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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Friday,
September 1, 1922,
continued
From up here, he could see the road north for maybe a quarter mile, before the lakeside trees and bushes obscured it. The land between the road and the lake was about a quarter-mile wide, so what Red saw out the north door was pretty much a square, with the road on his left side and the lake shore on his right.
Heavy palmetto clumps higher than a man hid the feet of slash pines a hundred feet high, and Ocala sand pines gathered in the white sand areas. These went only about twenty feet or so, with short needles and thick nests of branches, that would allow their enemies good concealment, but only fair cover.
The west side of the road was wide open, with little concealment and no cover at all. More war stories from his relatives who’d gone over to fight; cover was concealment that would also stop a bullet. Wasn’t shit on the west side of the road where he couldn’t spot a man and put one in his ass, as far away as he could see. The 1903 Springfield fired the same round as the Gewehr 98, and could technically reach a target almost three miles away.
What was called the “effective range” of either rifle was really more like three-quarters of a mile, at which they were deadly accurate. Everything within the square he was now thinking of as his “hunting ground” was well within that range, and with this rifle he figured a ten-year-old could take out a dozen guys if he was smart.
Whatever was a’gonna happen was a’gonna |
He was about to run back to the south end of the loft and signal the house that the threat was to the north, when he heard another truck engine roar. It was just south of the culvert, had idled quietly up, and was now making a hard run the last few dozen yards to the culvert, the only way across the ditch to the fish camp unless you waded it; the guys to their north would have to wade it before they came on.
“Oh shit,” Red said under his breath. They had come both ways. Probably sent these guys up to distract them while the rest crept in from the other side.
And if there were any machine guns, those guys to the north would be bringing them. These new attackers would be packing pistols and maybe rifles, but would really be just for show. They had to know they would come under heavy fire, no way they would be able to limber up an automatic rifle before they were forced to retreat. Red decided not to wait.
As the truck came in sight, going too fast, Red thought, to make the nearly ninety-degree turn over the culvert’s roadway, he sighted on the driver. Through the high-quality Goerz scope he could see the stubble on the man’s unshaven face. The second he saw him haul on the wheel to make the turn, he led the truck a hair and fired. Just like shootin’ at a runnin’ hog.
The rifle shot sweet, smooth as silk. As the blast rang Red’s ears and the stock bumped his shoulder, the truck’s partitioned windshield blew out on the left side, and the truck missed the turn, sliding sideways to put the left front wheel over the edge of the culvert pipe, blocking the roadway over the canal.
Red jacked the bolt on the Gewehr and sighted again, and nearly shot Jumper in the back as he and Jueve popped up and unloaded on the cab, with Jumper cocking and firing his Winchester like a pro.
Jueve was on the far side with a double-barrel shotgun, but Red saw Jumper had placed him back towards the house so if it came to it, they wouldn’t be firing at each other with the truck in between.
Red heard a man scream |
Jumper was looking at Jueve, who had the shotgun open and was loading more buckshot, when a man in the truck bed jumped up and aimed a pistol at the Indian. Red had him in the scope and took a quick shot. The man flew back, but his pistol fired and Jumper fell.
The diversionary attack now dealt with, Red had no choice but to run back to the north side, from where he expected the real assault to come.
Whatever might be done for the Indian, either Jueve or Joe would have to do it.
Red didn’t have long to wait. He first saw palmettos waving here and there, but there was no wind. They came through the bushes from the west side, where they’d parked their trucks on the road out of sight to the north. Seemed like they were trying to get more towards the lake, he thought, rather than angling straight at the house.
He didn’t mind; the house was set east of the barn, and you couldn’t see the west side of the barn, towards the road, from the house. If they approached that side, the only friends he had on the ground were Jueve and Joe, assuming Jumper was dead or out of action.
He was glad they hadn’t thought of it, were probably thinking their main threat would be from the house. If they circled east and came at the house and barn, there were at least ten people who could shoot at them, between him and all the folks in the house.
Red spied the moving palmetto fronds, the periodic glimpse of a leg or a hat as the attackers tried to sneak up on the house. They didn’t seem to think they’d been seen, or at least they weren’t acting like it. They had to have heard the shooting from the culvert, but if they wondered why it hadn’t taken but moments for the Middleton household to deal with the three gunmen, they didn’t let it stop their advance.
There was no fear in him now, only hate |
The last thirty yards between the house and the trees were mostly clear, and Red was worried the attackers were planning to set up inside the tree line with those automatic rifles.
He didn’t intend to let that happen; if they did, they could literally chew the walls of the house to splinters with them. A third of an inch of hardened steel armor was about six house walls’ worth of protection against the Brownings. The slugs wouldn’t even slow down, they would go right on through the house and out the other side. Jenny, Guy, or anybody else in the house unprotected would be chopped to bloody guts in about two minutes.
That was a problem. All right, it was about time to do something about that problem.
He saw that he’d arranged the hay bales more for the bad guys coming straight in than east towards the lake. He rearranged a few bales so that he had a good firing line that way, to his right, and started thinking like the hunter in his tree stand.
Stand hunting was kind of like being both the hunter and the hunted. You picked your ground, but still, you got your prey—your “enemy”—to come to you, onto that ground. He’d killed a mess of deer by tracking them as they pushed through the heavy palmetto stands, or sometimes entire forests of palmettos that went on for miles. It was like seeing the wake of a boat. You might get a glimpse of antlers or a flash of tan hide, but mostly it was just the stiff, waxy leaves, big as newspapers, waving with the passing of a large animal.
What he now saw looked a lot like that, and in his experience, if you fired right at that leading edge of moving bushes, you were going to hit whatever was moving them. They provided concealment, but no cover whatever. A .22 could kill you through palmetto leaves. Question was, should he shoot at the first of them, the closest?
He thought about the greatest threat, the Brownings. They were heavy, and took a lot of equally heavy ammunition to be effective. He’d heard that in the War they were often manned by two men, one with the rifle and another with a load of ammunition. So, maybe he should look for where two deer were pushing through the bushes, together.
He couldn’t afford to listen to his heart now |
He carefully aimed at the leading “deer,” then thought better, and aimed at the second one. If the shot caused the first man to turn…he fired. The sound of the shot battered around the loft like the first one had, but Red didn’t take time to look for the result. He jacked another shell and drew down on the spot he’d fired on, and sure as hell he saw a man in overhauls and a white shirt turn, while the man’s long rifle bent the palmetto leaves aside. A Browning automatic rifle.
Red shot the man high in the back, and gritted his teeth as he saw the red bloom of blood right beside his spine, saw the man spin and go down. He didn’t move. “Yes,” he said, his face a mask of hatred.
Everyone in the house seemed to let go at once after his two shots. He heard Guy’s Parker, a hollow boom deepened by the full choke, used to gather the buckshot tighter for larger game. Like hogs, or deer. Or people.
He heard a distinctive crack-crack-crack, that he suspected was Jenny’s .351 Winchester autoloader. Somewhere from the end of the house by the lake, Harlan was firing his own 1903 Springfield, practically the same rifle as the Gewehr, but with regular infantry-type iron sights. The Mexican boys were banging away with their .45 Colts, a solid thud as recognizable as the sunrise. Red could see they weren’t doing any real damage, but were sure as hell keeping the enemy’s heads down.
He spotted another double trail of moving bushes, but these two were in line, tight, one behind the other. Not more than two feet apart. Not a chance. But what the hell, why not try?
He grinned, but it was an evil grin; anyone who saw him then would have run. He aimed so that, as far as he could tell, he would hit the front man in the head or the upper chest, and if the bullet penetrated, wasn’t deflected by a spinal bone or something, would hit the other mid to lower body…he fired.
It was a bad way to die |
He was searching for another set of two deer when one of the gun crews got set up and let loose on the house. The battering crash of machine gun fire chewed at the wall, blasting chips and splinters from the clapboard siding, spitting up clumps of dirt from the yard and smashing in windows. Red hoped to God Guy and Jenny had the sense to take cover from that hailstorm of bullets.
The attackers clearly still didn’t know he was in the loft; the smokeless ammo was doing its job. The Gewehr held a five-round magazine, and he had one left. He jacked the bolt action and sighted on where the palmettos were thrashing from the automatic rifle fire, being chopped like salad. He could actually see the gunner now. It was Clarence Middleton. “God damn you to hell,” Red said, and fired.
In that instant, the guy humping ammo for Middleton leaned in from behind the bushes and took the shot right in the head. It blew off the entire right side of the man’s skull, and hit Middleton somewhere low, maybe a leg. Middleton howled, the firing stopped, and he saw where Middleton was crawling back away from the house.
He grabbed at the ammo box, couldn’t get it open; it had rusted. He flipped it over, rammed the rifle butt against the metal release handle. The handle popped open. He snatched at the magazines stacked inside, finally dropped the old one and inserted the new, chambered a round.
When he swung the scope around, Middleton was nowhere to be seen. God damn it, where was he? Red fired to the rear of the original position—he could see the Browning still laying there—nothing. He took a shot to the left, back towards the road. No reaction, no scrambling for cover. Shit! He fired again, to the right, in case the swamp rat was feinting towards the east to fool him. Still nothing.
A voice called out from the house, low and gravelly. Harlan.
“That you Clarence, you wuthless son of a bitch? Oughtn’t come around here annoyin’ decent folk, you likely to get yo’ thievin’ ass seriously kilt!”
Good man; maybe he could draw el Bandito malo out where Red could drill a hole in his black heart with some fine German engineering. No luck.
Harlan tried one more time |
That did it. Red heard Clarence call out, “Harlan Middleton, you shut your filthy mouth about my Ma! I should’a killed you back when we was kids…”
Red fired. It got a reaction, but he didn’t think it was a hit. He saw where Clarence was scrambling through the bushes, but shot after shot missed its mark. That skunk had more lives than a God damn barn cat.
Three or four others were crashing back through the palmettos, and Red decided they were better than nothing. One man showed his back for a second too long, and Red nailed him high, just left of his spine, and he dropped like a sack of beans. An instant kill, for sure.
Amion William Dedge thought, for just a second there, that he might be enjoying this a little too much. In fact, he wanted more. He longed, ached, prayed for the chance to personally kill every God damn Ashley and all their gang, and he’d made nothin’ but a fair start today. There was more killin’ needed doing. He knew it was wrong; his Southern Baptist upbringing had instilled enough guilt in him to make him wary, but he also knew that God understood blood. He understood revenge. He’d claimed it for Himself, but maybe, just maybe, God used men for His vengeance, just like the Bible said He used them for so many other things.
Red fired two more rounds, loaded another five, banging away at the retreating figures as they flailed their hasty way through the bushes. He didn’t think he hit any more of them, but it sure was fun watching them diving, rolling and duck-walking like their asses was on fire.
He knew for a fact they were being savagely slashed by the saw-palmetto stems, every Florida boy learned that lesson early, the hard way. He hoped there was prickly pear too, the vicious little cactus that would stick a hundred three-inch spines in you and break them off in one second. He’d known of dogs who’d got them in the muzzle and died. .
Sons of bitches deserved whatever they got. It looked like three of them were making a getaway, and Red could count six he’d killed himself. At least nine men. .
“Help! Jumper’s hit! Help!” |
He heard the front door slamming open and feet running behind him. He couldn’t see Jumper or Jueve, and he was chanting under his breath, “No no no no….”
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
That thrilling series of movie scenes continues….
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