Apache Death (15 page)

As the side of Little Cochise's head spattered down on to the staging and his body began to crumble, Edge lashed out with a boot to catch the dead Apache squarely in the small of his back. The sub-chief pitched forward over the wall and cartwheeled down to the hard road outside the gates. Howls of enraged indignation rose from the Apaches grouped in the town and the elder brother of the dead man strode purposefully across to where the prisoner looked at the sun. The many hundreds of braves fell silent as their chief drew his knife.

"Fire at will," Murray commanded as he realized what was about to happen.

The fusillade of rifle shots fell short of their targets but covered the screams of the Englishman as the point of the knife dug into the skin at the crown of his head; then his shriek as a tuft of hair was grasped and wrenched free with a flap of bloodied flesh
adhering to it. The chief waved the scalp in the air, glorying in, the screams of his victim, then silenced them with a vicious swing of his tomahawk. The head of the Englishman was cleanly severed from his body and as Cochise used his knife again, to slash through the ropes binding the man to the litter, the body toppled forward, leaving the head suspended by the twine through the ears.

As several of the soldiers reeled away from the sight, vomiting violently, Murray's own face turned toward Edge.

Edge took a final drag against his cigarette and arched it over the wall. "Not for nothing," he answered. "That Cochise, he's just got a mean streak."

The object of the men's exchange broke into a run across the street and leaped on to the back of his pony, yelling the order for a charge. But the chief himself moved forward only a few feet, allowing his braves to stream by on either side, into the range of the Winchesters. The murderous volley of rifle fire smashed a dozen braves from their ponies before they could get close enough to loose off an arrow and the survivors of the first wave sheered away to left and right to circle back to where Cochise waited.

"Those guys really needed those guns," Edge said as he fed fresh shells into his Winchester.

Murray ignored him. "Lieutenant, mount the Gatling on the arsenal roof. I don't think these savages will break through, but we'd better be prepared."

The commanding officer was a battle soldier. In standoffs and other circumstances which offered time for consideration, his conscience made itself a factor in every decision. In the heat of battle his mind operated like a well-oiled machine.

"You got a Gatling gun here?" Edge asked.

"You know the gun?"

"Fought against some in the Civil War," Edge answered. "Fouled up more times than they shot right."

"Gatling improved on the design," Murray said as he gazed out across the sprawled bodies of the dead Apaches to where the survivors had rejoined the main group. "Army bought a hundred this year and we've got one."

"Maybe you ought to have upped your order," Edge said, nodding out to where a dozen braves were hauling a wagon from behind one of the saloons as others threw brushwood, planks and bed linen into the back. "Gonna make it hot for us."

"Get water!" Murray yelled. "You, you, you, you."

The colonel pointed to a dozen men who backed away from the wall and started down the stairway toward the well. A score of lamps were smashed on to the back of the wagon as it was wheeled out into the street, back toward the fort’s gates. The glazed, lidless eyes of the severed head of the Englishman looked on as flames flickered and then roared. Cochise raised his hand and dropped it and the wagon began to move, powered by a dozen braves who grasped it by the shafts and broke into a run. Reeking smoke billowed up, screening the braves as they trundled the wagon along the street, gaining speed with every step.

"Fire at will," Murray yelled as two groups of mounted Apaches rushed along at each side of the blazing wagon. Bodies sprawled and ponies went down, throwing their riders, but the wagon kept rolling, gaining momentum as if the braves behind it found new strength in the sight of their dead brothers. A few of the riders got close enough to the fort to release arrows and lances and three soldiers fell backwards off the wall, their hands clawing for the shafts buried in their flesh. A fourth man leaned out too far for a better shot and was spun by a lance piercing his shoulder. His high pitched scream was curtailed as his falling body plunged into the burning wagon the moment it crashed' into the gates. The rest of the soldiers continued to fire down upon the scattering of mounted riders and those braves who had survived the wagon run, as the men with the buckets threw the water ineffectually down on the raging inferno before the gates.

"Give 'em back their guns," Edge yelled through the choking black smoke. "You lost that round, Colonel."

But Murray was in no mood to listen or reply to Edge any more. He knew that Cochise was seeking vengeance at any price and that the Apache chief was prepared to pay part of the cost in the blood of his own braves. Once the gates were down a full scale attack would be launched and there wasn't a chance in a million of stopping a horrifying proportion of the Indians from getting inside the fort.

"Keep pouring," Murray ordered as he glanced across the compound and saw that Sawyer and his detail were in the process of climbing on the arsenal roof; each carrying a component of the rapid fire Gatling Gun.

"Mind if I go and find a better place to die?" Edge asked rhetorically as he moved toward the head of the stairway up which the buckets of water were being passed.

"Chickening out?" Murray snapped."

Edge spat. "I just figure that if you keep all your men on this wall you're going to lay an egg." He started down the stairway as the hinges of one of the gates tore free and the burning planks of pine crashed into the seat of the flames, sending up a shower of sparks. In the compound a group of civilians were grouped around the sobbing Lorna Fawcett, trying to encourage her into one of the buildings.

"They're like beasts of the jungle," a woman said to Edge.

"But it was their jungle first," he answered as he examined the buildings of the fort and decided that the roof of the bunkhouses offered the best vantage point. But he went first to the arsenal and took out a box of ammunition. He tossed it up on to the roof, then threw up the Winchester before reaching for the verandah and hauling himself aloft. Glancing across to the adjacent roof of the arsenal he could see Sawyer and his men feeding cartridges into the hopper of the wicked-looking Gatling Gun. The weapon, which was mounted on a tripod, had six barrels, each with a separate bolt, cocking and firing mechanism which were activated by a crank at the rear.

"How many rounds a minute you likely to get out of that barrel-organ?" he called across.

"Makers specify 300," Sawyer answered.

Edge grinned as the second gate crashed down. "All be over in a minute then. Can't be more than that many Apaches left alive out there."

The fire was now the only bar to the Indian attack. Murray realized this and pulled his men off the water chain and started to deploy them along the wall and down in the compound, yelling for the civilians to be issued with rifles. The commanding officer himself stayed on the wall, to the right of where the staging over the gates were now in flames. But the heart of the fire had burned out so that now it crackled rather than roared and the beating of the Apache drums could be heard again, resounding out their presage of violent death.

"Get ready!" Murray called and Edge looked toward the gates as the smoke cleared, seeing a line of Apaches ranged across the main street of Rainbow. Edge sank to his knees and then pitched forward so that he was stretched out in a prone position. He used the barrel of his Colt and the point of his knife to pry up the lid of the ammunition box, then tipped it on its side so that he had easy access to the cartridges, then, as the first warcries of the braves sounded, he rested his cheek against the stock of the Winchester and lowered his left eye behind the back sight. Throughout the fort, as the leading arc of the new sun breasted the east wall, soldiers and civilians did the same. The whoops reached a crescendo, drowning out the drums and then unshod hoofs thundered, the stomping power of so many ponies at a gallop seeming to vibrate the very walls of the fort.

"Think the bastards mean it this time," Edge muttered as the men on the wall opened up, pouring a hail of hot lead down upon the advancing braves, firing again and again, as fast as their trembling hands could work the actions of their new weapons. But they were no more than twenty-five and as their fire power took out the front riders more braves increased speed to fill the gaps.

As the range narrowed the first shower of arrows swished up to the wall. Three men were hit in the chest and fell backwards into the compound. A woman who rushed out to help a man groaning through the final seconds of his life collapsed on top of him without a sound as an arrow cleared the wall and thudded between her shoulder blades. Another soldier, no more than eighteen, took a lance full in the stomach and turned before he fell. The shaft of the lance hit the ground first and the weight of the boy caused the point to burst out from his back with a great fountain of bloodied entrails. The flagpole above the gate burned through and toppled sideways,

smashing through the skull of a man who was in the process of reloading his rifle.

Then the leading group of braves leaped across the dying embers of the burned-out wagon and into the fort. A fusillade of rifle fire rang out and three braves fell, but four more jumped from their ponies and made it into cover.

"Jesus, they've got the Colonel," Sawyer yelled and Edge took out two of the second batch of braves before glancing up at the wall. He was in time to see Murray stagger across the staging, the Colonel's face masked by blood flowing from around the shaft of an arrow buried in his left eye. Another arrow penetrated his chest and Murray crumpled to the staging.

"Looks like you're in command," Edge told the lieutenant.

"Oh, my God," Sawyer yelled. "Fire, fire, fire, damn you."

He jabbed a shaking hand into the ribs of the trooper squatting behind the Gatling and the man began to crank. The six barrels started to rotate, belching smoke and spitting death, spraying the entire area of the gates with high caliber bullets, mixing the blood of Apache and pony and piling their bodies into an untidy heap. But it had been firing for less than fifteen seconds when metal screeched against metal and a loud clang signaled a jammed mechanism.

Edge sighed and shook his head. "Never trust anything a Johnny Reb made," he muttered. "Dick Gatling ought to have stuck to his planting in Carolina."

As Sawyer shouted obscenities at his men, urging them to free the tangled metal, braves streamed in through the gateway again, losing some but getting a great many into cover. The detachment of soldiers on the wall had been reduced to ten men without even a non-com to lead them. While inside the fort the Apache infiltrators ceased their warcries and crept stealthily into and over buildings to strike silently.

A trooper's head rolled out from a doorway and was kicked viciously into the center of the compound by a moccasined foot. A terrified child scooted out into the open, chased by his hysterical mother and both pitched forward with arrows growing from their backs. Knives flashed and tomahawks thudded, arrows swished and captured rifles cracked. Upon the wall four men died in as many seconds and the remaining six tried to make the foot of the stairway on the run, blasting as they went. A dozen braves spilled out their lives in blood, but only one soldier reached the compound, there to be ripped apart by the chattering fire of the Gatling as the mechanism came free.

"Cease fire!" Sawyer shrieked in terror as he realized the machine gun was no longer of use, its deadly spray not differentiating between friend and foe. It was his final command. An arcing arrow bored a course downward through his right cheek and into his throat. "Oh, mother!" he managed to sigh before he died, pitching forward off the arsenal roof.

Seven braves scrambled up on to the roof and threw themselves at the gunnery detail, who had no time to snatch up their rifles or draw revolvers. Edge picked off three with the Winchester, then another a moment after the brave had slashed the throat of a trooper. An army boot smashed into the groin of an Apache and then became separated from the leg as a tomahawk hacked through the ankle. The trooper's scream was curtailed by a knife in the heart and his murder died as Edge sent a bullet into the brave's heart. The last trooper was locked in a deadly wrestling match with two braves and managed to turn the knife of one and drive it into the Apache's belly. An instant before the other brave could bury his tomahawk into the exposed skull of the trooper, Edge's Winchester cracked again, smashing the wrist of the hand clutching the weapon. The trooper snatched up the axe and swung it with all his strength, burying the entire blade into the Indian's stomach and shoving the blood dripping body across the roof and over the edge.