One of the men looked to be dead.
Another crawled up and under the axles of Boss Shannon’s farm truck.
The shots continued from the front of the old, single-story farmhouse-rifles, Thompsons, and some pistols, in a small, merry band-Harvey knowing Miller could use some help, and maybe, just maybe, they could get off some shots to clear a way out.
Harvey yelled for Underhill to give cover, as he hurried the best he could on that bum leg across the open chicken ground and rapped on the back door, yelling for the Shannons to open the goddamn door. He turned to see goddamn Armon right behind him, calling out for his pa.
Boss opened up, wild-eyed and sweating, crying that Harvey Bailey had brought the law to his homestead, and Harvey told the old man to put a sock in it. It was George and Kathryn that had landed these bastards on his land.
“I ain’t goin’ down without a fight,” Boss said. “You can’t just come on a man’s property and start a-shootin’.”
“Where’s Verne?”
“He got hit.”
Harvey followed a crooked trail of blood on the slatted wooden floor into a bedroom, where Miller sat with his butt against a metal bed, wrapping his shoulder with his shirt and gritting his teeth as he tied it up tight. He still held on to the machine gun, his naked upper body covered in blood and sweat, and when he moved to a busted-out window for a look-see, it was on his tail, slow and deliberate, getting a good view of the G-men, hiding like cowards behind a row of vehicles they’d moved down from the main road.
“You all right?”
“Peachy,” Verne Miller said, a slight tic in his right eye.
“Wilbur cleared out three of them,” Harvey said. “How many out front?”
“Eight. Maybe ten.”
“Peachy.”
“The Buick still out back?” Miller asked.
“Gassed up,” he said. “Keys in it.”
“We can’t make it down the road. It’s cut off.”
“We can make it,” Harvey said.
Miller shook his head. “What about them?”
“Who cares? Long as we get the boys.”
“Young girl’s pregnant.”
“Where is she?”
“Totin’ a pistol. She grabbed it out of my hand.”
“And Ma?”
“She’s shooting, too.”
“Hell of a family,” Harvey Bailey said. “Always wondered where Kathryn got her set of balls.”
22
Nearly an hour passed, and no one had fired a shot. Colvin ran down through the gully and found Jones conferring with Doc White and Joe Lackey about setting fire to the barn, while Charlie Urschel eyed down the twin barrels of his shotgun, just waiting for one of those chickens to stick its head out. Jones gave the order to toss some kerosene lanterns into the hayloft and told Colvin to shoot down every last bastard who came running from that barn. They had one man dead, two men in some rough shape, one in a pig trough and another bleeding under a tractor. Jones studied the agent’s face to make sure he understood all this but only saw the neatly parted hair and eager eyes of that young agent from back at Union Station in Kansas City. “Keep your head down. You hear me, son?”
Jones exchanged glances with Lackey.
Colvin nodded, and scurried back down in the gully to the gauntlet of bullet-filled cars blocking the road from around back of the house. Urschel remained, sighting that damn shotgun, arms starting to tremble from fatigue.
There was the sound of glass breaking, and a few minutes later they smelled and saw the smoke drifting, lazy and slow, in the hot, airless day. The gunshots started again, the rat-a-tat-tatting of the Thompson, the rapid fire of automatics. Young men yelled and returned fire. Jones told a couple detectives from Dallas to keep their eyes trained on the front porch and windows, and he ran for the barn with Detective Ed Weatherford in tow.
Bullets zinged past Jones, and he ducked behind the shithouse, the smell something awful, and Weatherford followed, falling down at his boots.
The lanky detective found his feet, brushing off his pants and grinning, having a hell of a time, as he pointed the barrel of his pistol around the old outhouse and squeezed off some shots.
“You see ’em?”
“I hear ’em,” Weatherford said. “You think it’s Kelly?”
“It ain’t Greta Garbo.”
“They got a Thompson.”
“So do I.”
“He ain’t no expert,” Weatherford said. “That’s just a lie.”
“You wanna test that theory?”
Weatherford grinned. “You first.”
HARVEY FRIED SOME EGGS IN A BLACK SKILLET WHILE VERNE Miller counted out the rest of the ammunition on the kitchen table, divvying it all out in old coffee cans. Ma Shannon trained a shotgun out the salon window, already brought to tears over her shot-up china and brand-new RCA, while Potatoes held a.22 rifle, watching the rear of the house and the rolling black smoke coming from their barn. Boss was off somewhere, trading duties of watching the child and taking up the gun. The baby girl had run wild through the house, screaming and crying, while bullets had zipped past her in what a superstitious man might call a miracle. Somewhere in the house, he heard old Boss singing a lullaby.
“Y’all got any bacon?” Harvey asked.
“In the icebox,” Potatoes said.
“I looked in the icebox.”
“I guess I was thinkin’ of my icebox.”
“You think you could run back to the house and fetch me up a pound?”
“No, sir,” Potatoes said. “Not right now. I just seen them two bank examiners run behind the shitter. What in the world are they doin’ here?”
“Armon, were you dropped on your head as a youngster?” Verne Miller asked, five guns ready to go. He placed a.45 in his belt and carried the Thompson to the window beside the boy.
“Now, that’s a hell of a question, Verne,” Harvey said, cracking an egg into the hot skillet. He figured since they were going to be in here a while, there was no sense in starving.
“This is the greatest day of my life, fellas,” Armon said. “I sure am glad my family’s here to see it.”
Ma Shannon turned from the busted window and spit some snuff on the floor.
“You need to get them out of here,” Miller said.
“How come?”
“How come?” Miller asked, shaking his head.
Old Boss Shannon walked into the kitchen, rocking the baby girl in his arms, while the child’s teenage mother thumbed bullets into her rifle and took careful aim on the law outside.
“Can you give us cover?” Harvey asked the boy.
“I’ll die tryin’.”
“Potatoes?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I wish you’d quit saying things like that.”
THE SMOKE WAS SOMETHING TERRIBLE, AND JONES BURIED HIS face into his forearm as big clouds of it would scatter on past, bringing tears to his eyes, the heat tremendous. He held the Thompson’s grip in his right hand and peered out again at the big barn’s mouth, the flames licking up high in the loft, tearing at the walls and boiling the paint, black smoke pouring out of stalls as the timber beams started to crack and fall. A milk cow and two swaybacked horses trotted out and off into a field with heavy-hoofing steps while two black shadows appeared in the barn’s mouth, loose hay sparking electricity at their feet. The men held hats across their faces and waved their arms to dispel the coils of black smoke coming through every crack in the barn.
A big crash inside the barn and out rushed a pug-nosed thug in an undershirt, firing off.45s in each hand and running for a Buick that’d been parked sideways out behind the Shannon place. His face was soot black like a minstrel-show player, and his eyes were like eggs, wide with meanness and fear.