Still, Dan was tempted. Whether or not Sid Hatfield was a blood relative, he was most certainly an ancestral spirit. Company goons or Croats, his town was under attack.
But that was in the old days, when police officers were not really professionals. So Dan resisted the amateurish whimsy, and brought up the .40-caliber automatic in a proper two-handed grip. The first line of horsemen was forty yards away.
The first wheel locks were discharged at him. Dan ignored the shots. As inaccurate as the weapons were, especially on a galloping horse, he would only be hit by blind chance.
As he started squeezing the trigger, Dan forced another thought out of his mind. That was a much more difficult struggle. Dan disapproved strongly of cruelty to animals, and he was especially fond of horses. Still—
Professional.
He emptied the twelve-round clip, methodically mowing down the horses in the front of the charge. Most of his shots struck the cavalry mounts in the chest or throat, killing several of them outright. Even those horses that were only wounded stumbled and fell, spilling themselves and their riders. Then other horses, uninjured by bullets, began stumbling over the corpses. Within half a minute, the charge had piled up like water hitting a dam.
Long before those thirty seconds expired, however, the street had become a charnel house. As soon as Dan's first shot went off, the deputies and armed citizens in the upstairs windows began firing their weapons. The range was point-blank, and the street below was packed with horsemen. Due to their excitement and fear, many of the citizens—and not a few of the deputies—missed practically every shot they fired. It hardly mattered. It was almost impossible for a bullet not to hit something.
Screaming rage and terror, the Croats tried to return fire with their wheel locks. But the contest was hopelessly one-sided. Not only were the wheel locks inaccurate, but the men firing them were mounted on pitching horses. Any shot which struck home did so by pure luck. The residents of Grantville perched in the upper stories of the downtown buildings suffered only eight casualties. None were fatal, and only two of them were actual bullet wounds. The rest were cuts caused by shattering glass and splintered stone. And one freak concussion: when a heavily framed velvet portrait of Elvis, shot loose from the wall, landed on the head of a woman huddled below. Dan had planned to retreat, as soon as he fired off his first pistol. But now, seeing that the charge had been stymied, he stood his ground. Carefully, almost gently, he laid the empty automatic on the street next to his feet. Then he drew the pistol from his holster and started shooting again.
One of the officers who had been in the forefront was just now rising to his feet, shaking his head. The man was still dazed from his spill. He stumbled, and fell to his knees. His head came up, staring at the uniformed man who had so shockingly—one man!—shattered the charge.
Dan would have passed him up, if the man had managed to lose his hat. But Croats treasured their headgear—none more so than officers—and the hat was firmly attached by a drawstring. It was a very fancy, elaborate hat, replete with feathers. A commander's kind of hat. Even the bullet which came in between his eyes and blew out the back of his head didn't dislodge the thing.
Again, methodically, with a proper two-handed grip, Dan began killing the dismounted cavalrymen who had been in the first rank. He had intended to save a few rounds to cover his retreat. But by the time he came to the last few rounds, he saw that retreat would be unnecessary. Downtown Grantville, like a giant-scale Matewan, had become a death trap for arrogant outsiders. Already, he could see the Croats beginning their retreat.
Rout, rather. There was no discipline or order in the mob of horsemen galloping off to the east. Just five hundred panicked cavalrymen, leaving two hundred dead and wounded behind, driving down a road which led to no destination they knew. Just—away.
Dan heard the engine of the bus blocking the bridge start up. He spun around.
"Goddamit, Gretchen—wait for me!" Gretchen had positioned all the German police recruits in the bus, ready at the windows to cover Dan's retreat if necessary. Then, seeing the way the battle was going, she ordered the driver to start the bus.
The driver was an elderly man, confused and frightened by the situation. Seeing that he was useless, Gretchen seized him by the scruff of the neck and manhandled him out of the bus. Then, scanning the large crowd which had gathered south of the bridge, she bellowed: "I need someone who can drive this thing!" She repeated the words in German.
"I can! I can!"
Gretchen recognized the voice even before her little brother forced his way through the mob. Hans was grinning from ear to ear. "I can drive anything!" he called out proudly, racing toward her.