swallowed. There were men in the dust. Riders! Coming right at them, and stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, as far as the eye could see.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The battle on the mesa was decided long before the first shot was fired. There was killing to do and men to be buried if you were on the winning side, but there was never any doubt about the outcome. Hacker knew it, and most of his men, and even Pardo’s raiders, who had no experience with this kind of fighting. They were dead men. It was just a question of when and how it would feel when it happened.
Hacker rallied his troops above the storm. There was only one defensible position on the flatlands and he took it. Troops to the front and mounts to the rear—soldiers hunkered down in a broad circle with the gullies at their backs. Hacker’s horses wouldn’t help him here and he knew it. Not against the thunder bearing down from the north. Nobody could say how many they were, but it was clear the enemy dwarfed his own two hundred.
It was an awesome, terrible sight. Howie could see their faces, now, and even the bright feathers in their caps. War cries sang above the shriek of the wind. He sat frozen on his mount and stared, his mouth full of sand, until Harlie galloped by and dug his boot in the horse’s rump and sent it flying.
A shot whined past. Then another. A rider went down ahead and he saw the frightened white eyes of the mount, hooves clawing air. The Rebel forces scrambled for cover and died getting there. Their officers tried vainly to form orderly fire lines they knew wouldn’t stand against the first Loyalist charge.
Howie glanced back, searching wildly for Kari. But there was nothing back there anymore, only black clouds and destruction. Monroe had swallowed the rear of the column without slowing down.
He thought he saw Pardo, snaking his pack horses down a sharp ravine, Klu or Jigger beside him. The rain hit, burning his flesh and closing his eyes. His horse slid down the sides of the gully, pawing frantically for footing in the wet earth. He saw what was coming and clutched his rifle and jumped, praying the animal fell the other way. The ground came up to meet him. The rifle cracked hard across his brow, bringing blood.
He was up, then, and running. There were dead men in the water beneath him, men crying out on every side. He could see nothing, but he knew he had to keep running. The gullies were filling fast. He stumbled, fell. A hand clutched his shirt and jerked hard. Howie yelled and swung his rifle blindly against whatever it was. The man cuffed him sharply, drawing his face close to his own. Howie stared.. He knew the face. One of the raiders, The man shouted but Howie didn’t hear. The raider pointed back behind him and Howie nodded and followed. There were four others, bunched together atop a muddy bank, sending fire back at the troopers. Without thinking, he took up his own position and began shooting in the same direction.
It was a crazy, senseless thing. His eyes were filled with mud and water and he could see only vague shadows past the end of his barrel. Who was he shooting at? Rebels? Loyalists? He realized, suddenly, that it hardly mattered who was out there. As long as he was slamming cartridges in the chamber and watching the fire flash from the end of his muzzle the fear stayed a respectable distance away. The time was marked for killing and maybe something more terrible than dying would meet the man who didn’t take his share.
The rain parted briefly, letting awesome sights and sounds fill the world. Howie was appalled to see he’d run no more than thirty yards or so into the gully. He was sure it had been a good mile.
A veil of acrid smoke masked the heart of the battle, but he could clearly see the Rebels at the edge of the ravine had broken. Still, stragglers quickly reformed their ragged lines a few yards back. They were dead men, but they made the Loyalists pay for every inch of ground. The rain had been Monroe’s ally in that first, terrible charge, but now his own mounts were as useless as Hacker’s. The dry ravines had turned to a thousand water-filled trenches, and it was one man against another.
A great cry went up from the mesa as a fresh wave of government troopers swarmed into the fight. The Rebels held a brief moment, then crumbled.
The fighting was over, but there was still killing to be done. Troopers roamed the trenches firing point blank at anything that moved. The cries of the wounded were quickly stilled with the butt of a rifle or the edge of a blade. As Howie watched, a great, dark figure rose up out of nowhere and nearly cut a Loyalist soldier in half with his axe before a dozen shots brought him to ground. Klu. Or Jigger, maybe. He couldn’t tell. The rain swept in again on a roll of thunder and covered the sight.
“Godamn!” rasped the man next to him. He turned his muddy, rainstreaked face to Howie, eyes weary with fear. “I seen enough. I sure don’t want to see no more.” He scrambled down the muddy bank, leaving his rifle where it lay, and disappeared into the rain. His companions looked blankly after him a moment, then quickly followed.
Howie suddenly felt terribly alone and vulnerable. Not that the raiders could have done much, but they’d
A figure rose out of the rain right on top of him. Howie brought his rifle up and fired. The man’s face disappeared.
Howie went down beside him and searched blindly through the water. He found the Loyalist cap with its sodden feather, tossed his own hat away and replaced it with the soldier’s. Then he stripped the jacket off the man and forced his arms through wet sleeves.
“Mark, you all right?” The voice was no more than three yards away.
“Yeah,” Howie mumbled, “I reckon.” He stood and moved quickly down the water-filled gully, away from the body.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The storm swept over the mesa an hour before sundown, leaving a dull, leaden sky behind. There were men among Pardo’s band and the Rebel army who would never curse bad weather again; only the raw power of the driving wind and rain had enabled them to escape the Loyalist slaughter. Even then, pitifully few gat away and fewer still once the storm abated. Monroe’s troopers meticulously combed the gullies for survivors, taking no prisoners.
Howie watched them and waited for darkness. He had stayed alive by moving with the troopers under cover of the storm. It was an unnerving experience. What if the rain let up, and the soldiers saw him there and knew he didn’t belong? He shook with relief when an officer called them back to the mesa. When the others answered, he hung back and let them pass him, then turned and started running as fast as he could. He had no idea where he was going. All he could think about was putting as many miles as he could between himself and the Loyalists. They’d be back. And he didn’t plan to be there.
He stumbled more than once, choking on muddy water that was waist-high in places. The last time he fell, something groaned beneath him. He shrank back, startled. A face looked up at him and grinned feebly.
“
He could see his friend was badly hurt. Only his head and shoulders were above the water. Howie started to move him further up the bank but Harlie shook his head painfully.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere and don’t want to, boy.”
“Harlie. Where you hit?” Howie asked him.
“Belly. ’Bout twice, I figure. Godamn if once wouldn’t have been enough.”
“Is it… bad?” Howie didn’t need to ask.
“I ain’t walking out of here, if that’s what you mean,” said Harlie. He studied Howie, trying hard to focus on his face. “It ain’t too bad, boy. The water’s good and cold and I haven’t felt nothin’ for a while.” He tried to grin
