The few windows in the place was all on one side of the building, and they was in a flash protected by men with rifles. Thing was, not everyone there was a crack shot or a hunter. There was some that was just skinners, others that was teamsters, and so on. All of them could pull a trigger, but that didn’t mean everyone there could hit what they was shooting at. Jack was at one of the windows, and like the others was firing as fast as he could send a round out there into the air, throw out the casing, and load a fresh one. The Indians was firing back, and bullets was tearing into the walls, and in some places cutting through them like they wasn’t no more than bed sheets. I fetched up behind a barrel and got low, knowing a good round might go through a weak spot in the wall, the barrel, my head and whoever might be behind me, and maybe through the other wall and knock off an unsuspecting prairie dog lingering over his breakfast. Those Indians was well armed. They had bows and arrows, some spears, but they had modern shooters too, and when I thought about the number of them up on that hill, the number of us inside the store, I figured we had about as much chance as a block of ice on hot stove.
