Winchester 1887 (13 page)

“Shut up.” Wildcat cursed. “Shuts up. They's here.”

Robin went to James's side, helped him up, and handed him a rag to dab his watering eyes.

He had been right. He had tried to convince himself that the deal with the Indians he had witnessed earlier wasn't what he had thought. He had tried to make himself believe something else. He stepped back, lowering the rag, pulling free from Robin. Through blurred vision tried to find the old man. “That's not molasses. It's whiskey!”

“Get to the wagon, boy. You, too, Robin.”

“But—”

Robin pulled him away, then pushed him toward the wagon.

He tried to resist, but his eyes hurt too much. For a moment, he thought maybe he had been blinded, but slowly the tears flushed out the terrible whiskey.

“You didn't swaller none, did you?”

It took a while before he realized Robin had asked him the question.

“No.” He shook his head. His eyes had swallowed the handful that splashed into his face.

“Climb up.”

They had reached the front of the wagon. Once again, old Wildcat had not unhitched the team.

“It doesn't make any sense to hide up here now,” he said.

“Do it . . .”

He turned and faced Robin, seeing that the kid's face was white. Afraid. The boy was afraid. And suddenly James understood that Wildcat Lamar was afraid, too.

That was the fuel James needed. He reached out, took hold, put his left foot on the piece of wood, climbed up, and pulled himself into the boot. Robin went in right behind him and grabbed the shotgun.

James stared at the Winchester '86.

“That won't do us no good,” Robin said. “Unless you've conjured up some magic bullets.”

He sighed, blinked his eyes rapidly, and looked across the camp.

The Chickasaws were farmers, had been even when they'd lived in towns east of the Mississippi River in the state of Mississippi. Even before they had been removed to Indian Territory, those civilized Indians had had their own laws, their own religion, and their own government. The Chickasaws had shared a reservation—a Nation—with the Choctaws until the Treaty of 1854 had divided the reservations and created the Chickasaw Nation with five divisions.

The story went that the Chickasaws had always been allies of the white men, and had even helped General Anthony Wayne whip the Shawnee. Something told James that the twelve Indians he saw were not allies of Wildcat Lamar.

They dressed well, three of them in black broadcloth suits, five wearing tall silk hats like Abraham Lincoln might have donned, and several with silk cravats. They rode good horses. Yet every one of them carried a shotgun, rifle, or pitchfork.

“Chikma,”
Wildcat Lamar said, waving his hand.

James figured the Chickasaw word meant hello.

“Ofí!”
snapped a silver-haired gent in broadcloth and top hat. He spit.

James figured that word did not mean hello.

The old man lowered his hand and gathered his wits as he glanced at the wagon. A few riders eased their horses up until they had formed a semicircle around him and his whiskey kegs. None of the Indians seemed to consider Robin or James.

“This ain't good,” Robin whispered. “Ain't good at all.”

“Gots some mighty fine whiskey here, gents,” Wildcat said. “Three kegs. Like you asked fer, ol' chief, ol' pard. You got the silver?”

“You don't sell whiskey,” the old chief said.

His voice surprised James. He didn't sound like an Indian, at least not like those he had seen back on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache federal reserve. He sounded prim and proper, except when he had said that one Indian word. Bitterness and contempt had laced his voice then.

“You serve death.”

Old Wildcat Lamar started to back away.

From the distance and even with his eyes still not completely clear, James could tell that the old man's face was losing all color. Wildcat was scared. He could sense death.

Realizing if he ran, he would be killed, the crazy man turned back to face the chief and his braves. “No. Yer jes' tryin' to get me to lower my price. Ya ol' skinflint.” He laughed, though more fear came out than cackles.

“We will see.” The chief's head bobbed, and four men swung down from their horses. “After you drink your own whiskey.” Then he barked something in his native tongue.

Wildcat turned, screamed, and ran.

It happened so fast, James wasn't sure he understood any of it.

Wildcat Lamar was running, begging, and yelling for help.

Two Chickasaws kicked their horses and cut off Wildcat, blocking him from their view.

The shotgun roared, blistering James's left ear. He screamed, but couldn't even hear his own shout. The shot had been deafening. He clawed at his ear with one hand as if that might bring back his sudden hearing loss. Only then did he realize that Robin had cut loose with one barrel of the shotgun.

 

 

The horse's ears flattened, and Millard pulled on the reins, then stood in the stirrups. The wind blew and carried not only the smell of summer, but sounds.

Gunfire.

Swearing, Millard raked his spurs across the liver chestnut and galloped down the hill, skirting the woods, following the trail.

“Never ride into a fight,”
his father had told him,
“until you know what you're riding into.”

Millard didn't care.

His son was down there. In trouble.

 

 

As Robin thumbed back the other hammer, the second barrel exploded, sending James flying off the wagon and landing with a thud. He rolled over, trying to catch his breath. Shots and screams sounded, but far, far, far away. Like in a dream. He realized he was not deaf, that only one ear could not hear. The other picked up sound.

Robin had fired again, and her shot had knocked a man off his horse. Close by. James heard the horse gallop past him, so close it spit dust and gravel into his face. On his knees, he wondered why the oxen did not take off. Slowly, he comprehended that the brakes had not been unlocked. Those four animals were worn out from the long, hard haul and were not even straining to get away.

A bullet whistled past his ear that could not hear.

Blinking, he made out a tall Indian on a horse aiming a Henry rifle right at him. He swallowed, knowing he was about to die. At the last moment, the Indian switched aim, saw another target, and fired.

Behind him, Robin screamed. He heard it through his good ear.

James's head spun, only to see Robin falling back, dropping the shotgun, which he had been desperately trying to reload, and disappearing into the driver's box.

James looked back. The tall Chickasaw Indian was levering the rifle, sliding off his horse, and aiming at James.

James saw an old Colt revolver lying in the dust, inches from the Chickasaw that Robin had shot out of the saddle. He was dead, his chest a bloody mess.

Robin killed him.
That thought was quickly replaced by one more urgent.
And that tall Indian is about to kill me.

James dived for the Colt, and the bullet from the Henry rifle sliced over his head, barely missing him. Had he reacted a second later, he would be dead, too.

His right hand found the pistol. The tall Chickasaw was coming toward him, jacking the lever, aiming. Once again, he changed his aim and fired at someone else.

“Arggh!”

Robin's voice reached James somehow. He heard a thud behind him and wondered if the Indian had killed Wildcat's scrawny son.

Instinct took over as his right hand came up, his thumb pulling back the hammer. James knew he could not look back to see if the boy lived or lay dead like the Chickasaw. If he wanted to live, he had to kill.

The tall Chickasaw stood only a few feet from him, levering the rifle again, bringing the barrel down.

The pistol kicked in James's hand, and he smelled the bitter scent of gun smoke. The Indian fell backward, clutching his shoulder, sending the Henry rifle sailing over his head. James dived to his side as another bullet cut a swath past him. He fired again.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

He thumbed back the hammer, pulled the trigger, and heard—through his good ear—that dreaded click.

Pitching the empty Colt away, he scrambled back toward the wagon. Robin lay faceup, bloody, but still breathing. A bullet splintered one of the spokes in the front wheel. Another kicked up dust an inch from his fingers and he scrambled.

For . . . ?

For what?

He saw the Winchester—Uncle Jimmy's old 1886 cannon. James grabbed the rifle, rolled over, backed up against the front wheel, and brought the empty .50-caliber repeater to his shoulder. “Don't move!” he yelled, hearing his own voice . . . through both ears.

Three Indians stopped. Maybe they could see the size of the barrel. Obviously, they did not realize that the rifle was empty.

“Don't move,” he said again, quieter. Still, he heard his own voice, heard the echoes of gunfire fading, and saw himself staring down the barrels of rifles, shotguns, and revolvers.

He said it again. “Don't move.”

The silver-haired old leader stepped into the center of men, the nearest ones less than ten yards from James.

“He is a boy,” one of the Indians said.

“So is the other,” said another.

Another, out of James's view, cursed in English, and moaned. “He is old enough to have shot me.”

That caused a few of the Indians to laugh.

The chief barked something in the Chickasaw tongue, and the men fell silent.

They had not killed James. Not yet. He found that hard to understand, but he felt immensely grateful.

“Well?” asked one with a Yellow Boy, the old 1866 Winchester .44 carbine, so-called because of its shiny receiver.

“Where's—?” James shot a quick glance to find Wildcat Lamar and then wished he had not. Taking his eyes off the Indians could have, should have, been all it took for the Chickasaws to have killed him.

Wildcat Lamar's head was being held in one of the whiskey barrels. Two Chickasaws stood over him, their pitchforks on the ground. The old man struggled, but the Indians refused to lift his head.

“Let him up!” James snapped. He stared at the chief and brought the gun around until the .50-caliber rifle was aimed at his belly. “Do it! Tell them to let him up or I'll kill you.”

The Indian leader snapped his fingers, and the two Chickasaws jerked the man's white face, dripping with vile whiskey, out of the keg, and tossed him unceremoniously onto the ground behind them. They wiped the whiskey and its stink on their denim pants.

Wildcat Lamar rolled over, and groaned, moaned, and cursed.

“He is brave,” one of the Chickasaws said.

“For a puppy,” said another.

“We should let him live. To tell the white men not to bring their poison into our country.” This came from one with a silk cravat and a diamond stickpin . . . and a massive Sharps carbine that would have blown James in two.

“He shot me in the shoulder!” moaned the one James had shot.

James kept the '86 aimed at the chief, thinking
How many times can I pull off this bluff?

The chief answered that question. “Kill him.”

Yet the one with the silk cravat and fancy stickpin said, “We've killed two already.”

That brought out a series of curses and insults in English and Chickasaw from the old chief. “And how many of our people . . . how many of all Indian peoples . . . would they have killed with their poison? You have heard what they did to the Comanches to the west? He brought this poison to kill as many Indian people as he could. A sick, evil man. Who also killed his own people, his own kind, with this poison in Texas.”

“And he has drunk that which will kill him,” said the one that James decided was truly civilized. “It is enough. We do not need to kill any more.”

James held his breath, but did not lower the Winchester.

“Killing a white man is not an easy thing,” said one holding a muzzle-loading shotgun. “The metal shirts will come for us. To arrest us. To take us to Fort Smith. To hang us.”

“These are not white men,” the old chief countered. “They are not even men. Killers of children. Murderers of women. And they do not kill fast, but slowly, cruelly. Kill him.”

James would later think that was what it was like to be one of the Five Civilized Tribes. To talk. To sort out things. To make sure one did the right thing, or at least, what the majority agreed upon. That had saved his life. He figured the Comanches or Kiowas or Apaches would merely have shot him dead and been done with it.

“Think about it, John Yaneka,” the chief told the one who had been arguing that James should live. “Think how you would feel had your daughters or your sons have had a swallow of the poison in those barrels. Imagine the deaths we have heard described. Brought on by these with no God, no decency, no souls.”

The man with the cravat and stickpin sighed. “You are right, Fochik.” James's savior turned to the Indian nearest him. “Kill him.”

The Indian with a Remington .44 stepped forward.

For some reason, some crazy reason, James swung the barrel of the empty Winchester toward the Chickasaw, moving in to kill him. The Indian raised the revolver—the hammer had long ago been cocked—and James was waiting to hear that . . .