“What happened?” Johnston replied, a grin creeping across his face before he winked. “Why—them gol- danged Sioux bastards charged on in an’ they kill’t us all!”
There was an uneasy rattle of laughter from those not as old and leathery as Johnston, men who could not quite yet laugh in the face of certain death.
Donegan looked around at them, face by face, as he squatted down in the snow behind a small shelf of sandstone and made himself a gun prop. These were trained riflemen—not a one of them a green youngster straight out of Jefferson Barracks, he thought. It cheered him some to think that as good as Kelly’s bunch was with their guns, why—they were worth at least ten to one against those warriors who had them surrounded on the better part of three sides.
Ten-to-one odds, hell. From the looks of what horsemen were coming over the far ridge, more like twenty to one, or worse.
God-blame-it! Don’t ever, ever talk about the odds, he scolded himself as he levered another cartridge through the Winchester.
The others saw them too, and more than one man in that hollow groaned in fear and resignation as those enemy horsemen bristled across the far ridgeline, pausing only a moment before riding down the slope into the cedar and sage, where they vaulted from their ponies and joined the rest in tightening the cordon around the white scouts.
“They flank us, we might as well be boot-heel soup,” growled George Johnson.
“Just make sure they don’t flank us, goddammit!” Parker snapped.
“Ain’t a’gonna on my side, leastways,” Johnson replied.
It appeared the warriors were intent on doing just that, creeping in here and there on the left and right flanks, inching into the horns of a great curved crescent.
Minutes later James Parker stuttered, “There’s m-more of ’em than we c-can handle.”
“You’re right, son,” grumbled the aging Johnston. “Got our peckers in a trap for sure now.”
“They only have us on three sides,” Kelly argued.
George Johnson said, “We can still make a run for it out the back door.”
“If’n you think you can live through mounting up to make that ride,” Johnston declared sourly.
“Why, lookee there, fellas!” Donegan declared to shush them all. “Our Injin friends set themselves up a little skirmish line back there.”
The rest turned to look back in the direction of the soldier camp, finding that Buffalo Horn, along with the Jackson brothers and the pair of Crow scouts, had all just slid in behind some oakbrush taken root along the edge of a rocky outcrop better than two hundred yards to their rear.
“You think we can make it back to them in the saddle if they give us some cover?” George Johnson asked.
Donegan wagged his head, wheeling now to peer across the far ground as the enemy moved up on foot, dodging across the snow from bush to bush, narrowing the distance with every minute. “No. We’d never make it to ’em before most of us get dropped with a bullet in the back.”
As more and more of the warriors appeared on top of the ridge, spurring their mounts right on down the slope into the bottom, where they had the small party of white men pinned down, the scouts concentrated on killing those who ventured too close. When a warrior would poke his head up to fire, the scouts readied themselves and tried to snap off their shots as quickly as they could when the warrior heads suddenly appeared. From time to time one of the six men would swear, cursing his bad luck to miss a shot, grumbling about his fate to be held down by more than a hundred warriors the way they were.
With more warriors on the way.
Still, in the midst of that tightening red noose, the men began to cheer one another and themselves as they hit a target out there in the scrub oak and sage.
“Just hold ’em back a little longer,” Donegan kept reminding them. “Them sojurs is sure to hear our racket soon enough.”
Kelly agreed. “I’ll bet the general’s got an outfit on its way here already.”
They all wheeled apprehensively at the sound of hoofbeats clattering up behind them, most ready to fire on the approaching horseman galloping in, looking about as calm and deliberate in his mission as he could be.
“I’ll be God-bleeming-damned!” Seamus roared as he watched the Bannock scout rein to a halt, snow flitting from every hoof.
Out beyond them in the cedars the Sioux howled in dismay, wildly hurling bullets at the Indian scout as he dismounted in no seeming hurry, ground-hobbled his horse with the others, and then crouched near Kelly, where Buffalo Horn began adding his rifle to the fight.
Within minutes the uneasy feeling began to seep into the forefront of Donegan’s thinking. Fewer and fewer warriors were popping up to take their shots at the scouts. In fact—the gunfire from the Sioux was tapering off altogether.
“Ain’t this a strange thing to behold?” he asked the others.
“Yeah—what the hell you think they’re up to now?” James Parker said.
“Think they’re giving it up?” George Johnson asked.
“I think I smell a polecat,” Johnston said, sniffing the air for emphasis.
“I’ll lay odds they’re working their way in on us,” Parker declared.
“Yep,” Kelly agreed. “Soon as they get some redskins worked into position, I figure the rest will open a real warm fire on us again, to hold us down while the others snake on up close enough to finish us off with one good rush.”
Wringing his hands around his carbine, George Johnson cried, “Jesus! We can’t just sit here till they come in to—”
“Shuddup!” John Johnston bellowed. “Your crying don’t make a man’s dying no easier!”
“Ain’t none of us gonna die,” Donegan snapped. “Now, sit there, Johnson—and keep up the work with your rifle.”
“I figure they’ll make their rush at us over that ledge,” Kelly said a moment later, pointing with the long barrel of his carbine.
“It’s your call, Kelly—but looks to me that you and the Bannock are the ones to flush ’em out,” Donegan stated.
“Let’s just hope it is a flush, Irishman,” Kelly replied. “And not a full house.”
Then Kelly bent close and whispered to Buffalo Horn before the two of them slid on their knees to the rocky bulwark of the sandstone ledge. There the white scout counted to three when they both rolled into view. As soon as they landed on their bellies, rifles ready, a trio of Sioux exploded from the rocks and sage, sprinting away. The moment Kelly and Buffalo Horn began firing, the three warriors dived onto their bellies and continued their escape by crawling, snaking their way through the sagebrush.
In that moment it seemed that half a hundred guns or more opened up on the two scouts, causing them both to flatten against the icy snow behind no more cover than some stunted oakbrush.
“Get your arses back in here and quick!” Donegan cried.
Bullets kicked up snow and bits of sandstone rock as the pair shoved their way into a retreat. Then Buffalo Horn stopped behind a low pile of rock and fired back at his tormentors.
“A flying exit of feathers, legs, and arms, boys!” Kelly called out when he started his slide back into the rocky hollow.
Bullets banged and zinged off the layers of nearby stone, splattering lead and sharp rock fragments as the Sioux continued to do their damndest to hold down the scouts until they could figure out how to flush their prey from its burrow.
“God
“You’re hit?” Parker asked, immediately crawling to Johnston’s side.
Johnston pulled the fingers away from the side of his scalp above the ear and peered at them carefully. The smear of blood was already freezing. “Take a look at it for me,” he ordered the younger man.
Parker pushed the fur cap up, parted some of the old man’s long, greasy hair, and studied the wound. “Damn if you ain’t lucky.”
