A Town Called Fury

by William W. Johnstone

  It took only a few moments for Jason to reach the crest of the ridge, but with so much lead flying around him, it seemed more like an hour. When he reached the top he swung down from the saddle in a hurry, taking the rifle with him. Snatching off his hat, he used it to slap the mare on the rump and send Cleo charging on down the far side of the ridge, well out of the line of fire.

  Jason whirled around and threw himself down on the ground. He poked the rifle barrel over the crest and squinted down at the small army charging past on the flats below him.

  It was still difficult to see the riders because of the dust, but Jason caught occasional glimpses of them through eddying rents in the ochre-colored cloud. He had been right about them not being Apaches. They were a mixed lot, though.

  He saw men in curled-brim Stetsons, high-crowned sombreros, cavalry campaign caps, even a few derbies. A couple of riders wore white shirts and trousers, with colorful sashes around their waists and red bands around their heads so that their long black hair flew out behind them. They were Indians, but not Apaches. Jason figured they were Yaquis from the mountains below the border, members of a tribe that was reputed to be even more bloodthirsty than the Apaches. Those two had to be pretty sorry specimens, though, because the Yaquis were supposed to hate both whites and Mexicans too deeply to be riding with a gang of them.

  And that was exactly what he was looking at, Jason thought—a gang. No one but outlaws would be traveling in a wolf pack like that, shooting at everyone they saw and leaving behind the smoke of burning buildings.

  That thought made Jason’s breath hiss between his clenched teeth. He lifted his head and looked toward Fury. Pillars of smoke that dark and thick could come only from buildings that were being consumed by flames.

  Rage flooded through him and made him snarl curses as he nestled his cheek against the stock of his rifle and tried to draw a bead on some of the raiders charging past him. Near the front of the group was a huge man with a jutting black beard, a sombrero with silver balls dangling from its circular brim, and a blood-red serape that had been jerked around by the wind so that it flapped behind him like a cape.

  Juan Alba. The name sprang into Jason’s mind. He had heard about the bandit chieftain sometimes known as the Scourge of the Borderlands. If he had ever seen anyone deserving of such a title, it was this man. Jason fired, knowing that even though he couldn’t fight all of them, maybe he could bring down the leader.

  The big man galloped on, unscathed. Not far from him, though, a horse suddenly took a tumble, going down in a cloud of dust and a welter of flailing hooves. The fallen horse’s rider sailed out of the saddle and slammed into the ground, rolling over a couple of times before he was trampled by a couple of the riders who had been following him. Unable to swerve in time, the men rode right over the unfortunate bandit who had fallen. The steel-shod hooves of their mounts chopped and pounded him into something that barely seemed human. Jason grimaced at the sight until the dust swirled again and hid it from view.

  Once Jason was out of their way, the outlaw horde might have been willing to pass on by and leave him alone, but the impulsive shot that had knocked down one of their number drew their attention, and several of them peeled off from the main bunch and galloped toward the cactus-strewn slope. Heedless of the fact that Jason held the high ground, they charged him, the guns in their fists spouting flame and powder smoke.

  Staying low to make himself as small a target as possible, Jason fired a couple of times, and was rewarded by the sight of one of the outlaws sailing backward out of the saddle like he had been punched by a giant fist. Jason levered the rifle and squeezed the trigger again, but this time there was only a hollow click. The weapon was empty.

  And the rest of Jason’s ammunition was in his saddlebags, on the palomino. He twisted his head and looked down the back of the ridge. After that swat on the rump, Cleo had dashed off a couple of hundred yards.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jason muttered as he leaped to his feet and started running. He held the empty rifle in his left hand and used his right to hold his hat on as he dashed toward the mare. He tried to whistle for her, in hopes that she would come to him, but it was difficult to find the breath for that while running full tilt.

  Behind him, the three remaining outlaws thundered over the top of the ridge. One of them let out an exultant whoop as they saw their quarry fleeing on foot. If they had reined in and used their rifles, they probably could have cut him down, but instead they galloped their horses after him, evidently eager for a little vicious fun.

  Jason was glad they were cruel bastards. That gave him a chance, slim though it was.

  He finally managed to let out a piercing whistle. Cleo’s head came up. The palomino spun around and started toward him, then stopped uncertainly for a second as the outlaws opened fire with their pistols. Jason whistled again and Cleo came on, cutting the distance between them. Bullets whined past him. His heart pounded, both from exertion and from the knowledge that death flickered through the air scant inches from his head.

  He might have made it if a rock hadn’t rolled unexpectedly under his foot, throwing him off balance and sending him careening ahead out of control. He fell, rolling down the slope, scraping exposed hide on the rocky ground and brushing against a cactus that lanced its spines through his shirt sleeve into the flesh of his upper arm. Jason thought he yelled in pain, but he couldn’t be sure because the thunder of hoofbeats was deafening now. The outlaws were almost on top of him.

  He rolled over onto his back. He had dropped the rifle, but somehow his Colt had gotten into his right hand. He had drawn the gun without even being aware of it. Now instinct took over as he jerked the gun up, eared back the hammer, and fired.

  The flame from the muzzle blast almost singed the face of one of the horses. The bullet went past its ear, angling up, and struck the rider under the chin. The heavy slug tore through the man’s mouth and on into his brain, exploding out the top of his skull. He flew out of the saddle, dead well before he hit the ground.

  Jason rolled again to avoid the slashing hooves of another horse. The ground dropped out from under him, and he found himself sliding into a shallow gully. It was deep enough to give him some much-needed cover as he twisted around and snapped a shot at one of the remaining raiders. The man jerked in the saddle and hunched over, pressing an arm to his belly. In one of those frozen moments of time that sometimes occurred in battle, Jason found himself staring into the wounded man’s face. He was a white man, lean and ugly, with black gaps in his teeth and straw-colored hair sticking out from under a flat-crowned black hat. His thin-lipped mouth twisted in a snarl as he tried to bring his gun up for a shot at Jason.

  Jason pressed the Colt’s trigger again and saw the man’s face disappear in a red smear as the bullet smashed into it. The dead outlaw toppled from the saddle and crashed to the ground.

  That was enough for the fourth man. He yanked his horse around and fled back toward the top of the ridge. Jason let him go. He lay there in the gully, his mouth full of grit and his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He was too stunned for the knowledge that he had killed three out of the four outlaws who came after him to have fully soaked in yet.

  When it did, he was even more amazed. He pushed himself to his feet, took fresh cartridges from the loops on his shell belt, and thumbed them into the Colt’s cylinder, reloading in case some of the outlaws came back. From the looks of things, though, they weren’t going to. The dust cloud was moving off to the south now.

  Jason spotted his hat on the ground, picked it up, and whistled for Cleo again. While the palomino was trotting over to him, he found the rifle he had dropped. He checked the barrel to make sure it wasn’t fouled, then reloaded it too, before he slid it back in the saddle boot.

  Then he mounted up and rode to the top of the ridge, stopping just short of it so he wouldn’t be skylighted. From there he could see that the outlaw horde was indeed moving on to the south. They were at least half a mile away no
w. They had to be heading for the border, Jason thought. Juan Alba probably had a stronghold somewhere across the line in Mexico.

  Jason topped the ridge, hurried down the slope, and turned the other way when he reached the flats. The pall of smoke that hung over Fury was beginning to thin. At least some of the fires were out by now.

  But as Jason galloped toward the settlement, he dreaded discovering just how much death and destruction had been left behind by the raid.

  Chapter 18

  Jason felt sickness churning in his belly as he approached Fury and saw an overturned buckboard. The two horses that had been hitched to the wagon lay dead in black pools of blood that had gushed from their numerous bullet wounds. The poor animals had been riddled with lead.

  As had their owner, who lay facedown on the ground about ten yards away, as if he had fallen while trying to flee from the outlaws on foot. The back of his shirt was soaked with blood. He had been shot at least half-a-dozen times.

  His head was twisted so that Jason could see one side of his face, which was now frozen in a permanent grimace of fear and agony. Jason recognized him as Ed Willet, one of the newcomers to Fury who had arrived only a week or so earlier. Willet had planned to start a farm, and Jason guessed he had been heading to town to pick up some supplies when he saw the raiders coming. He hadn’t made it to safety in time.

  Not that anybody had been much safer in the settlement, Jason thought. The outlaws had swept right on into town, shooting, looting, and pillaging. Jason grew even more sickened as he reached Main Street and saw the bleeding bodies of people and horses littering the ground. Men, women, even children had been slaughtered with no thought of mercy or compassion.

  Jason had been through Indian attacks and had seen their grim aftermath. In a way, this was worse. At least the Indians were fighting for what they considered their own way of life, barbaric though it might be.

  This . . . this was just pure evil.

  The front window of Nordstrom’s Mercantile was busted out. A million pieces of glass covered the porch and the floor inside. Randall Nordstrom was slumped backward over the sill, unmoving. His chest was a gory mess, looking like someone had unloaded both barrels of a shotgun into it. Jason looked past Nordstrom’s body into the wreckage of the store. It had been thoroughly looted, the outlaws carrying off everything that struck their fancy.

  Across the street, the livery stable was still burning, although the flames were dying down since the roof had already fallen in and the walls had collapsed. The stink in the air told Jason that some of the horses had been caught inside the inferno and never made it out. The old man who ran the place and his Mexican hostler lay in front of the stable, both of them shot dead.

  Several houses were nothing but piles of ashes, including the one where Michael Morelli had his medical practice and his family’s home. Jason hoped all the Morellis had gotten out safely. He turned his head, dreading whatever terrible sight he would see next. It was Abigail Krimp’s place, burned out inside even though the adobe walls still stood. Jason didn’t see any sign of Abigail and wondered if she was inside.

  “Jason!”

  The shout made him jerk around in the saddle and reach for his gun. He stilled the instinct as he saw Saul Cohen running toward him. Saul had blood on his face, but he seemed pretty spry and wasn’t moving like a wounded man.

  “Thank God you’re here, Jason!” Saul gasped as he came to a stop beside the palomino. He was so shaken that he reached out and grasped the stirrup for a moment to steady himself. “It was awful, just awful. Like something in a war.”

  Jason glanced toward Saul’s hardware store. It seemed to be largely intact, although the front window was broken and it looked like the door had been kicked down.

  “Saul,” Jason said in a ragged voice. “Your wife, your kids . . .”

  Saul nodded. “All right, all of them, thank God. I got this cut from some flying glass, but that’s all.”

  The gash on Saul’s cheek was bloody and ugly, but the glass had missed his eye and the cut wasn’t life-threatening.

  “What about Jenny and Megan? Have you seen them?”

  Saul shook his head in dismay. “I don’t know. I just don’t know, Jason. I haven’t seen them, but I’m sure they’re all right.”

  Jason wasn’t sure of that at all. He had seen several women lying in crumpled heaps in the street and knew that the raiders had shown no compunctions about hurting females.

  But there were other things to worry about in the wake of this tragedy. “What about Ward and Wash?” He would need help putting Fury back together, and he knew he could count on those two.

  “They’re around somewhere,” Saul replied, and Jason felt relief at the knowledge that they were still alive. “Ward took a bullet in the arm, but I don’t think Wash was hurt at all. Both of them put up a fight. They got a few of the bastards.”

  To hear that curse from the normally mild-spoken Saul was an indication of how shaken he was. Jason dismounted and asked, “What about Dr. Morelli?”

  “Trying to help the injured, the last I saw. He was setting up what he called a field hospital in the Crown and Garter.”

  Jason started toward Alf Blodgett’s saloon when he paused and looked back at Saul. “What about Morelli’s family?”

  Saul shook his head. “I don’t know.” His voice and face were miserable.

  Hoofbeats made both of them look around. Salmon Kendall’s wagon rolled toward them, with Salmon at the reins whipping the horses. His wife Carrie was at his side, clutching Salmon’s arm. Carrie’s daughter Chrissy peered over their shoulders from the back of the wagon. She held a gray, squirming bundle that Jason recognized as her dog Rags.

  Salmon, whose first wife had been killed in the Comanche attack during the wagon train journey, had married the widow Carrie English and taken on Chrissy and Rags as members of his family as well. Carrie was a pretty blonde, but at the moment her face was tense and drawn with worry.

  Salmon pulled his team to a halt and leaped down from the seat. Jason was glad to see that his friend was hale and hearty, unharmed by the outlaws. In fact, it became evident as Salmon spoke that he and his family hadn’t been caught in the raid.

  “We heard the shots and saw the smoke,” Salmon said. “I wanted to come right on into town, but Carrie insisted on coming with me. Said with all hell breakin’ loose, I couldn’t leave her and Chrissy alone on the farm.” Salmon’s broad shoulders rose and fell. “I figured she was right. Took me a while to get the team hitched up, though.”

  Jason nodded. “You did the right thing. A gang of outlaws did this, and you wouldn’t have wanted them to catch the womenfolks alone on the farm.” Jason rubbed a weary hand across his jaw, wincing as the movement made his arm hurt. He looked down and saw several cactus needles sticking through his shirt sleeve. He was going to have to pull those out of there when he got a chance. Lord knows when that would be.

  He went on. “I’ve got a hunch this was Juan Alba’s bunch.”

  “You’re right,” a familiar voice said behind Jason. He looked around to see Wash Keough coming toward him. The old-timer continued. “I heard some o’ them sons o’ bitches yellin’ back and forth and caught Alba’s name. The bastard.” He nodded to Carrie. “Beggin’ your pardon for the language, ma’am.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Keough,” Carrie said. “Men who would carry out atrocities such as this deserved to be called bastards and sons of bitches.”

  “What do we need to do, Jason?” Saul asked.

  Townspeople would normally look to the mayor in times of emergency, but Jason knew they all still relied on him because he had taken over as wagon master after his father’s death. He said, “The well seems to be all right. Put together a bucket brigade and get the rest of the fires out. I don’t think you’ll be able to save any of the buildings that are already burning, but we need to keep the fire from spreading. When you find people who are hurt but able to get around on their own, send them to the
Crown and Garter. Dr. Morelli is there, tending to the wounded. Anybody who’s hurt too bad to walk, put them in Salmon’s wagon and he can take them to the saloon.”

  “You don’t think there’s any chance those bandits will come back, do you?” Salmon asked.

  “I had a little run-in with them south of town,” Jason replied without going into the details. “They were going hell-for-leather toward the border. I don’t see them turning back.” He added in a bitter voice, “Looks like they already got everything they came for.”

  * * *

  The next couple of hours were like a nightmare from which Jason couldn’t wake up. He moved from building to building, checking the damage, the wounded, the dead. Much of the destruction was wanton and senseless, killing and burning just for the sake of savagery. It hadn’t been enough for Alba’s raiders to clean out the settlement of everything valuable. It was like they had tried to drive a stake into the very heart of Fury.

  Ward Wanamaker caught up to Jason while he was making his grim tour of the town. A bloodstained rag was wrapped around Ward’s left arm, but he shrugged when Jason asked him about the wound.

  “Didn’t bust the bone,” Ward said, “so I’m not gonna worry about it.”

  “You’ll worry about it if it festers and you get blood poisoning,” Jason warned. “Go over to the Crown and Garter and let Dr. Morelli take a look at it.”

  “Aw, damn, Jason—”

  “Go on,” Jason insisted. “It shouldn’t take long.” He looked around at the devastation. “And I’ll be at this chore for a while, figuring out just how bad things really are.”

  As he continued his inspection of the town, he looked for his sister and Megan. He hadn’t seen either of them so far, but at least he hadn’t found their bodies. He could tell himself that they were still alive.