by Ralph Cotton
Summers gigged his horse toward the safety of the crevice where Teasdale and Webb stood firing up at the ledge. “You’re wasting your bullets!” Summers shouted, sliding down from his horse’s back and jerking his rifle from his saddle boot. “We’ve got to get on the other side of the trail—get a better angle of fire!”
“I’ll cover you both,” said Teasdale. “Make a run for it. Get over there, then cover me.”
“Ready when you are,” said Will Summers, shoving his horse farther back into the crevice and spinning his reins around a jut of rock.
“I’m ready right now,” said Webb, his gun barrel smoking from the shots he’d just fired upward at the riflemen.
“Go!” said Teasdale.
Summers and Webb darted zigzagging across the trail, their rifles in hand. Bullets kicked up dirt and rock at their feet. On the other side of the trail, the two lunged over the edge and rolled among dirt and rock until they stopped themselves and crawled quickly behind a low-standing rock terrace. “Here he comes—cover him!” shouted Will Summers, aiming and firing upward along the rock ledge where long drifts of rifle smoke wafted on the air.
The rifles concentrated their fire on Sergeant Teasdale as he made his run for the rocky slope. When he came sliding in beside Will Summers, a shot sent his hat spinning from his head. “Are you hit, Sergeant?” asked Abner Webb.
“No, I’m fine,” said Teasdale without even checking himself. He began firing upward at the riflemen. “They’ve got our men pinned down over there—we’ve got to help them!”
“Damn it!” said Summers, stopping long enough to hurriedly reload his rifle. “If only I’d seen through this thing sooner. The old goatherder fooled me.”
“We’re lucky you saw though it at all,” said Teasdale through the sound of rifle fire. “Another few feet and our men would have been stuck on the open trail with nowhere to hide.”
“Was that old man one of the Peltry Gang?” asked Abner Webb, firing as he talked.
“No,” offered Teasdale. “That old goatherder wasn’t one of the Peltrys; they just made him come down here and stop us on the trail, hoping to bunch us up as much as possible. They’re probably holding his family to make sure he did what he was told.”
“Either way,” said Summers, raising his loaded rifle and taking aim along the rock ledge, “they’ve caught us with our britches down around our ankles.”
“Then we better pull them up and get out of here quick,” said Teasdale, “before they cut our men to pieces.”
On the other side of the fifty feet of walled trail, Sherman Dahl and Trooper Hargrove had pushed and goaded Wild Joe Duvall, Trooper Doyle Benson, Edmund Daniels and Bobby Dewitt farther down the side of the steep rocky slope. But then, seeing where the men were headed, Sherman Dahl yelled, “No! Stop! Don’t go out there!”
Not far from Dahl and Hargrove, behind a short rock barely large enough to protect them both, Campbell Hayes, Cherokee Rhodes and Junior the hound lay piled upon one another, watching “The damned mindless fools,” Hayes cursed as the other four men stepped out onto the footpath.
To get out of the rifle fire, Wild Joe, Trooper Benson, Daniels and Bobby Dewitt began to work their way down the narrow footpath, clinging to the rocks hand and foot. Wild Joe Duvall felt his rifle slip from his hand, but he dared not try to grab it or look down as it clattered away against the side of the rock wall. Rifle fire pelted down above them. Beneath them lay nothing but thin air for a distance of two hundred feet. Wild Joe grasped his stomach, then looked at his hand and saw that it was covered with his blood. “Oh Lord…” He swooned slightly. Behind him, Edmund Daniels helped to steady him. “I swear, I do believe I’ve been shot in the belly.” He let out a crazy, halfhearted laugh. “Ain’t this the damndest thing?” He sank almost to his knees before he caught himself and stepped backward against Edmund Daniels.
“Hang on, Joe—damn your hide!” said Daniels. “You’re going to cause us both to fall!”
Still on the slope, hunkered down behind a large, half-buried boulder, Sherman Dahl and Hargrove fired upward as shots pounded all around them. Dahl cut a glance to the line of men inching their way along the narrow footpath where Wild Joe had stopped and caused the others to come to a halt behind him. “They’ll die out there if we can’t stop them!” Dahl shouted above the gunfire.
“What have you got in mind?” asked Hargrove.
“I’m going up there,” said Dahl, nodding upward toward the line of steady rifle fire. “There’s another ledge thirty feet above them. If I get in there, I can do us some good.”
“You’re crazy, young man,” said Hargrove. “You won’t make it across the trail, let alone up the rock wall. They’ll kill you!”
“I can make it,” said Dahl. “I’ve got to try…else we’re all dead!” He ventured a look toward Summers, Webb and Teasdale sixty yards away. “If they can see what I’m doing, and all of you give me some support fire, I can get a good start up there. Once I’m tucked in above them, the Peltrys will have a devil of a time getting to me. It’ll cost them some men, that’s for sure.”
Hargrove considered it as he bit his lip and ventured a gaze along the higher ledge. Shots concentrated in his direction, forcing him and Dahl to flatten behind the rock. When the fire slackened, he turned to Dahl. “All right, schoolmaster. I’ll cover you.”
Chapter 13
“What the hell is he doing?” shouted Abner Webb, seeing Dahl leap forward and make a run across the trail.
“I don’t know, but give him some help,” said Teasdale.
“Looks like our schoolmaster has more guts than he does good sense,” Will Summers said as he fired.
The three men fired as one, hard and steadily, sending a heavy barrage of fire in the direction of the riflemen above Sherman Dahl. Along the rocky ledge, Goose Peltry, Moses Peltry and Doc Murdock ducked back as bullets whistled past them from the trail below. “Whooieee!” Goose laughed aloud. “I love seeing Yankees trapped like bugs in a bucket!”
“Yankees?” Doc Murdock shook his head. “I’m starting to think that to you two a Yankee is any poor sonsabitch you happen to be mad at.”
“What’s the difference?” said Goose. “Just be thankful you ain’t one of them.” He ventured a peep down over the edge. When he stood back, he looked at Moses and said, “Most of them has taken cover along that footpath that winds around the mountain. If you want to really have some fun today, brother Moses, send a couple of men down below the trail and watch them pick ’em off like ducks in a shooting gallery.” Goose spread a flat, evil grin at Doc Murdock and Moses Peltry.
“I believe that’s a sterling idea, brother Goose,” said Moses with a bit of haughtiness to his voice, a bit of swagger in his stance. “Murdock,” he added with a smug tilt of his head, “you’re getting an eyeful of how my men work. Pay attention: You might learn something.”
As the Peltrys and Murdock had been talking back and forth above the fray, Sherman Dahl had climbed hand over hand up the side of the rock wall with bullets slicing past him. The rifle fire from Summers, Webb, Teasdale and Hargrove partially protected him as he struggled upward. Soon he had flanked the gunmen and climbed up past them along a taller stand of rock wall fifty yards to their right.
“By damn, sir!” said Hargrove aloud to himself. “He’s done it! He’s climbed up above them!” He poured rifle fire up at the gunmen with renewed effort, seeing Sherman Dahl settle in on a short perch of rock from which he could easily fire down into the Peltrys without them being able to draw a bead on him. “Now let’s give them hell, schoolmaster,” Hargrove whispered.
Goose, Moses and Doc Murdock stood talking, still safely back a few feet from the cliff’s edge, when Sherman Dahl opened fire on the line of gunmen. The first man to take a bullet was one of the Catt brothers, Little Catt, who stood up laughing at the trapped man only to feel an impact like the blow of a sledgehammer atop his head. He twisted down to the ground like a corkscrew, a crazed look of surprise fro
zen on his dead face.
“Little brother! Little brother, wake up!” demanded Big Catt, grabbing Little Catt and slapping his limp face.
But Goose, Moses and Doc Murdock already saw that the man was dead. “What hit him?” shouted Moses. They looked all around quickly, not noticing in the heat of battle that the killing shot had been fired down from above them.
On the firing line, lying next to Flat Face Chinn, Frank Spragg let out a grunt and relaxed down onto his face as a fountain of blood rose up from between his shoulder blades. “What the hell is this?” Chinn said, looking baffled for a second. But then, realizing what had happened, he scooted back from the firing line just as a bullet thumped into the ground where he had been. “They’re above us!” he shrieked, turning and firing blindly at the high wall of rock where Sherman Dahl sat well protected in his nest of solid stone.
“You’re right about me learning something, Moses,” said Doc Murdock as he and the Peltrys ducked into a crouch and ran for cover. “I’m learning that one man with a rifle can send your whole gang packing.”
“What?” Moses asked, not hearing Murdock in the melee.
“Nothing,” said Murdock, dismissing it, grabbing his horse and pulling it away from the line of horses as another shot exploded down and nailed another gunman to the dirt.
“Damn it, pull back, men!” shouted Moses Peltry. “They’ve gotten the drop on us…the bushwhacking bastards!”
“There’s only one man up there,” said Doc Murdock. “Send a couple of my scalp hunters up there—they’ll tan him for you!”
“No…not now,” said Moses. “We’ve spent too long here as it is. We taught them a lesson…got them off our trail. It’s time we cut out.”
“What about sending a couple of men down below the trail like you said you were going to do?” asked Murdock, already knowing the answer but asking it just to put the Peltrys on the spot.
“This ain’t the time or place, damn it, Doc,” shouted Moses, grabbing his horse as another shot thumped into the ground near the animal’s hooves.
Duckbill Grear and Andy Merkel ran in beside Doc Murdock, hearing Moses Peltry’s words. “Doc, say the word,” said Duckbill. “Me and Andy will slip down there and kill every one of them sumbitches.”
Doc Murdock considered it quickly, watching Moses and Goose Peltry mount their horses and ride off toward a stretch of tree line along a flat terrace. “All right, men. Go do it…but keep these knotheads from seeing you. Meet up with us down the trail. I’m starting to think I could scrape a better bunch of fighting men off a shithouse floor.”
“We’re gone, Doc,” said Andy Merkel. Murdock watched the two men make their way around the high wall of rock and disappear onto a downward footpath.
Behind their rock on the lower side of the trail, Will Summers said to Abner Webb and Sergeant Teasdale, “Listen…they’ve stopped firing. I believe that schoolmaster has turned this fight around for us.” The three looked upward, seeing only the tip of Sherman Dahl’s rifle barrel reach out from behind a rock and fire down into the line of fleeing gunmen.
But as they spoke, Abner Webb caught sight of the two riflemen, Andy Merkel and Duckbill Grear, working their way down the slope on the other side of Hargrove and the men still clinging to the side of the mountain on the narrow footpath. “Look there!” he said.
“Blast it,” said Teasdale. “Hargrove should have seen them coming!” Behind his rock sixty yards away, Hargrove lay scanning the ledge above the trail. “The men on the path will never know what hit them,” Teasdale said. “I better slip around behind the gunmen before they get into firing position.”
“No, you stay here,” said Summers. “I’ll take care of them. If there’s any bounty on them, I want to be the first one to know it.” He slipped down onto his belly and crawled away into the rock and sparse brush along the steep slope.
Teasdale looked at Abner Webb as Summers moved unseen across the sloping mountainside. “What kind of man is he that bounty money is all that matters to him?”
“I can’t say what kind of man he is anymore, Sergeant,” said Webb. “I thought I knew until the other night. But now I can’t say.” In his mind, Webb pictured Will Summers pulling the trigger on the shot that killed Davis Gant. As he saw the scene play itself out, he recalled every second of it, every move, every flicker of an eye…. Yet, as he saw the outlaw fall dead on the ground, he realized that he could not recall the look on Summers’ face as he let the gun hammer fall. “I can say this,” he said, looking back at Teasdale and shaking the scene from his mind. “I trust him with my life.”
Through the brittle brush, Will Summers belly-crawled until he’d circled down behind the two gunmen, coming to a spot behind a deadfall of sun-bleached pine. He raised his rifle up over the pine trunk just as a shot exploded from one of the men’s rifles. On the exposed footpath, Summers watched Doyle Benson sink down on his knees, barely hanging on with Bobby Dewitt’s help. Blood ran down the center of the young soldier’s back. Bobby looked back and forth helplessly, realizing there was no place to hide. “Damn you to hell!” he shouted. “You could give us a fighting chance, you damn, yellow cowards!”
Summers raised up and took aim at Duckbill Grear as Duckbill prepared for a shot at Bobby Dewitt. Both rifles exploded at once. Bobby Dewitt slid down on his knees beside Doyle Benson, the two wounded men weaving back and forth, supporting one another.
“Two damn good shots, Duckbill!” said Andy Merkel, rising to his feet beside Duckbill. When Duckbill didn’t answer, Andy turned to him and saw the dark blood running down from under Duckbill’s hatband. “Duck! Are you okay?” Andy asked, seeing the strange distant look in Duckbill’s eyes as the blood ran down into them. A strange sound came from Duckbill’s chest. He toppled forward and landed flat on his face, the force of the fall sending his hat out onto the ground and exposing the large, steaming hole in the back of his head.
“Whoa now!” Andy Merkel sidestepped away, looking all around, his rifle chest-high, his thumb across the trigger. He’d only backed up three steps when Will Summers’ shot hit him in his thigh, slamming him to the ground and sending his rifle sliding downward in loose gravel and dirt. He lay still on the ground for a second, listening to the footsteps move toward him through the brush and then stop.
“Throw your pistol out,” said Summers, crouched and ready for whatever move the wounded man might try to make. “I know you’re wounded; you best give up now. The rest of the gang has gone off and left you.”
“They’ll be back for me,” said Andy Merkel, lifting a big Hoard pistol from his holster and cocking it quietly, listening, judging how close the footsteps were to him. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll cut out now while you’re still able.”
“Drop the gun,” said Will Summers, stepping suddenly into view, his pistol out at arm’s length, cocked and ready.
But Andy Merkel would have none of it. He swung the big Hoard up. Will Summers shot him in the forearm. The pistol flew from Merkel’s hand. He writhed in pain, clamping his left hand around his right forearm. Blood flowed down the sleeve of his filthy buckskin shirt. “Son of a bitch!” he bellowed. “What the hell is this? You shoot a man in the arm?” His enraged eyes glared at Will Summers. “You think that’s all it takes for me? Then you’re dead wrong!” He snatched at his boot well for his knife, but Will Summers kicked him backward, then stepped forward and clamped a boot down on his good hand, pinning it to the ground.
“Settle down, outlaw,” said Summers. He looked at the body of Duckbill Grear, the dirty buckskins, the ragged headband and bits of bone and hair souvenirs pinned to the dead man’s shirt. Then he looked back at Andy Merkel and said, “You two don’t look like any of the Peltrys to me. Maybe we ought to talk about it some.”
“Slap a loaded gun in my hand, mister—that’s all we’ve got to talk about. We’ll see which one leaves here with a hole punched in his gut.”
“I just might slap a gun in your hand if you play you
r cards right, outlaw. Tell me what I want to know about the Peltry Gang. I’d sure hate dragging you and your stinking friend’s carcasses up this mountainside.”
“I never rode with the Peltrys before now, and neither did he. And I don’t have a diddling-damn thing more to say to you, mister,” said Andy Merkel.
“You might not think you do right now,” said Summers, grinding his boot down on Merkel’s hand, “but I bet you will before it’s over.”
Teasdale and Abner Webb gathered the men together in a defensive circle behind a large rock near the edge of the trail. The men had rounded up the horses and tied them a few yards away in the narrow shelter of a crevice between two tall upthrusts of rock. A few minutes had passed since a single pistol shot resounded from the direction Will Summers had taken in order to stop the two riflemen. Teasdale, Webb and the remaining survivors kneeled beside Bobby Dewitt and Wild Joe Duvall, both of whom were wounded. The pale, limp body of Doyle Benson lay beside them, his hands crossed on his chest.
“That poor…soldier boy,” Wild Joe said, his voice strained by the bullet wound in his big stomach. “Is he? Is he…?”
“Yeah, Joe,” said Abner Webb, holding a canteen down close to Joe’s bloody lips. “He’s dead. Here, sip you some water.” As Joe managed a short sip, Abner Webb cut a glance to Sergeant Teasdale and shook his head slowly.
“You…don’t have to hide nothing…from me,” said Wild Joe. “I know I’m done for.”
“Sorry, Joe,” Webb said softly. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for nothing in the world.”
“Hell…I know it, Deputy,” Wild Joe responded, his voice sounding weaker as he spoke. He turned his head sideways toward Bobby Dewitt. “Looks like me and you…are going to take the long ride together, huh, Bobby?”
“It looks it, Joe,” Bobby Dewitt said, his eyes glistening with tears. “I ain’t feeling nothing down my legs.” He struggled to hold back a sob. Then he asked, “Where’s Will Summers? I’ve got to tell him something before I go.”
