Bo had a feeling that he would soon be scurrying around the settlement telling everyone he ran into that the new marshal and his deputies had ridden out of town armed and loaded for bear.
Or Apache, as the case might be.
“I’m still not sure about this,” Reilly said as they rode along, generally following the course of the meandering stream that looped through Whiskey Flats and divided the town into two distinct sections. “I mean, Indian fighting doesn’t fall under a marshal’s normal duties, does it? Shouldn’t we be getting the army to chase those Apaches or something?”
“We’ll be a lot more likely to get some action out of the army if we have something specific to report to them,” Bo said.
“In other words,” Scratch said, “those soldier boys don’t like to jump until they know what they’re jump-in’ into.”
“Well, what if the Indians are still there?” Reilly insisted.
“Don’t worry, we won’t just ride in blind,” Bo assured him. “We’ll do a little scouting first.”
When Bo and Scratch thought that they had covered enough ground to be getting close to the Thompson ranch, they slowed their pace and began dismounting and checking before they topped each hill or rounded each sharp bend in the trail. It was still only mid-morning when Scratch came back down the slope of a wooded ridge on foot and said, “The spread’s on the other side, about five hundred yards away.” His voice held a tone of disgust as he added, “I didn’t see nothin’ movin’ around except some buzzards.”
Bo nodded grimly. “About what we expected.” He pulled his rifle from its saddle sheath. “We’ll go in slow and easy, ready for trouble.”
Reilly nodded. He looked a little pale but determined as he drew his own Winchester. “If you fellas are sure about this,” he muttered. “After all these chances we’ve wound up taking since we came to Whiskey Flats, though, there had better be a damned good payoff when we get to the end of this.”
“There will be,” Bo promised.
Scratch mounted up again and they edged their horses forward, riding to the top of the ridge. Now all three men could see the layout. Rawhide had described the Thompson ranch as a greasy-sack outfit…a small ranch usually operated by a family, where the men would carry their lunch in a sack when they set out on the day’s work, rather than returning to headquarters for the midday meal.
The Thompson place certainly qualified. The main house, from the looks of it once a sturdy log structure, was now a burned-out shell. The same was true of the barn and the other outbuildings. The raiders had set them on fire before leaving. The lack of a bunkhouse told Bo and Scratch that all the hands had lived in the main house and were probably related. They had seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of small spreads like this, both in Texas and in their wanderings elsewhere on the frontier.
“You were right,” Bo said quietly to Scratch. “Nothing moving. They’ve been here and gone, just like we thought.”
Scratch motioned to Reilly. “Spread out some. We want distance between us while we ride down there. No reason to clump up and give anybody who might be lurkin’ around a bunch o’ easy targets.”
“I thought you said they were gone,” Reilly said.
“Sometimes the next day, an Indian will come back to a place he’s raided, just on the chance that he might be able to jump anybody who comes to check on it,” Bo explained. “That doesn’t mean they’re here. Might not be an Apache within twenty miles.”
“But that don’t mean they ain’t here either,” Scratch added. “That’s why we’re bein’ careful.”
The riders spaced themselves out about twenty yards apart as they started down the slope toward the ranch. Their eyes moved constantly, always on the alert for any sign of danger. An eerie quiet hung over the place, broken only by the angry cries and flapping wings of the buzzards who rose into the air when the humans came too close.
Bo pointed to a couple of bloody, furry shapes and called, “There are the dogs. Looks like they’ve been shot to pieces.”
“Man just inside the door of the barn,” Scratch said as he pointed with his rifle. “He was probably runnin’ out to see what was goin’on when they shot him. The slugs knocked him over backward.”
“Where are the rest of the people?” Reilly asked. “I only see the one man Scratch pointed out.”
“There’s a fella by the corral,” Bo said.
“I don’t see…you mean that pile of rags?”
“Those ain’t rags,” Scratch said. “The ’Paches skinned him, bit by bit. That’s what’s left.”
Reilly looked like he was going to be sick.
“That’s a bad way to die,” Bo said.
“One of the worst,” Scratch agreed. He was even with the front door of the house now, so he reined to a halt and swung down from the saddle. Still holding his Winchester ready for instant use, he stepped to the doorway and peered inside for a long moment.
“Anything?” Bo called.
Scratch grunted. “Hard to tell because of the fire. Looks like a couple o’ women…three…no, make that four little’uns…and a couple o’ half-growed boys. From the looks of it, I expect they put up a hell of a fight.”
Bo walked his horse over and stopped to look around the place for another minute or so. Then he pointed toward the barn.
“Lester and his pa were in there tending to their evening chores. Somebody in the house spotted the Indians sneaking in and yelled. Thompson ran out and ran right into a bullet, like you said, Scratch. Before he died, he told Lester to grab a horse and ride for help. I reckon Lester didn’t want to go, but he’s a good boy and did what his pa told him. One of the Apaches winged him when he made his dash, but that didn’t stop him. Then they laid siege to the house, and finally either got inside or just set it on fire and let that do the job for them. We’ll know more when we get the bodies out to bury them.”
Reilly listened to Bo’s recreation of the attack and then asked, “How in the hell do you know all that?”
“Some of it’s an educated guess,” Bo admitted, “but the tracks tell the rest of the story. There were nine of the Apaches—”
“I make it ten,” Scratch said.
“Nine or ten Apaches,” Bo said. “Most of them, maybe all of them, were armed with Winchesters.”
Reilly shook his head. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“Look at all the brass layin’ around,” Scratch said. “An Injun’s got no way o’ reloadin’ cartridges, so he leaves his empty shells where they fall when the rifle kicks ’em out. There are enough of them around so that there had to be quite a few guns bein’ used. Open your eyes, Marshal.”
Reilly flushed angrily. “You can’t expect me to know all this. I’m not a damned marshal! I’m a gambler.”
“And a crook,” Scratch drawled. “Don’t forget that.”
Frustrated, Reilly turned to Bo. “What was that about finding out whether the Indians got inside the house before they burned it down?”
“That’s a good question. That’s how you learn things, Jake, by asking questions.”
“And by watchin’ hombres who already know what they’re doin’, like me and Bo,” Scratch said.
“If it’s such a good question, what’s the damn answer?”
Bo sighed. “If the children each have a single bullet hole in the head, it means the women finished them off before they could die in the fire and before the Apaches could get them. If that’s the case, the women probably died of gunshot wounds to the head, too.”
Scratch said, “But I’ll bet those older boys went down fightin’. I just got a feelin’ about ’em. That Lester’s plenty tough, ridin’ all the way into town with that bullet wound in his side, and odds are those other hombres were his brothers.”
Reilly stared at the Texans. “My God. You sound almost proud of them.”
“We are proud of them,” Bo said. “How a man dies is sometimes just as important as how he lived. In a case like this, where those boys didn’t ge
t to live out their full span, the way they died is even more important.”
“They stood up and fought,” Scratch said. “Empty shells all around both of ’em. They didn’t ask for what came at ’em, but they didn’t run from it either.” The silver-haired Texan spat on the ground. “Man who turns and runs from trouble ain’t worthy o’ being called a man. Lowest thing on the face o’ the earth as far as I’m concerned. But I can tell you one thing right now…those two boys were men.”
Bo nodded solemnly.
Reilly just shook his head. “I don’t understand. Dead’s dead, no matter how you got that way.”
“You live long enough, you’ll figure it out,” Bo told him. He clapped a hand on Reilly’s shoulder and went on. “We’ve got some burying to do.”
“We’re not going back to town to get the undertaker?”
“This was their home,” Scratch said. “They died fightin’ for it. Reckon this is where they’d want to be.”
By the middle of the day, the ashes had cooled enough for Bo and Scratch to retrieve the bodies from the house. They had spent the time before that burying the man they had found just inside the barn and the one who had fallen beside the corral. They had buried the dogs as well, knowing that the animals had died fighting against the invaders and deserved to be laid to rest properly.
Reilly helped with that work, although he looked sickened during most of it. He refused to go into the house to help bring out the women and children, though.
“I can’t do it,” he declared. “Sorry, but I just can’t.”
“You’ll learn one o’ these days that there are a heap of hard, unpleasant chores in this life,” Scratch told him. “Best to just face ’em head-on and get through ’em the best you can as quick as you can.”
Reilly shook his head. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted grudgingly, “but this is one chore I can’t do yet.”
Faced with that refusal to help, Bo and Scratch just carried on, since there was nothing else they could do.
As they had suspected, the younger children inside the house had each died of a gunshot to the head, one or both of the women choosing to spare them the agonies of dying in the fire. The women had given themselves the same mercy, one falling with a bullet in the back of the head, the other—the last one—snuffing out her own life with a shot to the temple. Probably the two teenage boys at the windows were dead by then, killed by Apache bullets. Bo couldn’t imagine the horror that lone woman must have felt, surrounded by flames and by the bodies of her loved ones, in that moment before she pulled the trigger and ended it all. That final shot had been mercy indeed.
They couldn’t dig graves for everybody, so they buried the little ones together, the boys in one grave, the women in another, the men in yet another. It wasn’t a very satisfactory arrangement, but it was the best they could do. When they were finished and all the dirt had been heaped over the fresh graves, Bo and Scratch took off their hats, prompting Reilly to do so as well. The young man even bowed his head this time as Bo said a prayer for the souls of those who had died here. That was progress, Bo thought after he’d said “Amen.” Reilly wasn’t thinking only of himself all the time anymore.
Reilly turned away from the graves and lifted his hat to put it on, when a rifle suddenly cracked and a bullet tore the black Stetson from his hand. He let out a startled yelp and dived for the ground, even as Bo and Scratch slapped leather and spun toward the sound of the shot. Another rifle spat leaden death behind them, though, and only a swift, instinctive move by Scratch kept the bullet from hitting him. One of the pieces of fringe on his jacket jumped a little as the slug tugged at it.
“Spread out!” Bo called as he snapped a shot toward a flicker of movement at the corner of the barn. “Move, Jake! Don’t let ’em pin you down!”
From the corner of his eye Bo saw Reilly scramble to his feet and dash for cover, triggering his six-gun as he ran. Reilly flung himself behind the horse trough near the barn, which had survived the fire and had been left alone by the Apaches except for defecating in the water to foul it.
Scratch, meanwhile, rolled under the bottom rail of the empty corral and came up in a crouch behind one of the corner posts. The post didn’t provide much cover, but the silver-haired Texan didn’t need much. As a bullet struck the post and sent splinters flying in the air, Scratch drew a bead and fired. He was rewarded by the sight of an Indian jerking back into cover behind some brush, his bullet-busted arm flopping limply as he did so.
That Apache wasn’t dead, though, just wounded, so he couldn’t be counted out of the fight. Scratch knew that, and took advantage of the brief respite to rattle his hocks and head for the far side of the corral.
Bo had cut away from the graves at an angle, putting some distance between himself and Scratch and Reilly. With bullets kicking up dirt and pebbles around his feet, he made it to some pines and ducked behind the shelter of the thick trunks.
The way the shots had been ringing out, it was impossible to tell for sure just how many attackers there were. Bo guessed three or four, which meant that he and his companions were pretty evenly matched. At the moment, though, he, Scratch, and Reilly were armed only with handguns. They had put their Winchesters back in the saddle sheaths while they worked on the graves. Since they were facing enemies with rifles, that put them at a disadvantage.
Nothing they could do except try to make the best of it, though. Bo began working his way through the trees, moving carefully and using every bit of cover he could find. Bullets hummed through the branches, but the riflemen were firing blindly, hoping to score with a lucky shot.
Over by the barn, Reilly lay on his belly behind the water trough, Colt clutched tightly in his hand. A few bullets had struck the heavy wooden trough, but they didn’t penetrate.
A sudden cracking sound came from behind Reilly, causing him to roll over onto his back. It was the right reaction, because a rifle spouted flame in the ruins of the barn and the bullet smacked into the ground where Reilly had been lying. He jerked up his gun as he saw the Apache trying to lever the Winchester he had just fired. In the back of Reilly’s mind, he knew the Indian must have stepped on a partially burned timber that had cracked the rest of the way under his weight, producing that warning sound.
He didn’t take the time right then to ponder on that, though, because he was too busy squeezing the Colt’s trigger. It roared and bucked twice in his hand, and the Apache, clad in blue tunic, breechcloth, and buckskin leggings, was driven backward by the bullets plowing into his chest.
Scratch was making for the corner of the barn when he heard the shots and glanced over to see Reilly firing into the ruins. He didn’t have a chance to see how that turned out because he reached the corner of the barn and ducked down behind the partially collapsed wall. The last time he’d seen the ’Pache he’d winged, the varmint had been coming this way. He heard a rustling in the brush now and turned in that direction.
Instinct warned him at the last second, or maybe it was a slight sound. Scratch ducked, and the Indian who had tried to lunge over the top of the ruined wall and grab him from behind got air instead. Scratch reached up, clamped his free hand around the Apache’s arm, and hauled him forward over the wall.
The Indian sprawled on the ground as Scratch twisted hard on the arm he held, pressing it beyond the endurance of flesh and muscle and bone. The Indian screamed as his elbow dislocated.
Scratch stepped back and covered him. He saw that this was the Apache he had wounded before, as he had thought it would be. Now the hombre had two bum arms and wouldn’t be a threat anymore.
That was what Scratch thought anyway. Even in agonizing pain from the bullet wound in one arm and the dislocated elbow on the other, the Indian came up off the ground and charged at Scratch, lowering his head as if he intended to butt the Texan in the chest.
“Damn it, don’t make me shoot you!” Scratch yelled as he grabbed the Apache’s tunic, used the man’s own momentum against him, and flung him over the to
p of the wall.
There was a sickening sound as the Indian landed, and when Scratch looked over the top of the collapsed wall, he exclaimed in disgust, “Dadgum it!”
The Apache had fallen on a jagged piece of timber sticking up from the ruins, and his weight had been enough to drive the sharp wood right through his body. He was still alive, jerking and twitching as he stared at the bloody piece of wreckage protruding a good four inches from his chest. Scratch had time now to note that he was young, probably not out of his teens.
As Scratch watched, the Apache gave a bubbling sigh and then his head fell back in death. Scratch shook his head and started to turn away. He wouldn’t have killed a helpless man intentionally, even one who’d taken part in the atrocity that had happened here at the Thompson ranch. Sometimes fate had other things in mind, though.
Like one of the bastards sneaking up on him and drawing a bead on him. Scratch knew as soon as he saw the Indian peering at him over the barrel of a rifle that he was done for. He didn’t have time to raise the Remington and fire before the Apache could drill him.
The shot that blasted out didn’t come from the Indian, though. Scratch saw the man’s head jerk sideways as blood spurted out. The Apache folded up, dropping the rifle before he could pull the trigger.
Bo stepped out from behind a tree, lowering his Colt, and Scratch said, “You took your damn time about it.”
“If you want to overwhelm somebody with gratitude, better look the other way,” Bo said with a nod toward the water trough. “I would’ve gotten here too late.”
Scratch looked over and saw Reilly peering over the top of the trough. Smoke curled from the gun in the young man’s fist. Scratch realized now that Bo was on the wrong side of the Apache to have fired the fatal shot.
“You mean he saved my life?” Scratch asked.
Bo grinned. “I reckon so.”
Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats Page 16
