Webb's Posse (24 page)

“Go!” said Dahl, his pistol coming up and firing as the horse bolted forward. Warm blood splattered on his and Summers' faces. A
Federale
trooper fell away from his horse with a bullet hole in his forehead. Dahl snatched the horse's reins and pulled it along behind them. A young Mexican came charging alongside them swinging a saber, but Dahl raised a boot and kicked him from his saddle as the sharp edge of the blade sliced dangerously close to his head. “Circle and come back!” Dahl shouted. “We've got to help the others.”

“No! Follow me,” Summers demanded as they cleared the edge of the fighting and Dahl leaped onto the other horse. “I think I heard the gun wagon crash! We can do more good if we can get our hands on that machine rifle!”

“I'm right behind you,” shouted Dahl, firing two shots into the Mexican uniforms gathered around the possemen. He caught a glimpse of Abner Webb and Edmund Daniels fighting from their saddles, their horses pressed together against overwhelming odds. But he forced himself to look away and follow Will Summers. They rode hard and fast across the stretch of flatlands, following the blanket of dust looming above the wagon's tracks. In a moment, while the battle raged behind them, Dahl cut away from beneath the drift of dust and called out, “Summers! Over here! Quick!”

As Will Summers reined his horse over to Sherman Dahl, he saw the first scraps of broken planks from the wagon bed. He saw an empty boot. Then, a few feet farther, he saw the big Gatling gun lying in the dirt without its stand. Dahl had just leaped down from his saddle, grabbed the gun and hefted it up into his arms. “Hold it still, schoolmaster,” said Summers, leaping down from his saddle and running up to Dahl. “I'll turn the crank.”

“Be careful not to aim it at our men,” Dahl cautioned as Summers straightened the bent crank in his gloved hands.

“I'm not going to shoot it at anybody,” said Summers. “I just want to get their attention.” He helped Dahl swing the barrels out along the dark trail as he turned the crank hurriedly and sent a string of bullets streaking out into the night. The recoil jarred Dahl to his bones, but he held tight, the smell of burnt powder rising into his eyes. Summers turned the crank another two full turns, then said, “Come on—that's enough for now. Let's load it up and get out of here. The Peltrys just had a little fun at our expense. Let's see if we can turn it around on them.”

At the first burst of fire from the Gatling gun when the wagon crashed and tumbled across the flatland, Moses and Goose Peltry had looked at one another, stunned. “What's keeping that wagon so long?” asked Goose. No one responded. But moments later, as they formed the men into two short columns and waited, listening to the sound of the battle raging less than a mile away, Moses looked back and forth between Goose and Doc Murdock.

“That gun wagon should have been here by now,” said Moses. “Something ain't right out there.”

Goose and Murdock nodded, looking concerned. Still, they waited until the sound of the Gatling gun exploded again. Not realizing that the gun was now in the hands of Dahl and Summers, Goose Peltry said, “Do you suppose Spears and Dupre got into trouble out there? I always said Fitzhugh can't drive a wagon worth a damn.”

“I don't know what's going on,” said Moses, “but we better get out there and find out.” He circled his horse quickly, drawing his saber, and said to the men, “Follow me! Everybody spread out as soon as we hit the flatlands.”

The riders pushed hard and fast across the dark flatlands, hearing the rifle and pistol fire of the
Federales
lessen in the distance and seeing less and less of the blossoming streaks of fire.

“Here they come,” said Will Summers, looking through the darkness to his right toward the sound of the Peltry Gang's horses' hooves. To their left, where the battle had all but stopped, the sound of hoofbeats also pounded toward them in the darkness. “Let's give them one more volley just to keep them interested.”

A half mile away and closing fast, Captain Oberiske and Sergeant Hervisu rode side by side at the center of the
Federales
. When the burst of fire erupted from the machine rifle ahead of them, Oberiske called out to his men, “Spread out and concentrate on that position! Fire at will; kill them all. They are nothing but lawless American criminals!”

Hervisu shook his head but said nothing, knowing that whatever advice he offered Captain Oberiske would go unheeded. As the Mexican soldiers began firing in the darkness, revealing themselves by the rifle and pistol flashes, Sergeant Hervisu kept his pistol silent and veered farther away from the captain, saying to several of the men as he passed them in the dark, “Quickly, get over near
Capitán
Oberiske. Give him some covering fire!” Hervisu rode away, leaving Captain Oberiske in a storm of gunfire.

But Oberiske soon saw he'd made a mistake. As the
Federales
around him began to fall, their positions betrayed by their own muzzle flashes, Oberiske shrieked, “Cease fire!
For the love of God, cease fire
!” Bullets whistled and hummed. He spurred his horse to his left, in the direction that Sergeant Hervisu had taken, and shouted over his shoulder to his men, “Follow me!”

Three hundred yards away, the Peltry Gang
slowed their horses and began holding their fire as the darkness seemed to close back upon itself. “Who were they? Where the hell did they go?” Goose shouted to Moses, who rode beside him.

“I don't know!” Moses replied. “But whoever it was, if they had their hands on that machine rifle, they would have used it!” He pulled his horse back and forth, looking all around in the darkness. “I think we're being tricked! Fall back to the valley trail.”

Across the flatlands, Captain Oberiske and Sergeant Hervisu listened to the sound of the hooves turn and ride away. “All right,
Herr
Sergeant,” said Oberiske, fingering a bullet hole through his shirtsleeve, “you know this country better than I. What do you propose we should do?”

As the frightened young soldiers drew their horses up around the two leaders, Sergeant Hervisu said, “Leave a small patrol here to round up any survivors,
Capitán
. If we want the machine rifle, we must be where these men do not expect us to be. To do this, we must hurry.”

“What about our dead lying back there?” Oberiske asked.

“For now, the dead must bury the dead. The patrol will find them in the light of morning.”

“Where exactly are you talking about going, Sergeant?” Oberiske demanded.

Sergeant Hervisu did not answer. Instead, he kicked his horse forward. The men fell in behind Hervisu in a loose column of twos and rode past Captain Oberiske in the darkness. Oberiske cursed under his breath and hurried to catch up.

On the flatlands, a thousand yards behind the
Federales
, Abner Webb lay against the body of a dead
horse with his pistol in his right hand and a long boot knife in his left. He listened in silence to the moaning of a dying
Federale
and the low, painful nicker of a wounded horse. He dared not make a move or a sound until he knew for certain that all the Mexican soldiers were gone. But as he lay there, hearing the sound of gunfire in the distance and the horses' hooves pounding away across the flatlands, he heard a cautious voice whisper, “Is anybody alive here but me?”

“Daniels?” Webb whispered in reply. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it's me,” said Edmund Daniels. “Is that you, Webb?”

“Yes, it's me,” said Abner Webb. “We must be the only ones left.” As he spoke, he belly-crawled around the dead horse toward the sound of Daniels' voice.

“That figures,” Daniels said in a flat, disgusted tone. “It had to be me and you left out here.”

“At least we're alive,” said Webb. “Are you hit?”

“Hell, yes, I'm hit. My leg's shot all to hell. How would a man get through a scrape like that and not get wounded some?” In an afterthought, he asked, “Aren't
you hit
?”

“No, not a scratch, far as I can tell,” sad Webb, sounding almost apologetic about it.

“Well I'll be double dog damned,” said Edmund Daniels, letting out an exasperated breath at the unfairness of it. “I suppose that figures too.”

Webb started to crawl all the way up beside the dark figure he saw in the pale moonlight. But then, hearing Daniels' tone of voice, he thought better of it and stopped and shoved the big knife down in his belt. He checked his pistol; there were only two rounds left. “I suppose we better fix that leg wound up…. Then we need to move around here, see if
all the others are dead.” He kept an eye on Daniels' dark outline as he took bullets from his pistol belt and reloaded.

“They're not all dead,” said Daniels. “Best I could see in the dark, it looked like your pal Will Summers got out of here while the getting was good.”

“Good for him if he did, as far as I'm concerned,” said Webb. “I wish to hell we all could've cut out.” He looked at the body of a young
Federale
lying three feet from him. “What do you suppose made them attack us that way? Think they must have figured we were the Peltrys?”

“Who knows?” said Daniels. “Who really gives a rat's ass? They beat the living hell out of us. That's enough for me. It's time to pack it in, head for home. Rileyville can't say we didn't give it our best try.”

With his pistol reloaded, Abner Webb crawled in beside him and felt the wet, sticky ground near Daniels' leg. “My God, Daniels, you're bleeding something awful.”

“I don't need you to tell me that, Webb,” said Daniels, the resentment still in his voice. “The bullet cut through the big artery in my thigh. I'm trying to hold back the bleeding with this tourniquet I made with a bandanna and my pistol barrel. I don't think it's helping much though. I can feel myself getting light-headed and weak.”

“Here,” said Webb. “Let me look at it. Maybe I can get it to—”

“Keep your hands off me, Webb,” said Daniels, jerking his wounded leg away. “I know where we stand.” He raised a rifle that he'd kept hidden down the length of his other leg. Even in the darkness, Webb could see the hammer was fully cocked. “I only came along to see you die…either by my hand or the Peltrys'. I never counted on it coming
about this way. Looks like we're gonna leave this world together.”

Abner Webb acted quickly, grabbing the barrel and shoving it away from his chest just as Daniels pulled the trigger. The explosion kicked up a chunk of hard dirt that broke apart and stung both men. “Damn it, Edmund! This ain't the time or place,” said Webb, wrenching the rifle from his blood-slick hand and pitching it aside. “I hope that shot ain't going to bring them back down on us.”

“What's it matter?” said Daniels. “You're going to kill me. I don't have a doubt about that.”

“You're wrong,” said Webb. “I don't want to kill you. I wish to God what happened between us never happened…but I don't want to kill you. I won't raise a hand against you unless it's in self-defense.” He pushed Daniels' bloody hands away and looked down closely at the bloodsoaked tourniquet. “Let's call a truce between us, at least until we get out of this fix we're in. What do you say?”

Instead of answering, Edmund Daniels said, “Let me ask you one thing, Webb, since there's only the two of us here.” Daniels looked down at the wound as Abner Webb untwisted the tourniquet to take it off and get a tighter grip on it. “When you and her, you know…did it. Would she ever say or do—”

“Hush, Edmund,” said Webb, cutting him off. “I'm not going to talk about it with you. It ain't right. Besides, you've lost a lot of blood. You're not thinking clear right now.”

“Who brought it on, Webb,” Daniels asked. “You or her? Did you go looking, waiting for your chance…or did she come offering?”

“Stop it, Daniels,” said Webb, feeling the heavy surge of blood as he completely let the pressure off the bandanna. He hurriedly retied the bandanna
tighter. He stuck the bloody pistol barrel beneath it and twisted it, cutting off the blood flow, seeing the fountain of thick arterial blood ebb down to a steady trickle then stop almost completely. “There,” he said. “Lay your hand right here on the gun handle and hold it in place. Can you do that while I see if any of our men are lying around here?”

“Yeah, I can hold the gun in place,” said Daniels, his voice starting to sound a bit slurred. “Didn't you check this pistol while you had it loose? Make sure it's not loaded?”

Now that Daniels mentioned it, Webb wished he had. But it hadn't crossed his mind at the time. “No, I didn't. But we've got a truce, remember?”

Daniels shook his head slowly. “I never said we had a truce, Webb. It's just something you brought up.”

Webb had already placed Daniels' hand down on the pistol and taken his own hand away. “If it's loaded, I'll just have to trust you not to shoot me,” he said. “If you undo that tourniquet just to shoot me, you'd have to be a damned fool. I doubt if you could get it back on before you bleed to death. You'd be killing yourself.”