They were all huddled in the protective lee of the pine log, the girls and Mrs. Stoat grinning at us as we bellied in. Stoat glowered and looked away. He chewed savagely at another of his fragrant Upmann’s. Flo had their rifle—a Model 99 Savage, the lever action with the five-shot rotary magazine. A lot of empty brass lay scattered around her. Sailor was down flat on his back with a bloody bandage wrapped turban style around his head. His eyes were glazed with shock, but he smiled up at us and raised a thumb. “Cavalry to the rescue,” he said. Dobbs was at the far end of the log with one of the Brownings. Stoat had the other next to him. Neither of them looked at us.
What had happened, as we pieced it together, was about what I’d figured. Dobbs refused to use the tainted avgas at the lodge and was heading for Superior to tank up. That electronic repair we’d seen him making the other night was on the Beaver’s fuel gauges but his fix hadn’t worked and they didn’t realize they had too little gas for the flight. They’d put down on the river with the engine sputtering. “Then these outlaws attacked us,” Mrs. Stoat said. She shuddered. “That Dr. Haugenbusch is a discredit to his profession. I shall certainly report him to the American Medical Association.”
“Mother,” Cora broke in. “He’s not a real doctor. That’s only his nickname, as Florinda told us. He’s a bank robber.”
“How are you doing for ammo?” I asked Flo.
“Half a box left,” she said.
“What caliber is the Savage?”
“Aught six.”
I handed her one of the magazines from the bandoleer. “Here’s twenty more.” I’d have given her the BAR but it had iron sights. She’d be more accurate using the four-power scope on the rifle.
“Where are Doc and Curly holed up exactly?” Harry asked.
“In that building there by the river,” Flo told him. “The old store with the gas pumps in front. Anyway Curly’s in there. Doc isn’t shooting, being blind like he is, but he’s probably right in there with him. He’s carrying that pump gun of yours.”
I popped my head over the log for a quick look. Curly fired just as I dropped it again. The bullet smacked the bark and whined away into the woods.
“There’s that old dirt road right ahead of him,” I said. “He can’t come across it without exposing himself. What do they have for a boat?”
“That canoe you shot up,” Flo said. “Curly patched it like I knew he would. They were paddling upstream toward us just before the storm hit. Mr. Stoat spotted them first and said, ‘Good, help’s on the way.’ When I looked over and recognized them, I told Sailor to right away cut loose at them. Thank God he did. Otherwise they’d have come right in here and slaughtered us.” She shook her head. “Curly nailed poor Sailor as it was, a snap shot from two hundred yards away in a moving canoe.”
“Did Sailor hit them, put a few holes in the canoe anyway?”
“I don’t think so. Before I could pick up the rifle they’d ducked in behind the riverbank, by that dock there just next to to the store. Since then it’s just been a sniper’s fight.”
I was trying to anticipate Curly’s next moves. “He’ll probably wait until dark, then move out of the store. Maybe circle back through the woods and try to outflank us.” There went our afternoon of steelhead fishing. And probably our ride back to Heldendorf as well.
“Have you radioed for help?” Harry asked.
“Dobbs tried to climb back in the cockpit but Curly made it too hot for him,” Flo said. “He couldn’t even wade out to the float before bullets were splashing all around him. Anyway, with the storm screwing up the atmospherics, he probably couldn’t have raised anyone anyway.”
“Wonder why he hasn’t shot up the plane?” I said. “He’s mean enough to do it for sheer spite.”
“Maybe they want the Beaver,” Flo said. “They’ll have to clear out of this country now, figuring you fellows blew the whistle on them. The cops could show up any minute. And Doc knows how to fly—he was in France with the Lafayette Escadrille during the First World War. He liked to talk about the time he used a Flying Jenny in a bank robbery out in Kansas. That was back in the twenties. Could be he figures on handling the controls while Curly acts as his eyes in the co-pilot’s seat.”
“Pretty risky,” I said.
“They’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Well,” Harry said, “they can’t fly it now without some gas.”
Flo thought about that for a moment. Her eye was glued to the scope through all this, and now she squeezed off another shot. Then cursed. “Stick your head up again, you bastard,” she said. She resumed our conversation. “No, unless there’s some fuel left in the storage tanks at the gas station. Float planes used to land here back in the forties, guys flying in to fish the lakes in the Chequamagon country.”
So we had the plane, they had the avgas. The trick would be to sneak in there and filch some of it. But how?
Now Stoat piped up. “When are you fellows going to begin shooting? You have those machine guns, why don’t you use them?”
“They’re our element of surprise,” I told him. “Doc and Curly don’t know we’re here yet, and that we have automatic weapons. Flo thinks they also may be sitting on a supply of avgas, in one of those pumps at the store.”
“Well, we must get some of it then. Time’s a-wasting. I have to be back at the bank by nine a.m. tomorrow. You’re a bold young Marine. Charge them singlehanded, or take Mr. Taggart with you. Root them out of there. Surprise them with firepower. With those guns it should be easy as pie.” Dobbs looked over at me and smirked. His look seemed to say, Now you know what I have to put up with.
But maybe it would work. I could leave Flo back here with the BAR to provide heavy covering fire while Harry, Dobbs, and I worked our way up along the riverbank, under cover. Then one of us could shoot up the store with the Tommy gun while the other two dashed for the gas pumps and filled a couple of cans with high-octane avgas.
“Do you have any gas containers on the plane?” I asked Dobbs.
“Two ten-gallon jerricans. Empty. And they’re in the back of the cabin. We’d never be able to fetch them, not the way that guy shoots.”
“I think I can do it,” I said.
The Beaver was moored by a single line to a tree on the bank, floating about twenty feet out from the shore. I told Flo what I wanted her to do, then stripped to my racing trunks and crawled down to the river. It was an easy underwater swim to the far float, the one on the upriver side from Curly’s vantage point. I looked back to Flo and gave her a thumbs-up. Wanda crouched beside her, eyes big with worry. Flo racked the lever of the Savage and started pouring shots into the storefront. I pulled myself up on the float, then scrambled into the portside hatch. As Dobbs said, the empty gas cans were stowed in the rear, under a couple of tarps. I grabbed them and crawled back. In the water, I unscrewed the caps and let them fill halfway. That way they could travel with me to the shore, underwater. Curly wouldn’t see them and would have no idea what we were planning. Anyway, I hoped he wouldn’t.
Back behind the log I emptied the jerricans. Now came the hard part. I explained my plan to the rest of them. “Is twenty gallons of fuel enough to get you out of here?” I asked Dobbs.
“Yeah, as far as Ashland anyway. Maybe even Duluth.”
“Well, let’s go get it.”
The pilot looked at me and frowned. “It’s not in my MOS, but what the hell.” He smiled. “The Japs couldn’t kill me. I don’t see why a renegade Marine like this guy Curly should be able to.” Spoken like a true movie flyboy. John Wayne, maybe, in Flying Tigers.
Harry and I flipped a coin to see who would carry the gas cans. I won, for a change. He’d hang back at the riverbank and provide covering fire, alongside Dobbs with the Savage. Flo’s BAR would give us a crossfire. I’d rush the pumps with the jerricans. They were the old-fashioned kind of pumps with a manual crank and didn’t require electricity. I’d just have to pray that our guesswork about Doc’s intentions were correct, and that there was indeed still some avgas left in the tank.
“Give us ten minutes to get in position,” I told Flo. “Then open up with all you’ve got.”
“Shouldn’t you synchronize your watches?” Wanda asked. “They always do it in the movies.” Cora nodded her solemn corroboration.
I didn’t have a watch, but Dobbs did. Waterproof, too. Stoat unstrapped his Patek Philippe and handed it to Flo—“Be careful, that timepiece cost $5,000!”—and we synchronized them to Wanda’s satisfaction. Then we slipped once again into the Firesteel’s icy water.
As we worked our way down the bank, we could hear Flo popping a few desultory rounds at the store. She had the BAR on single fire. She’d flip the selector to full automatic when the time came. There was no difference Curly could detect in the sound of her fire. Both weapons shot the same round.
When we reached the dock, Harry went up the bank first with the Tommy gun. He looked over the top, then signaled us up. We had four minutes left on Dobbs’s watch before H-hour.
“I think I can sneak around behind the store,” Harry said. “There’s a big pile of snags back there for cover. Captain Dobbs can shoot from here, and with Flo firing from the front they might panic. They ought to. Hell, they’re surrounded.”
“That drum on the Thompson’s supposed to hold a hundred rounds,” I told him. “It’s probably less. Try to keep your bursts short and sweet, conserve ammo, light finger on the trigger. The cyclic rate of fire on that bastard is about six hundred rounds a minute, so you could empty the drum in a hurry if you don’t watch out. Just . . .”
“Alright already,” he said. “I get your drift. Nag, nag, nag.”
“Three minutes to go,” Dobbs said. “You better get a move on. When you hear my first shot, start blasting.”
I said, “And remember . . . ”
Harry gave me the finger and crawled over the top. He ran in a low crouch to the rear of the store.
“Which pump is the avgas?” I asked Dobbs. He looked at them and shrugged.
“The colors are too faded to tell for sure, but I think it’s the near one. If there’s a price schedule left on them, it’ll be the one that’s most expensive.” He looked at his watch. “A minute.”
It was a long one. I tightened the laces on my sneakers and tied them tight in a double knot. I loosened the caps on the gas cans. I started taking deep breaths. It was about twenty yards to the gas pumps.
Dobbs counted down. “Five, four, three, two, one . . . Go!”
As I topped the berm I heard Flo cut loose on full automatic. Splinters flew from the front of the store, long silvery gray ones, and what was left of the glass in the windows shattered to bits. I heard the Savage crack behind me, then a chugging, four-round burst from the rear of the store. Then I was at the pumps. The first one I came to had no price listed, but it had “Hi Test” painted in white letters on the faded red cylinder. I unscrewed the cans, lifted the hose from its rack, and started pumping the handle. At first there was nothing but air, the stale smell of old gasoline fumes. But then I heard a gurgle, and a trickle of pale gold petrol spilled from the nozzle.
Fuck! At this rate of flow I’d be jacking off an hour!
But then it started gushing. I flailed at the handle like a mad masturbator, bullets flying every which way around me, the roar of gunfire everywhere, even from the front of the store, where Curly was returning fire. He hadn’t seen me yet, though, too focused on Flo’s muzzle flash to look to his right. Then I heard a shotgun blast from the back of the store. Doc had gotten into the act, spraying buckshot blind in Harry’s direction.
Suddenly Dobbs appeared beside me and grabbed the pump handle. He handed me the rifle and Flo’s half empty box of bullets. One gas can was full, and we switched to the other. He pumped while I reloaded the Savage, holding the pump nozzle in the mouth of the jerrican with my knees. The whole area reeked of gas fumes now. The hose was leaking.
“Almost full,” Dobbs said.
I saw the muzzle of Curly’s Springfield poke out of the glass-fanged hole that had been the front window. Flo’s fire had stopped. She must be switching magazines. The muzzle swung back and forth, like the head of a snake licking the air for a taste of its prey. I raised the Savage but then thought better of it. This close the rifle’s report would tip Curly to our presence at the pumps. With all the high-octane gas soaking the ground, one whitehot bullet fired at us could touch off an inferno.
“We’d better call this good enough and run for it,” I told Dobbs. He nodded and screwed on the last gas cap.
“It’s damn near full already.”
Curly’s muzzle swung back fast to the front and steadied. He had a target. Looking down his line of fire, I saw something galloping toward us. Something lanky, longlegged, and rusty brown. Gayelord! He must have spotted me at the pump and broken away from the girls, who were supposed to be holding him. The ground between the store and the plane was littered with stumps and old slash, all interfering with Curly’s aim. But in a moment Gayelord would reach an open patch only fifty yards away.
I raised the rifle, tried to calculate where Curly would be behind the muzzle of his Springfield, and fired. Instantly the rifle disappeared. Did I hit him? We ran for the bank, the jerricans swinging heavy from Dobbs’s hands. I looked back and—shit!—saw Curly lean out of the shattered window. He glared straight at me. The Immortal Jarhead. He tossed the Springfield from his right hand to his left, or open side—a good Marine marksman can shoot off either shoulder—and drew a bead on me. But at that moment Harry burst from behind the store, ran around to the front, and firing from his hip cut loose with the Tommy gun.
“No!” I yelled.
Sure enough, a spark from the Thompson’s muzzle blast hit the spilled gas. Ignition . . . Harry saw it happen, figured it with a flash, spun around and sprinted toward us. The flame flickered for an instant over the rainbow-hued puddle, blue and yellow and ghostlike, then the whole shebang went WHUMP!
The explosion blew me into the river. Harry landed on top of me, still clutching the Tommy gun. When his head popped clear of the water, his eyebrows were gone, along with the hair on the back of his head. Dobbs stood up to his waist in the water, holding the gas cans clear of it. The heat from the fire reached us even under the bank. We slogged back fast toward the plane.
Cora and Wanda were weeping when we slogged in from the river, while Mrs. Stoat hovered beside them, murmuring words of comfort. Gayelord had somehow gotten back and cowered now, shivering, at Flo’s feet. His hair looked kinkier than ever.
“Well, well,” Stoat said. “Our Johnnies come marching home. Rather bedraggled but none the worse for wear.”
The girls ran to us, so did Gayelord. Quite a reunion.
While Dobbs waded out to the plane and began refueling, I looked back at what had once been Chemango. The store was a plume of fire. A greasy black cloud writhed above it. No way Doc and Curly could have survived that holocaust. Harry had brought his horn up from the canoe. He played a few sweet bars—the opening notes to a favorite of ours: “My Old Flame.” The Spike Jones rendition, with Peter Lorre on the lyrics. Spike Jones and His City Slickers . . .
Back in grade school we used to play those old 78s in Harry’s rec room during our nonstop Ping-Pong matches, which the Hairball always won, 21 to 6. Or maybe 10 if my reflexes were sharp. He riffed around those basic notes for a minute or two, then skyed off into noodling arpeggios, high intervals overlaying low ones, blats and flats and fresh sweet lyrical phrases that spilled from his horn as if there were no limit to his invention, sounds that would have left the Bird himself flightless in their wake. He looked up and winked at me. Behind him the flames of the Flying Red Horse quavered all over the sky, red black and yellow.