"Hush now, Josh."
The boy ignored her with fifteen-year-old certainty. "No Trekker has ever rolled over for them, and I don't think even Lawson would be that low. His men would string him up. They can't all be bad apples. I'd bet my life on it."
Mrs. Hendricks looked out into the fog. "I've got to think about more lives than just my own. But we'll see. You may have to bet just that, with the help of our new friend here."
Twenty minutes later, Lawson and his outriders came into the camp through a gap in the gate battle-wagons. Two tables laden with food and drink stood near the gate on one side, opposite the little shallow with the stream running out of camp. A fire burned cheerfully in the center. The deacon stood in the light enjoying a bottle of beer and one of Valentine's cigars.
Valentine watched events from beneath a house-wagon in the second line in the center of camp. Rocks, cases, kegs, and dirt were piled up under the wagons, hiding him and two dozen men good at rapid rifle fire. A few feet in front of him Josh Hendricks stood, Valentine's revolver tucked in the back of his belt.
"Look at those guns," a man sighting down his lever action muttered to Valentine. "There ain't a man there who isn't ready to shoot. Think they suspect us?"
"No, I think they're supposed to do this in a hurry," Valentine breathed. His heart sounded loud in his chest. A fight was coming; he felt it in every raised hair.
At the sight of all the ready guns and the antsy-looking men, Josh Hendricks seemed to shrink back into his clothes as he stepped forward. Lawson stood up in his stirrups and looked around the walls, where a few of the Eagles were on guard. He scratched his heavy growth of beard with the front sight on his pistol.
"W-w-we sure are glad to see you, Wagonmaster Law-son," Josh stammered. The deacon edged closer to the boy. "We're short men on the north wall. After you eat, you think you could get your outriders to screen us from the ridge side?"
"Those your orders, boy?" Lawson said, squinting at Hendricks.
"No, my mother's. She's Wagonmaster of this camp."
"Not anymore," Lawson said, pointing his pistol like a striking rattlesnake. He shot Hendricks in the chest twice, and the youth toppled backwards, falling almost in front of Valentine.
Valentine's riflemen brought their guns up as the Bar Sevens wheeled their horses toward the walls. The men and women to either side of him fired in a long, ragged volley, followed by a second as the Eagles worked the bolts and levers on their guns. The food and drink tables upended, men appearing from underneath like shotgun-armed jack in-the-boxes, blazing away at the surrounding horses. From the walls, men fired down into the mass of emptying saddles and screaming horses. Three Bar Seven outriders managed to get outside the gate before the battle-wagons were pushed together behind them, but explosion-flashes from the swivel guns swept them into a bloody, dying heap in the trench.
The deacon crawled through the flying lead and dancing hooves, pulling Josh. He dragged him beneath the wagons and stayed put.
It was over in less than a minute. With the gate shut, a few of the Bar Seven men flung their rifles down and dived off their horses. Some tried to crawl out out under the wagons, only to be rounded up by the men from behind the tables who advanced into the slaughter-yard to pistol the crippled horses and pick up the wounded men.
Valentine raised his gun over his head and waved it. He and the snipers emerged from beneath the wagon to join the deacon and Josh. "How is he?"
"Gasping for air, scared, and a Godly man for the rest of his days, I'll bet," the deacon said, pulling apart Josh's shirt to reveal Valentine's bulletproof vest on the coughing youth. The deacon extracted out the flattened remnants of a slug and tossed it from hand to hand like a hot chestnut. Josh Hendricks got to his feet and removed the vest, handing it to Valentine.
"I guess I owe you an apology, sir," he said, rubbing his breastbone.
Valentine looked at the deacon. "No harm letting them think the sneak attack worked-"
The deacon's eyebrows came together; then a grin split his face. "Good Lord, yes." He turned to the walls. "Fire off a shot now and then ... like they're mopping up." A few shots cracked off into the night.
"Ghost! Ghost!" Valentine heard a female voice call from out of the mist.
Duvalier.
He ran to the front gate. His fellow Cat stood, barely visible in the mist in the light thrown by a reflector lantern.
"Can't stop for more than a moment-can you hear me?"
"I'm here," Valentine said.
She spoke quietly, but Valentine's ears picked up her words. "A Trooper and another of these Bar Seven turncoats were waiting about a couple hundred yards out."
"What did she say? Why's she so quiet?" one of the men on the wall asked.
"Anything we have to be worried about?" Valentine asked.
"No, I took care of them. One's just behind me, and the other's in the stream, if you want to get their weapons. I listened in at their camp; they're waiting for a signal. Watch your north wall, too."
"For what?"