Walt had doubled the supplies and borrowed pack horses to bring the additional staples to the ranch. There, Smoke made a slow walking inspection of the area surrounding the complex. There could be nothing else done to make the place any more secure.
After supper, he called a meeting in the lantern-lit barn.
“Here’s the way it’s going to be, people. No one leaves this area. No one. Not for any reason. Jud is going to hit us, and he’s going to hit us hard. When? Very soon, I’m thinking. He should be able to sit a saddle most anytime.” He noticed the smiles at that and had to join them in the rough humor. But his smile faded quickly. “I thought that after the so-called party at the Bar V the other night, and what happened afterward, that Sheriff Brady would do something—anything! But that doesn’t appear to be the case. I don’t know whether Jud has bought him off, or what. Maybe the sheriff just doesn’t want to get involved. Whatever the reason, it looks like we’re in this thing all by ourselves. We can handle it. But it’s going to get rough and dirty. Any of Jud’s hired guns with an ounce of mercy in them have pulled out. What’s left is the crud. That’s what’s going to be hitting us. Be ready for it. That’s it.”
Smoke looked at the young kids, kids that were growing up fast. Too fast, probably, for he saw no fear in their eyes. Did they really know the danger that faced them, or was this just kid excitement? Probably a combination of both, he thought.
“I’ll stand the first watch,” Walt said. “Then Smoke and Rusty and Jackson can divide up the rest. We’re going to have to do this every night. Three-hour pulls for each of us until it’s over.”
“Anybody seen or heard anything from Clint?” Alice asked.
No one had.
“The last time I spoke with him,” Smoke said, “he said he was having one of his spells—one of his moods is what he called it. He wouldn’t come close to me.”
“That’s probably good for you,” Doreen said. “He gets murderous when those things take hold of him. He thinks everybody is his enemy.”
There was nothing else to say, so Walt broke up the meeting by telling everyone to go to bed. He got his rifle and took up a position by the corral, taking the first watch.
Smoke slept a few hours and then went out to relieve the rancher. It was one of those Idaho nights that inspire poets to write the loftiest and most eloquent of verses. The heavens were filled with stars that clung so close to earth one could almost feel they were touchable.
“Quiet,” Walt said, standing up and stretching. “Everything is at peace with the other, I reckon. Well, almost. Even the birds stopped calling a few minutes ago.”
Smoke tensed. “No birds are calling?”
Walt was silent for only a few seconds, then he cursed himself for being an old fool!’ ’Dammit! What’s the matter with me? I’ll alert the others. The old rancher took off in a bowlegged lope.
Smoke ran toward the bunkhouse, catching up with Walt and telling him to get to the house and get Little Micky into the root cellar; he’d alert the others.
Smoke knew better than to bust into the bunkhouse with everyone on the alert. That would be a good way to catch a bullet. He paused at a window.
“They’re here, boys!” he called softly. “Get to your positions and keep the lights out doing it.”
He rousted Jackson and Rusty and they ran to preset positions around the compound. None of them saw the youngest of the kids leave the bunkhouse and race across the area, stopping by the side of the barn for a moment, and then slip into the darkness of the huge barn.
Chuckie and Clark and Jimmy and Buster grinned at each other. They’d had the very devil of a time gelling just the rocks for their slingshots; but they’d finally found some with just the right texture and their weapons were strongly made, their pockets bulging with smooth little stones.
They knell down in the darkness and waited. They could hear Smoke up in the loft on one end of the barn, talking to Jackson who was up in the loft on the other end.
The boys waited in silence, slingshots in their hands.
Smoke searched the darkness of his perimeter but could see nothing out of the ordinary. If Jud and his men were out there—and that was still iffy—they were on foot and staying very quiet.
Chuckie thought he heard something behind him, at the far end of the barn. He looked at the others. Their eyes were wide; they had heard it, too. Then the very faint sound came again, but this time it was closer.
Someone was in the barn with them, and it wasn’t anyone from the Box T. The boys knew all the positions of those friendly.
Chuckie slipped a rock into the pocket of his slingshot and ever so slightly shifted positions. Then he saw the clearly outlined figure of a man. And the shape of the hat told him it was no one from the Box T. Chuckie lifted his slingshot, pulled the rubber taut, and took aim. He let the rock fly and his aim was true. The rock struck the man in the center of his forehead and knocked him off his boots. The man made one grunt of pain as the rock hit him and then lay still on the barn floor.
Smoke was down the loft ladder in seconds. He looked at the slingshot-armed boys and sighed. It was too late to send them back to the house. But he couldn’t help but feel proud of them. They were a gutsy bunch.
Smoke moved to the fallen man. He didn’t know him.
“What’s goin’ on down there?” Jackson whispered from the hayloft.
“One of Jud’s men,” Smoke returned the whisper. “The boys dropped him with a slingshot.” Jackson chuckled softly.
“That means they’ve infiltrated us. Look sharp, Jackson.”
Smoke cut several lengths of binder twine and securely tied the hired gun. He stuck the man’s guns behind his belt and took his rifle. He looked at the boys looking at him. “I ought to spank you,” he whispered. “But I feel too proud of you to do that. Now, dammit, boys, stay down and out of sight! This is not a game.”
“Yes, sir,” Buster said, as Smoke headed for the ladder.
Smoke had just cleared the landing when Rusty’s rifle barked from his position in the bunkhouse. A man cried out in pain as the bullet struck true. Smoke ran to the hay door as gunfire began pouring in from all sides of the ranch complex.
Below him, the boys readied their slingshots as they crouched down behind bales of hay.
Jackson sighted a running figure, fired, missed, and fired again. The second slug dusted the man and sent him sprawling to the ground, side-shot and out of it.
Then the compound was filled with running men as they left their positions on the near-barren hills and ridges around the ranch and charged. Smoke could hear, over the gunfire, the sounds of horses coming hard.
The first wave of running men were cut down by the savage fire from the house, the barn, and the bunkhouse. Their bodies lay sprawled under the starry sky. One man, only slightly wounded, tried to make the barn. He was knocked to his knees by slingshot-propelled rocks and then knocked unconscious as a rock fired by Buster hit him on the side of the head and dropped him to the ground.
The boys grinned at each other.
Doreen sighted in a man and pulled the trigger, the Winchester slamming her shoulder. The slug caught the hired gun in the chest and ended his career.
Susie turned one around with a rifle shot and Alice finished him with a pistol. The rancher’s wife was calm and steady, this being nothing new to her. She’d fought Indians for years before this.
One of Jud’s men reached the outside bunkhouse wall. Jamie shot him between the eyes as he carelessly poked his head up just a tad too far.
Then the hard-running horses came into view, the riders carrying burning torches. The first half-dozen to reach the compound were blown out of their saddles by rifle fire. The boys in the lower level of the barn then went to work, sending rocks which impacted with horses’ butts.
One man was knocked out of the saddle as a rock struck him on the jaw. He fell on his torch and quickly became a living firebrand. He rose screaming to his feet, his clothing ignited, and tried to run. Walt ended his agony with a bullet to the head.
The horses went into a panic as the rocks pelted them, stinging and confusing and angering them. The horses began bucking and jumping, trying to escape the hurting stones. Riders were tossed to the ground and shot down by rifle and pistol fire.
One managed to reach the house and jumped in through a window. Doreen picked up a pot of coffee from the stove and tossed the contents on the man, the scalding coffee catching him flush in the face. He dropped his guns and began screaming in agony, running around the room, crashing into furniture in his frantic rush to get away from the awful pain.
Alice shot him in the head and permanently ended the wailing.
A bounty hunter ran into the barn as rocks from slingshots pelted him, stinging but not stopping his charge for cover.
Little Chuckie grabbed up a pitchfork, tines out, and braced himself against the impact. The gun hand ran right into the pitchfork, knocking Chuckie down as the tines tore into his belly. Screaming in pain, the gunny ran toward the other end of the barn. The handle of the pitchfork, sticking several feet out of his belly, hit a wall and stuck there. The gunny screamed his life away, unable to pull the handle from the crack in the stable wall or free himself of the tines.
Chuckie got sick.
A torch hit the roof of the bunkhouse and lodged there, soon catching the roof on fire.
Smoke lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite and tossed the bomb into the milling and panicked scene below him. The explosion knocked several horses to the ground, busting a couple of riders’ legs and creating even more confusion in the fire-lanced night.
Smoke began tossing stick after stick of dynamite from loft to the ground, as his eyes spotted Rusty and the boys running from the bunkhouse to a storage shed. A Bar V rider turned his horse as he spotted the boys, lifting his pistol. Smoke shot him out of the saddle. His boot hung in the stirrup and the frightened horse took off at a gallop, dragging the screaming, flopping,’ and helpless man.
All the steam seemed to leave the Bar V men at once. Those still mounted wheeled and raced from the fire-lit ranch. Those on foot ran away into the darkness.
“Cease firing!” Smoke yelled. “Hold your positions!”
The crackling flames from the bunkhouse became the only sounds in the bloody night.
“I’m gonna let it burn itself out!” Walt yelled from the house.
“You ail right, Jackson?” Smoke called.
“I’m okay. How about the boys down below?”
“We’re all right,” one called. “Chuckie got sick, is all.”
Smoke climbed down the ladder. He stopped as his eyes saw the pitchfork-impaled gun hand, the man’s hands still gripping the handle in death.
“I had to do it, Mr. Smoke,” Chuckie said. “I didn’t have no choice.”
“You did fine, Chuckie,” Smoke assured him. “You boys stay down behind those bales of hay.”
Smoke found a sack and then eased his way out of the barn. Staying close to whatever cover he could find, he began working his way to the storage shed. On the way, he passed men who were moaning and twisting in pain. He took their guns from them and dropped them into the sack. Rusty saw what he was doing and stepped out to begin calming and corralling the milling Bar V horses. Jackson stayed where he was, keeping a sharp eye out for any return raiders.
But Jud’s hired guns had apparently had enough for one night. No more hostile fire came.
Susie and Doreen rolled the dead man out of the living room and off the porch. A couple of the boys dragged the man out of the front yard.
“Rusty, at first light, I want you to ride for Montpelier and get that reporter and then find Sheriff Brady. Bring them both here. If Sheriff Brady won’t come, send a wire to the governor’s office and one to the Army up at Fort Hall. But I think Brady will come.”
“Right. What do we do with the bodies?”
“Lay them over by the side of the barn and cover them with whatever you can find. Use their own bedrolls and ground sheets if they were carrying any. We’ll put the wounded in the barn.”
Walt walked up. “I count twenty dead and twelve wounded. Some of them aini gonna make it.”
“I guess you better bring Doctor … what’s his name, Walt?”
“Evans. He’s a good man. He’ll come.” Walt looked up at the sky. “I hope they come quick. It’s gonna be a warm day and these bodies’ll start to bloat in a hurry. Flies will be awful.”