Gunsmoke for McAllister (16 page)

He was the center of some half-dozen men, all of them ruffians to a man and all of them of evil reputation. Looking them over now Rawley decided that if he was going to have trouble, it would be from this bunch. He therefore straightway started planning. He started adding up the odds. On his side he had Carlos and Rich. The latter was hurt and might prove of no help whatever. Carlos was a skilled man with a gun, but Rawley would not have liked to gamble on his reliability. Only if there were certain profit in something for him could the man be even half-trusted. On Rawley's side there was his own cool nerve and his reputation. On these he would have to rely. He had done that on many occasions in the past and had never lost by it.

But the attacks worried him, for he felt that they had shaken the confidence his men had in him.

As soon as the camp was set up and the cook had started the evening meal, Rawley started placing his men, scattering them around the central point as he had done the evening before. Rich he bedded down by the gold and left Carlos to keep him company with a half-dozen others. The rest he placed carefully out in the rocks and brush. Rico he left to last because he wanted a word with him unobserved by the other men. During the ride that day, Rawley had extemporised a plan, knowing that he would have to fool a cunning if not overly intelligent man. When they reached the spot where he intended to post Rico, well away from the others and out of earshot, he started straight in.

‘Rico,' he said, ‘we're in a spot.'

The man squatted and started to build a smoke. He looked up at Rawley from under his heavy dark eyebrows. ‘What kind of a
spot?'

‘I ain't referrin' to the feller's been shootin' us up nor the Indians. I'm talkin' about our own men.' The wariness that Rico tried to hide was transparent. This was Rawley's first plain warning that the man was dangerous.

‘What do you mean?' he asked.

‘I know for sure some of the boys're goin' to jump me for the gold before this trip's out.' Rico could scarcely hide his look of alarm. Rawley laughed deep down inside. He reckoned he had been right and this fellow had planned to jump him himself. He was now frightened that somebody else might beat him to it. He stared hard at Rawley and then turned his eyes away.

‘Who?' he demanded.

‘I ain't sayin' who,' Rawley told him bluntly. ‘But I know every Goddamn one of 'em.'

Rico began: ‘Rawley, I swear –'

Rawley laughed.

‘Hell, I ain't meanin' you, man. Sure, you thought about it. Who wouldn't? I would in your boots. But you're too smart to think you could pull it off. I ain't a greenhorn. I've taken precautions. Nobody can get that gold, Rico. I made sure of that. But maybe I need a little more help than I have right now.'

The man jerked his dark eyes up to Rawley. He was still alarmed, but his cunning little mind was thinking its way through the problem.

Rawley went on.

‘That gold back yonder in camp – that ain't nothin'. This is the third load I've taken into New Mexico. There's enough gold there for a dozen men to start new lives. If there was a good man among this bunch, I'd think about going partners with him. I'd think about it real good.'

Rico licked his lips.

‘Such as?'

‘You.'

‘Why me?'

‘You got sand. You can handle a gun better'n any of'em. You're smart. You know where the profit is.'

Rico looked like he swallowed it.

‘Sure,' he said.

‘Think about it,' Rawley said. ‘You could have enough gold to buy all you want for the rest of your life.'

Rico nodded.

‘I'll think about it,' he said.

‘Don't take too long about it,' Rawley told him and walked away. He chuckled to himself. The man he had left was sweating, not knowing what to think.

He walked back to the gold and stood by Rich. The wounded man was looking a little better.

‘How you feelin', Rich?' Rawley asked.

‘I'm healin', boss. I reckon I got good reason. When we hit town I'm goin' to be fightin' fit to spend that gold.'

They laughed together.

Rawley sat and ate his meal with the wounded man, then retired to his spot in the surrounding rocks from which he could look over the gold-packs. He slept lightly with his rifle under his hand, waking every now and then to look out over the moonlit scene and to listen to the night. He expected an intruder tonight and was almost put out that none came. Uneasily he rose in the morning, hoping that the man had lit out and would not be heard from again. He went around waking the men and calling the guards in. The cook busied himself with breakfast, Pepe took a look around and came back to report that nobody had been near the camp during the night. Rico came in to single Rawley out and whisper to him –

‘I thought it over, boss.'

‘What did you decide?'

‘I'm with you.'

‘Good.'

The horses were brought in, the pack-animals were loaded and men saddled up. Rawley showed particular interest where men rode today, making sure that he broke up Rico's bunch. He sent Pepe out in front to scout and got the train on the move. Hoofs clattered through the rocks and men beat the pack animals into motion. Rawley rode down the line to take the lead. The train lined out and started to wind its way through the rocks, a narrow creeping line in a massive landscape.

They had ridden for a half-hour when the shot sounded.

Rawley at once stood in the stirrups and held up his hand. Slowly the train came to a halt. There was a clatter of hoofs from up ahead and a riderless horse came into sight. Rawley recognized the animal as Pepe's. At once he sought enough room on the trail to bunch the train up and gave orders for Rico to go forward with a half-dozen men and see what had happened. There was no turning off this trail and he couldn't go forward until the way had
been cleared. Rico picked his men and rode forward at a fast pace. Silence fell as the hoofbeats died away. Rawley put a few men under cover of the surrounding boulders in case the train should be jumped. He found that his nerves were strung tight and he would have been almost thankful if something violent had happened then and there.

After a while they heard the sound of hoofs again and Rico came back with his men to inform him that he had found nobody except Pepe whom they carried with them now, wounded in the shoulder and declaring that he was going to die. Rawley's instinct was to rage, but he controlled himself admirably in front of the men and gave the order to move out. This time he put Rico and the men he had with him out in the van of the train. The wounded Pepe was slung on a horse and told to hold on the best he could. He sobbed that the motion of the horse would kill him, but nobody took much notice of him.

They hadn't covered the next quarter mile when the second shot came. One of the men from the advance guard tumbled from the saddle and lay still. Rawley put spurs to his horse and rode forward at a breakneck speed. One of the men of the advance guard yelled and pointed.

‘There he is, yonder.'

They all looked up into the rocks and saw the man on the run. Even as they watched, they saw him vault aboard a horse and go racing off into the east.

Rawley bellowed: ‘After him. Get him alive if you can. A hundred dollars for the man who gets him.'

They didn't need any second bidding. Every man there rammed the spurs home and quirted his animal. At a breakneck speed they clattered away through the rocks. Rawley followed them. He could see the fugitive disappearing ahead. Some of his men had their belt-guns out and were blazing away with no result whatsoever. The fleeing rider turned a corner and disappeared and just at that second Rawley knew they were riding into a trap. He bawled a warning, but nobody heard his voice above the thunder of the hoofs and the sound of the shots. His men swept around the corner.

It seemed to him that the sound of the hoofs stopped abruptly all in one second as if every horse there had been whisked from the ground by a giant hand. The guns stopped abruptly, horses screamed and men yelled.

The pandemonium was cut through dramatically by the flat
slam of rifles.

Rawley reined in at the corner and was appalled at the chaos that met his eyes. The narrow way was strewn with riders and animals. A man staggered to his feet, ran a few yards and was knocked from his feet by a rifleshot. Somebody spotted Rawley and shots came his way. Desperately, he neck-reined his horse around and spurred back the way he had come. In a second, he was out of danger, but he kept on going, for his great fear now was that the train itself would come under attack. He knew that he had been mistaken and that there was more than one man against him. There had been several riflemen in the rocks firing on his men. And they hadn't been Indians. These were white men armed with repeating rifles.

As he approached the train, the guards there were standing with their guns in their hands, alarm showing on every face. He started yelling to them at a distance, telling them to get the gold under cover, but they seemed too stupefied to move until he rode among them. They moved then. His presence seemed to bring them back to their usual tough and capable selves. They hustled the pack mules and horses into the rocks and took up defensive positions.

Hoofs sounded as the rifle fire ahead died away and several men came running back down the rocky trail. The first among them was Rico. He was wounded and he was mad. He was mad enough to show Rawley that he was mad. He sought out the leader in the rocks and said: ‘What the hell're you doin' skulkin' in these Goddamn rocks, Rawley?' The men came out of the rocks and started to gather around.

Rawley bawled furiously: ‘I'm protectin' the gold.'

‘You'd of done better to get us outa that hole,' Rico told him. ‘There's two dead men up yonder. Christ, there's horses dyin' all over.'

Rawley said: ‘When you've got your nerve back you'll see it differently. We could have done no good there.'

Bitterly, Rico told him: ‘You could of cut up through the rocks. There wasn't no more'n three of 'em. We got a Goddamn army here an' we get ourselves stopped by three drygulchers. It makes me puke.'

For a moment Rawley didn't know how to handle the situation. So he tried a counter-anger.

‘You can cut that kinda talk out, Rico. I'm boss here.'

Rico spat.

Carlos said: ‘We oughta go after them bastards.'

Rawley said to Rico: ‘You do a thing like that to me again and you best have a gun in your hand.'

One of the men with Rico said: ‘They lit out. Just like they did before. They done what they wanted and they lighted a shuck. They're smart.'

Rico stood up.

‘Some fine boys is killed,' he said. ‘It ain't good enough.'

‘We ain't in this to get killed,' a man said.

Rawley said: ‘We're in this for gold. An' there's the gold right there. So some men got killed and some got hurt. But we still have the gold, don't we? All right, get a grip on yourselves. You look like a bunch of frettin' old women. Charlie, George, get up in the rocks yonder and cover me. I'm goin' around the corner to see if there's anybody lying hurt there.'

The two men he named hesitated a moment, but he yelled for them to get on the move and they obeyed him. He'd show 'em. He'd show 'em he had sand and that he cared for his men. He put his rifle aside and walked down the trail. When he came to the corner, he stopped a moment and surveyed the scene. Two horses and three men were down. One of the men was kicking about in agony. One of the horses was still alive. He drew his revolver, walked up to the horse and shot it through the head. He didn't look up at the rocks above him once. That took nerve, he told himself. Nobody was to know that a marksman wasn't still skulking up above him. The first man he approached was dead, shot through the head and the chest. He hadn't known what hit him. The second man lay still on his face. Rawley turned him over with a foot and saw that a bullet had smashed through his face from one side to the other. It didn't make a pretty sight. But he wasn't moved. The man had been nothing in life and he was less in death.

The third man was doing the groaning and kicking. Rawley knelt down by him and saw that he had been shot through the upper part of the left leg. The man looked at him fearfully.

Rawley said: ‘You're goin' to be all right, boy.' He took the man's bandanna from around his neck and bound it tightly around the leg above the wound. Then he picked up a fallen revolver, thrust the barrel through the crude bandage and twisted it tight. ‘Hold onto that,' he said, ‘an' don't loosen it till I tell you.' He told the man to stand up and heaved him to his feet. The fellow looked like he was going to faint. Rawley got him onto his back and started up the trail with him. When he got him back
to the others, they helped the man to the ground. One of the men with some crude medical skill was ordered to care for the wounded man. Rawley walked off to think, raging over the fact that he had so many wounded men on his hands. By God, when he caught one of the attackers he'd boil his brains over a slow fire. He'd … it didn't do any good to promise himself things like that. He had to think things out. He had to get his gold through.

All right, he thought, this was war and he'd conduct the campaign like a general. Put out flankers, scouts. One bunch of men to guard the gold, the rest to hunt down the men who were doing this to him. Rico was the obvious man to lead the fighting men, but he was wounded.
By God
, he thought,
I'll do it myself
. Rich was the man who he could trust most. He'd leave him in charge of the gold. Carlos could stay with him.

He walked back to the men and gave them a show of confidence.

‘All right, men,' he said. ‘I've decided the way we're goin' to play this. These fellers think they have us worried and I sure reckon they have. Nobody likes gettin' shot up. But they ain't strong enough to take the gold or they'd have it now. I want six men who're goin' to help me get 'em. You, Tolliver. Gomez. Chart. Green. Hank.' He ran his eye over them and discovered the face of a man he had seen in a gunfight once. ‘Ransom. You all stick with me. The rest of you stay with the gold and no matter what happens, you don't leave it.'