Kickapoo Jackson was rolling the stage down the slight hill to Bluff Creek when he heard the roar of the gun. Brad Delaney came up on his knees, rifle in hand, but it was Wells with the revolving shotgun who saw the first Indian. His shotgun bellowed and Delaney’s rifle beat out a rapid tattoo of sound, and from below pistols and a rifle were firing.
The attack began and ended in that brief instant of gunfire, for the Indians were no fools and their ambush had failed. Swiftly, they retired, slipping away in the gathering darkness and carrying three dead warriors with them.
Jackson sawed the team to a halt, and Delaney dropped to the ground and sent three fast shots after the retreating Indians.
Doc Moody pushed open the door and saw the dying man, the rawhide still gripped in his teeth. With a gentle hand he took it away.
“You don’t need to tell me, Doc. I’ve had it.” Sweat beaded his forehead. “I’ve known for … hours. Had-had to … warn….”
Hank Wells dropped to his knees beside Ryan. “Dud, you saved us all, but you saved more than you know. You saved your own son!”
“Son?”
“Ruby had a boy, Dud. Your boy. He’s four now, and he’s outside there with Ma Harrigan.”
“My boy? I saved my boy?”
“Ruby’s dead, Ryan,” Delaney said. “She was sending the boy to you, but we’ll care for him, all of us.”
He seemed to hear, tried to speak, and died there on the floor at Bluff Creek Station.
Doc Moody got to his feet. “By rights,” he said, “that man should have been dead hours ago.”
“Guts,” Hank Wells said, “Dud never had much but he always had guts.”
Doc Moody nodded. “I don’t know how you boys feel about it, but I’m adopting a boy.”
“He’ll have four uncles then,” Jackson said. “The boy will have to have a family.”
“Count us in on that,” the newlywed said. “We want to be something to him. Maybe a brother and sister, or something.”
They’ve built a motel where the stage station stood, and not long ago a grandson and a great-grandson of Dud Ryan walked up the hill where some cedar grew, and stood beside Dud Ryan’s grave. They stopped only a few minutes, en route to a family reunion.
There were fifty-nine descendants of Dud Ryan, although the name was different. One died in the Argonne Forest and two on a beach in Normandy and another died in a hospital in Vietnam after surviving an ambush. There were eleven physicians and surgeons at the reunion, one ex-governor, two state senators, a locomotive engineer, and a crossing guard. There were two bus drivers and a schoolteacher, several housewives, and a country storekeeper. They had one thing in common: They all carried the blood of Ryan, who died at Bluff Creek Station on a late October evening.