The Loner: Inferno

Chapter 11

The Apache never had a chance. The Kid’s gun was already in his hand, and it roared twice in less than a heartbeat, slamming a pair of slugs into the attacker’s chest.

The bullets stopped the Apache like running into a wall. He crumpled, probably dead when he hit the ground.

He wasn’t alone, though. A Winchester cracked, spitting flame and leaden death into the night. The Kid felt as much as heard the rifle bullet hum hotly past his ear. He triggered a shot at the muzzle flash as he went down in a rolling dive.

His brain was working automatically, trying to figure out how many Indians he faced and where they were. He heard a sharp, angry neigh from the dun, so he knew one of the Apaches was over by the horse.

As The Kid came up on one knee with the Colt leveled, he spotted a figure in the moonlight, trying to get around the dun. The Kid fired and sent the man spinning off his feet.

Rapid footsteps sounded behind him. The Kid whirled as he came up, but the Apache was too close. He crashed into The Kid in a flying tackle, and both of them went down.

The Kid expected to feel the bite of cold steel at any second. He kicked loose as the Apache grappled with him. The man lunged after him, and moonlight glinted on a knife blade. Steel rang on steel as The Kid blocked the thrust with the barrel of his Colt.

He sank a knee in the Apache’s groin, making the man grunt in pain. The knife slashed at him again. The Kid ducked desperately as the blade went over his head. He grabbed the Apache’s wrist, clamping the fingers of his left hand around it to hold the knife off.

With his right hand, he shoved the revolver’s barrel under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger.

Flesh muffled the boom as the shot blew the Apache’s head apart. The man fell back dead. The Kid plucked the knife from his fingers and rolled away from the corpse.

He had just fired the last round in the Colt’s cylinder. Extra cartridges were in his pocket, but the knife would have to do until he could reload.

As he knelt there with the empty gun in one hand and the knife in the other, listening to the pounding beat of his pulse inside his head, he looked around the clearing where he’d made his camp and didn’t see anyone else. The dun still moved around skittishly, but that was due to the smells of powdersmoke and death that hung in the air.

The Kid’s instincts told him his enemies were dead. He trusted those instincts, but he wanted confirmation. He stood up, slipped the knife behind his belt, and reached into his pocket for those extra shells. It took only a moment to thumb them into the cylinder.

With the gun ready, he checked the three bodies. The Apaches were all dead, just as he’d suspected.

With that grim chore out of the way, he quickly holstered the Colt, strapped the gunbelt around his hips, and pulled on his boots. He got the saddle on the dun as fast as he could.

He hadn’t forgotten the sounds of battle he had heard coming from the south, or the glow of flames lighting up the sky.

He tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but a part of his brain still listened to the shots. They were dwindling, fewer and fewer of them, and The Kid knew that was probably bad. He tried to tell himself that the Apaches had given up their attack on the wagon camp and retreated ...

But the orange glow of the fire told a different story.

“The bastards,” he muttered under his breath as he tightened the saddle cinches. “The cruel bastards.”

The Apaches must have been watching the wagon train for the past couple of days, he thought. They were probably curious and wanted to see where the immigrants were going. Once it was obvious they planned to settle in Raincrow Valley, the Apaches had moved in to snatch away their chance for happiness, and most likely their lives as well.

The raiders had been lurking out there in the darkness, watching the camp, and they had seen The Kid ride away. They had sent three men after him, no doubt thinking that was plenty to slaughter one lone white man.

Those three had found out just how wrong that was.

The Kid couldn’t take any pleasure in that. As soon as everything was ready, he put his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Leaving the dead warriors where they had fallen, he rode down the hill to the creek and started south. He pushed the dun as fast as he dared in the darkness.

From time to time he stopped to listen. When he didn’t hear any more shots, a feeling of rage filled him. Fate had conspired to keep him away from the settlers on the very night they could have most used his help.

The orange glare in the sky brightened, then began to fade. The fires were dying down, The Kid knew. It was just like the attack on the Conestoga, only on a much larger scale. He dreaded the sight of the devastation that awaited him.

But not for a second did he consider turning back. He had ridden out of that village several days earlier when violence was about to erupt, and that decision had nagged at him. The circumstances tonight were much different—he hadn’t had any idea the Apaches were about to attack the camp—but he wasn’t going to turn away again.

He slowed down as he approached the camp. Fires still burned here and there, but most of the wagons had already been consumed. Bodies, human and animal alike, littered the ground thickly. All the oxen had been slaughtered, but as far as The Kid could tell, the Apaches had taken some of the horses with them. They could trade those horses below the border, maybe, or kill them and eat them on the way back to Mexico.

A bitter taste filled The Kid’s mouth as he rode up to the camp and saw the sprawled corpses. Men, women, even children ... no one had been spared.

He dismounted and started through the camp on foot, searching for survivors. Horace Dunlap’s body lay just inside the circle of charred wagons. The wagonmaster still clutched a gun in his hand. He had been shot to pieces, riddled with at least a dozen bullets.

The Kid would have been willing to bet that Dunlap had taken some of the attackers with him, though.

He moved on, listening for a moan, peering through the flickering light of the flames that still burned for any sign of movement. He didn’t find any.

After a few moments he came to Jessica’s wagon. At least, he thought it was her wagon. In the midst of all this destruction, it was difficult to be sure.

He saw a familiar figure lying face down next to the burned wagon. The Kid hurried over and knelt next to the man, grasping his shoulder and rolling him onto his side.

Scott Harwood’s head hung limply on his neck. His face was twisted in death. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from his chest. The Kid could tell what had happened. That arrow had driven deeply into Harwood’s body, killing him, and the shaft had broken off when the scout pitched forward.

Still on one knee, The Kid looked around, thinking that Jessica’s body had to be nearby. He figured she would have died fighting, just as many of the others obviously had.

He didn’t see her, though, and when he stood up and got as close to the burned wagon as the heat still coming from it would allow, he didn’t see her body in the ashes and debris, either.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. If she wasn’t there, she was somewhere else in the camp, but she was just as dead either way. From everything he had seen so far, the Apaches had wiped out everyone.

He kept looking, and a few minutes later was rewarded by the sound of a weak moan behind him. Swinging around quickly, he asked, “Who’s there? Can you hear me?”

Another moan turned into a reedy voice saying, “O ... over here ...”

Even strained by agony, the voice was familiar. The Kid ran toward one of the sprawled shapes and dropped to a knee beside it. The wounded man lay on his side. Easing him over onto his back, The Kid propped the man’s head up.

Milo Farnum gasped in pain as The Kid moved him. The front of the old scout’s shirt was dark and sodden with blood.

“K-Kid?” he choked out. “Kid ... is that ... you?”

“That’s right, Milo. Take it easy. I’ll see if I can help you.”

A grim chuckle came from the old-timer. “Ain’t no ... chance of that. I’m ... gutshot. Been tryin’ to ... hang on ... ’cause I thought maybe ... you’d hear the fightin’ ... and come back.”

The Kid understood. Farnum should have been dead, but grit and sheer determination had kept the scout alive.

“I’ll go get my canteen—”

“No! Water ... water won’t help. I want ... I wanted to tell you ... those red bastards didn’t ...”

Farnum’s voice trailed off. The Kid waited, thinking for a second that Farnum had died, but then he heard the rasp of breath coming from the old man’s throat.

“What didn’t they do, Milo?”

Farnum had to force the words from his tortured throat. “They didn’t ... kill everybody!”

The Kid’s heart slugged in his chest as the meaning of Farnum’s words sunk in. He leaned closer and asked, “They took prisoners with them?”

“Y-yeah. I seen ’em... . They had ... Jess Ritter ...”

Jessica was still alive!

“And Miz Price ... and her daughter ... and another lady ... Leah Gabbert... . I saw ’em ... drag those gals off... . Thought maybe ... if you came back ... I could tell you... . They headed south.... You gotta ... go after ...”

When Farnum’s voice faded, it was replaced by a long sigh, the likes of which The Kid had heard too many times in his life.

The scout was dead.

Despite that, The Kid said, “I’ll go after them, Milo. You did the right thing by hanging on until I got here. I’ll go after them and do everything I can for them.”

After making that vow, he eased Farnum’s head to the ground.

The Kid stood up and continued his search of the camp, hoping he might find someone else alive, but that hope was futile. Farnum had been the only survivor, and now he was gone.

By the time The Kid finished his search, the horrors of what he had seen were ingrained in his soul. He had been witness to death and destruction before in his life, but never on this scale.

What made it even worse was the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it. Burying all these people would take him days, and in the heat the stench would choke a man before he could ever get them in the ground. Even if that cavalry patrol had been there to act as a burial detail, it would take a long time to dig so many graves.

Thinking about the troopers made The Kid’s jaw clench in anger. If Lt. Nicholson had accompanied the wagon train to Raincrow Valley, as Horace Dunlap had asked, the immigrants might still be alive. The cavalry would have camped there for the night, and the Apaches probably would not have attacked.

Would the raiders have bided their time and struck later, after the cavalry was gone? That was possible, The Kid supposed, but there was no way to know for sure either way. He forced those thoughts out of his mind for the moment.

But if he ever crossed paths with Lt. Blake Nicholson again, he would make sure the man knew what had happened there.

In the meantime, there was nothing The Kid could do except keep the promise he had made to Milo Farnum. He walked through the devastation, past the littered bodies, and left the circle of burned wagons. The well-trained dun waited for him with reins dangling. The horse tossed its head as The Kid came up, maybe spooked a little by the coppery smell of so much freshly spilled blood.

“Yeah, we’re leaving,” The Kid told the dun. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

He mounted up and turned the horse to the south. Even though it was dark, he didn’t have any trouble following the trail up to the pass through the hills.

When he reached it, he paused and turned to look back. The fires were all out, but piles of glowing embers still winked here and there in the darkened valley, like the eyes of the ghosts that might linger there. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but a little shudder ran through him as he gazed out over that place of death.

Gehenna, he thought. That’s what they ought to call Raincrow Valley now.

He turned to face south again and heeled the dun into a trot.

Somewhere out there were four women, terrified prisoners of the Apaches.

And Kid Morgan was their only chance for survival.