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The shooting started again at dawn.
Bullets slammed into the house at steady intervals. The men outside may have counted what ammo they had and were being more spare with it. Scamp, up on the roof, had to move about fairly often, though. Justin could hear Scamp’s quick, scurrying steps as he shifted about. He was their favorite target as the morning grew brighter.
They sometimes aimed at the windows too, which made standing to the side of them a good idea. Sara had gone through the house and cleared the broken damage from yesterday’s barrage. She hadn’t had time or the goods to cook a meal. None of them looked like they were thinking about food.
Justin sure wished Lucas and Vin had stayed. But they had ridden off in the night.
“He should only have about thirteen men by now if Lucas was right in what he told us.” Francis lay prone in Sara’s bed. His wound had become infected and he could barely stand, much less hold a gun. But that hadn’t kept his mouth from moving fairly constantly.
Justin caught Sara and Button giving Francis stern glances, but they held their tongues. He might well be a dying man.
Justin used a dipper to fill a pan with water from a bucket with a diminishing level. Their drinking water. The last of it. He could see the bottom of the bucket. They couldn’t get to the well to pump water now that daylight lit up the surrounding area, so it seemed a shame to have to use so much of their little stock of it to keep Francis’s wound clear.
Francis muttered, sounding half in delirium, said, “I suspect that losing his bargaining chip and best shooters has made Grintly more desperate than ever. He can hardly leave us alive at this point.”
“Is there anything you don’t have an opinion about?” Sara didn’t even look his way.
Justin put the pan of water he carried down beside the bed and leaned close to Francis. “Maybe you should give her that cool indifference of being hard to get you told me about.”
Button winked at Justin. She and Justin seemed to be over their differences, not that it would matter for long.
“If that means silence, I’m all for it,” Sara said. “Button, why don’t you go around back and get up on the roof, give Scamp a break up there.”
Justin would have liked to spell Scamp himself, but knew he was nowhere as good a shot as Button. He busied himself reloading the muzzleloader and leaning it by the window, then he picked up the shotgun.
He had begun the slow process of accepting the prospect that they were all going to die. Somehow they had become the tiny obstacle in the path of a stubborn, rich, and very mean man. But that was as much a part of life out here as running into a bear, or a hostile Indian. Francis? Well, he was probably going to die anyway, if they didn’t get him to medical help.
Though the others had all resigned themselves to the prospect that they weren’t going to make it, they didn’t seem sad to Justin. They weren’t happy about it, but they’d go out fighting, because they were scrappers. It’s what they did, and Justin was one of them now.
Through all he’d done in his feeble attempt to rescue Button, he hadn’t been afraid. He’d thought only of her. So he did have courage, and he could take that to his grave, if nothing else. It might seem a small thing, but it loomed very large for him at the moment.
“I could try to get Francis to town on his leased buggy,” he said.
“I doubt you’d make it through the blockade. Let’s just all try to stay together, no matter what.” Sara’s voice broke as she choked on the last words.
She’d looked to Justin like she was holding up strong as ever. Maybe that was just an act so none of the rest of them got any more scared than they were. But the scrappy reassurance he got from her face was that she seemed far more angry than sad. He chose to feed on that.
Bent Feather looked over his followers and felt pleased. They had ridden hard and on little water or food, but that had only hardened them as warriors. Road Runner too seemed to be coming into his own, his eyes now eager and squinting as they crested a rise that let them look down on grazing beeves in the valley below.
He stopped his horse and the others stopped in a line. This was something new. He’d seen fences before, but never one out here. It stretched on and on out of sight. Palefaces made little sense to him. They kill the buffalo then bring in cattle, when they could have just eaten buffalo. Now these fences.
He made a sign and Crooked Nose rode farther to the left, and Coyote Eyes to the right. Yellow Hand eased his horse closer. “What does it mean?”
Bent Feather shrugged. He feared he knew, though.
“Hi-yee!” Coyote Eyes called from the right.
Bent Feather turned his paint horse and headed that way. Soon, he could see it too, a hole in the fence where the road had been. He came as close to smiling as he ever did, which was a tightened line of his lips, and he waved an arm for them to ride that way.
They rode through the gap in the fence and beef dotted the tall grass around them. He knew it at once to be a good place, rich in food, and from the tall line of trees ahead, water.
He led his band to a stream rich in frogs and lined with thick clumps of bunch grass. Once they had watered the horses and themselves, he pushed on, eager to see what lay ahead.
They came onto the ranch house and all its side building, horses in a corral, only a couple of cowhands visible working the ranch.
This was all he could ever hope for. He lifted his rifle high in his right hand and the others joined him in a chilling attack cry as they rode down hard toward the startled faces below.
As the wind whipped across his face, the joy of facing battle surged through him. He glanced toward Road Runner, riding hard and fast beside him. Bent Feather decided right then that the curse of the buffalo skull was over, if there ever had been one.
Justin opened the door for the barest second and dashed left, then dove into a roll across the dirt. Two bullets slapped the adobe wall just above him, would have got him if he had stayed on his feet. He shot around the corner and sprinted around to the ladder, and clambered up it.
As soon as he stuck his head up over the edge Button waved for him to stay low. She shuffled in a crouch to the far left side looked up, saw no clear targets, so she ducked low, waited until a bullet whizzed by where she’d been. Then she rose again, fired at a target this time, and hunkered back down as quickly as she had risen.
Justin slithered over the top of the ladder like a snake and crawled across to her, handed her the canteen.
She grinned at him, opened the top, and took a deep drink.
He didn’t tell her that was the last of the water.
“You seem to be having fun,” he said.
“Best to enjoy it as think about anything else.”
He hated to think about never seeing that smile again, but he probably wouldn’t be around either. He grinned back, though he suspected his smile looked a little forced.
A bullet slammed into the ridge of adobe above them and chips and bits of it sprayed across them.
“They can’t keep shooting at us like this forever,” she said. “Sooner or later they have to rush us and try to take the house. At least then we can get quite a few of them.”
He didn’t trust himself to smile at that, so he backed to the ladder and started down it. Barely a rung or tow down he stopped, and climbed back up.
“Button!”
She spun. He pointed behind him.
She crawled closer, looked past him. Three men were creeping this way, trying to get to the back of the house. They must have known not to try going through the goat pen, though Boxo was braying. That’s the sound that had alarmed Justin.
Button raised her rifle, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The one in the lead fell flat onto the ground. The one behind him made the mistake of standing to turn and start to run.
Crack! The rifle shot sounded and he grabbed a leg and spun and tumbled to the ground. The third man was running, but stopped to come and drag the wounded man along with him. Perhaps because of that Button didn’t pin his ears back as well. She held the rifle and waited. Once he had the wounded man to safety the man crawled back and dragged the downed one along too. Button could have got him easily, but Justin was just as glad she didn’t pull the trigger.
Their heads were close together. She turned to look at him, and shrugged. He gave her his best shaky smile and started back down the ladder again.
The moment he’d made his dash around the house to burst back inside the door the first thing he saw was his Aunt Sara wrapping part of a torn sheet around her upper arm. Blood tricked down the arm and dripped off her elbow.
“Don’t ask if I’m okay. Just get to the window and keep the front covered until I’m done here. Take the Winchester until I’m fit to be shooting again.”
Justin took up the rifle and went to the window. He didn’t waste bullets. Every once in a while he could make out one of the men trying to crawl closer to the house. Then if Button didn’t have a fix on the man Justin would shoot. He sure wished he’d spent some time practicing.
Back in the corner of the room on Sara’s bed, Francis moaned and spoke in an incoherent jumble.
“He’s making about as much sense as he ever does,” Sara muttered.
She finished wrapping her arm, tied off the knot, and came to take the rifle back from Justin.
He got the shotgun and went to the other window. Scamp was reloading the muzzleloader. It had more reach, so Justin stepped to one side so Scamp could look for any of them getting close enough for a shot.
“If you two cover me, I could take a bucket and dash to the well to pump us some water.”
“No,” she said, “It’s too dangerous.”
“Like as not you’d just be target practice for those coyotes.” Scamp fired the muzzleloader and stepped back to reload. Justin moved to point the shotgun out the window.
“I just wish I could do something instead of waiting in here to . . . you know.”
“None of us wants to die,” Sara said. “As long as the ammo holds out and we don’t starve or die of thirst, we’ll keep giving them all they want.”
Justin tried to recall Button’s cheerful smile. Though he figured her grin was more than half bluff in the face of danger, he wished he could borrow some of that pluck.
He peeked outside. Some of the men had inched close enough he could use the shotgun soon. That wasn’t good. He figured they had only an hour or so left, maybe minutes.
He looked to Scamp, whose face was darkened by the dark powder he’d been firing. He saw it again, that single tear going down one cheek. He wasn’t going to say anything, but Justin knew what he was thinking.
Their spirits were as low as they’d ever been, all of them putting up a pretty good front. But Justin knew how he felt, without letting on. They all probably felt as close to their last end of rope as he did.
“Man like that will never stop. Never, until we’re all rubbed out and are out of his way. He’s the relentless tide of tomorrow.” The first coherent thing Francis had said on a long spell, and Justin wished he’d just shut the heck up. His glance to Sara and Scamp said they felt the same. Even little Missy huddled over in the other far corner now shivered in place, feeling the fear and despair that ran beneath the surface on all of them.
“Boys,” Sara said, her voice crackling, “there’s some things I want to say to you before . . .” Her voice broke and she turned her face to the wall, her shoulders shaking, and if anything had ever turned Justin inside out and let all the hope run out, this was it.
He heard a low rumble of thunder. His lowered head snapped up. That wasn’t thunder. Those were hooves. Oh, Lordy. Did that Grintly have reinforcements arriving?
He looked out the window, eventually made out the approaching cloud of dust, and soon could make out riders coming this way hard.
But instead of welcoming them, Grintly men turned and began to fire toward them.
Justin could see the approaching men more clearly now, and his heart leapt up into his chest and pounded as hard as he’d ever felt it pound. He could make out they were Texas Rangers. Bless them all. Rangers riding hard and shooting back at Grintly’s men as they came nearer.