“Damn,” he muttered as he interlaced his fingers around that right knee and pulled the leg up. It hurt, but not the way it would have made him pass out with pain if the ball had hit bone. “I ain’t gonna die,” he told her, sweat dripping in his eyes. “Not just yet, I ain’t.”
“C’mon out, old man! Just get this over quick and we’ll be on our way.”
Titus dragged one of the rifles over and passed it to Amanda. “Here, you hold on to this while I shoot this’un. Then we’ll swap an’ you reload.” He shoved the loaded pistol across the dirt toward her feet. “Keep that’un right by you. Don’t use it less’n they get me an’ you can take one last shot when they get close to the rocks. Keep it … keep it for yourself till the very end.”
“Who are they?” she asked as she got to her knees and looked at him.
With a shrug, he said, “White fellers. Out here, shootin’ at me—I got a purty good idee, Amanda.”
“Who?”
That’s when Scratch flung his voice toward the copse of trees: “Hargrove with you stupid niggers?”
“No!” the voice cried. “He’s back with the train.”
“Like I figgered,” Titus yelled. “Just like afore, he sent you boys to do a man’s work, again.”
A ball smacked the rock, but this shot came from much closer. He was immediately worried, but didn’t want her to know as he grinned and said, “’Pears we made ’em mad.”
“That was close, Pa.” Amanda was shaking.
Likely she figured that out for herself from the sound. So he said, “Just gonna make it interesting—”
Bass heard the scrape of feet somewhere behind them. He dragged the hammer on the rifle back to full cock and prepared to rise on the good leg. Popping up with the rifle already into his shoulder, he spotted the man just darting away from a clump of brush, making for the rocks. The rifle slammed against him as it roared, the ball catching the attacker in the side of the chest. Spinning him back into the brush where his legs thrashed as Titus sank back into their fortress, two balls hissing overhead where he had been standing for but an instant.
Amanda was already reaching for his empty rifle, passing him the loaded gun. “That’s one of ’em, Pa.”
“You any good with one of these?”
She shook her head. “Roman, he taught me how to load, and shoot too. But, I didn’t hit much when we went hunting. Everything was so far away I never did any good—”
“This time, things gonna be much closer, Amanda—”
A loud voice interrupted him, “Did he get Ohlman?”
Another voice, closer still, shouted in reply, “Dropped ’im. Ohlman’s out of it.”
“All right, Corrett, you an’ Jenks work in on him.”
“Remember you promised,” a new voice was raised, “promised I could kill ’im.”
“That’s right, Jenks—you get to do the honors this time since you messed things up so bad for Hargrove before.”
“Jenks?” Scratch hollered. “You the one I beat like a half-growed alley cat a few nights back?”
“Goddamn you, old man!” the voice shrieked in fury.
“I’m here for you, Jenks,” he needled the young bully. “Just waiting for you, boy. You an’ me here now. So you even the score with me … since these other niggers saw how bad I whupped you—”
A ball splattered against the rocks.
“Jenks!” the leader’s voice shouted. “Don’t be a damn fool like that!”
“Yeah, Jenks,” Titus prodded as he watched Amanda pour priming powder into the pan. “Don’t be doin’ anything stupid like that again!”
“You hear that?” she asked in a rough whisper.
“Yeah.”
Another one of them was coming. This time from the north side of their rocks, where they were more vulnerable. He waited, and waited, listening carefully each time the angry voices paused. Listening for the sounds of the man’s approach. Then the voices fell silent. And he heard the sound of them coming from the south too. Three of them now. Two behind the rocks, one in front.
“Amanda, you just might have to show me you can hit something up close here real soon.”
She swallowed hard, her mouth firm and determined though doubt showed in her reddened eyes, and nodded once.
“Gimme that pistol you loaded.”
Passing him the second pistol, Amanda leaned back against the rock and clenched her eyes shut.
“Just like I told you when Lucas was passin’, this here’s come a time when you gotta be strong. Take a deep breath an’ hold on the target. You’re gonna be strong for me, ain’cha?”
Her eyes popped open. “Y-yes, Pa.”
“Get ready for the third one behind us, that way. I’m takin’ on the other two.”
He popped up with that rifle, afraid he didn’t give himself enough time to aim before he snapped off the shot. The ball went wild as the two men ducked aside, then immediately got their feet under them and started running at a full gallop for the rocks. Bass let the rifle slip out of his grip as he heard her gun roar behind him.
“You hit ’im?” he asked as he slapped the pistol into his right hand.
“I-I dunno,” she whimpered. “I don’t see him!”
Bass double-handed the pistol, held for a breath, and pulled the trigger as the man zigged through the brush. The ball caught him in the leg, spun him around a half turn as he flopped to the ground. But the second man kept coming at a crouch through the sage. With no time to reload, he’d have to use the only weapon they had loaded.
“Pa!” she shrieked as he was turning in a crouch to scoop up the pistol.
He saw him. The fourth attacker. Side of his belly was bloody, but he was back on his feet and still coming, that rifle held low in his hands, lunging toward them from the north side of the rocks. And the one who looked like Benjamin—advancing on horseback at a lope from the south.
“Reload me, Amanda!”
“Go on an’ get ’em, Jenks!” the horseman yelled. “They ain’t got a loaded gun between ’em now!”
Back and forth he looked, then decided on Jenks. Closer than Benjamin. Bass swallowed down the burning pain in his hip, setting the butt of the pistol on top of the rocks. Hunching up behind the weapon, he aimed it right as Jenks brought up the muzzle of his rifle and fired an instant before Bass’s ball slammed into the bully’s chest, just below the throat.
Titus was sinking to the ground and dragging the pouch toward him, sensing in the pit of him that one of the bastards would get him now. He didn’t want her to see it—lose a son, then her father too.
“Now you’re mine, old man!” promised that disembodied voice of the horseman.
Plug came out of the powder horn, and he spilled the black grains down the muzzle of the pistol.
The hoofbeats slowed, then stopped. Then there were footsteps as the voice came at him again. “Hargrove wants you real bad—had everything going his way till you came in the picture.”
Desperation overtook him as his fingers scrambled for a ball from his pouch. Pushing it into the muzzle with his thumb, he yanked out the ramrod and drove it home just as another voice yelled.
“Outta the way!”
Whirling with the pistol, he found the wounded man standing just outside the rocks, his rifle wavering as he growled at Amanda. Something in the bully’s desperate eyes told Bass he was going to shoot anyway—
But Titus fired his pistol instead, sending ball and that short ramrod both toward the target.
“That means you’re empty now, old man!”
He spun around with the empty weapon, realizing Benjamin was right. Dead right. Shifting the pistol to his left hand, Titus reached at the small of his back for a knife.
With a wicked and broadening smile, Benjamin stopped, as if enjoying this moment. When the bully brought the rifle to his shoulder and took aim at Titus down the long barrel, he laughed and said, “Looks like you just run outta chances—”