From the Ashes Page 11

  “Where are you?” He heard a flurry of shots through the intercom. “Dad!”

  “Mom and I are pinned in the kitchen and front den. They keep trying to spook us out, but we’re not budging.”

  The den had one of the family gun lockers in it, so Gus knew they had plenty of firepower and ammunition.

  “You okay?”

  “Mom is. I’ve got a crease in my left leg, but nothing serious.” Knowing his dad, the fact that he’d mentioned it meant it was not a minor wound. But he was probably functional. Gus’ father was almost as tough as his grandfather had been, which was saying something.

  But something else was worrying Gus. Someone hadn’t been mentioned; someone very important.

  “Dad, where’s Margo?”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “I don’t know, Gus. She’d gone upstairs to lie down before these yahoos showed up, and since the ruckus started, we haven’t seen or heard from her.”

  The ice ball in Gus’ stomach ballooned at the thought of his brother’s wife in the hands of these men.

  “I’m coming in, Dad. I’ll take out the outsiders, then I’m coming in by the east door.”

  “Gus, don’t be stupid. You…”

  “I’m coming in, Dad. Where do you think the outsiders are?”

  His father was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “All right. There’s at least one by the south end of the stable. Shots keep coming through the west windows, but he might be by the well house.”

  The stable was west of the house, and the well house was south of that, so someone lurking by either one could put bullets through the house’s western windows.

  “Right. I’m coming in. Be ready.”

  Gus hung up the intercom’s handset. Moments later, he was outside and charging over the crest of the berm behind the hay barn. Once he was far enough down the outside of the berm, he veered to the east and jogged along the side, muttering curses that he was wearing cowboy boots. They weren’t the easiest things to run in, especially along a slope.

  In a few moments more, he turned the corner of the berm and moved along the east side. He needed to get a good look at that side of the property. He stopped about a third of the way down the side and eased back up to the crest, stopping when his eyes barely cleared the top enough so he could see the ground at the bottom of the berm. He looked to the right and saw no one along the backside of the equipment barn. From this angle, he could also see all the space behind the building. He looked forward and saw nothing along the short face of the building, nothing in the space between the building and the house, and nothing on this side of the gazebo.

  Gus pulled down, moved further south, then climbed back up to take another peek over the crest. The south side of the gazebo was clear. He pulled the oculars out to make sure. Another three mounts were wandering loose—another bay, a dark roan with white socks, and a scrawny pinto that wasn’t much bigger than a pony. But there were no people.

  He scanned the front of the house. Gus’ mouth tightened when he saw the front door standing open, but he already knew there were people inside. He had to clear the outside first. There was no one in sight. Fine.

  Gus backed down from the crest, then moved to the bottom of the berm and started jogging around the perimeter to get to the west side. He clenched his teeth. He was about to bring some pain to someone.

  Taking the long way around took a while longer as he had to travel over a quarter mile, but he avoided passing in front of the main gate. Odds of five to three weren’t great, and he didn’t want to risk being seen.

  “Stupid boots,” Gus muttered as they slipped on the snowy grass when he started back up the berm. More gunshots sounded, and ice spread through Gus again, burning like fire. He wanted to charge the house, but his grandfather’s voice sounded in his head: “Boy, you don’t ever run into contested ground without scoping it out first. Especially if you don’t have a team at your back. You hear me?”

  “I hear you, Grandpa,” Gus whispered. He flattened at the crest, pulled out the oculars, and resumed his scan.

  He finally spotted two more strangers, one by the stable and one by the well house, peering around corners toward the house. They weren’t tense; just standing loosely, rifles halfway to their shoulders but not ready to fire. They seemed to be confident they had things under control. “You just keep thinking that, assholes,” Gus muttered.

  Still frozen inside, Gus considered. There were probably three inside. He definitely needed to reduce the odds. He put the oculars back in his pocket, flipped the caps off the rifle scope, and brought it up to his eye. First, he found the man by the stable. He looked at him closely. He looked familiar, but Gus didn’t have a name for him. He set the crosshairs on the man’s ear. He could take him now. He wanted to. But he wanted to get both of them. So, he swept the rifle toward the well house, found the other man, and studied him for a moment. That one he didn’t know at all. Gus went back and forth between them three times, deciding which order to shoot them in and feeling the smooth adjustment.

  He heard more shots from inside the house. Gus bit down on his anger. The well house guy lifted his rifle and fired at the house followed by a shot from the guy by the stable. Gus heard the sound of breaking glass, and that was all he needed. Self-defense had just become real. He focused on the well house guy, set the crosshairs just in front of his ear, put his finger on the trigger, breathed out, and squeezed slowly.

  Blam!

  The instant the rifle fired, Gus moved his aim toward the other man, only to catch him sprinting toward the well house and ducking around the corner. He had been smart enough to move when he heard the shot. Gus almost took the second shot, but he didn’t have a chance of making it, and he decided not to waste the ammo. His inaction might leave the intruders guessing, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. He looked back at the first target, who was undoubtedly dead. Head shots that left big blood patterns on the sides of buildings tended to be fatal. So, counting the one in the back, two were down—at least four to go.

  Gus crawled to the right to put the well house between him and the house’s main door. He rose to a crouch, moved over the crest of the berm and hustled to the well house, where he put his back against the west wall and pulled his pistol out. After a long, silent moment, he moved to the south, stepping over the corpse and kicking the dead man’s rifle out of the way in the dust. He stopped at the corner, looked behind him to make sure his back was clear, then did a quick head dart to peer around the corner. Nothing was visible at the other corner of the well house or up on the front porch. There was no movement in the main doorway.

  Gus’ mind was composed and ticking with icy logic. He kept an eye on the house while he tried to figure out what his next move should be. He’d used two shots out of the magazine—one taking the deer, and one on the dead man—so he still had eighteen rounds in the rifle. “No need to swap out yet,” he muttered. “No backup out here. If this doesn’t go down the way I want it to, I might be in deep kimchi,” he whispered to himself. As usual, hearing his Marine Corps veteran grandfather’s favorite expression brought a bit of a grin to his face. More shots from inside the house wiped the grin away, though. He slung his rifle, barrel down, and ghosted back along the wall until he came to the northern corner. He quickly peeked around the edge. No one in sight. So, the missing intruder must be somewhere along the east wall.

  “Fred! Elliott! Que pasa?” The gravelly voice came from inside the house. Gus said nothing, hoping the intruder that was outside would respond. His hope was rewarded.

  “There’s someone else out here!” a nasal tenor voice sounded from the other side. “I think he got Elliott!”

  “Shut up, you idiot!”

  Too late, Gus thought with a grin. He went around the corner, pistol leading the way along the short wall to the next corner. He didn’t stop there, but flowed around that corner as well, and as soon as he saw the intruder, he opened fire.

  Blam! Blam! Blam!

/>   Gus had caught the intruder off guard, and he dropped without getting off a shot of his own. Gus didn’t try to check on him. He just pivoted and began running north to get out of view of the front door and porch, crossing the distance to the stable in just a few moments, then angling toward the back of the house. He slowed to a fast walk after he passed the corner of the house. “Three down, three to go,” he muttered. He came to a stop and knelt by the body of his brother, Ben.

  “Sorry, bro,” he whispered, touching the hair on his brother’s head. Then he reached out and picked up the revolver lying in the dust by his brother’s hand. “Might need this,” he said and stuck it in his belt.

  A moment later, Gus was on his feet, moving toward the other corner of the house. Once there, he paused, then peeked around the corner. No one was on the porch. Good. He slid around the corner, kept his back against the wall, and looked around carefully. There was no one in view anywhere. Double good. A few soft steps, and he was on the porch, hand on the east-side door handle.

  The sound of more gunshots from inside made Gus freeze for an instant as he fought down the urge to burst through the door with pistol blazing. “Be smarter than the other guy,” he remembered his grandfather saying. “Right, Grandpa,” he whispered. “Smarter and harder.”

  Gus eased the door open, slipped into the dark utility room, and closed it with care, making sure the latch didn’t click loudly. The door into the rest of the house was open, and he stopped beside it to listen. He could hear a couple of voices mumbling. Sounded like they were in the main living room. Good enough. He slipped into the hallway and headed that way, pistol in one hand and an extra magazine in the other.

  He stopped near the opening to the living room while he was still in the shadows. He could only see two men from where he was standing. The third man was out of his range of view, or he was somewhere else in the house. Either way, that was worrisome. As the two men rose from behind their furniture barricades to aim toward the den and kitchen, Gus leveled his pistol and stepped forward.

  Gus didn’t know what gave him away, but one of the men turned his head, eyes wide, and shouted, “Behind you!” as he tried to shift his aim to Gus. Gus didn’t give him time, shooting three times and putting him down on the floor, limp and bleeding.

  He tried to shift his aim to the other man, but he hadn’t tried to turn, instead he’d ducked and leapt out the front door a split-second ahead of the bullet Gus sent his way. Gus hurried forward, dropping his pistol’s aim to put a bullet in the head of the first man as he stepped over him. “Always make sure,” he heard his grandfather say, and his mouth quirked.

  Gus could see the running man trying to control one of the horses long enough to mount it. He put his pistol back in the holster with one hand, dropped the spare magazine from the other, and unslung the rifle and brought it around. A moment later he put the scope up to his eye and focused on the man, only to see the horse swing around between them.

  Without hesitation, Gus put the crosshairs on the horse’s head and fired. The horse collapsed, leaving the intruder standing on open ground. “Wait, wait...” the stranger began, trying to raise his hands just as Gus fired again. An instant later, Gus was the only man left standing.

  For a moment, Gus stood there as it started to sink in that he’d shot four men. He’d never really believed he’d need all the training his grandfather had given him, but sure enough, he had. “Guess you knew best, Grandpa,” he muttered as he backed up against the wall next to the front door.

  “Dad!” he called out.

  After a moment, he heard, “That you, Gus?”

  “Yeah. You all okay?”

  “Nicked here and there, but we’ll be fine. What’s what out there?”

  “I can only account for five of them, Dad. You guys stay where you are. I’m...”

  Gus heard the sound of boots thundering down the stairs from the second floor, then the sound of fast moving feet inside the house.

  “He’s going out the side,” his father yelled.

  Gus started moving to the east, across the porch, when he heard the side door bang open and whoever’d run out it whistle shrilly. Just as he cleared the corner of the house, he heard two loud shots—Boom-Boom. The stranger pointed a big revolver Gus’ way as he ran down the side steps.

  Gus decided later that the stranger hadn’t had the luck to gun him down, but he’d had the next best thing. The first bullet slammed into the rifle’s receiver and tore it from Gus’ hands. The second hit his left foot as he was taking his last step, knocking the foot out from under him and sending him sprawling on the porch.

  From where he lay, momentarily stunned, Gus could see the scrawny pinto cantering across the yard toward the stranger, who holstered his revolver and reached up to grab the saddle horn. He ran alongside the horse as they turned for the main gate. Gus drew his pistol and fired at the stranger who had leapt up and was swinging into the saddle as his horse began to gallop. After two shots, his pistol jammed. He didn’t waste his breath on curses as he rolled to his knees and scrabbled for Ben’s Ruger. He fired three shots from the revolver before the hammer fell on a spent cartridge.

  The pinto was faster than it looked, galloping through the gate and jinking to the right and out of sight.

  “Shit!” Gus spat, thrusting the empty revolver back in his belt, then looking around. He didn’t see any blood, so maybe he hadn’t been shot. He pushed up from his knees to his right foot, then almost fell over when he tried to stand on his left foot. He looked down, then lifted his foot, and damned if that fool hadn’t shot the heel off his left boot. He hopped over to the wooden deck chair sitting on the porch and sat down to pull his boots off. Standing in his socks, he limped over and picked up the rifle and pistol in one hand while holding the boots in the other.

  “You okay?”

  He looked up and saw his dad standing in the front door, revolver hanging in his right hand and blood splotches on his left thigh and forearm. “Luckier than I have any right to be. That last guy shot at me twice, but he didn’t hit me.” He held out the rifle and turned his boots upside down to show his father the heel.

  His father whistled. “Damn, son, I’d say you done used up your share of luck for some time to come.” He looked around. “Did you get him?”

  Gus felt a snarl appear on his face. “No. This happened,” he shook the rifle, “my pistol jammed after a few rounds, and Ben’s Ruger only had three shots left in it. He and that little horse of his got out of the gate before I could nail him. I’ll be looking for him as soon as I can get some shoes on.” Now that the immediate fight was over, the rage in Gus seemed to expand like a fireball. He wanted somebody to hurt, badly.

  Then a thought crossed his mind. “Dad...Margo?” A heavy look crossed his father’s face, and the ice in Gus’ midsection expanded to fill his whole body. “No...” he whispered. Not Margo, not on top of Ben.

  “They rushed the house, and Mom and I barely got to the den. We couldn’t get her. It looks like one of them ran upstairs and caught her as she was starting to wake up. He pistol-whipped her pretty hard. He cut her some...I’m guessing he was trying to rouse her to ask some questions or something. From the look of her, she never roused from the beating.”

  Gus looked at his dad. He could tell there was more to it. “What else?” When his dad hesitated, he grabbed him by his sound arm and shook him. “Come on, Dad, what else?”

  His father sighed. “I’m almost certain that at least one of them raped her, and before he ran out the side door, that last fellow stabbed her. Left a knife between her ribs.”

  Gus dropped his boots and turned and slammed his fist into the side of the house. He felt the skin split over his knuckles, but he didn’t care, and he pulled his fist back to do it again.

  His father grabbed his forearm. “Stop it, Gus!” Gus struggled to get his hand free, only to feel his father’s fingers sink deep into his flesh. “Stop it. That won’t do anybody any good, and you’re going to want t
hat hand in good working order. Grandpa expected better out of you than that.”

  That got through to Gus. He stood still for a long moment, breathing deeply through flared nostrils as he fought his rage and despair, forcing them down, down, down, until he could put a lid on them. He finally dropped his hand. “All right, Dad. You’re right. I’m going to need that hand, and I don’t want to think about what Grandpa would say to me if I did something that stupid.” He bent and picked up his boots. “Let me get some other boots on, and I’ll bring Ben in. Where do you want him?”

  The expression on his father’s face darkened. “Bring him to the dining room. I’ll put a plastic cloth on the table.”

  Gus entered the house and made his way through the kitchen to the garage. He dropped his cowboy boots in a pile to one side of the door, then crossed over to the other side and picked up his old, weather-beaten hiking boots that he usually didn’t wear in the house. Today it didn’t matter. He carried them over to an old stool by a workbench and sat long enough to pull them on and lace them tightly. His cold feet got colder for a moment, but then they began to warm up as the leather enclosed his heavy wool socks. The support of the high tops helped him walk on his wrenched left ankle. He reached up and popped the garage door opener, then walked through the open door to where Ben was lying.

  He knelt beside his brother and rested his hand on his head. “Sorry, bro. Wish I’d been here. But most of them are dead, and the one that got away won’t live much longer. Promise, bro.”

  He rose to his feet and turned his brother onto his back, then took his hands and pulled him up high enough to get his arms around him and lift him onto his shoulder. He resolutely avoided looking at Ben’s face, although he did get a glimpse of the slack, lifeless features, and that made him swallow hard.

  Walking back through the garage and into the house was difficult. He negotiated the narrow doorways and made it to the dining room, where he found his father waiting to help him ease Ben down and lay him on the plastic-covered table. Gus had to swallow again when he saw his father’s hand tremble a bit as he touched Ben’s cheek. For the first time, he realized that his father was aging, and that cut through the ice that filled him. He turned away to wipe moisture from his eyes.