Only they were wrong about the way he was facing. Once more he had thought one step ahead of them; and he killed another Kiowa who crept upon him from the supposedly safe direction.
He had missed, though, with every shot, as he fired at those who retreated. The Dragoon was empty. He rolled himself into the coulee again, and lay there. He was weak, now, and when he tried to drag himself forward he made only a few inches.
He concentrated everything he had in an effort of the mind, so great that much of his pain was blanked off. He was trying to project himself into the minds of the savages, into their very bodies. He began to see them, one individual, and then another, wherever each was upon the prairie; and they appeared to him in a detail far more complete than any imagining he had ever experienced before. He seemed to sense not only the intentions but the thoughts of each one; and he took heart as he knew they were not leaving.
Presently he rolled himself to the side of the gully, tight against the mud wall of the coulee, belly down, but face tuned outward. He drew his Bowie knife from its sheath, though even this was a struggle, and gripped it underneath his body. Then he waited, counting his own heartbeats. He had to be alive, and conscious when they got there; but it was going to be a horse race.
They came in time. He knew they were there before he saw them. He waited with slitted eyes, un-winking; and at last they appeared around him. Another arrow in the back, first, then another. He lay limp, but was still breathing. Suddenly he was grabbed by the hair, and a knife sliced his scalp.
He whirled, then, got the scalper by the wrist, and snatched him downward. The Bowie knife struck upward, and went home to the guard in the belly of the Indian. With his last effort Cash twisted, carving with the knife point in a circle. Then he disappeared under a mass of as many as could reach him, hacking and stabbing.
Chapter Thirty-nine
When a quarter of an hour had passed without further sound of riflery, Rachel opened the bedroom door, lest Matthilda regain consciousness and call too faintly to be heard. She seemed asleep, her eyes closed, her breathing again so quiet that she seemed hardly to breathe at all. The heartbreaking cycle they had gone through so many times had come full circle once more, but without room for hope, this time, that it was not already starting over.
A small breeze was beginning to move out of the northwest as the sun lowered, and, though it didn’t amount to much, what there was of it was working against them. That mild and pleasant little stir of air would have been welcome, and enjoyed, on any other summer evening they had ever known. Tonight they blamed it for keeping any further news from coming to them across the prairie miles. Rawnerved, they felt that every act of nature was wickedly opposing them.
In the absence of any further indications, they judged they had better make ready to last out the night without help, regardless of what they might believe, or hope. Each was trying to seem unworried, and each was thinking how scared the other looked. They set about bracing each other by turning their minds to the practical things they could do. Their ammunition had better be tallied, about the first thing, they guessed.
The repeaters, to begin with. The faster of their two magazine carbines was the Spencer, which loaded with a seven-ball tube. Its magazine, with three extra tubes, accounted for twenty-eight rounds, and the Henry was carrying six. But when they had emptied every pocket, and scraped out the corners of the ammunition chest, they found only nineteen loose cartridges more. In all, the repeaters had fifty-three rounds, which might sound like a plenty, if you didn’t know how fast those things poured away lead. Every single round would have to be held back for the desperation moments of close action; and even then, the rim-fires must be hoarded with all care, or the magazine carbines would be out of action in the first three minutes.
Nothing to do about it. They could cast bullets, and make caps, but they didn’t know how to refill the detonation rings of the rim-fires. The closeshooting Sharp & Hankins would have been deadly in sniping action; it might have hurt the enemy more than any other weapon they had. But it was a slow-loading single-shot, and used the same rim-fires as the repeaters, so it had to be put away.
For slow fire, they were left with only two cap-and-ball pieces. They found only seven rounds for the breech- loading Sharp’s Fifty. Its linen cartridges were slow and finicky to make, but maybe they would have to try, if the Zachary marksmanship they were so proud of was to do them any good at all. The .69 buffalo gun was muzzle- loaded with loose powder; but search brought to light only one more of the huge slugs it fired, besides the one with which it was charged.
But their two cap-and-ball revolvers worried Andy the most. The big Walker Colt was loaded in its six chambers—they carried its hammer on a capless nipple—but had a reserve of only four more .44 balls. They had used it in firing for noise, and hadn’t found any way to get a good bang from it, blank, without wasting lead. And Andy’s treasured near-Whitney had the six loads in its cylinders, and that was all. They rummaged past hope without finding one .36 ball more. The revolvers were their final recourse if the Kiowas swarmed in, and Andy meant the Whitney for Rachel, because it was lighter, and bucked less, than the heavy Walker.
“We’ve got to make some—quick! Build up a fire—” He rummaged frantically for the lead strips they melted down to fill the bullet molds.
There were no lead strips.
“The saddle shed—there’s lashings of ’em down there in a—”
He grabbed for the door bar; but Rachel had got there, and threw her weight on it. “Andy—no, no, no—don’t you dare leave me here!”
“It’s our only chance to—”
“There’s nothing down there! The door’s stove in! Lead would be the first thing they took!”
He knew it was true. The saddle-shed door, nothing but rawhide on a frame, was hanging antigodlin by one strap, visible from the house.
Andy scratched up one idea more. He pulled a battered two-foot chest out from behind all the other plunder under his bunk. From this old toy box, as Andy pawed everything out of it, came such a history of Andy’s childhood that Rachel could not bear to look. She glimpsed the remains of a rag doll; Matthilda had seen no harm in giving a baby boy something to love as he went to sleep. Andy had decided dolls were unmanly before he was five years old, and Rachel had not known, until this moment, that he had never been able to bring himself to throw this one away.
In the very bottom of the chest, where they had sifted by their weight, lay tumbled some dozens of lead soldiers. There had been whole regiments of them once, brightly painted and tall as your finger—Andy’s share of the loot Papa had brought home one time, after selling a big herd.
“Here—here!” He shoved a clutch of them into Rachel’s hands, and clawed for more. “Get the fire going! Where’s the melt-ladle at?”
She packed all of their lightwood splinters into a solid heap, threw on gunpowder, and set it burning with the snaphaunce. She had already blown the flame white with the bellows when Andy stacked the rest of his soldiers on the hearth.
“Get some bigger wood onto—no, I’ll do it! Gimme that!” He took the bellows from her. “Get the thirty-six mold out! It’s the one makes eight at a whack….”
Only traces of paint remained on the little soldiers, but a picture flashed into Rachel’s mind of how bright they had been, and how pretty, long ago. She kicked one under the table, and crawled after it. Before she came out the other side she had managed to wipe her nose, without blowing it, on the inside of her skirt. If the little cracks were beginning to spread, she didn’t want Andy to know it. Not yet. Not while it could still be helped. As she brought the long-jawed bullet mold to the hearth, the first drums started.
A rattling noise began it, like the sound of two ax helves pounding on a log. Then a pair of medicine drums took it up, and finally, a flat loud clamor, made by beating on sheets of hardened rawhide. All of these noisemakers were struck in a unison as accurate as if a single giant drumstick were hitting them all at once with every stroke. The sound built and built, now and then ending with a final wallop like a cannon shot, to start over softly, and build
