“Out of the way!” Brett said. “Fuck out of the way. I’ll shoot any fucker in my way.”
Those still standing parted. Brett and Tillie went between us and out the door. Brett’s face looked demonic. Tillie looked as if she might be trying to add up a hard math problem.
A couple of men, half dressed, but holding heat, rushed out of the back room. A woman peeked out between them, then turned and went away. The men were in the room now, both zonked as lords, but trying to sober. “What the fuck?” one of them said. “What the fuck?”
“Avon,” Leonard said. “And we mean business.”
Then I suppose it all came together for everyone, what was really happening. Pistols snapped out of back pockets and ankle holsters. I cut down the Winchester, cocking and firing. Metal bees buzzed by me, and I kept firing. People seemed to leap away from me, and I saw the girl who had been using her tit for a hat go back in a blaze of flesh and bone as one of my wild shots hit her in the chest. I pivoted to look at the woman sitting on the floor. She was pulling a pistol out from under the dead black man’s shirt and pointing it at me. I turned and fired and the shot drove her head back into the wall and the other black man yelled something at me and I saw he had a gun and I fired. I had gone prehistoric, sniffing that swamp gas and tar. I think I shot him three times. All I know was a moment later I was cocking and pulling the trigger on an empty rifle. I heard Leonard letting fly again, realized he’d been blasting all the time, then through the back door, out of other rooms more men began to pour. They had shotguns and pistols and no sense of personal safety.
I cut down with the shotgun barrel and it was as if a great and invisible wave tore through the fresh recruits, then I was yelling to Leonard to back out of there, and out he went, and me after him, the wall splintering behind us, the men from the back rooms falling over the bodies of their comrades, slipping in their blood.
I said we backed out of there. Hell, we ran out of there. The jeep came whipping up to the door. We jumped in and Herman lifted his rifle with one hand and fired at the doorway, then he dropped it, grabbed the steering wheel, and away we went.
Just as I was easing myself to a sitting position, there was a blast and I felt stings all over my lower left side. Leonard cut down on those behind us and Herman stabbed the accelerator through the floor. We bolted up and over the ridge where we had hidden earlier, and turned south. Behind us more bullets popped and hissed, but now we were running on the other side of the ridge and they couldn’t see us and their shots were striking the dirt.
“Holy shit!” Brett said. “Holy fucking shit!”
“Shit,” I said. “We killed a bunch of people, Leonard. We killed a bunch of people.”
“Of course we did,” Leonard said, putting a hand on my shoulder, pulling it back as he felt the blood. “Of course we did.”
“Oh, God,” Brett said. “They weren’t so tough, were they? Were they?”
My thigh began to ache. I looked down. It was bleeding, turning my pants wet. My side hurt. I reached over and felt it. Small wounds. Pellets under the skin. I felt limp.
Behind us I saw a blur of white. Leonard saw it about the same time.
A horse.
A man riding bareback.
One of the men had bridled a horse and was trying to chase us down.
“Fuckin’ Lone Ranger,” Leonard said.
The Lone Ranger was unsteady on the horse, but he was firing at us with a handgun. A bullet whizzed between us, just missed Herman’s back and webbed the windshield.
I reached in the front seat and picked up Herman’s Winchester, cocked it, aimed and shot. The horse went down and rolled over, throwing the man. The man stumbled to his feet. The horse didn’t move.
“You missed,” Brett said.
“No, he didn’t,” Leonard said. The jeep left the man far behind us, a little fleshy dot against the great landscape of the desert. “Shit, Hap, what did that horse ever do to you? I can’t believe you spared that fucker’s life and shot the horse. You are some kind of work, brother.”
I dropped the Winchester and lay back against the side of the jeep, my head tilted upward. I held my bleeding shoulder and watched the stars bound and bob to the jerks and surges of the ride. Dust came up from the desert and lashed about us and filled my nose. I thought I could still smell blood and gunpowder. The roar of gunfire was in my ears. My legs were starting to shake. I felt as if I might suddenly burst out crying. My ass hurt. I reached around and pulled out the Winchester shells and the revolver that were riding in my back pocket, dropped them on the floor of the jeep. I lay back again and felt weak, so goddamn weak.
Leonard took off his jacket, then his shirt. He gave the shirt to Tillie, who just looked at it. Brett took it and slipped Tillie into it, buttoned it as if she were dressing a small child. It was large enough to make Tillie a short dress.
“Are we going somewhere?” Tillie said.
Brett patted her. The jeep bounced us painfully over rough terrain. I was growing colder. Leonard moved over next to me and turned his coat over and tore out the lining on one side. He stuffed the lining under my shirt, into the shoulder wound. He tied his belt around my leg and pulled it tight by winding the barrel of my revolver in it. He slipped his coat over me, sat with his arm around my shoulders.
“You gonna be all right, Hap,” he said.
“Rumble tumble,” I said, remembering what Red had called a bad fight. “Rumble tumble.”
26
We came to a little road that seemed oddly placed out in the middle of the desert. We drove down the road a ways and came to a little town that looked to be out of an old Western movie. It was at least sixty or seventy years back in time. There were very few lights and there was only one place open, a cantina.
