“Nothing much. Nothing automatic. The one on the left with the scarf around his head has a some kind of long blaster. He’s thumbing back on a sort of hammer.”
Hennings stood up. “I’ll waste them all, Ryan?”
The buggy was very close to the belt of sycamores that lined the far side of the river. Another ten seconds or so, and they’d be under their cover.
“Hold it. There might be hundreds of the double-poor bastards round here on both sides o’ the water.”
“I’ll just warn them some,” said the black, bracing himself and squeezing the trigger.
The blaster was set on continuous, and a stream of bullets flowed out, with a sound like tearing silk; it kicked up a line of spray a few paces from the watching men.
Finnegan glanced over his shoulder, whooping his approval at his old friend’s success. “Teach them suckers not to fuck with us!” he crowed, his enthusiasm making the swampwag veer alarmingly to one side, nearly sending Hennings toppling into the water.
“One of them’s got a blaster aimed!” shouted Krysty warningly.
Hennings waved his hand derisively toward the group of natives, clenching his fist in a power salute.
Ryan watched the men pick themselves up after Hennings’s burst of fire and scatter. All but one. He stood still, a long rifle at his shoulder, rock-steady.
There was something menacing about the man’s deadly calm. There was the look about him of someone who knew precisely what he was doing, not frightened by the shattering effects of the fire from the buggy. Ryan could almost feel himself inside the man’s skull.
He considered the windage, the elevation, the drift, the distance.
Then he squeezed and squeezed again.
Ryan turned toward Hennings, tasting the immediacy of the danger like cold steel on his tongue.
“Get down, Henn!” he shouted.
The tall black glanced sideways at him, the smile of triumph still on his lips. From the corner of his eye Ryan spotted the puff of gray powder smoke as it billowed from the muzzle of the long gun.
A moment later he caught the crack of the explosion. Almost simultaneously he heard the unforgettable flat wet slap of lead striking flesh. Hennings gave an “oh” that held more surprise than fear or pain.
“No,” said Finnegan, half standing, losing control of the swampwag for a moment, sending it skittering sideways, down the river.
“Keep on it,” yelled J.B., nearest to Hennings, holding the black man as he folded into his arms, blood gushing from the back of his head.
Ryan sprayed the men on the bank with his blaster, getting a vicious satisfaction from seeing three or four of them go down, kicking and jerking. But the man with the musket had reached the safety of the fringe of low scrub.
The buggy jolted and tipped as it reached the far side of the river and moved up the sloping bank. The six wheels worked independently, grinding over the tangled roots of the bayous. Mud and water splashed up off the huge tires.
Low branches scraped across the top of the swampwag, leaves crowding in on the crouching men and women. The moment they were totally under cover, Finnegan kicked the engine to a stop, letting it idle and die in a grinding of fears; vaulting off his seat he got back to where J.B. still cradled Hennings.
“How is?”
Both Finnegan and Hennings had ridden with the Trader on his expeditions for some years. They’d both seen a lot of deaths. Both of them knew the truth.
The leaden ball had struck the black man just above the right eye, leaving a neat dark hole from which a little blood seeped, bright scarlet against the skin. The exit hole was huge a chunk of skull the size of a man’s fist had been punched out in jagged fragments, blood and brains slopping all over the bottom of the buggy.
Krysty, Lori and Doc stood helplessly by, looking down at the felled man. Lori was crying silently, her shoulders shaking, tears sliding down her smooth cheeks, pattering into the spreading pool of blood.
Hennings’s eyes were open, blinking in shock. Though the brain damage was clearly terminal, a shred of life still remained. His eyes sought Finnegan, fighting to focus on the red face of his oldest friend.