Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

Around noon, the coach stopped. Johnson looked out. “Why are we stopping?”
“Keep your head in,” Earp snapped, “if you don’t want to lose it. Fallen tree up ahead.”
“So?”
Morgan Earp peered over from the top of the coach. “Miss Emily? I’d be much obliged, ma’am, if
you would get yourself low and stay there until we’re moving again.”
“It’s just a fallen tree,” Johnson said. Soil was thin in many places in the Black Hills, and trees
often fell across the road.
“Maybe so,” Earp said. “Maybe not.” He pointed out that high hills surrounded the road on all
sides. The trees came right to the road, providing good close cover. “If they’re going for us, this’d be
a good place.”
Tiny Tim got down off the box and went forward to inspect the fallen tree. Johnson heard the sharp
clash-clack of shotguns being cocked.
“Is there really danger?” Miss Emily asked. She did not seem the least anxious.
“I guess there is,” Johnson said. He withdrew his pistol, looked down the barrel, spun the
chambers.
Beside him, Miss Emily gave a little shiver of excitement.
But the tree was a small one, fallen by natural causes. Tiny moved it, and they drove on. An hour
later, near Silver Peak and Pactola, they came upon a rockslide and repeated the procedure, but again,
they had no trouble.
“When the attack finally came,” Johnson wrote, “it was almost a relief.”
Wyatt Earp shouted, “You below! Heads in!” and his shotgun roared.
It was answered by gunfire from behind them.
They were at the bottom of Sand Creek Gulch. The road ran straight here, with room on both sides
for horsemen to keep up and discharge their guns into the open coach.
They heard Morgan Earp, directly above them, scraping over the roof of the coach, and they felt it
sway as he took a position near the back. There was more firing. Wyatt called distinctly, “Get down,
Morg, I’m shooting.” There was more firing. Tiny whipped the horses, cursed them.
Bullets thunked into the wood of the coach; Johnson and Emily ducked down, but the crates of
fossils, precariously strapped to the seat above, threatened to tumble down on them. Johnson got up
on his knees and tried to cinch them tighter. A horseman rode alongside the coach, aimed at Johnson—
and in a sudden explosion disappeared from the horse.
Astonished, Johnson looked out.
“Foggy! Get your head in! I’m shooting!”
Johnson ducked back in, and Earp’s shotgun blasted past the open window. More gunshots from
riders outside splintered the doorposts of the carriage; there was a scream.
Cursing and shouting, Tiny whipped the horses; the coach rocked and jolted over the rough road;
inside the carriage, Johnson and Miss Emily collided and bounced against each other “in a manner
which would be embarrassing were circumstances not so exigent,” Johnson later wrote. “The next
period—it seemed hours, though it was probably a minute or two—was a nervous blend of whining
bullets, galloping horses, shouts and screams, jolts and gunshots—until finally our coach rounded a
bend, and we were out of Sand Creek Gulch, and the shooting died off, and we were safely on our
way once more.
“We had survived the attack of the notorious Curry gang!”