Up north where the last exchange had taken place, he found Arch Clayton with an injured left arm. “Some damned good shots out there,” Arch said, as one of the townsmen worked at bandaging the injury. At the look of concern on Claude’s face the younger man made a grim little smile. “Just a scratch, but close enough to make me dive like a prairie dog, Sheriff.” Clayton jutted with his chin. “They’re still out there, but I figure Mister Bríon’s had a bellyful for right now. He’s probably lost a man or two himself, and he’ll have some grumbling to put up with if he led his men down here believing that decoy posse was you out there, and this town was helpless.”
Claude flung down his unlit cigarette and stood with Arch Clayton in the blackness of a shed’s heavy shadow, gazing out where the stage road ran, pale and crooked, up through the desert until it blended with the far-off night.
“I could use a drink,” he said casually.
“Or that hundred men you spoke of a while back,” rejoined Clayton. “Well, it’s still up to Mister Bríon.”
Claude nodded, thinking he’d cheerfully sacrifice that drink he needed, and all the drinks he’d take for the next year or two, just to be able to hear what Bríon was planning next. “Keep a close watch,” he said, and went ambling back down the alleyway toward his own eastern side of Springville.
Some of his defenders were shifting positions, seeking more protected places to take up their positions. One of them walked back to show Claude a shattered carbine stock. All the townsman had to say about his close call was that someone—probably those damned Mexicans out there—owed him eleven dollars for that gun because he’d only bought it the year before to go buck hunting with, and hadn’t used it since.
Claude studied the sky to guess the time. It was past midnight. He made another smoke, and stepped around inside an old shed that smelled overpoweringly of goats to light it, deeply inhaled, exhaled, and slouched in the doorway, running Bríon’s alternatives over in his mind. He tried to imagine what an experienced Mexican brigand chieftain would do under these circumstances, and failed totally. He wondered what he himself might do, and decided he’d make one furious mounted charge from the east, attempt to break through over there, then, while most of his men were holding, he’d break into Barney’s store and try getting that safe open.
It turned out to be a good guess, but as he’d frankly admitted to himself, because he wasn’t a seasoned guerilla chieftain, he overlooked one thing, and it happened while he was standing there like all the other defenders, waiting for the next blow to strike.
Gunfire erupted abruptly to the west, but Bríon’s men had apparently belly crawled because they were uncomfortably close when they lashed out with bluish lances of carbine flame, when the order came to open up. One of Claude’s men who might have thought he’d heard something out there and had stepped clear for a better audition, dropped his carbine and went over backward with a slug straight through the heart from front to back.
Claude saw that, and ran ahead to drag the man to safety. Another man got there first, scooped up the man, and sprinted away with him. Claude fired from low across his body as he also ran along, covering this man’s escape. They got inside an old barn and found the man they’d risked their lives for was dead.
Then came the wild roar of massed gunfire from the east, and in a flash Claude understood that one thing he’d overlooked. Bríon’s men to the west were only a diversion. The sledgehammer blow fell furiously from the east.
Over there the fighting became savage and general. Men’s shouts in two languages were angrily punctuated by rolls of gunfire. Claude sprang up, shouted for the man in the old barn with him to come along, and ran hard through back lots and between buildings out into the main roadway. He didn’t even pause to make sure it was safe to cross over, but raced ahead with that townsman at his heels. They got between two buildings when lead began striking all around them. From here, because they dared not continue, Claude yelled for his companion to turn back and head up the roadway toward the nearest vacant plot of ground. They were both out of breath by the time they got up there where a man might duck at least and maneuver a little to avoid being hit.
Arch Clayton again sent men southward and westward. They came rushing down just as Claude and his companion got out back. The Mexicans and their gringo hirelings were coming on steadily, but they weren’t mounted as Claude half expected.
He knelt, setting an example for his companion as well as for Clayton’s men, fired at muzzle blasts, levered up, and fired again. All along the stubborn line of defenders other men were doing the same. It was a deafening, wild battle that lasted a full five minutes, and at its apex the line of defenders reeled from the close-firing, but Claude swore at them, making them heed his enraged shouts to stand firm.
Gradually, because something had to give, the Mexicans began falling back. Flesh and bone could not stand up to that kind of punishment. Gradually too, the attackers slackened their firing. The men on the east side of town had won out. They had repulsed Bríon’s furious onslaught.
Chapter Seventeen
Newton Douglas came up, and so did Arch Clayton. Apparently Clayton had come down the east side of town personally to aid in the fighting, for the moment he saw Claude’s anxious expression, he said, “Don’t fret any, Sheriff. The others I had down here went back to their northerly positions. I’m the only one down here now, out of my crew.”
The three of them had a smoke, went back to the rear wall of Whitsun’s store, sank down in total blackness, and had very little to say to one another for a while. Over where the defenders still hunkered, waiting for the next assault—which didn’t come—men lit up and smoked, too.
“He pulled way back this time,” said Claude. “Y’know, I think if the damned fool had used horses in that charge he’d have ridden right over the top of us.”
“Better to lose a few men and maybe get knocked back once or twice,” observed Newt shrewdly, “than get half his horses killed and have to walk back to Mexico.”
Claude said, “Arch, how’s the wound?”
“All right, Sheriff. As I told you, it’s only a little gouge.” Arch was sitting there, listening. Around them the town was no longer silent, and yet the sounds were small, almost furtive. Men were looking after their injured companions and dragging their defunct friends back out of the way. Here and there, too, others were going carefully around among the defenders with pitchers of coffee and tin platters of food. Where all this came from was anyone’s guess, but without any question of a doubt the women were inside in the dark working, too.
Newt departed first. He said he was uneasy about his line to the south. Arch and Claude sat a while longer. The sheriff said when the US government heard of this attack upon an Arizona town by Mexican guerillas from south of the border there would be hell to pay.
Arch, who didn’t know the countryside very well, asked where the nearest cavalry detachment was posted. Claude just shook his head over that, and said, “Too far, Arch. Much too far … even if we could get word to ’em … which we can’t.”
A man passed by handing out tin mugs of coffee. Claude sipped his, found the stuff bitter as gall and as hot as the clinkers from hell, and right away began feeling better. He told Arch that if Bríon wasn’t pulling out now, then he was hatching some newfangled meanness. Arch murmured agreement and thought quietly for a while, until he’d finished his coffee, then spoke again, his voice soft, his words carefully selected.
“Claude, Bríon’s going to come back around to the east. Maybe next time he’ll belly crawl right up among us like the redskins’d do. Or rush us on horseback. But whatever he does, he’s got to keep attacking over by the general store because that’s his objective, and everything else he does around town is simply a waste of men and time.”
Claude agreed. “All right. That isn’t what’s on your mind. Speak up.”
“Take half the men from the n
orth and half from the south. Have your men to the west spread out thinner than they already are to make up for stripping the other positions, then let’s not crouch back here like a bunch of scairt Navajos. Let’s creep out onto the desert and push our line maybe four, five hundred feet so the next time he comes, we can bowl him over when he doesn’t expect even to hear us. Claude, that belly crawling in the desert is about as silent as a man can get. We’ve got to surprise him at close range. Just once, that’s all it’d take. Just one steady volley from maybe twenty guns, and we could cut Bríon down to size, and then some.”
Sheriff Rainey said nothing one way or another. His responsibility was less Bríon and more Springville. If something like this failed, bold as it was, folks would afterward swear up and down it was because Claude Rainey thought he was a big battlefield general instead of just a cow-county sheriff whose obligation was to defend his bailiwick, not try sneaking up on a bunch of murderous gunfighters and Mexican vaqueros. He stubbed out his smoke, drained the dregs from his tin coffee cup, and said, “Go get some of your men, Arch, and tell the other ones to watch twice as hard after this.”
When Clayton had departed, Claude went southward in search of Newt Douglas. He found the rawboned old cowman standing in a doorway, talking to a couple of his men. As soon as Claude showed up, Newt sent his companions back to their positions over near the livery barn, and came over to meet him.
Claude explained what he was going to do. Newt gazed at him. “You know what’ll happen if you fail, if you get massacred out there, Claude?”
Rainey knew. He also knew something else. “Newt, Bríon’s not just sitting out there licking his wounds. He’s going to try again … and again … until he either runs out of men or until a bullet finds him.”
“I know that, Claude.”
“Well, how long do you reckon it’ll take before someone with Bríon suggests a fire attack?”
That comment and question held Douglas silent for a time. He, who owned more real estate in Springville than anyone else, had most to lose if racing horsemen hurtled past heaving firebrands into the town.
Newt said, “How many men do you need, Claude?”
“I need ten dozen, but I’ll settle for six or seven.”
“I’ll send ’em up to you,” said the cowman, and gravely walked down where his defenders were crouching behind improvised barricades, at the side of bullet-marked mud jacales, or were to the west over near the livery barn where it was dark as pitch.
Sheriff Rainey returned northward by walking up the east side of town. When he got back where he’d drunk that coffee, there was a cowboy from over on the west side of town wondering where the sheriff was. Claude sent him back after telling him what they were going to try over on the east side. The cowboy, like Newt and Arch, had glum misgivings. He said he’d pass the word over on the west side of town, then walked away.
A raking blast of gunfire started up along the northeastward desert. It seemed as though Bríon’s men were edging back into range but in such a manner as to be able to wheel either right or left, wherever the return fire was weakest.
That worried Claude justifiably because Clayton’s men were filtering down to reinforce the defenders on the east. Newt Douglas’ men also came up to add their numbers. For a moment Claude considered sending Clayton’s men back to him. But an aggressive burst of gunfire from up north, sustained evidently because Arch and his men were firing faster and oftener than before, made it appear the men up there hadn’t been reduced at all.
Bríon’s gunfire then swung more to the southeast, raking along toward Claude’s line. He yelled for his men to hold off, to fire weakly, to draw the attackers to them if they could. He then walked down among them to explain, and one of those little lulls in the fighting ensued. He used every second of that respite to urge his men out away from their comfortable shelters onto the desert. The firing started again, and now it sounded as though Bríon, perhaps not entirely fooled by the spotty response from behind Barney Whitsun’s store, but at least hopeful, was coming down the desert from along the northeasterly reaches. He was coming slowly and carefully, which made Claude think he must have had casualties in that other, wilder attack.
The desert itself had been fairly well brushed off around Springville. Here and there a tree had been spared the brush hook of nearby citizens, but that was all. Chemise brush, cacti, paloverdes, just about everything else had been cut down and cleared away. The reason wasn’t because of any fire hazard; it was more physical—there wasn’t a variety of desert growth that did not possess thorns in one form or another. Anxious mothers whose children ordinarily played on the desert had insisted the place be made safe, so it had been brushed off.
This helped Claude and his belly-crawling companions one way, no thorns, but in another way it was no help at all—there was no cover.
Fortunately, that thickening little moon was dropping down again, so the desert, like the town, was crisscrossed with variegated shadows, some long and thin, others wide and thick, all dark and darker.
The gunfire slackened slightly, but it also began drifting closer, too, as though Bríon’s men, slipping cautiously along through the yonder night, were nearing the back of Whitsun’s store again.
So far Claude’s men hadn’t given themselves away by firing, but some of Newt Douglas’ men who had spread out somewhat up along the unprotected west wall of town were occasionally popping away at a muzzle blast. These bullets sang overhead, and that, more than Claude’s gestures to keep flat as they crawled, seemed to inspire his companions to obey.
A little ruffle of gunfire broke out up north again, and that stopped Claude in his tracks. He was hoping against hope this didn’t signify Bríon was turning back to hit the north end of town. Evidently it didn’t signify any such thing, for as abruptly as that angry exchange began, it ended.
The only firing now was over the heads and backs of Claude Rainey’s sweating, tense, crawling defenders. A Mexican let off a high, blood-chilling Apache cry. Another Mexican let go with the grunting cough of a triumphant Comanche warrior. Several other men out there made the sharp barking sounds of coyotes. It was all done to unnerve the defenders, of course, but it accomplished something else—it gave Claude and his men a fair idea of the approximate location of these attackers who they could not see yet in the pitch black of night.
Claude corrected their course to converge on those sounds and raised upon all fours to motion his companions on after him. They crawled nearly a hundred feet without stopping even to listen before Claude dropped flat; his men dropped flat also, and up ahead where the tawny earth had light and dark shadows, they caught sight of the first gliding ghosts.
Bríon was coming straight in now. That weak gunfire back along the rear walls of town hadn’t been reinforced, or if it had, the reinforcements were holding off, but in either case he had to know, so Bríon swerved inward, completing his advance southward, and started his men stalking straight ahead toward Claude Rainey and his defenders. It was a bad moment; they could see those vaqueros fading in and out of shadows, widely separated, sometimes halting to listen, sometimes hastening ahead where they saw a spindly little tree or a low wallow where they could briefly hide. What troubled Claude was that he and his men must inevitably be spotted even though they blended perfectly into the spotty gloom, and if only one or two of the attackers made that discovery and cried out their warning, he and his men wouldn’t break Bríon at all; the best they’d accomplish would be to cut down one or two renegades.
It seemed that this was how the thing was going to work out, right up to the last time Claude moved, then flattened out gesturing for his men to do likewise, and lay perfectly motionless, watching two bandoleros creep ahead, crouched and ready to fire instantly.
They came like Indians, placing each foot carefully down ahead of the other foot, carbines held low in both hands, dark faces beneath enormous sombreros almost black in t
he night.
Another bandolero glided in from the south. A fourth one came out of the shadowy east. Those four paused to look around at one another, at the emptiness behind them, then they resumed their stalking, while from farther back other shadowy silhouettes converged, also advancing. It was this second line that held the yanquis. It was simple for Claude and his men to mark the distinction. The yanquis wore darker clothing and scorned to crouch over; they advanced with carbines at the ready, jaws outthrust, eyes beneath tugged-low hat brims, ceaselessly raking the splotchy land ahead. Occasionally one of them would fire back at the sporadic shots coming out in their general direction from town, but normally those calmer, colder men were content to leave this blind shooting to the more excitable Mexicans. Claude raised only his head. He looked left and right, saw his men aligned, carbines thrust ahead, barely recognizable where they lay blending with the earth around them, and squared around to gauge the distance and ever so gently raise his carbine, draw it back snug, and sight down its short barrel at the place on a Mexican’s chest where his bandoleers crossed, at the place where wet star shine glittered evilly off brass cartridges.
Claude fired.
All along his line, behind him and on both sides, other men cut loose. It was a deafening, blinding volley, too ragged for professional soldiers, too deadly for the attackers to stand before. Men cried out in agony and fell. Others collapsed, like the man Claude had aimed at, without a sound. Others, miraculously untouched, let out screams of astonishment or fright, turned and ran in all directions. The yanqui gunfighters, though, made no sound. They simply dropped to one knee and lowered their sights. These were the deadliest marksmen among Fernando Bríon’s force.
Claude yelled for his men to fire, to keep firing, which is exactly what he did. There was no time to aim. There was barely time to lever up a fresh charge after each shot before the gunfighters over there began pumping lead into Claude’s men.
Dead Man’s Cañon Page 13
