"You all right, Hon?" he asked.
"It's nothing," she said furiously, swiping at a splinter that protruded from her cheek, dislodging it and letting out a little stream of blood.
"You sure?"
"Just drill them, will you?"
Good enough. She was his same old Kate.
J.D. swung back immediately to the shattered window they were sharing, aimed along his rifle's barrel, wished that he could spot the trash who'd blooded Kate, but they were riding past too swiftly for him. With a snarl, he picked a hooded coward out at random, fired the Winchester, and cleared the saddle of a frightened-looking flaxen chestnut mare.
How do you like that, prick?
"Who are you talking to?" Kate asked him, moving up to take her shot.
"Nobody," J.D. said, embarrassed that he'd voiced his thought aloud.
Kate squeezed off through the window while he pumped the lever-action on his Winchester, and J.D. heard her say, "That's one more down, who won't be going home."
So they'd dropped two of the attackers, and there'd been no time to see if any of the freedmen had been scoring hits from their assigned windows. Whatever else, they made substantial noise, and gunsmoke drifted eerily across the farmhouse porch, while gunmen on the gallop added more to the surreal fog.
How many would the raiders have to lose before they called it quits and ran for home? J.D. had never learned the knack of reading minds, though he could often second-guess another shooter when they faced each other one-on-one. In that case, he could watch his adversary's eyes and hands, hope to anticipate whatever moves he made. But with a dozen—make that ten—opponents, wearing hoods and galloping around in circles through the hazy dusk, forget about it.
All J.D. could do was blaze away, take down as many as he could, and hope that the survivors broke before their wild fire started scoring hits inside the Hilliards' home.
A momentary lull descended as the circling mob passed out of sight once more, around the east side of the house, and they heard Moses Dyer's shotgun roar again. Marking the seconds until hostile riders came back into view, J.D. mentally counted rounds remaining in his Winchester, before he'd have to switch to his six-gun instead. Say ten shots left, and if his luck held out, that ought to be enough.
Beside him, Kate warned, "Here they come again!"
* * *
Amos Hilliard reckoned he was letting down his friends. He'd hunted game before, and thought he'd gotten pretty good at it, but shooting at a man—much less a mob of white men—was another story altogether. So far, he'd fired four shots from his Henry rifle and had missed each time.
Pathetic.
It was even worse than just failing his friends, of course. Each shot he wasted failed Calliope, and that was worst of all. If he were killed, with all the other men, what would befall their women? He supposed Kate Blaze would go down fighting like a man, but what about Calliope, Venus, and Abigail?
Amos had seen what white men did to black women when they were riled, and there were no white female witnesses around. Before he left Calliope to that, he thought he'd rather put a bullet through her head himself, and that idea brought tears to Hilliard's eyes, spoiling his aim.
He used a sleeve to wipe his peepers, hoping no one caught him at it, and prepared himself for the next rush of hooded riders, when they'd finished circling back around his house. The stout walls hadn't suffered any lasting damage, thankfully, but Amos knew he'd be replacing the front door and windows all around—that is, if he survived the night.
And here they came again, still whooping and still shooting, even through he sensed their numbers were diminished now. Despite his bungling efforts, Amos calculated three or four of them were down and out by now. Not bad, considering the cracker trash had started out with twelve. If better shots than he could keep on whittling down the odds, Hilliard supposed he and his friends might manage to survive.
And if they didn't...well, at least the raiders whom they didn't kill would know that they'd been in a fight, and they could take that word back to their yellow-livered boss.
Before the point man of the hooded party came in view, Amos had braced his Henry on the splintered windowsill and clenched his teeth, determined to hold steady and to make his next shot count. It might not count for much, but even so...
A rider plunged into his sights and Amos jerked the Henry's trigger, almost positive he'd missed again—but then the would-be killer's hood seemed to explode, as if the Henry's slug had struck a melon, and the lifeless body toppled over backwards from a wild-eyed snowflake Appaloosa galloping at speed.
Instead of cheering, Amos pumped the Henry's lever-action and lined up another shot.
* * *
Fuck this! thought Brent Bodine. I'm getting out of here!
It didn't matter to him now, if Mr. Fields was furious or not. The boss could fire him, even blacklist him from working anywhere in the Dakota Territory, but exile still beat the hell out of a cold hole in the ground.
"Come on!" he shouted to the remnant of his raiding party. "This is suicide! Break off!"
Nobody challenged him, which came as no surprise. They all peeled off together, more or less, although the fighting wedge they'd started with had long since gone to hell with holes shot in its ranks. Bodine had lost track of his friends as they had fallen, knew he'd have to count and list them later, when they gained safe distance from the house and doffed their flour sacks. He also couldn't tell if any of the men still mounted might be wounded, and until they put the darkies' blazing guns behind them, he was too damned scared to care.
Jumping Jesus, what a night this was for white men everywhere!
Bodine didn't wait to see if any of his comrades heard or followed his command to flee. Wheeling his horse around, he spurred it to the best speed it could manage, leaning down across his saddle horn to make the smallest possible target of himself. Gunfire still echoed behind him, crackling in the night, but now he heard hoofbeats pursuing him eastward, back toward the Circle F and home.
How long the ranch would be his home remained to be discovered, yet. Bad news had never failed to anger Mr. Fields, and Bodine would be bringing him the worst yet: not only his second rout in battle and a failure to complete his mission, but the loss of even more men than had fallen when the bounty hunters spoiled his necktie party with the Hilliards. It was well within the realm of possibility that Fields might put a bullet through his head, but if Bodine took flight without returning to the Circle F, he would be riding out with nothing but the sweat-stained clothing on his back, a few odd dollars in his pocket, and no hope of finding sanctuary anywhere inside Dakota Territory.
No. He would go back, explain to Fields exactly what had happened—well, at least the best he could—and see what next transpired. If that ended his life, so be it.
Christ, a man could only do so much.
Chapter 11
"Is everyone all right?"
Kate's question, almost shouted, echoed through the farmhouse as the raiders galloped off, night and their own dust masking their retreat. J.D. still fired one last round at the fleeing shadows before voices started sounding off from this and that room, spreading word that no one from the dinner party had been seriously wounded.
There were cuts and scrapes, of course, mostly from wives and children scrambling to protect themselves from hostile fire, but of the armed defenders, only J.D., Kate and Moses Dyer bore the superficial injuries from flying glass and splinters. It was pure dumb luck, J.D. surmised, that no one had been seriously hurt by bullets crashing through the windows, drilling the front door, or rattling around inside the house as ricochets.
When Kate was satisfied they had no bleeding victims on their hands, she faced J.D. and said, "We're wasting time."
"For what?"
"To run them down, J.D."
He knew her fighting blood was up, and was distinctly thankful for it. Still, he wasn't sure that following the raiders was the best idea she'd ever had.
"Now
, Kate—"
"They'll just keep coming back," she interrupted him. "Night after night. You know it's true."
He couldn't fault her logic there, and caught himself before reminding Kate it wasn't their problem to settle, after all. They'd only been attacked for sitting down to dinner with the Hilliards, and he wondered if the raiders even knew that he and Kate were in the house when they attacked. Doubtful, after they'd put their horses in the barn and out of sight.
In which case, they could simply give the whole thing up and ride away.
But how would Kate regard him in the future, if they did that, or he even voiced the words?
How would J.D. regard himself?
"Okay," he said. "I'm glad we left the horses saddled, anyway."
Almost before those words were out, most of the adult ex-slaves in the shot-up dining room were clamoring for their white guests to reconsider, let it go, move on and put Yankton behind them for their own sake. Only Moses Dyer kept his mouth shut, and the rest of it made good sense to J.D.—until he thought about Kate's future estimation of him, and the trouble he would have facing himself in any mirror from then on.
"We need to stop this," Kate was telling them, J.D. already out the door and moving swiftly toward the Hilliards' barn with long, determined strides. He could reload his rifle later, if and when they had someone to shoot at. In the meantime, every second wasted gave their enemies a longer lead.
He came back from the barn, leading his stallion and her gelding, both with ears perked up from all the recent gunfire, seeming anxious to be out of there and in pursuit. He passed the gelding's reins to Kate, then mounted up and took a second to survey the upturned faces of their clearly frightened hosts.
Would things be better for the freedmen if he tried and failed to get the crackers off their backs, or worse?
And did it even matter, in the end?
If he and Kate failed in their bid to stop the nightriders, they'd both be dead, beyond considering the ones they left behind on Earth.
"Their trail leads eastward," Kate observed. "With any luck, we'll close the gap before they veer off or split up."
For the first time since the raid had started, Moses Dyer spoke up. "Ain't no secret where them crackers all be goin'," he announced. "They's headed for the Circle F."
* * *
Ellis Fields was sitting down to supper—prime rib, rare, with baked potato and pan-fried asparagus from his own garden, a favorite combination—when the cry went up of riders coming in. He took his time, waited, and had the first succulent bite of beef between his teeth before his houseman interrupted, blathering apologies, to tell him that the raiding party had returned.
"Or some of 'em, I oughta say, sir."
"What's that mean?" Fields asked him, talking with his mouth full, though a sinking feeling in his chest told him that he already knew the answer.
"Sir, a dozen rode out when they left, and only eight's come back. Or maybe seven, I ain't rightly sure."
"Goddamn it!" Fields swallowed his half-chewed bite of beef, set down his knife and fork, making an "X" across his dinner plate, and pushed back from the hand-carved table where he almost always dined alone. He only took a moment, navigating rooms and hallways that would probably confuse some newcomers, then stepped onto his broad front porch, where dust was settling over seven—no, eight—riders, most of them still with the flour sacks over their heads.
Fields spotted Brent Bodine, his posture and his belly both dead giveaways, and shouted at him, "Brent! Get in here, now!" That said, he turned and disappeared inside the house again, not bothering to see if any of the other seven men were wounded and required a doctor's services.
Not that he planned to call Doc Ansen out from town, in any case. That would be all he needed at the moment, bringing in a witness who could place the raiders at his spread and draw the link between them that could send him off to prison.
When he was back inside the house, in what he sometimes called his drawing room, Fields waited for his foreman to catch up. Bodine arrived, winded, although as far as Fields could tell, his silver dapple gelding had been doing all the work.
"All right," Fields said, before his flunky had a chance to offer up excuses. "Spit it out!"
"Boss, they were waiting for us, all of 'em inside the Hilliards' place. As soon as we rode up and fired a couple shots, they all started unloading on us. Christ, I swear it was as bad as Gettysburg."
"Were you at Gettysburg, Bodine?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Then don't talk about it like you were!" Fields snapped at him.
"No, sir."
"All right. Let's tell it how the law would see it, then. You lot rode up and started shooting, then the darkies started firing back in self-defense."
"Well, uh...I guess so, yeah."
"And then?"
"Then what?"
"What happened then, you idiot?"
Bodine flinched as if Fields had slapped him, which was good, and then he forged ahead. "We rode around the house like that a few times, shootin' through the windows. Did you know they've only got one door?"
"The goddamned door you couldn't use to get inside and finish it?"
"Boss, that's what I'm tellin' you. They had at least four rifles, plus a shotgun that I'm sure of. Saw that twelve-gauge finish Billy Soames myself, I did. He leaves a widow and a couple orphans now."
"I couldn't give two farts about his family," Fields said. "Get on with it!"
"Okay. Sure, Boss. We rode around like that a few times, tradin' shots, but we were gettin' killed—and I mean killed. Aside from Soames, the niggers picked off Dautrey, Jones, and Treadwell."
"All of whom are on my payroll, I believe."
"Well, yeah. But Jesus—"
"You can call me 'Mr. Fields' or 'Sir.' Don't call me 'Jesus'."
"No, sir. Um...where was I, sir?"
"Explaining why you left four men behind, three of them linked to me."
"We hated to, you know. But with the niggers throwin' lead at us like that, if we'd have stayed, we'd all be dead by now."
"Which might have solved my problem," Fields replied.
"How's that, sir?" Bodine's face was worried now, his slow brain catching up with the grim night's events.
"Because I could explain a bunch of drunken yahoos riding off without my knowledge, getting killed in the commission of a crime. But how in goddamned hell can I explain you coming back?"
"Well, um..."
"Shut up! Get out of here. See to the others. Put the horses up and wipe them down. I need to think, and I can't do it while you stand there, stuttering."
* * *
"I don't like goin' into town right now," said Moses Dunn.
"We have to," Amos Hilliard challenged. "This is business for the law."
"You think the law don't know what's happening?" Dunn answered back. "You trust that cracker sheriff, now?"
"We gonna live in the Dakota Territory," Isaac Jones chimed in, "we gotta trust somebody, sometime. Ain't enough of us to run the county by ourselves."
"White men," Dyer fairly spat.
"The men in charge, Moses," Calliope replied. "We've never gone to them before, about our troubles. You don't know what any one of them is bound to say."
"Same thing as in the old days," Dyer answered, putting on a sneer as he said, "Nigguhs, get back in yo' place."
"This isn't Dixie, Moses," Custus Edgefield said. "You try to make it all the same, and that ain't right."
"What if the sheriff runs us off?" Dyer inquired.
"There's still the judge," Calliope reminded him. "The mayor, and the governor."
"You think they'd meet the likes of us?"
"Not if we sit out here and never try," she answered. "Nothing ever gets done, if you sit around and tell yourself it can't be done."
"I ain't convinced," Moses insisted.
"Then, you sit here by yourself," Amos directed him. "Or head back to your own place. Once we've been to town, som
ebody'll come by and tell you what's decided."
"Just like that?"
"You know another way to do it, Moses? Writin' letters? Singin' hymns in church? Hell, we don't even have a church!"
Moses considered that, then said, "Reckon I'd better ride along and keep you company, in case y'all run into trouble on the way."
Sensing a minor victory, Calliope smiled back at him and said, "That's mighty kind of you."
"Least I can do," Dyer replied. "I wouldn't want the young'uns gettin' scairt without me. Anyhow, I'm gettin' low on ammo if the buncha them comes back."
"We'll all watch over one another," Venus Jones said, smiling hesitantly.
"And we'll take our wagon," Amos Hilliard said. "I'm thinkin' everybody ought to fit all right, if no one worries about rubbin' elbows."
"I'm more worried about J.D. and his wife," Calliope replied.
"Wouldn't have liked tryin' to hold them back," her husband said.
"Me neither." That from Isaac Jones. "Them two can shoot, and I ain't lying."
"Still," Calliope pressed on. "The two of them, going against that bunch out at the Circle F."
"Sooner we tip the sheriff off to that," Amos reminded her, "faster he can ride out to help them. Isaac, Custus, help me get my horses in their harness now."
* * *
The raiders' trail was fairly plain to follow, thanks to moonlight beaming down upon the plains. It ran due eastward without deviating in the slightest, like the fleeing shooters had no thought of splitting up, no other destinations they could head for that would make the chase more difficult.
"So, it's the Circle F," Kate said, when they had ridden for the best part of two miles in silence.
"Are you having second thoughts?" J.D. inquired.
"Not even close," she said. "But we should think about the way we want to handle it, when we get there."
"Without seeing the spread beforehand," J.D. said, "I don't know any way to plan it out."
"That's what I mean. First chance we get, we ought to spy it out and see where everybody is, before we make our move."
"A spread as big as people claim this is," J.D. advised, "I wouldn't be surprised to see three dozen hands working. It could be more."
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