The Five Dollar Mail Book 3: The Road Home

104: Muzzle Flash

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork Storm by Laura Hollingsworth. All graphics by me.

Book 1: The Green, Book 2: Lynch's Boys, Book 3: The Road Home, and the Riders & Kickers Anthology are available on Amazon under the name Regina Shelley. So if you hate waiting for chapter posts and/or want a more polished read, the finished product is available now.

If anyone had suggested this insane plan that they were currently engaged in to Storm back at the station, while he and the crew were sitting in the comfort and safety of the stone-walled bunkhouse, he and the rest of the crew would have mocked whoever had suggested it until a fight broke out.

Because climbing onto the roof of a trapper's cabin and stuffing honeybees down the chimney until Bad Men came boiling out was madness. Nobody on the crew would have been insane enough to think up a plan like that, much less suggest it to a bunkhouse full of bored men and boys whose favorite activity was pranking and tormenting each other.

Well, nobody except Jesse, maybe. Everyone knew Jesse was half crazy. In fact, it was Jesse and Still Water Water Woman who were carrying out the actual bee-stuffing at this very moment. He knew the plan had sounded like drunken babbling when he'd voiced it aloud, and he'd expected that no one would take him seriously. But they had taken him seriously. Storm figured desperation would make a man consider just about anything. And the craziest thing about all of it was that it seemed to be working.

The door to the cabin slammed open against the wall and a couple of the men stumbled out, cursing and shouting, their arms swinging wildly around their heads. He crouched in the underbrush with Eagle Bone, motionless, knowing that at any moment, Stone would realize someone was on the roof and Scarcliff would give the signal to fire.

Where's Fiona? She didn't come out. Why didn't she come out?

One of the men wheeled around, pointing to the roof and the thin curling of silver smoke from the burning twist of sweetgrass Still Water Woman had used to calm the bees. Ah, marda, we're in it. Smoke and fire belched from the rifles of Scarcliff's detachment, and at least one of Stone's men went down. The soldiers were supposed to cover Jesse and Still Water Water woman on the roof. He hoped they were good shots. He motioned Eagle Bone forward, and the two of them slipped towards the cabin, blending themselves with the deepening twilight shadows.

Storm realized he was shaking, his heart pounding in his chest so hard it hurt. Acid burned up his throat. Where is she? Where's Fiona? The fighting around him seemed far away, unimportant. All he knew was that if she wasn't there, or if she were dead, he was done. The world was done, and nothing else would ever matter. "Go," he hissed at Eagle Bone, inpatient. "Hurry! Marda!" A bullet whizzed between them, and Storm gasped, instinctively ducking backwards.

Eagle Bone spun around, an arrow already nocked, and released the shot into the fray. "We have been seen, Crow."

"Yes," Storm muttered, tightening his grip on his pistol as Eagle Bone, quick as thought, nocked another arrow. I start shooting, and they'll all know know exactly where...

Eagle Bone's target crumpled. The sound of gunfire and the smell of powder filled the air, chaos and twilight turning the rocky terrain around the cabin into a battlefield. Another shot tore the leaves above his head. Ah, tabarnak. They already do. He pulled his pistol and returned fire, making a desperate break for the cabin as he went.

He could see Jesse crouched behind the chimney, shielding Still Water Woman against the stone with his body, and Storm hoped Scarcliff was able to cover the pair until they escaped. He saw one of Stone's men with an upraised rifle, aiming at the roof, and he fired at the man before he was able to get off a shot. Dirt exploded at his feet. Is this crossfire, or is someone shooting at us? He dropped down low, scrambling backwards as Eagle Bone dove behind a small pile of split logs.

Scarcliff's soldiers were riding in, firing back at Stone's men, and the mauve dusk was clouded with the sharply scented haze of gun smoke. And then he saw it. He'd been too focused on Stone's men, his senses addled and overwhelmed by his frantic, desperate fear for Fiona, to really pay attention to the cacophony of whispering voices inside his own head. A soldier hung back in the ranks, his blue coat turning him into a half-visible ghost in the darkening light. The bayonet on the end of the man's rifle swung towards them, unmistakably and deliberately, and Storm realized with icy horror that he was looking right down the barrel. 

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