Glorious (38 page)

“If I got to fight, I want to do it out of doors,” Bossman said. “It makes running easier.”

“While you were out today, did you see anything suggesting Apaches?” McLendon asked him.

“Not a sign. Couldn't have been quieter.”

•   •   •

W
HEN IT WAS
fully dark outside, Mary Somebody began lighting kerosene lanterns inside the Owaysis. Saint cautioned her not to light more than one.

“Too much illumination will make us better targets,” he said.

Mulkins leaned against the saloon's back door and rested his rifle stock on the floor. “My arm aches from holding this weapon all day,” he said. “But the hardest thing is the waiting. I don't want to die, but I wish to hell that if they're going to attack, they'd do it and get it over with.”

“What do you think, McLendon?” the sheriff asked. “Are they going to get on with it?”

“Probably soon,” McLendon said. “We have to remain alert.”

But hours passed and nothing happened. Girl, wrapped in blankets, slept on the saloon floor. Everyone else sat in chairs by the windows and doors. In spite of themselves, they fell into fitful dozes. McLendon snapped awake and held his pocket watch up to the single lighted lantern: two o'clock. He looked out the side window and couldn't detect any movement around the prospectors' tents. They, too, must have fallen asleep.

“Are you awake, Joe?” McLendon asked.

“Just barely. There's nothing going on at all. I wonder if MacPherson is going to allow the night to pass.”

Then there came the sound of gunfire to the west, and bloodcurdling screams. The others in the saloon came quickly awake.

“Where is it?” Mulkins asked.

There were many more shots and howls. “Outside of town, I think,” McLendon said. He looked out the window and saw the prospectors tumbling out of their tents, rifles in hand.

Girl began shrieking, a high-pitched counterpoint to the screaming outside. Mary Somebody rushed to comfort her.

Saint, crouched by the front door, said, “Someone's coming—I think it's Ike.” He raised his pistol and called, “Stand to, Clanton! I'll shoot if you don't.” McLendon, peering over Saint's shoulder, saw Ike stop just a few feet away. It was too dark to tell if anyone was behind him.

“It's the Apaches,” Ike cried. He moved forward again, pushing right up to where Saint guarded the door. “They're coming fast—you got to get out of there. Girl, honey, can you hear me? Come out to Ike.”

“Move along, Ike,” Saint said. He tried to push Ike away. Girl stopped screeching and rushed toward the door, moving too fast for Mary Somebody to intercept her. She squeezed between Saint and
McLendon and ran outside to Ike. He grabbed her hand and shouted back to the others in the saloon, “Follow me! You'll be safer!”

“It's a trick—don't do it,” McLendon warned, but Mary Somebody was already past him, too, calling for Girl to come back inside. Ike spun and ran, yanking Girl behind him. He pulled her past the dry goods store and up the hill.

“We got to get her,” Mary shouted, and set off in galloping, clumsy pursuit. McLendon and Saint ran behind her. So did Mulkins and Crazy George, who kept bellowing that he couldn't see and would someone tell him what was going on. The gunfire just outside town seemed to spread to all sides, but whoever was shooting was too far away to be seen, only heard as they fired and shouted.

“It's Apaches! Keep running!” Ike called back. There were lights ahead, and McLendon saw that he was running for the old wooden shack where the Clantons lived after Turner left town.

“We can't follow Ike, he's up to something,” McLendon called to the others, but Mary, breathing hard, gasped, “I got to keep Girl safe.” She clearly wasn't going to stop, and so the others didn't, either. There was gunfire all around them now, and still they couldn't see who was shooting. Whether it was the Culloden vaqueros or even the Apaches, McLendon wondered, why weren't they closing in?

Ike flung open the door of the cabin and shoved Girl inside. Then he stood in the doorway, gesturing for the others to come in as well.

“It's safer here, away from the main part of town!” he yelled, and McLendon, Saint, Mulkins, Crazy George, and Mary all hustled inside. A half-dozen kerosene lamps lit the interior. A table and some chairs stood in the center of the one-room dwelling, and several straw-stuffed tick mattresses were stacked in a corner. McLendon had an immediate sense of claustrophobia. It was a very small cabin.

“Everybody stay down,” Ike commanded. “I'm going out for a look.”

“You're what?” Saint exclaimed, and grabbed Ike's sleeve, but Clanton yanked away and ran back down the hill.

“What the hell?” Mulkins exclaimed, and McLendon went outside to chase after Ike, but as he did several shots rang out from very nearby, and he heard the whiz of the bullets and the smack of them hitting the wood beside him. McLendon dove back inside, colliding with Mulkins. They went down in a heap as Saint slammed the door.

“Douse those lamps!” Saint yelled. “Then everybody with a gun to a window.” His voice shook terribly, and he swallowed hard, trying to control his panic. “We're surrounded. They're shooting at us from all sides.” Everyone scrambled to blow out the lamps, and then the cabin was as pitch-black as the night outside. The sheriff pulled the door open an inch. McLendon and Mulkins rushed to the windows. There were only two, one in the front of the shack and the other in the back. Crazy George joined Mulkins at the back window. Mary Somebody pulled Girl to the floor and held her there. Girl was still shrieking, and her howling added to the confusion.

“It's too dark to see,” Mulkins complained. “What's going on out there? Why did Ike lead us here?”

“Who knows?” Saint said. “Everyone do your best. If you think there's something out there moving toward us, don't hesitate. Shoot at it.”

“I feel like George, because I can't see what to shoot,” Mulkins said.

“Blast away at the muzzle flashes,” the sheriff snapped. He fired his pistol, and the room was filled with the acrid scent of gunpowder. Then there was a near-deafening boom to McLendon's right: Crazy
George had fired the shotgun. Mulkins chimed in with two shots from his Henry, and even though McLendon couldn't see much as he craned his neck to peek out the window, he cocked his Navy Colt and prepared to fire too. There was a muzzle flash from a few dozen yards down the hill, so McLendon pointed the Colt in that direction and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand as he fired, hurting the base of his thumb. When he tried to fire again, he found that his hand was trembling, so much so that it was difficult to get his thumb on the hammer to draw it back.

The assailants' shots didn't completely subside, but they decreased in frequency. There were occasional thuds as bullets hit the wooden walls, and a few times they whizzed through the two window openings and struck interior walls, spraying splinters everywhere.

“Why have they slackened the shooting?” Mulkins asked. “Do you think we hit some of them?”

“It's unlikely,” McLendon said. “I think that for the moment they just want us pinned down here. Be ready—they may be preparing an all-out assault.” Behind him, he heard Girl sobbing, and Mary Somebody attempting to comfort her.

“Is it the Cullodens for sure?” Crazy George asked Saint.

“I'm certain of it,” the sheriff said. “Ike's the one who sprung the trap.”

“Fuckin' Ike,” the saloon owner growled. “I'd like one last chance to take my pipe to his skull. I'd mash that bastard—”

A new fusillade erupted at the bottom of the hill, and then there were flames.

“They're burning the prospectors' tents,” Mulkins said. “My God, they're shooting them as they run from the fire!”

The conflagration lit the night. Those in the cabin peered out the door and windows and watched with horror as Culloden horsemen,
visible now in front of the flames, rode down and shot fleeing prospectors.

“Maybe they won't get them all,” Mulkins said hopefully. “A few could escape in the confusion.”

“MacPherson's murderers are efficient,” McLendon replied, and thought but didn't say out loud,
It will be our turn next.
He was right: as the last prospector fell—it looked like Bossman Wright—the riders turned their horses about and dismounted. With the burning tents at their backs, more than a dozen began walking up the hill, moving slowly but purposefully.

“They're out of pistol and shotgun range,” Saint said. “Major, can you reach them with your Henry?”

Mulkins moved from the back window to the front door. “Reach them, yes, but hitting them is another matter.” He aimed and fired. The men on the hill paused, but no one fell or gave any other sign of being wounded. Mulkins fired a second time, with no better result.

The flames from the burning tents were high in the air, and by their light McLendon recognized some of those below. “There's Misterio and Lemmy Duke, and Ike Clanton's off to the side. What have two of those vaqueros with them got? Bows and quivers?”

“They took them off those dead Apaches they brought in a while back,” Saint said. “Are they setting up to charge us, do you think?”

“No, they seem to be waiting for something. There are a couple of vaqueros coming up behind them. They've got buckets. What the hell?” McLendon pulled the door wider to get a better look, and instantly bullets smacked into walls again. The new Winchesters used by the Culloden hands fired more accurately than Mulkins's vintage Henry.

“Yes, they mean to pen us up here,” Saint said. “Why this cabin?”

McLendon, squinting hard, saw another vaquero coming up the
hill. He carried a torch. “Damn it. They got us here because the cabin's made of wood. They mean to burn it down—and us with it.”

“Can't be!” Mulkins protested. “My hotel's wood too. If that's what they intended, why not trap us in there?”

“MacPherson wants your hotel, Major,” McLendon said. “He has no further designs on this cabin. We've got to shoot, got to keep them back. They've got kerosene and a torch. We can't let them get near.”

Mulkins fired the Henry again, and McLendon and Saint used their pistols. Crazy George cut loose with his shotgun. But it had no real effect. Most of the Culloden men stayed where they were on the hill, returning fire with their longer-range Winchesters until the defenders in the cabin had no choice but to stop shooting and duck. As soon as they did, the vaqueros toting buckets of kerosene ran up the hill. Saint and McLendon snapped off shots, but the vaqueros dodged to the sides of the cabin where there were no windows and then there were sloshing sounds as the kerosene splashed against the wood. Then the men on the hill threw down heavy covering fire as the vaquero with the torch sprinted toward the cabin. Those inside had no chance to prevent him as he pitched the torch against the outer wall. The kerosene ignited and flames instantly crackled. Girl began shrieking again, and Mulkins moaned, “We got to get out of here before we fry.”

“Back window,” Saint suggested. “Maybe we can climb out there, keep the cabin between us and them,” but when Mulkins tried to squeeze through the window there were shots from behind the cabins. MacPherson's men had anticipated that escape route and had riflemen placed to block it.

They huddled together in the middle of the cabin, cringing away from the heat of the flames that were already eating through one wall and part of the roof.

“Out the front door, then,” Mulkins said. “We don't want the agony of burning.”

“We do that, and they'll shoot us down right there,” Saint said. “Either way, when it's over they'll stick some of those arrows in us and claim it was Apaches.”

Mary Somebody let go of Girl and grabbed McLendon's arm. “Soames,” she shouted.

McLendon, distracted by the fire, said, “What?”

“Soames. My real name is Mary Soames and I hail from Burkburnett, Texas. If I'm going to die, I want someone to know who I really am.”

Then Ike Clanton, standing down the hill, called for Girl. As she had earlier at the Owaysis, she shook free of Mary and ran toward the door. As soon as she stepped outside there was a series of shots, and Girl's body came flopping back inside, entirely limp as though she had no bones. In the light from the flames on the wall and roof, they could see a round hole in the middle of her forehead. Mary Soames began to sob. Crazy George dropped his shotgun and wrapped his arms around Mary. “She's safe now,” he said. “She's with Jesus and we'll join her directly.”

The flames had spread enough so that part of the roof began crumbling. McLendon looked at Saint. “All right,” the sheriff said, and McLendon was surprised that there was no longer a quaver in his voice. “Time's come. Major's right, it's an easier death from bullets than flames.” Crazy George tried to pick up Girl's body, but the rest of the roof came tumbling down in blazing chunks and he had to jump back. They all went through the front door, moving quickly, ready to get it over with. When they were outside, they drew themselves up to die with dignity. Crazy George and Mary Soames held hands.

Twenty yards down the hill, Angel Misterio barked an order, and Lemmy Duke and the Culloden vaqueros snapped their Winchesters up to their shoulders and aimed. McLendon thought,
Firing squad.
He took a deep last breath and then it happened. Lemmy Duke, standing immediately to Misterio's left, levitated. His feet came off of the ground and his Winchester dropped to the ground. McLendon wondered how a man could fly and then he realized Duke had been lifted off the ground because there was a burly shape behind him. Duke dropped his rifle, his body shook violently, and McLendon thought that a grizzly bear must have wandered down from the mountains and attacked. Then Duke was flung aside and there stood Patrick Brautigan—Killer Boots—who immediately turned his attention to Angel Misterio. The Culloden vaqueros gawked at the burly giant, frozen in place by his unexpected appearance, but Misterio was tougher-minded. He reached for the throwing knife in his belt, his hand moving as always at amazing speed. Brautigan didn't seem to move quickly at all in contrast to Misterio's blurriness, but somehow before Misterio could pull and throw his lethal blade the hulking Brautigan made a graceful pirouette. His right leg rose up and the steel toe of his massive boot caught Misterio under the chin. Misterio's head snapped back and even twenty yards away McLendon could hear the
crack!
as his neck broke. Brautigan whirled, picked up the Winchester dropped by Lemmy Duke, and began firing at Ike and the remaining Culloden vaqueros. Terrified by the death of their leader, the Mexicans shrieked,
“¡El
Diablo, El Diablo!”
and fled. Ike Clanton vaulted onto his mule and galloped away.