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[Continuing chapter seven]
Cleburne turned to Patton and nodded, as if to say This is your problem. Well, Patton thought sourly, Cleburne seems to have been right about Pickett. “All right,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to finish riding up this slope”—he pointed behind him—“and then we’re going to dismount.” The others murmured uncertain protests, but Patton waved them down. “If we stand firm at the top of this rise, they’ll never come close to us. And they certainly won’t be expecting us to fight on foot.” He pointed to the rifle a man was holding. “You’ll be able to shoot better on foot anyway. Now come on, let’s get moving. We don’t have much time.” He turned his horse around and spurred it up the slope.
When he reached the top, he saw all but one of the others following him. Fifteen of us left, he thought. That should still be enough. When the men reached him, he had them dismount and prepare their rifles. The most nervous-looking of the men he assigned to the duty of leading the horses to the reverse of the slope and holding them ready for remounting should the opportunity come to pursue their attackers. The man looked ashamed, but accepted his assignment without protest.
Patton formed the men into a ragged line along the crest of the rise. He could smell the clean, rich scent of the green grass, overlaid with just a touch of acrid dust. Overhead, a bird—some circling hunter—called angrily. The men—his men, he thought—made nervous jokes among one another, in quiet voices that betrayed their uncertainty about this sort of fighting. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “We’ve each got eight shots to their one; they won’t even get close enough to us to use their pistols. My guess is, they won’t even try us once they see us up here.” Just then, a group of horsemen came into view on the crest of the next hill to the east, the one down which the scout had ridden with such haste a few minutes ago. In the distance, on a taller hill, Patton saw a second group of horsemen. There were only three men in the second group, though, and they would clearly play no part in this engagement, so Patton ignored them. His men leveled their rifles, aiming shakily at the riders. “Steady, boys,” he said. “Don’t fire until I tell you. Let’s see what these people are made of.”
The horsemen paused a moment, then charged down the hill, yelling and shouting. Patton felt, as well as saw, a slight stiffening of the men in his makeshift line. In spite of his words, in spite of the obvious superiority of their position and weaponry, these men were afraid, and trying too hard not to show it. Perhaps we’re always afraid in situations like this, he thought. Being such a small force just makes it easier to see. “Steady,” he said, drawing out the word.
He had time to count the riders; the scout had been accurate, there were exactly twenty of them. A movement caught his eye; one of the group in the far distance was waving something.
The riders reached the bottom of the hill, charged across the narrow piece of flat ground—and as the ground began to slope upward again, the furious rhythm of their movement altered; first one and then another rider slowed. Within seconds all of the riders had stopped completely, and the attackers formed their own ragged line down at the base of the slope.
“They’re scared!” one of Patton’s men yelled, and then all of them were jeering and shouting abuse at the Texans, who nervously sat their horses, which shifted back and forth so that the attackers’ line seemed to ripple like the horizon on a hot day.
Then one of the Texans lifted a rifle and pointed it at Patton. My God, Patton thought. He’s going to shoot at me. Not at us; not at some abstract identification of group identity. At me. He had just enough time to realize that he’d never really been deliberately shot at before when a puff of white smoke billowed from the Texan’s weapon. He heard the report at the same time as he heard a grunt from Cleburne beside him. “Christ Jesus,” Cleburne said, as though the words were lodged in his throat and had to be spat out.
Patton tried to spin around, but everything seemed to be happening slowly. By the time he’d turned, Cleburne was down on one knee, his rifle on the ground in front of him. His left hand was clasped around his right arm just below the shoulder, and purplish blood oozed between his fingers. “Cleburne!” Patton shouted.
“I’m all right,” Cleburne said. “See to your men, damn it.”
He’s right, Patton thought. If we break now, it’ll have been my fault. He raised his arm above his head. “Let them have it!” he shouted. “Fire!”
A second shot from the mounted men was answered by a single round from one of the rifles; then an eruption of shots, a single vast thunderclap, crashed forth from both sides. Patton thought of Cleburne’s torn arm, and aimed at the man who’d shot his friend. The horseman was already moving back in the direction from which he’d come; Patton didn’t care. He squeezed the trigger, felt the firm hammer-blow of the recoil against his shoulder, the stock grazing his cheek. The acrid-sweet smell of powder and primer filled his nostrils.
His target rode on, untouched.
Cursing, Patton worked the needle-gun’s curious bolt mechanism and dropped in another cartridge. To his left, the men cocked and fired their huge Currie revolving rifles, cocked and fired. He thought he heard one of them laugh. Then he was aiming again, blocking out the sound and all sight save for the buckskin-clad back that receded steadily eastward. He blinked the sweat from his sighting eyelid, and the resulting shift lost him his target for a crucial second. When he found the man again, he was thumb-nail sized over the sight at the end of the rifle’s long barrel. Patton squeezed the trigger again.
This time, when the smoke cleared, the horse ran on unencumbered.
Next Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
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