by Jory Sherman
“I’m a Ranger, ma’am, till I die.”
Darnell finished drinking his water. He put the oilskin packet back inside a pocket in his coat, and stood up.
“Well, if Aguilar’s moving against the Box B, I’d best be getting on out there,” Darnell said.
“But that’s a long ride,” Nancy said. “And you must be tired.”
“I can rub some dirt in my eyes. We’ll sleep when we can.”
Richman stood up. “If there’s anything I can do to help…”
“You keep an eye out for Reynaud,” Darnell said. “Get word to me if you see him in town.”
“I will.”
“Is there a reward for him?” Nancy asked, looking up at Darnell.
“No’m, not yet. The ink on these warrants is still wet. But I’m authorized to bring him in dead or alive.”
“And which would you prefer?” Nancy asked.
“It don’t make no never mind to me which,” Darnell said, tapping the brim of his hat with his finger. “Be seein’ you. Thanks for the branch, Ken.”
“You’re welcome. When you come back, maybe you’ll have whiskey instead of water.”
“I might, at that,” Darnell said. He looked to the bar. “Boys, let’s go.”
Casebolt and Shepley left their stools immediately. They picked up their rifles and followed Darnell out the door.
“My, what a surprise,” Nancy said, after the batwing doors had stopped creaking on their hinges.
“Yes. I imagine Matteo will be surprised, as well.”
“Maybe that’ll be an end to poor Martin’s troubles.”
Ken finished his whiskey. The fumes burned his eyes and left them wet. He looked at the silent batwings, the darkness beyond.
“I keep thinking I ought to be out at the Box B with Martin right now,” Ken said. “Helping him.”
Nancy reached over and put her hand atop Ken’s.
“No, you belong here,” she said. “With me. I don’t want you getting shot.”
“I just hope Martin comes out of this all right. He’s been having a run of bad luck lately.”
“I know. It’s so sad. Caroline dying and now this.”
“I tell you, Nancy, I don’t know why any man would want to run a ranch in this pitiful country. If it’s not the Apaches or your neighbors trying to do you in, it’s the damned wind or the rain or the hurricanes. I just don’t understand why Martin ever left the sea to take up ranching.”
“We all have our dreams,” Nancy said.
43
THEY FINISHED COVERING David’s body with hastily cut mesquite boughs. It was plain to Anson that Roy was shaken up at his stepfather’s death. Roy was stumbling around like a man in a stupor.
“Roy,” Anson said, putting the last bough over David’s body. “Buck up. We’ve got to get to the ranch quick.”
“Hey, I’m all right, Anson.”
“I guess David’s death hit you pretty hard.”
“No. I can handle it.”
“Bullshit.”
“If you two are going to fight,” Al said, “Peebo and I will walk to headquarters by ourselves.”
“Come on, Anson,” Peebo said. “Let’s go.”
“Roy?” Anson said.
Roy looked at the makeshift covering over David and doubled over for a minute. When he straightened up, his eyes were wet and he looked as if he was going to be sick.
“Just let me get my breath,” Roy said. “Just give me a minute. You all go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you.”
“You don’t have to come with us at all,” Anson said. “It’s not your fight.”
Roy’s face contorted at the lash of Anson’s words, as if his head had been wrenched violently. He already felt bad about David getting killed and now Anson was laying into him. He felt as if he was locked inside some nightmare dream. He wished it could make all the hurt go away, wished he had never gotten into this fight in the first place. He wished David was still alive. And most of all, he wished he had not ragged on David so, especially right before he got killed. What in hell was he going to tell his mother? How was she going to take it? She might even blame him for not protecting David, and she might begin to hate him for hating David so. Everything was so mixed up and he couldn’t think, couldn’t move. He felt as if he was all torn up inside, as if he was raw and bleeding, only nobody could see any of it. It was all inside him, all tangled up and all mashed and twisted and cut up like butchered meat and he couldn’t even cry, couldn’t even pray, or curse, or get away from any of it. It was as if he were nailed down there by David’s body, as if David’s dead soul didn’t want him to leave, but to stay there and die there with him for all the taunts and teasings and hatefulness he had bestowed upon him.
Roy looked askance at Anson. Anson had not moved, but seemed to still be waiting for him. None of this made any sense. David should not have died this way, should not have to lie there under a bunch of mesquite leaves as if he were just trash to be buried out of sight.
A volley of rifle shots spurred Anson to pick up his rifle. “We’ve got to go and help my pa out,” he said. “Roy, you can stay here if you need to.”
Al shot Anson a look of disapproval. Anson ignored him. He and Peebo started running to the road. Al turned to look at Roy. “Might be better if you come with us, Roy. You can’t do any good here.”
“I know. I—I’m just damned sorry I was so mean to him.”
“It doesn’t make any difference now. You can’t help David none, and if you stay here and those Rocking A boys come back, we’ll be cartin’ your corpse to the graveyard. Come on.”
Roy took a deep breath and shook his head as if to rid his thoughts of David. He stepped to a tree and picked up his rifle. “I’m ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Al took off at a run, with Roy a few paces behind him. The two caught up with Anson and Peebo. They heard sporadic firing and the sounds grew louder and more distinct as they drew closer to the Box B headquarters.
“Sounds like a battle to me,” Al said. “Lots of shooting.”
“Yeah,” Anson said, and gritted his teeth as he began to run faster. The rifle shots were not steady, but there were more of them, and he found himself counting out the seconds it took a man to reload a rifle. Juanito had said a man should be able to reload in twenty-two seconds while under fire, and Anson had practiced and practiced but he’d never been able to do it in less than about forty seconds.
He hadn’t counted the number of men from the Rocking A who had passed them on the road, but he knew there were at least twenty or more, and maybe his pa had a couple of dozen, all told, up at the headquarters, and now it seemed like they were all shooting pretty regular and he knew how hard it was to shoot a man from a galloping horse. He knew his pa had cleared out the barn and stables and put the horses in a pasture out of harm’s way. He kept listening for the sound of the cannon going off, but he never heard its roar and now, as his side began to ache from running, he was worried sick that something had happened to his pa.
“Look out,” Anson said, as the barn came into sight. “Spread out and head for this side of the barn.”
“Then what?” Peebo asked.
“Sneak around it and shoot anybody on horseback.”
“What the hell happened to that cannon your pa lugged in from town?”
“I don’t know,” Anson said, and bent over to keep a low profile. He saw riders beyond the barn, but only briefly. They seemed to be riding in circles, or back and forth. He couldn’t tell because they were too far away and were not in view long enough.
Al and Roy struck a path to the left of the barn and Anson turned right, with Peebo following him. Two riders came around the barn and Anson saw that they were reloading as they came, using the barn for cover. He stopped, took aim on the nearest one. Peebo stopped, too, and brought his own rifle to his shoulder.
“I got the one in the front,” Anson said. “You get the other one.”
“Son, I got him at t
he end of the pipe.”
Peebo fired and Anson led his target and fired a split second later, and both shots missed as the riders spotted them and put their horses into a zigzag. Then the two riders raced around the right side of the barn and disappeared from sight.
“Damn,” Peebo said. “I’m gettin’ right rusty.”
“I missed, too.” Anson trotted toward the barn, spilling powder from his horn in his excitement, and lost track of how much went down the barrel. He reached the back of the barn and leaned against it to finish loading. “Sloppy,” he said, knowing it had taken him the better part of a minute to reload, and his heart was pounding so fast he thought it was going to burst from his chest.
“Now what?” Peebo asked, as he leaned a shoulder against the barn. “I’m loaded. Are you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I poured fifty grains or two hundred down my damned barrel.”
“Same here. I reckon I got enough to push the ball out the end.”
Anson saw Al and Roy stop at the far corner of the barn. Al held a hand out to keep Roy back while he peeked around the corner. Anson smiled. He would not have to worry about Al. He knew how to fight.
“We ain’t goin’ to get much shootin’ from back here,” Peebo said.
“Follow me.” Anson crept to the corner of the barn and craned his neck, staying low. He saw riders going in and out of the smoke, but none seemed an immediate threat. He stepped around the corner, knowing he was going to be without cover. Rifle shots popped and snapped like cracking dry tree limbs. He was surprised at all the white smoke. It clung to the ground, thick as clouds, mingling with the fog of morning, the dew evaporating as the sun struggled to clear the horizon.
Peebo came up behind him as Anson reached the other corner of the barn.
“We can’t go into that smoke,” Anson said.
“No, son, we can’t. Want to try and make the front porch of the house?”
“We’ll be walkin’ into smoke.”
“Make a wide circle around it, off yonder to the right. At the base of the slope. We can use the smoke for cover.”
Anson thought about it. He had a rough idea of where the Box B hands would be and where his father would be with the cannon:behind the house. Martin would have shooters inside the house. There was nobody in the barn, but anyone going in now, would be trapped. The slope Peebo was talking about lay almost directly perpendicular to the barn and house. The house sat up on a low hill, with trees all around it. If they could make it through the smoke to the base of the slope, then they could stay behind the smoke and make their way to the house. If they could get inside, they’d have cover and be able to help fend off Matteo’s men.
“Sounds right to me,” Anson said.
“Let’s go, then.”
Anson started running, straightaway from the barn, then began to angle left. He could hear Peebo’s boots slapping the ground behind him. Bullets whistled all around them, but they knew these were wild shots. Anson ran straight into a cluster of smoke that hugged the ground and he coughed, gagged, fought for air.
Peebo, behind him, held his breath as long as he could and then began gulping smoke. Rifles cracked from within the dense cloud of white smoke and they heard lead balls ricochet and whine off somewhere out of sight.
Anson nearly stumbled on the sloping ground and he got his bearings as Peebo caught up to him. “This here’s the bottom of that long slope.”
“Yeah, I reckon. I figure the house is right over yonder. Sounds like most of the shooting’s on the side and back of the house.”
Anson listened. “Could be,” he said.
“I wonder how Al and Roy are doin’.”
“They’ll do all right. Let’s just worry about ourselves. Ready?”
“I’d like to see a target. We might want to go up this slope and see if we can’t see down on the fighting.”
“Hmm,” Anson intoned. “Might be best, at that. That smoke is thick as pudding, but we ought to be able to see, if we get to higher ground.”
“We’ll also make better targets of ourselves,” Peebo said.
Anson flapped his hand to blow smoke away from his face. Now they both heard hoofbeats; hoofbeats that signaled many riders still fighting, probably invisible to the Box B hands. It was eerie standing there in the smoke listening to the sporadic shots and the galloping horses and not being able to see what was happening.
“Well?” Peebo said.
“I’m thinking about it. We could maybe walk a ways up the slope, stay low and see what we can see. Can’t see a damned thing from here. We’ll be able to see the front of the house and the left side.”
“Yeah?”
“And if it looks clear, we can run on down to the house and go inside.”
“We’ll have to yell to make ourselves known to whoever’s inside. ’Else they’ll likely blow our heads off, us chargin’ in like that.”
“Let’s take it one step at a time. First, up the slope. Then, either pick us some targets if we can see ’em, or go on down to the house and get inside.”
“Good enough,” Peebo said. He started scrambling up the rise and Anson had to run to catch up. They did not look back down until they were well up the slope. Then Anson stopped and turned around.
Peebo saw Anson turn and he stopped and did the same.
Anson let out a sigh. Then he gasped at what he saw.
“Jesus,” Peebo said.
With the sun at their backs, they had a panoramic view of the battlefield below. Amid the cloaking smoke, they saw riders shooting from the saddle at targets behind the house, hugging their mounts like Apaches and shooting from the hip. Then they’d race back into the smoke and reload.
“Look,” Anson said. “There, over by the front porch.”
Peebo turned his head to look where Anson was pointing.
“My god,” he said.
Several men were pulling flaming torches from a fire they had built just beyond the smoke, and running up to the porch and tossing the firebrands inside the house. The front of the house was already blazing.
“Nobody’s shooting at them, either,” Anson said, as he knelt down and brought his rifle to his shoulder.
Peebo dropped to his knees and then slipped sideways to sit on his butt. He dug his heels in and braced himself as he prepared to take aim.
“Listen,” Anson said. “I hear screaming. From inside the house.”
“Let’s start cutting down those murderin’ bastards,” Peebo said, as he lined up on the back of a man squatting by the fire.
Anson fired from the kneeling position at a man climbing the front steps, a torch in his hand. “I figure a hundred and fifty yards,” he said, and squeezed the trigger. He saw the man pitch forward and drop the firebrand as he hit the top step.
Peebo shot and struck his man square in the back. The mortally wounded man fell face down into the fire and sparks flew upward like flung jewels.
The other men stopped what they were doing and turned to look up at the slope. Anson sat down and started to reload.
“They’ve spotted us, son,” Peebo said. “A couple of them are going for their horses. We’re going to be in deep shit pretty damned quick.”
Anson finished reloading and saw the men clawing at their reins and grabbing saddlehorns. Then he saw the front of the house erupt in a wall of flames and, through an upstairs window, he saw the fire had spread to the upper story.
A great sadness washed over him as he saw his home streaming with fire and he knew that it was dying. He could hear the wood scream as the flames gathered momentum and raced through all the rooms.
But then the men who had started the conflagration were mounted and had turned their horses. They were riding straight toward him and Peebo, at least five of them, and there was no place they could hide.
Anson cocked his rifle.
Peebo cocked his weapon a second later.
The riders came on, driving their horses hard, and behind them the Baron house raged wi
th fire and the front walls started to cave in as if they were made of paper.
It took all of Anson’s resolve not to break down and weep at the terrible sight of La Loma de Sombra, the house his father had built, collapsing before his eyes as waves of flame swept over it like a terrible tide from hell and the smoke rose in a hideous column up to the blue morning sky like some ominous beacon that could be seen all the way to Baronsville.
44
MARTIN YELLED AT Socrates to take cover as the line of riders broke and rode in a wide arc on their position. They streamed out of the mist and the gathering fog like a swarm of hornets, and he was astounded not only by their horsemanship, but also their tactics. They seemed to have trained for just this moment. He aimed his rifle at one rider, only to see his horse cut sharply and change direction so that any chance for a shot was ruined.
Socrates scrambled under the wagon just as a lead ball kicked up dirt where he had been standing but a moment before. The other men were shooting, but Martin knew they were missing their targets. And as he bent low and ran to the side of the wagon to find cover, he saw one of his men grab his throat with both hands, his rifle hanging in the air for a second before it struck the ground, and the man’s hands turned into bloody gloves and he gurgled a terrible sound before he crumpled and fell into a silenced heap.
The riders kept coming, singly and in widely separated pairs, zigzagging through the white smoke and the fog, and Martin saw that they were dead shots as several of his men were hit and fell down, out of action. He used the sandbags lining the wagon bed for support and was able to shoot an attacker out of the saddle, but when he started to reload, another came at him and he had to scuttle for cover.
He thought he heard screams from inside the house, and then heard another sound that he could not identify. He put them both out of his mind, for the moment.
He knew then that his cannon would have been useless in such a battle. There was no massed target for such a weapon. He ducked behind a tree and finished reloading, but no riders came at him and he wondered where they had gone. It seemed to him that the battle had lasted for hours, but he knew he had been fighting for only a few minutes. He heard shots from the other side of the house, but no more from the upstairs and he tried to think how long it had been since last he had heard shots from the upstairs windows. A long time. Too damned long.
