"After us," shouted Jack. "One of them got away."
Both of them covered in blood.
Jack and Walks Alone wheeled and took off down the road.
"Jack's back," said Doyle.
"I couldn't help but notice," answered Innes.
"Lionel," said Doyle, "perhaps you ought to wait here.... "
"By myself?" said Lionel, launching himself into the sad-die like a veteran. "Are you crazy? Let's ride."
They followed Jack's hell-bent pace. The sky grew red; the violent bouncing of the saddles blurred their vision, giving the horizon a shimmering miragelike surreality, until The New City itself finally came into view; the entire southern half of the town was engulfed in fire, wind gusts fanning sheets of flame to towering heights. On the north side of Main Street, most of the buildings remained intact.
They heard church bells ringing, and at the far end of that street, for the first time they saw the black tower stark against the sky, lit up by the inferno, marbled in a dozen hues of swirling red reflections. A sea of torches swarmed around its base above an undulating mass of white that they realized was a crowd of people.
A second gate blocked the road in a fence that ringed the settlement; Jack and Walks Alone steadied their horses' strides on approach and cleared it with a jump. Two black-shirted guards jumped out of the guardhouse and took aim at their backs. Presto and Innes quickly dismounted and cut the guards down with a volley before they could shoot.
"This is it!" shouted Innes, running forward, opening the gate while Presto covered him.
"Leave the horses here," said Doyle, climbing down.
"But they've already gone on," said Lionel, pointing to Main Street where Jack and Walks Alone had ridden from view.
"We'll need a way back out," said Doyle, ending the discussion. "Tie them here."
They secured the horses to the gate and armed themselves.
"Lionel," said Doyle, "why don't you wait for us here as well...."
"No, goddammit," said Lionel, cocking his Winchester as he'd seen the others do. "Stop treating me as if I'm some sort of inconvenience. It's my father who's in here somewhere, and I've a better right than anyone to be—"
A bullet whistled, knocking off his hat; Innes yanked Lionel to the ground, and the four scrambled to cover behind the guardhouse as another shot kicked off the gate.
"I do apologize," said Doyle to Lionel, who was nervously fingering the hole in his hat.
Halfway down Main Street, Jack and Walks Alone stopped in front of a large adobe house; the fire burning too intensely to risk taking the horses in any farther. They grabbed their rifles, turned the horses around, and spanked them back in the direction of the gate.
At the far end of the street through a thick haze of smoke and dust, they could see a column of people in white shirts moving toward the black church, where a large crowd moved slowly and steadily through its doors.
"There," said Jack, pointing toward the church. "That's where we're supposed to go, isn't it?"
Walks Alone nodded. They moved.
A patrol of white shirts came out of an alley; Jack calmly pulled his pistol and fired four times. As they stepped over the bodies, another figure stumbled toward them out of the darkness. Walks Alone raised the shotgun in her hand to fire, but Jack pushed the barrel aside.
A woman. Wearing a white low-cut gown with an Empire waist, a paste tiara fastened to her thick black hair. Face blackened with soot, dress shredded, arms raised in desperation.
"Help me, please," she said.
Jack stared at her. "Oh, my God."
The woman's eyes hit Jack and grew wide. "Oh, my God."
Walks Alone saw recognition fighting Jack's eyes as well. He moved right to the woman and she fell into his arms, holding on for dear life.
"It's you. It's really you, it's really you." Eileen opened her eyes, saw the Indian woman covered with blood over Jack's shoulder, and gasped.
"You're all right?" asked Jack.
She nodded, tears falling onto his shoulder.
"Where's Frank?" she asked, irrationally deciding they all must know each other.
"Who's Frank?" he asked.
"He went to look for Jacob."
"Jacob is here?" said Walks Alone.
"You know Jacob?" asked Eileen.
"He is here, then," said Jack.
"Yes, he's with your brother," said Eileen. "He killed Bendigo."
"Jacob did?" asked Jack.
"No; your brother." "So my brother's here."
"Yes."
"Who's Bendigo?" asked Walks Alone, growing more confused.
"Who's she?" asked Eileen.
"A friend. Where's Jacob now?"
"I don't know; we came in with the Japanese man...."
"Japanese man?" asked Walks Alone.
"This Japanese man?" asked Jack, pulling out the flier.
"That's him," said Eileen.
"Where is he?" asked Jack.
"I don't know; maybe with Frank."
"Who's Frank?" asked Walks Alone.
"Wait," said Jack, to both of them. "Slow down. Back up."
Jack pulled them into the shadows of the alley; Eileen took a deep breath and tried her best to explain.
At the guardhouse, shots peppered the logs around the four men. Their return fire had failed to flush out the sniper; Doyle looked through his spyglass and spotted a muzzle flash in the darkness of a shack to the northeast, a hundred yards away across open sand.
"We can't stay here," said Doyle.
"I'll have a go," said Presto.
The men looked at each other.
"Bit of the old tiger hunt," he said blithely. "Nothing to it."
"You're one of the dreamers," said Doyle. "You've some part to play in all this. Can't risk losing you off the board."
Presto reluctantly deferred. Doyle looked at his brother.
"Me, then," said Innes.
Doyle nodded. Innes edged to the side of the logs, looked left, and saw Jack's and Walks Alone's horses galloping toward him.
"Diversionary fire would be much appreciated," said Innes.
On Doyle's signal, the other three men rose up and emptied their guns toward the sniper. Innes dashed out from behind the guardhouse in front of the advancing horses. They reared as he approached; he grabbed one by the reins and used the horse as cover to take him to the nearest structure, a row of shanties north of the main street. By the time the sniper could spot him, the horse had run off again and Innes was in place; the shots cracked harmlessly through the wood over his head.
With the sniper firing at Innes, Doyle jumped out and grabbed the bridles of the horses, gathered them in, and tied them with the others behind the guardhouse. Presto spotted Edison's suitcase strapped to Jack's saddle and pulled it down.
Innes rushed silently through the back of die shanty, negotiating a series of empty buildings until he was directly behind the sniper's position. He picked up a rock, cocked his pistol, and closed in on the shack's rear door.
Through the glass, Doyle saw movement in the shack window and took off at a dead run toward the building.
Innes tossed the rock onto the roof of a lean-to on the right and kicked open the back door, ready to fire; the shack was empty. He heard a hammer cock to his left and dove to the ground; the first bullet cut through the meat of his upper left arm, the second kicked into the ground beside his head. His return shot went through the window wide, missing the sniper, a man in black outside the building. The sniper raised the rifle to finish him when three shots exploded in a burst and knocked the man out of sight.
Innes lay still, cocking the pistol, hands shaking violently. "Get him? Did you get him?"
Silence. Innes lowered the gun when Arthur appeared in the window, holding his smoking rifle.
"Got him," said Doyle, looking down at the man in black clothes.
"Is that the one?" asked Innes, feeling both faint and talkative. "Is that the one that got away? Out there, I mean. You know; the one they saw."