“That is wise of them,” said Sergeant Hervisu. “They can travel many miles through the rocklands with graze and water for their horses without ever being seen.”
“No, Sergeant, they are not wise,” said Captain Oberiske, looking out through the binoculars. “They are stupid American bandits, nothing more.”
Sergeant Hervisu gave a guarded look at some of the men and shrugged, saying submissively,
“SÃ, Capitán
, that is what I really meant. They are nothing but stupid bandits, these
gringos
, but at least they have managed to go in the right directionâ¦perhaps by mistake.” He stifled a sly smile and shrugged at the men again.
“I will have that machine rifle, Sergeant Hervisu, rest assured of that,” said Captain Oberiske, lowering his binoculars again, this time rubbing his eyes from the strain of focusing in the near darkness. “What right have they to bring such a weapon into this country? It will be a token of Germany's willingness to guard the Mexican bordersâ¦and quite a useful tool to help us do so, eh?” He chuckled.
“SÃ, Capitán,”
said Sergeant Hervisu. The men nodded and chuckled in agreement.
“Shall I prepare the men to charge these stupid gringos?” asked Hervisu.
“From here? In this light? On this terrain? Of course not! Are you insane, Sergeant?” Captain Oberiske barked. He ran a forearm across his sweaty forehead and seemed to settle down. “No, we will hurry ahead of them and cut down into the river valley. We will be waiting for them when they arrive.”
On the valley floor, at the head of the hard-riding men, Moses Peltry lowered his dusty field telescope from his eye, collapsed it in his gloved hands and put it inside his shirt.
“Federales
, just like we thought,” he called out to Goose and Doc Murdock, who rode beside him. “They're turning and leaving now.”
“Want to guess where they're going?” said Murdock.
“Guessing's not my job,” said Moses. “My job is
knowing.
” He gestured toward the river valley ahead. “They'll be waiting there for usâ¦. You can count on that. If we can't shake them off our tails, we'll have to keep swatting them all the way to Punta Del Sol.”
“Is that where we're headed?” asked Doc Murdock.
“Yep,” said Moses, “but keep it between us three for now. We've still got to get into that river valley first, without getting shot all to hell.”
Murdock looked back at the tired men and horses. “We can't beat them to the river valley. Our wagon horses are about dead right now.”
“Naw, we can't beat them there,” said Moses. “And if we did, think how bad that would hurt their feelings.” He grinned and poked a gloved thumb back over his shoulder. “We'll step aside up here at the last minute and let our posse run smack into them. That ought to keep everybody busy for the rest
of the night while we circle around and go on about our business.”
“Good thinking,” said Murdock, appearing impressed.
“Yeah, scalp hunter,” said Goose with a sarcastic snap, nodding at the old woman's scalp tied to Murdock's saddle horn. “We know our business, same as you know yours.”
“That's real good to know, Goose,” said Doc Murdock. “I'm beginning to realize that maybe you're not nearly as stupid as you look.”
Goose bristled, but Moses looked around just in time to see his expression darken. He dropped his horse a step back between the two of them. “Take it easy, Goose. Doc meant that as a compliment, I'm sure. Didn't you, Doc?”
“Hell, yes. If we can throw those
Federales
onto that posse dogging our trail, you better believe I meant it as a compliment.” He grinned, booting his horse forward.
Inside the entrance to the river valley where the trail narrowed between the two towering chimneys of upreaching stone, Captain Oberiske had positioned his men. They crouched low along both sides of the trail in the black shadows of rock, listening, waiting, their horses within arm's length. Beside the captain, Sergeant Hervisu whispered,
“Capitán
, it is not my place to say, but this is very dangerous in the dark. Most of our men are young and inexperienced. They have never been in this kind of a fight.”
“You are right, Sergeant,” said Captain Oberiske, letting out an impatient breath. “It is not your place to say anything! It is your place to observe and learn, if that is at all possible! It is my place to teach you how to lead troops and develop this savage, godforsaken
wilderness!” The sound of horses' hooves thundering closer into the valley caused him to stop and turn his attention from Sergeant Hervisu to the darkness stretched before them. “Here they come! Prepare your men to rise up and charge, Sergeant!”
Fifty yards inside the towering rocks, the Peltrys' men knew what to do. The supply wagon and half the men had already broken away in the darkness and taken another trail, one leading wide of the river valley and around the line of foothills toward the Peltry hideout in Dead Horse Pass. The rest of the men still riding ahead of the gun wagon cut away swiftly and doubled back at the last second, their only purpose being to let the
Federales
hear the sound of their horses' hooves in the darkness. As they doubled back and beat a hasty retreat out of the valley, the gun wagon swung around fast and began pelting rapid gunfire across the soldiers' positions.
“Holy Mother of God!” shouted a young soldier, one of the first to gather quickly on the river valley trail to meet the oncoming riders. But now there were no oncoming riders, only an endless spray of hot lead as bullets sliced through the black air and through the flesh and bone of man and horse alike.
“It's a trick!” shouted Sergeant Hervisu. “Retreat, men! Run quickly!”
“No, you fools!” Captain Oberiske screamed above the exploding gunfire. “Get off the trail! Back into the rocks!”
But the men were not retreating. Nor were they taking to the rocks. Instead, they were bunched up mid-trail, seemingly stuck there, melting into a dying, tangled pile of flailing limbs and horseflesh beneath the insistent pounding of the machine rifle.
Then the firing stopped as abruptly as it had started. A voice from the gun wagon let out a long
rebel yell in the darkness as a wagon whip cracked and the team of horses whinnied loudly and thundered away.
“They're running! Charge them!” screamed Captain Oberiske, crawling over a dead horse and its rider in the middle of the trail. His hand caught onto the stirrup of a spooked horse, and he managed to pull himself upward and grab the horse, settling it enough to throw himself across the saddle. “Do not let them get away! We must have that machine rifle!”
“Like hell you will!” came a taunting reply in the darkness. And the chase was on.
On the speeding gun wagon stood Mort Spears with both hands holding firmly onto the machine rifle. He stayed crouched low, bracing himself against the bucking wagon floor as he rounded two full turns on the gun's crank, leaving a stream of fire in the darkness behind him. “Yiii-hiiii!” he yelled. Beside Spears stood Monk Dupre, one hand holding onto the gun stand for dear life, his other hand planted down atop his hat to keep it from blowing off. Driving the wagon was Elmer Fitzhugh.
“Let me know when to hightail it out of here!” Fitzhugh shouted over his shoulder. He rode leaning forward from his bouncing driver's seat, the long reins slapping steadily in his left hand. In his right hand he wielded a long whip above the backs of the team of horses. On either side of the racing wagon, the riders had begun to cut away. They raced off into the night to join the Peltry brothers and Doc Murdock on the other trail around the foothills.
“Stay on the trail for now!” Spears shouted. “I'll let you know when to cut out of here.”
A half mile away on the other trail, Moses Peltry, Goose and Doc Murdock stopped their horses. Having heard the last blast of gunfire, followed by the
sound of hooves drawing closer to them in the night, Moses smiled in the thin moonlight. “That should give them all something to do the rest of the night,” he said.
“Think the posse will fall for it?” asked Murdock.
“What is there to fall for?” Moses chuckled, stroking his long beard. “When someone rides at you in the dark, shooting at you head-on, your choices are pretty simple. You either shoot back or die.” He laughed quietly. Goose and Doc Murdock joined in, hearing the sound of horses' hooves slow down and draw closer until finally the approaching horses stopped, and a voice called out.
“Moses? Goose? Is that you?” asked Bert Smitson.
“Yeah, Smitson, it's us,” Goose replied. “Get on over here so's we'll know who's who as you men ride in. Who's that with you anyway?”
“It's me, Flat Face,” said Chinn.
“And me, Comanche Killer,” said Brayton Cane.
“Handy Phelps back here,” said another voice. “And there's more not far behind me.”
“Yeah, I'm back here,” said Pip Magger. “Man oh man, you ought to heard them soldiers screaming! That machine rifle ate them up and spit them out like soft goat meat! I got to get me one of them guns someday just to chase jackrabbits with, if nothing else.”
A chuckle rose above the gathering men. More scattered hoofbeats came in along the dark trail. In the distance, another rapid volley erupted from the Gatling gun. “Damn, I hope your man Spears don't melt the barrel,” said Goose. The blast of gunfire died down. Then sporadic rifle and pistol fire resounded from the soldiers chasing the wagon along the black trail.
“It won't be much longer, men,” said Moses Peltry,
listening closely for any change in the firing. The men fell silent for a moment until they heard return rifle and pistol fire coming from farther down the trail. “There comes our posse now,” Moses grinned. But his grin would have faded fast had he been able to see what had just happened to the gun wagon.
As soon as the Gatling gun had done its job and drawn fire from the
Federales
, Elmer Fitzhugh had turned the wagon sharply off the trail and sped it across the rocky dirt toward the other trail where the Peltrys and Murdock's men were waiting for them. Behind Fitzhugh, Monk Dupre and Mort Spears held on tight to the side rails of the gun wagon. “Slow down a little, Fitz!” Monk Dupre shouted. “Before you break a wheeâ”
His words had cut short as the spokes of the right front wheel splintered inside the steel band. “Oh no!” shouted Dupre as the front edge of the wagon began breaking apart. In the darkness, Dupre caught sight of Elmer Fitzhugh sailing off the driver's seat with the reins still in his hands. Then Dupre saw nothing but a swirl of darkness and dirt as he and Spears went tumbling through the air.
“Look out, Spears!” Dupre bellowed, sailing high from the crashing wagon.
The two men rolled and bounced across the flatlands, the Gatling rifle and its stand ripping loose from the wagon bed and keeping right up with them. Six shots exploded as the gun's crank hit the ground and turned. Then the gun collapsed in the dirt with its barrels smoking. In the silence that followed, Monk Dupre let out a groan and said “Fitz, you crazyâ¦sumbitch. Moses is going to kill you.” But Fitzhugh didn't answer. His right wrist and left leg had become tangled in the long reins. His broken
body bounced along in a wake of dust behind the fleeing team of horses.
Farther back along the trail, at the first sound of oncoming gunfire, Sergeant Teasdale had sensed something was wrong. But without hesitating, the possemen began returning fire at the sound of the Gatling rifle exploding on the trail coming toward them. “Hold your fire,” shouted Teasdale as soon as he realized there were no bullets streaking past them in the darkness. “They're not firing at us!” But by the time the men heard him and stopped shooting, the gun wagon had already cut off the trail and gone on to its fate, leaving the two groups of riders facing one another in an onward rush.
Rather than face the Gatling gun bunched up in a long single column, the
Federales
had spread out abreast on the flatlands and charged forward relentlessly, knowing that they had to strike hard and fast while the deadly machine rifle was still silent. From where the possemen stood, the land before them came alive with blossoms of gunfire, bullets whistling past them like angry hornets.
“They damn sure
are
firing at us!” shouted Edmund Daniels, a shot grazing his forearm as he ducked low in his saddle. Another bullet grazed his horse's ear. The animal nickered wildly and bolted away. As the air filled with streaking lead, the other horses attempted to do the same.
“Do not return fire!” Teasdale demanded.
“Sergeant, they'll cut us to pieces,” shouted Abner Webb through the sound of gunfire and pounding horses' hooves.
“Not if they can't see us,” said Will Summers. “Do like he says.”
At first it appeared that Sergeant Teasdale had done the smartest thing by getting them to cease fire
in the darkness. In doing so, the possemen were no longer making targets of themselves through their muzzle flashes. For a moment, the gunfire began to slacken. But the hoofbeats never let up. Teasdale shouted for the men to turn their horses and clear the trail, knowing what was about to happen next. But it was too late. The men couldn't act quickly enough to prevent it. The oncoming light Mexican cavalry patrol closed ranks as it charged and slammed into the mounted possemen head-on in the darkness.
In the melee, both sides sought one another out blindly with pistol and knife. But Will Summers managed to move away from the throng at the core of the skirmish and fight his way toward the flat stretch of land on his right, the direction where he'd last heard the short burst of shots from the machine rifle. “Summers, down here!” shouted Sherman Dahl from the ground. Looking down quickly, Summers saw the dead horse lying at Dahl's feet. He threw out his hand to Dahl, felt the young schoolmaster grasp it firmly and swing himself up behind him.