Ben laid the M-16 aside and picked up his Thompson. He was almost certain a few of the outlaws would get inside the house this night. While he really had nothing against the M-16, he knew the big, slow .45-caliber slug packed more of a wallop than the smaller, lighter, but faster 5.56 round. He knew that if the .45 slug hit a man, anywhere, that man was going down.

Full dark came suddenly, almost too quickly.

One second it was still light enough to see, the next instant darkness had completely enveloped the ghost town.

The outlaws wasted no time in slipping around the house on the hill. Those badly wounded outlaws that lay moaning and crying and dying around the house gave their buddies away.

Rani whistled softly for Ben. He looked up through the gloom of the old stairs.

"They're slipping in all around us, Ben," she said softly.

"The kids up?"

"And ready."

"Pick your targets and open fire."

It was rock-and-roll time around the house on the hill overlooking the ghost town. The night became pocked with muzzle flashes, punctuated with yelling from the now-discovered outlaws, and filled with the screaming of the wounded as the young defenders of the house found their targets and opened fire.

Over the banging and roaring of gunshots and bolts slamming back and forth, Ben heard the faint sounds of boot heels on the old brick of the front porch.

He stepped back into the darkness until his back touched the wall. He lifted the Thompson as his eyes found the shapes of men slipping quietly up to the sightless empty windows that faced the porch.

He cleared one window of three dark shapes, the Thompson jumping and bucking and roaring in his hands.

The men were flung backward as the lead struck them in belly and chest.

Ben quickly changed positions, moving from one end of the room to the other. He heard one of the young peopleyell. He had no way of knowing if the cry was out of fear or if the young person had been hit by gunfire. Ben suspected the latter.

He looked up just in time to hurl himself to the floor. Gunfire ripped the dark room, the slugs striking where Ben had been. On the floor, Ben lifted the Thompson and pulled the trigger, clearing yet another window of outlaws.

Someone was in the room with him. No! More than one person. Two, maybe three men. Ben lay on the floor and listened. A boot sc.r.a.ped the floor. Ben crawled noiselessly away, lifted the submachine gun, and poured the lead toward the sound.

As the muzzle flashes from the Thompson gave sparking light to the room, Ben saw three men jerk and dance grotesquely as the .45-caliber equalizers. .h.i.t flesh and bone. The odor of p.i.s.s and s.h.i.t and vomit and sweat was strong in the room, as dying bladders and bowels emptied.

"Back, back!" someone from the outside called.

"Fall back."

"f.u.c.k this c.r.a.p!" a man yelled. "I've had it. I'm cuttin' out."

"Yeah," another voice said. "Me, too."

"I'm with you, guys," yet another voice was added.

"Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here," a fourth voice said.

Those voices were joined by others.

"You yellow mother-f.u.c.kers!" a man screamed.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds runnin' away from kids and c.u.n.ts and one man!"

"You G.o.dd.a.m.n right!"

"I'll see you dead first!" the commanding voice shouted.

Then what Ben had hoped would happen began taking place.

Gunfire ripped the night. But the fire was not directed toward the house. The outlaws were fighting among themselves.

The sounds of heavy gunfire coughed out of the night.

Trucks and cars and vans cranked up, and headlights cut the dust and gunsmoke that had settled over the ghost town.

The gunfire died away. The sounds of roaring motors faded into the night. Only the moaning and howling and screaming and cursing of the wounded could be heard.

Ben crawled around the room, making certain all of the outlaws were dead. Ben found one still alive.

Using his long-bladed knife, Ben cut the man's throat.

He crawled to a window and looked out. Far in the distance, he could see the light from escaping vehicles.

Against all odds, the small band of defenders, alone in the ashes, had won this fight.

Chapter 22.

Robert had been hit in the arm. The wound was painful, but not serious. Miraculously, that was their only casualty. At first light, with everyone giving him cover if it was needed, Ben slipped outside and began gathering up weapons and ammo.

He counted ninety dead. He smiled amid the gore and dead and shook his head. If ninety had been killed, at least that many more had been wounded.

"Lucky," Ben muttered. "We were so very, very lucky."

"Oh, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Ben!" Rani said, when Ben told her what he planned to do.

Ben stood firm. "You going to help me, or do I do it myself?"'

Her green eyes touched him. They were emotionless, unreadable. "I'll help you, Ben. If you think it's necessary, then let's do it. But I think it's the most hideous thing I have ever heard of."

"When they start soaking up the bullets meant for you and me and the kids," Ben countered, "you just might change your mind."

They began stacking the bodies of the dead outlaws around certain parts of the yard, and closing in the porch with them.

It was grisly work, and Ben didn't like it any more than Rani-although he would never let on to her that he didn't. But he knew the grisly sight would make a lot of outlaws very uneasy, and would probably cause a few of them to give up the fight altogether. Also, most of the outlaws would be very reluctant to climb over the stinking, stiffening dead to get onto the porch.

He told Rani that.

"I still think it's barbaric!" she snapped at him.

Ben met her hot eyes. "Would you prefer to see eleven-year-old Jane held down on the ground and b.u.t.t-f.u.c.ked?"'

She shut her mouth and continued working.

Colonel Gray's column got as far as west central Texas before they started hitting any further major trouble. There, more small bands of looters, outlaws, and warlords began popping up, slowing down Gray's advance. Almost always, when the outlaws saw what they were up against, they pulled back and let the column go through.

But it was slowing their progress considerably.

Captain Nolan's platoon advanced to midway between Fort Stockton and Marathon. They had all refilled their water containers back at the Imperial Reservoir, but were in such a hurry they did not check the water for impurities. Dysentery laid them all down flat. They carried the proper medication to treat the illness, but that was small comfort to the suffering Rebels, who all knew it would be a full twenty-four to thirty-six hours before any of them would be able to do anything other than moan and squirt.

West and Texas Red had managed to gather some sixty-odd members of their outlaw band together. The rest had split for parts unknown, all vowing they would not be back. It was a sorry-looking bunch that met Cowboy Vic and Jake Campo on the east side of Study b.u.t.te at midmorning.

Jake started laughing when he saw who it was.

West and Texas Red flushed with anger, but wisely kept their mouths closed.

Jake waved the leaders to one side and said, "All right, tough-boys. What happened?"

Jake stopped laughing as the story unfolded.

He began getting madder by the second. Finally he waved the men silent.

Jake glared at the outlaws. "Do you mean to tell me-honestly-that

one.

man, and

one.

woman, along with a handful of snot-nosed brats, managed to beat back two hundred and fifty grown, fully-armed men?"

"That's about it, Jake," West said.

Texas Red said, "All that talk about Ben Raines being some sort of G.o.d, Jake. I don't know. But something is d.a.m.n sure spooky about him, and those that follow him."

"I don't believe that s.h.i.t!" Jake snapped.

But after this? ... He shook that thought away. "You boys look like c.r.a.p. Get some food in you and some sleep.

We hit that skinny son of a b.i.t.c.h, that uppity broad, and them kids at first light."

Ben and Rani sat in the yard of the old mine owner's home. Rani did her best to keep her eyes from the piled-up bodies in the yard and on the porch.

"And you really think you and your followers can bring a return to civilization?" she asked him.

"The way it was?" Ben looked at her. "Oh, no. Never in our lifetime, Rani. Probably not even the grandchildren of those kids in the house will know civilization the way we knew it. But those of us who believe strongly enough can carve something out of the ashes. We don't have to be alone in that, either.

Sometime within the next few months, we'll start setting up the outposts I told you about. It's a start," he said philosophically.

"Where would the dream have been if you had not come along?"

"Oh, Rani, don't give me more credit than I'm due. Believe me when I say I didn't want the d.a.m.ned job to begin with."

"You mean you tried to get out of it?"

"I sure did."

She sat by his side on the stone fence and stared out at the emptiness around them. "Where will you go if ...

when," she corrected, "we get out of this bind?"

"Wandering, probably."

She abruptly stood up. "I've got to check on the kids."

And you'd like to go wandering, too, Ben thought. Like me, you're tired of the responsibility. But you're also tired of hunger and danger and of the feeling that you are the only person in the entire country who gives a d.a.m.n about the kids.

"When we get out of this," Ben muttered. "You were right, Rani.

If is the word."

Ben spent the rest of the day checking weapons. He unpacked his rocket launcher and checked the grenades. Then, with a shovel in his hand, he prowled the area around the house, digging a dozen and a half punji pits, rigging the bottom of the pits with sharpened stakes, then camouflaging the opening the same way he'd done the shaft openings.

Using old wire he found, he rigged another dozen and a half ankle traps.

He emptied out several boxes of shotgun sh.e.l.ls and made some crude bombs, filling them with rusty nails and the shot from the sh.e.l.ls.

It was nearly dusk when he finished. He could not think of anything he'd missed in his preparation for war.

Other than wishing he knew of some way to keep the piled-up bodies from stinking.