From where I was, I could only see in one direction, and it didn't seem like a good idea to go out. Besides, one of us needed to be here and hold the armory with its rifles. Back in the main room, I saw the older woman opening the armory door. The pregnant girl had put on a pair of pants from a dead Kazakh and was buckling on his pistol belt. I could see a ladder fastened to a wall, and a trapdoor above it in the roof. From the roof I'd be able to see around. But first I needed to see the armory and get a rifle. I couldn't hit much with a pistol except up close; with a rifle I could reach out.
In the armory were rifle racks, one of them almost full. I took one, an obsolete military model, and checked to see if the magazine was full. It was. I took two spare magazines from an open box, put them in a deep pocket in my Kazakh cloak, and went back out of the armory. The pregnant girl was standing by the inner door with a pistol in her hand, as if waiting for someone to come in from outside. I called to her to be careful, to kill only Kazakhs.
Then I went to the ladder and climbed it. The trapdoor opened below the roof ridge on the side away from most of the buildings. I could hear some shouting, but no shooting, and crawled to the ridge on my belly. From there I could see across the buildings and into the horse pasture on the far side. One of the herdsmen on shift was just sitting his horse about four hundred meters away, about as far as I could make him out by dimday. He seemed to be looking in my direction. There should have been another one, but I couldn't see him.
That's when I heard three shots below, in the bunkhouse, two of them almost at the same time. I stayed where I was, hoping that the women would take care of things down there. There was more shooting from a building near the horse stable. A Kazakh ran out, stopped around the corner of the door and waited, pistol in hand, as if he thought someone might follow him out. I raised my rifle and aimed as well as I could, given the distance and the light. Then I squeezed off a single round, and he fell. No one shot at me, and it occurred to me that if a Kazakh saw me, he might not be sure I wasn't another Kazakh.
Another one came trotting toward the bunkhouse, half bent over, also holding his pistol. There was another advantage for us: Except for herdsmen on shift, probably none of them had a rifle with him. I shot him down, too, and someone shot twice in my direction, someone I hadn't seen. One bullet hit a sod near my face and threw dirt on me, so I crawled back and rolled to my right a couple of meters, then moved back up just enough to peek over and see someone running from a shed and into cover behind another one.
It looked as if he was going to get around behind me. For just a second I thought about going back down through the trapdoor, but what good could I be there? I needed to be where I could find targets. So I stayed where I was. If someone did get around behind me, he wouldn't be able to see me from close up because of the eaves, and maybe he couldn't shoot well with a pistol.
One place I couldn't see at all was the ground close in front of the bunkhouse. Then I heard more shooting from inside. Right after that a window broke, as if someone wanted to get in that way. I knew the windows were double paned, because there was a sash at the outer end of the window hole and another one at the inner end. They'd be hard to crawl through. Then there was a shot from somewhere across the way, and I heard a yell of pain from in front, by the window. It had to be Cody that shot him-Cody with what I had thought might be a broken arm.
Right after that there were three quick shots from behind me, pretty far away-rifle shots, I thought. I didn't hear any bullets hit. From the corner of my eye I saw someone run from a building toward the Kazakh I'd shot near the stable. I didn't think it was a Kazakh; it was someone without a cap, someone baldheaded. He bent as he reached the Kazakh, just long enough to pull off his pistol belt and pick up his gun, then he shouted something and ran inside. I decided he must be one of the Latvians.
What happened next might have been from someone seeing my breath puff in the chilly air. There was a short burst of rifle fire, and one or more bullets hit just in front of me. One went through the sod, hit the flex below, and glanced back up through the sod again to knock off the Kazakh cap I was wearing. Then I heard feet trotting as if coming to the bunkhouse from in front, so I rolled over the top, and with someone shooting at me again, I slid down the other side feet first, to drop off the edge. It wasn't a long drop, less than two meters. My feet hadn't hit the ground yet when I saw the two Kazakhs, and when I landed, I emptied half a magazine in their direction. They both fell, and I ran to the outer door of the bunkhouse, hearing more shooting, and the dull thud of slugs hitting sod-covered flex.
I was in the cloakroom, panting as if I'd run a hundred meters, before I remembered the women. I called to them in English. "Its me! The American." But I still didn't try to go through the inner door. Instead I did some quick mental arithmetic. I'd killed a Kazakh in the cow pasture. Then Cody and I had shot six more inside. And I'd shot one near the stable, and two just out front. And Cody'd shot at least one other. That made eleven, eleven of, say, sixteen. And there'd been other shooting. How many were left? Had the women killed any?
So I called out, "How many from outside did you women kill?" The answer came in Russian: "One." So there shouldn't be more than four Kazakhs left, it seemed to me. Just then there was more shooting outside, and I stood beside the door, listening for whatever would tell me anything. After awhile I heard someone, Janis, call out in English. "Indian!"
I answered without showing myself: "Yes?"
"I killed two, and I don't know where there are any more. Some of my friends have guns now. What should we do next?"
"What about the herdsmen with the horses?"
"We just shot one of them. I don't know about the other."
That might have been the one who'd been shooting at me. "Get his rifle," I called.
"We already did."
Janis said he'd killed two, and then they'd shot a horse herder, unless Janis had counted the herder as one of the two. There could hardly be more than two Kazakhs left to fight here-maybe none at all. I'd just told myself that when there was a shot from inside the bunkhouse, then screaming, and more shots. I went inside to see. It was the pregnant girl that was screaming, lying on the floor, while the other woman was swearing-it sounded like swearing-and emptying her pistol at a window in the other side of the bunkhouse.
I turned and ran out, around the corner of the bunkhouse, then around the back corner. Behind, crouched below a window but looking right at me, was a Kazakh. I don't think he knew what was happening, even then; he probably thought it was all a slave uprising. If he'd shot right away, he could have killed me. Instead I killed him with another short burst.
I stood there panting and shaking for a minute, till my mind started to work again. Then I replaced the magazine in my rifle. Was there another Kazakh? Or had we shot them all?
I went back to a front corner of the bunkhouse and called out in Navajo: "Cody! Are you all right?"
He called back to me from somewhere. "All right except for one arm. It may be broken. The blacksmith hit me with a hammer."
Another voice called in Navajo. It was Arnold, the man I gave the rifle to in the cow pasture. "Boulet! Where are the Kazakhs?"
"Most of them are dead," I called back. "Shot, anyway. Maybe all of them. Have you seen any?"
"Just one. He's dead now. He rode past me without seeing me. It was impossible to miss."