Ned had only a moment to enjoy the sense that he had dealt the first blow. A second later, rifle fire poured down on him from the hill. He stretched belly-down on the floor and crawled behind the bed. Soon, all the window glass shattered. Though the house was of solid log, now and then a bullet ricocheted off a windowsill, and into the room. The rifle fire was continuous. Ned saw a mounted man start down the hill, and promptly shot him out of his saddle. It was not a fatal shot; Ned saw the man crawl away.
The firing was so thick that Ned felt cautious about even raising his head. He crept to a west window, and shot another posseman—the fellow had been standing by a bush, in plain sight. It was grey now, the darkness receding, and Ned could see a good deal better what he was shooting at. The fellow who had been standing by the bush did not crawl away, and Ned considered that he had one less opponent. He had hit three, counting their leader, but could only be certain that he had eliminated one killer. The rider he had only hit in the shoulder; he had no way of knowing how seriously he had injured the tall man named Tail.
Ned started up to his crawl space. It meant leaving one side of the house unprotected, but it was the safest place to shoot from and provided the best view of the hill. He could see anything that moved.
Before he could get to it, he heard the sound of hooves. The whole posse was charging now. He thought he saw seven riders, which did not accord with his count, but he had no time to check. He stood by the nearest window, and fired. He knocked off two riders before the posse made it to the house. One man jumped off his horse and ran in the door. Ned had reached the stairs by then, and he shot the man before he had both feet in the door.
Horses and men were all around the house when, suddenly, Lyle Miller appeared.
“Ned, I’m scairt!” the boy cried.
“You ought to have stayed put, Lyle!” Ned said. He shot another posseman through the window, but Lyle’s appearance had rattled him—he only hit the man in the leg. The man clung to his horse, and disappeared. There was so much dust from the horses that Ned could not see clearly. He grabbed the boy, and carried him back to the second floor.
Before he got to the crawl space, he smelled fire. One of the posse-men must be expert at firing structures, to get a fire going so quickly and in the middle of all the shooting, Ned thought.
Ned did not know if he could squeeze into the crawl space with Lyle. He felt a powerful duty to his friend Tuxie to protect his son, and so stuffed Lyle in first. Then he heard something behind him— turned—and shot a man who had followed him upstairs. The man had a gash across his forehead, raggedly sewn up. The man fell backward down the staircase—dead, Ned felt sure.
“You get in there and you stay put, Lyle,” Ned ordered. “You can’t be popping out, with all this shooting going on.”
Smoke was already curling up the stairs by this time. Ned did not immediately fear the house flaming up—it would take half a day for the stout logs to burn through—but he did fear smoke. He hastily ripped off a piece of quilt to make rags to cover his nose. He handed one to Lyle, though he knew it would take a while before the smoke penetrated to the crawl space. He thought of the women in the root cellar, Jewel and Liza, but did not feel he could risk going back down the stairs. It might be filled with possemen already, and one of them might surprise him and end the battle. Besides, the smoke would rise. The women would be safe enough in the root cellar, unless the floor collapsed, and that was not likely to happen for hours. Surviving the battle was the task he had to accomplish. He thought he had accounted for half of the posse—if not killing them, then disabling them sufficiently to keep them from wandering around in a smoky house looking for him.
Before scooting into the crawl space, Ned turned for a moment to look out a window. He knew the riders were still milling around outside. He heard the nervous horses whinnying; horses never liked fire. He thought he might be able to shoot down on the men, perhaps killing or disabling one or two more. If he could, maybe they would give it up and leave. It seemed there was at least a chance of that, since he had hit the leader early. Then it flashed to him that he had seen the leader, Tail, in the charge. Though well to the rear, he had been the seventh man.
Or so Ned thought; it was hard to be certain of what exactly he had seen, in the few seconds the men were racing down on him. His worry now was that he had only dealt Tail a small wound, when he shot at the sound of his voice. It was a troubling thought, dashing his hopes that without their leader to force them on, they might not have the stomach to continue such a deadly fight.
Just as Ned edged to the window, something struck his face, right by his nose. It spun him around, causing him to drop to his knees. He was looking directly down at the floor, but could not see it—in fact, he could not see anything. His vision had gone. The world was black, with just a distant spot of light, at the center of the blackness.
Oh Lord! Blind, he thought—blind, finished! He had a Colt .44 in each hand, the guns his father had given him, but he could not see to fire them. The moment at the window had been incautious. Now he was hit, and he was blind. Any one of the possemen could finish him, if one happened to be bold enough to come up the stairs.
Ned stayed on his hands and knees for a moment, in a black world, no vision at all. He felt a weight in his head between his nose and his eyes; he knew it must be a bullet, and wondered why he was not dead. He wanted to sneeze out the weight, but could not.
He began to cough from the smoke. He still had the rag in one hand and quickly put his face in it to stifle the coughs. He did not want to give his position away. He could smell that the smoke was billowing thicker, which was both good and bad. It would hide him, discouraging the possemen from climbing the stairs—but it would also choke him and finally kill him, if he did not move to get out of it.
Ned had whirled when the bullet struck. He had to reach out with one hand and touch the bed to know which way he faced. His upper teeth ached; he wondered if the bullet could have struck his teeth and gone up his nose, but he knew he had no leisure to worry about the wound. He was blind, but he was still alive—he had to get to his crawl space before the smoke choked him, or a posseman found him. He tucked one pistol inside his shirt and kept the other in his hand, as he inched across the floor. Though blind and wounded, he took care to move quietly. If the possemen heard him, they might shoot him through the floor. As he crawled, he wondered who had shot him. He had only shown himself at the window for a second, and yet had been shot in the face. It must be that the posse had a sharpshooter with them.
It troubled Ned that he had let go of his rifle when he fell. He wanted the rifle, but knew he could not take the time to locate it, blind as he was and with the smoke getting thicker. At least he had his pistols. He would have to shoot at sound if anyone came at him.
The smoke thickened so that Ned thought he would die before he made it to the crawl space. Even with the rag at his face, the smoke got into his nostrils when he tried to draw a breath. It stung his nostrils, and made his eyes water. He could not see, though his eyes teared.
When he got to the crawl space, weak from the smoke and from the weight in his head, he whispered to Lyle Miller. He wanted to hand the boy his pistols, afraid he might damage one of them crawling into the small space. He whispered, and got no answer. He reached into the crawl space, fearing the boy might have passed out from the smoke, or from fright—but Lyle was not there. It stunned him for a moment. He had put Lyle in and told him to stay, only a few minutes before—had he bolted again? Had the posse found him? Was he on the roof? They were all questions Ned was unable to answer. All he knew was that the crawl space was empty. Lyle Miller had disappeared.
Ned had no time to ponder the mystery. He carefully eased himself in, and closed the little flap of wood concealing the space. In the little hollow, he could breathe again, without the smoke burning his nostrils. The flap kept most of the smoke out, or did so far; Ned inched along until he could put his face up to the small peephole to the outside. H
e could breathe pure air and ease his lungs. He heard the sound of horses milling in the backyard. He hoped Lyle Miller had managed to wiggle off and get away. He would never be able to face Dale and Tuxie, if the boy was hurt.
Then he heard Liza screaming: they had found the women! If they had Liza, they had his Jewel, and here he was, shot in the face and blinded, unable to help. Ned felt a rage that pained him far worse than his aching teeth. Men had come to his farm—bad men—they had shot him, fired his house, and now they had his women. Jewel was carrying their child, and yet he was too wounded to fight for her or the child. He felt he had been wrong to snap off that first shot, when the man had asked for his surrender. He had been wrong to try and fight so many. Better to have surrendered and then tried to escape on the road to Fort Smith.
But it was too late. Liza was screaming, and then he heard someone hit her hard—but not with a hand—and then the screaming suddenly stopped. He longed to hear Jewel’s voice, even if she was fearful, so he would know she was still alive. But Jewel made no sound. She might have fought the men when she came up from the root cellar; she might be dead.
Ned had a hard time keeping consciousness, the pain in his head was so bad. He wanted to fight, and yet, he was blind. That was the main fact he had to act upon: he was blind. Inside one eye was a piercing, painful light; and yet it was not a light that showed him anything. It was as if a tiny sun wee shining inside his head. The light was a bright circle, intense as fire. It was painful, and yet Ned was glad of it. It offered him the hope that he might not be blind forever. Old Turtle Man had saved Tuxie when the last breath of life was about to leave him. Perhaps Old Turtle Man would understand what the light was. If he could survive, perhaps Tuxie or Dale would fetch the old man to him. If the house did not burn up completely, he could survive in the crawl space until the old healer came.
The light was only in one eye, which meant that the other eye might be lost. Even if that was so and he had to fight with one eye, Ned meant to recover. In his mind, he tried to be sure he remembered the face of every posseman, although he had only glimpsed them briefly as they charged. He intended to survive his blindness, or half-blindness. His woman might be dead; his unborn child dead, too. There might be nothing left for him but to be a warrior. If so, he meant to be a fierce one, a warrior the whites in Arkansas would never forget.
He heard the horses leaving now, and he could hear flames crackling on the north side of the house. The posse must think he was dead, cooked amid the burning logs of his home. They must be so sure he was dead that they were not even going to wait to search the house for his body—to take an ear, or a finger, to show to the court. Such things had happened to Cherokee men, warriors who fell in battle with the whites. His father had told him the stories, and his grandfather.
But this posse was lazy, and the logs of his house were solid. They would take all day to burn. Ned lay in his crawl space, the little sun burning in one eye, and tried to determine by listening how many horsemen were left. He wanted to know how many men he had killed, and how many were left to fight, if he had to fight them again. But he could not tell. Maybe the whites were taking the bodies of their fallen home for burial—nine horses had come; nine were leaving. He held onto consciousness until they were out of earshot, trying to count. But he could not be sure of the number.
He wanted his Jewel to come. Maybe she could blow the painful little light out in his eye, as she blew out the lamp at night before she came to him in bed. The light shone too brightly, searing his brain, making a heat in his head. He touched his face and felt a bullet, wedged at the top of his nose just under the skin. He pushed and the bullet moved; he pushed again, and it came out, followed by a rush of blood.
Ned did not mind the blood, for there was space in his head again, hazy space. The little sun inside his head grew dimmer and dimmer, until finally he could sleep, holding the spent bullet between two fingers.
37
“NED’S DEAD . . . NED’S DEAD,” LYLE MILLER SAID, TO THE RED-HEADED man who kept shaking him and cuffing him. “I seen him on the floor when I run out.”
Lyle did not want to be dead himself, as Ned was, and Liza. One of the possemen had hit Liza in the head with a stick of firewood, to make her stop screaming. After he hit her, Liza stopped screaming— and also stopped moving, or breathing. Lyle saw her body by the woodpile, as the men were moving them out.
Jewel was not dead. The possemen put him and Jewel on the same horse. Jewel kept quiet, and so did he.
Lyle was sorry he had to say that Ned was dead, for Jewel began to cry when he said it. The men had stopped by a little creek and made a fire. Several of them were wounded and bleeding, and wanted to wash their wounds.
Before the fire was even hot, the red-headed man began to shake Lyle and cuff him. Lyle was very afraid. He did not want them to hit him with a stick of firewood and leave him dead, like Liza, so he did not cry out, or scream; he told them about Ned being dead on the floor. Jewel did not cry for long. After a while, she sat looking down at the ground. The men stood around the fire, waiting for the water in the pot to boil. Some had their shirts off, or their pants, examining their wounds. Except for the red-headed man, they paid little attention to Lyle, or to Jewel. The red-headed man was rough—he shook Lyle until Lyle’s neck popped.
The tall man who wore the dusty coat was wounded in the shoulder. He had taken his coat off, and his shirt, too. He held a little pocket mirror in one hand, using it to inspect his wound, which was not bleeding much.
“I’m luckier than I was when those Yankees shot me,” Tailcoat said. “The bullet went through and missed the bone. I’ll be damned if I would have enjoyed another smashed-up collarbone.”
“I still don’t know how he hit you,” Beezle said. “You was well hid, Tail.”
“Well hid, but I opened my goddamn mouth,” Tailcoat said. “I ought to have known better. He shot at the sound, and he didn’t miss by much.”
“Not many men can hit a feller just by aiming at his sound,” Beezle marveled.
“I could, when I was sharpshooting,” Tailcoat informed him. “I wounded several Yankees just because they were fools and talked too loud.”
Then the tall man said something that surprised Lyle.
“Why have you brought that boy?” Tailcoat asked Beezle. “Let him go.”
“Why, he’s the one says Ned Christie’s dead,” Beezle said. “I was just giving him a good shaking to make sure of the information.”
“He’ll be a nuisance to travel with . . . let him go,” Tailcoat said. “I shot Ned Christie through a window. He didn’t leave the house, and the house is afire. If he ain’t dead from the bullet, I expect he’ll burn up.”
“Well, but that’s not sure, Tail,” Beezle conjectured. “Judge Parker likes marshals to be sure about things like that.”
Tailcoat Jones was galled as it was. Despite much evidence of the excellence of Ned Christie’s shooting skills, he had lazily underestimated the man and got himself shot through the left shoulder. He wanted to hurry on to Fort Smith to get the wound treated by a doctor. Over the years, he had developed a profound fear of infection from having seen many men die from serious infections in wounds such as his, during the War. He did not want to sit around all day waiting for the heavy log house to burn down, just so he could locate Ned Christie’s bones. Four of his men had been killed outright, and three more were wounded. Only two of the ten possemen had escaped from the conflict unscathed.
Under the circumstances, one thing he did not intend to tolerate—from Beezle, or anyone else—was a lecture about what Ike Parker liked or did not like. He would, of course, have preferred to bring Ned Christie’s body back to Fort Smith as evidence of the success of the raid. But a burned body would be a stinking thing to travel with, and in any case, Ike Parker was so contrary he might well consider the posse a failure and dock their pay. After all—he had requested five criminals to try—being given one who was past trying might only irk the man.
>
“Oh—so you’re afraid Ike will be irked?” he said to Beezle, who promptly released the boy.
“I just know that he likes his marshals to be sure of what they did,” Beezle repeated, cautiously.
“I’m sure we have four dead men and three wounded,” Tailcoat said. “Go home, boy . . . get!”
Lyle was happy to obey. He missed his mother badly. He missed his pa, too—he even missed his sisters. He knew he would have to walk it, since his colt was still back at Ned’s—but that was better than being hit with a stick of firewood, as Liza had been hit.
Lyle’s only worry was leaving Jewel. She was not tied, but there were men all around her. She would not have much of a chance, if she ran. He thought she might ask the tall man if she could leave with him. With the two of them traveling together, there would be that much less danger of bears. But Jewel would scarcely raise her eyes to look at Lyle; she did not look at the tall man at all.
“I’m afraid I’ll get lost, unless Jewel comes with me—she knows the way,” Lyle said. It upset him to leave Jewel, even though he was anxious to be home with his ma and his pa and his sisters. These men were bad. They had killed Ned, and Liza. He was afraid they might kill Jewel, if he left without her.
Jewel looked up quickly then, and motioned for Lyle to go.
“Go on home, Lyle, it’s an easy trail,” she said, in a low voice. She did not look at him when she said it. She kept her eyes lowered.
“Go on, boy—get!” Tailcoat said again.
Nobody seemed inclined to let Jewel go with him, and Jewel herself made no move to get up, so Lyle reluctantly walked on out of the camp. He was scared, but Jewel herself had told him to go.
Once he was out of sight of the camp, his fear of bears came back, and he broke into a trot. He knew he could not outrun a bear on foot, if one came at him, so he figured he better try and get on the trail home as quickly as he could.