The End of the Trail (19 page)

It was the first time Dock had ever sworn in his father's presence. Pat granted his new state of manhood by not reprimanding him for it now. He said, “We will, Dock,” and hurried away to mount the horse Sam had saddled for him.

Karen had gotten her horse and ridden back. Her six-gun was back in its holster and her rifle was in a saddle-boot under her right stirrup leather, its wooden butt creased by Pat's bullet that had jarred it out of her hands.

Her mouth was set in a straight line and her eyes were icy-cold as she galloped off up the stage road with Pat by her side. One look at the expression on her face told Pat it was useless to argue with her, but he couldn't let a woman ride into danger without making an attempt to turn her back.

“I'd feel better if you'd stay with Dock, Ma'm. He's mighty young to take all that responsibility.”

She turned her head and her lips smiled at him, but her eyes remained cold. “Nothing will turn me back now, Mr. Stevens. I've waited almost two years for this chance.”

He said, “There'll be shooting.”

Karen laughed shortly. “You bet there will, if I get a chance to draw a bead on one of them.”

Pat shrugged and gave up. Times were sure changing, he thought dismally as they loped along with Sam and Ezra right behind them. Women wearing men's clothes and refusing to listen to reason. First Lily, and now this widow of a murdered detective. He felt responsible for both of them, but what was a man to do?

Then he remembered Sally when he had first met her more than a dozen years ago, and he decided maybe things weren't changed so much after all. He hadn't been any more successful keeping Sally out of danger that time. It was kind of funny, he thought to himself, how men tried to make out that women were weaker and softer than men. Fact of it was, a lot of them had more guts than most men.

Take Lily for instance. No man he knew would have been fool enough to go up against an outlaw outfit like she did. Riding right up to the hideout without even a gun on her. Trusting her life in the hands of men who had murdered only a few days previously.

And Karen too. It gave Pat a sort of funny tingly feeling up his backbone to glance aside at her as she galloped along with him. She didn't look like the kind of woman that would spend two years hunting down her husband's murderers. Two years all by herself, isolated on Sanctuary Flat from any other woman, surrounded all the time by men who might be the ones who had killed her husband.

She looked like the kind of woman who ought to be rocking a baby and knitting small clothes for it.

She saw him glancing at her, and seemed to divine his thoughts from the expression on his face. “You're worried about me,” she said coolly. “You're wishing I'd turn back, and wondering how you can keep me back in safety when the fight starts. Well, you can't, Mr. Stevens. I've thought of nothing else for two years. I'm not going to be denied a part in the showdown.”

“I wish you'd call me Pat,” he mumbled.

“I will, Pat.” She smiled suddenly. “I can't help what's inside of me,” she went on breathlessly. “I've got to be in on the finish. It's as though my heart had been frozen to ice for two years and the only thing that will melt it is revenge for Doane's death. I guess you know how he was murdered, don't you?”

Pat nodded soberly. “They told me about it in Denver. You'll get yore chance at 'em all right.”

It was turning full daylight now. On the western slope of the Divide there would be no sunlight for many hours yet but the sky was streaked with angry violet and crimson. Pat glanced ahead up the road toward the Pass and pulled up suddenly with a shout at Karen. She reined up as Sam and Ezra lunged to a stop beside them.

“There's a rider comin' hell-bent down the road.” Pat pointed ahead. “I saw him t'other side of that horseshoe curve. He's behind them aspens now. Must be one of the gang. They're the only ones that know how to get on this road.”

Karen listened to him, and without a word spurred her horse ahead, drawing her gun as she did so.

Pat saw her intention and spurred after her. There was something wild and terrible about the slim figure in the saddle ahead of him. Every line of her swaying body bespoke implacable resolve.

He overtook her flying horse slowly and was almost abreast of her as they rounded the point of the sharp curve and the single rider from above came into view.

Karen was leaning forward in the saddle and she leveled her revolver. Pat caught one clear glimpse of the small, white-hatted figure on the road before them, and he drove the fore-quarters of his horse savagely into the flank of Karen's mount.

Both horses stumbled and her first bullet went wild. He grabbed her gun-arm and she swung on him, her smooth face twisted and ugly with hatred. “What's the matter? Why don't you let me kill him?”

“'Cause it ain't a
him,”
Pat said sharply. He wrested the gun from her hand and then offered it back to her, butt-first.

“That's the gal I told you about back yonder. Lily Lytell.”

It was Lily right enough. Swaying drunkenly in the saddle and clinging to the horn with both hands. She was coatless and the back of her thin silk blouse had been slashed to bloody ribbons by a quirt. Her face was bloody and bruised, and as her laboring horse slowed to a trot approaching them she relaxed her tight grip on the horn and tumbled out of the saddle into the road.

Karen was out of the saddle quicker than Pat, and she reached the girl first, stripping off her leather jacket as she ran. She spread the jacket about Lily's bleeding shoulders and gently lifted her head into her lap, but Lily fought her off, sitting up with her eyes fixed on Pat's face and gasping,

“They're after me. Only a few miles back. I got away. After they beat me. They know about you coming after them for what they did in Sanctuary Flat. I didn't tell them anything … no matter how they beat me. But they went down to the main canyon and found your trail. They're coming …” She let her head fall back into Karen's lap with tears streaming down her distorted face.

“How many?” Pat demanded.

“Five. Counting Uncle Cleve and Art.” She shuddered and closed her eyes. “They've turned into monsters. They bragged about their murders. I didn't know … men could be like that.”

Sam and Ezra had ridden up and were dismounting beside them. Pat waved them back into their saddles. “The gang's comin' down this road after her. Scatter into them aspens on the right-hand side an' stay out of sight. We'd best get her off the road right here, Ma'm,” he told Karen. “You an' her an' both yore hawses. It's a long straight stretch of road up ahead an' we want 'em to keep right on ridin' into this aspen grove.”

Karen was white-faced but calm. She got up and helped to assist Lily to her feet. Pat grabbed the reins of their two horses and led them aside off the road while Karen helped Lily stumble along behind him.

Pat darted back and got his own horse, led him off and tied him with the others out of sight, and hastily unstrapped a canteen of water from behind his saddle. He tossed it over to Karen and told her matter-of-factly, “You can start workin' on her some with that.” He started to trot forward through the aspens to join the ambush against the outlaw gang, but Karen stopped him with a single word, “Wait.”

Her tone made him turn back. She was holding her six-gun out to him and there was a queer smile on her lips. “Here's six extra bullets. I'd like to have them … used.”

He strode back to take the gun from her hand.

As he moved forward again, staying off to the side of the road, he heard the thunderous pound of hoofbeats surging into the stretch leading through the grove of silvery aspens.

He trotted on a hundred yards, until he was opposite Sam and Ezra who had stationed themselves well back among the trees, and then dropped to one knee behind a small bush and peered up the road cautiously.

They were coming at a wild gallop. Five of them all right. Strung out a little more than Pat liked. The two riders in the lead were abreast, with the other three trailed out behind with gaps of a hundred feet or more between them.

He knew Sam and Ezra would take their cue from him, would hold their fire until he started the ruckus. Now, more than ever, he desperately wanted to take at least one of the leaders alive.

He knew he couldn't trust either Sam or Ezra to help him much along that line. When they started shooting they'd be aiming to kill.

He hoped the two riders in the lead were the Runyon brothers. He had no way of knowing as he waited for them to reach the ambush. They were both big men, quirting their horses savagely as they tried to overtake the girl who had fled from them.

Pat let them thunder past unsuspectingly in front of him. He raised his guns and took a bead with Karen's revolver in his left hand on the head of the horse nearest him.

He waited as long as he dared before pulling the trigger, until the third rider was opposite Sam and Ezra, and the others not too far behind.

The stricken horse dropped with a squeal of anguish and his rider hurtled over his head in the road.

Pat fired at the other rider with his right-hand gun at almost the same instant. He swayed in the saddle and slumped forward.

A racketing hell of gun-fire broke out from the other side of the road and behind Pat.

He didn't take time to glance back in that direction. Sam and Ezra would have to deal with the other three.

He leaped forward onto the road and ran toward the unhorsed outlaw. The man was rising on one elbow, trying to level a gun.

Pat threw another bullet from his gun held hip-high as he ran. The man sank back to the ground with a groan.

The other horse was still racing madly down the road with his rider slumped in the saddle but staying on his back. Pat didn't know how badly he was hit.

He took a moment to bend over the outlaw whose horse he had shot, found him breathing but unconscious with a bullet through his shoulder and a broken leg doubled back under him.

He raced into the aspen thicket and mounted his horse, swung out down the road to overtake the horse running with loose reins.

The other horse was badly winded from his run down the mountain, and Pat overtook him a quarter of a mile away.

His rider was dead, still in the saddle twisted over the saddle horn. It had caught his belt and held him in position.

Pat grimly gathered up the reins and trotted back, leading the horse with its dead burden behind him.

Sam was standing over the live outlaw when he got back. The wiry little man grinned cheerfully and reported, “We got one live one back yonder. Ezra's bringin' him in. Other two never will beat any more gals I reckon.”

Pat nodded soberly. “That makes three to bury right here. Will this one stay live long enough to reach Fairplay?”

“Don't see why not,” Sam said cheerily. “Lily says he's her Uncle Cleve. Sort of the boss. That'n in the saddle behind you is her Uncle Art. What in tunket's holdin' him in thuh saddle anyhow? Ain't he dead?”

“His belt caught the saddle horn when my bullet slapped him in the back of the head.” Pat dismounted wearily and walked over to where Karen was bathing Lily's discolored face with cold water from the canteen.

Karen looked up to ask, “Did you … use my gun?”

Pat looked down at the gun in his left hand. He'd forgotten he was carrying it. He remembered that the bullet that killed Art Runyon had come from his own gun, but he didn't see any reason to tell Karen that.

He laid it down beside the widow and said, “You can rest easy tonight. If I hadn't had your gun one of 'em might have got away.”

17

It was late dusk when the trail-weary cavalcade led by Pat Stevens reached Fairplay. There were six horses strung out behind Pat. Karen had agreed to come to care for Lily and help her make the grueling ride in to medical attention. The girl was in a dazed condition, her back terribly lacerated by the quirting she had received from her uncles, her heart sick with realization of the truth as it had been revealed to her.

Karen had another reason for riding into Fairplay with them. After two years of mental agony, she was determined not to miss the final act in the tragedy that had taken her husband's life. She wanted to see the final round-up of the entire gang, and Pat had promised her that would take place in Fairplay. She and Lily rode right behind Pat as they entered town at dusk. She was half-supporting the girl who rode close beside her, and her eyes were clear and shining with the realization of a fulfilled resolution.

Behind the two women, Sam and Ezra each led a horse carrying the body of a man securely strapped in the saddle. Back on the Pass, they had taken time to set Cleve Runyon's broken leg with a rough splint, and to tie up his wounded shoulder. He was unable to sit in the saddle, so they had him tied across it belly-down, and he was near-hysterical with jolting pain as they neared town. Twice during the long ride in he had lapsed into intervals of unconsciousness, but none of them had made any effort to alleviate his suffering. He was a proven cold-blooded murderer and their only concern was to get him in to the sheriff alive.

The other living member of the outlaw gang went by the name of Pokey Dallgren. He was a big dull-witted man who had thrown up his hands in instant surrender as soon as the shooting started, and had come out of the ambush unwounded.

His hands were lashed to the saddlehorn and his feet tied in the stirrups with a rope under his horse's belly. He was happy to be alive and had answered all questions about the gang's activities freely, seeming not to realize that he was due to feel a hangman's noose about his neck for his part in those activities.

The Fairplay jail was a square stone building with iron-barred windows built on the hill just behind Main Street. Pat led the way there and stopped in front of the jail, turned to yell back at his partners, “Wait right here till I get the sheriff.” He told Karen, “You an' Lily come on with me to the sheriff's house next door. Mrs. Hartly'll take care of her till we can get a doctor.”