News of the World: A Novel (12 page)

He turned and saw Johanna crawling toward him, dragging the box of .38 ammunition. She had got it out of the flour keg. It was covered with flour, so were her hands.

He took the box and then pointed sternly to the wagon. She wriggled back.

This was not the first time that someone had wanted to kill him but the other times had been what one might call fair fights. The two rifle shots sounded to the Captain as if they had come from Henrys. A Spencer made a flatter, barking sound. But it could have been the gunpowder they were using. He smelled the gunpowder smoke rising up from below in long windless strands that snarled in the cedar. His mouth was dry. They had been traveling the entire night and he was weary and the cloudy light was diffuse so it was difficult to see.

He had not thought they would turn so quickly to murder. He had thought if they caught up, they would bluster, threaten, offer a certain amount in silver, perhaps even claim they were the girl’s relatives. He saw himself pointing the long barrel of the Smith and Wesson into their faces and saying something like, Begone or I will blow you through. This was clearly not going to happen. Human aggression and depravity still managed to astonish him. He had been caught by surprise.

The girl was under the wagon. She was listening. Then she lifted her hands and whipped her long hair into a braid and tied it off with a piece of lace edging she tore from her skirt. She was not astonished. Not at all.

He lay still in the crumbled stone and blue-green agarita behind the protection of the caprock. He waited. He and Johanna were exposed to the wooded slope behind them, higher ground, but it was a good quarter mile away. Almay and the Caddos were coming up from below. The wagon must have been just barely exposed. He waited. The wind was cold.

He heard, remotely, the lever action of another Henry and then saw another puff of gunpowder smoke below, from behind a long slanting buttress of red stone on the right side of the ravine. Instantly afterward he heard a sharp, flat crack and the noise of the wagon being hit again. Splinters burst into the air and rained around him. Pasha fell back on his halter rope but it did not break so he came up straight again. He wasn’t hit. Fancy was more determined and tore her halter rope loose and went crashing away into the trees and stopped. She was hung up on something.

The Captain waited for the other, or two others if they were all armed with rifles. He had to hoard his revolver ammunition and watch for the best shot even if they were right in his face. It seemed his eyes would start from his head. He had to shut them for a moment. Then a .45 long Colt round struck to his right like a hammerhead, about six feet away and then he heard the muzzle blast. He didn’t turn his head but only noted where the smoke came from. It had also come from the right side of the ravine, farther down. Number three. The shot did not have that deep, biting bark of a rifle, so it was a revolver. They had all three come up single file on one side. Stupid. They were overconfident. They were up against nothing but an old man and a girl.

In some ways he wouldn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory. Seventy-one was a good long time to have lived. But then there was Johanna.

The mild, watery sun of early March poured down a shadowless light. Not many reflections. Another shot. It chipped the face of the dark, dense limestone to his left. He did not duck nor glance in that direction but watched for the smoke.

He saw it. Same rifle. Two, that’s all they had. The third man was the odd man out and had to make do with a revolver like himself.

Then he saw a man jump from one buttress of rusty-red stone to another to cross the ravine to the other side. He was carrying a rifle. The Captain fired three times, chipping the stone around the man, sending up sprays of cedar duff and the sumac leaves like little airborne ears. It was one of the Caddos. They were trying to nail him between two lines of fire; a rifle to his left and a rifle and a handgun to his right.

A brief glimpse; the Caddo was wearing a heavy leather glove on his left hand. So he was right, they did have Henrys. There was no floor arm on the Henry and its hot barrel and the magazine tube had to be handled with a glove. Another shot. He waited for the flash of a rifle barrel on his left, within the range of his revolver, saw it, fired twice and heard a yell and the rifle flew away and got wedged among the rocks.

Got him. At least he had knocked the rifle out of his hand. And now the stupid fool was going to go after it.

He aimed and waited. He was sure the Caddo was going to try to retrieve his precious expensive rifle.
Go for it, man.
Over
on the other side of the ravine he caught a glimpse of the crown of a hat. He was too smart for that. It was on a stick.

Johanna, get back!

The girl ignored him. She was edging along the caprock to his right. She ducked in and out between the great tabular sections of red sandstone, holding on to the unforgiving rock with her bare hands. She peered over, she ducked back. She carried the stove lid lifter in one hand and now she began to lever at the base of a flat layer of stone. She had pulled the back hem of her skirts between her legs and tucked it into the dainty belt at her waist in front so it looked as if she were wearing big Turkish pantaloons. She was still barefoot. She looked like the engravings he had seen of Circassian children in their rags and bandoliers fighting the Russian troops somewhere in the Pontus. This was clearly not her first gunfight.
Mao sap-he,
she said.
Caddos. The Ring-in-the-nose people. They will die.
She didn’t care if he did not understand her, it was simply important to say,
They will die.

The Captain turned back to his notch and through the leaves on the left he saw the Caddo’s black hair glinting as he dodged from rock to rock, down the ravine, going for his rifle. He fired again. A yell, then whimpering. One wounded. How bad he didn’t know. Sweat ran from under his hat, from the tattered sweatband and into his eyes and he wiped his eyes on his shoulder one after the other, quickly. He was surprised when he saw he had to reload. He had not thought he had fired so many rounds. His hands had flour on them from the box of shells.

Johanna was still levering at the base of a slab of stone with
the lifter. To his amazement she tipped it up, and then over, and it rolled end over end like a flat plate on edge, leaping downhill, smashed in half on an outthrust boulder and then shattered and fell in pieces upon somebody. There was a deep shout, almost a grunt, and a man fell forward out of concealment and rolled.

Good girl, he said. Demon child! He laughed as he fired again and again, careless of the expenditure of ammunition. Then he was furious with himself; the man was in his sights and yet he could not hit him. Then the man disappeared.

TWELVE

H
E HAD TWENTY
cartridges left. He clicked out the cylinder and reloaded.

He smiled at her as she came back. You are most amazing, he said.

She acknowledged this with a grave nod and turned her attention back to their enemies.

Another rifle round shattered stone in front of him like an explosion. He bent his head against flying chips and felt a strange electrical pain all over his skull, a nerve pain, then he couldn’t see out of his right eye. He wiped at it quickly and it cleared and he watched for the smoke. He saw it down to the right, again. She had probably hit the man with the handgun. The stream of water chattered busily down the ravine and here and there shone like glass. The Captain wiped again at his eye and then looked at his hand. It was wet with blood. A blade of stone blown off the rock had struck him over the right eye but he thought it would stop bleeding in a minute or so. He must not be incapacitated, he must not be killed because he knew very well what they would do with
the girl. Some people were born unsupplied with a human conscience and those people needed killing.

He tried to think how many of them were wounded. He might have shot the Henry rifle barrel out of alignment. He thought he had hit the man on the left but how badly he didn’t know. Johanna had wounded another by tipping a rock down on him.

He bent his head to his knuckles. His shirt was spotty with blood. He considered his choices. They could run for it, riding double on Pasha. Get Fancy loose and she would follow them. If they gained enough distance from Almay and the Caddos he could stop long enough to put her on the mare, but Fancy was a dear slow creature with her out-of-alignment front leg and prone to stumble. They could try to reach that distant smoke on the horizon.

Johanna crept forward and brought the leather water bottle to him. The Captain rolled onto his back and poured it down. Some ran down the sides of his mouth. He capped it. Almay and his evil minions had the spring water trickling down the ravine but he and Johanna had only this one canteen. He handed it back to her.

Useless thoughts again and again of why he had not carried more ammunition, why he had not bought more. Because they left Dallas in the middle of the night, that’s why.

Then the girl held out a wet cloth to him and he took it and wiped his forehead and eye. Lucky it was his right eye because it was his left eye that he aimed with. It was a shallow cut but the blade of stone seemed to have hit a nerve because it made a crawling sharp pain all over his scalp. It didn’t matter. He
could see out of both eyes now. His vision was very good. The animals down below probably thought he was half blind with old age. Well surprise surprise. He turned over on his stomach. After this little silence they would be eaten up with curiosity. He caught a glimpse of a rifle barrel within range of the revolver. He laid the long eight-inch barrel in a notch; he fired carefully and listened happily to another shout of pain.

Kep-dun, she said.

He looked into her worried dark blue eyes. My dear, he said. Let’s face facts.

He flipped open the cylinder of the revolver and turned his hand so that she could see it was empty. In his other hand he held the remaining fourteen rounds.

She reached out for the shotgun and looked at him.

No good, he said. No. He showed her one of the shells. Nothing but light Number Seven bird shot. It would not even carry very far. He pointed toward Pasha. Then he pointed to her. His bay saddle horse stood stiff as a china figure with fright and his ears were rigidly fixed at full cock toward the ravine. The horse might prove difficult, but among the Plains Indians, even young children could ride and ride well.

Go, he said. He made an “away” motion with his hand. Go.

He had made up his mind and his expression was firm and unsmiling.

They were calling up to him. They were trying to make a deal.

Haina, haina.
No, she would not go.

Get on the horse and go, he said. He slid backward and got hold of Pasha’s riding bridle from off the front wheel rim and
held it out to her. The Captain knew that with two of the men below wounded she might have a chance. Damn it, go.

Haina.

Suddenly he felt very tired. He could not deal with her and their attackers all at once. With his last fourteen rounds clattering in his hand he crawled again tight behind the lip of rock and found his notch. He loaded the cylinder and wasted three more shots trying to ricochet a round into Almay, who was behind the buttress on the right-hand side. Then one of the Caddos appeared, darting up the ravine and into cover again, and that caused him to uselessly expend another two shots. It was his judgment that was failing him as much as his strength. The only good thing was that the Caddo had a bloody hand.

Johanna, get on that horse and go.

For a moment he dropped his head on his forearm. When he lifted it there was a kind of bloody eye-socket print on it. She had gone somewhere. He pressed the wet cloth against his eyebrow. Again the strange flashes of nerve pain all over his skull. Then he saw her crawling toward him with the shotgun in one hand and the shot box in the other. Somehow she had managed to stack the bag of coins on top of the shot box and shove that along too. She was covered in dirt. He supposed he was too. She pressed the bag of coins toward him and gestured down the ravine.

Johanna, they are not going to be bought off, he said. He patted her arm. Her hair was coming out of the braid and it hung over her young, childish face in swags. He said, They can’t be bribed, they are not going to be made to go away with offers of coin. He looked into her anxious blue eyes and a terrible thought came to him. He felt his eyes leaking tears or sweat.
She could not be allowed to fall into their hands. Never. Never. He had eight shots left, six in the cylinder and two in hand. He said, It won’t work my dear.

She pushed the shotgun toward him.

He shook his head. Useless. He opened a shell and poured the tiny lead beads out into his hand and showed her.

Another shot from the left. It struck near one of the shafts of the wagon. The Caddo had got his rifle again and was shooting, wounded or not, and the smoke told him the man had gained higher ground. More than fifty yards away. If he got above them and started shooting down on them they were in serious, serious trouble. The Captain watched for him, saw the bright shifting of black hair.

He felt Johanna tugging at his sleeve. He looked down.

She held up one of the shotgun shells.

It was loaded with dimes.

He stared at the shell resting on Johanna’s outstretched palm.

Then the Captain reached out for it even as another round smashed into the front of the stone in front of him. He jumped but didn’t duck. He lay back and hefted the shell. The dimes fit perfectly into the paper tube of a twenty-gauge hull.

Well, I’ll be damned.

It was very heavy. He looked at the cap. She charged it with the powder charger. He saw her work the thumb lever that gave out twenty grains at a time: one, two, three, four, eighty grains of powder. A heavy load for his old shotgun. The Captain tossed the shell full of dimes up and down in his hand and smiled.

This is amazing, he said. He laughed. Ten years old and a wizard of field expedience.