The citizens of Fury, however, had been out in full force since the crack of dawn. Jason wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find the town well draped in silver tassels and dangling shrimp forks come morning.
“Jason Fury!”
He turned toward the voice and spied Abigail Krimp, already dressed in her spangles, and carting enough loot to stagger a stevedore. She grinned widely. “I got up early to shop,” she said, “and I’m so glad that I—”
“Jason!”
He turned around again, because this shout sounded urgent. And it was. Wash Keough, who to the best of Jason’s knowledge was supposed to be far out of town and working his claim, came barreling toward him in a roil of hoof-raised dust.
“Wash! What are you doing—” Jason began, but Wash cut him off.
“Injuns, Jason! It’s Apache, and they’re comin’ your way in a big hurry!”
Jason jumped out of the way to avoid Wash’s lathered horse, and before he knew it, Wash had jumped down and was tugging him along and jabbering to beat the band.
“Whoa!” Jason shouted, and Wash stopped to catch his breath, dropping his reins in the process.
Jason grabbed them before Wash’s horse could skitter off, and Wash bent over and hung onto his knees for dear life, as if he let go he’d fall straight over.
After a moment had passed and Wash seemed to be breathing a little easier, Jason asked, “What’s the trouble, Wash? You been sippin’ at some of that homemade cactus whiskey of yours?”
Wash wiped at his long mustaches and raised his head again, a look of pure disgust creeping over his craggy face.
“You deaf or somethin’, boy? I just told you: Apaches, and they ain’t far out of town! You gotta get these folks inside, where it’s safe! You gotta man the turrets! You gotta—”
“Man the turrets?” Jason broke in.
The Reverend Milcher, standing a few feet away, let loose with a guffaw, which he quickly stifled with his fist when Jason shot him a dirty look.”
“Well, hell, boy, get some fellers up top on the wall at least!” said Wash. “And haul these wagons inside, get these critters movin’. Don’t you know? All they are is Apache ladders!”
As hysterical as Wash appeared, Jason couldn’t smell any mescal on him.
Quickly, he handed Wash’s reins back to him and leapt to the seat of the closest wagon, standing on it to get as high as he could. He stood there a moment facing south, his back to Wash, before he whirled around and jumped to the ground.
“Hey!” he shouted, but it was lost in the crowd noise. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled as loudly as he could. That worked.
Ignoring Wash’s whispered “Thank God,” Jason began to marshal the crowd, sending families scrambling for the gate in the town wall, sending single men running for their guns, and urging the drivers to hitch their horses in a hurry and instructing them to move with all due haste.
“Circle your wagons around the well inside the walls,” he shouted. “Apache! Apache coming in fast!”
He hoped Wash was dead wrong, but the truth was that there was a dust cloud to the south, a dust cloud that was rapidly approaching Fury.
“Come on!” he shouted as he helped a small boy, dusty and crying for his mother, to his feet, then quickly hoisted him over his shoulder. “Hurry up, folks! Move it!”
3
Upon reaching the big south gate of the town, Jason ran through it and dropped the crying boy. He leapt up on Megan’s horse, which was still tied to a nearby hitching post, and galloped back outside again through the stampede of men, women, children, and wagons coming swiftly toward him and the gate.
He paused only a moment to direct the first wagon driver toward the well, then spun outside the mass of the wagons to get a look at the horizon.
They were closer now. Almost close enough to make out individuals without the aid of binoculars, and through his mind raced the image of his sister, out at the MacDonald place. He prayed that she was all right, that she’d hidden, or that the braves were too intent on reaching the town and the wagons to bother with a meager homestead.
His thoughts were broken by a shouted “Jason!” coming from up the street. It was Ward Wanamaker, running toward him down the center of West Main, his gun drawn. Since Jenny had married and moved out, Ward had been renting her room. Jason believed in keeping his deputy close at hand.
“See to the wagons,” Jason shouted to Ward, then wheeled his mount back across the square to Dr. Morelli’s door. He didn’t have to knock, let alone dismount. Morelli was hurrying out the door when he got there.
“Apache!” Jason shouted, as if that one word were the answer to every question Morelli could possibly ask.
Apparently, it was. And in reply, the doctor nodded quickly and reached back inside the door for his rifle and his medical bag. “Get your wife and kids to the center of the square,” were Jason’s final words before he wheeled the horse once more and headed up toward Cohen’s Hardware. If those Indians made it over the wall, he didn’t want the first screams to come from Olympia and Doc’s kids, let alone Saul and Rachael Cohen’s.
Once he skidded Megan’s mount to a halt and tossed the reins around the rail, he banged at the glass out front of Salmon Kendall’s Mercantile until Salmon’s head appeared at the bottom of the steps. Then Jason made a sign—fingers for feathers—at the back of his head.
The mayor’s expression changed immediately, and he started shouting for his wife and kids to get the heck downstairs. Jason took off for the Cohens’ store, next door. He figured they were probably both out like snuffed candles, but he had to get both of them and their kids downstairs. Even with the outside wall—and the walls of their house—between them and the Apache, nobody should be upstairs right now. Jason knew what just one flaming arrow could do if it hit the right spot on a roof.
And so did Saul Cohen. If he hadn’t been knocked out on Doc Morelli’s joy juice at the moment, Saul would have moved his family downstairs long ago, and be out here on the street, helping Jason.
Jason unlocked, then pushed in the front door, and raced past shelves bulging with nail kegs and ready-made hinges and bolts and screws, pushed past a display of hammers and saws and awls, and took the stairs two at a time.
“I tell you, I’m pretty sure they passed us by,” Matt said from atop the ladder. His ear—attached to a head full of red hair as fiery as his sister’s—was still pressed to the floorboards above him, and his attractive brow was still knotted with concentration.
Below, on the dirt floor of the hidey-hole beneath the main room of their home, sat Jenny Fury, now Jenny MacDonald. Her long, slender legs were crossed Indian-style, and her arms were crossed, too. She didn’t answer him.
Everything about her body posture said, “No.”
Actually, everything about it said, “Go to hell,” but that flew past
