William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

They struck from all directions, steadily moving in closer, tightening the noose. They bloodied up the defenders, keeping them off balance and uncertain.

Several storerooms on the west side of the first floor of the courthouse building had been set up as infirmaries to treat the wounded. They began to fill up as the early morning assault opened.

Among others, a gray-haired grandmotherly woman was giving first aid to the injured in one of the infirmary rooms. Some of the wounds were fearsome, the blood flow prodigious. All too soon she ran out of bandages, but not patients. More were being brought in by the minute, children and adults alike.

The caregiver hurried to the room next door to pick up fresh bandages. She went into the hallway. A bullet tore through a pine board covering a window, drilling it and knocking her down. She fell to the floor, blood pooling out from her.

A man ran to her aid, into the path of more bullets tearing through the same window. He fell down dead.

Shot through, the boards over the window broke apart, leaving a large gap. Swift blurred forms of Comanches outside flashed past the gap.

A young cowboy charged the window, a gun in each hand. He slipped in a puddle of blood, booted feet flying out from under him. He took a pratfall, landing hard on his tailbone. One of the guns in his hand went off, narrowly missing a nearby teenage mother with a babe in her arms.

An arrow flew through the hole in the window, whizzing past the cowboy. Getting to his feet, trembling with pain, he clomped to the window on shaky legs.

A Comanche stuck his face in the gap, looking in. The cowboy pointed a gun and fired. The brave’s face became a wet scarlet mask for an instant before dropping out of sight.

Vince Stafford’s Ramrod riders were astir at the feed store, positioned at the windows and outside at the barricades. Dimaree and Carney were huddled at the northwest corner of the store, behind a makeshift barrier bordering the boardwalk.

Dimaree thrust out his left arm, pointing at the top of the building across the street. “Injins! Climbing the roof of the Golden Spur!”

“Hell, let ’em,” Carney said, “that’s Damon’s lookout.”

A quartet of Comanche braves on horseback galloped into view, rounding the corner between the Spur and the Alamo Bar, charging east on Trail Street. Whooping, shrieking, they opened fire on the feed store.

Dimaree, hit in the left shoulder, spun sideways. Bullets whizzed past Carney on both sides. One clipped off an earlobe. Another ripped into Marblay behind him, gut shooting him. He doubled up, grabbing his belly. He tried to scream but lacked the breath.

Carney reeled, off balance. One hand pressed to his torn, bleeding ear, he stumbled around, crashing into Dimaree and knocking him down. Dimaree hit the boards with a thud, a six-gun in the fist of his right hand. His left arm where he’d been hit was numb, useless; he couldn’t make it work. Marblay lay beside him, spasming, belly and crotch soaked with dark blood.

A rattle of gunfire ripped out, venting from the blazing pistols of Kev Huddy in the wing of the barricade. Having no dominant hand, he could shoot with equal facility with either hand and alternated shots between the gun in his left and the one in his right, first one, then the other, so fast the reports blended into a roaring torrent of noise. Crouched bent-legged, a toothy go-to-hell grin on his face, he fired into the four Comanches who’d shot his buddies.

Four ponies flashed by, the braves sprawled dead in the street at Huddy’s feet. A cloud of gun smoke floated around his middle.

Carney bumped into the bulwark hedging the west end of the boardwalk in front of the store. He held on to the top of the hay bale, propping himself upright and looked up.

Standing opposite him on the other side of the bale was a Comanche with war hatchet upraised. Grinning fiercely, the brave buried the blade in the top of Carney’s skull, splitting it down to the eyeballs. Bits of bone and brain matter spewed, geysering up on a torrent of blood. So deep was the tomahawk buried in Carney’s cranium that the brave couldn’t get it free.

Carney lurched away, arms and legs thrashing spasmodically as he careened from side to side, bouncing off the barricade and storefront.

Dimaree shot the hatchet-wielder from where he lay on his back on the boardwalk, tagging him high in the chest.

Carney smashed into plank boards nailed over the bottom of a storefront window, tearing them loose, and falling through. He lay half in the store, half out. His shattered head bled into the store, soaking into the top of hundred-pound grain sacks heaped as a barricade. His legs hung outside, squared-off boot toes drumming the boardwalk before giving a final kick.

A running brave angled southwest across the street. Duncan raised his rifle but a section of the barricade blocked the shot. He sidestepped into the street, swinging the rifle barrel in line with the brave’s muscular, delta-shaped back and drilled him between the shoulder blades.

A Comanche bowman on the roof of the Golden Spur launched an arrow at Duncan, hitting him in the right breast. Duncan stood in place, weaving slightly.

The bowman sped a second arrow at him. It took Duncan sideways through the right ear, piercing his skull. Down he went.

Seeing it, Lord cried, “Dirty stinking redskin!” and pointed his rifle up at the archer.

A Comanche at ground level stepped around the corner of the Golden Spur, rifle leveled at Lord. Kev Huddy shot him.

Lord did a double take. A second report from Huddy’s gun fell swiftly on the echoes of the first. Lord looked up.

The bowman on the Spur roof was hit, lurching sideways. He ran out of roof, pitching into empty space and impacting the street with a loud booming whoomp .

Huddy grinned at Lord over smoking pistols that had just gunned two braves. He’d saved Lord’s life twice in two blinks of an eye, but all the same, that toothy grin of Huddy’s really burned Lord’s ass.

“Thanks,” Lord said grudgingly, hating the other.

Knowing it, Huddy laughed.

Up above the street, high on the Golden Spur roof, Swamper and his shotgun got to the roof edge late and only managed to tag the last brave in the line of riders moving south between the Spur and the courthouse. It took a second barrel to blow him out of the saddle.

Swamper broke the piece, shucking out the empty shells and reloading. While he was occupied, several nimble Comanches managed to scale a drainpipe on the west side of the building, mounting the roof.

One, an archer, slew Duncan before being slain by Kev Huddy. That attracted Swamper’s attention, causing him to glimpse two other braves ducking for cover. It was a game of hide-and-seek.

He padded toward them, keeping a wide brick chimney topped with several spouts between him and them. Leaning around a corner, he loosed a barrel into a Comanche rifleman.

A second brave dodged around to the other side of the chimney. Swamper stepped out in the open for a clear shot. He fired. The brave jackknifed, pitching off the roof. Swamper did not see, but heard, him hit bottom with a satisfying thud.

A pair of hands came into view along the west edge of the roof. A Comanche chinned himself, heaving up over the edge.

No time for reloading. Swamper rushed to roof’s edge, butt stroking the brave’s head with the shotgun. It made a wet crunching sound, smearing the other’s features, breaking his nose and knocking out teeth. The brave was tough, holding on. Swamper readied to strike again.

The brave defiantly spat a mouthful of bloody teeth up at him.

Swamper struck again. The brave’s head snapped back, his hands losing their grip. Backward, outward, and down he went—without cry, curse, or complaint.