‘What the hell!’ Job bellowed as Dusty bounded towards his brother.
‘I’ll stop hi—!’ Aaron began, right hand dropping towards his revolver.
‘Let him go!’ growled Wightman, face alight with sadistic delight. ‘Your brother will smite him hip and thigh.’
Which seemed a reasonably logical conclusion, comparing the six inches difference in Dusty’s and Stap’s height and the latter’s considerable advantage of weight. Stap had a reputation for being a rough-house brawler, with better than fair skill in a brawl. For all his plans to ingratiate himself with General Buller at the Rebel captain’s expense, Wightman could not resist the temptation to watch one of the hated Secessionists receive a brutal beating. Even if the scout had told the truth about being followed by a Troop of Dragoons, the injuries inflicted by Stap could be explained away. There was, however, the matter of how the scout would react to the sight.
‘You saw how that Rebel filth attacked Brother Stapley without provocation, stranger?’ Wightman challenged, looking at the plainsman.
Before the scout could be forced to take a stand on the issue, Stap launched the attack—and they all received something of a shock.
Ducking under the punch, Dusty let the bigger man’s impetus bring him forward. Even as Stap realised that his antagonist had most unsportingly avoided the attack, he started to have troubles of his own. Bowing his legs to take him beneath the other’s fist, Dusty kept his right hand braced against the right hip. Like a flash, the small Texan struck back.
The manner in which Dusty held his hand might have looked strange to western eyes, but any student of Oriental
karate
could have warned Stap of the danger. Instead of closing his hand, Dusty bent his thumb across the open and upturned palm. Driven forward, with a slight twisting of the torso to increase their force, the extended fingers thrust into Stap’s solar plexus. To the guerilla, it felt as if he had been jabbed with a blunt spike of wood. Breath burst from his lips and he changed from advance to retreat, folding over. Coming down, the centre of his face met with Dusty’s left fist as it rose in an occidental fashion. Dusty proved to be almost as effective when striking in the conventional manner.
Almost, but not quite. He had hoped to strike Stap on the jaw, which would have rendered the guerilla
hors de combat
, or so near to it as not to matter. Instead, the other’s withdrawal caused the fist to miss its mark. Not that Stap felt any gratitude over his good fortune. Ploughing into Stap’s already unlovely nose, Dusty’s knuckles crushed it. The force of the blow lifted Stap erect. Blood gushed from his nostrils as he spun around twice and crashed back-first into the left side gate-post.
‘I saw him, for sure,’ admitted the scout, grinning maliciously. ‘Ain’t he the mean one?’
Once again the small, insignificant-seeming young Texan had won the scout’s respect by proving himself to be a mighty capable and efficient
big
man.
Shaking his head, to try to bring sense back into it, Stap reached for his Colt. In his pain and bewildered condition, he did not make anything like a flashing, well-performed draw. Allowing the gun to clear leather and begin to lift in his direction, Dusty lashed up his right leg. Coming inwards, the toe of his boot caught the back of Stap’s palm with a force that numbed the hand. Stap’s fingers opened and the gun spun away from him. For all that, he responded with some speed. Thrown from his daze by the agony of the kick, Stap focused his eyes on his assailant. Snarling barely coherent curses, Stap whipped across his left arm in a back-hand slap to Dusty’s head. Caught with his foot still descending from the kick, Dusty pitched sideways. Once more the small Texan lost his campaign hat.
‘Get him, Stap!’ screeched Charley excitedly, throwing the piece of wood down in front of him and waving the knife. ‘Stomp him good!’
Willing to carry out his companion’s advice, Stap thrust himself from the gate post. Although the Texan had not fallen, the slap had knocked him back several feet. He looked to be off balance and easy meat for reprisals. Eager to hand them out, Stap hurled himself after Dusty. Extending his arms, the guerilla’s big hands reached ready to take hold of the small Rebel.
By the time Stap had drawn near, Dusty was in full control of himself. Coming to a halt facing the guerilla, Dusty side-stepped at the last moment. Pivoting around as the other blundered on, the small Texan caught him by the shoulder and turned him. Then Dusty demonstrated some of the fighting skill which the spy at Pine Bluff had doubted if he possessed. Smashing a right cross punch to Stap’s jaw, Dusty sent him backwards and kept him retreating with a battery of rapidly-thrown blows to the head and body.
‘The stinking peckerwood son-of-a-bitch!’ Aaron spat out, his gun still half drawn and allowed to remain that way because he had believed his brother could easily thrash the diminutive Rebel. ‘I’ll fix—’
‘Leave the gun be, Maxim!’ Wightman hissed savagely, clamping a hold on Aaron’s wrist as the other tried to complete the withdrawal. ‘Like I’ve been telling you, we need him alive!’
Twisting his head, Aaron stared briefly, but furiously, at the speaker. Then he swung his eyes away from the cold, savage, gaunt fate. Experience had taught the guerilla that his leader was never so dangerous, or determined to receive compliance with his wishes, than when he dropped the pious-sounding word ‘brother’ and began to use surnames. Some people might regard Parson Wightman’s pomposity and pseudo-religious cantings as harmlessly amusing, but Aaron knew him to be a cold-blooded killer with no scruples against taking even his own men’s lives if they crossed him.
So Aaron allowed the revolver to slip back into its holster and jerked his arm from the gaunt man’s grasp. Common-sense told Aaron that, even if Wightman did not stop him shooting the Texan, the long-haired scout would do it. There was another, almost equally effective way in which he might help his younger brother.
Driven backwards by Dusty’s fists, Stap literally did not know from where the next blow was coming. Instead of trying to anticipate the next point to be attacked and guarding it, his hands fled to the last place on which his assailant’s hard fists had impacted. Caught by an almost classic left jab to the jaw, he nearly ran rearwards to escape further punishment. To his horror, he saw that the enormous Texan was following with the clear intention of continuing the punishment.
In his eagerness to catch up with the reeling guerilla, Dusty did not notice that he was passing in front of the other men. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw Aaron lunging in his direction and felt the man’s hands close on his right wrist. Bringing himself to a halt with his weight on the right foot, Dusty did not try to jerk his arm free. Instead he threw his left leg to the rear, pivoting himself around. Twisting closer instead of attempting to draw away, Dusty hurled his left arm rearwards and up. It passed over Aaron’s clutching hands, propelling the clenched fist at his face. Once again Dusty reverted to
karate
. Knotting his fist so that the second finger’s protruding root made the impact, he crashed it against the
philtrum
collection of nerves immediately under Aaron’s nose. Sharp agony stabbed through Aaron’s head, numbing his brain. Opening his hands, he stumbled away with them flying to his damaged face.
The respite had given Stap a chance to recover. Changing direction, he leapt from behind the Texan. Throwing his right arm across the back of Dusty’s neck, he bent the other for a headlock and planned to drive the left fist into his face. Up flashed Dusty’s left arm to Stap’s left shoulder and his right hand closed just as quickly on the upper inside of the guerilla’s left thigh. Throwing his right leg in front of Stap’s, before the young hard-case could carry out his second intention, Dusty ducked his left shoulder in the direction of the ground.
So suddenly did Dusty respond, that Stap was taken by surprise and pulled off balance. Forcing the guerilla’s head down with his left arm, Dusty pushed strongly at the trapped thigh while subsiding. Stap’s feet left the ground, rose into the air and described a beautiful semi-circle. Coming to earth with a solid thud, he felt himself released and bounced away from his would-be victim,
Once again Aaron tried to come to his brother’s rescue. Darting forward with his hands still trying to lesson the pain from his nose, he halted between Dusty’s spread-apart feet and raised his right leg. Although Aaron hoped to stamp his heel into Dusty’s groin, the attempt came to nothing. Hooking his right foot behind Aaron’s left ankle, Dusty drove the sole of his left boot against the other’s near knee-cap. By jerking forward at the ankle and pressing to the rear on the knee, Dusty sent the burly guerilla toppling away to crash on his back in the dirt.
Before Dusty could rise, Stap had writhed around and plunged on top of him. Kneeling astride the small Texan’s torso, Stap smashed a right which twisted his head sideways. Then the young hard-case closed his hands about Dusty’s throat. Raising Dusty’s shoulders from the ground, Stap tried to crash his head against it. By bracing his neck muscles, Dusty lessened the impact; but he knew that he must escape.
Then he remembered seeing the length of branch discarded by Charley and recalled something taught to him by Tommy Okasi, his uncle’s Oriental servant. Even as his upper torso was raised again, his right hand scrabbled for and found the stick. Down drove Dusty’s head, but again his braced muscles and Stap’s weakened condition saved him from incapacitation. Gripping the stick at its centre, Dusty lashed his right arm forward and up. The protruding butt end of the stick below the heel of his hand crashed on to the bridge of Stap’s nose. Instantly the guerilla’s brain seemed to burst into a searing white-hot fire. Screaming, he took his hands from Dusty’s neck and involuntarily began to rear upwards.
Feeling the weight leave his body, Dusty braced his feet and head on the ground. Bowing the rest of his frame upwards, he caught Stap between the thighs and pitched the guerilla head-first from him.
There was need for haste in escaping from beneath Stap. Already Aaron was starting to rise and Job was moving in. Aaron hurled himself through the air without regaining his feet. Bending his knees as he sank into a lying position, Dusty caught the man’s chest on the soles of his boots. Again the improvised
yawara
stick proved its worth. Devised by Okinawans, forbidden by their rulers to carry arms, the techniques of
yawara
fighting served the small Texan equally well. As Aaron’s weight pressed down on him, Dusty propelled the rounded butt-end as he had at Stap—except that this time he sent the hard hemisphere into his assailant’s temple. Aaron’s body went limp. Exerting all his strength, Dusty straightened his legs and flung the unconscious hard-case from him. Using the same impulsion, Dusty threw himself upright.
A low, savage snarl from his right warned him of danger. Glancing around, he found that Job was rushing towards him. Already the man’s right fist flung at Dusty’s head. Gasping in breaths of air, Dusty dropped into a kneeling position that carried him beneath the blow. With his left leg thrust almost straight to the rear and right knee bent, he looked like a sprinter preparing to start a race. Using much the same methods as a sprinter leaving the blocks, he thrust himself forward. Shooting out before him, the ‘point’ of the stick—that part emerging ahead of his thumb and forefinger—ploughed agonisingly into Job’s groin.
Giving a strangled scream of torment, Job fell with his body draped on Dusty’s head. Surging erect, the small Texan toppled the man over him. Clutching at the stricken area, and barely conscious, Job crashed to the ground behind Dusty.
Turning, Dusty confronted Wightman, the scout and Charley. In a defensive crouch, he held the
yawara
stick ready for further use. Hissing furiously, Charley lunged forward. Thrusting out his left foot, the scout tripped the young man. Even as Charley sprawled face down, knife flying from his fingers, the scout drew right-handed and threw down on the small Texan.
‘Drop it, Reb!’ the plainsman ordered, with a slight jerk of his head in the direction of the cabin. ‘Do it fast!’
Flickering a look that way, Dusty saw a medium-sized, lean guerilla with a revolver in his right hand running from the building. Even before he obeyed the scout’s command, Dusty noticed that the other had swung the Navy Colt in Wightman’s direction. Opening his hand, Dusty let the stick which had served him so well drop to his feet. He wondered what the scout intended to do next.
‘Tell your man not to shoot, Deacon,’ the long-haired westerner said, pointing his gun by what seemed an accident straight at Wightman’s belly.
‘Don’t shoot, Brother Herbert! Wightman yelped, knowing that the muzzle was turned his way by design not chance. ‘Do you help that Secessionist scum, stranger?’
‘He’s still my prisoner,’ the scout pointed out, then indicated a somewhat dazed Charley who had reached hands and knees but not stood up. ‘And I figured you didn’t want no more of your boys abusing.’
Looking around him, to where the three brothers lay either rolling in agony or still and unconscious, Wightman felt that the scout had a point. While wild and without moral scruples, Charley was more dangerous from behind than in front. If that small—or was he small—Texan could lay low the three Maxim boys, he would make easy meat of the hot-headed Charley. Wightman had no wish for his small band to be further weakened, although that might not matter if— ‘Hey!’ the scout exclaimed suddenly. ‘Look where I’m pointing my gun. It’s sure lucky that feller you’ve got on guard didn’t shoot me or this ole Navy’d right certain go off.’
And icy feeling rose in Wightman’s stomach at the words. Up to that moment he had been hoping that Gustav, up on the slope, would see what was happening and shoot the scout down. Now, with sickening clarity, Wightman realised that such an action would have also caused his own death. The scout’s negligently-held revolver had its hammer drawn back at full cock under his thumb, while his forefinger depressed the trigger. If he had been hit by a bullet, those grips would have relaxed. Before the barrel could be deflected far enough, a fast-driven, conical-shaped piece of lead would have ripped into Wightman’s belly. He had seen too many men die gut-shot to relish the prospect of it happening to him.