A Tale Out of Luck (31 page)

“That’s the Wolf!”

The Original Wolf slid to a halt on his pony, signaling to the riders behind him to stop. He shifted his eyes to the rider of the right-hand prong of the attack, now coming around the barn in spite of the barrage Skeeter had flung. The Wolf shouted something in Comanche and made a whirling motion of his wrist, and the whole wave of warriors that would have swarmed around the barn and in between the two buildings turned instead back to the creek.

Hank backed into the barn behind Jane. Jay Blue came in next, closed the barn door behind him, and turned his back to the door to shout at the loft. “Hold your fire, Skeeter! That’s the Wolf with the lance, and he just saved my ass!”

At that moment, an arrow slammed through the planking on the closed barn door, the shaft protruding into the barn just far enough to sink an inch deep into Jay Blue’s left hip pocket. He bellowed like a branded calf and sprang forward so hastily that he jumped into Jane’s arms, tripping her to the dirt and falling right on top of her. She fell awkwardly on her back, with her legs jutting two different directions. The arrow stayed stuck in the barn door, the point not having sunk quite deep enough into flesh for the barbs to take hold.

Skeeter was almost falling down the loft ladder in a fit of laughter. “Looks like you been shot in the heart by Cupid’s arrow!” he cried in guffaws.

“They’re regrouping,” Matt Kenyon said, watching the movements of the Indians.

Hank turned to Flora. “You promised to stay put at the ranch!”

“No, you
ordered
us to stay put. Don’t start, Hank. This was as much our arrest as it was yours. Anyway, we brought medical supplies in case the shooting started. Didn’t count on quite this much of it.”

Hank bit his lip. “Well, look at Jay Blue’s wound, then check on Matt. He’s bleedin’ pretty bad over there in the corner.”

Jane was crawling out from under Jay Blue, who was also trying to regain his footing and his dignity. Flora knelt behind him and ripped open the seat of his britches where the arrow point had poked through.

“This one’s gushing, too,” she said. She yanked the leather satchel open, pulled out one of the bandages she and Jane had made by tearing up a sheet, and folded it over a couple of times. “Here,” she said, placing the folded bandage in Jane’s hand. She pressed Jane’s hand hard against Jay Blue’s wound.

“Grab hard, honey! He won’t complain!”

Skeeter started laughing almost too hard to reload as Jay Blue hobbled into position behind the breastworks at the double doors facing the adobe.

“Stay low, Jane,” Jay Blue said, his store of dignity almost exhausted.

“I’ve been reduced to grabbing your butt in front of your father,” she replied. “Is that low enough for you?”

Now even Hank had to chuckle a little. “That girl is coming around,” he said to Flora as he led her toward her second patient.

“How are we doing on ammunition?” Hank asked as he watched Flora stuff a wad of cotton into a bloody bullet hole in Matt Kenyon’s thigh.

“Low,” Tonk replied.

“Me, too.”

“Yep.”

“How bad is it, Hank?” Flora asked.

“Well, we’re almost out of ammunition and we’ve got ninety-some-odd Comanches out there who all want us dead. Or worse.”

She made a knot in the bandage tied tight around Kenyon’s leg. “So, what’s the good news?” she said.

“I’m not through with the bad news. There are nine outlaws in that adobe house who won’t give up without a fight, and you can bet they’ve been saving their rounds behind those thick mud walls.”

“Okay,” Flora said. “And the good news is . . .”

“I’m still lookin’ for the good news.”

“They seem to be poised for another charge,” Kenyon observed.

“Hank!” said Long Tom. “The door to the adobe is openin’.”

“What the hell?” Hank rushed across the barn to look out through a knothole.

From the darkness of the interior of the ranch house, the form of a man came running, illuminated by an orange flame that came with him. It was Eddie Milliken, Rafferty’s top man.

“Stop him!” Hank shouted, but Milliken had already taken two steps outside and flung the torch across the way to the barn. It landed in a pile of old hay and scrap lumber at the dilapidated northwest corner of the barn. Before the arsonist could turn back to the door, Jay Blue sent three bullets into his chest, causing him to shuffle backward and fall. He landed dead in the doorway, blocking it open.

Hank kicked the barn door open in an attempt to rush out and stomp the fire, but a barrage from the ranch house cut his flesh in several places and drove him back.

“Here comes the next charge!” Kenyon warned from the far corner of the barn.

“The bastards have sacrificed us!” Hank fumed. He stepped out again and fired four more rounds into the ranch house doorway before the outlaws could drag Milliken’s body inside and shut the door.

“Captain Tomlinson,” Skeeter said hopefully. “If that’s the Wolf out there . . .”

Hank shook his head. “Don’t think you can go out there, son. He can’t stop what he’s started. He’s promised those braves a chance at glory, and he can’t yank it out from under them now. He didn’t know you and Jay Blue would be here.”

“He’s already saved us once,” Jay Blue argued.

“He got away with it once. He can’t give you another chance.”

Flames began to crackle, and smoke streamed through the barn.

“What are we gonna do, Captain?” Long Tom Merrick was waiting.

“They’re circling four hundred yards out now!” Kenyon called. “Looks like they’re going to close in. My God, they’re using their horses for shields, riding at a full gallop.”

“Hank?” Flora said nervously.

“Take the horses out of those stalls and put them in that big corral upwind,” Hank ordered, buying some time to think. “Hold your fire, boys, unless they’re right in our laps.”

A gust caused the flames to roar louder and sent a whole cloud of smoke barreling through the interior of the barn. Skeeter, Tom, and Beto were taking horses from the smoky stalls and turning them into the corral, in clear view of the Indians.

“Alright,” Hank said. “This is bad. But we got one chance.”

“We gotta get the girls inside that adobe,” Jay Blue said.

“Right, son.”

“They’re inside two hundred yards and closing the circle!” Kenyon coughed. “I can’t see! The smoke, Captain!”

“Come here, Matt! Everybody! Here! Now!” He waited precious seconds as the smoke thickened, the heat rose, and the men gathered at the barn doors facing the adobe. Jay Blue was on his feet now, his arm around Jane, whose jaw was set in fear.

“We’ve got to storm that house now! I’ll kick the door down and go in first.”

“Right behind you, Captain,” said Kenyon, picking up the double-barrel he had yet to use.

“
Everybody
better be right behind me.”

Kenyon cocked both barrels. “We’ve got to go! The Indians are bound to be in range now.”

Flames were crackling up through the rafters and the cedar shakes.

Hank winced at the smoke. He knew he had to go out there. He saw Jay Blue hand a revolver to Jane. Her hand trembled when she took it. He snorted at Skeeter, and Skeeter snorted back, pumping the lever of his freshly loaded Winchester. He winked at Flora. She tried to smile, but a hideous war cry suddenly knifed into the barn, sounding closer than even Matt Kenyon had figured, and more eerily bloodthirsty than even Hank could have imagined.

From a swirl of smoke, Tonk stepped past everyone and walked outside, taking the smoke with him. Hank pursued, and felt the rest of the men surround the ladies, ushering them away from the heat of the burning barn.

The smoke seemed to cover them all halfway to the house, but then it twisted away on a windflaw and lifted like a stage curtain. Hank waved two Colts, anxious for a target. What he saw was too strange to shoot at. Lumbering between him and the adobe stronghold, came a . . . by God, it was a camel!

That hideous war cry screeched against his eardrums again and he glanced up to see what for all the world looked to him, at least for a split second, like a wraith on a ghostly steed. It turned out to be bare-chested Jubal Hayes on the Steel Dust Gray, which was even more of a sight than a soul-reaping spirit. To the west, two companies of blue-coated buffalo soldiers came to the rescue, led by First Sergeant July Polk on a familiar claybank gelding. In every other direction, Comanches left the field, scattering far and wide in fear of the evil ghost.

“The horses!” Hank yelled.

The men scrambled for the corrals to calm their mounts before they pushed through the broken-down fencing in an attempt to flee the burning barn.

Jubal’s green-broke mustang dodged the smoke, so he swung wide around the barn, laughing at the fleeing Indians as he galloped. Polk and the troopers quickly caught up to him, chasing the Indians all the way into the distant timber to make sure they were gone for good.

Feeling the sun on his skin, Jubal yanked at the leather ties on his saddle skirt where he had secured his shirt. He also reached into his saddlebag where he had stuffed his hat. He could feel Steel Dust’s heart beating double time to his heaving lungs. He could not have imagined a more challenging training run for the killer stud, but he was still ahorseback after many a mile.

“That wasn’t much of a skirmish,” First Sergeant Polk admitted. “But that’s alright with me.”

“I told you they’d run,” Jubal said, and he would have carried on in that vein had not the gunfire stopped him.

Polk wheeled as his troopers milled around him, letting their horses blow.

Jubal, too, made his mustang turn. “What in the name of . . .” They had left the ranch house some four or five hundred yards behind. He was sure they had chased off all the Comanches. So, what now? Why the shooting?

“I’ll be damned,” Polk said. “The fools are killin’
each other
!”

The outlaws had come out of the adobe ranch house like a swarm of hornets, running at the corral. Skeeter figured quickly what it meant. The outlaws had seen the soldiers. They had seen the Indians leave. They knew they were all going to jail or going to hang, so they had to run for the brush or run for the horses.

They didn’t do well at capturing the horses. All the Broken Arrow men were there, guarding the stock, and the outlaws came out of one door in the adobe, making easy targets. Skeeter himself saw one of his bullets knock half of Bill Waterford’s head off. Then his blood-kin father stepped out and somehow knew right where to fire. Skeeter saw the big man’s eye aiming at him, and felt the slug tick his ear as he jumped into the open door of a rundown little smokehouse and ducked low as bullets splintered above him.

He looked out through the door and saw Rafferty running around the far side of the smoking barn, shooting as he retreated. Then he looked up and saw two hairy things hanging inside the smokehouse. He felt his face wrinkle and felt his stomach turn as he realized what they were. One was made of long, curly strands of light brown hair. The other was black hair, thick, but cropped short.

He reached forward and touched Poli’s scalp. The gunfire outside suddenly seemed to wake him. He jumped out of the smokehouse and circled the barn in the opposite direction his so-called daddy had run. Before he rounded the corner, he looked back and saw his friends disarming a couple of outlaws who had given up. But there was still shooting going on, and Skeeter knew Jack Brennan would be the last to end it.

Rounding the back side of the burning barn, using smoke for cover, he took to the brush. Passing through mesquites and cedar, he came clear of the smoke and angled back toward the buildings, and there he saw the big man with his back turned, unaware of his presence. He was using the corner of an old rock springhouse for cover, firing at the Broken Arrow men.

Then John Rafferty’s revolver hit an empty chamber, and he started to reload.

“Drop it!” Skeeter was startled to hear his own voice. “Drop it or I’ll shoot you!” He knew he had the best of the murdering outlaw.

Rafferty turned and looked up at Skeeter, but kept reloading. “You better do it before I get reloaded, son.”

“I ain’t your son! Drop it!”

He finished reloading and stood with his barrel angling down. “Go on, shoot, Skeeter. Do me the favor. I don’t want to hang.”

“Well, I don’t want to shoot you, so drop it!”

Suddenly, Rafferty’s muzzle was pointing at him. “Do it.”

“Drop it, I said!”

Rafferty cocked the hammer. He fired between Skeeter’s feet, startling him. Still, Skeeter hesitated.

“A man’s soul can’t get out when he strangles. I won’t hang!” He cocked and fired again, and again.

Dust showered Skeeter, then a bullet cut his arm, and he pulled his trigger. The shot caught Rafferty high in the chest. The big man slammed back against the rock wall of the springhouse and slid to a sitting position on the ground, leaving a smear of blood on the rocks.

Skeeter approached him, and noticed he had dropped his revolver at his side.

“Good one,” Rafferty said, coughing up a frothy mouthful of blood after he spoke.

“Skeeter!” Jay Blue’s voice said from a way off. “Where are you?”

Skeeter stood over the dying outlaw. “What was my mother’s name?” he asked.

Rafferty coughed again. “I don’t really hate music,” he managed to say.

“Tell me my mother’s name!” he demanded.

“She was a good woman.”

“Tell me,
please
!”

The blood sprayed from his mouth this time, and he seemed to try to form a word that wouldn’t come. Then he spit and said, “It means light. Her name . . . Her name . . .” His chin fell down on his chest and his eyes stared at nothing.

“Skeeter!” Jay Blue said. “He’s over here, Daddy! He’s okay!”

Skeeter glanced up to see the cavalry soldiers and Jubal trotting back. Jay Blue stepped up beside him, then saw the dead man on the ground.

“Daddy! Skeeter got him! Skeeter got Rafferty!”

Captain Tomlinson came around the rock springhouse and grabbed Skeeter by the shoulder. They all stood there and looked at the outlaw’s body for a time.