Hawk 03 by William S. Brady

Author:William S. Brady [Brady, William S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Angus Wells, Edge, George G. Gilman, Spaghetti westerns, Western ebook, Western series, Wild West
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 2023-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The horses came closer, the sounds of their hoofbeats echoing hollowly against the sides of the ravine. Shapes began to dissolve from the mist, forming into mounted men clad in furs and looted coats. They saw the wandering horses and rode in closer.

Saw the phaeton and began to cluster around the carriage.

Hawk waited.

Waited until the ravine was filled up with Apaches.

Then fired at the kerosene lantern that was still burning atop the first keg.

His bullet splintered the glass bowl into a myriad of fragments, pouring inflammable liquid down over the kegs of blasting powder stacked across the wheel. The wick, still burning, dropped into the spilling liquid and ignited the kerosene that spread fast over the powder.

There was a terrific blast that spread red flame in a gusting billow up and back and forwards. The second keg went off, heated to blasting point by the explosion of the first. Men and ponies were lifted up and plastered in bloody fragments against the sides of the ravine. The two horses tethered behind screamed and began to kick. Then the flash fire spread to the crates of powder and shells inside the phaeton and the entire ravine was filled with hellish thunder as great spurting gusts of fire and destruction roiled out to sear lungs and blind eyes.

Contained within the walls of the ravine the explosion had only three ways to go. Tongues of fire spurted in Hawk’s direction, singeing his horse so that the stallion began to buck and try to fight clear of the tethering reins. But the bulk of the massive discharge spread up and back along the ravine, penned in by the walls and the clustered horsemen.

The bullets in the cases began to explode, ricocheting off the walls to dance death down the length of the ravine. The first explosion had killed about twenty Apaches, the second as many more. The ricocheting bullets accounted for the same number, zinging back and forth across the walls of the ravine without stopping until they hit flesh or bone that was strong enough to stop them.

Men and horses died in the same bloody onslaught, flesh and bone pulping and shattering beneath the onslaught of the exploding munitions. El Cicatriz’s best war chiefs went down with bullets ploughing through their faces and bodies, or the massive explosions of the powder kegs plastering them like jam against the walls of the ravine.

The whole passage filled up with the splinters of the phaeton and the horses. With the corpses of screaming Apaches and dying mustangs. A welter of bodies blocked the trail, all streaming with blood and splintered bone.

Then the walls—already weakened by the grip of ice—broke under the impact of the explosions. Tons of rock burst loose, fragmenting down into the cleft to dump the upper half of the ridge into the trail.

El Cicatriz lost the last third of his warriors there as the passage through to Mantegara fell down and buried the pursuing Apaches beneath the tumult of stone. He reined back, dancing his pony clear of the rock slide.

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