In the absence of any further indications, they judged they had better make ready to last out the night without help, regardless of what they might believe, or hope. Each was trying to seem unworried, and each was thinking how scared the other looked. They set about bracing each other by turning their minds to the practical things they could do. Their ammunition had better be tallied, about the first thing, they guessed.
The repeaters, to begin with. The faster of their two magazine carbines was the Spencer, which loaded with a seven-ball tube. Its magazine, with three extra tubes, accounted for twenty-eight rounds, and the Henry was carrying six. But when they had emptied every pocket, and scraped out the corners of the ammunition chest, they found only nineteen loose cartridges more. In all, the repeaters had fifty-three rounds, which might sound like a plenty, if you didn’t know how fast those things poured away lead. Every single round would have to be held back for the desperation moments of close action; and even then, the rim-fires must be hoarded with all care, or the magazine carbines would be out of action in the first three minutes.
Nothing to do about it. They could cast bullets, and make caps, but they didn’t know how to refill the detonation rings of the rim-fires. The closeshooting Sharp & Hankins would have been deadly in sniping action; it might have hurt the enemy more than any other weapon they had. But it was a slow-loading single-shot, and used the same rim-fires as the repeaters, so it had to be put away.
For slow fire, they were left with only two cap-and-ball pieces. They found only seven rounds for the breech-loading Sharp’s Fifty. Its linen cartridges were slow and finicky to make, but maybe they would have to try, if the Zachary marksmanship they were so proud of was to do them any good at all. The .69 buffalo gun was muzzle-loaded with loose powder; but search brought to light only one more of the huge slugs it fired, besides the one with which it was charged.
But their two cap-and-ball revolvers worried Andy the most. The big Walker Colt was loaded in its six chambers—they carried its hammer on a capless nipple—but had a reserve of only four more .44 balls. They had used it in firing for noise, and hadn’t found any way to get a good bang from it, blank, without wasting lead. And Andy’s treasured near-Whitney had the six loads in its cylinders, and that was all. They rummaged past hope without finding one .36 ball more. The revolvers were their final recourse if the Kiowas swarmed in, and Andy meant the Whitney for Rachel, because it was lighter, and bucked less, than the heavy Walker.
“We’ve got to make some—quick! Build up a fire—” He rummaged frantically for the lead strips they melted down to fill the bullet molds.
There were no lead strips.
“The saddle shed—there’s lashings of ’em down there in a—”
He grabbed for the door bar; but Rachel had got there, and threw her weight on it. “Andy—no, no, no—don’t you dare leave me here!”
“It’s our only chance to—”
“There’s nothing down there! The door’s stove in! Lead would be the first thing they took!”
He knew it was true. The saddle-shed door, nothing but rawhide on a frame, was hanging antigodlin by one strap, visible from the house.
Andy scratched up one idea more. He pulled a battered two-foot chest out from behind all the other plunder under his bunk. From this old toy box, as Andy pawed everything out of it, came such a history of Andy’s childhood that Rachel could not bear to look. She glimpsed the remains of a rag doll; Matthilda had seen no harm in giving a baby boy something to love as he went to sleep. Andy had decided dolls were unmanly before he was five years old, and Rachel had not known, until this moment, that he had never been able to bring himself to throw this one away.
In the very bottom of the chest, where they had sifted by their weight, lay tumbled some dozens of lead soldiers. There had been whole regiments of them once, brightly painted and tall as your finger—Andy’s share of the loot Papa had brought home one time, after selling a big herd.
“Here—here!” He shoved a clutch of them into Rachel’s hands, and clawed for more. “Get the fire going! Where’s the melt-ladle at?”
She packed all of their lightwood splinters into a solid heap, threw on gunpowder, and set it burning with the snaphaunce. She had already blown the flame white with the bellows when Andy stacked the rest of his soldiers on the hearth.
“Get some bigger wood onto—no, I’ll do it! Gimme that!” He took the bellows from her. “Get the thirty-six mold out! It’s the one makes eight at a whack….”
Only traces of paint remained on the little soldiers, but a picture flashed into Rachel’s mind of how bright they had been, and how pretty, long ago. She kicked one under the table, and crawled after it. Before she came out the other side she had managed to wipe her nose, without blowing it, on the inside of her skirt. If the little cracks were beginning to spread, she didn’t want Andy to know it. Not yet. Not while it could still be helped. As she brought the long-jawed bullet mold to the hearth, the first drums started.
A rattling noise began it, like the sound of two ax helves pounding on a log. Then a pair of medicine drums took it up, and finally, a flat loud clamor, made by beating on sheets of hardened rawhide. All of these noisemakers were struck in a unison as accurate as if a single giant drumstick were hitting them all at once with every stroke. The sound built and built, now and then ending with a final wallop like a cannon shot, to start over softly, and build again. The whole thing had an odd ventriloquism, so that sometimes the drumming seemed to be coming from down the creek, then from behind a ridge, then from somewhere on the prairie beyond the Dancing Bird.
Andy glanced up at Rachel, but they didn’t say anything about the drums. He skimmed the molten lead in his ladle. “Better take a look at Mama.”
The red rays of sunset were striking through the high air-slits in the bedroom, filling the narrow space with a strange ruddy light. Matthilda’s face quivered, and her eyes opened, as Rachel stood looking down at her. For a moment she stared unseeing; then she knew Rachel, and her face twisted weakly as she burst into tears.
“Darling girl,” she said, as if the words were wrung out of her, “darling, precious girl…. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
They never knew just what it was Matthilda so regretted as she died. Maybe the last thought in her mind, as the light left it, was the simplest kind of an apology for being unable to care for them, or even herself, anymore.
The snoring gasps called the death rattle began at once. Rachel tried to call Andy, but before she could get control of her voice he was at her side. He looked at Rachel, questioning, with the wideeyed look that sometimes made him seem a little boy. She nodded, dry-eyed. The rattle stopped, and Andy moved closer; his competent hands gently pressed Matthilda’s ribs, and the effort to breathe began again. But the second time it stopped, Rachel took Andy’s hand, and wouldn’t let him start it any more.
Almost ten seconds after breath ended, Matthilda’s eyes opened, and turned right and left, as if searching the upper corners of her room. Rachel had heard of a final flare-up of consciousness in the last moment before death, and she wanted to cry out some word of good-by, but she was unable. Later she blamed herself, for she believed a smile would have come to Matthilda’s lips as she died, if Rachel had been able to speak.
Rachel drew the sheet over Matthilda’s face. Andy still stood looking down at the lifeless form, his face twisting and his breath coming hard, as he tried not to cry.