Rebel Yell (26 page)

Johnny Cross led a group of fifteen mounted men on the mission to maraud the marauders.

Among the band of gunfighting skirmishers were Lone Star notables. Tom Lord from the Ramrod wore a fancy brocaded vest and black sombrero with silver filigree embroidery. His weapons were a pair of elaborately engraved silver-plated revolvers.

Kev Huddy was an up-and-coming young gunfighter who also rode for the Ramrod. Long straight brown hair framed a pleasantly ugly horse-face with a massive overbite. His pale gray eyes were keen, alert, intelligent. He wore no holsters, instead keeping a pair of guns stuck in the top of his pants. He could get them into action fast and shot straight.

From the Cross ranch, Vic Vargas wore a holstered gun on each hip and two more guns holstered butt-out under brawny arms. He'd learned the technique of forting up with many readily available six-guns from Johnny Cross.

El Indio Negro, a mysterious gunman of mixed blood, had gotten his name from his penchant for wearing all-black outfits, including a black hat and a fringed black buckskin jacket.

Fritz Carrados, half German and half Mexican, had long thin straw-colored hair, bulging watery blue eyes, and a long thin face. He wore a planter's broad-brimmed hat and white suit. He didn't care that the white suit made him a better target. He was something of a dandy. A dandy shot, too.

Wiley Crabbe was disreputable and oafish, and a no-account brother-in-law of Squint McCray. But he was earning a mark on the plus side of the ledger by putting himself on the line in defense of Hangtree. He wore a big floppy shapeless hillbilly hat, a pair of blue denim bib overalls, and thick-soled, lace-up, brown “farm boy” boots. He was armed with his notorious “shotgun revolver,” a custom-made four-barreled shotgun featuring two barrels over two barrels, all clustered around a long central axis that could be rotated 360 degrees. He wore a bag of shotgun shells hanging from a cord worn over his neck.

The others were mighty men of renown, each whose exploits and adventures could fill a book.

Luke Pettigrew had demanded to be included in the group, but the hard truth of the matter was that his left leg ending with its stump below the knee would prevent him from doing the all-out hard riding that the mission required. He'd argued, protested, and wheedled to go along but all in vain. In the end, he'd had to admit to himself—if to no one else—that his handicap might endanger others of the band, not the least Johnny, who would try to protect his friend and partner at the risk of endangering himself.

Luke had consoled himself by staking out a role in the howitzer's gun crew, which was sure to put him in the thick of the action.

As dawn was breaking over the knoll, he thought back to that conversation.

 

 

About the same time, the band of Hangtree gunhawks was in a secret passage in Sidepocket Canyon where the Free Company was camped.

Sidepocket was commonly held to be a cul-de-sac with only one way in or out, but Johnny knew better. He had grown up in these parts. In a sense, they were his own backyard.

As a boy, he had explored and hunted extensively in the backcountry west of the Breaks, in Wild Horse Canyon and the flats stretching out to the Llano. He'd ferreted out all its hidden and secret ways, its little-known and almost unknown byways, its gulches, draws, coverts, caves, ledges, benches, fans, and slides.

Jimbo Turlock and Free Company must surely adhere to the common wisdom that Sidepocket had one way in and out—one way only—and therefore would take precautions to ensure that the portal was well-guarded.

But like much that passed for common wisdom, the belief in a lone entryway was wrong.

Johnny knew of a long winding gorge, so narrow in some places that a well-girthed horse could barely proceed through it without scraping its flanks on rock walls. It entered the canyon from the northwest, worming its way through seemingly solid stone bulwarks to spill into a hollow under a cavernous rock overhang inside Sidepocket. The outer entrance was screened by a wall of trees at the base of a limb of towering rock.

Johnny had taken the point and led the skirmisher band into the gorge in black predawn darkness. The riders had been forced to proceed single file. With no room for a horse to turn around and reverse position, once in the gorge there was no turning back.

It was no place for those with a dislike for tight confining spaces, as Johnny had made clear to the others when first outlining his plan. To a man, they were determined to take the hard ride.

“The better to smite the Philistines,” fancy-talking Mick Sabbath put it.

Dawn was breaking when the riders could see the enemy. The scene in Sidepocket looked like something out of the Middle Ages, when mounted bands of robber knights were followed by a locust-like horde of predatory rabble eager to feast on the leavings of a warlike wolf pack.

The main force of Free Company was a nomadic group of riders, not unlike Plains Indians, mounted tribes, or an army unit out in the field. The base camp partook of elements both mobile and martial.

The hard core of the Company numbered about two hundred mounted fighting men. Their camp followers, who squatted apart in an encampment of their own, were somewhere in the number of three hundred men and women and more than a few children.

Free Company had several dozen wagons of all types—wagons to carry water barrels, food supplies, weapons, loot, personnel, and personal belongings. Like the Company itself, the transport vehicles were a ragtag crazy-quilt assemblage.

The variety of wheeled carriers included teamster freight wagons, covered wagons of the Conestoga type, rancher's flatbed wagons, buckboard carriages, chuck wagons, and tall, high-sided gypsy-style homes on wheels.

There was also a motley collection of lesser vehicles—coaches, gigs, two-wheeled dog and fly carts, and even some man-powered wooden push carts.

As with all nomads, horses were a prime necessity. A section at the rear of the canyon had been penned off into a corral enclosed by a semicircle of wagons laid end to end. A gap in the middle was eliminated by a plank-and-beam wooden gate. Several hundred horses were penned in the big corral, but knots and clusters of the animals were picketed around the many smaller campsites scattered about.

A second, similar corral held several score of rustled cattle. The hapless beasts were tightly penned, crowded together with little room to move. The stock provided the Free Company with its own traveling commissary of “meat on the hoof.” What wasn't eaten could be sold later.

The canyon floor was covered by a mosaic of homemade hand-crafted structures, lightweight and portable, designed with traveling in mind. A number of canvas tents dotted the scene, having been looted from army stores and mining camps.

The better tents were gathered together in a separate section set off by themselves, away from the more primitive and squalid living areas. Other shelters included lean-tos, several tipi-like constructions, and many foxholes roofed with blankets, sheets, or rags.

The mass of people had had an immediate damaging effect on the surroundings. Grass, weeds, and the leafy brush of the canyon had pretty well been grazed down to the nub by horses and cattle. Branches were picked clean of leaves, trees and bushes had been torn up by the roots to be used for firewood. The ground underfoot had been trampled into a muddy morass.

At the early morning hour, the camp was as quiet as it ever got, coming alive with activity as the more sober denizens began to rouse themselves for the day's ill deeds ahead—which were eagerly anticipated by all and sure to be bloody, horrendous, and profitable.

Bedlam was astir as groups of drunks shouted at each other, argued, sang, laughed, cried, and fought over cackling, slatternly women and trollops. Occasional shots and screams rang out, ignored by all but those who were immediately concerned.

In the hidden cave, the Hangtree skirmishers prepared to make their wild ride. They were on foot, holding the reins of their mounts, the cavern ceiling being too low for them to sit their horses beneath it.

Vic Vargas was a
dynamitero
, a dynamiter. An open-mouthed canvas sack slung over his neck and shoulders was filled with bundles of dynamite. Each bundle contained several sticks of TNT tied together with a short fuse sticking out of the top. Vic had been helped by Sam Heller, himself an experienced hand in the bomb-making line, in preparing the explosive packages the night before.

Vic was making a few last-minute adjustments, trimming the tips of some fuse cords with a penknife blade, his face a study in concentration.

“Dynamite is tricky. Sure you know what you're doing with that stuff, Vargas?” Tom Lord asked dubiously.

“If he don't, it's too late to do anything about it now.” Wiley Crabbe snickered.

“You want to do it, Tom?” Vic Vargas said, looking up from his chores.

“Not me!” Lord said quickly, holding his hands up, palms-out in a warding gesture. “All I know about gunpowder is that it shoots a bullet!”

“And it's served you very well, Tom,” Fritz Carrados said, smiling thinly.

“Thanks, Fritz . . . I think.” Lord was unsure how to take the other's comment. Was it a compliment or a sly dig? He didn't know; the elusive Carrados was a hard man to read.

Vic finished what he was doing, folded his jackknife, and put it away. “My folks died when I was a kid. I got taken in by miners at a mining camp. They raised me to be a powder monkey. I'd put the gunpowder charges in the holes for blasting. You've got to know what you're doing in that job to keep all ten fingers.” He held out his hands with fingers extended. “I've got mine. That satisfy your concerns, Tom?”

“The proof is in the blasting,” Lord said stubbornly.

“So it is. We'll all find out soon enough, eh? Me first of all,” Vic said.

“We ready to go then?” Johnny asked.

“Let me light up this cigar first and we'll be on our way,” Vic said.

“Light it when we're in the open,” Lord said. “I don't see the sense in playing with fire with that sack full of dynamite in here.”

“Vic knows what he's doing,” Cross said.

“Sure, but does the TNT?” Lord countered.

For reply, Johnny flicked a thumbnail against the white phosphorous tip of a self-igniting wooden lucifer. The flame sputtered, underlighting Johnny's face, casting weird flickering highlights and shadows in the cave under the ledge.

A hiss sounded. Possibly a sharply indrawn breath from anxious Tom Lord, maybe from somebody else. It was too dark to tell who'd made the sound.

Johnny reached over, holding the match flame to the tip of the long thick cigar held clenched between Vic's teeth.

Vic puffed it alight. “
Gracias
.”

“
De nada
,” Johnny said. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Vic said.

“The rest of you?” Johnny asked the others.

All signaled their eager readiness, with no dissenters.

“Let's go.” Johnny took the lead, holding the reins of his chestnut horse. He went up a gentle dirt slope, stepping onto the canyon floor and out from under the overhang. Parting the screen of brush with an arm, he stepped out into the open, the horse following.

The other skirmishers followed one by one until all men and horses were under open skies, clear of the brush. They stepped into the saddles, mounting up in a ranked line side by side, facing the Free Company camp and the gap in the far side of the canyon that was the exit.

The canyon floor was covered with a haze of smoke from the many campfires and cooking fires scattered around the site. The gray pall was so thick in some places that it stung the eyes of those nearby. The canyon walls held the smoke, forming a protective bulwark against cleansing winds. Through only two vents could the smoke escape—straight up into the sky and by drifting east out of the mouth of the canyon.

Baldy Vance pointed at a clump of well-ordered, well-kept tents clustered off to one side at the north of the canyon. “Reckon them tents is for the high muckety-mucks in this crowd?”

“That's how to bet it,” Fritz Carrados said.

“Let's be sure to take care of them,” Kev Huddy chimed in.

“Hear that, Vic?” Johnny Cross asked.

“Yes I do. Strikes me as a property that's ripe for demolition.”

“That means he aims to blow it up, Wiley,” Hilton George condescended to remark to the man seated astride a horse to his left.

“I know what it means, dang you,” Wiley said, irritated.

The area with the greatest concentration of people was in the center of the canyon, but the space was relatively small. Free Company and its tattered auxiliaries were many, so several dozen ragtag foot soldiers and followers were camped farther away, closer to where the Hangtree raiders suddenly emerged as if they were phantoms who could mysteriously appear at will.

A line of smoke rose from a low campfire. Around it, men stretched out on bedrolls or wrapped in blankets. A few early risers stood around the fire, smoking and passing around a half-gallon brown jug. A pretty sorry-looking bunch, dirty, unkempt, raggedy-assed, they turned to stare at the newcomers.