Ellen's Arc

Chapter 18 of 45

The wagon gave Ellen guns but no walls. Its iron plates covered the box and the seats, but the flats around it lay open in every direction. Cade walked a slow circle at dawn and came back grim. "Guns face out," he said. "But a rider can charge the flank before the barrel swings." One fast horse across open ground could reach them before the Gatling turned. Ellen looked at the tired women behind the plate and knew a single charge could end them. She climbed to the rear rail and studied the grenade gun bolted there. It was a squat military weapon, boxy and heavy, its belt of stubby rounds fed from a green ammo can. It did not need a clean hit. It threw fire in an arc and burst wide. "This," she said. "We aim it at the ground where a rider would cross. Not at the man. At the dirt." Cade understood at once. He paced the flat and marked the two lines a horse could use. "Salt's hard here. Soft there." He drove his heel in. "They'll come across the soft ground. Faster footing." Ellen swung the grenade gun and ranged it on the soft strip. She and Cade set the belt, checked the feed, and waited. The hum came near noon. A shape dropped from the sky, red and gold, and landed hard beside the wheel. It was the armored man who had guided them to this wagon and pulled Brennan's last gunman off the plain. Stark. His faceplate glowed as he pointed east. "Six riders. Coming fast. Your soft ground read is right." "Then hold the sky," Ellen said. "We hold the dirt." Stark lifted off without another word. The riders came low and hard across the flat, dust behind them, guns up. They took the soft strip, exactly as Cade said. Ellen let them close. Then she fired the grenade gun. The rounds walked across the soft ground in a line of bursts. Dirt and fire jumped up in a wall. The lead horse reared and threw its rider. The second slammed into the first. The charge broke apart, men and horses scattering wide of the wagon. Cade opened up with the Gatling, sweeping the flank while they were tangled. Stark dropped from above and pinned the two who tried to circle. In a minute the flat went quiet. The surviving riders wheeled and ran east. Ellen lowered the grenade gun. Her hands shook. The women were alive. The charge had failed. But the belt in the ammo can was near empty now. She had spent most of what the wagon carried to break one charge. Cade thumbed the last rounds and counted them out loud. "Twelve," he said. "That's all." The walls could shoot back, but not for long. To hold this ground for good, Ellen needed more than a fort that would soon run dry.