“You’re one cheerful sumbitch,” Will said, sliding cartridges into the Sharps. “You gotta realize that—”
There was a loud crash from the back room where the horses were being held. At the same time, a man in a Union general’s uniform left the saloon across the street with a white flag attached to a broomstick. He marched as if in formation, waving the flag. “We will talk,” he shouted.
Will hustled back to the horses. Slick was on his side, eyes closed, legs twisted under him, in a puddle of blood. Gentle Jane’s Partner was slumped against the far wall, gouts of blood spurting from his throat, doing his best to raise a forefoot to fight back—and not doing well at all. When he fell, it seemed the entire building shuddered.
“They’ve killed our horses!” Will yelled. “They killed our horses!”
Will ran to the barricade just in time to see Jane trigger both barrels at the man carrying the white flag. The two blasts hit his upper body squarely, hurling him back six feet with a gaping hole in his midsection. The flag and broomstick vaulted into the air and then dropped to the dirt of the street.
“Both are dead?”
“Yes—throats cut.”
“My Partner . . . he was a fine horse.”
“So was Slick.”
Will looked above barricade. “Shit. Here they come with fire arrows.”
Across the street, men were firing torches—fire arrows—at the mercantile. Both Will and Jane began shooting, Jane dropping his shotgun next to him and working the rifle Austin had left for him.
Will cranked his .30-30, rarely missing a shot.
“The roof!” Jane called. “It’s on fire. They’ll burn us out!”
“I ain’t gonna let that happen. Keep on shootin’, Jane—scare ’em or kill ’em. I don’t care. I’ll go up on the roof an’ I’ll—”
It was then that the flimsy, dry-wood roof caved in, showering Will and Jane with charred wood, snippets of flame, and years of accumulated dust that sparkled like tiny Chinese firecrackers as it ignited. A couple of renegades toppled in with the collapse. Will shot them both before they hit the floor.
“If Austin had been up on the roof . . . ,” Will roared stupidly, needlessly.
“And if hogs could fly, they would nest in trees. We must get out of here before the whole place caves in on us!”
The smoke was bluish gray, and acrid, difficult to breathe, making the men feel as if their lungs were filled with searing pebbles and burning shards of glass. They both hurriedly tied their bandannas over their mouths and noses. The ladies’ garments section of the mercantile was fully ablaze, as was the fabric department. Fingers of flame sprang up from the goods and from the floor, spreading quickly into sheets of fire.
The barrage from the street remained intense, nonstop, slugs whistling through the smoke and flames. Will and Jane held their positions behind a pile of plows and farm implements at the window, firing, coughing rackingly, eyes tearing copiously. A round careened into the action of the Sharps, tearing it from Will’s hands. He didn’t bother to pick up the rifle; the damage to the mechanism would never allow it fire again. “Sonsabitches,” he cursed.
Will put his face close to Jane’s. “The back’s our only way out,” he choked. “They’re either gonna fry us or shoot us—an’ I’ll take a bullet ’stead of burnin’ to death!”
“The fire—the damned fire! All my life I’ve feared fire . . . ,” Jane coughed.
The two men rose and ran, trippingly, almost blind from the smoke, parting walls of flame with their bodies, gagging, throats thick and constricted by the heat and smoke.
The outlaws had smashed their way through the siding, making a hole large enough to allow a crouched man through to get to the horses, their noise covered by the fusillade from the street. Jane was a few steps ahead of Will. He performed a running dive through the hole, cranking his rifle as he did so. Will followed and crashed into his now-staggering friend—blood brother—who had two blazing arrows protruding from his chest, his beard, hair, and clothing aflame, screaming in agony. Will pushed himself up from the ground, where he’d fallen after slamming into Gentle Jane, the ungodly screeches of Jane’s pain louder than thunder in his ears.
The arrows were well-placed, deadly, in Jane’s chest. Will immediately saw that his friend had no chance at life. He drew his .45 and put a slug between Jane’s eyes and then turned his pistol on the pair of mounted Indians who’d skewered and torched his friend. He blew the nearest one off his horse with a single shot, but when he attempted to fire at the second, the hammer of his pistol clicked on an empty cartridge. Will’s right hand slammed his .45 into its holster and continued downward to his boot. He was already in a run as the renegade nocked another arrow. He hurled his body at his enemy, tackling him, plunging his knife up to the hilt in the man’s guts, hot blood spurting onto his hand, carrying them both off the horse’s back.
Even over the roar of the fire and the shooting into the front of the mercantile, Will heard hoofbeats, whoops, and war cries alongside the building. He vaulted onto the renegade’s horse, grabbed the single rein, and put his heels to the animal’s side. He’d barely gotten the horse into a full gallop when there was a tremendous crash behind him and a stinging rush of hot air and red, smoking bits of wood swept over and past him. He looked over his shoulder: the entire structure of the store had collapsed to the ground, freeing hungry flames to reach twenty and thirty feet into the sky as the conflagration sucked at and fed itself with the fire-feeding air.
He asked the horse he was riding for yet more speed.
The horse Will had taken from the Indian he killed with his knife must have been a recent steal by the renegade. Will felt some fat around the animal’s withers, and the horse seemed willing enough to cover ground. He was shod; Will could tell that from the ringing sound of hooves striking bits of rock. The horses One Dog and his crew rode were unshod.
Will reined down to a fast walk after a couple of miles at a lope, figuring the gang wouldn’t be able to track him in the now-full dark. The battle in memory seemed a speck of time, but in reality, it had covered several hours. Images of the fight cluttered Will’s mind, clashing with one another, out of sequence, an amalgam of gunfire, flames, blood, and death.
The faces of Austin and Jane floated in front of him like mirages, one on either side of Hiram’s face.
The side of Will’s head tortured him—it felt as if he were still in the mercantile, forcing his way through smoke and flames. He explored the painful area with his fingertips and encountered what felt like minute strands of strings. He grasped one between his thumb and forefinger and tugged it free, puzzled. Then it struck him: the stitches! The fire had singed the exposed parts of the sutures, parting them. Within a few minutes, Will had removed the entire line. He probed where his eyebrows had been. Now there was nothing but seared flesh. He found his eyelashes were gone, as well. His Stetson was burned all the way around and it smelled strongly of scorched felt. He put his palm on the grips of his Colt: it felt fine. He wondered about his gun belt: he was carrying, he thought, thirty rounds of volatile .45 cartridges. But as he ran his hand around his waist he found many of the leather loops were empty—he’d loaded and reloaded automatically, without realizing what he was doing. Will reached back to his saddlebag for a fresh box of Remingtons and realized that he was riding without a saddle— without his own saddle and supplies—and that the horse he was riding wasn’t Slick.
The pain struck suddenly. His face felt as if it were on fire, his arms screamed for relief from the heat, and his gut, upper body, and back felt as if he’d been horsewhipped. The crazy hot blood of the battle, the Sharps . . . and his two friends, Austin and Gentle Jane, were gone—gone for good. Will was dizzy with pain. His left hand let go of the single rein and it dropped on the horse’s neck, giving the animal free choice as to where he was going.
Will mumbled to himself—and moaned, now and again—but for the most part, he sat the horse, not knowing where the hell he was, and not really caring.
The fatigue, the pain, the pounding ache in his body and in his heart, fell on Will like a heavy, impenetrable blanket. His eyes closed and he slumped forward at the waist, his face only a few inches above the horse’s ears.
The animal was, of course, not saddled. Only Will’s many years of riding, both bareback and in a saddle, kept him aboard the horse. Will’s body shifted with that of the animal rather than against it, and although he wasn’t consciously aware of it, his legs exerted just enough pressure to keep him centered.
