XIV Men of Peace
1
THE RANCH house was small, a one-room sod cabin, but the more defensible for that. Its two windows had heavy inside shutters and each wall a pair of loopholes. Picket stakes surrounded it, six deep. Men built like this in the west Texas cattle country—such of them as weren’t dead or fled.
“Lord, but I wish we’d cleared out in time,” Tom Lang-ford said. “You and the kids, at least.”
“Hush, now,” replied his wife. “You couldn’t run the spread without me, and if we gave up we’d lose everything we’ve worked for.” She leaned across the table, over the firearms and ammunition that covered it, to pat his arm. A sunbeam through a hole on the east side struck through the gloom within and made living bronze of her hair. “All we got to do is hold out till Bob brings help. Unless the redskins quit first.”
Langford kept himself from wondering whether the va-quero had gotten clean away. If the Comanches had spied him and sent pursuit with remounts, he must already lie scalped. No telling. Though you could see a long ways around here, by day, the war band had appeared at dawn, when folks were just getting started on the chores, and arrived faster than you might believe. Of the hands, only Ed Lee, Bill Davis, and Carlos Padilla had made it to the bouse .with the family, and not before a bullet smashed Ed’s left arm.
Susie bad set and bandaged that limb as best she was able after the warriors recoiled from gunfire and withdrew out of “sight. At the moment Ed had Nancy Langford on his lap.
The three-year-old clung hard to him, terrified. Bill kept watch at the north end, Carlos at the south, while Jim flitted between east and west in the pride and eagerness of his own seven years. A sharpness of powder still hung in the air, and some smoke seemed to have drifted in from the barn as well. The Indians had torched it, the only wooden building on the place. The roar of its burning reached the defenders faintly, like a noise in a nightmare.
“They’re comin’ back!” Jim shrilled.
Langford grabbed a Winchester off the table and sprang to the west wall. Behind him he heard Lee say, “Bill, you help the missus reload. Carlos, you be with Tom. Jim, you go ‘round and tell me where I’m needed.” The voice was ragged with pain but the man could work a Colt.
Langford peered through his loophole. Sunlight brightened the bare ground outside. Dust puffed and swirled ruddy from the hoofs of oncoming mustangs. He got a brown body in his sights, but then the pony veered and the rider vanished, except for one leg. Indian trick, hang yourself down the other side. But a Comanche without a horse was only half himself. Langford’s rifle cracked and nudged his shoulder. The mustang reared, screamed, went over, kicked. The warrior had thrown himself clear. He was lost in the dust and rampage. Langford realized he had pretty much wasted that shot, and picked his next target with care. The bullets had to last.
Riders would never take this house. They’d learned as much, first time. They galloped around and around, whooping, firing. One toppled, another, another. I didn’t get them, Langford knew. Carlos did. A real marksman, him. Brave, too. Could likely have gotten away from where he was when they showed up, but stuck with us. Well, I never did hold with looking down on a man just because he’s Mexican.
“Comin’ on foot, over here!” Jim cried.
Yes, of course, the mounted braves provided covering fire, distraction, for those who snaked amongst the pickets. Langford allowed himself a glance backward. Bill Davis had left the table to join Ed Lee on the north. The black cowhand wasn’t the best with a gun in these United States, but his targets were close, slowed down by the barrier, scornful of death. He blasted away. Susie brought him a reloaded rifle, took his emptied weapon back, fetched Ed a fresh pistol. The screams, hoofquake, shooting went on and on, world without end. You weren’t scared, no time for that, but at the back of your head you wondered if there had ever been anything else or ever would be.