“Jason,” she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears.
He kissed her. He kissed her hard and long, knowing that he might never be allowed this privilege again.
And then abruptly, he let go of her, leaving her swaying, and mounted his mare. His throat was so thick that he had no words to say good-bye. He simply nodded, his heart full, then rode away.
* * *
Roughly twenty minutes after Jason bade good-bye to Megan and rode west, Matthew was awakened from his siesta by Gil Collins, whom he’d hired to help him build his house.
“What?” he said, cranky with the heat and tired from the work.
Gil hurried down from the ladder, which leaned against the partially finished second story, and started running for the horses. “Riders!” he shouted as Matt climbed to his feet. “Comin’ fast from the south.”
Matt stopped and cocked his fists on his hips. “I suppose these are more of Fury’s imaginary Apache?”
Gil leapt into the saddle, grabbed Matt’s pinto by the reins, and brought him to Matt at a hard trot. “Not imaginary. Look.” Then he tossed Matt the pinto’s reins and lit out toward Fury at a dead gallop.
“Coward,” Matt grumbled under his breath, but he swung up on the horse, just to get a higher vantage point.
He looked toward the south.
Through clenched teeth, he said, “Damn it!” then lashed the pinto.
He had only loped about thirty yards before the first arrow sank into his arm like a hot branding iron. He didn’t look back. He was afraid to see what was chasing him, although the first whoops were just now reaching his ears.
He hunkered lower in the saddle and dug his spurs into the pinto’s flanks.
His pinto was fast, faster even than Jason’s Cleo or any of his father’s Morgans. He slowly gained on Gil, who was racing for town, and then drew even with him. He glimpsed the fear on Gil’s face and saw him draw his revolver.
Gil began to fire just after Matt passed him.
* * *
In Fury, Saul was the first one to hear the shots. “Listen!” he said to the others. “Do you hear?”
Randall Nordstrom furrowed his brow. “That’s out Matt’s way. You think they’re hunting rabbits?”
“Too close,” said Salmon. He scurried up the ladder to the window of Nordstrom’s second floor, then stood up in the window casing to get a better look.
“What?” asked Saul.
Salmon came halfway down the ladder, then jumped the rest of the way. “Apache! And Matt and Gil are ridin’ in, hell-bent for leather!”
Saul started to yell, “Circle the wagons!” then remembered that half their wagons were broken up or staked out. Thank God the Mortons had taken most of the livestock up north with them, to where they were building their houses.
Salmon was yelling, “Apache! Get your arms! Apache!” and Randall Nordstrom was already upstairs, in his store, pointing a rifle out the glassless window.
Saul ran to the northwest edge of the square and the ammunition wagon, which hadn’t yet been unloaded, and grabbed a couple handfuls of cartridge boxes. One, he tossed up to Randall. The others, he passed out to the men who were already running to Fury’s southern perimeter.
To his side, Rachael ran out the front door of his store. He saw her and he called, “Rachael, the children?”
“Under their beds. Saul, come now!”
He ran for her just as Matt MacDonald thundered between them. Saul didn’t have to think twice. “Matt!” he cried as the boy leapt off his horse.
Saul could see he was wounded. “Come!” He waved frantically. He could hear the Indians now, hear them growing close with every second. Already, the men on the southern side of the square were firing. “Matt, come here! Come inside!”
Gil Collins came into town just as Saul helped Matt through the door. Gil had taken an arrow deep in his back, and was slumped over his horse’s neck.
Saul flagged down the tired horse, slid Gil’s limp body to the ground, and slapped the horse on the rump before he dragged Gil inside and bolted the door behind them.
Catty-corner across the town square, to the south, the men opened fire.
Chapter 31
Jason turned to take one last look at the distant horizon, one last look at the land in which he’d left his sister and his love and, he admitted, his friends.
But something was wrong with the horizon. Above the line of trees that followed the creek there rose a thin, moving line of dust. And it was moving toward Fury.
His first thought was Apache, but then he got a grip, telling himself that it was likely another false alarm. Probably just another federal marshal, out on another fool’s errand.
But he turned around anyway, and headed back where he’d come from. He urged the palomino into a soft lope. You couldn’t be too careful, he supposed, and he could always leave again in the morning.
Maybe he could get Jenny to make him up some beef sandwiches for the road, if they slaughtered a steer tonight.
* * *
The sound of the battle came to Ezekial Morton, two miles north of Fury. “Zachary!” he called to his older brother. “There’s trouble in town!”
Ezekial’s daughters, Europa and Electa, both big, strapping girls, looked up from their chore of mixing adobe and making bricks, glad for the distraction, and joined their father and uncle.
“Mama!” Europa called to the house, or anyway, what there was of it at this point. “Mama, bring Aunt Suzannah!”
Suzannah and Eliza came from the house, and the whole family stood there, listening to the distant gunfire. Ezekial thought it sounded like Independence Day. If you were British.
He suddenly felt cold all over, despite the heat.
“Should we go back?” Electa asked. She was always the optimist, his Electa.
“And do what?” her uncle Zachary said, stroking his beard. “We are best to stay here. Suzannah, put out that cook fire. Now. It makes too much smoke.”
Suzannah obeyed as fast as her aged legs would move her.
“Eliza, darlin’, you and the girls go inside, too,” Ezekial said. “Arm yourselves. Zachary and I will keep watch.”
Zachary cocked a grizzled brow. “We will?”
“Yes, Zach. We will.”
“Well, I think I’ll have a pipe, then.” He held out his tobacco pouch. “Care to try my blend?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
* * *
Jason slowed up on the far side of the creek and made his way through the trees on foot, leading his horse. The sounds and cries were unmistakable, now. This was not an errant marshal. These were Apache on a raid. It sounded like a passel of them, too.
Still on the other side of the creek, hidden from the attackers, he made his way upstream—or what would have been upstream, if there’d been any water flowing—until he was at the far north edge of the town.
Then he mounted his horse, wove through the cottonwoods, and at their edge, suddenly raced forward toward the ammo wagon. He knew the men had to be running low by now.
The Apache were so preoccupied by the settlers, who seemed to have primarily grouped at the south end of town, that they didn’t notice him, and he grabbed up all the ammunition he could carry in a gunnysack, left Cleo behind the wagon, and hurried along the fronts of the buildings on the east side of the square, the sack of ammo in one hand and his gun in the other.
Still, no one saw him until a door suddenly opened and he found himself yanked inside. He turned his gun on the person that had dragged him in, then saw it was Saul.
“You came back?” Saul asked, surprised.
“Looks like,” Jason answered, then handed the ammunition bag over. While Saul dug through it, Jason spied Gil in the corner, hurt bad. He didn’t need to ask what had happened. Instead, he asked, “Where’s Morelli?”
Saul motioned with his head. “South wall. Matt MacDonald’s upstairs. He galloped in about two shakes before the Apache.”
Muttering,
“It figures,” he snatched back the sack. “Got everything you need?”
“Yes.”
“Then get back to it. I’ve got to get down to the men.” He stood up, staying well back from the windows, and turned for the door, then hesitated. “Where are your boys?”
“Upstairs. Rachel put them under their beds.”
“Bring them down. The first thing the Apache will do, if we can’t turn ’em back, is set fire to the roofs.”
“What? But how?”
“Flaming arrows.” Jason shut the door between them.
What he saw didn’t hearten him much. The new livery was already on fire. Flames licked at the cottonwood roof, bellowed from the windows, and ran the length of the new cottonwood fence. It billowed black smoke.
“Well, I suppose that’ll keep ’em from sprouting,” he muttered as, hunkered low, he made his way toward the battle. Above him, in front of Nordstrom’s, he heard a shot ring out and looked up just in time to see the muzzle of a rifle withdraw.
“That you, Randall?” he called.
“Yah!” came the shouted answer. Jason dug through the bag until he found .44 rimfire cartridges, then hollered, “Catch! Ammo!”
Nordstrom’s head and one arm popped through the opening, and he snatched up the box of cartridges Jason threw.
Jason heard his muted “Thank you!” as he scuttled down the street.
But somebody had seen him, for just then three Apache arrows buried themselves in the dirt at his feet.
He pulled his gun and fired back, although he didn’t know exactly who to fire at. Any Indian would do at this point.
They had come around, between, and over the southern buildings now, and were attacking from both sides of them. Jason shot two braves that were hacking at the roof of Milcher’s new church. He didn’t know who shot the other one, but all three tumbled to the ground like rag dolls.
He was rewarded for this by an Apache arrow that sank into his thigh. It stung like hell, but all he could do for the time being was break off the shaft. Morelli would have to cut it out. He already knew he couldn’t push it through because he could feel it scraping the bone.
Some of the Apache had guns, but as far as he could tell, they didn’t have any repeaters. Yet.
Limping, he slid around the corner of the building, into an alley, and across it to peek around the corner of the wagon parked at its side.
The savages were swarming over the buildings now. He knew he’d never get any ammunition through to his people. And then he suddenly remembered Salmon Kendall. Salmon Kendall was the only one with an old rifle, one that took powder and ball. And in that sack, he’d put balls and powder for Salmon.
He had an idea. It was dangerous, and it might not work at all, but it was all he had at the moment.
He ducked back into the shadows of the wagon’s undercarriage and quickly unraveled three burlap strings from the bag, which he proceeded to braid together, just as he had braided his sister’s hair when she was younger.
He affixed one end of the braid to the bag, and then pulled out the small keg of powder, the smallest one he’d been able to find in the ammo wagon. He opened it and shook half its contents out over everything else in the sack, and also over the length of his makeshift fuse.
He hoped it would work. He’d never done it before, never even seen it done. He said a brief prayer, reclosed the half-full keg and stuck it back inside the bag, then lit the fuse.
It burned faster than he’d expected, and he had to toss it in a hurry. Even so, in that brief moment he was exposed, he took another arrow to the shoulder, and thought, What am I? A pincushion?
He jumped back into the shadow of the wagon again and waited. Nothing happened. Damn it! Either the quickness of the throw had blown out the fuse, or the concussion when it hit had knocked the fuse free of the sack. Either way, his makeshift bomb hadn’t gone off.
He crawled underneath the wagon, and on his belly, he took aim and shouted, “Take cover, men!” He fired. And missed.
He hit it with the second shot.
The bag exploded in a thick haze of black smoke, and bullets zinged every which way. Since the Indians were out in the open, it did them, by far, the most damage. Bodies fell right and left, scattered in piles like autumn leaves, and the wood over Jason’s head was splintered by three wild slugs.
Fortunately, most of the townsmen had heard and heeded his warning, and jumped back inside what few buildings there were. He still heard shots being fired inside the buildings, their sound muffled as opposed to the bright zings of the ordnance from the bag.
Blood flowed in a river from Jason’s leg. He felt weak, and with the last of his strength, he attempted to tie off the leg with his bandanna. That was the last thing he remembered, anyway. Trying to put the bandanna around his thigh, and it being incredibly difficult.
* * *
When he woke, he was in Nordstrom’s mercantile, laid out on a wide plank, held up by two sawhorses. And the first notion that entered his mind was that they were readying him for burial.
But then Dr. Morelli appeared at his side and said, “How do you feel, Jason?”
“Like I’ve been on a three-day drunk.”
“That’s the laudanum,” Morelli replied curtly, though with a smile. “And the blood loss. That arrow you took to the leg nearly killed you. Be more careful next time, son. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I have other patients. Lie still. Try to sleep.”
Try to sleep? There were so many questions he wanted to ask, so many faces that he wanted to see, alive and well.
“Doc?” he asked as Morelli opened the door. “Can I see my sister? And . . . and Megan MacDonald?”
“They’re toting water to the men putting out the fire at the livery. They’ll be along soon enough.”
Jason sighed with relief. They were both all right and unscathed if they were well enough to carry water. He fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
* * *
When he woke again, it was night, and Jenny was sitting by his side.
“It’s about time,” she said, and smiled at him.
“And what time would that be?” He was feeling less well than he had before, but the wooziness was gone. Now he was sort of wishing it would came back.
“It’s nine. I saved you some supper, if you’re interested.” He was, and sat up to take his food. His arm was sore, but he knew it would pass. He’d checked under the bandage, and from the burns surrounding it had seen that Morelli had resorted to a little bit of old-time frontier medicine—he’d cut off most of the shaft, cut a groove in what remained, filled it with gunpowder, and shoved it out the other side of Jason’s shoulder while it was burning, removing the arrow and cauterizing the wound all at once.
Smart.
He scraped the plate clean in five minutes.
“Didn’t know you were that hungry, or I would have brought more,” said Jenny.
“I didn’t know I was that hungry, either,” he said, then changed the subject abruptly. “Who lived and who died, and what happened to the rest of the Apache?”
“The Apache ran off.” Jenny looked at her lap.
“Jenny?”
“Dead will be quicker.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Who’d we lose?”
“Gil Collins. He was dead halfway through the battle. He was dead when Dr. Morelli got to him. Elmer Jameson. He was freeing the horses from the livery when the Indians set it on fire. He never came out. Mr. Nordstrom got hit with an arrow, but he’ll be all right, Dr. Morelli says. Same thing for Matt MacDonald and Ward Wanamaker.”
“And that’s it?”
“One of the new people, too, the ones that stayed from the last train that came through. I don’t know his name, but he took an arrow to the neck and a lance to his side, and the doctor said he must have had an angel sitting on his shoulder. Both of them missed anything vital.”
“The Mortons?”
&
nbsp; “Ward and Salmon rode up to see to them. They were fine.” She grinned. “I guess that when your little powder keg thing went off, Miss Europa fainted. That’s what Zachary said, anyway.”
“Mr. Morton,” Jason corrected out of habit.
“Mr. Zachary Morton,” Jenny repeated, playing along.
He paused before he said, “And Megan?”
“We’ve been taking turns sitting with you. She left to stretch her legs about five minutes before you woke up, you ravenous beast, you.”
He grinned, then flinched.
“Lay back down. The doctor said you were to stay flat on your back for at least two days.”
“Easy for him to say. He doesn’t have to lie on a couple of wooden planks with no mattress and no pillow.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Megan’s bringing quilts and a pillow from our wagon.” She was talking to him like a fussy child now, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
The door opened, and instead of Megan, there stood a contingent of townspeople, Salmon Kendall in the lead. “We’ve had us a meeting,” Salmon said as he took off his hat. The other members of his party followed suit as they filed in.
“What sort of meeting?” Jason asked, somewhat leerily.
“Well, first off, we wanna thank you for some mighty fast thinking this afternoon. We thought you had gone off to California.”
“I came back.”
Salmon nodded knowingly, and so did Saul, behind him. “And why’d you do that?” Salmon went on.
“I saw the dust cloud. Didn’t know if it was another marshal or Apache, but didn’t figure it was worth taking the chance.”
“You see?” Saul piped up. “Loyal, he is.”
“And brave,” added Megan, who had just stepped in, her arms full of bedding.
“Salmon, you heard me say it, Jason Fury would not let us down.”
“I heard,” said Salmon.
“Isn’t our town named for his papa?” Saul went on. “Is not Fury a name to be reckoned with in the West?”
As a man, the crowd nodded and murmured, “Yes.”
But Jason wasn’t in the mood for flattery. He said, “Get to the point, Salmon.”
“And he sees to the heart of the matter!” said Saul.
A Town Called Fury Page 19
