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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Friday,
September 1, 1922,
continued
When they pulled up to the fish camp, things seemed quiet, but Rosalijo jumped out, shouting at the Mexican boys to get in the main house and take up positions at windows looking west, towards the only road in, from Jackass Junction. The two Indians hopped down from the farm truck and promptly melted into the trees surrounding the main house, and Red figured that was good. They were the best scouts around and utterly fearless.
With the lake at their backs and the only way in to their front, all they needed was some good scouting to keep from being bushwhacked.
It surprised Red how easily this seemed to come to him, but the truth was, like so many boys whose fathers and uncles had taught them first aid, they had also been taught about weapons, tactics, what it was like to fight a war. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened in their lives, and they were soaked in it. There was nothing much else to talk about, hoeing corn or picking tobacco or eating dinner, and the men who’d gone to war, many not much older than them, talked about it a lot. It was a kind of friendship that seemed to extend to even those the veterans didn’t know, but who’d done the same. Gone to fight.
Every boy in America wanted to be a soldier instead of a farmer, and half of them could field-strip the 1903 Springfield their daddies and brothers and uncles brought home from the Great War. So, even North-Florida dirt-floor cracker-ass farm boys knew about things.
Things like the Gewehr 98 sniper rifle with the Goerz scope, and the smokeless, high-velocity ammunition. Nice thing, for a sniper, he thought grimly, not to show his position with a flag of smoke. Might just keep him from getting his own self killed.
“Rufus, take Miss Jenny into the house” |
Rufus frowned at him. “He know they there, he send ’em to you in de fus’ place.”
Red figured Rufus was right. He could see Jenny was about to protest about being put out of the way but he spoke to her aside, trying not to look down her ample bosom while he did it.
“You took good care of Guy, could you please look in on Mr. Willis and just make sure he’s all right? Ma Middleton’s a good cook but I don’t know if she knows a lick about nursin’. Then, I need you an’ that fancy Winchester .351 looking north for anybody trying to flank us from that a’way. The main grade of the road passes us by, goes on around the lake to the north, and if they don’t come straight on, that’s where they’ll come, from the north.
“If they come straight on, they’ll be jammed up at the turn-in, an’ I just don’t think they’ll want to take that chance. It’s too close to the house, and there’s water on both sides of the culvert. They did, we’d chop ’em to bits as they crossed the culvert, an’ they know it. They’ll drive by, maybe a quarter mile, leave their trucks and walk in. The ground is good, dry and sandy, with lots of scrub and palmetto to hide in.
“That’s what I’d do if’n I was them, an’ I think it’s the most likely. That means I’m countin’ on you to hold them off until I can back you up, if that’s the way it goes. I can’t bet all my chips on it, so I gotta watch both ways until they make a move. Who knows, they may come both ways.
“Take Guy with you, he’s got the Parker and my old Colt Peacemaker, and anybody gets within a hun’erd feet better say his prayers. Anybody closer’s already gonna be dead.
“Rufus,” and he turned to the boy, so much like a man, so much like himself.
“Suh?”
“Please make sure Miss Jenny has all the ammo she needs for her rifle and that Beretta. Cart Mr. Guy’s shotgun shells too, they’re heavy. Twelve gauge! And we’re gonna need somebody to cart ammo if the shootin’ starts.”
Rufus’ mouth went tight, his eyes glittering like hidden obsidian. “Think it’s gonna? Start, I mean?”
Red nodded seriously, looking the boy hard in the eye. “Yeah. I think it’s gonna start, and real soon. I’ve seen these snakes before, I’ve killed some of ’em, and I’m tellin’ you, son, don’t you hesitate. You shoot ’em down like the rabid dogs they are, or they will God damn sure do it to you.”
“Don’t you worry none, Mis’ah Dedge, I mean t’ do jus’ that” |
Jenny and Guy humped their guns into the house, followed by Rufus with bags of ammunition.
Red whistled like the night whippoorwill, a night bird that would have stopped calling long before dawn, and Joe appeared like a wraith from the trees. “You think we should put Jumper at the turn-off? Just in case they act stupid and go for the front?”
Joe looked at him sideways for a second. “What if they anticipate we will think they wouldn’t come right on, and decide it would take us by surprise if they did? I think we should have Jumper and Jueve on the culvert, with plenty of ammunition. Can Jueve shoot?”
Red had his hands on his head, his fingers like heavy spiders pushing down on his skull. “Jueve? What the fuck is Jueve doing here?”
Joe looked innocent. “He came in your truck, I assumed you let him come.”
Red was shaking his head, violently, eyes closed, saying “No, no, no, Jueve is fifteen years old! He can’t be here!”
Joe put his hand on Red’s arm, calmly. “The Romans considered a boy a man at fifteen. He would, if qualified, become an ‘equestrian,’ which is—” and Red slapped his hand off.
“I know what a God damn equestrian is, and I’d appreciate if you’d knock off the bullshit, we ain’t got time for it. Git the boy an’ Jumper up there at the culvert to watch for ’em comin’, and tell ’em make sure they hide good. Ashleys’ll try to sneak on past, and they better think they’ve pulled it off or they’ll stop and slaughter them boys without a second’s thought. Tell them don’t let ’em see you and don’t shoot ’less they shoot first. Jumper solid? Won’t panic?”
Joe nodded solemnly. “Jumper’s solid.”
Red nodded. “Then let’s get to it. Tell Jumper that if they come from the north, see if he can’t sneak up the road and maybe hit ’em from the side. Rosalijo!”
“Si, Senor Roja?” he turned to Red.
“Get the trucks in the barn or behind the house by the lake. We know they ain’t got boats, so they ain’t comin’ that way. Don’t want them shootin’ up the trucks and having us stuck here. Where can I find a ladder?” Rosalijo said there was a twelve-foot straight ladder in the barn, to get to the lofts. “But what do you want it for? Maybe I can help.”
Red was looking at the house, the barn, and the road. “I want to get on the roof of the house, so I can see both ways to use this sniper rifle.” He’d explained the capabilities it had, and Rosalijo grasped the idea right away.
“What you need, Senor, Roja, is the barn loft” |
Red looked, nodded, and went to get the rifle and ammunition box, which he’d left on the porch of the main house, intending to get on the roof there. Harlan Middleton came out on the porch and asked what he was doing.
“This rifle Skeeter gave Rosalijo is a German sniper rifle. I mean to get up in the hay loft so’s I can cover both ways with it.”
Middleton rubbed his stubbly chin. “I fergot all about that, yeah, one a’ Skeeter’s younger brothers—he’s got about ten of ’em—brought it back from France. A good one, huh?”
Red nodded, slung the rifle over his shoulder and hefted the heavy ammo box. “Far as I know, one of the best. My daddy says the Germans make really good stuff, weapons, optics, stuff like that. How’s Skeeter doin’?”
Middleton allowed as how Skeeter had been shot before. “I heard that,” Red said drily.
Harlan allowed as how Skeeter was still ready and willin’ to shoot right back.
Red nodded, and as he hustled towards the barn, Harlan watched him go, still rubbing his chin. It struck him that that boy was just eighteen. Well hell, he thought, all them boys went to the War was mostly just eighteen too.
The barn loft would be a far better hunting stand than the roof, Red thought, with a flat floor, cover, and hay bales to hide behind. The second-floor doors were big enough to drive a truck through, and would give him a wide range to fire from.
He was terrified of another encounter with a machine gun, and them stinkin’ Ashley boys was known to favor them. Just like the Colt .45 pistols, there was a massive surplus of the Browning automatic rifles and anybody could buy them. Probably traded ’shine for ’em, but either way they were murder machines, and anybody fighting back with a pistol or rifle was liable to get theyselves seriously killed.
He just needed to be better at killin’ than they were |
Rosalijo helped him set the ladder up in the barn, and humped the ammo boxes up the ladder. Red carried up the rifle and had Rosalijo help him stack hay bales in front of the north and south doors. When he left he closed and locked the ground-floor doors, leaving Red in control of the barn; he didn’t want any of the gang to sneak in and attack him from below.
Red set about making walls of hay bales with small windows to shoot through. He knew the Browning fired a .30-’06 bullet at high velocity that could penetrate a third of an inch of hardened steel; his brother Walter had told him the French tanks the Germans commandeered were vulnerable to the BAR and they had about that much armor. He’d also told him that things like brick walls, tree stumps, dead horses, and hay bales were effective in stopping them.
When he was done, he had two walls of bales two bales thick, with slots both vertical and horizontal that gave him clear views to the culvert and the land between the road to the north and the barn.
He still thought they would come from the north, but his brother had told him some other stuff, too. Like how you cain’t never be sure of nothin’, ’cept your enemy wants to kill you really bad, so you’d best kill him first. That, you could count on. Turned out, Walter was right.
Red heard the first two trucks, idling ever so slowly up the dirt road, making little noise and raising no dust. He could see them and drew down on the front truck’s windshield, held his breath, hoping Jumper and Jueve would just lie still.
He could see the driver’s face in the 2.45 magnification on the Goerz sight, a slab-faced man Red didn’t know but didn’t like, right off. He was looking over at the fish camp to his right, and almost directly at Red, hidden behind the hay above his sight line. It was all the boy could do not to send this unknown heathen son of a bitch, come to kill him and his, to Hell right then, but he knew that would be disastrous. He needed them to go on by, do what he anticipated, come from the north.
Their daddy, John Sr., and brother Walter had both said it was better to get your enemy to come to you than the other way ’round. If you could pick your ground, you had the advantage. Against all their instincts from woodcraft and living off the land, that it was better to be the hunted, than the hunter. Red thought of that savage explosion of bullets from Cooter Summerlin’s window and shivered in the heat. He felt hunted all right.
He sighted on the second truck, and he shivered again |
He kept the scope on his enemy until he was out of his angle of view, then ran to the rear to pick up the trucks again as they continued along the road.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
I look forward to seeing how the action of these scenes will be presented in the film based on A Killing on a Bridge. Should be trilling!
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