Free The Tall Men by Will Henry

thought you did—which right now wasn’t half as much as you wished you did—what he was doing up there, was praying!
    But there could be no misreading the ramrod stiffness of his posture, nor the stock-still, outstretched appeal of the suppliant arms. To Ben, suddenly, there was something sinister about that Indian. Something about his black furs and his rail-thin motionlessness that got into a man like the other nine put together hadn’t done.
    He shrugged off the chill, blaming the cut of the north wind for it. At least there was one thing damn certain about that religious redskin. If he was praying, it wasn’t for peace. When an Indian did that, his gun was always placed on the ground in front of him. In the upraised hands of this black-robed brother reposed a Henry Repeating Rifle as short and sweet and ugly as the one now getting sweated in his own shrinking grasp.
    Well, no matter. Nine working at war and one praying for it, or not. A man knew what he had to do. And what he had to do was get through them and into that emigrant camp.
    He had seven shots in the Henry. If he couldn’t get five of those bucks with that seven rounds, atthat peashooter range of not over a hundred yards, he was in the wrong business. Naturally, after that, the ball was over and the band could go home. The rest of them would be falling in on him like a rotten roof, and a man would have to figure his chances lay somewhere between how fast he could get back to the black and how slow the Sioux could scramble for their ponies. There wasn’t any use trying to guess it past there. He would only get the shakes and spoil his aim.
    Ben got on his belly, moved his elbows around in the snow until he found firm ground under both of them. He wedged himself down solid, cheeked the Henry, lined up the first buck and squeezed off.
    It was a head shot. The Indian never moved. He just buckled a little in the knees, eased gently forward into the bank, was out of the fight for keeps. He got two others through the body in as many seconds, then his luck and their surprise ran out together.
    A freakish gust of wind boiled up the groundsnow between him and his running targets, obscuring the Sioux for a full five seconds. In that time they had made it to their ponies and were vaulting up on them. The air was still dancing with blown snow as he levered the last four shots into them.
    A man feels things with his rifle. If he knows it. Ben knew that Henry from bent foresight to battered buttplate. He was just as sure his past four shots were wasted as he was certain his first three were center-ring, meat-in-the-pot, solid.
    Going for the black, he shifted the empty carbine to his left hand, whipped out the Kwahadi knife with his right. It was too long after lunch to be fussing with tied reins. He went aboard the gelding like a charging grizzly swarming over a crippled buffaloheifer. The Kwahadi blade slashed, the San Saba “Heeyahhh!” echoed hoarsely, and the race was on.
    For the first forty jumps he guided the black with his knees, using his hands for a few other things that needed to be done before spring set in. Like transferring the knife to his clenched teeth, ramming the useless Henry into its saddle boot, sheathing the blade, refilling its vacated hand with a comforting fistful of case-hardened steel backstrap, worn grip screws, and well used walnut.
    With the Colt out and ready for argument, a man felt better.
    Even good enough for a twist in the saddle and an over-the-shoulder look at what he had behind him in the way of late afternoon callers.
    Those boys were well mounted and making the most of the fact. They rode nearly as good as Kwahadis, which was to say the best in the Indian world, and had bigger, stronger horses under them than you generally saw with Kiowas or Comanches.
    Well, if it was a horse race they wanted, they had picked a pretty good pony to beat. The black was a halfblood Spanish Arab from the best caballaje in Old Sonora. He was