The second attack had nearly done them in. Davis had slipped along the line and found that a number of his men had been killed or wounded. Those who had ridden in later were either dead or missing. Bailey had been killed, a bullet through the neck, and Webster was down with a bullet in the knee and a second in the shoulder. Bradford had been hit, too, but not badly. He was more angry than hurt.
Davis checked the ammo, picking up that from the dead and passing it out to the living. It didn’t make much of a difference. He didn’t tell any of the survivors that it didn’t look as if they’d make it to the night so they could slip away. He didn’t tell them that the next attack would probably be the last.
He drew the men into a tight ring around him with the wounded in the center of it. If he and the healthy men couldn’t fight off the Apaches, it would make no difference to the wounded. Davis had decided that no one would be taken alive. He would take care of the wounded at his last act.
Now there was nothing more he could do. He had a fully-loaded rifle in his hands, a second one propped against the rock, and two pistols jammed into his belt. He sat down, his back to the rock, looked up at the sun, and knew that it wouldn’t set for another five or six hours. Much too long.
He pulled the cork from his canteen, took a drink, and sloshed the water around his mouth before swallowing. He took his hat off and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“When do you think they’ll come?” asked Bradford.
“When they get ready and not before. They’ll just decide it’s time and come at us.”
Bradford crouched down. His hands were shaking and his face was pale. Sweat was beaded on his upper lip and he was blinking rapidly. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”
Davis thought about answering that question. When the Apaches attacked, he’d need every gun and every man if they were to have any kind of hope. He could lie and maybe lose Bradford when the attack came, or he could tell the truth and maybe lose him now. The truth won.
“I think that we might be able to repulse one more attack, but after that it’ll be all over. There are too many of them.”
Bradford nodded slowly. “Maybe we should try to get out now.”
“I thought about that,” said Davis, “but I don’t like the odds. In the daylight they’d run us down and kill us one at a time. Here we’ll take some of them with us.”
“Maybe if we get out, they’ll let us go,” said Bradford. “Maybe they’re mad because we’re close to the gold.”
“This has nothing to do with the gold,” said Davis. “We’re in their territory and they’re defending it. They won’t let us walk out. Especially after what we did at the watering hole.”
Bradford closed his eyes for a moment. Sweat dripped down the side of his face and from his chin. It looked as if he was going to pass out and then suddenly, the color came back to his face.
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “We’ll take the sons o’ bitches with us.”
Davis didn’t say anything to him. He just stood up and turned so that he could watch the river bank. That’s where the Apaches were hidden.
They didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes the Apaches were on the move again, but this time they weren’t attacking across the river on horseback. They were coming up from the near bank, using it and the trees and bushes along it as cover. They were crawling along, from bush to tree to depression, showing as little of themselves as they possibly could. There was no firing from them.
Davis leaned across the sun-hot rock, his rifle tucked into his shoulder. He was looking over the barrel, searching for a target. But the Apaches, having seen that a straight frontal assault might succeed eventually but only at a great loss of life, had decided to sneak forward. They were not going to play the ritualistic game of counting coup as their brothers of the plains did. They were out to kill.
Davis finally began to use the sights. He followed the progress of one brave, and the instant the man was in the sights, he fired. The round hit a stone and whined off into the distance. But that started it. The men with him opened up, their rifles rattling. The Apaches did not shoot back. They dodged from tree to rock to bush, showing themselves briefly and then diving to hide. Bullets slammed into the trees, or kicked up sand, or chipped the rocks. And still the Apaches came on.
Davis caught one of the Indians as he made a final run for the foot of the bluff. The round spun him around, and he threw his rifle into the air. He fell to the sand and didn’t move again.
“One down,” said Davis quietly, as if speaking to himself.
“Got another coming up here,” said Bradford. He fired then, and there was a scream of pain.
But all the Apaches had reached the foot of the bluff near the body of the man just killed, and were not climbing up the rocks. They used the crevices and outcroppings and the depressions to hide. They began to shoot, too. Single shots that chipped at the stones near Davis and his tiny band of defenders.
“Got one to the right,” said a voice. “Coming up now.”
Davis saw movement out of the corner of his eye, whirled, and fired. The round missed, striking a stone with a high-pitched sound. The Apache leaped in among them, raising a knife over his head. He swung it at Davis who dodged right and fired again. The Apache was hit low, in the stomach. He grabbed at himself and fell, his blood pumping onto the sand.
That marked a change in the battle. While they had been watching the Indians playing the game in front of them, others had been approaching from the sides. A second Indian, and then a third, came over the rocks, leaping among the defenders.
Webster was the first to die. He didn’t see the Apache dive over a rock and come at him. The Indian plunged the knife into Webster’s back and then shoved him down. He jumped on Webster’s back, jerked at his hair and cut his throat.
Davis shot the Apache but it did Webster no good. His blood pumped out onto the sand at the base of a rock. There was an odor of bowel and hot copper. The whole area was beginning to stink of that and gunpowder and sweat.
Bailey died next as one of the Apaches shot him in the face. Bailey might not have realized what was happening. He’d been delirious from the heat and from the pain of his wounds.
Davis watched the others go down one by one. They were shot or stabbed or clubbed. They fought as long as they could, some of them wounded. Finally there was only Davis left alive. The others were lying on the ground around him in bloody heaps. It was apparent that the Apaches planned on taking him alive.
For a moment, they had a stand-off. He was surrounded by the Apaches, who didn’t move only because he held a pistol in his hand. He moved it from the chest of one brave to that of another as they would move.
Davis knew that there was no hope now. He was as good as dead. The question was did he want to go easy or hard. He knew the Apaches would keep him alive as long as possible, as they thought of ways to amuse themselves while they tortured him to death.
Grinning suddenly, he turned his pistol on himself, the barrel against his temple. He hesitated briefly, not giving himself time to think. He pulled the trigger.
There was a blinding flash of white light and a deafening roar as pain flared red-hot in his head. The sunlight was fading. Everything was getting dark around him. The sounds were fading, too. Davis had no idea what was happening to him. All he knew was that he must have drunk everything in the bar because he had the granddaddy of all hangovers.
And then he knew nothing at all.