William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

“I make ’em about seventy-five or so,” Johnny said.

This second assault force was quiet, with no screaming defiance, no war whoops. They came downhill, wheeling east to form up in a long line at the far side of the flat.

Prone on the floor, holding his face over the open hatch, Johnny looked down into the dark well of the tower shaft. Putting two fingers to his mouth, he whistled several times, sharp and shrill.

Lockridge entered the bottom of the well, looking up. “They’re coming!” Johnny called.

“We see ’em!” Lockridge replied.

“Hold your fire till the first blast.”

“Okay—but don’t wait too long!”

At the center of the Comanche line leading the sortie was a Titan figure with lines of scalps hanging from the reins of his horse. Ten Scalps. A Bison Eye who’d been with Red Hand since the beginning. A copper-hued Hercules, he was mounted on a big quarter horse, a dappled white and gray charger.

He led his band of seventy-five braves east across the flat toward the rise, their path taking them straight across the field of red-banded stakes. Onward they came, inexorable.

Gesturing with the lance, Red Hand set his warriors into motion. Forward!

The main body of Comanches advanced, coming from a power position, attacking with the rising sun at their backs. The quickening charge unleashed shrieking war whoops and drumming hoofbeats.

The long line swept westward, its swift rush narrowing the distance between them and the defenders.

They rode on, prime targets for sharpshooters Pete Zorn and Steve Maitland in the clock tower, Boone Lassiter on the courthouse second floor, Deputy Smalls and some of the Dog Star marksmen at the jail, and Hobson and a knot of riflemen at the livery stable.

At the last moment, reaching the hinge where the Hangtree Trail ran into town, the Comanche line broke in two at the center. Half the line peeled off to the left, the other half to the right.

A canny campaigner like Red Hand was too smart to charge straight into the guns of the enemy’s strongpoint. The twin halves of the line swung around to the sides, setting up a pincer movement to flank the north and south ends of Four Corners. The objective: surround the stronghold and arrow in, swarming it where it was most vulnerable.

His men broke off the full frontal charge well short of the eastern fields where the red-banded stakes lay, circling around to the sides. A lucky break, or the result of foresight and strategy?

The answer remained to be seen.

Red Hand’s attack was loud, heard clear across town, to the church knoll and beyond. It cued Ten Scalps to launch his attack.

Digging his heels into his horse’s flanks with such force the animal shuddered in pain, Ten Scalps charged forward. His followers did the same. The earth shook under their hoofbeats.

Sam’s nerves were taut. The issue would be joined directly, in a matter of seconds. Ten Scalps and his seventy-five braves were fast narrowing the distance between themselves and the knoll.

“Come on, come on. Let them come on.”

Ten Scalps was in his glory leading the charge. A bull of a man, a magnificent physical specimen, he held. a rifle in one hand, and motioned his band forward toward the knoll and Hangtown below ... charging straight into the field of red-banded stakes.

Sam timed his move with nice delicacy, waiting until the thundering herd was deep in the red-staked field. At the head of the charge, Ten Scalps was almost clear of the flat.

Sam took a stance in the belfry, using the square upright column for cover. Shouldering the rifle, he pointed it downward at the near end of the field. Sighting on the red-staked center of the closest dynamite pit, he squeezed the trigger. A hot round ripped into a bundle of buried dynamite just as Ten Scalps rode over it.

Kaboom! The tremendous explosion erupted like a vest-pocket volcano blowing its top, spewing light, heat, and violent energies. Geysering earth heaved up in a fan-shaped cone of flaming death.

Caught in the middle of the blast, Ten Scalps disintegrated, along with his horse.

Shockwaves ripped through several dozen braves riding nearby, obliterating them and their mounts in an upthrust wall of yellow-red glare. They were hurled skyward in a heap of body parts. Down they came, but not too soon—they’d been blown pretty high up.

The church rocked from the ground floor to the spire. The belfry roost shivered. Having been wrapped in muffling layers of cloth and tied down in place earlier, the church bell did not toll. It quivered with vibrations, sending out a metallic teeth-rattling hum, which Sam felt in his bones.

No sooner had he popped off the nearest blast pit than his rifle swung toward the next. He scoped out another red-tied stake and triggered it, blowing a big hole in the stunned and stricken Comanche charge and shredding men and mounts.

Gore fountained. Dust and chaff showered down from inside the spire above, shaken loose by the shock waves of the blast. Sam hoped the church bell or the spire itself wouldn’t crash down on their heads.

He sighted on a red-staked pit toward the left rear of the mass of braves and fired.

Another earthshaking blast rewarded him. Curtains of roiling black smoke rose up, wrapped with writhing red serpents of flame. Dirt, smoke, and debris temporarily obscured part of the scene.

A fresh explosion surprised Sam, detonating in the northwest quadrant of the field of death. It was one he hadn’t triggered.

Johnny Cross had, tagging it through the open sights of his rifle. He flashed a tight grin at Sam.

Hangtown had no cannon. Such heavy guns had been confiscated or spiked by Union troops in the unhappy aftermath of the War. Yet the braves’ charge was ripped and rended as if shattered by cannon balls. The field was an annex of Hell, scored with blast craters and scorch marks.

Smoking craters vented black-gray pillars of smoke, creating too much murk and chaos for Sam or Johnny to see the red-tied stakes for a moment. But they could still see plenty of Comanches, outlined shapes streaking through the palls of smoke and fire. A cluster of them changed course, charging the church.

Johnny waved a hand, getting Sam’s attention. He held an unlit bundle of dynamite.

Sam nodded.

Pitching it overhand, Johnny heaved the bundle at the oncoming attackers below.

Sam fired, hitting the bundle and detonating it in midair above the attackers. Bodies arrowed outward in all directions from the center of the blast.

Gunfire ripped in the church below as Lockridge and Bayle fired on the foe, knocking them down.

A ragged knot of Comanches rode up the far side of the knoll. Johnny let fly with another bundle of dynamite, a round from Sam’s rifle touching it off.

The slope was cleared.

Sam began picking off the remaining braves one by one, shooting them off their horses. Johnny hefted his rifle and did likewise, while Lockridge and Bayle in the church below continued to cut loose.

The charge in the west was broken, its force crushed. Survivors scattered, fleeing the killing field.

Red Hand’s man Sun Dog led the Comanches’ right wing north, his kinsman Badger taking the left wing south with the all-important task of stealing the horses penned in the Big Corral. The prime stock fenced in behind the barricades was as attractive to them as a bank ripe with gold bullion would have been to outlaws. Irresistible!

His job was to break the ring of the Big Corral and run off the herd. The animals could always be rounded up later. Denied the use of their mounts for a getaway attempt, the townfolk would be pinned in place for conquest. Rape, torture, and slaughter!

The Big Corral was not without its defenses. Hobson, Squint McCray, and a half dozen other top riflemen were posted in the second-story loft of the livery barn. More were on the ground floor.