Longarm was still stumbling backwards, trying to move away from the shack as fast as he could. Then he realized that the body that he was holding was no longer leading the horse. He took two quick steps forward, switching arms as he did, and grabbed the horse’s reins with his right hand, starting to run backwards, moving fast. Another shot was fired that thudded into the body. Longarm realized that very shortly they were going to hit him in the arm and probably break it. He estimated that he was some sixty to seventy-five yards from the shack. He yelled, “What kind of people are you that you’d kill your own half-brother?”
A deeper voice yelled. Longarm assumed it was Rufus. It said, “We got lots of half-brothers, but there ain’t but one of you and we’re kind of sick of you, do you understand? You’re right, there ain’t going to be no next time. This is the time.”
Just as he said it, Longarm suddenly released the dead body, and sprang behind his horse, frantically trying to increase the distance. Two shots rang out, and he heard and felt the thuds into the side of his horse. Instantly, he realized that if the horse fell full out, the nitro would blow up. The horse was swaying on his legs. He had already gone down to his front knees. Bending low, Longarm worked the ties that were holding his saddlebags. With his left shoulder, he was trying to prop the horse up as more bullets hit the carcass of the poor animal. It was taking all his strength. The horse’s weight was beering down on him harder and harder. He imagined that the animal was already dead. At any second now, the horse’s hind quarters would crumple and the nitro would go up, blowing him and the horse a long way up in the sky. Then, just as his strength was about to fail him, he undid the last tie and jerked the saddlebags loose. He fell at the same time as the horse, using the carcass as protection from the rifle bullets that were beginning to sing over his head.
Longarm was in no immediate danger. They could not hit him from where they were in the shack as long as he lay prone behind his horse. But all they had to do was spread either to the left or to the right, flanking him, and he was a goner. All he had in the way of a weapon was a two-shot derringer that was ineffective over five yards. There was, of course, the nitro and the slingshot, but he couldn’t raise up enough to sling one of the vials into the cabin. He could, perhaps, work his way onto his back, but that would expose him if he lay in such a way that he could see the shack. If he could see them, they could see him.
Meanwhile, the occupants of the shack seemed to take pleasure in whining bullets inches over his head. Occasionally, one of the slugs would hit his saddle and bits of leather and wood would fly. He thought of his horse, and it made him angrier than anything else. He had owned the dun for a good two years and during that time, the animal had never let him down. Even dying, he had managed to stay on his feet long enough for Longarm to free his saddlebags and keep the nitro from exploding.
Longarm was in a tight place and he knew it. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t fight. It was only a matter of time before they got tired of playing with him, circled around out of the range of his derringer, and either killed him outright or took him prisoner and killed him at their leisure. He rather imagined that the latter would be more to their taste.
As carefully as he could, without raising his head, he slipped the slingshot and one of the oilskins containing a vial of nitro out of one side of his saddlebags. He was unpleasantly surprised to see how little ice remained. In another thirty minutes, it would all be gone and then the hot sun would start warming the nitro. He’d understood from Simmons that it didn’t have to get very warm to explode. The slightest movement could set it off. If he didn’t get a shot at the shack in the next five minutes, he was in fairly serious trouble. He’d been in some tight places before and had always found a way to escape, but this time he wasn’t sure there was a way. At the moment, he was facing, by his best count, at least five rifles. He was behind a dead horse. He had a popgun that was a better weapon beyond five yards if you threw it. He had two vials of nitroglycerin that in the next fifteen to twenty minutes could very easily blow him sky-high unless he could find a way to use them. Other than that, the situation looked pretty good. He glanced up toward the sun. There was no hope of nightfall. Dusk was a good two hours away, and long before that the Gallaghers would figure out that he didn’t have a weapon in the saddlebags that they must have seen him untie. Or they would think that it might be a weapon of such limited range that they could flank him and force his surrender.
They seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition, judging from the steady barrage of shots that kept zipping over his head or thudding into his dead horse or hitting his saddle or kicking up dust behind him. Pretty soon, he decided, one of them was going to get the bright idea to get on top of the roof. He calculated the man would be able to whittle off his right side. The way he was lying on his belly the angle would be just right. The only chance that he had, and it seemed to be a very slim one, was to risk slingshoting a vial of the nitro at the shack. To do it meant that he would have to expose himself for two or three seconds. The nitro wasn’t something that you jerked around, so he would have to move very slowly and very carefully and with those five rifles aimed at him, it was almost a certainty that if he wasn’t killed outright, he would be wounded so badly that his chances of getting medical help would be slim.
Yet he couldn’t lie there and do nothing. As carefully as he could, he slid a vial of the nitro out of the oilskin pouch in the saddlebags. He took the slingshot handle in his left hand and with his right, he put the vial of nitro in the leather pouch. His hands were trembling at a time when he needed them to be rock steady. His only hope would be to roll over on his back, push out a bit from the cover of his horse, and try a blind shot at the shack. it was a very-high-odds play.
Then suddenly, he heard rifle fire from a different quarter. It was not shots coming from the cabin. In fact, the firing from the cabin had suddenly ceased. His head was near the rump of his horse and the shots were coming from the west. He inched himself forward a foot, careful of the nitro, and peered out from behind the hindquarters of his horse. A few hundred yards away, he could see a man lying in a prone position and firing. It was Fisher Lee. Longarm smiled. He said, “Fisher, you old sonofabitch, I love you.”
The unexpected rifle fire on their flank had distracted the men in the shack long enough to divert their attention from Longarm. He knew he had about ten seconds and it was a do-or-die ten seconds to save his life. The distracting fire, that Fisher was laying down was nothing more than that, a distraction. In the long run, he could make no difference in the outcome of the battle, and he could do nothing to save Longarm’s life. He was firing from just within the perimeter of his range. He was also firing from a very exposed position, and if they chose to turn all their weapons on him, he would be an even easier target than Longarm was.
He didn’t think all these things, he simply reacted as each thought raced through his mind. In an instant, he had swiveled around, come up to one knee. and with one smooth motion drew back the pouch, aiming, judging the distance, hoping he was right, calibrating as he had never calibrated a shot with any other weapon before, and then releasing the shot as he dropped down behind his horse.
For a long time, it seemed as if nothing had happened. Then there came a blast that even he could feel from where he was. Longarm wasn’t waiting for the blast, nor was he wasting time attempting to see what the results of the first shot had been. From the second that he had flopped down, he had been busy getting out the eighth and last vial of nitro. By the time the boom had finished sounding, he was already raising up to fire the second shot. He was aware as he looked that the shack was almost blown apart, but the vial was away and glittering through the sunlight and he was falling back behind his horse before the full vision registered. After that, he lay and just hugged the ground.