just gunned two braves. He'd saved Lord's life twice in two blinks of an eye, but all the same, that toothy grin of Huddy's really burned Lord's ass.
“Thanks,” Lord said grudgingly, hating the other.
Knowing it, Huddy laughed.
 
 
Up above the street, high on the Golden Spur roof, Swamper and his shotgun got to the roof edge late and only managed to tag the last brave in the line of riders moving south between the Spur and the courthouse. It took a second barrel to blow him out of the saddle.
Swamper broke the piece, shucking out the empty shells and reloading. While he was occupied, several nimble Comanches managed to scale a drainpipe on the west side of the building, mounting the roof.
One, an archer, slew Duncan before being slain by Kev Huddy. That attracted Swamper's attention, causing him to glimpse two other braves ducking for cover. It was a game of hide-and-seek.
He padded toward them, keeping a wide brick chimney topped with several spouts between him and them. Leaning around a corner, he loosed a barrel into a Comanche rifleman.
A second brave dodged around to the other side of the chimney. Swamper stepped out in the open for a clear shot. He fired. The brave jackknifed, pitching off the roof. Swamper did not see, but heard, him hit bottom with a satisfying thud.
A pair of hands came into view along the west edge of the roof. A Comanche chinned himself, heaving up over the edge.
No time for reloading. Swamper rushed to roof's edge, butt stroking the brave's head with the shotgun. It made a wet crunching sound, smearing the other's features, breaking his nose and knocking out teeth. The brave was tough, holding on. Swamper readied to strike again.
The brave defiantly spat a mouthful of bloody teeth up at him.
Swamper struck again. The brave's head snapped back, his hands losing their grip. Backward, outward, and down he went—without cry, curse, or complaint.
Swamper leaned over the edge of the roof for a looksee. A trio of braves on foot came skulking south down the side street. The shotgun was empty or he would have cut loose on them.
The brave in the lead spotted him, swinging up a rifle toward him. Swamper threw himself back, landing on his ass and elbows, but dodging a bullet. He crawled away from the edge and reloaded.
The braves in the street fired into the Golden Spur's west windows. Bullets ripped through the plank-boarded lower halves of window frames, felling a gray-bearded Mexican and a beardless youth inside.
Flint Ryan went to the grand staircase, rifle in hand, taking the stairs two at a time until he was at the midpoint of the flight. This put him several feet above the tops of the planks nailed across the lower west windows. He half sat, half sprawled across the steps, looking down into the street for a shot. A brave flashed into view rushing a window, and Ryan shot him.
On the roof, Swamper heard suspicious noises coming from the side of the building. He swung his weapon over the edge, pointing it downward. A brave lay flat in the street where Ryan had shot him. A second brave stood beside a window, his back flattened against the wall, edging in for a shot.
Swamper swung the shotgun down at him, but before he could fire he was shot by the third brave in the group, who'd been hanging back from the others, waiting for Swamper to show himself. He drilled Swamper through the forehead, blowing off the top of his skull.
Swamper fell back in a heap on the roof, shotgun falling from his dead hands into the street.
Below, the brave standing beside the window peered through gaps in the nailed-up boards. Plenty of human targets were scattered around inside the gambling hall. He fired inside, cutting down a man who stood on the other side of the floor at the east wall.
Defenders fired back, tearing holes through plank boards, sending splinters flying, but the brave ducked under cover and remained unhit.
Ryan climbed to the top of the stairs, turning left on the landing, moving along the balcony to a window overlooking the street below. The window was unboarded, open.
He peeked out cautiously, looking for the Comanche who'd just shot through the window. Instead, he saw a brave shinnying up a drainpipe, climbing up the side of the building. It was the one who'd shot Swamper, though Ryan had no way of knowing that.
The climber was almost level with Ryan. They saw each other at the same time.
Ryan's rifle was at the ready. He fired into the Comanche at point-blank range, blasting him off his perch.
The climber dropped, narrowly missing a brave standing pressed against the wall with his rifle raised to fire again through the window. Ryan shot him, too.
A lone Comanche came galloping in from the north, riding along the eastern edge of town toward the courthouse. He heaved a ball-like object through the open space of a high window, clear above the plank barricade and into the building. It hit the courtroom floor, rolling for some fair yardage before bumping to a halt against a wooden bench.
Yipping his defiance, the brave wheeled his horse around, racing back to cover.
The object was revealed to be a human head, un-scalped, the deliverer having used its longish hair as a handle by which to hold and fling it inside.
Somewhat the worse for wear, it was still recognizable as the severed head of Hapgood, the other rider who'd set out at nightfall to reach the cavalry troop escorting Major Adams's wagon train west of the Breaks.
Whatever else, the cavalry would not be riding to the rescue of Hangtown.
T
WENTY-THREE
With violent clashes peppering the Four Corners, Red Hand assembled his men for the main assault.
They came out of the eastern treeline on horseback, filtering from behind the brush, the woods yielding a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Comanche warriors.
Streamers and banks of morning mist drifted above the earth, giving the initial appearance of the braves a dreamlike aspect, as if they were phantoms materializing from the gloom.
They took on an all-too-solid reality as they came forward—at least a hundred and twenty-five of them ... or more.
A long line of mounted braves, several ranks deep, stretched out on both sides of Hangtree Trail. They faced the town in a front reaching from Commerce Street north of the courthouse to Hobson's livery stable in the south.
The Comanches sat silently on their ponies, hard, stoic, remorseless.
They carried rifles, carbines, muskets, six-guns, lances, bows and arrows, tomahawks, stone-headed war clubs, and knives. Many wore round buffalo-hide shields over one arm.
They were well armed. Red Hand had seen to that. Anglo and Mexican captives—young women, mostly, but also boy and girl prisoners hardy enough to withstand the harrowing ordeal—had been traded for weapons and ammunition in advance of the Great Raid. They'd been herded overland to secret meeting places deep in the Staked Plains where renegade Comancheros camped, swapping whiskey and guns for human flesh. The captives were ultimately sold into slavery deep in the remote vastness south of the Rio Grande, never to be seen again by friends and family.
Red Hand took his place at the center of the front, brandishing the Fire Lance. The real, authentic Fire Lance, the one he'd taken from an Austro-Hungarian cavalryman who'd come a long way from home to die in service to Maximilian's foredoomed Empire of Mexico.
He used it as a baton, conducting and directing the movements of his men. It was dormant, un-torched, for its fiery aspect lost its impact in the light of day.
In their perch high in the church tower, Sam Heller and Johnny Cross could see some, but not all, of the Comanche battle line where it extended north and south beyond the courthouse. Its center was blocked by the courthouse itself, shielding Red Hand from being targeted by Sam's long rifle with its telescopic sight.
“Looks like Red Hand's getting ready to make his move,” Johnny acknowledged.
“He's tricky,” Sam stated. “If he's showing himself in the east, it means you better look west. The bunch at Four Corners, Barton, Lassiter, Zorn, and the rest of them are better positioned to deal with him than we are. We're here to guard the back door.”
And so they were. East, the ground was open with little cover, affording clear fields of fire to the defenders. West, the approach to Four Corners consisted of the street grid, with much cover provided by blocks of buildings honeycombed with streets, lanes, and alleys.
If Sam had been making the attack, he would have directed his forces to come in singly or in combination from the north, south or west, with minimal concentration of attackers coming from the east. That's why he had set up his sniper's nest in the church tower, giving him good firing lines along the north, south, and west approaches.
By the same logic, the flat west of the church would be a prime staging area to marshal forces for an attack. Charging horsemen could work up a nice head of steam crossing east across open ground.
The knoll on which the church and Boot Hill were sited would screen the attackers from view of those in Four Corners until the charge topped the rise. That's why Sam had planted red-staked blast pits on the flat.
If he'd guessed wrong, and the Comanches did not come from the west, he could still do plenty of damage to them with his scoped rifle from the church tower heights.
So he and Johnny Cross guarded the back door, scanning the landscape for a west-based assault.
Sure enough, Red Hand had divided his forces. A second Comanche band appeared, coming out of the stepped ridges in the north. They crested the nearest ridge, having hidden behind it in a valley.
“I make 'em about seventy-five or so,” Johnny said.
This second assault force was quiet, with no screaming defiance, no war whoops. They came downhill, wheeling east to form up in a long line at the far side of the flat.
Prone on the floor, holding his face over the open hatch, Johnny looked down into the dark well of the tower shaft. Putting two fingers to his mouth, he whistled several times, sharp and shrill.
Lockridge entered the bottom of the well, looking up. “They're coming!” Johnny called.
“We see 'em!” Lockridge replied.
“Hold your fire till the first blast.”
“Okay—but don't wait too long!”
At the center of the Comanche line leading the sortie was a Titan figure with lines of scalps hanging from the reins of his horse. Ten Scalps. A Bison Eye who'd been with Red Hand since the beginning. A copper-hued Hercules, he was mounted on a big quarter horse, a dappled white and gray charger.
He led his band of seventy-five braves east across the flat toward the rise, their path taking them straight across the field of red-banded stakes. Onward they came, inexorable.
 
 
Gesturing with the lance, Red Hand set his warriors into motion. Forward!
The main body of Comanches advanced, coming from a power position, attacking with the rising sun at their backs. The quickening charge unleashed shrieking war whoops and drumming hoofbeats.
The long line swept westward, its swift rush narrowing the distance between them and the defenders.
They rode on, prime targets for sharpshooters Pete Zorn and Steve Maitland in the clock tower, Boone Lassiter on the courthouse second floor, Deputy Smalls and some of the Dog Star marksmen at the jail, and Hobson and a knot of riflemen at the livery stable.
At the last moment, reaching the hinge where the Hangtree Trail ran into town, the Comanche line broke in two at the center. Half the line peeled off to the left, the other half to the right.
A canny campaigner like Red Hand was too smart to charge straight into the guns of the enemy's strongpoint. The twin halves of the line swung around to the sides, setting up a pincer movement to flank the north and south ends of Four Corners. The objective: surround the stronghold and arrow in, swarming it where it was most vulnerable.
His men broke off the full frontal charge well short of the eastern fields where the red-banded stakes lay, circling around to the sides. A lucky break, or the result of foresight and strategy?
The answer remained to be seen.
Red Hand's attack was loud, heard clear across town, to the church knoll and beyond. It cued Ten Scalps to launch his attack.
Digging his heels into his horse's flanks with such force the animal shuddered in pain, Ten Scalps charged forward. His followers did the same. The earth shook under their hoofbeats.
Sam's nerves were taut. The issue would be joined directly, in a matter of seconds. Ten Scalps and his seventy-five braves were fast narrowing the distance between themselves and the knoll.
“Come on, come on. Let them come on.”
Ten Scalps was in his glory leading the charge. A bull of a man, a magnificent physical specimen, he held. a rifle in one hand, and motioned his band forward toward the knoll and Hangtown below ... charging straight into the field of red-banded stakes.
Sam timed his move with nice delicacy, waiting until the thundering herd was deep in the red-staked field. At the head of the charge, Ten Scalps was almost clear of the flat.
Sam took a stance in the belfry, using the square upright column for cover. Shouldering the rifle, he pointed it downward at the near end of the field. Sighting on the red-staked center of the closest dynamite pit, he squeezed the trigger. A hot round ripped into a bundle of buried dynamite just as Ten Scalps rode over it.
Kaboom!
The tremendous explosion erupted like a vest-pocket volcano blowing its top, spewing light, heat, and violent energies. Geysering earth heaved up in a fan-shaped cone of flaming death.
Caught in the middle of the blast, Ten Scalps disintegrated, along with his horse.
Shockwaves ripped through several dozen braves riding nearby, obliterating them and their mounts in an upthrust wall of yellow-red glare. They were hurled skyward in a heap of body parts. Down they came, but not too soon—they'd been blown pretty high up.
The church rocked from the ground floor to the spire. The belfry roost shivered. Having been wrapped in muffling layers of cloth and tied down in place earlier, the church bell did not toll. It quivered with vibrations, sending out a metallic teeth-rattling hum, which Sam felt in his bones.
No sooner had he popped off the nearest blast pit than his rifle swung toward the next. He scoped out another red-tied stake and triggered it, blowing a big hole in the stunned and stricken Comanche charge and shredding men and mounts.
Gore fountained. Dust and chaff showered down from inside the spire above, shaken loose by the shock waves of the blast. Sam hoped the church bell or the spire itself wouldn't crash down on their heads.
He sighted on a red-staked pit toward the left rear of the mass of braves and fired.
Another earthshaking blast rewarded him. Curtains of roiling black smoke rose up, wrapped with writhing red serpents of flame. Dirt, smoke, and debris temporarily obscured part of the scene.
A fresh explosion surprised Sam, detonating in the northwest quadrant of the field of death. It was one he hadn't triggered.
Johnny Cross had, tagging it through the open sights of his rifle. He flashed a tight grin at Sam.
Hangtown had no cannon. Such heavy guns had been confiscated or spiked by Union troops in the unhappy aftermath of the War. Yet the braves' charge was ripped and rended as if shattered by cannon balls. The field was an annex of Hell, scored with blast craters and scorch marks.
Smoking craters vented black-gray pillars of smoke, creating too much murk and chaos for Sam or Johnny to see the red-tied stakes for a moment. But they could still see plenty of Comanches, outlined shapes streaking through the palls of smoke and fire. A cluster of them changed course, charging the church.
Johnny waved a hand, getting Sam's attention. He held an unlit bundle of dynamite.
Sam nodded.
Pitching it overhand, Johnny heaved the bundle at the oncoming attackers below.
Sam fired, hitting the bundle and detonating it in midair above the attackers. Bodies arrowed outward in all directions from the center of the blast.
Gunfire ripped in the church below as Lockridge and Bayle fired on the foe, knocking them down.
A ragged knot of Comanches rode up the far side of the knoll. Johnny let fly with another bundle of dynamite, a round from Sam's rifle touching it off.
The slope was cleared.
Sam began picking off the remaining braves one by one, shooting them off their horses. Johnny hefted his rifle and did likewise, while Lockridge and Bayle in the church below continued to cut loose.
The charge in the west was broken, its force crushed. Survivors scattered, fleeing the killing field.
 
 
Red Hand's man Sun Dog led the Comanches' right wing north, his kinsman Badger taking the left wing south with the all-important task of stealing the horses penned in the Big Corral. The prime stock fenced in behind the barricades was as attractive to them as a bank ripe with gold bullion would have been to outlaws. Irresistible!
His job was to break the ring of the Big Corral and run off the herd. The animals could always be rounded up later. Denied the use of their mounts for a getaway attempt, the townfolk would be pinned in place for conquest. Rape, torture, and slaughter!
The Big Corral was not without its defenses. Hobson, Squint McCray, and a half dozen other top riflemen were posted in the second-story loft of the livery barn. More were on the ground floor.

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