Bill thudded against the wall and fell. The lead had sleeted across the cabin and taken him in the back. By candlelight and monstrous flickery shadows the blood that gushed from him shone blacker than his skin.
Carlos crouched on the north side, rifle aimed and useless. Two broad muzzles thrust in by the west loopholes. One smoked. It withdrew. Instantly another took its place. Meanwhile the second roared.
Langford jumped to the bedside and Susie. Sick understanding billowed through him. Hostiles, just three or four, had crawled under cover of night, slowly, often stopping, shadows in the gloom, till they were among the stakes and under the eaves. When they shoved their guns through, maybe they hoped they’d fire straight into an eye.
No matter. Shooting blind, wedging the barrels to and fro, they made defense impossible.
Whoops lifted, nearer and nearer. Thunder beat on the door. No tomahawks, Langford knew; that was a regular woodcutting ax, probably his. Panels splintered. A gust blew out the candle. Langford fired and fired, but he couldn’t see anything for sure. The hammer clicked on emptiness. Where the hell were the loaded guns? Susie screamed. Maybe he should have saved a bullet for her. Too late. The door was down and the dark full of warriors.
7
The racket brought Tarrant iwd the Herreras from their bedrolls, hands to weapons. Tumult went murky among the tipis. “El ataque,” the trader said beneath yowls and shots.
“What’re they doing?” Tarrant grated: “Another frontal assault, in the dead of night? Crazy.”
“I do not know,” Herrera said. The noise rose rapidly to crescendo. He bared teeth, a dim flash under the stars. “Victory. They are taking the house.” Tarrant bent to put on his boots. “Where do you go? Stay here. You could too easily get killed.”
“I’ve got to see if I can do anything.”
“You cannot. Myself, I stay, not out of fear but because I do not want to see what comes next.”
Tarrant’s pain lashed: “You told me you don’t care.”
“Not much,” Herrera admitted. “But it would be evil to gloat, nor have I the heart for it. No, my sons and I will pray for them.” He plucked the other man’s sleeve. You slept fully clad in such a place as this. “Do stay. You, somehow, I like.”
“I’ll be careful,” Tarrant promised, and loped off.
He skirted the Comanche camp. More and more torches came to life there, flared, bobbed, streamed sparks on their hasty way. Sight of them dimmed the stars that hi their uncountable thousands gleamed frost-bright across black. Nevertheless he had light enough to turn the soil gray for him.
Where the devil was Rufus? Probably snoring out on the prairie alongside the empty bottle. Just as well. No matter how self-controlled, a white man took a risk, showing himself to red men in blood-rut.
So why did he, Hanno, Lugo, Cadoc, Jacques Lacy, William Sawyer, Jack Tarrant, a hundred different aliases, behave like this? He knew he couldn’t save the ranchers, and didn’t mean to try. They must perish as star-many had perished before them and would in the future, over and over, world without end. History chewed them up and spat them out and soon most rotted forgotten, might as well never have been. Maybe the Christians were right and mankind was like that, maybe it was simply in the nature of things.
His intention was practical. He hadn’t survived this long by hiding from the terrible. Rather, he kept alert, aware, so he’d know which way to jump when the sword swung. Tonight he’d observe from the fringes. If an impulse arose to wipe out his party too, he could talk it down, .given help from Peregrine and maybe even Quanah, before it got out of control. In the morning he’d start back toward Santa Fe.
The chief stood huge near the cabin, a long-helved ax on his shoulder. Torchlight guttered across painted face and body, horned headdress; it was as if he flickered in and out of hell. The braves were mostly less clear, blobs of night that swarmed, pranced, screeched, waved their brands like battle flags. Squaws capered with them, knives or sharpened sticks hi hand. The doorway gaped hollow.
They kept clear a space in front of it. Three dead men sprawled at the threshold, dragged forth. The Anglo’s left arm was splinted; someone had cut his throat before stopping to think about sport. Rib ends stuck out of a hole torn in the Negro’s back. A third seemed Mexican, though he was so slashed and pulped it was hard to be sure; he had gone down fighting.
Lucky bastards. Two squaws held fast a small boy and a smaller girl who screamed, blind with fear. A tall Anglo sat slumped. Blood matted his hair and dripped onto clothes and earth. He was stunned. Two warriors locked the arms of a young woman who writhed, kicked, cursed them and called on her God.
A man bounded from the ruck. A torch swung near him for a moment and Tarrant recognized Wahaawmaw. He had slung his rifle to free his hands. The right gripped a knife. He laughed aloud, caught the collar of the woman’s dress in his left, slashed downward. The cloth parted. Whiteness gleamed, and a sudden string of blood- beads. Her captors forced her down on her back. Wahaawmaw fumbled at his breechclout. The man prisoner stirred, croaked, struggled to regain his feet. A brave gave him a gun butt in the stomach and he sagged, retching.
A grizzly bear growl resounded. From around the cabin stormed Rufus. His Colt was drawn. He swept his hook back and forth. Two Indians stumbled aside, faces gashed open. He reached the woman. The men who pinned her sprang up. He shot one through the forehead. He hooked an eye from the other, who recoiled shrieking. His boot smashed into Wahaawmaw’s groin. That warrior tumbled, to squirm by the white man. He sought to choke down agony, but it jerked past his tips.
Flambeau flare made Rufus’-obeard its own hue. He stood with his legs on either side of the woman, hunched forward, swaying a little, flaming drunk but the Colt rock-steady before him. “Aw right,” he boomed, “you filthy swine, first o’ you makes a move, 111 plug him. She’s gonna go free, an’—”
Wahaawmaw straightened on the ground and rolled over. Rufus didn’t see. There was too much else for him to watch. “Look out!” Tarrant heard himself yell. The Indian bowls drowned his voice. Wahaawmaw unslung his rifle. Prone, be fired.
Rufus lurched back. The pistol fell. Wahaawmaw shot again. Rufus crumpled. His weight sank onto the woman and held her fast.
Wild, Tarrant shoved men aside. He sprang into the clear space and went on his knees beside Rufus. “O sodalis, amice perennis—“ Blood bubbled from the mouth and into the red beard. Rufus gasped. For an instant it seemed he grinned, but Tarrant couldn’t really know in the shifty torchlight or even by the light of the stars. He clasped the big body to him and felt life ebb away.
Only then did he hear what a silence had fallen. He looked aloft. Quanah stood above him, the ax held out tike a roof or a buffalo-hide shield. Had he roared his folk into quietude? They were a massive blur, well back from him and the dead, the wounded, the captive. Here and there a blaze briefly picked out a face or made eyeballs glisten.
Tarrant hauled Rufus off the woman. She stirred, stared, mewed. “Easy,” be murmured. She got to hands and knees, made her way thus to the man. Squaws had let go of the children, who were already at his side. He’d regained consciousness. At least, he could sit straight and lay his arms around them all.
The warriors Rufus injured had joined the crowd, except for the slain one and Wahaawmaw. He had risen but leaned on his rifle, shakily, holding himself where the pain was.
Tarrant got up too. Quanah lowered his ax. The pair of them regarded each other.
“Bad is this,” said the chief at last. “Very bad.”
A skipper from Phoenicia learned how to snatch at every chance, no matter how thin a shred. “Yes,” Tarrant answered. “A man of yours has killed a guest of yours.”
“He, your man, broke murdering into our midst.”
“He had a right to speak, to be heard hi your council. When your Nermernuh would bar his way and likely attack him, he acted in self-defense. He was under your protection, Quanah. At worst, you could have had him seized from behind, as many men as you command. I think you would have done that if you had gotten the chance, for everyone calls you a man of honor. But this creature shot him first.”
Wahaawmaw groaned outrage. Tarrant didn’t know how much he had understood. The argument was weak,
