Gunsmoke for McAllister (11 page)

One possibility never entered his head – that McAllister and Spur would be back. In his mind, he pictured them skulking through the hills, their guns run out on them, scared. When his fevered mind came to rest on the girl, he knew a kind of anguish. He had planned to take her into New Mexico with him; he had never known when he had fancied a woman more. He had taken
her outside Euly for some minor offence and had built it into obstructing a peace officer in the course of his duty. She had seemed willing from the start. What he couldn't believe was that it had all been a trick from the start. Her regard and attraction for him seemed so genuine. The blow of finding that she probably hated him was as much as he could bear. Never had he been attractive to women, in fact most had shown a deep aversion to him. Now, for once he thought himself successful with a woman and she had run out on him for the sake of those two saddlebums McAllister and Spur.
By God
, he thought,
when I get her I'll kill her. I'll leave those other two sonsabitches so everybody'll think the Apaches have been at 'em.

That night he put double guards on the basin rim and kept every prisoner working around the clock. One died on him during the dark hours, but he gave the fact no thought. There were some thirty of them left and they would move enough ore by dawn to satisfy his needs. He took Carlos with him and checked the animals in the corral. He had kept them well fed and conditioned for such an eventuality. They were in prime condition. They were mostly mules, which would be ideal for the rough and mountainous country through which they would have to travel. Then he checked the mills and made certain that they were working to capacity.

Around midnight, a flurry of shots came from the rimrock and he hurried in that direction only to find that a guard had fired at a shadow. Rawley returned to the cabin to pace up and down outside it, unable to identify the source of his acute tension, wondering if it could be pure animal instinct that was warning him of some unknown danger.

The halfbreed came in, footsore and weary, having followed the sign many miles south. There was no doubt he thought that the two men and the woman were making their way toward the town. This took Rawley aback. It didn't seem possible that they would be crazy enough to head for
his
town. He wondered if it would be smart to send a rider to town to warn folks that two killers were on their way, so that a posse could be formed to take them, but he decided against it. If there were Indians out, a single man might not get through and for the moment he was going to need every gun he had. No, his best bet was to clear out of here as fast as he could with as much gold as he could. He stood cursing McAllister, Spur and the woman till his face was a fiery red. The halfbreed who was used to him as a calm cold man gazed at him
in some astonishment. Rawley went back into the cabin and took a strong drink. Never before had he felt the need for it.

Just once he asked himself the question: Which way would the three escapees head after they reached town? Then another question: Would they talk? If they did, what harm would be done? Nobody would believe them surely. The girl had relatives in the district; they might swallow her tale. But if they did, surely there was little they could do about it. They were all lousy Mexes and they didn't carry any weight. And if they did want to do something about it, who would dare the hills with Gato and his savages abroad? No, if he got out soon, no harm would be done. And nobody would find him in New Mexico under another name.

He lay down on a bunk, listening to Rich's groans, and tried to sleep, but sleep didn't come. His mind churned on and on.

McAllister lay on his belly, watching the man in the canyon below him, guessing what part he played in the drama, knowing that he was one of Rawley's men sniffing out the trail of the two men and a girl who had escaped. He lay patiently, scarcely moving an inch, watching the man following the sign like an eager and frightened dog. McAllister could almost smell the man's fear and knew the Indians were the source of it.

The sign-reader worked his way a hundred yards past McAllister and then came back, walking with his eyes on the rocks to right and left of him, raising them frequently to scan the heights above, rifle ready in his hands. He was now going back to report. Pretty soon Rawley would know that the fugitives had headed back toward town. The realization didn't worry McAllister. The storekeeper would tell Rawley soon enough that they had been there. He and Sam would hit the basin before anything could be done about it. The thought of taking on some twenty heavily armed men didn't cheer the big man – he knew only too well what a gun could do in the hands of a man who knew how to
use it. The possibility that he and Sam would not walk away from there alive was strong and he was only too well aware of the fact. Sam and he had to play this the Indian way. Or was it the Indian way or only the way that white men thought Indians worked? Indians sought for glory and fought emotionally. He and Sam would have to fight with their heads, ruthlessly killing one man here and another there until the fighting force in the basin was small enough to meet head on. And lying there under the broiling sun, it sounded to him like a mighty tall order.

He lay motionless until the tracker went out of sight around a bend in the canyon, then he rose and walked back to the others. The horses stood around with their girths loose; Sam and the girl sat in the shade of a rock.

‘See any thin'?' Sam asked.

‘Feller followin' our trail out. I reckon he decided we was headed for town and now he's gone back to tell Rawley.'

‘You reckon Rawley's at the basin?'

‘By now, yes,' McAllister said.

Spur stood up and stretched. He looked a little more like his old self, though he was still pared down to skin and bone. However, that look of utter exhaustion had gone from his eyes and there was some show of the old iron there, the iron that had carried him through several stiff Indian fights and, to McAllister's knowledge, at least three big-time gun fights with white men. The time that McAllister remembered most was when the two bounty hunters had thought they had the drop on Sam in E1 Paso. Sam had shot his way out of that and left one dead and one crippled man behind him. Sam wasn't the fastest man on earth. He had that other essential that made a fighting man – nerve. It never entered his head that he could lose.

‘How do we play it, Rem?' Sam asked now.

‘We hole up around here,' McAllister said. ‘Then I take a look around the basin after dark.'

Sam said: ‘Not alone, you don't.'

‘Alone.'

‘Let's have an agreement that neither of us start any heroics. There aren't enough of us for anybody to go playing at heroes.'

McAllister said: ‘Now you're bein' downright insultin'. I never played at heroes in my life an' you know it.'

Sam smiled.

‘There was the time you winkled me out of a sheriff's posse in
the brush country.'

McAllister got mad.

‘Now you're bein' sentimental,' he snarled. ‘Talk sensible. I'm more Indian 'an you. I can walk into that basin any time I want and nobody'll see me. You couldn't make a yard. Carlita, talk some sense into this damn-fool man of yourn.'

Carlita spread her hands as if to say the woman wasn't born who could talk sense into a man, least of all hers. So in the end, after some argument, they tossed for it and McAllister won. And then, being McAllister, when he'd won, he wished to God he had not, for he didn't fancy walking into that basin with all those guns ready to blast holes in him. But he'd made his choice and he reckoned he'd have to go, so they reached around for a good place to hole up and ate a cold supper.

As soon as it was full dark, McAllister prepared to move out. He pulled off his boots and put on a pair of moccasins he carried always in his saddle-pockets. Sam, who was a reading man, said something about things that creep in the night, but it didn't mean anything to McAllister. He checked that his gun was tied down in the holster, pulled his knife scabbard around so he could reach the hilt of the weapon easily and was ready to go.

Sam said: ‘Watch out for yourself, boy.'

‘Bank on it,' McAllister told him.

In Spanish, Carlita told him: ‘I do not like you going there alone. That Rawley is worse than an animal.'

McAllister gave her a little grin.

‘Quit it,' he said, ‘you'll have ole Sam all riled up with jealousy.'

He walked away into the night, remembering them there together and thinking that he had seldom seen a man and a woman who looked better together, the fair man and the small dark woman, both fine people.

He walked north for a mile or more, keeping to high and difficult ground and making scarcely a sound, stopping to listen every now and then. No sound reached him but the mournful note of a distant lobo. He knew that he was getting near the basin and from here would have to be doubly watchful.

Within fifteen minutes, he sighted his first sentry. The man was on the move, but he didn't hear him above the crash of the mills below. He peeked over the edge of the basin and saw many lights below. Men seemed to be on the move everywhere. A line of prisoners moved across his line of vision, moving slowly under the watchful eye of a guard. Two men stood outside the cabin in
the light of a lamp and McAllister knew that one of them was Rawley.

McAllister was within twenty yards of the narrow trail down into the basin and he knew that if he were to use it, the guard would have to be silenced. He weighed the possibilities, knowing that though there were arguments in favor of the man dying, he was not the kind of man to agree to them. Yet a great many lives could depend upon his actions in the next few minutes.

He started working his way forward, not sure even then just what he intended to do, realizing that he would have to play it by ear. It was only when he was within a few yards of the man that he knew he meant to try and knock him out. He reached down and untied the thong that held his Remington in its holster, eased the weapon from leather and started to get cautiously to his feet. Then he advanced soft-footed as a cougar. Luck, however, was not with him. Suddenly, the earth seemed to fall away beneath his feet, he stumbled, rocks rattled noisily and the man whirled.

McAllister came down on one knee. His eye caught the gleam of metal in the starlight. The guard loosed off a shot as he brought the Remington to full cock. After that it was a matter of chain reaction. He fired almost point-blank into the man's body. The fellow took a staggering pace backward and went down. McAllister didn't wait for anything else; leaping the man's prostrate body, he ran for the head of the narrow trail. This was a mistake, for, as he bounded down it, a shot came from behind and, turning, he saw the man above the rimrock, lying flat firing down at him. He snapped off another shot and ran on, but another shot winged after him and this was too close for comfort. The next he didn't doubt would hit him. Better a live coward than a dead hero any day of the week, so he threw himself off the trail onto the rocks at the side. The landing was a hard one and lead smacked into stone near his head and sent him scrambling for a safer spot. Once there, he lay and cursed himself for the biggest damn fool in creation. Now he had a rifleman above him in a good vantage point.

And they had heard the shots from down below above the crash of the mills. Men were running and pointing.

He gave up the idea of using the trail altogether. Putting his gun away so that he could use both hands for climbing, he worked his way along the rocky side of the basin toward the north. Men were climbing up the trail. More were running along the flat parallel to the route he had taken. By God, it looked as if they
would have him. He started to sweat in earnest now and wished he hadn't won the toss. When, he demanded of himself, would he grow old enough not to get himself into situations like this. He stopped crawling and started to punch empties out of his gun. He would want the I emington full for what lay ahead of him.

His instinct was to climb the wall of the basin, reach rimrock and hightail out of there. But when he thought about it, it didn't seem such a good idea. That was what they would expect him to do. His old man had always said: ‘Son, if'n you don't know what to do – charge. The other feller looks awful surprised.' Well, maybe he wouldn't charge, but he'd do the next best thing. He'd go toward them.

He kept the Remington in his right hand and began slowly to edge his way down the face of the wall, using every bit of available cover there. They couldn't see him from below, of that he was sure, but the fellow on the rimrock could see him and so could the men on the trail. Mind you, they couldn't see him clearly. He would be no more than a shifting shadow to them, but they were pouring shot in his direction. Enough to make him feel that any second now he would feel the lethal burn of lead.

He got down low among the rocks and peered down below. There were three men waiting for him with rifles. It looked like his old man had been wrong. He should have climbed the basin wall and got out while he was still breathing.

He started to crawl forward with the greatest caution, hugging the ground closer than a snake's belly. He could hear the men pounding their way up the steep trail, shouting. Pretty soon they would be above him and pouring fire down on him. So he had to settle this one way or the other pretty damn quick.

Now when a man is in a situation like that, he has to use what few talents God has given him. McAllister could draw a gun fast, though he wasn't the fastest by any means. The gun fights he had been in during his short life had been won through his extraordinary talent for taking long shots with a revolver. The fast draw is a short range man, the fanner even shorter, and McAllister had won because he possessed a talent they did not. He also knew his gun – which was half the battle. He didn't think when he used it; it was an extension of himself. So now, he raised himself with some care, rested his wrist on a rock in front of him, gripped his wrist with his left hand in a grip of iron and took careful aim on the man below him and to his right. The shot was the most difficult a pistoleer could choose. The range was long and he was
shooting at a target well below him. He had taken some long shots in his time, but never one as long as this.