Winchester 1887 (25 page)

“That's my rifle, you know.” Grinning like the madman he was pretending to be, Millard Mann pointed at the Winchester rifle Red had on his lap.

“Not no more it ain't.” Red flicked the lines, and the wagon picked up a little more speed. “Mine.” He shot Millard a bemused look. “One of One Thousand. You probably figgered I didn't know that.”

Millard shrugged. “Well, I hope you enjoy it.” He looked to his side where the smoking half-breed Choctaw rode alongside the wagon on his horse. It did not surprise him that Newton Ah-ha-lo-man-tubbee had just finished rolling a cigarette and was sticking it in his mouth.

“How about a smoke, breed?” Millard said as the Choctaw struck a match against the saddle horn and brought it up to his cigarette.

As soon as the Indian had the cigarette fired, he blew out a chimney of smoke and handed the cigarette over. Millard took it, nodded, and placed it in his mouth. He took a long pull and exhaled. “Reckon you better get to the corral, breed. Before McCoy and Maxwell get irritated.”

Newton Ah-ha-lo-man-tubbee's head nodded, and he kicked his horse into a lope, moving in front of the wagon, making Millard and Red eat the horse's dust. He rode fast, moving underneath the watchtower that sat above the road into the fort and then veered west toward the corrals.

Like most frontier military posts, Fort Washita did not have a stockade surrounding the grounds. It seemed a tad different from most Army bases Millard had seen—Fort Supply and Fort Sill in Indian Territory; Fort Davis, Fort Sam Houston, Fort Richardson, Fort Griffin, and Fort Elliott in Texas. Fort Washita lacked rhyme and reason, spread out, maybe a bit discombobulated. It had been constructed before the Civil War, but had not been a fort in years. Most of the posts Millard had seen were more modern.

He saw Newton Ah-ha-lo-man-tubbee ride past the baker's oven and the guardhouse and dismount in front of the corral, already full of horses. Somehow, the half-breed had managed to roll a smoke during his lope down the road. Millard could see smoke drifting above the Choctaw's hat. That man had an amazing talent, and one hard addiction.

Millard withdrew the cigarette, checked how much remained, and wiped his sweaty hands on his pants. His heart pounded as the wagon drew closer to the watchtower. He could see Steve Locksburgh in the center window. Millard wet his lips, and returned the cigarette, trying to remember the last time he had actually smoked anything other than a cigar.

“Won't be long now,” Red said.

“Yeah,” Millard said. “You're right. It won't be long. Won't be long at all.”

A shout came from behind the wagon, followed by the thundering of hooves. Red leaned over to look from his side, and Millard peered around the canvas flap on his side.

Zane Maxwell had his horse at a gallop, leaning forward, low in the saddle, reins in his right hand, violently whipping his horse's side with his hat. He rode as if death chased him.

Something did. Millard saw dust down the road to the south.

“Hurry!” Maxwell shouted. “Get moving, Red! They're coming! Those Texans are coming! Early!”

A second later Maxwell had thundered past the wagon, raising dust for the watchtower and shouting at Locksburgh up in the log cabin on the stone pillar.

“Get moving, man!” McCoy had caught up with the wagon, riding alongside, gripping the pistol-grip shotgun. His hat had flown off his head, but he had no intention of stopping to pick it up.

“What?” Red asked, but already had grabbed a whip and started popping the black-snake above the mules' long ears. “Hi-yah! Hi-hay!” He cursed the animals. The Winchester .32-20 bounced on his lap.

“Find your place!” McCoy spurred his horse forward.

“They ain't supposed to be here for another hour or more!” Red bellowed, but McCoy was too far ahead to hear.

For a moment, Millard thought about making a play for the rifle in Red's lap, but bouncing up and down and sideways on the uncomfortable wooden seat, he had to grip the bottom to keep from flying out. His lips pressed to hold the cigarette in place as he thought,
Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell planned everything for this heist. Planned it and timed it perfectly. Yet the Texans have spoiled those plans by arriving early.

Again, Millard leaned over the side of the wagon. He could make out the stagecoach pulled by a team of six black horses. One driver on the top was popping his own whip, working those horses into a thundering frenzy. The Texas flag flew on a pole affixed to the side of the coach. It flapped and snapped in the wind as the stagecoach bounced along the road.

Those Texans had spoiled some of his ideas, too. He drew hard on the cigarette, and leaned forward.

“Hi-yah! Hi-yah!” Red's whip bit.

The watchtower was closer. Millard glanced through the oval canvas opening at the kegs in the back.
Time it. Time it right,
he thought, making one final hard drag on the cigarette.

He pitched it into the back. A sudden
whoosh
sang out, and the stink of sulfur bit into his nostrils.

“What the—” Red was turning, lowering his whip, but Millard was already moving.

He snatched the rifle from the gunman's lap, kicked up, and jumped, praying he had enough distance, enough momentum to clear the road. He landed hard but kept the Winchester One of One Thousand in his arms, and bounced hard, the breath leaving his lungs. His head pounding, he rolled over and over and fell into a ditch. Instantly, instinctively, knowing what was about to come, he had the sense to cover his head with his arms.

The detonation deafened him. Even a foot down in the dry ditch, an intense heat singed his shirt. He heard bits of wood whistling over him, felt hot embers landing on his back. He rolled over and came up, fighting to regain his breath, fighting to see.

Fighting to live.

Smoke and dust obscured his vision. He coughed, his lungs working again, and stepped into the smoke, yelling. At least, he thought he was yelling. “Go back!” he shouted at the approaching stagecoach. “Get out of here!”

To his amazement, the long-haired driver of the stagecoach didn't slow or even try to stop his team. He steered the vehicle off the road, moving around the destroyed main gate. The coach bounced, almost toppled over, but somehow managed to regain all four wheels as it clipped the fence that ran about twenty-five yards alongside the gate. The driver had the stagecoach—and all that gold—riding straight into the hands of Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell.

Millard couldn't see it anymore. Wind blew the smoke in an eastward direction, and the stagecoach and its crazed driver disappeared.

What he
could
see was the ruins of the covered wagon and the burning tower.

McCoy and Maxwell had made the mistake of leaving the making of the whiskey and the loading of the wagon to Millard, James, and Robin. Oh, they had brewed some whiskey, but the only poison in it was castor oil.
Just in case,
Millard thought,
they wanted someone to get real sick.

A lot of whiskey peddlers put gunpowder in their whiskey. To add a little kick to that Taos Lightning. Millard hadn't. He had packed the gunpowder into one keg, and spread a mass of black powder right beside it. That's what the cigarette had touched off. Then that keg had exploded, igniting the whiskey barrels, and sending poor Red—and unfortunately the team of mules and his trailing horse—into oblivion.

It had exploded just as Millard had hoped, right as it passed the tower, which was aflame.

But it had not killed Steve Locksburgh. One of his Colt Lightnings barked.

Millard answered with a shot from the Winchester and hurried toward the scorching hot mass of what once had been a covered wagon. Sweating, smoke half-blinding him, the heat almost unbearable, he levered a round into the Winchester and fired through the floor of the tower. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. He went out on the other side, looking up at the open windows, and put two shots through the center window.

Three seconds later, Steve Locksburgh came down through the trap door. His knees buckled, but he didn't fall. He held a Colt Lightning in each hand and fired from both, but Millard knew that was a fool's play.

You didn't win gunfights being the fastest.

You won them being accurate.

His rifle kicked and Locksburgh was driven into the conflagration behind him. He screamed once, stepped away from the fiery mass, and fell facedown onto the hot ground, his shirt ablaze.

Millard levered another round into the rifle, went over and kicked dirt onto the dead killer's shirt until the body was just smoking. He also picked up both double-action revolvers, sticking the hot weapons into his waistband, ignoring the pain, and moved away from the burning mass, the heat, the smoke, the death, and carnage.

He stared across the ground. The stagecoach had stopped near the flagpole. The driver had set the brake and fired a shotgun at one of the buildings. He leaped down and disappeared. Another man was running straight for the stagecoach, firing as he moved.

Chaos. Panic. Indians and white men ran this way and that, trying to get out of the line of fire. A tuba sounded. Then dropped. Millard could not make out McCoy or Maxwell, but he levered the Winchester as he ran straight into the pandemonium.

 

 

It had made absolutely no sense to Jackson Sixpersons as he'd whipped the team of horses pulling the stagecoach into Fort Washita. The covered wagon had exploded just as it had reached the entrance to the compound. Some guy had jumped off, shouted something, and waved before vanishing in the smoke and dust and debris.

At the flagpole, he'd managed to stop the team and slam the lever to set the brake. He dropped into the driver's box, yelling, “Stay down! Stay down! Stay down!”

A bullet sang from the big stone barracks off to the west and clipped the makeshift pole from which the Texas flag waved.

There's one of them,
he realized. He came up with the Winchester scattergun, fired, although those barracks were well out of range, and leaped from the coach onto the ground. As he ran toward the stone building, he cocked the shotgun, thinking that he ran pretty fast for an old Cherokee.

A figure with a black mustache appeared in the corner upstairs window and shot again. Realizing the gunman was shooting a revolver, not a rifle, Sixpersons sent another round and saw the buckshot spray the stone wall just to the left of the window.

Ten steps later, he was inside the barracks, finding the stairs, and taking them two at a time.

Something inside him told him to stop. He did and heard a grunt outside. Down the steps he went, moving lightly on his feet and taking a quick glance at the shotgun. He didn't remember doing it, but he had cocked the twelve-gauge already.

From outside came more firing, more screaming. Curses and confusion. As he moved toward the door, he heard the metallic click of a revolver being cocked and then the man with the black mustache and a pair of old Remington revolvers in both hands appeared in the doorway.

The old Cherokee saw the surprise in the man's eyes and the understanding that he was about to meet the devil.

The gunman fired both .44s at the same time. One bullet went far to the left of Sixpersons. The other tugged at the brim of his hat.

With the shotgun braced against his thigh, Sixpersons fired from the hip, and the man with the black mustache and two Remingtons was knocked through the doorway. The Cherokee lawman moved, fishing two-and-five-eighths-inch shells from his pocket to reload the '87 as he reached the doorway. He looked outside to see the man with the black mustache lying faceup, spread-eagled, quite dead on the ground.

 

 

McCoy had just dropped from the saddle behind the old log cabin on the other side of the cobbled road—a long way from the fort's main gate and
behind
the log cabin—when the explosion knocked him from his feet. That's how powerful the blast was.

As his horse had scampered away, he'd found the cut-down, pistol-grip shotgun, and hurried through the cabin to the front where he saw the whiskey peddler's wagon and the tower aflame. People were running everywhere.

Suddenly, he saw a man with a long rifle shooting from underneath the tower, firing at the floor, and finally stepping away from the burning wreckage. That man looked a whole lot like the whiskey runner Bodeen. McCoy watched as a figure dropped from the burning log cabin. Guns spoke. And Steve Locksburgh died.

“Bodeen!” McCoy croaked. He uttered a curse and fired his shotgun, though the whiskey runner was far, far out of range for the sawed-off ten-gauge.

Something else caught his eye. The stagecoach driver was running toward the South Barracks where John Smith was watching. They exchanged shots and then the driver, also working a lever-action shotgun—though not as fancy, nor as original as McCoy's own—went inside the building at a dead run.

McCoy smiled, thinking old John Smith would outfox that old man with the long gray hair.

The hired gunman leaped from the window, pushed a trumpet player aside, knocked down the fleeing, screaming, crying band conductor, and moved back inside the barracks, trying to sneak up on the shotgun-wielding old man. Guns echoed inside the dark building, and instantly, Smith came flying out the door, landing on the grass with a thud, his chest a bloody mess.

Tulip Bells came bolting down the stairs that led to the verandah of the bigger barracks on the south side of the parade ground and ran straight for the stagecoach.

The stagecoach! All that gold has to be inside.
McCoy started running toward it, too, but Bells reached it first, grabbed the latch to the door, and swung the door.