by Jory Sherman
“He’s in shock now,” Al said, his voice soft. “You get to diggin’ too hard and he might light a shuck.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here and let him die,” Roy said.
“I can stop the bleeding, maybe,” Anson said.
“Well, shit, if he’s all tore up inside,” Roy said, “what the hell good’s that gonna do?” His voice was on the rim of hysteria and the others knew it.
“Old son,” Peebo said, “he’s just tryin’ to help, Anson is, and you might want old Dave to be comfortable some before he goes.”
“You sayin’ he’s goin’ to die?” Roy said, glaring at Peebo. “You givin’ up on him?”
Al scooted down closer to Roy. “Roy, you’ve got to face what’s got to be faced. That ball hit a lung and as long as it’s inside him, it’s nothin’ but a question of time. A wild ball like that can tear hell out of a man’s innards.”
“Damn you, Al. Damn all of you. I ain’t lettin’ David die.”
“Nobody’s lettin’ him die, Roy,” Anson said, as he leaned forward and started to tear off and stuff pieces of David’s shirt in the hole to stop the bleeding. David’s breathing was shallow and thready.
“He don’t sound none too good,” Peebo said to Anson, almost in a whisper.
“I know. I don’t think it would have helped any if I did find that damned ball.”
“What’s that?” Roy asked, straining to hear what Anson and Peebo were saying to each other.
“Roy, I’ve stopped the bleeding for the time being,” Anson said. “It’s only temporary and it’s all I can see to do right now.”
“Let me see,” Roy said, and scooted up to where Anson had been sitting. Anson moved back out of the way. He reached for his rifle and grabbed it up.
There was more gunfire from Anson’s house. He started to recharge his rifle while Roy bent over and listened to David’s breathing.
“I don’t hear Pa’s cannon,” Anson said.
“No,” Al said. “I was wondering about that.”
“Me too,” Peebo said. “Something’s wrong.”
They were all quiet then, listening to David’s breathing, which had begun to falter. Roy was whispering something in David’s ear, but none there could make out the words.
Anson resumed pouring powder down the barrel of his rifle. He nodded to Peebo, who slid away from David and picked up his rifle. In a few seconds he was reloading his own weapon. “Thanks for the flint, son,” Peebo said. “Worked just fine. Now, if it could only aim the barrel…”
Roy sat up straight.
“I think David’s dying,” he said, and there was a whimper in his voice, a quaver the others detected.
Anson, Peebo, and Al avoided looking at Roy just then, as if they were embarrassed for him. Roy slumped and looked down at his hands. They were grimy from the black powder and the grease and he sucked in a breath to keep from choking up and crying right then and there.
David’s eyelids fluttered open and closed several times. Roy leaned over so that David could see him. “David?”
“Ah,” David said.
“Can you hear me?”
David’s eyes remained open and Roy could see him trying to focus them.
“It doesn’t hurt much, Roy,” David said.
“David, I’m sorry I been raggin’ you.”
“No matter. Roy. You take good care of your mother.”
“David, you’re not going to die. We’re goin’ to get you a sawbones and fix you up. Doc Purvis is comin’ out.”
David opened his mouth and struggled to say something. He gagged and then started coughing. His face swelled and turned russet, and then the coughing stopped. His lips began turning blue once again.
“Purvis—he can’t help me now, Roy. No hard feelings between you and me?”
“No, David. Never was. I mean I … God, just don’t die, hear?”
David stopped breathing. Hie eyes widened and he looked up at the sky beyond Roy’s face and he lifted one arm as if he were reaching out for something. He made a gurgling sound in his throat and then relaxed. His eyes closed, and when Roy leaned down and put his face close to David’s mouth, he felt no air coming out.
David’s arm fell back down and he lay still. His chest no longer moved and his face began to take on a pallid cast as the sun rose higher and the shadows shrank to isolated pools beneath the trees.
Roy doubled over and began to sob. His body shook and his tears fell on David’s face. He cried for a long time as the rifles cracked in the distance, as if they belonged in another world and held no meaning for those gathered around the dead body of David Wilhoit as if waiting for Roy’s tears to raise him from the dead.
Finally Anson cleared his throat to say something. But no sound came out and he looked at the others there, Al and Peebo, and finally at Roy, who was crumpled up but no longer weeping, and wondered if they had all been struck dumb at that moment and if only the rifles up at the Box B headquarters could speak in their crisp, sharp, lethal voices.
40
THE NIGHT HAD been long and nerve-wracking. The men were still restless and had moved around the past two hours more than usual, and Martin had heard them talking in low tones but hadn’t been able to make out what they were saying. He sensed that they were faltering in their resolve to fight, and wondered if he should say something to bolster their spirits, help them find their courage.
The sky was paling ever so slightly, and he knew that if an attack was to be made by Aguilar and his men, it would not be long in coming. A sense of foreboding began to build inside of him, a blackness of the mind that the coming dawn could not erase with its spreading light. He wondered if the men would be able to act quickly enough to turn the wagon and if he could reload the cannon fast enough after he fired the first shot. So many doubts crept into his mind, like little snakelike tendrils with flickering forked tongues and blind eyes.
Martin saw the mist rising from the fields as the sun’s streaming light began to blush the eastern horizon. He saw the fog float upward from the creek like a thick cloud and then unfurl to mingle with the mist under the delicate pressure of a light breeze from the southwest.
As the fog began to build and spread like some rolling carpet of cotton, he heard shots coming from down the road. Then, after a numbing silence, he heard more shots and the horrible scream of a man in mortal agony.
“Socrates, you and Carlos there, help me take these sides down. The rest of you men crawl under the wagon.”
At first nobody moved, then Socrates walked over and Carlos Quintana followed him. The three of them began to unlatch the side panels and take them down, exposing the cannon on its bed, its brass barrel gleaming faintly in the dim light of the dawn. Martin climbed up onto the wagon. None of the men moved until Martin barked at them: “Take your positions. Now.”
The men crawled beneath the wagon, and Martin heard them muttering to themselves as he picked up a small keg of powder and began to pour it into the hole. He had checked the load earlier and knew it was tamped down and ready.
“Lift the wagon when I give the word, and move right or left as I command, Carlos.”
“I will tell them,” Carlos said.
“Socrates, you find yourself a tree and stay behind it.”
“Yes, suh,” Socrates said.
Then they all heard the popping of rifles on the south road. Martin knelt down and took flint and steel and began striking sparks into a lead pan filled with fine wood shavings. One of the sparks caught and he bent down and blew it to flame. Then he took a long slow fuse and stuck its end to the flame. The fuse began to fume and spark as it started to burn. He had thirty feet of it and felt sure he could get off several shots. Near the muzzle of the cannon, he had set out cloth bundles of buckshot, pieces of metal, chunks of lead, and larger lead balls that he could ram down the barrel. The metal was seated on coarse black powder to act as the charge for each load. He had gone over the reloading a thousand times in his mind. It would be b
etter if he had a helper but he knew it was something he had to do alone. He would be an easy-enough target if he wasn’t careful. Two or three men would be too tempting for Aguilar’s riflemen.
The light from the moon began to fade as Martin stood there with the burning fuse in his hand, listening to the rippling crackle of rifle fire.
“Men,” he yelled, “get ready! Lift the wagon off its wheels.”
He heard a scuffling underneath the wagon boards, the low sounds of whispered conversations. But the wagon did not move.
“Lift up the wagon,” Martin said, in a loud-enough voice for all his men beneath the wagon to hear.
There was more talk and he heard scuffling sounds underneath him. “Get this wagon up off the wheels,” he ordered again. “Now.”
Then he heard a sound and turned to see the dim outline of a man standing beside the wagon. The others crawled out from underneath and stood up.
“We do not want you to shoot the cannon.”
“Who is that?” Martin rasped.
“I am Julio Sifuentes.”
“Julio, get the men back under the wagon and move this cannon.”
“We do not want to do that.”
“Why?”
“We have seen what the cannon does. We saw what it did to the Apaches. We do not want to see our brothers shot into little pieces like that.”
“We are being attacked, Sifuentes.”
“Yes, and we will fight. But we will fight our way. Not with the cannon.”
Martin noticed the men all carried their rifles.
“So you’re going against my orders, Sifuentes.”
“We fought the Apaches for you. We will fight our brothers if they attack us here. But we do not want to see their bodies cut up and thrown everywhere like with the Apaches. We could not live with those thoughts for all of our lives.”
“Well, I’m disappointed. Aguilar’s men will be here any minute and we could have stopped them in their tracks with the cannon.”
“The cannon does not belong here,” Sifuentes said. “It is from a ship, and this is land that already has blood on it. Do not shoot the cannon. If you do, we will throw down our rifles and hide. We will not fight.”
Martin saw that he was not going to win the argument. He looked past Sifuentes at the other men. For a split second he thought they might lift their rifles to their shoulders and shoot him if he defied them.
“Very well,” Martin said. He lifted the fuse in his hand, then dropped it to his feet. He stamped out the sparking fuse and a puff of white smoke rose up and then dissipated.
“Bring me my rifle, Carlos,” Martin said, as he sprang from the wagon bed. “The rest of you find cover and do your best. Otherwise Matteo Aguilar will win and probably kill you all.”
The men scrambled for cover. Carlos brought Martin’s rifle to him. It had been leaning against a tree behind the wagon where Martin had left it in case he had to make a run for it. He took one last glance at the cannon and thought: Caroline was right when she told me to get rid of the cannon. She hated the cannon and so do these men.
He should have seen it coming, should have seen the discontent in the faces of his men. But he had not. He had been thinking only of the four-pounder and the damage it could do, horrible damage, to Aguilar’s men when they attacked. He had forgotten the horror of the Apache attack by Cuchillo and his braves. He had forgotten the mangling and the blood.
Now Sifuentes had reminded him of what the cannon could do. But he had already known, and so had his hands. The cannon was a useful weapon, a weapon of war, and this was war. Yet there was something different about this one. And there shouldn’t have been. No one had protested his use of the cannon on the Apaches, but now that he was fighting Mexicans, the rules had suddenly changed. He knew there was a difference, but he did not know why. Were the Apaches so different from the Mexicans? What if they were being attacked by white men? Would the rules have changed again?
Martin wanted to ask Sifuentes and the others about this question. He wanted to know why they did not want to use the cannon, but were still willing to fight with rifles and machetes, and maybe even slingshots if necessary.
Martin’s ruminations were cut short as he heard the rumbling thunder of hoofbeats beyond the barn, along the road. He knew the others had heard it, too, and he knew he did not have to issue any orders. In a few seconds they would all be fighting for their lives.
Martin cocked his rifle and braced himself against the tree. Then he saw them in the pale dawn light—two lines of riders breaking wide, one to come at them from around the right side of the barn, the others across the open toward the house.
The riders looked as if they knew where they were going. They did not shoot their rifles, but held their fire and they did not bunch up. He stopped counting at a dozen as one line disappeared from view and the other spread out and began twisting their horses in a zigzag pattern as if they had trained for this moment. It was both a beautiful sight and a terrible one, and Martin started measuring the distance from a rider he had picked out as he brought his rifle to his shoulder.
Before he could fire, Martin heard a shot. It came from an upstairs window of his home and he saw one of the riders falter and slump over in the saddle. But the rider did not fall, and kept coming. It was a long shot, but an accurate one.
Then he found his rider and led him and squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle buck against his shoulder as it spouted flame and smoke and blotted out the charging horsemen.
A split second later he heard a dozen rifles go off around him, and from the perimeter where his men waited behind earthen breastworks, and then there were shots from the house and he saw riders all around him, through the blossoming clouds of smoke, and all time stopped as Martin began to pour powder down the smoking barrel of his rifle.
And he heard the screams of wounded men and the yells of his own and he wished he had fired the cannon and ended it all as the battle swarmed around him and rifles crackled and popped from all directions and all the targets disappeared in the pall of white smoke that blinded and choked him as he seated patch and ball and jerked his ramrod free.
In that frozen moment of eternity, the battle broke over Martin and he felt all alone, with a terrible fear building in his belly that had nothing to do with his courage, but with all that he could not see and all that he could hear, as the peaceful world of the Box B exploded and screamed in his ears.
41
ESPERANZA’S HEART QUICKENED as she saw the distant rider, saw him multiply into two, then three, four, five, and then too many to count. They seemed to ride out of nowhere, out of the darkness and into the spreading misty light of the dawn. She knew who they were; she had been waiting all these long hours, her bladder full for the past thirty minutes, her stomach empty, her nerves taut as the strings on Lazaro’s guitar.
She had sent Lucinda to Caroline’s room to see what Lazaro was doing and if he was staying away from the windows. Lucinda had said she had to relieve herself, but would do that, then return. But she was not here now and her loaded rifle was leaning against the wall near another window.
Esperanza sat straight in her chair and cocked the hammer on her rifle as she scooted the barrel farther out the window. The riders were coming fast and she knew she would not have time to aim and shoot the first one. She picked the fourth man on horseback and moved the muzzle of her rifle until she saw the horse’s head and then she lined up both front and rear sights. When she had the horse’s head in view, she swung the barrel slowly to her left, trying to match the speed of its gallop, and when she had swung two meters she squeezed the trigger and kept the barrel moving as she had been taught to do when she was a girl shooting her father’s old fowling piece.
She was not prepared for the explosion that made her ears hurt and drowned out everything but a steady ringing. She felt the rifle jerk hard against her shoulder and saw the smoke billow from the muzzle. The smoke blotted out all the riders and she did not know if her ball h
ad found its mark.
The explosion had deafened her for a few seconds and then loudened in the empty room until her ears began to hum with a steady ringing as if a bell had been struck. The billowing white smoke mixed with the morning fog and she could not see if she had hit her target. Nor did she want to know. She slumped in her chair and pulled the rifle back inside to reload it. She sagged against the wall as rifles cracked outside and men began to yell and scream, her hands trembling and her body quivering.
Through the din she heard the door open. Still half-deaf, she heard the soft pad of sandals on the hardwood floor.
“Did you shoot an enemy, Esperanza?” Lazaro asked.
“I do not know. You should not be here. Go back to your mother’s room.”
Just then, rifles began crackling and Esperanza cringed at the sound, like bones breaking, and she heard rifle shots from the other rooms, so she knew the attack must be coming at them from all directions.
“I hear them,” Lazaro said. “I hear them shooting. I wish I could see the fighting.”
“You be quiet,” Esperanza said and, almost mechanically, began to reload her rifle. “And stay away from that window.” She saw him go to the window and start to lean out. “Get back. You might get shot.”
“There is a lot of shooting,” Lazaro said.
“I am trying to put powder in this clumsy rifle. Callate.”
Lazaro stepped back away from the window, but Esperanza saw that he was very excited. The ringing in her ears began to subside as she finished starting the patch and ball down the barrel of her rifle. She stood up and extracted the wiping stick from beneath the barrel. She tamped the ball and cloth down until they were seated and then poured fine powder in the pan and checked the flint to see that it was tight. She pushed the chair aside and stood at the window, looking out.
“Where is Lucinda?” she asked Lazaro.
“She had to go pee.”
“She should be here.”
“She will come. I think she is talking to the other women.”
“Damn her,” Esperanza said.
