The Jackals

by William W. Johnstone

  Breen spit in the dark. “Yeah. Hell.”

  “I’ll go,” both men said at the same time.

  “I’m going,” Breen said.

  “Why you?” Keegan asked.

  “Because I spent a hell of a lot of money on that Sharps. I ain’t about to let some Apache take it.”

  They ran back to the cabin, stopping on the porch.

  Keegan drew his revolver and started to pound on the door, but stopped. He let loose with a string of blasphemy.

  “What’s the matter?” Breen asked.

  The old soldier chuckled. “You won’t believe this. But I can’t remember what sequence I told that ink-slinger I’d use to get inside.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “Just bang on the damned door.”

  Then they heard the shot. It echoed in the darkness, and both men stared at the yellow glow of distant fires in the hills.

  “That’s my Sharps,” Breen said.

  “I’ll be a suck-egg mule,” Keegan said, and let loose with a regular belly laugh. “That sorry turd of a Texas Ranger. He made it.”

  “He got a shot off, at least,” Breen said, and slapped Keegan’s shoulder. “And my Sharps don’t miss.”

  The door started to open. Both men turned. A figure slipped out of the shadow, and Keegan banged into him. The man cried out, something hit the floor, and then the man followed. Keegan glanced back at Breen.

  He nodded and waved McCulloch’s Winchester. “I’ll cover McCulloch. And don’t wait for any damned password or such tomfoolery. When we’re banging on that door, let us in damn quick.”

  The bounty hunter scurried toward Sir Theodore Cannon’s wagon while Keegan went inside and pulled the door shut.

  * * *

  “What the hell were you doing?” Sean Keegan looked at Alvin J. Griffin IV sitting on his hindquarters and rubbing his elbow.

  The actor, the blond woman, and the little pipsqueak were standing by the front shutters, each one armed. Keegan had to blink and look closer. Yeah, that was Harry Henderson, lover of carpetbags, standing by the middle window.

  The newspaperman came up, swallowed, and said, “I was letting you in. Where are the others?”

  Keegan was about to answer, when a pistol shot popped outside. It came from the hills. Keegan swore. A rifle shot followed. Then another.

  “They’re shooting,” Sir Theodore Cannon said.

  “Hell.” Keegan kicked one of the carpetbags and watched it slide past Alvin Griffin and hit the leg of the table.

  The Apaches were using firearms. Holy Shirt had lost his hold on at least some of his people.

  “Get those guns out,” Keegan commanded. “Be ready. With a little luck, McCulloch will be coming hell-bent for leather for us. And a whole lot of Apaches will be right behind him.”

  When Keegan turned back to the door, he saw the newspaperman at the door. “Don’t bar the door, damn it.”

  Griffin whirled around.

  “Stay there. No. Get to that other shutter. The corner one. If any buck shows his shiny hair, part it.” Keegan drew the Remington and tossed it. “You’ve got six. Make them all count.”

  He moved to the table, realized that it was two tables shoved together, and that the tops were thick wood. He wet his lips, snatched the Navy Colt off the top, and went back to the door He opened it and yelled again, “Don’t bar the door!”

  As soon as he was on the porch, he dropped down and pulled the thick door shut behind him.

  * * *

  At first, Jed Breen thought the streak below the stars was a shooting star. And another. And another. But meteorites did not last that long, and as the light began to descend, he cursed.

  Those were arrows. Flaming arrows. One thudded on the roof behind him. Another struck the ground.

  He heard the popping of guns, and realized what that meant. Some of the Apaches were shooting bullets, ignoring Holy Shirt’s message.

  Another arrow bounced off the roof.

  Then two hit the top of the lean-to. Another struck the barn. One whipped into the side of the Concord stagecoach.

  The roof of the lean-to was already burning, and smoke smoldered inside the barn.

  “They’re lighting us up!” Keegan called from the porch of the station.

  “So they’ll be able to see McCulloch when he hits the yard!” Breen fired back.

  Two more arrows glowed. Another went through the window of the stagecoach. The third bounded in the dirt.

  About that time, McCulloch rounded the side of the barn and somehow managed to bound over the corral fence and cover its distance in a matter of seconds. Diving between the lowest and middle rails, he hit the ground, rolled over several times, and scrambled to his feet.

  Three, no, four, Apaches appeared a moment later.

  And Breen was standing, firing the Winchester from his hip, moving away from Cannon’s touring wagon to the front of the stagecoach, feeling the intense heat from the fire raging inside the old vehicle.

  He worked the lever and trigger practically at the same time.

  “That damned door better be open, Keegan!” he yelled and watched the Apaches scatter.

  A bullet blasted the door of the stagecoach, sending sparks into the air like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  Matt McCulloch ran past as Breen pulled the trigger and heard the loud snap of the hammer fall on the empty chamber. A bullet punched a hole through the crown of his hat, knocking it to the ground. He whipped off the stocking and tossed it to the ground.

  He’d be good and damned if he met his Maker wearing a woman’s stocking over his face and fine white hair. He ducked underneath the hitching rail, and saw the open door. McCulloch was already inside. Keegan was holding it open and firing some toy pistol. The muzzle flashes practically blinded Breen, but he moved toward the opening as a bullet plucked his collar. Keegan leaped inside, and Breen followed him, diving onto the floor, and sprang up to help Keegan bar the door.

  He didn’t have to.

  Summoning the strength of Hercules, the veteran sergeant managed to do it himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “You said Apaches don’t attack at night!” Alvin J. Griffin IV yelled.

  “I said they don’t like it!” Keegan yelled back, and pointed at the shutter the editor had turned away from. “Shoot, damn it. Show them why they don’t like fighting at night!”

  He was too late.

  A rifle barrel rammed through the cross carved into the wooden shutter, and sixteen inches of smoke and flame shot out of the barrel. That bullet thudded into the wooden mantel over the fireplace. As Gwen Stanhope withdrew her weapon to reload, a rifle barrel slipped into that opening, and the gun roared. That bullet ricocheted off the stone wall—Keegan just glimpsed the spark—and heard the deadly pinging as it whined three times more before the chunk of lead either disintegrated into several slivers or landed in something wooden.

  The woman reached up, grabbed the barrel, and shoved it forward as the Indian pulled the trigger again. Stanhope screamed as the heat of the rifle barrel burned her hands. Sir Theodore Cannon turned away from his shutter and rushed to help her as the rifle went up and down, with the Indian and the murderess fighting for control. Another barrel, this one from a pistol, came through the arms of the cross, and spoke.

  Jed Breen rushed forward, stuck his Lightning between Stanhope and the pistol, grabbed the barrel of the Apache’s gun, and pulled the trigger of the double-action. 38 six times, emptying the revolver. The pistol fell out of sight. Stanhope dropped to the floor as the rifle barrel fell, too.

  Then Sir Theodore Cannon screamed, clutching his head, and fell to the floor, where he rolled over, back and forth.

  “McCulloch!” Keegan shouted. He wasn’t sure the former Texas Ranger could hear over the din of gunshots echoing and the whining of ricochets off the walls, but the Ranger looked up. He was kneeling over the actor.

  Keegan was already at the nearest tab
le.

  “Help me get these things turned onto their sides!” Keegan shouted, and McCulloch abandoned the actor and rushed to the tables butted together.

  A ricocheting bullet punched off Keegan’s hat and burned the top of his head. He gripped the table’s thick, wooden side, saw McCulloch doing the same, and they managed to get the table onto its side, then moved to the next one, and pushed it over, as well.

  “Take cover!” McCulloch and Keegan shouted together. “Get behind these tables.”

  McCulloch rushed back, helped the actor to his feet, and they lunged forward. Breen was guiding Stanhope forward. The newspaper editor and the man with the carpetbags stumbled in the darkness.

  Seeing the small barrel on the floor beside the glowing fireplace, Keegan dived toward it. He picked it up, thinking it was the gunpowder they’d been using to reload their cartridges, and cursing the imbecile that had left the deadly powder that close to an open fire.

  The bullets fired from the windows sparked on the walls, like fireflies on a summer night.

  A bullet scratched his calf right above his boot, before Keegan managed to slide behind the heavy wooden tabletop.

  The newspaperman dived over Henderson and rolled as close to the table as he could. Breen shoved the woman over the table, turned and grabbed the man in the black suit, and dragged him behind the cover.

  Matt McCulloch was the last to take cover, bleeding from a scratch on his neck. He held a small barrel, too, and as he leaned next to one of the tables’ legs, he nodded at Keegan.

  “Nails?” McCulloch asked as the gunfire and pinging of ricochets ceased for a moment as the Apaches reloaded.

  Keegan glanced at the small barrel he had risked his neck to get away from the fireplace—or a stray bullet. Nails. Eightpenny most likely. “What the hell?” he snapped.

  “Oh,” Harry Henderson said. “We thought we could melt them down. Use them for bullets.”

  “They didn’t melt,” said the actor as Breen moved to him and wrapped his head with a bandanna.

  The gunfire and the ricochets resumed. The men and the women cringed, hearing the bullets whip over their heads and bounce off the floor and the walls, and jumped as a bullet or parts of a bullet struck the tops of the table.

  Again, a silence returned.

  The smell of gun smoke mingled with the scent of the burning barn, lean-to, and stagecoach outside.

  McCulloch drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and shook his head. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  Keegan nodded. The tops of the heavy tables covered two sides. A potbellied stove gave a little protection on one of the openings, but they had no way to keep a ricochet from hitting them from the open side facing the main door or the opposite wall.

  “When anyone’s killed,” McCulloch said, “whoever’s closest, pull the dead body over you. That might keep you alive.”

  “Ladies first?” Breen asked.

  “No,” Keegan said. “Closest. There ain’t no chivalry here. Besides, she’s going to hang in a few days anyway.”

  “M-m-maybe,” Harry Henderson stuttered, “th-th-they’re out”—he swallowed—“of . . . of . . .of . . .b-b-b-bullets.”

  They weren’t. The hellish gunfire continued.

  The actor screamed in pain. “Those swine!” he said, gasping for breath. “They shot off my big toe.”

  Pings and sparks came from everywhere. A piece of the table leg lodged in Keegan’s cheek.

  When the noise died, the actor yelled again, “Stop pulling on me, Griffin! Confound you, I’m not dead. And few would call a bullet to a toe a mortal wound!”

  Breen slid away from the woman to the center of the makeshift fortress. “Give me that gunpowder.”

  “Are you reloading?” Harry Henderson cried out.

  Breen did not answer, but took the small keg McCulloch slid across the floor.

  “And those nails.” The bounty hunter motioned at Keegan, who looked at the small keg he had set to his side and pushed it toward Breen.

  The gunfire resumed. Everyone except the bounty hunter huddled closer to the floor. Breen lifted the small container of nails and dumped them into the five-pound gunpowder keg. He set the nail keg down at his waist, and a ricochet slammed into it, spinning the keg around. Breen did not even notice what had happened, or how close he had come to catching a ricochet in his hip, leg, or side. He focused on pounding the top onto the container of gunpowder.

  “A bomb?” McCulloch asked.

  Breen shrugged.

  The gunfire stopped again.

  “Wagon’s out front,” Keegan said.

  “Let’s hope it’s still burning.” Breen came to his knees, knocking over the empty nail container, and rose to his feet.

  Keegan and McCulloch stood up, too.

  “Stay low, folks,” McCulloch said, and the three ran to the barred door.

  Keegan took one end of the bar and McCulloch the other, while Breen braced himself against the rocky wall near the door.

  Then, the muzzle flashes lit up the deadly station, the roar of gunfire turned deafening, and sparks explode once more to the accompaniment of pings and screams of those behind the table.

  “Go!” Keegan barked as he staggered and held the bar across his body.

  McCulloch left the Army man holding the heavy piece of wood, and took hold of the handle of the door. A bullet slammed into the wood inches from his face. The former Ranger did not even flinch.

  “Ready?” he asked Breen, who held the barrel of powder and nails in both hands.

  “Go!” Breen barked, and jumped slightly as a piece of a bullet carved the inside of his left leg.

  The door opened, and the flames in the night almost blinded the bounty hunter as he stepped outside. McCulloch leveled his gun, ready to fire at any Apache guarding the door. To his surprise, all the Indians were at the shutters. He stepped through the opening and saw an Apache ramming a ball down an old Enfield rifle. He fired. The Indian crumpled, and others turned. A muzzle flashed, but by then McCulloch was stepping back to the open door.

  Breen got as close as he could to the old Concord completely engulfed in flames. He heaved the keg, saw it swallowed by the inferno, and heard it crash inside what had once been the coach. He also recognized the smell of the burning flesh of the corpses the Indians had left inside. It smelled like a beefsteak roasting on an open fire.

  McCulloch got through the door first, Breen a second behind. Indians whooped as they rushed from all but the corner window where a repeating rifle sent bullets bouncing off the wall. One thudded into the heavy brace Keegan held, and it drove him against the door. That helped push the door shut. But the Indians were ramming it.

  “Get it on!” McCulloch yelled as a bullet from the rifle in the far window cut across his side.

  “Can’t,” Keegan yelled and dropped the heavy wood on the floor.

  Turning toward the gunfire coming from the window, McCulloch fired one shot, knowing his chances of putting a bullet through the cross were nonexistent. As the Indians tried to push the door open, he joined Breen and Keegan and leaned against the door.

  The rifle opened up again from the shutter.

  A second later, the explosion rang in their ears. The concussion almost drove them away from the door.

  Screams followed. The Indian stopped firing from the shutter. Resistance ceased and the door slammed shut. Keegan and McCulloch quickly picked up the heavy wood, got it in its holders, and dived to the floor, expecting the gunfire and the deadly whining of ricochets would resume.

  But all they heard from the outside was the agonized shrieks of Apaches who had been riddled by eight-penny nails—an obscene form of grapeshot.

  Keegan sat, legs stretched out, both hands clutching his stomach.

  “You hit?” McCulloch asked, noticing the grim look on the old sergeant’s face.

  “Yeah.” Keegan turned and grinned. His right hand came up, and he held a flattened bullet between his forefinger and thumb.


  “Hell’s fires!” Breen yelled.

  Keegan let out a little chuckle. “Bullet went right through that bar, popped me right in my navel.” He shook his head. “Hurts like a son of a gun.”

  “Would’ve hurt a lot worse had that chunk of wood not stopped it.”

  Keegan nodded.

  Outside, the Apaches began yelling at one another, mixing with the moans and intense screams of the wounded and the dying.

  “We ought to get behind those tables,” McCulloch said, but he made no effort to move.

  “Yeah,” Breen said. “We should.”

  “You boys go ahead,” Keegan said. “I’ll be there directly.”

  No one moved.

  Behind the tabletops, Sir Theodore Cannon moaned about his shot-off toe, the woman reloaded the weapons around her, and the newspaper editor prayed.

  “We need to move,” McCulloch said. “They’ll open up on us directly.”

  Breen nodded. “Be madder than hell after what I just gave them.”

  “Yeah,” Keegan said. “Good thing I fetched that keg of nails.”

  “Good thing,” McCulloch said. “You coming?”

  Keegan nodded. “In a jiffy. Don’t wait for me.”

  “Me, either,” Breen said. “Soon as I can get my legs to work, I’ll be over yonder.” He nodded at the table.

  “Yeah. I’ll see y’all then.” But Matt McCulloch did not move, either. They sat there, backs against the door, legs stretched out before them, breathing in and out, and looking at the shutters.

  They were still sitting there when rays of sunlight began peeking through the crosses on the shutters.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I’ve been brave, Harry Henderson thought. That newspaper editor, Griffin, he’ll write all about what I did here in the Purgatory City newspaper. I bet newspapers back east, and in California, maybe even in London and Dublin and Paris and Berlin, they’ll write about me, too. I wasn’t a coward. Not tonight.

  He frowned, then, thinking of those children of his. They wouldn’t care, one way or the other. Prudence, his wife in Sierra Vista, she wouldn’t care, either. She was such a hard woman. And that girl he had married in Dallas—what was her name?—well, that didn’t matter. Nor did the woman in Fort Worth.