Webb's Posse (35 page)

“No!” Hervisu shouted, seeing Goose struggle with the heavy latch. He fired his last two pistol shots. One hit Goose high in his shoulder. The other thumped into the thick wooden door. But Goose continued to throw the latch open. Hervisu tossed his empty pistol aside and hurled himself forward, drawing his saber from its sheath.

Inside the cellar, atop the stair landing, Summers, Webb, Teasdale and Moses Peltry stood poised, listening to the latch trying to come open on the other
side of the door. Behind them, the rest of the men pressed forward, eager to make their break. Tense seconds ticked by. At the bottom of the stairs, the two guards lay dead, their rifles gone, their pistols stripped from their holsters. “Come on, come on, hurry it up!” Will Summers pleaded with the slow-turning latch as if his voice could coax it open faster.

“Moses!” Goose cried out in agony as the big door swung open. He stood with one hand on the door, his free hand clasped firmly around Sergeant Hervisu's throat. Hervisu was past struggling. His bulging eyes stared glazed and lifeless. Half of his broken saber still hung in his hand. The other half protruded from the center of Goose Peltry's chest, the long point of it smeared with Goose's blood.

“No, Goose, no!” Moses lamented, grabbing his brother as Goose slumped down to the floor, releasing his grip on Sergeant Hervisu's throat. Webb, Teasdale, Summers and the rest of the prisoners poured out through the open doors. Moses lagged behind, holding Goose's bloody head in his lap. Holding one of the dead guards' pistols in his free hand, he wiped Goose's hair back from his forehead with the other. “Look at you, Goose,” Moses said, weeping softly. “My poor, crazy brother. Why'd you do this fool thing? You shoulda took off and found some cover…not come back here.”

“See?” Goose rasped, his breath beginning to fail him. “Bet you wouldn't…let nobody put me to sleep now.”

“Damn it, Goose.” Moses hugged his brother's head against his chest, careful of the sharp point of the broken saber blade. “You know I would have never let anybody harm you. You're my little brother.”

In the street in front of the mission, the
Federales
, led by Captain Oberiske, moved back toward the corral and the livery barn, where there were more horses. Will Summers saw where they were headed and shouted to Abner Webb and Sergeant Teasdale, “Don't let them get mounted—they'll head up after the schoolmaster!” He stooped down and picked up Cherokee Rhodes' pistol from the dirt street and checked it quickly.

Three feet away, one hand pressed to his chest wound, Rhodes lay propped up on one elbow. “Summers, give me a hand…. I ain't done for. I was coming for you and the possemen…. I swear I was!”

“Lie still, Cherokee,” Summers shouted above the pounding gunfire. “Try to die with some honor!”

“Honor hell,” Rhodes moaned. As Summers moved away from him, firing the pistol, Rhodes reached a hand up toward one of the naked scalp hunters passing by. “Help me up! I'm one of you!”

Big Catt and Cap Whitlow came running up and slid down beside Rhodes in the dirt as the Gatling gun made a pass along the street, kicking up chunks of hard dirt. “You're Cherokee Rhodes, ain't you?” said Cap Whitlow.

“Yes, yes! That's me,” said Rhodes, feeling hopeful. “Help me over there, out of the street. Hurry, before the machine rifle comes back!”

“Have you got a knife down here?” Cap Whitlow asked even as he jammed a hand down Rhodes' boot well and jerked out a long skinning knife.

“Yes, take it,” said Rhodes. “Now let's go. Hurry!”

Big Catt grabbed Cherokee Rhodes' boot and began twisting it off his foot. “These are mine, Whitlow. You can have his britches.”

Seeing what was going on, Cherokee Rhodes tried
kicking the two men away from him. “You damned, lousy vultures…get out of here!”

“We sure enough will,” said Big Catt. “But I'm taking this along with me for luck!” He raised the front of Cherokee Rhodes' hair high and tight in his fist and deftly skinned him from forehead to rear crown.

“Lord have mercy, Big Catt. Look at you! You ain't even got drawers to hide yourself! You're taking hair?”

“I see no better time for it than now,” said Big Catt, holding the scalp up as blood and fluid dripped from beneath it.

Rhodes writhed in the dirt, screaming. Big Catt slung the gore from the scalp and ran away in a crouch, veering off from the fleeing
Federales
and putting distance between himself and the sweeping Gatling gun. “I coulda told you he'd do that,” Whitlow said to the screaming half-breed. Grabbing Rhodes' boot, he quickly twisted it from his foot. But before he could claim the other boot, a rifle shot from one of the fleeing
Federales
hammered into his forehead, causing his head to snap back and appear to explode from the impact.

Twenty yards away, Will Summers, Abner Webb and Lawrence Teasdale had taken a strong firing position behind an empty two-wheel oxcart. With rifles, pistols and ammunition belts they'd snatched up from the dirt and from the hands of dead soldiers, the three managed to keep Oberiske and the remainder of his men pinned inside the livery barn. Above them, the Gatling gun had fallen silent. Will Summers glanced upward through a thick sheet of dust in the air. “Either he's run out of bullets, or else he figures we're safely on our way out of here.”

Lawrence Teasdale reloaded and checked the pistol
in his hand. “That's good—so long as he gets away before these boys ride through us and head up there. Oberiske wants that Gatling gun. Nothing else is going to satisfy him.”

“Then let's fall back and let them ride out of here,” said Webb. “So long as the schoolmaster is safe, what do we care about these
Federates
?”

“Yeah, you're probably right,” said Summers as shots from the livery barn whizzed past them. A shot thumped into the oxcart near his head. He flinched and jerked his head back. He looked all around at the bodies lying strewn about in the dirt street. Then he said, “But you know something? I make it there's only seven or eight soldiers left, and that's counting the German captain.”

“Yeah, so?” asked Abner Webb, not liking the look in Will Summers' eyes.

“So,” said Summers, “I keep thinking how arrogant that pompous sonsabitch was…going to take us out one at a time and shoot us like we were brute animals or something. Does that sit right with you two?” He looked back and forth between them.

“Hold on, Will,” said Abner Webb. “We've just about got what we came here for. Let these
Federales
ride out of here right now and go after the Gatling gun. Then all we've got to do is take down Moses Peltry and what's left of his men.”

“That's the end of it all right,” said Will Summers, realizing there was a lull in the firing from the livery barn, which meant that the soldiers were getting ready to make their move. “All we've got to do is let them ride out.” He looked at Teasdale, then back at Abner Webb. “Is that what you two want to do? If it is, make up your minds and let's ease back away from here. They're coming any minute now.”

Each of them considered their options as a ringing
silence fell over the dirt street. For a moment, the only sound was that of Cherokee Rhodes moaning in the dirt as his lifeblood continued to pour from his chest wound and the raw, exposed top of his head burned like fire. The three possemen stared at Rhodes for a second, then shifted their gazes back toward the livery barn. A few yards from the barn, Junior the hound had slipped back down the path into town. He stood beside the body of a
Federale
, his nose down against a wide circle of blood in the dirt. “What's that dog doing?” asked Webb.

“What do you think he's doing?” Summers said, trading one question for another.

“He's lapping up blood is what it looks like to me,” said Abner Webb.

“So he is,” said Will Summers. “It looks like all the excitement finally got to him.” Summers grinned. “Figures he's going to get his share of all this, I reckon.”

“He's welcome to it,” said Teasdale. “His share, and mine too.” He looked at the two of them and let out a tense breath, letting the rifle slump in his hand. “As far as I'm concerned, let them pass.”

“Yeah,” said Abner Webb. “That goes for me too. If you think the schoolmaster is safe…let them pass.”

“Consider it done,” said Will Summers. He raised his voice toward the barn. “Captain Oberiske. We're backing away here. You heard the Gatling gun; you know where to look for it now. What do you say? Can we call it quits here? You go your way, we go ours?”

There was a silence, followed by Oberiske's stern voice. “If you are out there, we will have to kill you. If you are out of my sight, I will not waste time and supplies looking for the likes of you.”

“Fair enough,” Summers called out. The three possemen backed away from the oxcart and watched from around the corner of a weathered shack as Oberiske cautiously led six mounted soldiers out of the livery barn. Summers spread a flat grin and said over his shoulder, “I hope the schoolmaster took out the firing mechanism before he left that gun sitting for whoever comes by.”

“How do we know for sure he left it there?” said Webb. “He might be carrying it with him.”

“No, he left it there,” said Summers. “That's the way the schoolmaster would have it planned.”

“You don't know that for sure,” said Webb.

“You better hope I do,” said Will Summers.

“I could use a drink right now,” said Teasdale, leaning back and sliding down the side of the shack.

“So could I, but don't get too comfortable just yet,” said Summers. “Soon as these men are out of sight, we've still got some bounty collecting to get started on.” He gestured his rifle barrel toward the body of Cap Whitlow lying in the dirt with a bullet hole in his forehead. “There's one.” He gestured farther along the street to the bodies of Thurman Anderson and Bert Smitson. “And there's two more.”

“Who does that leave still alive?” Webb asked, looking all around the shot-up town.

“That leaves only two men: Roscoe Moore and Moses Peltry,” said Will Summers. “I look for them to come crawling up out of the dirt any minute, now that they see the soldiers are leaving.”

Teasdale stood up and checked the rifle in his hands. “All right then. Ready when you are. Let's get it done.”

Captain Oberiske and his six soldiers rode past without casting an eye in the direction of Summers, Webb and Teasdale. As the last soldier passed by, Will Summers let out a breath and shoved a pistol down into his waist. He started to speak to Webb and Teasdale, but before he could get his words out, Moses Peltry's enraged voice resounded along the dirt street, causing Oberiske to raise a hand and bring his men to a halt. “Oberiske! You've got to answer for my brother, you dirty, bloodsucking bastard you!”

“Uh-oh,” said Will Summers. “Looks like a change of plans for the German captain.” He took a step back out of sight around the corner of the shack, Webb and Teasdale right beside him.

As Moses Peltry stepped into the middle of the street, facing Oberiske and the six riders, he did so with his right hand holding one of his big Walker Colts that he'd managed to find. The big Colt was cocked and aimed at Captain Oberiske from less than twenty feet away. Along with his Walker Colt, Moses had also found his own trousers and galluses and put them on. He walked forward slowly, still barefoot, still shirtless, the straps of his galluses looping down his thighs and his long beard thrown back over one shoulder. “Stand down from that saddle, Oberiske! It's me and you!”

He cut a glance to the Mexican soldiers behind

Oberiske and spoke to them in Spanish, explaining that this was none of their concern. This was a matter of honor that had to be settled between him and the German. And when he asked the soldiers if they could ever respect and follow the orders of a man who refused a duel of honor, the young soldiers looked at one another, already knowing the answer.