“If they go, do you want to go with ’em?” asked Escondido.
The Boy shook his head.
“I’m half tempted to run myself.” Then, “The Hillmen are sending messengers out to their villages. That might even things up a bit. All right, you’ll fight with me. I’ll be on the eastern wall. You can reload my rifles. You know how to do that?”
The Boy shook his head.
“Well, we got all night to learn.”
Chapter 30
“Feels like spring,” whispered Escondido in the cool darkness as the two of them sat beneath the ramparts along the wall. It was morning, just before sunrise.
Below the wall, in the fields and forest beyond, all was a soft gray.
The Boy smelled a breeze thick with the scent of the field. And on it, he knew, he could taste the waiting tribes out there in the darkness.
“Be a long summer,” muttered Escondido, his old eyes squinting at the far horizon. “But what do I know.”
The Boy checked Raleigh’s knife. It was stuck into the soft wood of the parapet.
Escondido had taught him how to break the rifle, pull out the expended cartridge, load another of the massive bullets into the breech, exchange rifles with Escondido. Repeat. They had more than a hundred cartridges. But not many more.
Escondido wiped angrily at his nose.
“I can smell ’em comin’ up the ravine. If we fall back, or you see the Chinese start to leave, head down to the courthouse in the center of town. They’ll make their stand there. That’s if I’m kilt, understand?”
The sun washed the field in gold, and out of the low-lying mist, arrows like birds began to race up toward the parapets. Loud knocks indicated the arrows ramming themselves into the wooden walls just on the other side of their heads. Someone screamed farther down along the wall. There was a sudden rush of the slurring Chinese, spoken in anger and maybe fear.
Escondido popped his head over the wall, keeping his rifle erect.
He shouted a string of Chinese directed at the others along the wall.
Then he sat down with his back to the parapet. “They’re using them arrows to keep our heads down. There’s thousands of ’em crossing the fields with ladders and poles now.” He took three short breaths, then, “Here we go!” Escondido popped his head over the wall, this time sighting down the rifle, and a second later the world erupted in thunder and blue smoke.
As the echoing crack of the rifle faded across the forest, the tribes began to whoop and scream below, breaking the morning quiet.
Escondido backed down behind the wall, handed the spent rifle to the Boy, and grabbed the other from the Boy’s frozen fingers.
The Boy had been told all his life about the legendary capacity of a gun to strike back at an enemy. But he had never seen one fired. He was never told of its blue stinging smoke and sudden thunder.
Three breaths as Escondido raised the rifle back over the wall. He targeted some unseen running, screaming tribesmen. A brief click as he pulled the trigger, and again the explosion.
They exchanged rifles. Unloaded and smoking, hot to the touch—for the other rifle, now loaded and waiting to be fired again.
Repeat.
“There’s thousands of ’em,” stated Escondido again.
Three breaths.
The explosion.
Repeat.
“They’re coming up the walls, it’ll be knife work shortly.”
The explosion.
Repeat.
“Duck!”
The sudden whistle of flocks of arrows flinging themselves from far away to close at hand, then the thick- sounding
The Boy grabbed Raleigh’s knife when he heard the ladders fall into place on the other side of the pine logs. He put it in his mouth before he took the expended rifle and started the unloading trick he’d been taught.
Explosion.
“Be a long hot summer,” muttered Escondido.
Repeat.
The Boy finished reloading and waited to exchange rifles.
When nothing happened he looked up.
Escondido was slumped over the wall, almost falling facedown. The Boy pulled him back behind the parapet.
A bolt had gone straight up through his jaw and into his brain. His eyes were shut tight in death.
The Boy heard feet scrabbling for purchase on the other side.
All along the wall, lunatic tribesmen jabbered, screamed, and spurted blood as they hacked away at the mostly dying Chinese.
The Boy, still holding the rifle, grabbed the sack of cartridges and tumbled off the platform, checking his landing with a roll.
He raced down a lane, his limping lope carrying him away from the bubbling surge of madmen now atop the wall and spilling over into the outpost. Chinese and Hillmen raced pell-mell for the old courthouse. Snipers from its highest windows below the old dome were shooting down into the streets.
The Boy was making good speed while watching the courthouse. He saw one of the snipers draw a bead on him and fire at the place where he should have been. Instead he crashed through the front door of a shack. Inside he found linens and pots and pans. There was even food in glass jars.
‘Go to ground,’ he thought, and wondered if this was the voice of Sergeant Presley. There was too much going on for him to tell.
He remembered Raleigh telling him to meet MacRaven at the front gate so that he could lead the tribes to the planned horror of their murdered leaders.
Outside, Mohawked tribesmen were streaming down the streets with axes and blood-curdling screams. Bullets, fired from the courthouse, smacked and ricocheted into the cracked and broken streets.
When the first wave passed by the store, the Boy darted across the street and into an alley. He followed the alley and a few others as he worked his way back to the gate that sat astride old Highway Eighty.
He smelled smoke and burning wood.
Women were screaming.
Ahead, above the rooftops, where the gate should be, he saw an explosion of gray smoke and splintering wood.
The gunfire from the courthouse was increasing.
Breaking glass both close and far away.
Screams.
I’ve got to get Horse.
At the gate, the ashen-faced warriors were leaping over the collapsed remains of the entrance to hack with
