Savage Texas by William W. Johnstone & J. A. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone & J. A. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W. & Johnstone, J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Western
ISBN: 9780786023509
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fever dreams!

Heat? The agony of a living, sensate being suffering the merciless torments of an inferno? Sam Heller had known his share and more. Now, in his mind, he relived some of those incidents:

There was the time a few years before the war, when a war party of Apaches had been rampaging throughout south Arizona. Sam was one of a party of gold-seekers prospecting a likely claim in the high desert mountains when the Apaches struck. He’d been one of the few to survive the initial onslaught on the miners’ camp and flee on horseback.

The fleeing miners took shelter in a Butterfield stage station on the overland route. The station house was made of thick stone walls. Some travelers and local ranchers and their families were forted up there.

Apaches generally liked to hit and run, but this raid had been coordinated among several tribes, laying waste to the whole southern tier of the territory. The red raiders besieged the station house. They stole all the horses first thing and settled in to wait out the defenders.

They avoided a head-on charge. No sense in that. They were there not to be killed, but to kill. Lurking in the surroundings just out of sight, they were elusive, phantomlike, rarely showing more of themselves than the shadow of an overflying bird.

For one of the defenders in the station house to show himself for even an instant in one of the windows was to risk death. The station had solid walls; the besieged had plenty of guns and ammo. But the water supply was outside: a well in the dirt front yard. The only water inside was a single, small cask that was half-full when the attack struck.

Eighteen souls, men, women and children, were penned in the stone house under the blazing Arizona sun. The water went fast, rationed or not. The well was less than ten yards from the front door, its tantalizing nearness even more maddening once the water ran out. And run out it did, early.

Water is like breathing: one of those those things you never think about until it’s suddenly cut off. Funny how thirsty a man becomes the instant he realizes he can’t have a drink of water when he wants one . . .

Stalemate. The Apaches couldn’t storm the place without suffering too-costly casualties, but the besieged were pinned down with no escape.

Apaches prefer not to fight at night—but they will, if necessary. On the second night, several volunteers tried to make a rush to the well to get some water. The lucky ones died in a salvo of bullets. One poor devil was taken alive. He lived for a day and a night and a day, fiendishly tortured out of range of any merciful death-dealing bullets.

Thirst. Sam’s throat closed up; he couldn’t swallow. His tongue swelled up in his mouth. Unquenchable thirst lit a fire in the brain.

A mother was found dead in the morning, throat cut by her own hand, but not before she first had

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