Hard Road to Holford, page 6
CHAPTER NINE
Dwyer winced as a man splashed tequila on his wounded ear and wiped it none too gently with a bloodstained bandanna. The discomfort, he told himself, was nothing compared to what Robert E. Grant would suffer. Nobody would swindle Colonel Miguel Dwyer and live. He had paid good American dollars for five cases of carbine ammunition. The top case had contained rifle ammunition which the army had been giving free to buffalo shooters and the remaining cases had contained gravel. In the midst of a battle with Federal troops was not the time to discover that the fresh ammunition he had counted upon was all but useless. His revolutionaries had eagerly seized the new cartridges, but a couple of rounds had left them battered and in many cases gun-shy. It was a brave man who did not flinch when firing the full rifle round in a light carbine. Under such much-reduced and erratic fire, the shaken soldiers had recovered their confidence and forced Dwyer’s men into an ignominious flight.
Now he had another problem. A minority of his riders still had a few rounds of carbine ammunition. but nowhere near enough for a sustained battle against trained infantry. His men possessed three Winchester repeaters but again, their ammunition supply was low.
Juan hurried over the where his leader was having his wounded ear treated. ‘Things are not good, Colonel,’ he reported. ‘We cannot fight these men at long range. They have more rifle ammunition than we have.’
‘Tell the men to work closer. There is enough brush on the hillsides to get into revolver range. Then we can rush them, as they only have single-shot rifles.’
The grizzled lieutenant shook his head. ‘That might not be a good idea. They have some revolvers,’ he said doubtfully.
Dwyer waved a hand impatiently. ‘They are not veteran fighters like our men. We need more fighting and less talking. I’ll join you in a minute and we will plan an attack.’
‘It is very dangerous, Colonel. That coach will already be missed and soldiers or lawmen will soon be looking for it. The gringos hold the water and our horses have much travelling to get us back over the border. We should cut our losses and go.’
‘No,’ Dwyer told him angrily. ‘Who will follow me if I allow this man Grant to escape and leave the death of my cousin unavenged? We have lost good men. These people must pay. Our men expect no less.’
‘Our men mainly expect to get back to Mexico with whole skins. If people think you would throw away their lives they will not follow you.’
Reluctantly Dwyer was forced to admit the truth of Juan’s argument. ‘I suppose you are right. I will try one more attack here and if that fails, we will retreat.’
For the besieged there was a degree of relief. The travellers shared some of the soldiers’ rations which, although very basic, were a great improvement on starvation.
The besiegers’ rate of fire slackened considerably but the group at the well were careful not to take unnecessary risks. Careless movements between the ruins, the stake corral and the well still invited a bullet but the attackers were not wasting ammunition.
Jones had taken Wilmot’s bandoleer and found that it contained only two rounds suitable for the carbine he carried. His own bandoleer yielded another three. The remaining cartridges were rifle rounds and these he placed to one side, to be used for only desperate, close-range work.
Chris found himself beside a soldier whom Quinn had left inside the adobe walls. The man indicated Jones and said quietly, ‘I’m glad we have him on our side. He’s hell on wheels with a gun.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Only by sight,’ the man admitted. ‘I saw him kill a man in El Paso. The man he shot was supposed to be a mighty tough pistolero but that hombre there shot faster and straighter.’
‘What were they fighting about?’
‘I don’t know,’ the man admitted, ‘but the law didn’t seem all that interested in him. He had a couple of Mexicans with him and was driving a wagon. He went over the border into Mexico not long after the shooting. I don’t reckon I ever heard his name but I’m sure that’s the same man.’
A bullet came through the opening that once had held a door. It hit the wall just above Maggie’s head and she shrieked in surprise as she was showered with adobe dust.
Amos grabbed her and none too gently pulled her away from the doorway. ‘Did you get hit?’ he demanded.
Maggie regained her composure and brushed the dust from her face and the shoulders of her blouse. ‘I just got a fright. I’m not hurt.’
Chris was worried because the attackers would have been well around their position before a rifleman could angle a shot through the doorway. The sniper would be somewhere in the brush and could be as close as one hundred yards away.
He called to the soldiers in the corral. ‘Did anyone see where that last shot came from?’
It was Ellen who answered his question. ‘I saw a puff of smoke at the base of the hill. I’ll show you.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Chris said sharply. ‘He could be waiting for someone to look around the corner of the doorway. Can you remember anything about the place where you saw it?’
The girl thought for a while. ‘There’s a very tall, straight cactus just to the right of where I saw the smoke. It goes a fair way up before any branches come off it. It was somewhere near the bottom of that.’
The guard called to the soldiers in the corral. ‘Can anyone see a tall, straight cactus on the flat across the road? We think there’s a sniper somewhere to the left of it. He’s firing through the doorway here.’
Quinn called back. ‘That cactus is only about sixty yards away. He’s mighty close.’
Another shot came from the brush behind the ruins. A soldier facing that way fired back before shouting, ‘They’re on this side too.’
The firing increased in intensity with puffs of smoke erupting from the brush disturbingly close to the besieged position. A couple of bullets fell short but others whined off stony ground, smacking against the adobe or burying themselves in the rotting wooden stakes of the corral.
‘They’re firing revolvers,’ Jones told Chris. ‘They could be getting ready to rush us. They know the soldiers have to reload after every shot.’
Chris saw the danger too. ‘We can give some covering fire to the soldiers, but with only a door and a window to shoot through, we are likely to get in each other’s way.’
Horace provided the answer to the problem. He indicated a couple of empty boxes that had held supplies. ‘If we stand on those, we can shoot over the top of the wall.’
Amos appropriated one box and placed it firmly against the base of the ruined wall at one of its low points. ‘I’m the tallest,’ he said. ‘So I reckon I can shoot over here easier than most.’
Horace took the other box and found a suitably low spot on the opposite wall.
Jones said that he would back up the soldier positioned at the window leaving Chris and Wilmot to guard the door. The latter was pale and glancing nervously about him, as though looking for an escape route or somewhere to hide. There were neither.
The besiegers’ shots had slowed noticeably as they ensured that all their guns were loaded before making the final rush.
Suddenly a wild shout echoed around the narrow valley and pistol shots sounded on three sides.
‘Here they come!’ a soldier yelled.
CHAPTER TEN
Men sprang from the brush alarmingly close to the ruins and sprinted across the open ground. Occasionally one stopped to fire a shot but mostly they just ran, anxious to close the distance as the soldiers reloaded their single-shot rifles.
One man scarcely went three paces before a bullet cut him down, another staggered as though hit but then recovered and lurched forward again. Amos shot him from over the top of the wall.
Chris had no trouble selecting a target but one of the soldiers beat him to the shot and he saw the man smashed backwards by a powerful rifle bullet. Suddenly two men were converging on the open doorway. The first almost ran on to the muzzle of the guard’s carbine and a squeeze of the trigger sent a .44 slug into him taking him out of the fight. A rattle of rapid shots from behind the guard sent the other attacker reeling away with one arm hanging uselessly. Good, he thought, Wilmot had at last decided to help.
Jones had taken over the window while the soldier with him reloaded his rifle, but the attack on that side seemed to have melted away.
Three Mexicans had reached the corral and were firing through the gaps between the stakes while Quinn and his men fired back and reloaded as quickly as they could.
Horace, who was shooting over the wall and had a better view of the corral, shouted urgently. ‘Help the soldiers.’
Seeing no adversaries in front, Chris stepped out of the door and turned to his right. He could see the corral wreathed in gunsmoke and three attackers firing into it. At a few yards range, he raked them with rapid fire from his Winchester. One man crumpled forward while another was knocked flat on his back. The third turned to run but with the guard, Horace and a couple of soldiers shooting at him he was cut down after a couple of strides.
Somewhere in the brush a voice called loudly in Spanish and, as swiftly as they had arrived, the attackers were gone, leaving seven of their number sprawled on the ground. One man moved feebly and a soldier immediately fired another shot into him. The movement stopped.
‘Cease firing,’ Quinn bellowed. He turned to Amos. ‘Are any of your folks hurt?’
The lanky driver looked around. He saw Wilmot edging out from behind Maggie. ‘We have one nearly dead of fright, but that’s all.’
Chris looked behind him and was surprised to see that it was Ellen standing there and not the man who was supposed to back him up.
The girl, despite her pale face and shaking hands, smiled apologetically and held up her empty revolver. ‘I’ve run out of bullets.’
Angrily Chris looked about for Wilmot and found him standing sheepishly beside Maggie. The latter looked annoyed.
‘Where the hell were you, Wilmot? How is it that you left a lady to do your share of the fighting?’
Though still pale, Larry answered in an aggrieved tone: ‘Don’t get too high-handed with me. Maggie was the only one without a gun and needed to be protected.’ His courage might have deserted him but his wits had not.
The guard would have said more but there was a gentle touch on his arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ellen said. ‘We seem to have driven them off again so our luck is still holding.’
Two of the soldiers had been wounded. One had taken two bullets in his right arm and the other had been hit in the side. Both were stretched on the ground, their faces masks of shock and pain.
Quinn, conscious that another attack could be imminent, reorganized his defenders after moving the wounded into the ruins, where they would have better protection.
Jones seemed to have more knowledge of bullet wounds than any of the others and, assisted by Ellen and Maggie, he took over the task of attending to the wounded.
With Amos and Wilmot keeping watch, Chris checked on the fallen Mexicans and collected their guns and ammunition. Aware that he could be a target for a rifleman, he worked swiftly collecting three revolvers and gun belts and passing two through the stakes to the soldiers. He told them: ‘You might want to load these and keep them handy in case they attack again.’
‘Do you think they will come again?’ Private Ridley asked.
‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t if I was them, but these characters have been mighty unpredictable.’
At the southern end of the valley Dwyer saw his men assembling. The defeated look on their faces told him that any further attacks would be futile. While his men might die for the ideals of their revolution, none would relish the idea of dying for the sake of their leader’s reputation. But Miguel Dwyer was a single-minded man when he set himself a task. Robert E. Grant would yet be brought to account.
Quickly he called his men together and selected two whom he knew to be reliable men with a good command of the English language.
Morillo was barely twenty, short and wiry with strong Indian features but was both intelligent and skilled in guerrilla fighting. Correnza was older and slightly taller but he too had proved his worth in many skirmishes especially the more recent ones that had proved so costly.
‘You ride with me,’ the colonel told them. Then turning to his lieutenant he said, ‘Juan, you must take the rest of the men back over the border. The Americanos will soon have troops after us and I want you to deceive them into thinking that our entire force has retreated. Lay false trails to delay them but leave enough traces for their scouts to follow. Take the spare horses because they must think they are following our whole band.’
‘Sí, Colonel. But what will you be doing? Where will we rendezvous in Mexico?’
Dwyer replied: ‘I will capture this Robert Grant person and meet you later at our camp in the Sierra Madres. Now go and leave a good trail at first for the cavalry to see. We will ride with you for a short distance and will split away at some place where the tracks won’t show.’
Juan looked worried. ‘But you don’t know this Grant person.’
‘We will follow these gringos. He will betray himself sooner or later and when he does, I will have him.’
‘But people will see you,’ Juan protested.
A smile flitted across Dwyer’s face. ‘It does not matter. There are plenty of gringo clothes left at that coach and probably some at the change station as well. Our clothes will make us look as though we have lived this side of the border for a long time and there are plenty of our people in New Mexico and Arizona. We will hide from the army right under their noses. Now we must go.’
Chris had been busy with his pocket-knife making new holes in the Mexican cartridge belt he had appropriated. The attached holster contained a Colt pocket revolver converted to take a .32 rim-fire cartridge.
Ellen had done all she could to help the wounded men and now was seated on a box in the ruins eating beans from a can. With a dirty face and dishevelled clothes she scarcely resembled the young lady who had boarded the coach on the previous day. There was sauce around her mouth and she had managed to spill some on her blouse but to the shotgun guard, she still looked as beautiful as ever.
‘I have something for you,’ he announced.
The girl stopped eating and looked up curiously.
‘Seeing as how you backed me up so well today, I thought you might like a better gun. I made some extra holes in the belt so it should fit you. I wish it could be a bunch of flowers or something nice.’ Chris’s voice faltered as he suddenly wondered whether a dead man’s gun was an appropriate gift for a lady. He continued lamely, ‘It’s a good gun, like the one you used today, except that it takes metallic cartridges – I thought it might be useful.’
A dazzling smile dispelled the guard’s doubts. A small hand reached up and took the holstered weapon. ‘That’s very kind of you, Chris. I hope I will never have to use it but it will be a great souvenir. Thank you. As soon as I finish these beans, I’ll get you to show me how to load and unload it. Have you eaten yet?’
‘The soldiers are arranging some food for me now. Even that army grub will go down well.’
‘Do you think those men will attack again?’
Chris looked around at the attackers still sprawled where they had fallen. Pausing a moment, he said, ‘I’m not sure. Corporal Quinn reckons they need more men than he thinks they have. But there’s something different about these characters. They know something about us that we don’t.’
‘They might know about me,’ Ellen suggested. ‘I’m carrying six hundred dollars in cash to make the final payment on our ranch mortgage. I wonder though how they would know about that.’
‘I think it’s more than a robbery. Those Mexicans seemed more interested in catching up with someone they called Robert E. Grant. That’s a fake name if ever I heard one. Either they have been barking up the wrong tree completely or one of our passengers has been in some sort of crooked deal and double-crossed them somehow.’
‘Horace and Larry are well-known around the district and John Jones seems a very decent type. The Mexicans must be mistaken.’
‘Being well-known at home doesn’t mean that they are known at all in Mexico. These hombres are revolutionaries and can’t check on every one who does a deal with them. South of the border they have to accept any name a man uses if he is selling them something they know is illegal.’
A shout from a soldier on watch stopped any further conversation.
‘There’s dust rising behind that hill. There’s horses on the road causing that. I think they could be coming again.’
Ellen jumped to her feet and started buckling the gunbelt around her waist. ‘I think you’d better show me how to load my new gun.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They waited anxiously with all eyes fixed on the road where it passed over the hill. If it was the revolutionaries returning to the fight, they must surely have been reinforced, for a frontal attack straight down the road was guaranteed to be costly.
Horsemen appeared, a pair of them both in army blue. One by one the soldiers began to uncock their rifles. Then a wagon came over the crest.
‘It’s our transport,’ a soldier said in a relieved tone. ‘We’re going home.’
A cavalry sergeant and an infantry lieutenant rode ahead of the canvas-topped wagon with its six-mule team. They urged their horses into a canter when they saw the scene before them. The battle casualties confirmed what the riders had expected but the presence of civilians among the soldiers took them by surprise.’
