Shalako (1962) (18 page)

"You needn't have been. To be perfectly honest I was worried about my horse. I couldn't bear the thought of his being eaten."

"It adds up to the same thing. Anyway, you could have come with me."

"And leave the others? You knew I would not do that." He was following the conversation with only half his attention, the rest of it was out there in the rocks, trying to understand the thinking of an Indian who was planning to kill one or all of them.

She had been silent for several minutes, evidently thinking along the same lines, for she said, "How could you know who he is? The Indian, I mean."

"Every person identifies himself by his habits, his mannerisms. Sometimes you know them by the tracks they leave, sometimes by the tracks they do not leave. Little things add up to make a picture...."

"Will knowing who he is help?"

"It might. It makes him easier to understand, and sometimes you can outguess a man you know."

Roy Harding overheard them. "Who did you say?" "Tats-ah-das-ay-go, the Quick Killer."

"I've heard of him."

Among the rocks the Apache heard his name spoken and was frightened. An Apache's name is a closely guarded secret in most cases, and to possess a man's name is to possess a power over him.

His eyes fixed apprehensively on the big man who had spoken his name. By what medicine had this man learned who he was?

This was the one he heard called Shalako. He was the man with whom the rains came.

Tats-ah-das-ay-go watched the big man closely. He was a man to be avoided ... a great warrior ... a man with whom the Apache would have risked anything to meet in battle. But Shalako knew his name ... there was big medicine in this. Nobody had seen him, but Shalako spoke of him.

He remained where he was. The man on the cliff, he was to be the next one.

Shalako glanced around at those whom he could see, and the tension was obvious. Edna Dagget looked drawn and haggard, starting at the least sound, on the ragged edge of hysteria.

Julia Paige seemed all eyes. The dark circles beneath them indicating lack of sleep and worry. Count Henri had lost weight, but he was cool, competent, and ready.

"You'll have to watch, Roy," Shalako said. "Don't rely on the girls. They aren't up to it. Keep your gun handy ... they may try to finish you off."

"I'm wondering what became of Bosky Fulton. You said you saw him out there, and there's been no shooting." "Holed up. That's if he's smart. If he tried to run for it now he'd be sure to be killed."

Shalako knew that Forsyth would have his own problems. By the sound of the firing they had heard, a battle had taken place between two considerable forces. He could only surmise the results, but he imagined the Army would have won. On the other hand they might have suffered, might have lost horses, and either might slow them up.

He glanced around the circle. Their small supply of food would not go much further.

The food would give out before the ammunition, and how disciplined were these people?

Could they hold out two days? Three?

Forsyth might be within a dozen miles of them now, but Forsyth could not know where they were. Tomorrow, if an attack was made, he might hear the gunfire. If he were in battle himself, he would not.

Yet by this time Forsyth's scouts would certainly have told him the hunting party had headed south ... if they didn't leap to the conclusion that it had been wiped out or taken prisoner.

Laura Davis was the daughter of a United States Senator and by now the wire from Washington would be hot with demands that something be done.

Say three days longer. They must hold out three days longer.

There would surely be an attack tomorrow, which would mean that superstition or not Tats-ah-das-ay-go would kill tonight. He was a lone warrior, and he would want to count coup again before the final attack.

Getting to his feet he circled the line of defense. By day each man could be seen from the central point where the fire was, but by night the positions of several of the men on guard were lost in darkness. It was these about whom he worried.

Von Hallstatt looked up as Shalako squatted beside him. "Don't remain in any position very long," Shalako warned. "Keep moving, watch the shadows. I think he will try to kill at least one more tonight."

Dagget was eager, rather than frightened. For the first time in his life he was actually in the field. He looked around at Shalako. "I'm a fool," he said. "But do you want to know something? I like this."

"It puts a man on edge, all right."

"It's living! Really living! I always wanted to be a soldier, but Father advised diplomacy and, of course, Edna would hear of nothing else. I never had a chance to even try it."

"You'll have to get some sleep. After a bit we will manage to sleep, two at a time."

"I don't mind. I'll stay here." Henri was settled down with his back against a towering boulder. He had chosen a good, concealed and relatively protected position that offered a good field of fire. The position was so good that it was unlikely he would be attacked.

Shalako went back to the fire, which had been allowed to die down. The fuel they had close by must now be sufficient, for there was no possibility of leaving the circle for more.

Irina was near the fire, and Laura also. Julia Paige was lighting a cigarette for Harding, who lay stretched on a pallet just back from the edge of the firelight.

"It's getting cooler," Laura said. "I can never get used to how cool the nights become after such hot days." "When I was a little- girl in India," Irina commented, "I used to lie awake at night . . . the heat was stifling ... and listen to the tigers out in the jungle. I could lie there and imagine them slinking through the jungle, their great black and gold bodies moving as soundlessly as a snake."

"We're all going to be killed," Edna Dagget said. "We're all going to be killed, and you just sit there, talking." "Ain't much else to do," Harding said mildly. "Nobody's going out in that jungle after no Apache. Nobody in his right mind."

He glanced at Irina. "I'd sure admire to hear more about that tiger country, ma'am.

I heard somebody say you'd hunted them with your pa."

"Yes, I did."

"Hunted mountain lions a few times," Harding said. "No fun to that, once you get the hang of it. Lion's a mighty mean animal, but they sure ain't got any brains.

I've trapped two lions in the same trap on the same day ... with the smell of lion and blood all over the place. You'd never do that with a wolf, nor most any other animal."

Irina's hands lay in her lap. They were beautiful hands, but capable hands, too, the hands a woman should have.

It had been a long time since Shalako had thought of himself in connection with any woman as beautiful as Irina, and he was a fool to begin now. He had nothing to offer, and no doubt she would be astonished and then amused if she realized he had even thought of such a thing.

He was a saddle tramp, a drifter with a pistol and a Winchester, a man who rode wild country with wilder men, and to that he had best keep himself. He was Shalako, the man who brought the rains with him ... and she was Lady Irina Carnarvon, daughter of an ancient Welsh-Irish family. Two people could not be farther apart ... and the fact that for a few brief years he had known a life not unlike hers was of no importance, and all that was forgotten now. Or was it?

At best, those years had been an interlude, for he was a Western man, and only a Western man... nor did he wish to be anything else.

Shalako threw the dregs of his coffee into the fire. "I'm going out there," he said, "and find that Indian." They looked at him as if he were mad, and perhaps he was, but, after all, this was the thing he did best, and why should he shrink from trying? He knew enough about that Apache out there to know that hunting a rattlesnake in the grass with your hands might be far safer than hunting that Indian at night among the rocks.

"If I don't find him," he said, "somebody will die before daylight."

"And what if something happens to you?" Irina asked. "What shall we do then?"

He looked at her with sudden bitterness. "You know how much of 'a hole a man leaves when he dies? The same hole you leave in the water when you pull your finger out. I'll leave no more than that, nor be missed more than an hour or two ... If anybody here can find that Indian without having him find them first, it's me. I've got a chance." "Don't go," Irina said.

"We could all come in close to the fire," Laura suggested, "and each could watch the others."

"And by daylight you'd be surrounded and helpless. No, I've got to try." He paused a moment, thinking of what lay out there.

Laura added a stick to the fire and the firelight that blazed up caught Harding's face. "Better wait," he said, "somebody's coming."

He was lying on the ground, and caught the sound before any of them. And then they could all hear it, the pounding of hoofs ... a wild, shrill cry in the night, and the racing hoofs coming closer and closer.

Shalako sprang back from the fire and lifted his gun. They heard the sharp challenge from von Hallstatt, then a more distant shot, and then they heard a voice say, "Hold your fire, Fritz. I'm coming in."

And the rider came on into the circle and into the firelight. It was Bosky Fulton.

He slid from the saddle, grinning. It was a taunting grin, yet Shalako could see the wariness in it, the animal like watchfulness.

"There's a passel of Indians out there an' come morning I figured you'd need help.

And I ain't sayin' I wouldn't be glad of it my ownself."

Von Hallstatt came into the circle. "You damned thief," he said. "You damned, cheap, murdering thief." Fulton turned on the German, but he kept smiling.

"Now most any other time, Fritz, I'd kill you for that. Right now I figure we got plenty of killin' to do without us shoot in' each other."

He squatted on his heels by the fire and picked up a cup. Coolly, he poured himself a cup of coffee. Then he looked up. "If there's one Indian out there, there's fifty.

They done give the Army the slip, and that there Forsyth is chasing off toward the border after six or eight Apaches who are making tracks enough for fifty. The rest of them are bunched out here to take this outfit."

"But you came in to help us?" Laura said skeptically. "It doesn't sound like you."

"I came in to he'p myself," Fulton said, grinning insolently. "I'd no chance to catch the Army, and it was gettin' mighty lonesome out there by myself. I figured I better take a chance with you folks."

"You're a cheap coward," von Hallstatt said. "You ran like a rabbit once, and you'll do it again."

Bosky Fulton's lips tightened a little. The smile remained but it was stiff. "Now you'll die for that," he said. "If the Apaches don't kill you, I will."

"You have your nerve," Irina said.

"Sure." He looked at her with a flickering glance that did not quite remove his attention from von Hallstatt. "And if you want to keep General Fritz alive, ma'am, you better quiet him down. If he figures to talk to me like that, he should have that rifle in firing position before he opens his yap Fulton had not noticed Shalako, and now Shalako stepped down from the shadows near a tree where he had stepped at the rush of hoofs. "This is fool talk, Fulton, so if you want to stay here with us, cut it out."

Fulton's shoulders hunched as if from a blow. His yellow eyes clung to von Hallstatt.

He desperately wished to turn, but he feared to turn his back on the German, and von Hallstatt, seeing his quandary, smiled at him.

"Now that takes a lot of guts," Fulton said. "Coming up behind a man like that. Suppose you meet me face to face."

Deliberately, Shalako stepped up behind him and took him by the shoulder and turned him sharply around. "All right, Fulton"-he stood within two feet of him-"I'm ready.

Want to make something of it?"

Fulton stared at Shalako, and Shalako's cold eyes did Louis L'AMOUR not waver. "You can stay, Fulton, as long as you carry your weight. When you stop carrying it, or start trouble, out you go.

"And who'll make me?" Fulton was shaking with fury, but there was something in Shalako that worried him. Shalako was not worried, he was not afraid, he was even contemptuous.

"I'll make you, Fulton. You make trouble here and I'll run you out of camp, like a whipped dog. And when you decide to try gunning me, just go right ahead. I won't be drunk and I won't be scared, and even if you get a bullet into me, I'll kill you.

Make up your mind to that, Fulton.

I'll kill you."

Harding had lifted himself on an elbow. For the first time Fulton saw that Harding held a Colt in his hand. "Bosky, you're a nervy man.

Tats-ah-das-ay-go is out there in the rocks. Somebody's got to go after him. Why don't you show us just how tough you are and go get him?" Fulton's anger and frustration mounted within him, yet through it all stabbed a clear hard grain of sense. Tats ah-das-ay-go ... good God!

"He killed Buffalo a few hours ago, but he's inside the circle somewhere. He's in the rocks out there, not more than fifty yards away right now. Why don't you go get him?"