Episode 5

High Tide

Joe moved low with a pair of Colts in his fists and the bloody blade of his dagger pressed between his lips. He looked around and took aim at a bawling shadow moving in the stinking mist. The man fell with a shriek. Flashes lit the night near where the man fell. Joe heard the rushing wind of a lead ball sail close by his head. Rather than cower, he stood full height and let off a string of shots from both pistols held at arm’s length. He ran for the cover of a wagon, leaping over bodies as he moved. The wicket and strike of hot rounds followed close behind.

The gunfire was more deliberate now as the two opposing sides took the measure of one another. This was high tide. This was where the fight was won or lost. In the dark and the smoke and sheer madness of it all, Joe could not sense in whose favor the tide was turning. For all he knew half of his company was down or dead or run off. It might only be him and a couple others left, waiting for the teamsters and their hired guns to come out and shoot them down like rabid dogs.

It was then Joe spied Ben charging across the camp, black with blood, his long-barreled Remington sending out a gout of flame. Joe moved closer to Ben dodging from cover to cover, what meager cover there was. As he ran, he saw a rail thin pistolero slithering from beneath a wagon tongue that lay angled to the ground. The man reminded him of a snake. Joe couldn’t help but admire the other man’s gun and rig as the pistolero rose to a knee and fired. Two slugs knocked down one of the raiders, a half-breed Mex Irishman named Ramon O’Hara, a man quick with a joke and well-liked by the others.

Joe shot the slim gunman twice as he ran to close the gap between them. The first ball spun the man to the side. The second struck the man in the face, sending a saucer sized section of skull flying from the back of the pistolero’s head. Joe moved past him. He did not begrudge the man for killing his friend. This was a fight to the death. But he would miss O’Hara at the next campfire to be sure, his stories and his laughter. That made killing the man all that much easier.

The noise rose as the fury of the battle swelled to echo off the rocks with the blast of guns and the yells of men. War whoops yipped from a few of the Indians. Joe caught sight of Ben, Muñoz with him. Both men walked with deliberation toward the last defenders holed up beneath a wagon. They fired as they walked, ignoring gouts of dust kicked up about them. A teamster rose from under the wagon’s belly with a long rifle to his shoulder. Muñoz brought him down with a shot to the throat; the man dropped gurgling and spewing.

Joe trotted forward, only one Colt with any charges left in it. He raised this with the front tang toward the source of gunfire coming from around the last wagon. He saw a shape grow from the peak of the hummock of the cargo load atop the wagon. The clouds moved past the sliver moon in time to reveal it was a man standing in the sylvan glow, feet braced atop the load. A big-gutted teamster with a ten-gauge coach gun aimed square down at Ben Temple.

“It’s over for you. You murdering son of a whore!” the man shouted.

“Ben! Behind you!” Joe Wiley shouted.

Ben turned around, whip fast to raise a pistol at the man looming above him.

And the hammer fell with a dull click on a spent chamber.