Here by the Bloods (16 page)

I load what munitions I can carry and turn back from the fallen nag. A thunderstorm of gunfire bellows from the top of the ridge, but it is not meant for me or Delmer. The bandits have regained the upper hand, flushing the threadbare Pinkerton squad from the boulders and sending them into retreat. Bix sprints down the canyon slope in our direction followed closely by Casey, firing his rifle one-handed at the advancing gang who venture from the safety of the ridge, smelling blood.

Last to abandon the boulders are the Frey brothers. The heavyset middle boy charges from the rocks, only to catch a scatter gun in the ribs and lose his footing. He falls hard to the ground. The brazen youngest wails in horror at the sight of his injured kin and bursts forth to help him, stepping headfirst into a swarm of flying lead. The boy's skull snaps violently sideways, his eyes rolling white in their sockets. He drops dead where he stands.

I let my armload fall to the ground and draw both pistols. Darting out into the open, I move left, unloading both cylinders into the pack of marauding outlaws. I disrupt their offensive long enough for Jacob, the oldest of the siblings, to spring from his purchase and scoop up his wounded brother, who dazedly finds the strength to keep his legs churning. The youngest boy is too far gone to consider.

Delmer skids to his knees behind me and starts to assemble the crank barrel into its swivel. Bix barely slows as he passes me, grabbing Delmer by the collar and yanking him up.

“Run, Delmer! Run!” Casey hustles past me after Bix and I snatch up a Winchester rifle from the dirt—it looks like the one the captain carried. Thick, acrid smoke plumes from the barrel as I work the lever, pumping rounds into the loose cluster of outlaws. They know better than to hug too close. I aim for the middle and keep firing until the group splinters and I am looking at their backs.

The brothers stumble down the slope, the heavier one wheezing, his skin white as a bedsheet. He is losing blood. I duck my shoulder beneath his arm and lift the left side. The three of us scamper along the trail, Bix and the others bobbing ahead. Voices rise behind us as the shooting trickles to sporadic, ineffectual spurts. We are out of range. The shattering silence of the aftermath provides the outlaws an opportunity to regroup and affords our meager numbers the chance to do the same. The peace will be short-lived, I fear.

As we trudge forth, the steep, barren cliffs of the canyon give way to the pine-covered hills that roll back southward toward Heavendale. We find Bix and Casey hunkered down behind a knotted trunk just inside the canopy.

Delmer collapses on all fours behind them, sucking in huge gulps of air. “I'm deaf! I'm deaf!” he cries.

Jacob speaks softly to his brother in German, but the brother's steps have slackened and we are mostly dragging him when he slides off my shoulder into the soft pine needles next to Delmer.

“Hans. Hans!” Jacob falls to his knees, cradling his brother's head in his hands. Hans gurgles a weak bubbling breath and then his eyes gloss over. His breathing stops. Casey aims his rifle back into the canyon, scanning the far slope for movement, but the bandits have withdrawn from view.

“I'm sorry, Jacob,” Bix says, removing his hat. I remove mine as well. “We'll get your brother's body out of that canyon too. Just can't do it now.” Jacob says something else to his brother, his voice cracking. Tears cascade down his cheeks, forging a clean path through the dust and smoky grime from the firefight.

Bix pulls at my shoulder and we drift toward the tree, letting the brothers have their private moment. We replace our hats and crouch down behind the trunk, where Casey keeps sentry over the mouth of the canyon.

“I did not see him. Did you?” I ask.

“Who?” Bix says.

“LaForge.”

“Can't say I would know him by sight.”

“Stands about six foot, maybe an inch over. Black hair. Fancies the color blue.”

“I saw no such cocksucker,” Casey says.

“Me neither,” says Bix. “Not among them what came at us.”

“Then he must be over the ridge, with the horses,” I say.

“And the loot,” Bix says. “I reckon the Snowman cares more for protectin' them saddlebags than he do his own men.”

“What about
our
horses?” Casey says. “Them sumbitches likely to steal 'em, eat 'em, or both.”

“You just keep that rifle pointed up at them boulders,” Bix says. “Anyone crosses the ridge toward our stock, you cut 'em where they stand. And if they come this way, you do the same.”

“Aye, Lieutenant.”

“They come this way, we are in trouble,” Bix says, confiding in me as he turns.

“They will come,” I say. “Too few of us left not to finish off.”

A hand tugs at my trouser leg. Delmer sits there on his haunches, looking up at me, scared. “Say something, Two-Trees. I hear a ringin'.” He shouts his words, unable to regulate his speech.

I pull him to his feet to hush him up. “You will get your hearin' back, Delmer. You are gun-deaf, is all.”

His eyes light up as I speak. “I hear you!” he says. “I think it's coming back. Say something else.”

The canopy of trees shifts in the swaying breeze. Sunlight streams through the branches and dances across the fallen pine needles where Jacob Frey closes his brother's eyes with a final brush of his palm.

“Are we out of danger, Two-Trees?” Delmer asks. Something in the wind, a wisp of sound, sends the hair on the back of my neck to full attention. A patch of sunlight blooms over the chest of the fallen brother, only to be invaded by the shadow of a human figure. I turn and find myself staring into the muzzle of my old Spencer rifle.

“No,” I say.

Jacob sees the shadow too and, drawing his pistol, spins toward the trees behind us. A flash of brown sizzles the air. Jacob gasps and slumps forward, run clean through by the Dineh arrow. Three brothers dead in five minutes.

“Easy,” I say. Bix and Casey pivot. Ahiga stands in full view, unguarded by trees. For protection he has with him two dozen armed Dineh, their faces painted for death—a war party. They filter through the trees, revealing their numbers slowly. I raise my arms in surrender. Bix and Casey do the same and by then Delmer has figured it out as well.

Ahiga keeps the Spencer trained at my head. The young scout who spotted us earlier now kisses the string of his bow tight against his lips, his arrow itching to fling forth into Casey's belly.

Letting the Colts drop to the dirt, I step away from the holster, careful to keep my movements slow and deliberate. The thud of guns hitting the ground follows in short order. Only when we are completely removed from our weapons does Ahiga step to the side, letting the chief clomp forward on his pony.

The old silver-hair looks us over and then sighs, disappointed. The irritation he feels at our not possessing whatever it is he is searching for will hardly be salved by our imminent slaughter. He raises a hand, instructing his warriors to take aim. A chorus of bowstrings groans to within its final ounce of tension. It is cold comfort that when that hand falls again I will be one of the lucky ones to take it from a rifle.

“Wait,” I say. And that is when I step forward to talk to the chief.

 

 

The thing about an old silver-hair, his face will tell you less what he is thinking than the snakiest riverboat gambler who ever bluffed his way down the Mississippi. I do not know how long I stand there, watching his inscrutable eyes mull over my offer, only that the burning in my triceps means my arms have been up long enough. I put them down.

Ahiga, the third man in our conference, spits and looks to his father, unconvinced. But the chief nods his head and turns back to his pony. Mounting with the agility of a rider half his age, he throws up a palm, the exact gesture as before, only now it inexplicably carries a different meaning. All at once, the warriors lower their weapons and retrace their paths back into the forest, leaving only Ahiga. He shakes his head and pulls his face close to mine. “If you are wrong about this, brother, I will slit you open and feed your insides to the wolves while you watch.” With that he turns and sprints off after the rest of his party.

“What the hell did you just do?” Bix says with astonishment as I return to him and the others at the fallen tree.

“Gave him what he wanted,” I say.

We drag Jacob and his brother up against the fallen tree and cover them best we can with branches, no defense against the coyotes, true, but maybe it buys us an hour or two before the vultures get wind of a tasty dinner.

The bodies of our dead, some just fragments of flesh and bone, are the furthest things from my mind, but they will have to be dealt with eventually. Not now, though. There is no time. I pick up the heavy cylinder from the crank gun and turn toward Delmer. He sits on the tree trunk, rolling a cigarette between thin, trembling fingers. “Delmer, what exactly can you do with this?”

Delmer looks at me and strikes a match. The paper flares orangey-red as he sucks the smoke into his lungs and expels it into the air. A wave of calmness befalls him, underpinned by a confidence I have thus far not seen in the diminutive Pinkerton. “Shit, son. I'm not on this team for my muscle.”

“What's the best range for it?”

“The Bulldog Repeater is most effective between ten and fifty yards,” Delmer says.

“Where you thinking?” Bix says.

“That boulder there,” I say, pointing to an outcropping of rock inside the canyon about a hundred yards from where we stand.

“That'll work,” Delmer says.

“Best get that thing primed and ready, Delmer,” Bix says.

“Oh, she'll be ready.”

“How much time you think we'll have, once it starts?” Bix asks.

“I reckon thirty seconds or so,” I say.

Bix clucks his tongue and lets out a sigh. He does not care for the odds. I cannot say I blame him. “Sure would be nice to have a full minute.”

“That it would.”

“Forget the tripod, Delmer.” Bix says. “You can put her on the short sticks. One less thing to carry.”

“You read my mind, Lieutenant.”

Bix looks over at Casey. “How 'bout it, Case? You ready to run?” Casey dumps a carton of bullets into his coat pocket and slides the bayonet over the tip of his rifle. He snaps it into place.

“Good a day as any to die.”

“Well,” Bix says, checking the rounds in his pistol and rifle before slinging a heavy case of Gatling magazines over his shoulder. “Better to get shot than scalped.” I suspect the lieutenant is right about that, but death spends the same no matter how you sell it. “We go on your say-so, Harlan.”

Up above, the cold, lifeless sun retreats behind the wintering sky, taking my shadow with it. A thick, gray blanket covers both earth and heavens. The vanishing division between the two beckons by way of a screeching condor's call. I close my eyes and go to work with my ears.

The woman stands before me in some unfamiliar doorway, holding our dark child to her breast. I push the thought of her out of my head. If I survive the next hour, I suspect I will see her one more time at most, and then never again. Such is the clarity that comes in the stillness before the slaughter.

A hollow, rasping wind holds steady. The only other sound is the pounding blood in my ears. I focus my hearing on the ridge, demanding all of my senses to detect the slightest corruption of the silence. And then it comes, whirling at first, concealing its source as the sound waves ricochet about the canyon walls. But then I realize that the noise—a haunting, high-pitched yelp—emanates not from one direction, but from two. The Navajo have split, surrounding their quarry and approaching from opposite corners of the range. The faint
pop-pop-pop
of a rifle echoes from over the ridge, followed by the distant boom of a twelve-gauge. Indeterminate men's voices fill the spaces between gunfire, all of it against the swelling, repetitive din of the Dineh war cry. Bix utters an opinion shared by all of us, and by anyone who has ever heard that terrifying sound. “Good God, it's awful.”

The crescendo of noise on the backside of the ridge, out of our view, builds to a fever pitch. The tide of thunderous gunfire finally drowns out the warriors' bloodthirsty howls, only to succumb to the piercing screams of grown men as they endure the horrors of their own flesh being ripped from their bodies.

“Hold,” I say. “Not yet.” I squint toward the ridge, awaiting the final visual confirmation before signaling the start of our maneuver. All at once, like a rising phoenix, the mass of white gun smoke fills the air, drifting upward, lipping over the ridge toward the sky.

“Now!” I say.

 

 

We spring from behind the tree and, burdened with the weight of all the crank gun munitions we can carry, sprint for the outcropping of boulder. The cacophony explodes as we enter the canyon proper, lending cover for the jangling of our bullets and bones that accompanies our mad dash for position. I see only the rock. It bounces larger in my vision as I run until I am able to dive for the base of it. A body lands on top of me, iron magazines digging into my back.

We huddle in an uncertain mass for a moment and then I hear Bix's voice through the noise. “Delmer?”

“Here.”

“Me too,” Casey adds. I squirm free and meet Bix's eye. All present and accounted for. Clutching the Winchester, I peer around the edge of the rock. Smoke consumes the top of the ridge, but the fighters—neither white man nor native—have yet to crest the summit. Delmer, now sure of his range, makes his final adjustments to the Gatling, turning the sight screws with precise clicks.

“We ought to spread out,” Bix says. “Casey, you and Harlan make for them rocks yonder.”

“Who's gonna load the crank?” I say.

“Ain't my first time as gunner's mate. I need you two laying down cover.”

“We'll do more than lay it down,” Casey says, trundling past me and scampering behind a tall obelisk of sandstone a few yards ahead.

“We are blind here, Harlan. We need your eyes as well. They got numbers on us, no sense in letting them have time to adjust.”

“All right, then. I will call out when to throw it. Oh, and Delmer,” I say, almost as an afterthought, “if you cut down any of them Dineh, even by accident, them what is left will kill us for sure . . . . Okay, then.”

I am about to roll back to the row of stones behind us when Delmer stops me. “You got a smoke rolled up? I'm all out.”

“The smoke will give you away.”

“I won't light it. I shoot better with something to chaw on.”

“It's true. He does,” Bix says. I find my last cigarette and hand it to Delmer.

“Much obliged,” Delmer nods. I squeeze his shoulder.

Bix whacks my arm. “Go on now. See you on the other side.”

 

 

I crawl back quick across the dirt and tuck up behind a tawny slab of siltstone. Casey crouches with his rifle to my right. Bix and Delmer are between us and the Snowmen, poised to hoist the crank. We are spaced enough apart so that a bad miss from the charging outlaws will not take out one of us by mistake. In a perfect world, we should be at different elevations, further confusing the enemy, but this formation will have to do. We are out of time.

Pistol shots ring out from the top of the ridge. The raw clarity of the tone—free of the distorted echo found in distant gunfire—tells me the bandits have crested the nearest ridge. It also means they have depleted their rifles and switched to sidearms.

The wall of indistinct shouting soon takes on real, decipherable words. Men bark orders, curse the heavens, and cry in pain as the retreating, backward steps of boots and trousers descend from the smoke cloud. I close my eyes, bring the rifle to my lips, and kiss it. I open my eye to a handful of escaping white men—the most feared outlaws in the West, so accustomed to being the hunters—wide-eyed with fear and firing haphazardly over their shoulders into a fog of gun smoke as the legs and moccasins of Dineh warriors churn toward them.

The bulk of the Snowman's gang tries to hold its ground, engaging the enemy in the type of bloody, close-quarter battle that claimed most lives in the War. Guns give way to knives, then fists, then, in close, teeth. This is a brawl on Dineh terms—a swarming, tenacious tide of blades and stones and bullets that neuters the superior firepower of the outlaws.

Ahiga leads the charge, thrashing his ax with his right arm, my Spencer thundering from his left—a big noisemaker, mostly. The ax does the bulk of the damage.

We keep ourselves hidden as the stream of Snowmen rolls down the hill, straight into the maw of the awaiting crank. I watch the bandits and Bix watches me, both his arms resting beneath the cylinder, ready to hurl it onto the rock. Delmer, with the calmness of a man unafraid, cradles the trigger end. The cigarette, steady as stone, dangles from his lips.

The bandits draw closer, thirty yards, twenty, ten. I pick out a straggler, a gray-bearded bastard in a flat, black Stetson, and bringing the gun up, set my sights square on his chest. I squeeze the trigger, my eyes already leaping to the next target. I see, from the corner of my vision, the gray-beard lurch backward, stricken.

In a fluid, synchronized motion, Delmer and Bix swing the crank gun over the edge of the rock. The stubby legs of the bipod tap once against the stone, then scrape slightly as Delmer makes the smallest correction. Bix drops down immediately, readying the next magazine while Delmer, cool as morning frost, shows all in attendance how he earns his keep for the Pinkertons.

The nearest bandit lets out an audible gasp, a wide-eyed inhalation of understanding as the killing machine screeches to life. A sound like no other—a terrifying cross between a sputtering steam engine and a child's whirling pinwheel—overwhelms the canyon as a seamless rope of lead shreds one outlaw after another.

Casey rises from his cover, working the lever action of his rifle with unprecedented efficiency. I lay into the Winchester, the two of us picking off those that break from the pack with surgical, unyielding precision.

Snowmen fall so quickly that their riddled corpses pile up in a grisly heap in front of the boulders. Within seconds the crank gun cuts their numbers, and bodies, in half. The stunning display of power freezes, for a brief moment, the Dineh warriors, even those in the throes of brutal, hand-to-face combat. And even their enemy—some mere seconds from death—take pause in the desperate struggle for survival.

Thick knots of smoke belch from the Gatling's barrels as steam ripples upward from the immense heat. The first magazine clicks empty. Delmer rips it from its socket—Bix is right there with the replacement, already chambered before Delmer can shift the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. But in that brief buckle of time, the remaining Snowmen scatter like roaches. Fresh pistols appear from boots and inner pockets and then, sensing the tiniest window of opportunity, the outlaws commence a swarming assault on the Gatling's position.

Unfazed, Delmer pivots the gun a few degrees and with a short, lethal burst, cuts down the nearest attacker. He swivels the gun left and fires another burst. I expose myself from the outcropping of rock and, with new urgency, defend the left flank despite the Winchester's tendency to pull low and to the right—an annoying irritation that I overcome, finding the rifle's sweet spot.

Savage torrents of lead pulse from the crank, dropping the bandits where they stand and, in a staggering testament to Delmer's artistry, leaving the Dineh unscathed.

To the besieged outlaws, the Navajo warriors are a secondary threat. Neutralizing the relentless crank gun becomes their all-consuming focus. Their survival depends upon it. The desperados instinctively attack in a flurry of movement, never staying idle for a second out of fear for the dreaded Gatling finding a bead on any fragment of their flesh.

How many of the bandits remain, I cannot say for certain—maybe half a dozen. Ten or twelve braves are left to chastise them from the rear while the four of us unload from the front.

The arena of battle, once an entire canyon, is now decidedly more intimate. Bix, compelled to intervene, draws his revolver and empties six rounds into a pair of encroaching invaders, but a third man reaches the bunker and hurls himself over the boulder. Bix springs upward with his knife, spearing the attacker beneath the rib cage and falling backward to the dirt. Their momentum carries them back away from the Gatling, leaving Delmer to fend for himself on the reloads, which he does, albeit a whisker slower. And a whisker is all the Snowmen need.

As Bix and his assailant wrestle for the knife, a figure rises from the ground, bloodied but not dead. I recognize his shape—the one called Finn, his silhouette burned into my brain from that night at the campsite. He wears a long, chestnut overcoat, from which he unsheathes a short-barreled four-ten. Delmer swings the crank toward him, bullets ripping the air, but the man dives the other way, causing Delmer to jerk the handle. The abrupt motion throws off his aim. Two Dineh warriors, crouching beyond where Finn had stood, crumble, their chests blown apart.

The four-ten booms over the top of the boulder. Delmer winces, grazed by a passing fleck of buckshot, but then he steadies himself behind the trigger. I run to help him, firing off a round into the belly of an advancing outlaw—a young one, no more than twenty years. Grabbing the closest magazine, I reach up and touch the bolt of the crank gun. The searing heat blisters my fingers as I slam the cartridge into place.

“Mother-scratching bastard!” Delmer barks, snapping the bolt closed with authority.

“Watch left!” I shout. Delmer pivots the gun and snaps off a steady burst into the chest and skull of a bearded bandit. I come up blasting. Ahiga swings his ax into a man's back and yanks it out again, just in time to parry the blow of a second, stronger adversary. Finn fires the shotgun point-blank into the face of a howling Dineh. The warrior's skull vanishes.

I hear Bix and the other man scuffling behind me. Turning, I watch as Bix buries his blade into the man's chest. Bix collapses on top of him, utterly spent.

The steady crack of Casey's rifle turns to an ominous click. Undeterred, he leaps out from behind his rock and charges forth, his bayonet leading the way. A grizzled, hatchet-wielding outlaw is there to greet him. Casey slides left as the hatchet slices nothing but air. He spins back, clocking the butt of the rifle against the outlaw's spine. The man grunts, winded. He tries to straighten up, but instead finds the red tip of Casey's bayonet protruding through his vest. He sighs again and then slumps. Casey shucks him off his blade and turns back toward me, a thin, satisfied, smile spreading across his face. Then a quick flash of light blooms from up the hill, followed by a sudden, crisp
pop
. Casey's head snaps to the side, a spray of pink mist erupting from his skull. He falls dead.