Down at the MacDonald place, Curly, hiding beneath the bunkhouse floor with the two other hands, heard the fall of soft footsteps on the floorboards above. The three of them froze at the first rustle, and Curly held his fingers to his lips before he silently blew out the lantern.
They waited, sweat pouring from their every pore, each moccasin footfall sounding to them like the beat of a big bass drum. At one point, one of those footsteps landed on the timber directly above Carlos’s head, and Curly had to practically strangle him to keep him from crying out.
They listened while the braves threw their bedding around, opened and slammed shut drawers and doors, and even pulled the potbellied stove from the floor. Or at least, did something that sounded like it.
Curly was mad, about as angry as he’d ever been in his life, but he tamped it back and held his tongue. He knew there was enough kerosene up there that if the Apache learned where they were hiding, they’d only have to crack open the hatch to pour enough flaming fuel through the crack to roast them alive.
He wasn’t going to die that way. All he could do was wait them out and pray that he and the hands wouldn’t be discovered. They were lower down than the braves above, and it would be a miracle if they made it up top with their heads still on their shoulders.
At long last, it seemed his prayers for deliverance were answered. After one last kick to the stove—or at least what sounded like a kick to the stove—the braves withdrew.
Muffled footsteps exited the bunkhouse, and a little while later, they heard the distant sound of hoofbeats as the savages left.
“Wait,” Curly whispered when one man reached for the latch. “Give them a few minutes.” Just because they’d gone away, it didn’t mean they’d gone far.
The hand retreated, and Curly waited. After five minutes had passed, he felt the boards above him. He was searching for heat, but there was none. Softly, he said, “Listen, fellas, Apache usually burn everything they run across, and—”
“Sí,” said Carlos. “They burn my whole village when I was a boy, only seven. They are murderous pigs,” he added, then spat.
“Whoa,” whispered Wilmer, whose bony hand had just grabbed for the latch and rested there, trembling. “Your mama, she make it?”
“My mamacita made me hide down the well,” Carlos continued, without answering the question directly.
“Quiet!” hissed Wilmer.
“And you, too, Wilmer,” whispered Curly. “They might have left somebody up there to catch us.”
“So now we wait longer?” Carlos murmured.
“Yep,” said Curly. “Give it just five more minutes, okay?”
“Sí,” said Carlos.
“Yeah,” agreed a shaken Wilmer.
Curly relaxed a little. He’d only made out four separate voices among the Apache, so they hadn’t sent the whole mob. Probably just a scouting party who had found no one at the ranch, and probably assumed everybody was in town. Burning.
His stomach roiled at the thought. He didn’t care so much about Mr. MacDonald as he did about Miss Megan and Mrs. MacDonald. But it was a terrible fate for anybody, to burn up. Especially to burn at an Apache’s hand. He had seen it once, when he was young and a trooper. It was why he was so cautious now.
At last, he figured the five minutes were up and it was time to face whatever was—or was not—out there. He said, “Okay, Wilmer. Open it just a crack.”
Slowly, Wilmer pushed aside the crossbeam and opened up the trapdoor about half an inch.
“A little more,” whispered Curly.
Wilmer pushed it up another half inch. Enough that Curly could see the tipped-over stove, could see and smell its ashes, and smell the spilt kerosene. He could also hear the faint whoops of four Apache, who, by the sound of things, had set the main house on fire.
“Close ’er up, Wilmer,” he said to the older man. Those hoofbeats he’d heard must have come from their own horses, which they’d left up in the paddock. “We’re gonna be down here for a while longer.”
Wilmer, who had seen and heard exactly what Curly had, was more than happy to comply.
Outside, four braves watched the main house burning, watched the walls slowly go up in flame, and cheered when part of the roof fell in and down to the ground, bringing part of the second floor and a slide of furniture with it. Shy Colt went so far as to jump in the horse trough with delight.
But Cunning Dog wasn’t so overjoyed. There were many more things to burn, here: a barn, a pump shed, a sleeping house. He pulled Shy Colt from the water and sent him, along with Sees Far, to learn if there was any livestock in the barn. If they could find no whites to kill, perhaps they might find cattle or horses to steal.
Tipping Hawk he sent to set fire to the shed, while he went to take a torch from the house with which to set the workers’ sleeping house ablaze.
Shy Colt and Sees Far came back with a milk cow, a calf—perhaps a week old—at her heels, and two ducks who immediately headed for the water trough Shy Colt had vacated earlier, flew up, and began to swim in it.
Cunning Dog asked, “This was all?”
Both braves nodded.
“Kill the calf. We will eat.” Cunning Dog, having spoken, turned toward the shed. Tipping Hawk had set it aflame—something the other two had neglected to do to the barn.
But Shy Colt was now busy butchering the calf while Sees Far strained to hold back its bawling, frantic mother.
Idiots.
Still holding his torch, Cunning Dog started toward the sleeping house, and started round it, setting flame to every protruding board he could find. By the time he had rounded it, the whole building, dry as the desert trees from which it had been built, was blazing, and the roof had caught.
By that time, Tipping Hawk had jogged back up to the barn and set fire to that.
Cunning Dog grunted with satisfaction. They had done their job, and done it well. And they would have livestock to take. They had found three horses, plus the cow, plus the ducks.
Having tethered the cow to a fence post, Sees Far was now helping Shy Dog peel the hide from the calf’s carcass and then push a spit through the animal’s body. Together, they carried it to the edge of the burning house and hoisted it onto the Y-shaped posts they had already set into the ground on either side of the impromptu roasting fire. Within minutes, the fine smell of cooking flesh came to his nostrils.
They had burned many buildings and taken some animals.
Life was good. And Lone Wolf would be pleased.
The people in the town could not see it, for it was veiled by the still-rising smoke from their ditch, but the smoke rising from the south was obvious to Lone Wolf and those Apaches on the south side of the town. A few cheered, but were quickly quieted. They had at least done some damage today.
Lone Wolf hoped that besides Fiery Hair, there had been many white settlers at the ranch that his men had burned. He hoped they had all been tortured, and had died in agony. Screaming. Even the women and children. He hoped the babies had been thrown against the walls of the houses or fences made of spikes, that their skulls had split open, and that their mothers had been made to watch as they died.
He had far worse things planned for the townspeople, but it would be a good start.
The smoke was just beginning to thin its cloak around the town. Perhaps this white trick would fade in time. He could wait.
He had time.
By four o’clock the Apaches had gone and Curly, Carlos, and Wilmer had nearly suffocated in the small cellar beneath the bunkhouse. But they struggled out, fighting their way through the flames that still rose from all around them, fighting past the heavy roof beam that had toppled across the trapdoor.
No more roof, no more bunks.
And when, coughing and hacking, they made their way out into the yard, the house was nothing more than a pile of smoldering, smoking timber. The barn and shed were gone, too, and Wilmer made his way up to what was left of the barn first thing.
Probably to check on the cow and her calf, Curly thought. He also thought it likely that they were both dead, buried in the rubble, although he said nothing. He couldn’t speak anyway. He tried, and was surprised when no sound came out, only a feeble puff of thin smoke.
Wilmer came back down to where the house had been and spread his hands, shrugging his shoulders. Apparently there was no cow to be found. But Carlos had found something. He waved them over to the front corner of the rubble pile.
They found the calf’s remains—little more than a few bones still clinging to a rough spit—and a few feet away, Carlos found the little thing’s guts and hide.
Poor Missus, Curly thought, thinking of Jenny. That calf had been her and Miss Megan’s pet. Trouble, they called him, because his mama had had such a hard time bringing him into the world.
Judging by the tracks, the Apache had ridden their horses off and led the cow. At least, there were shod prints mingled with the unshod prints made by their ponies. He hoped that his horse, Spin, took it into his head to buck that brave—or braves, if they were riding double—clear back to Texas.
And right smack on top of a cactus.
Drat them anyway!
“Jenny!” Jason called.
From atop the platform affixed to the interior of the stockade, Jenny turned around and shouted, “What?”
She looked irritated, Jason thought, but then he’d be, too, if he were her. She was obviously still upset with her marital situation, and had run away from it—something against her nature to begin with—to find herself thrust into the role of a soldier, rifle and all, defending the town’s perimeter.
She should be back East somewhere, attending Miss So-and-So’s Academy of China Painting or some such, Jason thought. Not on the run from both a husband and a force of Apache warriors.
But then, his sister was a force of nature, wasn’t she?
“What is it, Jason?” she repeated.
He waved her over and, bless her heart, she came. Not happily, but she did. He started toward her, and they met on the south side of the square. He spoke first. “Can you do me another favor, Jenny?”
She didn’t say yes or no, just stared at him. But she didn’t walk away, so he figured he was still in her good graces. He said, “Jenny, I want you to round up the womenfolk and have them get their old kitchen grease and household oil.”
She still didn’t say a thing, but she was looking at him as if he’d just lost his mind.
“I want them to take it up on the wall and toss it over, into the moat. You understand? And the more they can scrape up, the better.”
“Any kind?”
“Anything,” he said, nodding. “Beef fat, bacon grease, chicken fat, cooking oil, shortening, anything. Just collect it in wooden buckets, and when they’re full, chuck ’em down into the moat.”
She turned on her heel and left to go about her mission, calling over her shoulder, “By the way, my house is on fire.”
“Jenny?” he called after her, but she was too far away to hear.
Then he talked to some of the men from the freight wagons and also most of the townsmen, asking them to gather everything slightly combustible that they might have—axle grease, liniment, hair oil, hinge oil, and the like—and sent them on their way to make collections.
Soon, the smoke changed from dark gray to black as buckets filled with everything from chicken grease to pig fat to horse liniment to hair oil were tossed over the fence and into the ditch.
“That should hold them for the night,” he muttered as he watched fresh billows of smoke rise above the stockade. “And maybe into the morning, too.”
“What the hell you burnin’ now?” said Ward’s voice from behind him.
“Dinner grease,” replied Jason. “What are you doing out of the office?”
Ward patted his pocket. “Had to see the doc about our boarder. I picked up a little surprise for Matt.”
Jason grinned. “Well, aren’t you just a daisy?”
Ward chuckled. “Oh, that’s just how I think’a myself. A regular flower.”
They started toward the jailhouse.
The wagon train
“You sure you don’t see anything?” asked Mankiller, looking west, his hand shading his eyes.
The Reverend Blake shook his head. “No, nothing.
But then, I’m a little nearsighted.” He, too, squinted at the far western horizon.
Both men were on horseback, and both had ridden down the Mormon Trail far ahead of the wagons. Man-killer was standing in his stirrups. He wasn’t the near sighted one, and he was certain that he’d seen a puff of smoke on the far horizon.
Well, maybe it had been a cloud. Or a mirage.
But it had been something, something that moved a bit, then faded away.
The faint jingle of harness came to his ears. He said, “That’ll be the wagons comin’ up.”
The Reverend Blake nodded curtly. “We’ll drop back and keep pace with them. And don’t mention this to anybody, Randy. Okay? Just keep those sharp eyes of yours peeled.”
Mankiller understood. The reverend didn’t want to cause any confusion in the ranks. Meaning Olin Whaler specifically.
“Right,” Randy said, reining his horse around. “I can keep my trap shut.”
Blake, too, turned his mount back toward the east alongside Randy Mankiller’s. They began to jog back toward the nearing wagons.
“You’re a good man, Randy.”
“Try my best.”
“You succeed. Now, if I could only get you to be a God-fearing man…”
Randy grinned. “Fat chance, Rev. My daddy reared me on all the gods of the Cherokee, and let me tell you, they’re a colorful bunch. Yours don’t stand a chance.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Blake, grinning a tad, and kicked his horse into a canter.
Randy kept pace.