I do NOT own the copyrights to Bonanza Sweet Carolina
Scene 12
Last Hurrah
"Back door won't budge!" Hosea hollered.
"Shoot the lock, you fool!" Lange hollered as he pulled his own trigger. His bulled blasted through the window, but missed Pappy by a mile.
"Man's a lousy shot!" mouthed Carolina's adopted father. His own gun returned fire. Lange might as well have been a jack-in-the-box for as much bobbing as he was doing from behind a rock.
"I don't know what they put in front of that door, but shooting the lock did no good." Hosea was shocked no bullets had hit him as he'd raced back to where Lange was crouched.
"Keep shooting, but do it from a different angle then me." Lange bit off his words as he took another shot.
"Man who taught that idiot to fight should be hung." Muttered Codger at his friend Pappy.
Pappy Jones chuckled and kept shooting; though all of his misses were on purpose. "I don't care; just keep them busy 'til our ammo's out." Pappy whispered back. Both men used their ammunition carefully as they wanted to buy Ben and Carolina as much time as they could before Lange ended what they were calling their real last hurrah.
The sun looked down at the events going on and shook its head, even that ball of fire could see Lange's stupidity. However, even if it could, it wouldn't do anything to get the man to see the light of day. The rocks would have laughed at the man if they could; he'd worn his fancy city suit on this ride. If they could have talked they'd have asked each other something akin to 'Are you sure this man has brains?'
Brains, or not, the fight went on for a good three hours. "It's time to die." Codger stood up, out sight, "I've one bullet left."
"Me, too," Pappy then said that since Lange and his men were so jumpy they'd probably shoot at the first thing appearing in the window.
"Egg them to come on in, Might as well try to take one more man down before we get plugged ourselves." Codger whispered.
"Got it" And that's exactly what he did. "You want me!" Pappy Jones imitated Ben's voice once again. "Come and get me, you imbecile!" Lange saw red, he hated being called names. He and his men rushed in.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Lange's bullet found Pappy's longtime friend. "I got my last hurrah." Codger said as he fell backwards and died.
"Always knew you were a idiotic fool." Pappy spoke as he fell from a bullet out of Robert's gun and, through foggy eyes, saw some man he did not know drop dead himself from Pappy's own bullet. The last thought on Pappy Jones' mind was 'I hope we bought you enough time'. Feet pounded across the dirt and threw open the door expecting to see Ben and Carolina dead and two scared children in the corner; what they saw stopped them in their tracks.
"Jones!" Hosea gasped. "That man has a thousand lives." The superstitious man slunk back from the dead man.
"Who's that?" Robert pointed to Codger.
"Codger." Lange spoke with dripping disgust, "Should have known that old gizzer wasn't dead. A fact he'd easily have known, if he'd paid attention before leaving Limbo. "Let's get going, Cartwright can't have gotten far."If Codger hadn't been raised around the Apache he might not have been able to hide Ben's tracks so well before Lange had arrived, but he was and there was no signs of which way the well-known rancher had gone. "They'd have had to take the main road." Robert insisted, "Mr. Cartwright is too injured to handle the hills."
"Ya, the roads are no good, that contraption Pappy built couldn't handle the way those roads dip up and down. It would fall apart." Hosea had never trusted the 'thing'.
"You very well may be right." Lange had his doubts, but what they said made sense, and they were right about that strange looking carriage. So they headed down the main road without another thought, something they might not have done if they'd realized they'd been watched the whole time.
