Deserter (26 page)

There's no possible way to sneak three heavily loaded freighters carrying a total of about fifty armed men and four trussed-up outlaw lookouts who weren't looking out quite sharply enough into a small town like Fairplay, and the Night Riders didn't attempt to do so. The first wagon, ahead of the others by three or four minutes, pulled to a stop midblock, in the center of the street, across from the sheriff's office. Jake stepped over the planks at the rear of the wagon and walked forward. He unbuckled the traces and the reins of the four snorting horses and whacked the lead horse on the rump, sending him on his way. At either end of the street men jumped from their wagons and did the same thing. In moments the two mares and the other gelding Jake had set free were followed by eight other horses, the small herd of them instinctively turning back toward their home at a shuffling lope. Jake, rifle shouldered, stepped toward the sheriff's office. Repair work, he noticed, was pretty much complete and the wreckage resulting from the past raid was all but invisible. A couple of men stepped out of the saloon and watched dumbly as Jake scratched a lucifer to fire with his thumbnail and touched the flame to the twined fuses of a pair of sticks of dynamite. At any other time the smooth, sparking arc—which flowed up from Sinclair's hand, rose quickly, and then flashed like a shooting star in the darkness—would have been pretty, even celebratory.

This morning it was a signal that a battle to the death had begun.

An eye-searing burst of white light preceded the roar of the explosion by the briefest part of a second. The front window and frame, along with the roller shade attached to the inside, catapulted past Sinclair, a single pane of glass amazingly unbroken and reflecting the already hungry flames in the office behind it. The as yet only partially shingled roof caved in gracefully, slowly, feeding the fire below. The door hung awkwardly from its top hinge for a moment before the entire doorway fell in, belching smoke and fire into the street.

Lanterns blinked on the length of Main Street and hurriedly dressed men, some bootless, most with un-buttoned shirts or no shirts at all, began pumping pistol and rifle fire into the three freighters. Slugs made a hollow sound—much like that of a knuckle thunked against a ripe melon—as they struck the thick slabs of wood. The wagons, Jake knew, were able to absorb whatever gunfire Mott could send them. They were vulnerable to dynamite, but that had been part of the gamble that's part of any engagement. It was a good bet that the outlaws simply didn't have any of the explosive: Moe had cleaned out his mercantile of dynamite—as well as most of his stock of weapons and ammunition—at night with midnight loads to Lou Galvin's ranch.

A bullet whined by Jake's head too close for comfort and several more dug up spates of dirt at his feet. He scrambled toward the back of the freighter he'd ridden in on just as Lou Galvin leaned out to give him a hand up. Jake reached for the hand but never touched it. Almost magically a fountain of blood shot out from Galvin's wrist and arced to the grit of the street. The entrance
wound was small—a jagged little tear the size of a five-cent piece, but as the slug exited it carried with it a flap of flesh and bits of bone and cartilage. Sinclair used his momentum to heft himself over the back of the freighter's rear ramp, slamming into Galvin and taking the stunned man crashing to the floor. Two Night Riders dropped their rifles and rushed to help the older man. “No, damn it!” Jake yelled. “Stay at your posts and keep firing—I can handle this!” He snatched a handful of cloth strips and a bottle of grain alcohol from the wooden packing case nailed to the center of the wagon floor. The blood that had been a fountain was now a steady flow, its metallic scent even stronger in the wagon than that of the acrid gun smoke. Galvin was already in shock, skin chalk-pale, eyes beginning to roll back in his head. Jake slapped his friend across the face—hard. Galvin's eyes began to focus. He yelped when Sinclair poured alcohol into the exit wound, turned the wrist over, and did the same to the smaller entry puncture. He wound a length of cloth around the wrist, but within seconds blood was dripping from the underside of Lou's wrist. Jake rigged a tourniquet just above the elbow, pulled it snug, and tied off the cloth. For a moment, the eyes of the two men met. There was nothing to say and they both knew it. Sinclair turned away to pick up the deer hide covering his Sharps, unwrapped the rifle, and slid a cartridge into it.

Light was coming on fast. Although the sun hadn't yet cleared the horizon, the long splashes of color to the east had been chased away by the break of day. Jake hunkered in front of a gun port and scanned the row of buildings across from him. The sheriff's office
was burning nicely and flames had propagated to the empty storefront next to it. Down the block a trio of riflemen on the saloon roof were silhouetted against the sky, their muzzle flashes further establishing them as targets. Jake drew a bead on the middle outlaw and eased back on his trigger. The man simply disappeared, the velocity of the big Sharps slug at that minor distance such that the rifleman was hurled the length of the roof and off the back before the report reached his partners. One of the outlaws dropped behind the cover of the roof's low parapet; the other hesitated a moment too long. The bullet struck him at his belt line and his face met his shins as he folded like a pocketknife being snapped shut, leaving a thick arrow-straight streak of blood to the rear edge of the roof and a reddish mist in the air as he was pitched off and dropped to the ground near his equally dead partner.

After the first twenty-five or so minutes of the battle the barrages of gunfire from both sides diminished to an ongoing, more logically paced crackle. Jake had warned his men this would happen. “In a fight where both sides have fairly good cover, after first hot and heavy exchanges, the battle slows way down. Men pick their shots—they aim rather than spraying lead toward the enemy. Some men get sloppy for a moment, show too much of themselves, don't keep as tight a watch. Those fellows end up dead. I want you boys to stay alert and stay alive. This showdown isn't going to be over in an hour or even a couple of hours. I guarantee that. If we let up, we lose. It's as simple as that. We've got more ammunition than we need, and we're not outnumbered by more than a few men. Stay sharp and we can win in Fairplay and take back your
town.” In a second, he'd amended his statement. “
Can
win?” he questioned himself. “Hell, we
will
win! And look: If anyone sees Mott, let me know. He's got a bill that's due to be paid to me.”

“I'm pretty sure I seen him haul his ass into the hotel from the saloon, Jake—maybe ten or fifteen minutes ago—carryin' a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other,” one of the men responded.

“Yeah—I seen that, too,” another agreed.

Jake nodded and hunkered next to Lou Galvin. The older man's wrist was weeping some blood, but the tourniquet seemed to be holding well. “Your hand's looking good, Lou,” Sinclair said. “You'll be grabbing the ladies by the ass in no time.”

Galvin forced a smile that was more of a grimace. He forced some words Sinclair had to lean closer to him to hear. “My ass-grabbin' days were over a decade ago, Jake. Tell me—how are the boys doing?”

“They're doing fine—real good. I figure Mott has about forty-five men in play, spread along both sides of the street. We've dropped at least four of them and yours is the only bad wound we've taken.” He waited out a volley from their wagon and then spoke again. “No deaths on our side, Lou, and we're doing our best to keep it that—”

The young farmer at the gun port a yard away from Galvin and Sinclair ratcheted a round into his rifle and drew a bead. Before he could fire his head snapped back like that of a condemned man hitting the end of a gallows rope and a fist-sized chunk of his temple and a spatter of gray matter slapped against the canvas on the other side of the wagon. The man at the next port dropped his rifle and vomited, choking, gasping. Two
others set down their rifles to rush to their fallen comrade. “No! Goddammit, no!” Jake bellowed angrily. “Get back to your posts and keep firing! There's nothing you can do for this boy now except to keep fighting!” He eased the body past Galvin and to the rear of the wagon. He took a blanket from the stack of three or four and spread it over the corpse. When he'd asked the women to supply each wagon with a few blankets, no one had asked him what they were for—they knew. It was easier—safer, emotionally—not to talk about it, as if not saying the words would make the reality less frightening. Jake picked up his rifle from next to Lou and moved to the port, leaning his back against the rough wood next to it. “Anybody see where the shot came from?” he called out.

“I think it might have been the roof next to the saloon,” a shaky voice answered. “Yeah,” another agreed. “Either there or the second floor of the hotel.”

Jake fed a round into the breech of his Sharps.
I should have told them,
he chided himself.
I could have warned the men . . . but about what? How? Tell them not to fire from the ports?
He eased the rifle barrel out the port, put the butt to his shoulder, and shifted into firing position, eyes slowly sweeping the saloon and the hotel next to it.
Should I have told them that there are probably a couple or more men in Mott's band who had seen a great deal of combat during the war—maybe even had been sharpshooters? That those men are deserters with their battle skills still intact, just as my own are? What good would that have—

A scream of pain from the front end of the freighter stopped Jake's thoughts. The young man at the port held both hands to the side of his face, blood streaming
from between his fingers. “Hell's fahr,” he shouted. “Ain't nothin'but a scratch. Scared me, is all.”

Sinclair caught a quick glimpse of sunlight on metal at a second-story window of the hotel. The glass was crusted with dust and dried dirt—impossible to see through. He placed his round in the center of the pane and when the glass exploded inward he saw a figure slammed toward the back of the room. As Sinclair reloaded, two shots tore into another outlaw as he passed by the now empty window frame. “Good shooting,” Jake called out.

Each man had left the Galvin Ranch with a full canteen and a pocketful of deer or beef jerky. By midday much of the water had been drunk and a good part of the jerky eaten. The boxes of ammunition piled in the center of the wagon floor were holding up well, although the men had been firing essentially nonstop. A runner who'd weaved his way to the center wagon from the one closest to Fairplay's second saloon reported two Night Riders dead, three wounded. A runner from the other wagon reported one dead, two wounded. The best guess was that nine or maybe ten outlaws had been killed.

Sinclair worked his big rifle methodically through the afternoon, seeking out targets, taking good aim, and killing outlaws. His face smarted from gunpowder blowback, his eyes reddened and teared almost constantly, and his right shoulder ached dully from the pounding recoil it had been taking all day. There was no way to cushion or reduce the recoil: Each .54-caliber bullet fired transmitted the power of a strong punch through the cherry wood stock. Jake was pleased to trade the power, range, and accuracy of the Sharps for a sore
shoulder and a face that felt a tad scalded. The freighter smelled of gunpowder, sweat, and blood, and the air was somehow thick, turgid, unmoving. Jake moved up and down the length of the wagon offering what encouragement he could. These men weren't used to combat at all, much less sustained battles. They were tired, spent, those who had killed turning over what they'd done—ended another human being's life—in their minds. Sinclair stopped behind Mason Trott, a clerk from Moe's general store, and watched as the young man pretended to aim but, a moment before pulling the trigger, angled his barrel sharply upward. He jacked another round into the chamber and flinched as Jake put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. “What's the problem, Mason?” he asked quietly, crouching next to the rifleman. “Why're you wasting ammunition? That last shot of yours must have been thirty feet over the hotel roof.”

“Jake,” the young man began, his eyes locking with Sinclair's. “Jake—I—I can't do it. I'm a Christian man, I'm a deacon in my church, I teach kids there. I teach them that killing is bad, wrong, a foul sin, an affront to Jesus Christ. I believe that with all my heart. I know these outlaws are evil, but it's the Lord's own will that'll dictate when their lives end.” He swallowed hard. “You're right. I'm wasting ammunition and endangering my friends. I've thought it over. I'm going to make a run for it, get back to Lou's place, pray there with the women and kids. It's where I belong—it's where I should be and want to be.”

Sinclair's grip on Trott's shoulder tightened. “You can't, Mason. You wouldn't get ten feet. Look: I'm almost out of ammunition for my Sharps. You set your rifle
down here and go on back and look after Lou, OK? I'll take over this port. Lou's been coming in and out of consciousness. Talk to him, pray with him if you want. I've been loosening the tourniquet every so often. You can take over doing that. After dark you can make it to the other wagons, look to their wounded. But trying to hightail it out of here now is suicide. There's no sense in you getting killed when you're needed here, right?”

Sinclair watched as Mason Trott hustled back to where Lou was stretched out at the rear of the wagon.
How many others of these guys aren't shooting to kill, can't bring themselves to sight in on another man? I've seen it in every battle, boys who can't—won't—take a life, shooting way high so their pals won't know.
A quick flash of anger and frustration surged through him and he fought to back it down.
These boys are civilians,
he chided himself,
and they're doing a hell of a job. Outlaws are going down, regardless of those who can't kill.