* * *
It was dark enough that the canyon was beginning to lose detail. Clint heard the muffled clattering of unshod horses’ hooves before he saw the rapidly approaching Yokuts band. He counted. Three against ten. He hoped Matt could shoot straight, for they must make every shot count.
As soon as the band was within range, not more than a hundred and fifty paces away within the narrow confines of the steep ravine, Clint sighted on the leader and fired. The crack of the rifle echoed up the canyon, and the rider’s horse went down.
He used the ring to advance the cylinder but did not fire. The leading Yokuts brave on the ground quickly swung up behind another, and they galloped forward. As Clint had hoped, they figured he was armed with a musket and would have to reload. They advanced another fifty paces, slipping and sliding down the narrow cleft and hunkered low in the saddle. Matt rose up from behind a rock and began firing the pistol. The revolving breech spit fire in deadly rhythm, and Indians began to fall.
Hawk rose from behind a clump of buckbrush on the far side of the ravine and loosed an arrow. He dropped down, then stood and fired another almost as fast as Matt’s revolver.
Another Indian fell.
The Yokuts riders searched for a target for their muskets, believing there must be a dozen vaqueros in wait, but they saw only Matt.
At thirty paces, they fired at the huge target of a man. With surprising agility, Matt scrambled up the rockface and dived to the cover of a clump of buckbrush.
Clint’s second shot knocked a brave from the saddle, but the Indian riding behind spotted him and raised his big .50 caliber, its cavernous muzzle only twenty paces away. Then came the flash and billowing smoke of its blast.
Clint thought his head must surely be blown away. He flung himself against the rock, banging his head as rock chips stung his face.
He tumbled from his perch and would have fallen thirty feet directly into the path of the oncoming riders, but he caught the ledge. Dragging himself back up, he recovered his Colt. He wiped blood from his cheek where the rock chips had splattered him then worked the ring of the Colt again.
Across the, ravine, Hawk’s third arrow thunked into a Yokuts brave’s painted belly. The Indian doubled, clutching the arrow with both hands, and dove from the saddle.
Still, five came on. Clint fired again. A paint horse went down as the rider took a slug in the chest and rolled off its back, jerking rein. The horse was quickly up and running. Blowing pink frothy lung blood, the Indian crawled a few feet, then stilled.
The Indians passed thirty feet beneath Clint’s perch, so close he could hear their breathing, but he could not see them for the overhang. He ran to the far side of the rampart rock, sighted on the back of a thickset Yokuts brave who crouched almost neck-to-neck with the buckskin he rode, and squeezed off another shot before they were out of range.
The Colt bucked in Clint’s hands, and he thought he had missed, but the Indian slowly slid from the carved saddle as the three remaining braves pounded on by. The warrior clung to the horse’s reins with a death grip, then fell and was dragged for a few feet by the bucking horse until the reins were jerked free and the buckskin abandoned him, following the three Indians still mounted.
By the time Clint had worked the ring again, they had disappeared into the willows lining the streambed. The last of the gunshots echoed up and down the canyon. The silent stench of gunsmoke rose from the body-strewn cleft.
Clint, Matt, and Hawk had been as effective as a small army. Clint whooped and held the Colt high in victory, then moved back around the rocks until he could see the backtrail.
His joyous mood darkened when he viewed the scene below. Hawk strode up the bottom of the ravine, going from man to man, recovering his arrows, collecting a pair of muskets for himself, and finishing the wounded Yokuts with his blade.
Matt sat on a rock overlooking the grisly scene. For the first time since Clint had met him, he was not smiling. Clint climbed down the steep rockface and joined him. Hawk walked toward them, pausing once to run his knife into the sand.
“Six here,” the tall Indian said.
“And one more out in the flat,” said Clint.
“Seven. It is good. I will get the horses.”
“No damage to either of you?’ Clint asked.
Matt showed Clint the holes in his shirt just under his arm from a .50 caliber lead ball coming and going, and a missing boot heel. “They shot my boot.”
Clint laughed.
The Kanaka eyed the rotating breech of his Colt. “If I had more holes in this thing for slugs, I would have got more Yokuts.”
“Reload. They may be back. I have three shots left my friend. You should not be so eager… but then again, you did well.”
“I thought they would turn and run. But they came on. They are very brave men.”
“Humph,” Hawk grunted. “These are dead men. They can be brave again in the next life. It is better to be alive like the fox than brave and dead. I get the horses.”
He jogged away with an arrow notched on his bow even though he carried two Yokuts muskets.
Twenty-Three
Ramón and Inocente drew rein, listening to the reverberating echo of several faraway shots.
“Por Dios!” Ramón said. The soldados must have been waiting at the bottom of the ravine.”
“It sounds as if the Yokuts devils have run into trouble,” Inocente said. “Let’s ride. Maybe we can trap them between us and whoever they fight with.”
At a dead run they headed down the canyon. It was a mile before they reined up their panting horses to study the three men who stood beside their mounts in the trail below— and the Yokuts bodies scattered along the ravine bottom. The vaqueros pushed their horses slowly forward, eyeing each twisted body they passed. Then they drew rein and dismounted.
“Clint!” Ramón stared in disbelief. “Did the rest ride on in pursuit of the Yokuts?”
“The rest? No, there are only the three of us. Where are the rest of your people?”
“The Yokuts ambushed us and scattered our stock. We lost five men. Two killed, three wounded.”
They were silent for a moment,
“This is a lie!” Inocente’s voice rang out. He glared at Clint, then at the Kanaka and the Chumash. He dismounted and waved his arm at the devastation. “There were many men who did this.”
Clint stepped within striking distance of the equally tall vaquero. The heat of battle still coursed through his veins. “You know, you pile of donkey dung, I’ve had about all of you I can stand. I’ll he happy to stomp you into a greasespot right here if you can’t keep your mouth shut.”
Inocente stood speechless. He had figured this man for a coward. Anger flooded him, and he moved forward to answer the challenge.
But Ramón did not give him a chance. He stepped between the two. “We need every man, Inocente, and I would hate to see you skewered on the end of that ugly knife my Anglo friend carries before you have a chance to get your Patróns stock back. Save your crowing for when we get back to the pueblo. Not now. Now we have more important business.” His voice lowered. “My father and the others are not yet cold, and the Padilla stock will be dripping grease into Yokuts cooking fires in the Ton Tache if we do not hurry.”
Inocente cut his hard gaze from man to man, then turned and shoved his foot into his tapadero and mounted. “There will be another time.”
“That is my sincere hope,” Clint snapped. With his hackles still up, Clint stormed to his horse, Inocente stared after him.
Mounting with a swing into the saddle, Clint reined around to face the whiplash-thin vaquero. They sat silent for a moment.
“There’s only a hundred or so more Yokuts raiders,” Matt said, breaking the tension. “Then we can go home.”
“You’re right, Matt,” Clint said, nudging his horse down the trail, “but next time they will be ready. It won’t be so easy.”
Blood-red shafts of light escaped from dark clouds on the western
horizon and painted the sand of the wide valley spread out before them, but they turned their backs to the setting sun and rode east. They rode hard until it was as dark and ominous as a snakehole then fell exhausted in a cold camp by the river. A lonely wolf on a far ridge welcomed them with a lament while they unsaddled and hobbled their horses. Matt and Inocente took the first two watches since they had slept the night before.
Cha’s jaw was set, his shoulders tense. Behind him, seven braves lay in the dirt—seven who would have to find their own way to the spirit world. And one of those with him would soon be unable to stay in the saddle,
Worse, they had lost many muskets.
The country was becoming drier as they moved farther and farther away from the influence of the sea. Soon the tree cover would be gone and they would begin the descent into the Ton Tache. Before the light completely faded, Cha sought some rosemary along the riverbed, found it, and paused to pack the ragged hole in the thigh of his brave. Even then, he could not get the bleeding to stop.
Cha remounted and whipped his horse. He would catch up with the herd and the rest of his men during the next sun then find a place...
A place of his choice...
A place to end this.
But first they must rest. As the last of the sunlight vanished and the sister stars lit the night, he led his men away from the streambed and a quarter mile up into the nearby wooded hills. They camped beneath windblown piñon pines. Cha stood the first watch while his men foraged for packrat nests and robbed them of the fat pinenuts of the piñon. Their hunger satisfied, the men fell into a well-deserved sleep.
Cha sat on granite outcropping and scanned the dark valley below to the accompaniment of a chorus of coyotes and the sudden screech of the cat-who-had-lost-his-tail. A bobcat had been successful in his hunt, Cha decided, hearing the cry of a rabbit in the jaws of death.
Cha pondered. It would not do to lead these white men back to the village. He must resolve this problem long before then. But against the man with the firestick that sounded like the woodpecker he would need more men. Tomorrow he should catch up with the rest of his warriors and the herd.
He shuddered at the thought of the huge man who had stood near the edge of the trail, a man the size of the great bear who had fired as fast as the crow cawed. This was a new problem, a firestick that did not need to be fed. But no matter how big nor how many times the man could shoot, he could not defeat a hundred men with firesticks and a thousand arrows. That is what Cha must bring against them.
As the moon clawed to the top of the sky, Cha awoke one of the men to take the watch then fell asleep to the groans of his wounded comrade who tossed feverishly and still wept blood from his wound.
When he awoke, the eastern sky was the color of the wild rose, and the man was quiet. The blood that soaked the earth beneath his leg was the color of old iron. They found a slight depression in the ground and hurriedly loosened the soil and scooped it out until it was deep enough to accommodate the warrior. Facing south, he was placed in a semisitting position in the grave. They placed his weapons with him; his charm bag on his chest, and covered him with little ceremony.
They rode on.