A Good Day to Die Read online

  While the Fishers did not exactly flourish on the south rim, neither did they perish. Maverick cattle provided meat, hides, tallow, and, when ground up, powdered bones for fertilizer. There was wild game aplenty—deer, antelope, pheasant, quail, and such varmints as possum, raccoon, rabbit, and squirrel.

  Seeds bought or bartered from the Hangtown feed store grew in vegetable patches near the ranch house yielding corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and such. Ada and her daughter Lydia tended to the gardening, as well as the cooking, cleaning, mending, and washing.

  Fisher and his sixteen-year-old son Eben did the heavy labor, clearing, hewing, building, herding and branding cattle, and the like. Built like a bull, Fisher was a hard, tireless worker.

  Son Eben got his growth early. He was a big, hulking youth, a towering man-boy. He did his chores like he was told—as long as his Pa was there to oversee him every minute. Fisher despaired of Eben ever making his way all by his lonesome.

  Eben was in the dooryard chopping wood when his pa returned from the stream with two full buckets of water.

  Although big and strong, Eben was clumsy and ill-coordinated. Coarse dark hair fell across his face into his eyes. Flailing away at sectioned log rounds with a double-headed ax, he seemed more likely to cut off some toes rather than split firewood. Working harder, as if to impress his pa with his industry, he made a noisy task of it, grunting with the effort of each stroke, splinters and wood chips flying this way and that, making a mess.

  Hot, tired, and thirsty, Fisher wasn’t fooled. His shoulders, arms, and neck ached from the effort of fetching water for the house cistern. His mouth and throat were dry, parched. He longed for some refreshment. But it was easier to keep moving and stumble along, rather than having to resume from a dead start. He’d dip a ladle into a bucket, taking a long drink of cool, fresh water once he reached the house and set down his heavy load.

  He closed his eyes for an instant, squeezing them shut. Red and yellow suns and pinwheels blazed against the black backdrop inside his eyelids.

  He opened his eyes. He saw intruders.

  Indians!

  Comanches.

  Four braves on horseback emerged from behind a screen of trees on the west, on his left side. They’d come as if out of nowhere, materializing like phantoms.

  Fisher shook his head, wondering if perhaps that’s all they were—hallucinations brought on by too much sun on his bare head.

  They looked hard and cruel. Dangerous.

  Reeling, he staggered back a step. A giant invisible hand squeezed his gut, the bottom of his stomach feeling as though it had fallen out. He stood frozen in the middle of the yard, buckets in hand, a stone’s throw from the ranch house, Through an uncurtained window, he saw a flash of movement as Ada crossed in front of the window, moving around in the room. She hadn’t seen the invaders.

  Eben stood with his back to the Indians, chopping wood full tilt, sending the chips flying, blissfully unaware of the intruders.

  The horses’ hooves trod softly on the brown dirt of the yard. There was a faint musical whispering. Soft as the first pattering fall of raindrops, it was the jingling of tiny bells. An odd, jarring note, the musical chimings came from several strips of little silver bells no bigger than a berry. They were strung at regular intervals on rawhide thongs, braided into strands of shiny black shoulder-length hair framing the face of the Comanche riding slightly in advance of the other three.

  Seton Fisher was unaware that he was in the presence of Little Bells, a member of the Bison Eyes clan and a valued henchman of War Chief Red Hand. He knew only that he and the rest of his family were in danger, deadly danger.

  He wondered if he looked as sick as he felt. He had no weapon at hand. He owned a rifle, two pistols, and a shotgun, but they were all in the house. Why weigh myself down with a gun while carrying out ordinary household chores? he had thought earlier.

  Too late, he knew why, and cursed himself for being a damned fool.

  Little Bells’s lithe, wiry limbs were knotted with ropy strands of muscle wrapped in veins. A red bandanna circled his forehead. Beneath it, his hair hung loose and free, a strand of silver bells on each side of his face. Deep-set eyes peered out from under an overhanging brow. His swarthy, copper-hued face was painted with vertical and horizontal black stripes. War paint.

  He wore a salmon-colored shirt, a breechcloth, and deer-hide boots. He rode a brown horse with a high-backed Comanche style wooden saddle, holding the reins in one hand and a rifle in the other. The rifle was decorated by a pair of feathers tied below the muzzle by a rawhide thong.

  The three braves with him were armed. Greasy Grass carried an army carbine. Thorn had a single-shot rifled musket. A bow was slung across Firecloud’s back and a quiver of arrows hung over a shoulder. A six-gun was stuck into a braided rawhide belt holding up his breechclout.

  They stopped between Fisher and the ranch house, their expressions remote, impassive.

  Some men cling to hope no matter how grim the facts. Why assume the worst? Fisher asked himself silently. He’d handled stray Indians before. They were great ones for trying to get something for nothing from settlers. High-handed, high-stomached, full of themselves, they did not beg, they demanded. Feed them a meal, give them a few trinkets, baubles, and blankets to sate their savage vanity and childlike greed and they’d be on their way. That’s how it had always been in the past, in other places.

  But those Indians hadn’t been Comanches, staring down Fisher on the lonely heights of the hill country.

  Eben kept on huffing and puffing, making the chips fly as he continued to chop wood, oblivious to the danger at hand.

  Damned young fool! He always was slow on the uptake, that boy.

  Seton Fisher glared and called to him in a stage whisper, his voice a croak. “Hsst! Hsst! Eben. Eben!”

  “What, Pa?” Eben said, not looking up from the woodpile.

  “Over here, ya derned idjit!”

  Eben straightened up, turning around with ax in hand. “Yow!”

  “Easy, boy,” Fisher said.

  Eben’s expression of shocked surprise might have been almost comical in its grotesque exaggeration if the situation had not been so direfully real. He cried, “Injuns! Oh Lordy!”

  “Keep still, boy! We can’t show weak,” Fisher hissed.

  “Gawd!”

  “Quit your bawling and carrying on.”

  “What’re we gonna do, Pa?”

  Fisher trembled, agitating the pails of water he held. Water slopped over the top of a bucket, splattering on the ground. Fat droplets were soaked up by the brown dirt.

  He set the buckets down on the ground, knees creaking. He straightened, never once taking his eyes off Little Bells.

  Little Bells grimaced, baring his teeth. Seconds passed before Fisher realized the Indian was not making faces, but grinning. It was hard to tell the difference. The grin was accompanied by a dry chuckle, sounding like a barking cough.

  Little Bells glanced at Thorn beside him on his left, the turning of his head setting off a jingling of the silvery bells. Thorn smiled.

  Little Bells turned to the right, toward Greasy Grass. Grinning away, he nodded at the other, as if to encourage him. The lower half of Greasy Grass’s face split in a knife-blade smile, sharp, toothy, and mirthless.

  Little Bells beamed down at Fisher, who forced a half grin. He looked sick. Little Bells’s smile widened, laugh lines crinkling around dark eyes. His chuckling ripened into laughter.

  Exchanging glances with his sidemen, he motioned them to join in. Greasy Grass and Thorn laughed loudly. Firecloud remained aloof, stone faced.

  Little Bells gestured to Fisher, as if encouraging him to join in the merriment. Seton forced a laugh, sounding like he had a bone stuck in his throat and was trying to clear it.

  Apparently that really tickled Little Bells, who laughed out loud. Greasy Grass and Thorn laughed along with him. Firecloud’s blank-faced silence remained unbroken.

  Little
Bells motioned for Seton Fisher to continue. Fisher made a show of laughing it up. If that’s what the savage wants, best play along, he thought, and made a braying jackass of himself.

  Suddenly, without warning Little Bells frowned, falling silent.

  Taking their cue from him, Greasy Grass and Thorn stopped laughing, turning it off as abruptly as though it had never been at all. The Comanches smiled no more.

  Fisher’s face was ashen. Little Bells pointed his rifle at Seton.

  “What ... what’s happening, Pa?” Eben choked.

  “I’m kilt.”

  Little Bells fired once, the bullet tearing through Fisher. He crumpled, falling backward.

  Firecloud burst out laughing.

  “Pa!” Eben remembered the ax in his hands. Hefting it high above his head, he rushed Little Bells, sobbing. “Crazy murderin’ redskins!”

  Little Bells swung the rifle toward Eben and fired. Eben swayed but kept lurching forward, his big feet kicking up clouds of brown dirt.

  Another slug tore into him, knocking him down.

  Inside the west wing of the ranch house, Lydia was mending a croker sack with needle and thread. At thirteen, she was slim, coltish, with long, straight, dirty-blond hair worn in a pair of braids framing a thin, fine-featured face. Dark brown eyes contrasted with fair hair and skin. She wore a lilac-colored, cotton floral-print dress and a pair of flat-heeled, lace-up ankle boots.

  Her mother sat nearby, folding towels.

  Lydia stopped working and looked up at her ma.

  “Quit your daydreaming, gal.”

  “I’m out of thread, Ma.”

  “Get some more. You know where it is.”

  “Yes, Ma.” Sighing, Lydia rose and left the room.

  Her mother watched her leave, then stood and walked past the front window on her way to put away the towels. In her early thirties, Ada looked ten years older, the wreck of one who’d once been fancied by appreciative males as “a damned handsome woman.” Hard times and privation had worn her down. Her gray-streaked brown hair was pinned up so as not to interfere with the daily round of household chores. A deeply lined, square-shaped face showed a strong chin and a lot of jaw.

  Movement outside caught her eye as four Indians on horseback cut off Seton and Eben from the house. Immediately, she closed and barred the front door, and shuttered the front window. Stuffing her pockets with shells from a box nestled on a ledge nearby, she grabbed the shotgun from where it stood against the wall beside the front door. Her eyes, usually dull with fatigue, were hard and intent.

  Lydia went through the dogtrot into the east room. The twin of its opposite number, it was a low-ceilinged cube, bright where sunlight shone through the south-facing window and dim where shadows massed.

  A rear corner had been partitioned into a kind of alcove, which was used as a storeroom. The windowless enclosure was thick with stuffy brown gloom.

  Lydia stepped inside, looking for the wicker basket containing her mother’s sewing kit with its spare bobbins of thread. She rummaged through boxes of household goods and domestic implements in search of the kit, but couldn’t find it.

  Hunkering down, not wanting to soil her dress by kneeling on the hard-packed dirt floor, she searched the lower shelves. The sewing kit continued to elude her. Frowning, she started pulling out boxes and looking inside them.

  She grew aware of a commotion outside. Like a garment snagged on a nail, her attention was caught up by the sound of laughter—a sound rarely heard on the hardscrabble, just-getting-by-if-that Fisher ranch.

  Lydia’s frown deepened. She disliked something in the laughter, a note of meanness. Or craziness. Or both.

  The laughter stopped. Lydia rose to see what it was all about. After the gloom of the storage space, the sunlight shafting through the window was dazzling. She squinted against it, eyes narrowed.

  A shot sounded from outside.

  Ada Jenks Fisher came barreling out of the west room. Usually too worn out by hard work for speed, she moved fast, rushing along the dogtrot into the east room, carrying the shotgun. Brushing past Lydia, she slammed the front window shutters closed. Made of hardwood several inches thick, they had loopholes for shooting through. “Help me bar the window! Quick!”

  A voice started screaming, ragged, high-pitched.

  Eben?

  Another shot boomed, followed by an outcry.

  A third shot.

  Silence.

  Laughter again, thinner than before.

  “Ma, what?”

  “Quick!”

  Stung, Lydia took hold of a stout wooden bar lying on the floor below the window. With both hands, she lifted it and wrestled it into the pair of U-shaped metal staples bracketing the window frame. Ada’s free hand helped push it solidly into place.

  No sooner was the job done than Ada caught Lydia by the arm, clutching her thin wrist. Turning, she started back the way she came, pulling Lydia after her with a wrench that nearly yanked her off her feet.

  “Ma! You’re hurting me!”

  “Hush up, you fool girl!”

  They hustled through the dogtrot into the west room, shadowed in brown murk.

  Outside, screaming broke out, raw and terrible. Counterpointing the screams came shrill exultant cries, sounding like a cross between a screech owl and a coyote.

  Lydia put her hand to her mouth, gasping. “What is it, Ma?”

  “Indians!”

  The rear half of the west room was partitioned into two cramped, criblike rooms. Blankets strung on head-high, horizontal poles served as doors. Ada went into a room, pulling Lydia, dazed and numb, after her.

  The room was hot, dim, and stuffy. Set high in the rear wall was a small, square window. The shutter was open, unfastened.

  Ada put her mouth close to Lydia’s ear, speaking low. “Comanches killed Fisher,” she rasped, “and from the sound of things, they’re doing the same to Eben.”

  “Comanches! What’re we gonna do, Ma?”

  “You’re gonna run like you never ran in all your born days, missy.”

  Ada shoved Lydia toward the window. It opened on a long, grassy field bordered by woods on the east and west. The field stretched a hundred yards north to a dirt road that intersected it at right angles—Rimrock Road. Beyond the road lay a thicket of woods, with Sentry Hill peeking over the treetops.

  “Climb out the window and run for the brush.” Ada indicated a patch of woods on the east, right-hand side of the field. “Get under cover as soon as you can. Don’t try to reach the road. It’s too far away. Hide and don’t come out no matter what you hear.”

  “What about you, Ma?”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  Lydia climbed on the narrow, wooden plank bed under the window and put a leg through the open space above it, scraping the back of her thigh against the windowsill. Holding the frame with both hands, she pulled her other leg after her.

  She sat on the sill, bent forward from the waist. It was a tight fit.

  Frightful noises came from the front of the house, rising and falling.

  Lydia paused, hesitant. Ada put a hand on the girl’s back and pushed her forward.

  Lydia fell to the ground, feet and ankles tingling from the impact. She turned, looking back. “Come on, Ma,” she urged.

  “You go first, gal,” Ada said.

  “Ma—”

  “I’ll cover you. Don’t argue. Git!”

  Lydia started forward, angling toward the treeline east of the house. She felt naked and exposed in the open. The sun shone brightly on green grass.

  She was about ten trembling paces away from the house when a Comanche rode out of the west woods. He’d been posted there earlier to keep watch on the road.

  He put heels to his horse’s flanks, kicking it into motion, intending to run the girl down. It was better sport than he’d dared hope for.

  Ada saw him coming. She shouldered the shotgun, planting both feet squarely on the dirt floor. When the brave drew abreast of the wind
ow she pulled the triggers, giving him both barrels. A booming blast of buckshot blew him off the horse.

  Stung by a few pellets, the horse reared, shrieking. It raced toward the road.

  Ada broke the shotgun, shucking expended cartridges out of the bores. Reaching into a front pocket of her apron, she took out two fresh shells and reloaded.

  Lydia stood frozen in place.

  Ada cried, “Run!”

  “I ain’t leaving you, Ma!”

  Ada shook her head. “I’ll hold off them red devils as long as I can. Go, before they get us both. I’m gonna give ’em what for. Don’t let it be in vain.”

  “Ma, no!”

  Ada smiled sadly. “You always minded your momma. Don’t stop now. I love you, darlin’. God save you!”

  “Mama, please.”

  “Run!”

  Lydia stumbled a few steps forward, sobbing. She looked back, blinking away tears. Ada lifted a hand in farewell, and moved away from the window, lost from view.

  Lydia staggered away from the house, weaving toward the trees. She caught sight of the dead Comanche sprawled on the ground, his upper body a wet, red ruin from the double-barreled shotgun blast. Recoiling, she lurched away from him, stiff-legged.

  Ada nodded approvingly to herself as she saw Lydia closing on the treeline. She had thought about keeping Lydia with her and making a stand against the Comanches. The ranch house had guns, ammunition, and solid walls. But the roof was made of wood. The braves would set fire to it to burn them out. It was better to distract the Comanches, keep them focused on the front of the house while Lydia escaped through the rear.

  The plan had almost gone awry thanks to the brave hidden in the west woods. Luckily he’d showed himself in time for Ada to down him, and there didn’t seem to be anyone else posted there. She had to keep the others busy for as long as she could.

  Lydia reached the safety of the trees, ducking into the greenery and disappearing inside the thicket.

  Ada crossed to the shuttered window in the front and peered through a loophole. She saw three braves, all on foot. To her left, near the corral, Firecloud was hitching the reins of a horse to a top rail of the corral fence. The reins of another were wrapped around his forearm to forestall the animal from getting loose. Two other horses had already been hitched to another section of fence.