the Quick and the Dead (1983) (14 page)

What if he had been injured internally? He had taken a bad fall, and would be relatively helpless for a time. What if she should be left alone here, with Tom?

It was a frightening thought. She was independent of mind but Duncan had always been there, as her father before him. Without him, in this wilderness, what could she do?

Her independence, she suddenly realized, had not in fact been independence at all, for she had depended on the law, on society, on all those things that gave her freedom and entitled her to respect. And out here there was none of that. Out here she was alone.

The firelight moved weird witch-shadows against the darkness, and a soft wind came through the leaves, fluttering the fire. Duncan muttered in his sleep, and she glanced to where Tom lay. He was also asleep, curled against the faint chill.

Susanna added sticks to the fire, then looked again to the shotgun. There were two shells in the barrels and she had two more in her pockets. It was little enough. They had left everything back at the cabin. What if it was destroyed? Duncan had only a little money.

She looked into the fire, loving the warmth and the hot coals that now lay in its bed. Fortunately there was no end of fuel.

Something stirred in the forest and she felt the skin prickle along the back of her neck. She glanced toward the shotgun. It was over there, out of reach ... how could she be such a fool? Con Vallian never moved without his rifle. It was almost an extension of himself, and now she knew why.

She straightened up from the fire, adding a few sticks, as she did so, then she drew her shoulders together as if experiencing a chill. She went to the blankets as if to pick up her coat. Instead she took up the shotgun and turned.

A man was standing at the edge of the firelight. It was the dark man in the buckskin jacket, the one who had been with the flat-nosed man at the cabin.

"How do you do?" she said quietly. "Is there something I can do for you?"

His eyes went from her to the man. "He is not well?"

"Yes, he has been hurt. A lion jumped on his horse. He was thrown."

"That was very clever ... with the shotgun."

"I am learning."

He laughed, suddenly, pleasantly. "Yes ... yes, I think you are."

"Who is he? That other man?"

"A friend. He has been very helpful."

The Huron came a step further. "Whois he? I must know."

There was a deep cut on the Huron's cheekbone, and his buckskin jacket had been slashed.

"Are you hurt? Your face seems to be cut."

"It is nothing. Tell me who he is."

"His name is Con Vallian."

"Ahh!" The sound was a sudden, sharp exhalation, startling in its intensity. "You tell him this for me, that next time I shall kill him."

"Why? Why should you kill him? Or anybody? Isn't that rather savage?"

He turned his attention to her. "I am a savage. I am the Huron."

"I do not think you are a savage. When you came to the cabin it was you who spoke for me. That man ... the other man. If you had not spoken there might have been trouble."

"Red Hyle would have killed him. He has spoken for you."

"He has? You may tell Mr. Hyle that I am married, happily married."

The Huron looked at her thoughtfully. "Hyle would kill him. He would kill your husband. Then he would take you."

"And you would let him?"

"Why not? What are you to me?"

"I am a woman. You are a gentleman."

For the first time there was a shadow of a smile on his face. "You are clever, to put that burden upon me, but ask anyone and they will tell you the Huron is a savage. Ask your friend."

"Mr. Vallian?" She indicated his face. "Did he do that?"

"It was our second meeting. I thought I had killed him the first time. I look forward to the third."

"He is a good man, Huron."

"I think so. But I will kill him. Nobody escapes the Huron twice."

Suddenly, he was gone.

She stood staring, then turned swiftly. Con Vallian was walking into camp. He paused, looking beyond her. "I thought I heard someone talking."

"It was the Huron."

"Here?"Vallian stared at her. "You were talking with him?"

"He speaks very well ... excellent English. I thought there was a shadow of French, but I cannot be sure."

"Well, I'll be damned."

"You had better eat, Mr. Vallian."

He glanced at McKaskel. "How is he?"

"In some pain, I think, but he is sleeping. I fed him some broth."

So the Huron had been here and knew their location. Would he bring the others? It was likely, but then one never could outguess the Huron.

"What are you thinking of?"

"That Injun ... next time we meet one of us will get killed. He moves like a ghost. Makes a man right uneasy, with him around. The first time he almost killed me."

He ate the food she gave him, yet there was a restlessness about him, an unease. Twice the Huron had come upon him unheard, something he believed no man could do. He got up suddenly. "We're going back."

"Back?"

"To your cabin. You had decided to stay there, and it is a good place. They may come back looking for you, and they may not, but there is a time to stop running, and the time is now, the place is there."

With help they got McKaskel into the saddle. Con Vallian led the way, not along the dim trail by which they had come, but up through the aspens, on a winding route among the trees. Suddenly they emerged on the slope of the mountain. Below them, bathed in moonlight now, lay a wide flat, a high, grassy plateau.

They crossed it at a gallop, then entered the trees once more, weaving among them through the filtered moonlight. The rain had softened the leaves under foot and their horses made little sound. When they came at last to the cabins it was upstream, from below. They were under the cottonwoods.

Near the house they saw their wagon, and Con stopped them. "I'll go up there," he said.

There was no way to approach the house under cover, so he walked his horse across the meadow to the cabin, watching the house and prepared for anything. Nothing happened.

The door swung on hinges, and nothing seemed disturbed. "Better get some sleep."

"We left the other mules in a corral." Tom pointed. "It's back there."

"You get some sleep. I'll have a look at them."

Susanna turned at the door. "You will stay? You will be here in the morning?"

"I'll stay."

He walked away, pausing only when he was in the blackness under the trees. He turned to glance around. It was a good place they had chosen.

He found the corral and it was what he had supposed. The original owner of the cabin had simply pulled deadfalls into place among the close-growing aspens to form a crude fence. Probably the little he had done had been done from horseback, simply swinging logs into a better position. Yet it permitted a nice bit of grass and grazing for the mules.

He had no idea how the showdown would come. Now that they knew he was here it might be approached more carefully, for they would know about Con Vallian.

But seven of them? Duncan McKaskel would be a help, and so would the others, but they'd be better off holed up in the cabin. For himself, he preferred to be outside. He had always believed in a war of movement, and was not given to occupying static positions.

Standing in the shadows near the cabin, he studied the layout. The approach from the creek could be covered by fire from the house, and so could the trail down from the bench. Except for the windows, nobody was going to get a bullet into that house ... well, the door was a risk, but a lesser one.

The dangerous area was near the bench where land broke off sharply and dropped away to the area of the beaver-dams. A rifleman, or several of them, could get close to the house from there and there would be no way to smoke them out.

Con Vallian looked from the bank across the beaver ponds and the naked tree trunks lying on the green and marshy ground. Beyond were the still pools where the beaver had gathered water.

It was a good place the McKaskels had chosen, rich with the quiet of trees and still water. Over there, just down the way a bit was the river, running pleasantly over the stones.

Once a man had been here, perhaps with a family. He had seen and loved this place and had built this cabin, and then somehow he had gone away. Had he tired of it? Had he fallen and died? Been killed by Indians or renegades? Did he lie buried in some mine tunnel only he himself knew? Or had he simply gone off to Cherry Creek, which people were beginning to call Denver, and never come back?

Susanna came out from the house. "Are you listening? Should I be quiet?"

He shrugged. "I was thinking that this is the best life, always the best I was thinking that cities are no place for men."

"You may be right, Mr. Vallian, but cities have much to offer. They have better educational advantages, and culture."

"Maybe. I wouldn't be knowin' about such things."

"Do you think they'll come tonight?"

"Doubt it. But I'll never try to outguess that Huron. He's a canny one, and the next time they come, ma'am, it'll be root hog or die, no two ways about it."

VaUian pushed his hat back. "You're fresh out of the eastern lands, so get it straight in your minds. When they come back they'll be killin'. No matter if they say, 'you do this an' you'll get off scot-free', or 'do that an' we'll not harm your boy,' Ma'am, don't you believe them.

"When a man starts out to do violence there's only one way. You got to defend yourselves.

"Now these men. Purdy's a bad one, but he might give you a break. His brother Ike wouldn't even give Purdy a break, and neither would Red Hyle. Doc Shabbitt is mean, dirty, and a coward, but he'll kill you just as quick, an' the others gather someplace between."

"I ... I wanted a home out here, Mr. Vallian. I did not think I'd have to fight for it."

"No, ma'am, but you have to fight for most of the things worth havin' ... or somebody does."

Chapter
XVI

For a time Con Vallian walked about, gathering sticks, hauling deadfalls closer to the house, building up a pile of wood for the fire. He had always enjoyed working with his hands. Moreover, he thought better while working.

There were seven tough men in Shabbitt's lot, as opposed to McKaskel and himself. Susanna and Tom would fire some, would load for them, and could be helpful, yet he had to find some way of shortening the odds.

He was not a man who wanted to kill, yet the men he had to face had no such compunctions. He doubted whether any of them actually liked to kill, unless it was Ike Mantle but the others did it just the same.

Aside from Hyle or Purdy Mantle, Con doubted whether any of them would stand up to a man in a fair fight. The trouble was, they could choose their time and their direction.

Con Vallian did not like the idea of fighting from a position, such as the cabin. He preferred to be outside, under the trees. He paused, straightening up and leaning on the thick branch he held in his hand. Slowly he surveyed the area.

They might be already out there, watching. But suppose they were not? Suppose instead of waiting inside the cabin for an attack, they waited outside?

The attackers could come across the stream, down from the bench, or they could come downstream. The only other route was across the beaver ponds. Possible, but difficult owing to the great number of fallen trees and the marshy ground.

If they came downstream they must hold fairly close to the banks where there were dim trails or at least openings among the trees and brush.

Con walked to the woodpile and threw the branch on it, then walked upstream about thirty yards and stopped.

If this was their route they would be confined in a space some forty or fifty yards across. Elsewhere they'd be in the river-bottom where the sound of horses' hoofs on stones would give too much advance warning of their coming.

On his right, before one reached the bank, there was thick brush. Some trees, their roots still clinging to the bank above, leaned far out, shading the brush. Before the thick stand of brush were several rotting trees, fallen long years ago, their broken stumps all that remained.

He walked up to the brush. Peering through the slender trunks of the trees, he could see a small open space where some animal had bedded down. The brush along the bank above was impenetrable for anything larger than a bobcat.

The brush where the trees leaned over was actually a thick stand of aspens, few of them more than three inches in diameter, none exceeding five inches. As with all such stands, a number of trees had already died and fallen, their slender trunks criss-crossing among the waist-high brush that skirted the aspens and grew among the outer fringe of trees.

Con walked back to the house. "Put a little jerky together, some coffee and such-like. We're going to camp out tonight."

"Camp out?"

"Leave the fire burning and a couple of good logs that will last the night. Eat up now, and let's move out. Bring your guns and all the ammunition."