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They didn’t have long to wait. The stagecoach came careening around the corner with the horses straining at their bits and the lathered sweat flying from their harness collars. The driver sat on the edge of his seat, his feet wedged into the floor and his knuckles white on the reins.
Behind the coach, five mounted riders with guns drawn chased the coach into view. The driver hauled on the reins with all his might to turn the horses around the corner. Just as the chase exploded around the last building and up the street past Mary’s house, the armed townspeople jumped from their hiding places with their guns blazing. Max and Luke propped their gun barrels on the wagon box and fired.
The bandits started back in surprise, and their horses reared in fright at this unexpected development. The noise of the guns frightened the horses pulling the stagecoach, and the carriage, already riding precariously on two outer wheels, crashed down onto its side in the middle of the street.
The crash threw the driver clear of the wreck, but the horses screamed and thrashed in their harnesses to get free. Behind the coach, the bandits recovered and gained control of their own horses. A couple of them took shelter from the hail of gunfire behind the fallen coach. Others found places to fire on the townspeople behind water troughs and hedges.
The townsfolk exchanged fire with the bandits, and in the fight, two of the bandits fell, never to rise again. From Mary’s window, Kathy saw Luke wheel and collapse behind the wagon, clutching his shoulder. “Luke!” Annabel shrieked next to her, but Kathy couldn’t move from her spot.
The bandits saw the tide turning. In one last desperate effort to save themselves, they emerged from their hiding places and dashed back in the direction they came.
Seeing their intention, Max raised his head from behind the wagon where he shot at the bandits with a Winchester rifle. He waved his hand to his friends to signal them to press their advantage against the bandits. The other men of the town understood him and came out of their hiding places.
The town men consolidated and moved forward in pursuit. Some of the women came out onto Mary’s porch to observe the spectacle. The bandits darted from one defense point to another, covering themselves with gunfire to their rear as they went.
Max shouted to his friends, and the town men surged forward. The bandits saw them coming and, as one man, they whirled and rained a shower of bullets at the town men.
Annabel saw the disaster even before it happened. “Max!” she screamed, and she flew off the porch into the street.
The bullets smashed into the townspeople and exploded in all directions. One of the young man who carried Kathy’s trunk fell and dragged himself behind a tree for protection. Max turned to look at him, and a bullet caught him in the back of the neck.
Annabel screamed again and ran to him, only to be hit in the side of the head by another stray bullet. She pitched forward and landed face down in the grass in front of the church. Luke saw her from his place behind the wagon wheel. He tried to rise to go to her, but he fell back, delirious.
Kathy saw her fall. Her lungs refused to work, or she would have screamed herself. She wanted to run to Annabel, to take her by the hand and bring her back to the house where she would be safe, but she couldn’t move. Anyway, she might get her wedding dress dirty if she tried to leave the porch.
The men in the street charged the bandits, and all but one of the would-be robbers tumbled and fell. The last bandit got to his horse and managed to urge the animal into a gallop. He catapulted himself into the saddle of the running horse and escaped out of town.
The silence that now descended over the town hurt Kathy’s ears. The horses screamed and fought against their harnesses, but Kathy couldn’t hear anything. She stood frozen on Mary’s porch, staring at the aftermath of the battle.
Luke lay in a sweat behind the wagon wheel, the white shirt under his black suit jacket turning red with blood. Max lay in a heap in the middle of the street, his rifle still pointed toward the bandits. And Annabel lay across the grass, her arms at her sides.
Kathy looked around for someone—anyone. Women wept and screamed and the children hid in the shrubbery, but Kathy didn’t see anyone. She stepped off the porch toward Annabel. She didn’t feel her train dragging in the grass and dirt. She bent down and put her hand on Annabel’s shoulder. She was still warm. The bullet that killed her hadn’t gone straight through her, so Kathy couldn’t see any wounds or blood on her back. She looked like she’d fallen asleep.
She glanced up and spotted Luke hauling himself up on the spokes of the wagon wheel. His face dripped with sweat, and his mouth twisted in mask of despair. He looked back and forth between his brother and Annabel. He managed to stagger over to Kathy. But in the last steps before her reached her, he stumbled and would have toppled over if Kathy hadn’t caught him and supported him.
His breath rasped in his throat. “Where’s Adelaide?”
Kathy couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t even thought about Adelaide. Had the girl seen the gun fight? Had she seen both her parents gunned down in the street?
“Gotta find her,” Luke wheezed.
The fog blew away from Kathy’s head and her thoughts cleared. “We’ll find her. But first, we have to get you inside. Where’s the doctor?”
Luke coughed. “Forget about me. Get the doctor for Max and Annabel.”
“We can’t help them,” Kathy replied. “We have to get you inside and stop the bleeding. Come on.”
“But we can’t just leave them here,” Luke argued.
“We’ll get the boys to carry them into the church,” Kathy told him. “Now stop arguing and come with me. You’ll be dead yourself if you don’t.”
Kathy didn’t wait any longer. She staggered up the steps of Mary’s porch with Luke’s weight hanging on her shoulder. She brought him into the sitting room and laid him on a sofa across from the trestle tables. Then she propped up his head on a cushion. His skin glowed waxy and pale, and he shivered. Kathy grabbed a knitted throw from the back of the sofa and tucked it around him.
A woman Kathy didn’t know materialized at her side. “Do you have some cloth we can use for bandages to stop the bleeding?”
The woman looked around. “Here. Use this.”
Kathy looked down and found a kitchen towel in her hand. “Thanks.” She folded it and tucked it inside Luke’s shirt against the wound. “We’ll need some more. That will soak through in no time.”
“I’ll get ‘em for ya.” The woman paused. “Your dress is ruined.”
Kathy looked down and saw red stains covering the front of her dress, but she had too many other things to think about right now. She would never wear this dress again. She probably wouldn’t even look at it long enough to burn it. “Get the doctor. I’m going upstairs to change my clothes. If you see Adelaide, send her up to talk to me.”
