“Dad.”
“What?” Ryan moderated his own seething rage at the sight of the slight figure of his son, right at his side. “What do you want, Dean?”
“Not worth fighting, Dad, is it? We gotta get on to revenge Christina and Jenny and Michael.”
He closed his eye and turned away. “I guess that’s so, son. All right.”
He raised his voice to the Native Americans. “I’m truly sorry the boy died. He died real bravely, and his warning saved a lot of lives.”
There was a long silence. Then the entire group turned toward him, the rising sun throwing their faces into deeper shadow.
Thomas whispered something and several of them nodded. But it was Sleeps In Day who answered for them all, clearing his throat.
“I think you speak the truth to us, Ryan Cawdor. Perhaps our brother was doomed anyway. It was his day to die, as we say. But you locked the door on him and made his death certain.”
“His death was certain the moment the bastard inside that wag pulled the pin on the implode,” J.B. said, his voice tight and angry.
“A man does not turn his back on a friend.”
“Bullshit!”
It was Ryan’s turn to try to act as the peacemaker, touching J.B. on the shoulder. “This isn’t helping,” he said, looking at the Native Americans. “No way of deciding this. Just the one question. Do we go on after the General or do we stop now? Or split up and each try to chill them on our own? Which way do you want to play it, Sleeps In Day?”
“We go on together. After all is finished, we may talk of this again.”
Ryan nodded. “Sure. Fine with me. Now, time’s wasting and the sun’s rising fast.”
IT SEEMED LIKELY that the General would send out a relief party to dig the trapped war wag clear, probably soon after first light. They’d find the destruction and the bodies, and would know that there was a serious threat close by their camp. And would send word back to the General.
The attempt to infiltrate the underground headquarters would be far more difficult.
It was a simple problem, and Ryan knew that there was a simple solution.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The J. C. Wright Caverns.
From the appearance of the sign, it somehow looked like it had been battered and faded, even when it was new, which was around a hundred years ago.
Better than Carlsbad. That was the main boast on the huge billboard. One of the main supports had rusted through and tumbled, leaving the sign leaning at a drunken angle toward the left, part of it buried in the gray sand.
” ‘Not so big and not so many bats, but beautiful and cozy.’ That is, I believe, about the only totally honest advertisement I have ever encountered,” Doc commented, slapping Judas across the top of the head as the mule tried to sidle sideways and brush him off onto a big saguaro.
Everyone had reined in, stopping to look at the sign, which teetered on the side of an ancient blacktop. The marks of the surviving wag passed within a hundred yards of the sign, turning to follow the sand-covered highway south.
“How far?” Krysty asked.
“Sign says it’s only a few minutes ahead,” Mildred replied. “Could mean anything between five and fifty. Probably nearer the latter.”
Ryan looked behind them. The smoke from the burning wag was almost extinguished, but there was still a menacing pillar rising vertically for two or three hundred feet into the dark sky, until the light breeze tugged it out of shape. If the General had men out on watch, then it seemed an even chance that one of them might have spotted it.
Dawn was less than an hour back.
“Reckon we should think about getting ready to meet their patrol,” he said.
“To repair the wag?” Sleeps In Day asked.
“Yeah. Could cross our path in a few minutes.”
“Ruins of gas station there.” Jak pointed to the right with a long, bloodless finger, where there seemed to be a dirt road cutting in from the west, and the dust-covered foundations of a few buildings.
“Be good,” Ryan agreed.
“Let us go and hide there,” Two Dogs Fighting suggested. “You stay here with your good blasters. Any you miss will fall onto our spears.”
If they’d all sat around and argued for half a day, Ryan doubted whether they’d have been able to come up with any better plan.
All it needed was a little checking of the nuts and bolts of the idea.
HE AND J.B. AGREED that the rescue and repair party wasn’t likely to consist of more than seven or eight. At the outside. The General was only a spit away from his home base, in territory that he knew well. Though he might suspect there was some threat, he would probably only look for it to come from a handful of poorly armed savages on ill-fed pinto ponies.
Dean and Doc, along with Young Pony Runs, were delegated to take all of the animals, including the protesting Judas, and lead them into an arroyo that ran behind the gas station. The mule had made its feelings known with spectacularly vicious braying and kicking out.
“You keep it real quiet or you slit its throat, Doc,” Ryan warned.
“Mayhap I might gently open a large artery anyway, Ryan, my dear fellow.”
“Just keep it quiet.”
Sleeps In Day led Two Dogs Fighting, Thomas Firemaker and the other four warriors to form a ring around the scattered remnants of the tiny ville. In less than five minutes they had each scraped out a shallow trench, quickly piling the loose earth over themselves.
Ryan stared at where he knew they were hiding, but couldn’t see any trace of them.
“Hope they can use those old blasters they got as well as they can camouflage themselves.” He sniffed the air. “Wind’s veering and freshening. Could be there’s plenty more double-heavy rain on the way.”
J.B., along with Jak and Krysty, picked hiding places for themselves along the side of the blacktop, using the shattered remains of a storm drain as cover. But the bulk of the responsibility for the firefight was going to fall on the shoulders of Mildred and Ryan, the best shots in the group, she with her Czech target pistol and he with the Steyr hunting rifle.
“Coming.” The voice was Jak’s. The full light of the day hadn’t yet flowered over the hills, and the albino’s sight was still excellent.
“Ready, Mildred?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
J. B. Dix had stood up briefly, clenching his fist and opening it five times.
“There’s five of them,” Ryan said. “Remember who they are and what they did, Mildred. Christina and the little baby. Michael Brother. I need you. Take them out clean and fast. Head shots if you figure you can make them good. But they have to be all aces on the line.”
“Sure. And so we bid a fond farewell to the good old Olympic spirit. Today’s event for Mildred Wyeth is the free pistol massacre. I’ll go for gold, Ryan.”
THE FIVE MEN RODE donkeys and wore the uniform that Ryan knew belonged to the followers of the man called the Generalblack shirts and pants, with a red stripe down the leg, black berets and black boots. They were still a couple of hundred yards away, but Ryan could already make out that four of the five sported mustaches.
There was no sign that they were aware of being watched or of any potential threat. They rode slow and easy, legs out straight, laughing and joking with one another. Ryan noticed that they carried picks and shovels strapped to their saddles, ready to dig out the wag.
“Lambs to the slaughter,” Mildred breathed, wiping the palm of her right hand down the side of her reinforced military jeans. “Lord forgive us for what we are about to do.”
“Amen,” Ryan whispered.
The range had now dropped to below a hundred yards. The group had ridden past where the seven Navaho warriors lurked amid the ruins of the gas station, looking neither to one side nor to the other.
“I’ll start with the tall one on the left,” he said.
“Fine.”
“Wait as long as you can,” Ryan warned.
Where they waited, among a nest of boulders, the ground was slightly higher than the trail ridden by the General’s men, which made for more difficult shooting.
Sixty yards.
Ryan still hadn’t brought the rifle to his shoulder, waiting as long as possible. The wind was now fresh to strong, blowing directly up from the south, reducing the chances of anyone at the General’s caverns hearing the shots. Also, the five men were now in a shallow dip in the land, which would also tend to trap the sound of the blasters.
Ryan glimpsed Jak, flat on his belly, crawling through the stubbly grass toward the riders. The sun, peeking through a belt of low clouds, glinted off something metallic held in the teenager’s right hand.