I let about half the train go by and said, “Suck your guts in and pick out a target.” Then I got an Indian's head in the V of my rear sight. I waited an instant while the knob of my front sight settled on his ear. I should have squeezed the trigger. Bama was waiting for it, white-faced, but I couldn't seem to make my finger move.
This was a hell of a time to think about ethics, but I simply couldn't kill a man like that, without giving him a chance in the world to fight back. I lowered my rifle. Before I realized what I was doing I was standing up and yelling—and that, I guess was when hell moved to Arizona.
Chapter Nine
IT DIDN'T TAKE long to see why the men held such a deadly respect for the Indian's fighting ability. There was no period of surprise when I stood up and yelled, there was no time wasted in shock, and they didn't wonder what to do. They just did it. One instant they were riding in deep lethargy under the broiling sun, and the next instant they were screaming insanely and firing point-blank down our throats.
I had never seen anything like it. I fell back and lost sight of my target completely, and the next thing I knew, an Indian was trying to split my skull with a hand ax. I must have shot him, but I can't be sure about anything that happened then. I had dropped my rifle somewhere and was clawing for my pistols, and across the flats I could hear the sharp volley of fire as Kreyler's men let go with their first rounds.
Vaguely, I saw the fat old smuggler slide from his horse and come charging at us with both pistols blazing. He went down holding his gut. The Mexicans milled senselessly, wondering what had hit them, but the Indians were chopping us to pieces. And the crazy thing about it was that you could shoot them but they would keep coming and slash your throat and laugh at you before they died. It was a nightmare of screams and smoke, and men wandering aimlessly with bullet holes in them like lost souls in limbo.
It couldn't have lasted long, but time like that isn't measured by the ticks of a clock. A lifetime can be lived by the time a bullet travels twenty paces. In the instant it takes a hammer to fall and a cartridge to explode you can grow to be an old man. I felt like an old man right then. My hands shook. I wasn't certain of anything. I kept falling back and more Indians went down in front of my guns. Then my pistols were empty and I scooped one out of a dead man's hand and kept on firing. Then I heard Bama yelling, and I looked around and saw him kneeling behind one of those little gray mules, his rifle to his shoulder.
Somehow I got over to him and he gave me covering fire while I punched out-my empties and reloaded. We seemed to be the center of attention now as four or five Indians spotted us and rushed us. We beat them off that time. I dropped one and Bama got one with his rifle, and they turned and got behind rocks to think up something better. That was when I began to notice that we were all alone out there.
I didn't see any of the men anywhere. It was just me and Bama and maybe a half-dozen Indians. And I had a feeling that pretty soon it would be just the Indians.
“My God,” I said, “are all the others dead?”
Bama laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. He pointed behind us, and the men were running—what was left of them. They were running for the high ground and the Indians had decided to let them go and concentrate on us.
For a long moment I cursed. I used all the vilest words I'd ever heard, and they weren't half enough to say what I wanted to say. And then our friends the Indians were coming again. This time they had spread out and were coming at us from three sides, and they must have picked up some of our rifles because their shooting was getting better all the time.
They had changed their tactics too. They had learned that charging us wasn't the answer, so they were creeping up on us from behind rocks and bushes, and even dead animals and men. They seemed to flit across the ground like cloud shadows in front of a racing wind, and they were gone before you realized they were there.
I took some shots just to keep my nerve up, to feel the pistols in my hands, but I wasn't doing any good. I looked back at the high ground just in time to see Kreyler and his men clawing their way up the steep embankment.
“The bastards! The goddamn no-good bastards!”
Bama laughed that wild laugh again.
“Shut up, goddamn you! Shut up and let me think!”
The wildness went out of Bama's face and he just looked tired. Very sober and very tired, and he looked as if he didn't give a damn what happened.
“I'll get them,” I said tightly. “If it's the last thing I do, I'll kill every last one of them.”
And Bama said flatly, “Yes, I guess you would, Tall Cameron.”
“I
Somehow I would get out of this mess. I didn't know how yet, but I would, and when I did...
“Watch it!” Bama said.
I caught just a glimpse of an Indian as he shuttled from one rock to another. I burned a cartridge just because I wanted to shoot at something, not because I thought I would hit anything. I started reloading again, filling the cylinders all the way around, six cartridges to a pistol. I finished one gun and got three in the other one and that finished my belt.
That was when the sun stopped giving off heat. That was when cold sweat started popping out on my neck and my insides felt as if it had been washed with ice water. Bama's .36-caliber ammunition wouldn't fit my pistols, and anyway, he was out too.
“How many rounds have you got for that rifle?”
He checked the magazine and there were two.
“Well, that gives us eleven shots between us. Have you got any ideas?”
“I guess you could pray, if you go in for that sort of thing.”
That seemed to end the conversation. Things didn't look too bright, but they could be a lot worse. For one thing, Bama was getting his guts back—I could tell by the way he talked—and guts was just the thing that might
