run of the arrow chapter 7 The Wounds of War

The ambush had hit fast and brutally. One moment, the air was thick with the rhythmic clatter of the stagecoach wheels and the jingle of harness; the next, it was ripped apart by war cries and the terrifying thwack of arrows.
Jessie, his face already grimy with road dust and sweat, cursed under his breath as he wrestled the panicked team. He was perched high on the driver's box of the Desert Rose, a coach that now looked less like a symbol of progress and more like a splintered coffin. Behind him, the few passengers—a stern-faced preacher, a nervous merchant, and a young woman—were huddled, their terrified gasps blending with the chaos.
The attack had been a lightning strike by a small group of Apache riders, driven, Quinn knew, by the desperate hunger the white man’s railroads and settlements brought to their lands. Two arrows had pierced the coach's body, and one had grazed the passenger guard riding shotgun, sending him tumbling to the sandy earth, his rifle silent beside him.
Jessie saw his chance when the Apaches wheeled for another pass. He brought the whip down hard, urging the horses into a frantic gallop, driving them toward a small, rock-strewn arroyo that offered a sliver of cover. The coach slammed to a halt, listing precariously as the wheels dug into the soft dirt.
“Stay low! Everyone stay low!” Quinn barked, grabbing his repeater rifle.
Silence, absolute and heavy, fell over the scene, broken only by the ragged, wheezing breaths of the horses. Quinn scanned the ridges, rifle raised, his heart hammering against his ribs like a drum. The Apache had vanished, melted back into the merciless landscape as quickly as they had appeared. It was over, for now.
Jessie slowly climbed down from the box, his boots crunching on the brittle scrub. The coach was damaged, but repairable. His immediate concern was the team. Six magnificent bays, their coats slick with foam and blood, stood shivering in the traces. He moved to the lead pair first, patting their necks and whispering soft reassurances. He checked their legs, their flanks, finding only minor scrapes from the wild rush.
He moved along the traces, his eyes scanning for injury. It was when he reached the wheelers—the powerful pair closest to the coach, the anchors of the team—that his blood turned to ice. The horse on the right, a proud animal he called "Cheyanne," was leaning heavily against the other, his flanks heaving. Jessie knelt, his fingers tracing the slick, matted hair just behind the shoulder. He didn't need to see the wound clearly; he felt it. An arrow, a long, barbed shaft, had sunk deep. It had been broken off, likely during the violent stop, but the damage was done. The blood was a sluggish, dark seep, not spurting, but coating the horse's side with a fatal, sticky sheen.
He moved to the other wheeler, "Old Bart." He was swaying, his head drooping, his wide, brown eye staring blankly past him. His injury was lower, in the gut, a shallow but gruesome rent from a second arrow that had scraped past a rib. Bart’s breathing was a horrific, gurgling rattle.
Jessie stood up, the rifle suddenly heavy in his hand. He looked at the four horses still sound enough to pull, then back at Cheyanne and Old Bart, the life draining out of them with every ragged breath. They weren't just wounded; they were mortally wounded. The long, agonizing wait for the rescue patrol was a death sentence for them, and trying to pull the heavy stagecoach with only four horses, and two of his best wheelers dying in the traces, was impossible.
A wave of crushing despair washed over him. He could fight off the Apache; he could fix the coach. But he couldn't fix this. He was stranded, not by the enemy, but by the tragedy of the road. Without his wheelers, the Desert Rose was rooted to the spot, a beacon for any riders still watching from the hills.
He turned toward the arroyo, where Quinn watched him with concerned eyes. “Mr. Quinn,” Jessie said, his voice flat, devoid of the usual road-worn cheer. “Tell the others we’re not moving. Not for a while.”
Jessie walked back to the dying horses, pulling out his Colt-45. He had seen too much death on the frontier to let a creature suffer. He pressed his forehead to Bart’s muzzle, smelling the horse's sweet, panicked breath for the last time.
“Sorry, old boy,” he whispered, his eyes stinging. “Sorry you had to go this way.”
He knew what had to be done. He also knew that the moment he fired those two shots, the whole valley—and anyone still lurking—would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the stagecoach was crippled. The odds had just gone from bad to suicidal.
Quinn took a deep breath, fixed his gaze on the hazy horizon, and raised the repeater. The sun beat down, turning the sand to glittering glass, waiting for the inevitable sound of the gunshots that would signal the end of the road.
Jessie’s hands trembled, but his grip on the Colt-45 was steady. The first shot was a flat, brutal sound that instantly robbed the air of its ringing silence. Old Bart’s legs buckled, and he sank into the hot sand with a shuddering sigh. The second followed quickly, a sharp crack that echoed the first, bringing Cheyanne’s proud head down.
Jessie did not look back. He holstered the pistol, the metallic click sounding deafening in the sudden, renewed silence. The Desert Rose was no longer a stagecoach; it was an anchor, a tombstone planted in the dirt.
He walked back to the arroyo where Quinn, Tommy, the preacher, the merchant, and the young woman—who Quinn now recalled was named Sarah—were watching him, their faces pale masks of dread.
“It’s done,” Jessie said, wiping a sleeve across his forehead. “We can’t pull the coach. We’re four horses short of a working team, and the coach is too heavy.”
Quinn nodded slowly, his eyes already scanning the horizon, not looking at the coach, but at the arroyo. It was a dark, forbidding outcrop—the only significant terrain feature in the immediate vicinity—and its highest point was crowned by a single, wind-battered Ironwood tree.
“This rock formation,” Quinn stated. “This is our only place. The coach is a target. The horses’ panic and those shots just told anyone watching that we’re stalled and crippled. They’ll be back, and they’ll come hard and fast this time.”
 
The sun was a white-hot hammer pounding the baked clay of the arroyo, turning the meager shade into a mocking, dust-caked blanket. Quinn, his sweat-soaked cotton shirt clinging to his ribs, pressed his back against the shallow, sun-blasted wall of the gulch. Around him, the stagecoach passengers—four pale, terrified souls—huddled together like chicks under a hawk’s shadow. Their predicament was brutally simple. They were trapped.
A flurry of arrows, fired hours ago, had signaled the attack, shattering the stagecoach's windows and killing one of the passengers instantly. But the arrows had done worse than just cause injury and death; they had pierced every single water skin.
"They're dry, Quinn," Jessie muttered, holding up a limp, flaccid canvas bag. An arrowhead still protruded from the side, a dark, venomous bead. "Every last one is bled out. Just mud at the bottom."
The silence, broken only by the frantic crying of Tommy, was deafening. Every drop of water they possessed had seeped into the thirsty earth. The attackers, a band of Apache warriors who had tracked the stage for days, were in no hurry. They now had them cornered, the dust-choked arroyo their tomb.
Then, a movement on the ridge above brought every eye up. A single warrior, clad in bleached buckskin, stepped into the punishing sunlight. He did not raise a rifle or an arrow. Instead, he did something far more cruel: he rolled a gorgeous, bulging water skin—easily big enough to quench all their thirsts for a day—down the sandy slope. It tumbled with sickening slowness, kicking up puffs of dust, until it came to rest barely fifteen feet outside the arroyo's mouth. It sat there, full and heavy, its damp leather shimmering, a perfect, impossible promise of life.
“The Lord is testing us,” whispered Mr. Eldridge, the preacher, his voice cracking with feverish despair.
Quinn, a man whose face was already lined with a lifetime of bad choices and close shaves, squinted, his mind racing. The water was a lie. A lure.
"It's a trap, folks," he rasped, licking cracked lips. "They want us out of cover. Don't move."
The water skin sat there for a long time. The passengers started to go mad. The preacher, his face purple and slick with sweat, began to whimper.
"Just a few sips, Mr. Quinn. They won't shoot a preacher for just getting the water, will they?"
"They'll shoot all of us for thinking about it," Quinn replied, watching the ridge. He knew the warriors were lying prone, their rifles steady, simply waiting for the first fool to break. Thirst was the Apache’s best weapon right now, far better than any bullet.
The sun climbed higher. Hours dragged. Every tick of the clock was a drop of moisture stolen from their bodies. The sight of that plump, glorious sack of water became a singular, agonizing obsession. It wasn't just liquid; it was freedom, salvation, life itself.
As the sun finally surrendered, painting the western sky in hues of violent orange and bleeding crimson, a chilling breeze swept into the gulch, offering no comfort, only amplifying the silence. The water skin—the beautiful, mocking leather orb—lay visible in the faint moonlight, still an agonizing fifteen feet away.
The preacher, the heavy-set passenger, had become restless. He was a traveling preacher, a man used to calling upon divine intervention, and the silence had festered into conviction.
“It is a test of faith, Mr. Quinn,” the preacher whispered, his voice thin and dry. “They have shown their brutality. But the Lord rewards the righteous. If I go out there and pray, perhaps they will see the light in my eyes. Perhaps they will offer mercy.”
Quinn scowled, clutching his old Winchester. "They’ll see a target, Preacher. Don’t be a fool."
"I am a man of God," the preacher insisted. "I have no choice but to try.”
Against Quinn’s fierce whispers, the preacher began to move. He was clumsy and bulky, but the desperate need for water lent him a strange, almost ethereal stealth. He shed his dark coat, dropping to his belly and beginning the slow, agonizing crawl out of the arroyo and toward the ridge. He moved inch by inch, the dry grit scraping against the cotton of his trousers. Every few moments, he would stop, raise his head, and peer toward the distant, dark silhouette of the ridge.
He was almost there. His hand was outstretched, trembling, only a foot or two from the bulging water skin—the very edge of salvation.
A sound—not a gunshot, but a soft, dull thud—was the only warning.
Before the preacher could grasp the water-skin, a large hand clamped over his mouth, and a heavy blanket was thrown over his head, cutting off his desperate cry. There was a brief, muffled struggle, and then the air went still.
Quinn cursed under his breath. They hadn't even let him reach the water. They had been waiting for the next fool.
The stagecoach passengers in the arroyo were paralyzed. They could hear nothing but the frantic pounding of their own hearts, the dryness in their throats now compounded by a cold, stomach-churning fear.
Then, the silence broke. From somewhere just over the ridge, carried on the night air, came a sound that ripped through the exhausted nerves of the survivors: a high, raw, animalistic shriek of pain.
It was The Preacher.
A moment later, the screams intensified—a gasping, choking, desperate sound. The Apache warriors were not quietly dispatching him; they were using him as an instrument of torture against those left behind.
Quinn pressed his head back against the clay wall, clenching his fists. He knew what they were doing. They were trying to break the remaining survivors—to drive them out of the meager cover so they could be killed quickly, or to simply let the terror and thirst finish the job.
The screams were punctuated by short, rhythmic pauses, only to erupt again with renewed, mind-numbing intensity. Mrs. Eldridge began to sob hysterically, burying her face in her hands. The terror was overwhelming, a physical assault on their sanity.
"Oh, God, make it stop!" she wailed.
Tommy covered his ears, but the sound—the sound of a man being systematically dismantled by pain—seemed to pierce through his palms, through his skull, deep into his soul. It was worse than a bullet. It was psychological warfare, designed to make the water look like an even more appealing choice than death itself.
The torture continued through the night.