News of the World

by Paulette Jiles

  He had not thought they would turn so quickly to murder. He had thought if they caught up, they would bluster, threaten, offer a certain amount in silver, perhaps even claim they were the girl’s relatives. He saw himself pointing the long barrel of the Smith and Wesson into their faces and saying something like, Begone or I will blow you through. This was clearly not going to happen. Human aggression and depravity still managed to astonish him. He had been caught by surprise.

  The girl was under the wagon. She was listening. Then she lifted her hands and whipped her long hair into a braid and tied it off with a piece of lace edging she tore from her skirt. She was not astonished. Not at all.

  He lay still in the crumbled stone and blue-green agarita behind the protection of the caprock. He waited. He and Johanna were exposed to the wooded slope behind them, higher ground, but it was a good quarter mile away. Almay and the Caddos were coming up from below. The wagon must have been just barely exposed. He waited. The wind was cold.

  He heard, remotely, the lever action of another Henry and then saw another puff of gunpowder smoke below, from behind a long slanting buttress of red stone on the right side of the ravine. Instantly afterward he heard a sharp, flat crack and the noise of the wagon being hit again. Splinters burst into the air and rained around him. Pasha fell back on his halter rope but it did not break so he came up straight again. He wasn’t hit. Fancy was more determined and tore her halter rope loose and went crashing away into the trees and stopped. She was hung up on something.

  The Captain waited for the other, or two others if they were all armed with rifles. He had to hoard his revolver ammunition and watch for the best shot even if they were right in his face. It seemed his eyes would start from his head. He had to shut them for a moment. Then a .45 long Colt round struck to his right like a hammerhead, about six feet away and then he heard the muzzle blast. He didn’t turn his head but only noted where the smoke came from. It had also come from the right side of the ravine, farther down. Number three. The shot did not have that deep, biting bark of a rifle, so it was a revolver. They had all three come up single file on one side. Stupid. They were overconfident. They were up against nothing but an old man and a girl.

  In some ways he wouldn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory. Seventy-one was a good long time to have lived. But then there was Johanna.

  The mild, watery sun of early March poured down a shadowless light. Not many reflections. Another shot. It chipped the face of the dark, dense limestone to his left. He did not duck nor glance in that direction but watched for the smoke.

  He saw it. Same rifle. Two, that’s all they had. The third man was the odd man out and had to make do with a revolver like himself.

  Then he saw a man jump from one buttress of rusty-red stone to another to cross the ravine to the other side. He was carrying a rifle. The Captain fired three times, chipping the stone around the man, sending up sprays of cedar duff and the sumac leaves like little airborne ears. It was one of the Caddos. They were trying to nail him between two lines of fire; a rifle to his left and a rifle and a handgun to his right.

  A brief glimpse; the Caddo was wearing a heavy leather glove on his left hand. So he was right, they did have Henrys. There was no floor arm on the Henry and its hot barrel and the magazine tube had to be handled with a glove. Another shot. He waited for the flash of a rifle barrel on his left, within the range of his revolver, saw it, fired twice and heard a yell and the rifle flew away and got wedged among the rocks.

  Got him. At least he had knocked the rifle out of his hand. And now the stupid fool was going to go after it.

  He aimed and waited. He was sure the Caddo was going to try to retrieve his precious expensive rifle. Go for it, man. Over on the other side of the ravine he caught a glimpse of the crown of a hat. He was too smart for that. It was on a stick.

  Johanna, get back!

  The girl ignored him. She was edging along the caprock to his right. She ducked in and out between the great tabular sections of red sandstone, holding on to the unforgiving rock with her bare hands. She peered over, she ducked back. She carried the stove lid lifter in one hand and now she began to lever at the base of a flat layer of stone. She had pulled the back hem of her skirts between her legs and tucked it into the dainty belt at her waist in front so it looked as if she were wearing big Turkish pantaloons. She was still barefoot. She looked like the engravings he had seen of Circassian children in their rags and bandoliers fighting the Russian troops somewhere in the Pontus. This was clearly not her first gunfight. Mao sap-he, she said. Caddos. The Ring-in-the-nose people. They will die. She didn’t care if he did not understand her, it was simply important to say, They will die.

  The Captain turned back to his notch and through the leaves on the left he saw the Caddo’s black hair glinting as he dodged from rock to rock, down the ravine, going for his rifle. He fired again. A yell, then whimpering. One wounded. How bad he didn’t know. Sweat ran from under his hat, from the tattered sweatband and into his eyes and he wiped his eyes on his shoulder one after the other, quickly. He was surprised when he saw he had to reload. He had not thought he had fired so many rounds. His hands had flour on them from the box of shells.

  Johanna was still levering at the base of a slab of stone with the lifter. To his amazement she tipped it up, and then over, and it rolled end over end like a flat plate on edge, leaping downhill, smashed in half on an outthrust boulder and then shattered and fell in pieces upon somebody. There was a deep shout, almost a grunt, and a man fell forward out of concealment and rolled.

  Good girl, he said. Demon child! He laughed as he fired again and again, careless of the expenditure of ammunition. Then he was furious with himself; the man was in his sights and yet he could not hit him. Then the man disappeared.

  TWELVE

  HE HAD TWENTY cartridges left. He clicked out the cylinder and reloaded.

  He smiled at her as she came back. You are most amazing, he said.

  She acknowledged this with a grave nod and turned her attention back to their enemies.

  Another rifle round shattered stone in front of him like an explosion. He bent his head against flying chips and felt a strange electrical pain all over his skull, a nerve pain, then he couldn’t see out of his right eye. He wiped at it quickly and it cleared and he watched for the smoke. He saw it down to the right, again. She had probably hit the man with the handgun. The stream of water chattered busily down the ravine and here and there shone like glass. The Captain wiped again at his eye and then looked at his hand. It was wet with blood. A blade of stone blown off the rock had struck him over the right eye but he thought it would stop bleeding in a minute or so. He must not be incapacitated, he must not be killed because he knew very well what they would do with the girl. Some people were born unsupplied with a human conscience and those people needed killing.

  He tried to think how many of them were wounded. He might have shot the Henry rifle barrel out of alignment. He thought he had hit the man on the left but how badly he didn’t know. Johanna had wounded another by tipping a rock down on him.

  He bent his head to his knuckles. His shirt was spotty with blood. He considered his choices. They could run for it, riding double on Pasha. Get Fancy loose and she would follow them. If they gained enough distance from Almay and the Caddos he could stop long enough to put her on the mare, but Fancy was a dear slow creature with her out-of-alignment front leg and prone to stumble. They could try to reach that distant smoke on the horizon.

  Johanna crept forward and brought the leather water bottle to him. The Captain rolled onto his back and poured it down. Some ran down the sides of his mouth. He capped it. Almay and his evil minions had the spring water trickling down the ravine but he and Johanna had only this one canteen. He handed it back to her.

  Useless thoughts again and again of why he had not carried more ammunition, why he had not bought more. Because they left Dallas in the middle of the night, that’s why.

  Then the girl hel
d out a wet cloth to him and he took it and wiped his forehead and eye. Lucky it was his right eye because it was his left eye that he aimed with. It was a shallow cut but the blade of stone seemed to have hit a nerve because it made a crawling sharp pain all over his scalp. It didn’t matter. He could see out of both eyes now. His vision was very good. The animals down below probably thought he was half blind with old age. Well surprise surprise. He turned over on his stomach. After this little silence they would be eaten up with curiosity. He caught a glimpse of a rifle barrel within range of the revolver. He laid the long eight-inch barrel in a notch; he fired carefully and listened happily to another shout of pain.

  Kep-dun, she said.

  He looked into her worried dark blue eyes. My dear, he said. Let’s face facts.

  He flipped open the cylinder of the revolver and turned his hand so that she could see it was empty. In his other hand he held the remaining fourteen rounds.

  She reached out for the shotgun and looked at him.

  No good, he said. No. He showed her one of the shells. Nothing but light Number Seven bird shot. It would not even carry very far. He pointed toward Pasha. Then he pointed to her. His bay saddle horse stood stiff as a china figure with fright and his ears were rigidly fixed at full cock toward the ravine. The horse might prove difficult, but among the Plains Indians, even young children could ride and ride well.

  Go, he said. He made an “away” motion with his hand. Go.

  He had made up his mind and his expression was firm and unsmiling.

  They were calling up to him. They were trying to make a deal.

  Haina, haina. No, she would not go.

  Get on the horse and go, he said. He slid backward and got hold of Pasha’s riding bridle from off the front wheel rim and held it out to her. The Captain knew that with two of the men below wounded she might have a chance. Damn it, go.

  Haina.

  Suddenly he felt very tired. He could not deal with her and their attackers all at once. With his last fourteen rounds clattering in his hand he crawled again tight behind the lip of rock and found his notch. He loaded the cylinder and wasted three more shots trying to ricochet a round into Almay, who was behind the buttress on the right-hand side. Then one of the Caddos appeared, darting up the ravine and into cover again, and that caused him to uselessly expend another two shots. It was his judgment that was failing him as much as his strength. The only good thing was that the Caddo had a bloody hand.

  Johanna, get on that horse and go.

  For a moment he dropped his head on his forearm. When he lifted it there was a kind of bloody eye-socket print on it. She had gone somewhere. He pressed the wet cloth against his eyebrow. Again the strange flashes of nerve pain all over his skull. Then he saw her crawling toward him with the shotgun in one hand and the shot box in the other. Somehow she had managed to stack the bag of coins on top of the shot box and shove that along too. She was covered in dirt. He supposed he was too. She pressed the bag of coins toward him and gestured down the ravine.

  Johanna, they are not going to be bought off, he said. He patted her arm. Her hair was coming out of the braid and it hung over her young, childish face in swags. He said, They can’t be bribed, they are not going to be made to go away with offers of coin. He looked into her anxious blue eyes and a terrible thought came to him. He felt his eyes leaking tears or sweat. She could not be allowed to fall into their hands. Never. Never. He had eight shots left, six in the cylinder and two in hand. He said, It won’t work my dear.

  She pushed the shotgun toward him.

  He shook his head. Useless. He opened a shell and poured the tiny lead beads out into his hand and showed her.

  Another shot from the left. It struck near one of the shafts of the wagon. The Caddo had got his rifle again and was shooting, wounded or not, and the smoke told him the man had gained higher ground. More than fifty yards away. If he got above them and started shooting down on them they were in serious, serious trouble. The Captain watched for him, saw the bright shifting of black hair.

  He felt Johanna tugging at his sleeve. He looked down.

  She held up one of the shotgun shells.

  It was loaded with dimes.

  He stared at the shell resting on Johanna’s outstretched palm.

  Then the Captain reached out for it even as another round smashed into the front of the stone in front of him. He jumped but didn’t duck. He lay back and hefted the shell. The dimes fit perfectly into the paper tube of a twenty-gauge hull.

  Well, I’ll be damned.

  It was very heavy. He looked at the cap. She charged it with the powder charger. He saw her work the thumb lever that gave out twenty grains at a time: one, two, three, four, eighty grains of powder. A heavy load for his old shotgun. The Captain tossed the shell full of dimes up and down in his hand and smiled.

  This is amazing, he said. He laughed. Ten years old and a wizard of field expedience.

  With the weight of the dimes and the powder charge the shotgun had just become something like a small cannon. Not only that but heavy things flew far and fast and so it might give him a range of close to two hundred yards.

  He couldn’t stop laughing. By God, by God, he said. They had a chance to get out of this. Everything had changed now. Good girl, Johanna, good girl. My dear little warrior.

  He did not notice that he stank of cordite and that Johanna’s hands were white with flour and that both of them were coated with the red dirt of the Brazos country. The Captain found that suddenly he was no longer tired. She smiled back at him with her bright child’s teeth and then the Captain held up one hand. Wait. She nodded.

  First they had some ruses and deceptions to accomplish. He took up one of the dove-shot shells and loaded the old shotgun. As he laid the barrel into the notch he saw her loading yet more dimes into shells, ramming in the wads with a stick, pouring out powder from the old spring-loaded charger, ramming another wad and finally twisting each hull firmly shut.

  He fired down the ravine and heard the light beads of Number Seven Dove tinkle harmlessly on the stone.

  Far below, Almay’s laugh rang out. He called, That all you got?

  Come closer and you’ll find out, you son of a bitch, the Captain called back.

  I’m scared. You’re shooting cake decorations or something at me, Almay shouted in reply.

  Well come on, then, said the Captain.

  He wondered where the Caddos were. Nursing their wounds, hopefully, or better yet, busy bleeding to death. He loaded another Number Seven and fired. It sprayed out its tiny beads into the air as if it had sneezed poppy seeds. He glanced at Johanna. She was busy stacking more dimes into hulls.

  Listen to me, said Almay. He was still hidden behind one of the stone buttresses.

  I don’t seem to have a choice, called the Captain.

  You should be good at a bargain. This ain’t your first rodeo, here.

  They don’t need to make a deal. He thinks everything is on his side. What he wants is to kill me and take the girl and the horses. They’ll burn the wagon. It’s too recognizable. Curative Waters. He wants to get close enough to kill me without hitting the girl. He’s not sure of his aim. He’s shooting uphill. Always difficult.

  He worked the bolt and the old hull jumped out smoking and she grabbed it. Now he slipped one of her dime shells into the breech. The weight of it should give him a good hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty yards if not more. He laid the barrel into the notch.

  What’s your deal? he called.

  Reasonable! I can be reasonable.

  Come up, we’ll talk.

  The blond man held his hat out from the edge of the buttress. There was a hole in it. Captain, he said. You was trying to hit me in the head, here. That’s serious malicious intent. We have some serious talking to do.

  So?

  Listen to me, said Almay.

  You already said that. Stop repeating yourself.

  Now, let’s make some kind of deal here.

&nbs
p; Why was he delaying? The Captain knew the only reason was to keep him talking while the Caddos crept up. Far to his left a small trickle of sand and rocks spilled down the ravine.

  Well speak up, then, said the Captain. Stop your goddamn dithering. I hate dithering.

  By now Almay knew the range of the shotgun and its dove shot. He walked confidently out from behind his buttress of stone. He also thought the Captain was out of revolver ammunition. Clearly he was not shooting it and had reverted, in his desperation, to the shotgun and its pepper-light loads. Almay advanced up the ravine. Here and there the water of Carlyle Springs had worn the red sandstone layers down to the strata below, hard and marblelike. White and pure and level. They were like irregular steps going down the ravine, carved through the eons. Since Noah, perhaps. Almay carried his hat in one hand and took long steps to reach from one plate to the next in his knee-high boots. His hair was dark with sweat. They had ridden hard to catch up.

  I tell you what, Almay called. You put down that shotgun and I’ll make sure my men empty their magazines and we can have a conversation.

  Two hundred yards, then a little closer. Come on, come on.

  Certainly. I’m putting it down as we speak.

  The Captain aimed very carefully. He was not sure what the coins would do, or the extra-heavy powder charge. So he aimed for the V of Almay’s open shirt collar and pulled the trigger.

  The dimes roared out of the muzzle at six hundred feet per second with a muzzle blast two feet long. The gunsmoke expanded in a great thick cloud and the stock slammed back into the Captain’s shoulder almost hard enough to dislocate it. He struck Almay in the forehead with a load of U.S. mint ten-cent pieces. As the coins flew out of the paper tube they turned on edge so that when they hit Almay’s forehead it looked as if his head had been suddenly printed with hyphens. The hyphens all began to spout blood. Almay fell backward, his head downhill. All the Captain could see was his boot soles.