“Get him?”
“My loop’s still blocked,” she fired again into whatever lay against it. Then they heard Georgia’s carbine go, at her port near the other end.
“Good girl,” Cash said. For moment, then, Georgia let her carbine fall. She rolled away from her gun port, sat up, and what sounded half like sobs and half like laughter came through her fingers.
Rachel cried out, “She’s hurt—she’s shot in the mouth!” She ran to Georgia, but attempted no aid. She threw herself upon her stomach across Georgia’s legs, and got her carbine muzzle to the loop Georgia had abandoned. For a split moment she saw what she took for a leg outside the port; she fired, and believed she hit it, but it was snatched away.
Georgia pushed her aside. She was breathing hard, and her voice shook, but, “Nothing hit me,” she said, and she took her porthole back.
An ax, swung by an enemy who stood in the protection of the wall, was splintering into the shutter where Cash waited. He had an answer to that. He coolly studied the angle of the axblows, then struck the wall nearby with the butt of his Colt. A shard of plaster fell, revealing an opening the size of a half dollar. It showed no light, but as he fired through it, the mud that plugged it went to dust and the ax blows ceased.
At the other window the whole frame loosened, and the shutters cracked and bowed inward, under the impact of a boulder no man should have been able to lift. A split opened down the middle, and Andy fired through the crack at a shadow beyond.
And suddenly that was all. The mounted Kiowas circled a few times more, but their fire was thinning. Then both gunfire and war cries stopped altogether, and the rear wall brought them the sound of horses going away.
Matthilda had slept through it all, and still slept; making them believe now that she might never wake.
Lost Bird’s body was gone, when the three-quarter moon came up, but they could see no other dead. Scoring up, they believed that three more Kiowas had been hit, one of them hard. Andy still believed he had touched up Seth, a little bit. Cash didn’t think so. They feverishly carpentered the broken shutters, finding out how hard it is to get anything done right in the total dark.
When that was done, not much was left to do but wait.
“I guess I kind of slipped a stirrup, there for a minute,” Georgia said sheepishly.
“You did fine,” they all assured her. And that was all that ever was said about that.
Cash was encouraged, cocky, even, because they had come through a full-out assault without any hurt. “See how easy? I misdoubt if there’s a Horse Indian alive knows how to fight against walls. If they can stand getting shot, we can sure stand pulling the triggers. Just as long as they want to keep up!”
He told them a story he had picked up from a cow hunter, way over to the east of their range. There had been a big fight, up on the Staked Plains—just lately, too. No more than three—four weeks ago—seemingly about the middle of June. Twelve or fourteen buffalo hunters—Billy Gibson was their ringleader—had moved into an old deserted place up there, called Adobe Walls. And here they had been set upon by the biggest passel of Comanches, along with a fair sprinkle of Kiowas, that anybody had heard of in years. The story had it that there were sixteen hundred Indians in it. “So, let’s say, there maybe was about four hundred Indians,” Cassius trimmed it down. He didn’t know who the war chiefs had been, except that Quanah had been seen there.
Quanah had struck in the dark before sunup, and might have carried the place, too; only some old dry-rotted roof timbers had happened to fall in, and had got two-three of the hunters up, spoiling the surprise.
A couple of fellows sleeping outside in a wagon had got killed. But once the twelve inside started firing, the savages never got any farther. The fight went on about a day and a half, and the hunters believed they had killed about fifty Indians. “Let’s make that about ten Indians, more likely,” Cash pruned down the story again. One buffalo hunter had got a slug in the arm, and that was all the damage inside.
“And there you have it: Walls is what you need! Nothing but walls. I bet that us four, in this house, could whup a thousand of ’em with these walls right here. If a thing can’t be done ahorseback, why, they just don’t know how to do it at all. We’ve got those fools helpless out there!”
None of them really believed their position was as good as that. But they did begin to feel that maybe they had some sort of chance.
They talked about whether Cash’s cowhands would hear the firing, far off where they were. Cash had left them moving a herd southward from the extreme notheast corner of their range, and the wind was from that way, what little there was. He didn’t believe they could hear. Not at worse than twenty miles away. Besides, wet cows are always losing their calves, when you chouse them around in bunches; nothing else could bawl so much. Cash doubted if you could hear the world fall down, through all that bedlam. If ever they got the idea he needed them, they’d come, all right.
“There’s about four of the hands call him ‘Padre,’ ” Andy said, as if that clinched it.
“Padre? Who, Cash? You mean like a priest?” Georgia looked blank. “Now don’t tell me he preaches to ’em!”
“It generally means they got crazy-helpless on snake-head,” Andy explained, “and their boss saved ’em from jail. Or maybe something worse.”
“Like what kind of worse?”
“Like being dead is worse.”
“Well, they’re sure missing a real meaty chance to return the favor.”
Cassius made no comment on all that. He wondered out loud if the Rawlins boys were liable to come looking for their sister. Georgia thought they might. “Along about late tomorrow afternoon.”
Rachel didn’t speak his name, but Ben was the one she hoped would come. He could have been back by now. He ought to have been back.
Chapter Thirty-six
For three hours the people in the Zachary soddy waited, ready to fight again, but no more attacks came on. Cash concluded that the enemy would hold off, now, until the last darkness before dawn. He tried to make the others get some rest. They remained fully dressed, their carbines in their hands, and either Cash or Andy prowled the ports by turns, watching the prairie by the light of the young moon. No one could more than doze. They knew the Kiowas wanted them wakeful through this part of the night, so that morning would find them fumble-handed, but they couldn’t help it. They stayed strung-up anyway, just as the enemy wanted them to.
A little after midnight a bullet came wowling from the north ridge, and broke a little pane in the blocked north lookout. Ten minutes later a rifle whanged from the creek, chugging a ball into the door. During the next couple of hours seven or eight more shots were fired, at irregular intervals, and from various directions. It was the same game, to keep them from resting when they ought to rest. Two hours after midnight, all action ceased, and the night was still. Now the Kiowas would give them every chance to go sound asleep, in time for the next assault.
Cash had them all up at their loopholes long before the first graying of the sky. And now the Kiowas fooled him again. Daylight came clear and strong. The sun came up, and the locusts began winding up again, after sleeping out the cooling of the dry land between midnight and morning. And no attack came at all.
Matthilda waked, and, though she was very weak, she seemed immeasurably improved. Georgia made her a few spoonfuls of gruel, and it stayed down. In their unbounded relief they let Matthilda lead them back to the theory that she had suffered nothing worse than a severe siege of indigestion, after all. Intent upon keeping his people up to scratch, Cassius allowed them only a cold breakfast; but the sunlight outside, and the increasing warmth of the summer morning, were favorable to the illusion that the worst was over.
Cassius seemed partly puzzled, and partly suspicious; but he was beginning to show what appeared to be a curious disappointment. Finally, turning impatient, he threw open the outer door, and stood exposed upon the stoop, his carbine in his hands. Nothing happened. He led his horse out, mounted bareback, and rode it down into the creek to let it drink. Andy and the two girls stood ready at the portholes while Cash did that; but still nothing
