Will nodded.
The three men spread out about ten yards apart, Jane a dozen yards ahead of the other two. Austin and Will’s horses were antsy, dancing a bit, as the thrumming of the galloping enemies came closer. Jane’s horse stood alert, ears forward, but perfectly still.
The prairie floor was still damp with dew; the outlaws raised no cloud of dust. But the pounding of hooves became louder, more insistent.
Jane drew a bowie knife from somewhere within his clothing and grasped the blade in his teeth. He wrapped his reins around his saddle horn. His right hand held his eight-gauge, his left a Colt .45.
Will knotted his reins, counting on knee pressure and the urging of his heels to put Slick where he wanted him. His clutched his rifle in his left hand and his Colt in his right.
Austin too knotted his reins. He held a pistol in each hand and a long-bladed knife in his teeth.
The renegades came into view suddenly, as if they’d sprung from the earth. They were riding directly into the sun and the various brass buttons and medals of the mishmash of Confederate and Union jackets reflected the sun sharply, as did the barrels of their rifles and the heads of the spears a few carried.
As they came closer, there was an unearthly silence beyond the thunder of hooves. The outlaws—even the Indians among them—held the war cries that generally led them into battle.
They closed in a ragged line, the chests of their horses white with frothy sweat. Some of the Indians, Will saw, had painted their faces and chests with war paint.
They were fifty yards out—and then twenty-five. Jane sat calmly on his horse, contemplatively, as if he were watching a particularly beautiful sunset. Slick and Austin’s horse were anything but calm, their eyes wide, desperately wanting to flee from the wave of men and horses rushing toward them.
The outlaws were fifteen yards away and gunfire erupted from their line. Jane banged his heels against his horse’s sides and the huge animal was almost immediately into a hard gallop, moving far faster than one could expect such a massive animal to move. Austin and Will followed, returning fire, choosing targets and taking them down, not wasting a shot.
The ponderous boom of Jane’s shotgun rolled across the prairie. Two outlaws had made the mistake of riding together, and both went down as bloody masses. The shotgun bellowed again and a man, headless, rode on a few feet before toppling from his horse.
One Dog sat a tall pinto, waving his rifle and hollering orders, attempting to distribute his troops to stop the onslaught of the three men. Will swung into a swarm of outlaws and dropped a pair of them, bringing Slick into a scrambling turn. For the briefest part of a second, his eyes and those of One Dog met—and that was all it took. Both men knew immediately that only one of them would live much longer.
The barrel of Austin’s rifle sizzled as a drop of renegade blood splashed onto it. He triggered another round but it misfired, the metal of the mechanism overly expanded by the heat of such rapid fire. He threw the rifle aside, cursing, and went to work with his Colt.
Jane crushed an unhorsed outlaw under the hooves of his horse and swung his bowie knife like a saber, leaning far from his saddle to skewer confused, panicked outlaws.
One Dog had gathered ten or so men near him, and bullets were whispering past Will, Austin, and Jane. Jane howled a wolf-call-type war whoop as he wheeled his horse around and galloped from the melee. Austin and Will followed, shots whistling past them, horses at full run.
Will dared a quick look back. There seemed to be more dead or dying outlaws on the ground than there were live ones on horses.
A mile away from the battle scene, Jane gave the halt signal and slowed his horse to a stop. He turned in his saddle. “Anybody hit?”
“Sonsabitches ruined my perfectly good rifle, makin’ me fire too fast. She’s warped to hell. Now I prolly couldn’t hit a damn barn with it, even if I was inside the damned barn. I had to toss her away.”
Jane chuckled. “Terrible thing,” he said. “I guess the reason they charged us like that was to damage your rifle.”
Will took off his Stetson. “One of them scum tore a piece off the top of a fine hat,” he said. “Other’n that, me an’ Slick are good.”
“Why ain’t they tryin’ to chase us down?” Austin asked. “Was me, I’d be haulin’ ass after the three pissants what caused me such grief.”
“Because they’re cowards and because they’re undisciplined. I expected more from One Dog, considering his reputation. We rode into them and stirred them around like a bowl of applesauce. I’d wager a good number of the dead were shot by their own men. Still, we sent more than a few off to the happy hunting ground.” He hesitated for a few moments. “You boys did very well, by the way.”
“What now?” Austin asked.
Will spoke up. “We have nowhere to run to. Seems to me we gotta make a stand in Olympus—choose the best place an’ fight from there, ’cause One Dog’ll be back. You can bet on that. An’ next time, he’ll make sure his crew fight like men.”
“I walked the street last night. The mercantile will be our fort. We can bring our horses right inside the storeroom in back. In the store are all the guns and supplies we will ever need.”
“I don’t s’pose the fella who owns the place will be too pleased,” Austin said.
Jane smiled again. “Will can pay for the damages, no?”
There was no reason to enter into immediate negotiations with the mercantile owner. He—and apparently the rest of town—had scattered to parts unknown, probably to the farms of relatives and friends.
“How’d they get word of our li’l tussle so quick?” Austin asked.
“A man on a bay horse followed us out and beat us back to town. It didn’t take long for the good folks here to figure out what we would do.”
“I didn’t see no rider on a bay.”
“No. But I did.”
“Well. Anyway, it’s a sure thing the barkeep didn’t take all his beer an’ whiskey with him. You boys up for a drink?”
“Of course,” Gentle Jane answered. “But after we drink we must prepare the mercantile for a siege.”
“Least I can get me a new rifle,” Austin said.
The mercantile was the end building of the block, and there was an alley next to it at least wide enough for a delivery freighter to pull in. There was even a pump in the storeroom the owner probably used to wash apples, carrots, potatoes, and other produce he brought in. The stream of water it produced was paltry, but it was better than nothing. The side of the structure facing open prairie had no windows, but Austin used a pickax to bash shooting ports in it every few feet. He set a rifle and a few boxes of cartridges at each port.
Will worked in the storeroom, hauling out things the horses could hurt themselves with, such as sacks of oats, corn, and sweet grain. Given time a horse could damned near eat himself to death—and if he didn’t die from the overfeeding, pressure inside his hooves would make him unusable and keep him in constant pain. Will remembered the old farmers’ adage about what to do for a foundered horse: “First you dig a big hole good and deep, the size of the horse . . .”
He lugged out bundles of shovels and picks, kegs of nails, and miscellaneous farm tools.
Then he filled a new trough with water and put it against a wall. He scattered some grain around to give the animals something to do. Emptied, the room was good sized, at least large enough to board three horses for a few days. Of course, Slick and Austin’s horse would give Jane’s behemoth most of the room, but Will didn’t expect any serious fighting; neither horse would challenge Jane’s.
Will led his and Austin’s horses into the room, leaving Jane’s where he’d been ground-tied. He went back out and approached the animal slowly, talking quietly—nonsense words with a little humming added—and reached for the reins. If he were a hair of a second slower, he’d have been a dead man: a steel-shod hoof that seemed the size of a wagon wheel snaked out toward his face. Will threw himself backward, landing clumsily and hard on his back.
Jane rushed out of the store. “I should have told you! I am so sorry—are you all right?”
He helped Will to his feet. “He’s trained that way—I didn’t realize you were going to try to lead him.”
Will brushed off his butt. “It’s a sure thing nobody’s gonna steal him from you,” he said. “Come on, bring him along.”
