Chapter 34 - The Ambush at the Adobe
The valley floor was an inferno of heat and noise.
By the time Jesse cleared the rocky foothills and hit the open flats, the rattle of rapid rifle fire was deafening. Thick clouds of gray gunsmoke poured from the narrow firing slits of the adobe station house, hanging low in the windless, stagnant air.
Kaya’s warriors were circling the perimeter like a pack of wolves, leaning low over their mounts' necks, firing Henry rifles and short bows beneath their horses' bellies. Two mustangs were already down in the dirt near the corral gate, thrashing violently.
Jesse saw Zora a hundred yards ahead of him. She wasn't firing. She was riding straight toward the dry wash, her hand raised high in the universal sign of parley, shouting in a rapid, guttural tongue that Jesse couldn't understand.
A young warrior whirled his pony toward Zora, drawing an arrow to his cheek.
"Kaya!" Zora screamed, her voice cutting through the gunfire with desperate clarity. "Kaya! Chi-kis! Don't shoot! It’s Zora!"
The warrior with the bow paused, his eyes widening in confusion.
From the center of the dust cloud, the woman with the red-painted face hauled her horse back on its haunches. The animal reared, hooves churning the dirt, before slamming down hard. The woman lowered her Henry rifle, her dark eyes locking onto Zora’s face. For two heartbeats, the war cries ceased, swallowed by a stunned, disbelieving silence.
"Zora?" the woman gasped, the name catching in her throat like a burr.
Then the world exploded.
A heavy double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun roared from the hayloft of the adobe barn. A blast of heavy buckshot tore through the dirt between the two sisters, peppering the legs of their horses. Zora’s mare shrieked in pain, stumbling sideways.
"Ambush!" Kaya screamed in English, her face contorting with sudden, wild fury. "Traitor! You brought soldiers to our flank!"
"No! Kaya, listen to me!" Zora yelled, desperately trying to keep her panicked mount upright.
From the rocks above the station, Morrison’s hired gunmen opened up with a devastating volley. Bullets kicked up spurts of white dust all around the warriors. One of the young Apache men took a round through the shoulder, tumbling from his saddle with a cry that was quickly drowned by the roar of rifles.
Jesse slammed his bay mare into a hard slide between Zora and the barn, throwing his mount broadside to create a shield.
He brought the Spencer carbine to his shoulder, cocked the heavy hammer, and fired three rapid shots into the hayloft window. Wood splintered, and a muffled scream of agony told him his lead had found its mark; the man with the ten-gauge tumbled out of the loft, crashing through the rotting shingles of the awning before hitting the hard dirt below.
"Get to the wash!" Jesse shouted at Zora, pumping another round into the chamber. "Take your sister and get behind the bank! I’ll hold the gate!"
Kaya looked at Jesse, her rifle swinging toward his chest with lethal speed. "White dog!" she spat, her finger tightening on the trigger.
"Kaya, no!" Zora threw herself from her saddle, landing hard in the dirt beside her sister’s stirrup, grabbing the hot barrel of Kaya’s Henry rifle and shoving it skyward just as the weapon went off, the bullet whistling harmlessly into the blue sky. "He saved my life! He brought the surveyor to answer for the survey!"
Kaya stared down at her sister, her chest heaving, the paint on her face smeared with sweat and black powder grime.
Behind Jesse, Silas Finch tumbled out of his saddle into the dirt, weeping and groveling on his knees, clutching his hands over his ears as bullets snapped through the air above them.
"Is that him?" Kaya asked, her voice dropping into a deadly, vibrating whisper that chilled Jesse even through the heat of battle. "Is that the one-eyed coyote who drew the red lines?"
"Yes," Zora said, rising to her full height, her hand still resting on Kaya’s knee. "That is Silas Finch. But Morrison is inside that stone house, Kaya. He has the survey chain. If he burns the wood inside that hearth, our people's land dies today."
Kaya looked past Jesse, toward the heavy oak door of the station house. A dark, sinister column of black smoke had just begun to curl out of the stone chimney, carrying with it the distinct, sickly-sweet smell of burning pine pitch and old paper.
"He’s burning the records," Kaya snarled, her eyes narrowing into slits of pure, primal hatred.
She turned to her surviving warriors and barked three rapid orders in Apache. The warriors immediately scattered, breaking off their circle to take cover behind the earthen banks of the dry wash, keeping up a steady, suppressing fire against the windows of the station.
Kaya swung down from her horse with the fluid grace of a mountain lion. She unsheathed a long, bone-handled hunting knife—the twin to the one at Zora’s waist.
"We go through the back kitchen door," Kaya said, her voice completely stripped of emotion, looking not at Jesse, but directly into Zora’s eyes. "If the white man fights with us, he bleeds with us. If he runs, I put an arrow through his liver. Understand?"
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Jesse cracked a cold, grim smile, his thumb sliding another heavy cartridge into the loading gate of his carbine. "Ma'am, I didn't ride fifty miles through these thorns just to watch another fire burn. Let’s go kick the door down."
***
