Chuckie thought he heard something behind him, at the far end of the barn. He looked at the others. Their eyes were wide; they had heard it, too. Then the very faint sound came again, but this time it was closer.
Someone was in the barn with them, and it wasn’t anyone from the Box T. The boys knew al 1 the positions of those friendly.
Chuckie slipped a rock into the pocket of his slingshot and ever so slightly shifted positions. Then he saw the clearly outlined figure of a man. And the shape of the hat told him it was no one from the Box T. Chuckie lifted his slingshot, pulled the rubber taut, and took aim. He let the rock fly and his aim was true. The rock struck the man in the center of his forehead and knocked him off his boots. The man made one grunt of pain as the rock hit him and then lay still on the barn floor.
Smoke was down the loft ladder in seconds. He looked at the slingshot-armed boys and sighed. It was too late to send them back to the house. But he couldn’t help but feel proud of them. They were a gutsy bunch.
Smoke moved to the fallen man. He didn’t know him.
“What’s goin’ on down there?” Jackson whispered from the hayloft.
“One of Jud’s men,” Smoke returned the whisper. “The boys dropped him with a slingshot.” Jackson chuckled softly.
“That means they’ve infiltrated us. Look sharp, Jackson.”
Smoke cut several lengths of binder twine and securely tied the hired gun. He stuck the man’s guns behind his belt and took his rifle. He looked at the boys looking at him. “I ought to spank you,” he whispered. “But I feel too proud of you to do that. Now, dammit, boys, stay down and out of sight! This is not a game.”
“Yes, sir,” Buster said, as Smoke headed for the ladder.
Smoke had just cleared the landing when Rusty’s rifle barked from his position in the bunkhouse. A man cried out in pain as the bullet struck true. Smoke ran to the hay door as gunfire began pouring in from all sides of the ranch complex.
Below him, the boys readied their slingshots as they crouched down behind bales of hay.
Jackson sighted a running figure, fired, missed, and fired again. The second slug dusted the man and sent him sprawling to the ground, side-shot and out of it.
Then the compound was filled with running men as they left their positions on the near-barren hills and ridges around the ranch and charged. Smoke could hear, over the gunfire, the sounds of horses coming hard.
The first wave of running men were cut down by the savage fire from the house, the barn, and the bunkhouse. Their bodies lay sprawled under the starry sky. One man, only slightly wounded, tried to make the barn. He was knocked to his knees by slingshot-propelled rocks and then knocked unconscious as a rock fired by Buster hit him on the side of the head and dropped him to the ground.
The boys grinned at each other.
Doreen sighted in a man and pulled the trigger, the Winchester slamming her shoulder. The slug caught the hired gun in the chest and ended his career.
Susie turned one around with a rifle shot and Alice finished him with a pistol. The rancher’s wife was calm and steady, this being nothing new to her. She’d fought Indians for years before this.
One of Jud’s men reached the outside bunkhouse wall. Jamie shot him between the eyes as he carelessly poked his head up just a tad too far.
Then the hard-running horses came into view, the riders carrying burning torches. The first half-dozen to reach the compound were blown out of their saddles by rifle fire. The boys in the lower level of the barn then went to work, sending rocks which impacted with horses’ butts.
One man was knocked out of the saddle as a rock struck him on the jaw. He fell on his torch and quickly became a living firebrand. He rose screaming to his feet, his clothing ignited, and tried to run. Walt ended his agony with a bullet to the head.
The horses went into a panic as the rocks pelted them, stinging and confusing and angering them. The horses began bucking and jumping, trying to escape the hurting stones. Riders were tossed to the ground and shot down by rifle and pistol fire.
One managed to reach the house and jumped in through a window. Doreen picked up a pot of coffee from the stove and tossed the contents on the man, the scalding coffee catching him flush in the face. He dropped his guns and began screaming in agony, running around the room, crashing into furniture in his frantic rush to get away from the awful pain.
Alice shot him in the head and permanently ended the wailing.
A bounty hunter ran into the barn as rocks from slingshots pelted him, stinging but not stopping his charge for cover.
Little Chuckie grabbed up a pitchfork, tines out, and braced himself against the impact. The gun hand ran right into the pitchfork, knocking Chuckie down as the tines tore into his belly. Screaming in pain, the gunny ran toward the other end of the barn. The handle of the pitchfork, sticking several feet out of his belly, hit a wall and stuck there. The gunny screamed his life away, unable to pull the handle from the crack in the stable wall or free himself of the tines.
Chuckie got sick.
A torch hit the roof of the bunkhouse and lodged there, soon catching the roof on fire.
Smoke lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite and tossed the bomb into the milling and panicked scene below him. The explosion knocked several horses to the ground, busting a couple of riders’ legs and creating even more confusion in the fire-lanced night.
Smoke began tossing stick after stick of dynamite from loft to the ground, as his eyes spotted Rusty and the boys running from the bunkhouse to a storage shed. A Bar V rider turned his horse as he spotted the boys, lifting his pistol. Smoke shot him out of the saddle. His boot hung in the stirrup arid the frightened horse took off at a gallop, dragging the screaming, flopping,’ and helpless man.
