“Fish in a barrel, Sheriff,” Gil replied without looking around. He was busy reloading his rifle.
Jason drew and shot over Gil’s head, breaking a new windowpane but picking off a warrior who’d been right behind the one Gil had hit. The body toppled backward and out of sight.
Gil muttered, “Thanks, Jason,” before he brought up his rifle again and trained it on the top of the gate. “Sneaky critters, ain’t they?”
“They surely are. If you’re all right in here, I’m going to help with the fire at the church,” Jason said. His gun was still out, but he was backing toward the door.
“Go then,” Gil said, and took another shot.
Jason didn’t get a chance to see who Gil was aiming at. Or whether his shot had struck its target. He just ran like the devil was after him, ran through a barrage of arrows, and all the way across the street toward the flaming corner church.
The Milcher kids had been hurried across the way by their mother, and Jason gave them a reassuring wave as he scurried past. Then the horses and wagons ringing the center well blocked his sight of them, and he was in front of the church.
Everybody was still hard at work passing buckets toward the stable, but he got Salmon Kendall’s attention. “Half to the church!” he shouted over the battle noise. Salmon heard him, and directed every other man to make a second water line to the west and Milcher’s church.
Muttering, “Someday that sonofagun’s going to take my advice and not build that consarned thing so damned high!” Jason grabbed a full bucket from the closest man and made for the church doors.
Inside, he found that the flames hadn’t worked their way down to the first floor yet, but the smoke certainly had. The Reverend Milcher was stretched out behind his pulpit, unconscious and covered with ash. An empty bucket lay beside his hand.
First things first.
Jason set down his bucket, tied his bandanna over his mouth and nose, and proceeded to drag Milcher outside. Mayor Kendall and a new face greeted him outside. Both men were carrying buckets, and Kendall had his halfway to the ground before Jason waved him off. “Second floor,” he said raggedly. The smoke was getting to him, despite his efforts.
He dragged Milcher as far as he could, which was just to the other side of the circled wagons, and left him to regain consciousness in his wife’s arms. He barely heard Lavinia’s thankful cry of “Bless you, Jason, bless you!” as he sprinted back across the way.
The bucket line had reached the front of the church by now, and Jason arrived just in time to grab a full one from the front man, an enormous black man built like a stevedore and stripped to the waist. Jason took the bucket with a murmured “Thanks,” and headed toward the stairs at the backside of the first floor.
The smoke was thick, and it stung his eyes and nose as he felt his way up the steps. He bumped into somebody on his way up—Salmon, he thought, squinting against the smoke—but he kept moving until he reached the top landing and the Milchers’ living quarters.
The place was ablaze. Rugs sprouted flames like prairie sprouts grass. The sofa and chairs pocked the room like burning brush, and the heavier pieces—the breakfront and dining table and some wooden shelving—smoked in some places, flickered with infant flame in others.
Jason didn’t take the time to pick a target. He simply threw his bucket of water toward the couch, barely seeing the water fly through the smoke-filled room. But he heard it hit the target with a satisfying hiss. And immediately, he turned on his heel and found his way back to the stairs.
Halfway down, he ran into someone coming up. Salmon again. Wordlessly, through the roiling smoke, he traded buckets with the mayor and started back up the steps.
Outside Fury’s walls and at the top of a distant rise, Lone Wolf waited for his captains to return to him for a parley while he watched the battle.
It was not going well. In fact, it was going very poorly. The whites picked off his men from the top of their wall like his forefathers had once picked off the mighty grazing buffalo from the cover of long grass.
“I thought you said you had scouted,” grumbled Juanito, who had returned limping badly, a bullet imbedded in his thigh.
“I did,” snapped Lone Wolf. “Just last week.”
He had, too. All was just as he’d seen it, except for those big wagons they’d just observed hurrying to the relative safety of the inner wall. Lone Wolf knew they were freighters, daring to cart their wares across Apache land. And from past experience, he knew what they carried.
He smiled to himself. Very soon, there would be new toys for the children and pretty cloth for the women, and the Apache would all have a rich supply of cattle and pigs and flour and salt to last through the summer and winter, and new ponies.
“Your information was not very good,” said another brave, his voice mingled with the cries and shrieks of battle, and of men dying.
Bobcat Who Snarls added, “It was not good, Lone Wolf. The walls are too high for such men as we. It would take men the size of gods to step over them.”
“So said Raven Lids,” announced the brave who rode in with Bobcat Who Snarls. The dust still rose from his shoulders in clouds. “He said, ‘Then I will be that tall,’ and stood on his pony. He lies where they shot him off.” His tone indicated much cheating and untrustworthiness on the part of the whites.
“Pick up the dead,” said Lone Wolf, “and bring them back. The wounded too. But do not stop the fight. We can win. You and you,” he said, pointing first to one man, then the next, “take your men to the side of the town where earth greets the sun. Attack strongly. You, Bobcat Who Snarls, you get back to the gate.”
Bobcat Who Snarls didn’t look too happy, but went.
“Juanito,” commanded Lone Wolf, “get yourself to the medicine man.” He pointed to a brave squatted in the brush, about a stone’s throw away. “Tell him I said to mend your leg before you go back to battle.”
Juanito grunted, then left him, awkwardly hobbling toward the medicine man.
Lone Wolf glanced to the west. The sun was falling close to the horizon. There would not be much time left for fighting today.
Victory might have to be left for tomorrow. If this was the case, so be it.
Ward Wanamaker, the town’s deputy and the man who had organized the bucket brigades once the wagons were all inside and the stockade closed up against the heathen, was busily hauling bucket after bucket up from the well.
It was no easy feat, because the water level was rapidly falling. He knew that if they didn’t get these fires put out pretty quickly, they were going to have to let the fires have their way.
He didn’t want that.
His back aching, Ward hauled up another bucket, handed it to the next man in line, and sent down an empty. It was halfway to its target when he felt the arrow sink into his shoulder with a sharp sting, then a burning ache.
He fell to his knees, and then face-forward into the dirt of the street.
His bucket rope was grabbed by someone, he couldn’t see who, and he heard a voice shout, “Morelli! Dr. Morelli!”
And then he felt hands dragging him out of the way while he repeated over and over, “Get me up, get me on my feet, get me up.”
No one listened, not even his own body.
He passed out.
4
Rap rap rap.
Jenny looked up sharply, and Matt fairly leaped to his feet. Both remained silent, though, waiting to see if the knuckle-rapper had a blade and a spear or an arrow, or if he was friendly.
After