Smoke and the Reno Kid had grabbed up rifles and bandoleers of ammunition and raced to the barn and corral, knowing that if the outlaws succeeded in stampeding their horses they were doomed. Reno climbed into the loft, with Jake and Corgill. Fitz, Willie, and 01’Cook stayed below, while Smoke and Gage remained outside, behind watering troughs by the corral.
The outlaw, Hartley, who was wanted for murder down in the Oklahoma Nations, tried to rope the corral gates and bring them down. Smoke leveled his pistol and the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Running to the man, Smoke jerked him off his horse and smashed the man in the face with a balled right fist, then a left to the man’s jaw. He jerked Hartley’s pistol from leather and rapped the outlaw on the head-bone with it. Hartley lay still in the dirt.
Smoke stuck both of Hartley’s pistols behind his belt, reloaded his own .44’s, and climbed onto Hartley’s horse, a big dun. He would see how the outlaws liked the fight taken to them.
Smoke charged right into the middle of the confusing dust-filled fray. He saw the young punk gunslick Twain and shot him out of the saddle, one of Twain’s boots caught in the stirrup. Twain’s horse bolted, dragging the wounded and screaming young punk across the yard. His screaming stopped when his head impacted against a tree stump.
Smoke stayed low in the saddle, offering as little target as possible for the outlaws’ guns. He slammed the horse’s shoulder into an outlaw’s leg. The gunny screamed in pain from his bruised leg and then began screaming in earnest as the horse lost its balance and fell on him, breaking the outlaw’s other leg. The horse scrambled to its feet, the steel-shod hooves ripping and tearing flesh and breaking the outlaw’s bones.
Cat Jennings rammed his big gelding into Smoke’s horse and knocked Smoke to the ground. Rolling away from the hooves of the panicked horse, Smoke jumped behind a startled outlaw, stuck a pistol into the man s side, and pulled the trigger. Shoving the wounded man out of the saddle, Smoke slipped into the saddle, grabbed up the reins, and put his spurs to the animal’s sides, turning the horse, trying to get a shot at Cat.
But the man was as elusive and quick as his name implied, fading into the milling confusion and churning dust. Smoke leveled his pistol at Ben Sabler and missed him clean as the man wheeled his horse. The bullet slammed into another outlaw. The outlaw was hard-hit, but managed to stay in the saddle and gallop out of the fight.
“Back! Back!” Lanny Ball screamed, his voice faint in the booming and spark-filled night. “Fall back and surround the place.”
Smoke tried to angle for a shot at Lanny and failed. Jumping off his horse, Smoke rolled behind a tree in the front yard of the main house, and with a .44 in each hand, emptied the guns into the backs of the fast-retreating outlaws. He saw several jerk in their saddles as hot lead tore into flesh and one man fell, the back of his head bloody.
Smoke ran to the house. Jumping on the front porch, he saw the body of Willie, draped over the porch railing. On the other side of the porch, Holman was sprawled, a bloody hole in his forehead.
“Damn!” Smoke cursed, just as Cord pushed open the screen door and stepped out.
Cord’s face was grim as he looked at the body of W illie. “Been with me a long time,” the rancher said. “He was a good hand. Loyal to the end.”
“Man can’t ask for a better epitaph,” Smoke said. “Cord, you take the barn and I’ll run to the bunkhouse. Tell the men to fortify their positions and fill up every canteen and bucket they can find.” He cut his eyes as Liz and Alice came onto the porch. “You ladies start cooking. The men are going to need food and lots of it. We might be pinned down here for days.”
Cord said, “I’ll have some boys gather up all the guns and ammo from the dead. Pass them around.” He stepped off the porch and trotted into the night.
“Larry!” Smoke called, and the hand turned. “Get the horses out of the corral and into the barn. Find as much scrap lumber as you can and fortify their stalls against stray lead.
The cowboy nodded and ran toward the corral, hollering for Dan to join him.
Smoke and Parnell carried the bodies of Holman and Willie away from the house, placing them under a tree; the shade would help as the sun came up. The men covered them with blankets and secured the edges with rocks.
Snipers from out in the darkness began sending random rounds into the house and the outbuildings, forcing everyone to seek shelter and stay low.
“This is going to be very unpleasant,” Parnell said, lying on the ground until the sniping let up and he could get back to the house.
“Wait until the sun comes up and the temperature starts rising,” Smoke told him. “Our only hope is that cloud buildup.” He looked upward. “If it starts raining, I plan on heading into the timber and doing some head-hunting. The rain will cover any sound.”
“Do you think prayer would help?” Parnell said, only half joking.
“It sure wouldn’t hurt.”
There were seven dead outlaws, and all knew at least that many more had been wounded; some of them were hard-hit and would not live.
But among their own, Corgill and Pat had been wounded. Their wounds were painful, but not serious. They could still use a gun, but with difficulty.
Smoke and Cord got together just after first light and talked it out, tallying it up. They were badly outnumbered, facing perhaps a hundred or more experienced gunhandlers, and the defenders’ position was not the best.
They had plenty of food and water and ammunition, but all knew if the outlaws decided to lie back and snipe, eventually the bullets would seek them out one by one. The house was the safest place, the lower floor being built mostly of stone. The bunkhouse was also built of stone. The wounded had been moved from the upstairs to the lower floor. Beans, with his leg in a cast, could cover one window. Charlie Starr, the old warhoss, had scoffed off his wound and dressed, his right arm in a sling, but with both guns strapped around his lean waist.
“I’ve hurt myself worser than this by fallin’ out of bed,” he groused.
Parnell had gathered up a half dozen shotguns and loaded them up full, placing them near his position. The women had loaded up rifles and belted pistols around their waists.
Silver Jim almost had an apoplectic seizure when he ran from the bunkhouse to the main house and put his eyes on the women, all of them dressed in men’s britches, stompin’ around in boots, six-guns strapped around their waists. He opened his mouth and closed it a half dozen times before he could manage to speak. Shielding his eyes from the sight of women all dressed up like men, with their charms all poked out ever’ whichaway, he turned his beet-red face to Cord and found his voice.
“Cain’t you do something about that! It’s plumb indecent!”
“I tried. My wife told me that if we had to make a run for it, it would be easier sittin’ a saddle dressed like this.”
“Astride!” Silver Jim was mortified.
“I reckon,” Cord said glumly.
“Lord have mercy! Things keep on goin’ like this, wimmin’ll be gettin’ the vote for it’s over.”
“Probably,” Parnell said, one good eye on Rita. There was something to be said about jeans, but he kept that thought to himself.
“Wimmin a-voting’?” Silver Jim breathed.
“Certainly. Why shouldn’t they? They’ve been voting down in Wyoming for years.”
The old gunfighter walked away, muttering. He met Charlie in the hall. “What’s the matter, that bed get too much for you?”