“Maybe you got guts, maybe you don’t,” Will called back, “but you sure don’t have many brains. That coop you’re hiding behind? I built it out of scrap wood years ago. I could shoot through it with a decent slingshot.”
Will emptied his Colt, blowing holes through the coop.
Sully cried out sharply then fell silent just as abruptly, telling Will he was either dead or hit awful hard.
Will didn’t leave it to chance.
He dismounted, walked to the other end of the coop, then blasted the lump on the ground with both barrels.
Whatever Sully had been, he was dead now.
Very, very dead.
Will broke open the messenger gun and loaded two fresh shells and was just about to reload his Colt when, with the rush of battle finally ebbing away, he turned and looked back across the field to where his home burned brightly in the night.
He slammed the empty Colt in its holster, slung the shotgun over one shoulder, ran back to Clyde, climbed aboard, and raced toward home, praying for his friends and family.
CHAPTER 48
“How does it feel, being back in your old room?” Mama asked three days later.
Will shrugged. “Not bad. Though I’d like to provide something nicer for Maggie eventually.”
He’d been examining the ceiling, where a new water stain had appeared since he’d last been in his boyhood room… which would now, for a time at least, be his and Maggie’s space.
“That’s your nature, son. You’ve always been a good provider. I’m just happy to be home with Pa and the babies. I hope those Yankees never come back.”
The battle had been too much for Braintree and his wife. They had abandoned Will’s family farm the very next day, leaving with a wagon full of possessions and telling a neighbor on the way out, “That crazy Bentley can have the place for all we care. We’re never coming back!”
Will figured he’d head to town at some point and see about making that official. He’d feel a lot better with a deed to the place. But in the meantime, this would work just fine.
“They won’t be back,” Will said with a grin. “Too noisy for them here.”
For Will, his family, and friends, the battle had gone unbelievably well.
A bullet had grazed Maggie’s face and would leave one heck of a scar on her cheek, but it had done no structural damage, and as Will told her over and over, the mark would make her even more gorgeous to him, serving as a reminder of her bravely coming out to fight alongside him then avenging her family against Teal himself.
Will was black-and-blue from his pelvis to partway up his ribcage, but as he had suspected, the bullet wound had not been serious.
None of the others received so much as a scratch.
On Will’s side, anyway.
When the dust settled and bodies were counted, nineteen raiders were dead, counting Teal, Sully, Gibbs, and a pair of scoundrels who tried to run south and ended up getting knocked out of their saddles by Will’s excellent neighbors, Sam Waters and his boy, Junior.
Will suspected a few more raiders did manage to escape. But that was all right. They had kicked the wrong dog up here, and they weren’t liable to come back anytime soon.
Of course, not everything had gone well.
In the wild stampede, several longhorns had been shot dead or wounded badly enough that Will and his friends had put them out of their misery, and another three dozen were still at large despite an effort to gather them.
Worse still, the house had burned along with everything in it, all their food and clothing and furniture and personal items, like Mama’s Bible and Rose’s journal and Maggie’s cameo brooch, which she had borrowed from her mother the night of Teal’s first raid, and which had understandably been of great value to her.
The fire also destroyed another thing of great value: Will’s saddlebags, which had contained the rest of his hard-earned cash.
The sting of this particular loss was greatly alleviated, however, when they searched the enemy corpses and came away with over a thousand dollars in cash.
They gave a hundred dollars to Sam and Junior Waters, then split the rest of the money equally between those who’d fought: Will, Maggie, Rufus, Jake, Ted, and Farley.
