the Quick and the Dead (1983) (7 page)

"He was trying to kill you."

"I know ... although that hardly seems real. I wonder if he really was? Or did Vallian shoot him for reasons of his own?"

"They had your horses, Pa. They threatened you."

"Yes," he admitted reluctantly, "yes, they did, but when it comes to killing ... well, I doubt if--"

"You said you felt the bullet's wind when it passed you. You heard the sound of it."

"I know," Duncan was having second thoughts, and violence was no part of his ordered plan for living. "But I've heard that if a bullet is fired nearby the report is sometimes heard a second time if you're standing near a tree or post. I could have been mistaken."

"There was no mistake about the man I hit," Susanna said, rather sharply. "He was an armed man and he was creeping up to our camp. I hit him, and I'm glad."

Duncan laughed. "I had no idea you were so warlike."

"One does what one has to," she said simply. "I've begun to realize that the world is not made up of nice, well-mannered people. There are those, of course, but there are others. Back east we had the law to restrain them, out here we have nothing."

"It's up to us," Tom said quietly. "That's what Con Vallian says."

Twice they stopped to rest the horses, and Susanna looked carefully around before they started on. She was alarmed at the change in the mules. They had lost flesh and looked gaunt and tired.

They nooned near a brushy gully and they all took time to pick up sticks to put in the tarp slung under the wagon. Duncan led the mules to water, then let them graze on the buffalo grass nearby.

The air was very still, the sky impossibly clear. Susanna walked slowly toward a small knoll and climbed it. There were a few rocks there, and after a glance around for snakes, she sat down. The wind blew gently against her face and stirred her hair.

She realized with a sort of shock that she loved this country and when Tom came up the hill to join her, she said as much.

"I do, too, Ma. I like to look away there for miles and see all that land. It's marvelous."

"It is very mountainous where we're going, Tom. It won't be like this."

"Do you think those men are following us?"

She hesitated. There was no purpose in lying. When trouble came, he must face it too. "Yes, Tom, I think they are. I think Mr. Vallian was right and that they are very bad men. Your father doesn't like to admit it to himself, he has such faith in people, but he believes it, too."

"Will we have to fight?"

"I think so. Unless we find some other people ... good people."

"Out here? I think we had better get ready to fight."

She got up, and they stood there a moment, looking at the vast space. And men, far off--

Tom spoke first. "Ma! Somebody's coming. See?" He pointed. "Away yonder where that draw comes into the plain."

It was only a dot, a speck in all that vastness, as they watched the speck grew, and was accompanied by a small cloud of dust.

"It's Vallian," Susanna said. "Nobody sits a horse quite like him."

Tom strained his eyes, but could not make him out. Only a man and a horse drawing nearer.

"We'd better go down," she said, "Pa is hitching up the team."

They walked down the hill together, and Susanna saw that Duncan had both his shotgun and rifle near the seat, but she made no comment except to mention Vallian's approach.

They moved out, walking beside the team, and a few minutes later Con Vallian skirted the trees near their last camp and rode up the slight grade.

"Figured you might need some help," he said dryly, "with the unloading."

"Unloading?"

"Uh-huh. Right ahead of you is some sand-hills. You're going to have to get shut of that load there or kill them mules. Arkansas River's not far from here."

"We'll manage," McKaskel spoke stiffly, resenting the assurance in Vallian's tone. "My mules can handle it."

"Mighty fine mules," Vallian agreed, "ain't quite as pert as they was. Reckon it's the climate?"

He rode on ahead, and Duncan stared after him. "That man--! I wish he'd--!"

"Don't say it, Duncan. He has helped us, and he will again."

Yet when the mules leaned into the harness and strained to start the wagon, he felt guilty. They were pulling too hard. It was stupidity to continue on in this way, and his own stubbornness was at fault. For some time he had known they must discard something ... but what?

Susanna loved her furniture. The bed they might keep, but that chiffonier...

He could see the drift-sand ahead.

"We can hitch the sorrels ahead of the mules. They aren't draft animals but they can do it. They've been driven to a light wagon."

Twice in the next quarter of a mile, they stopped. It was then he went to the wagon and looked for the other sets of harness. The extra harnesses had been brought along for repairs, and he had little idea of actually working the sorrels. He got the harness out and threw it on the horses, glancing into the wagon as he did so. The sheen of the mahogany made him turn his head. He was irritated by his feeling of guilt.

They moved forward again, with Tom walking ahead, trying to scout the best route among the sand-hills. Even with the horses the load was heavy.

Before them were the breaks of the Arkansas, a rough, wooded and brushy area where any danger might lurk. Emerging into a small open space they found three graves. From the brief words scratched on the crosses two had died from cholera, one from Indians.

Vallian noticed them, and shrugged. "Riding back from Californy I counted more'n a thousand graves of folks that died or were killed last year."

His amusement was ironic. "I reckon some of them tried to go through to the gold fields with their wagons loaded too heavy."

"Possibly," Duncan said quietly, "possibly they did just that. And perhaps some of them managed to get through, even though they were overloaded."

"Mr. Vallian, were you ever married?"

"Me? Never."

"Women, Mr. Vallian, often build their lives around things. The proper things in their proper places give women assurance, a sense of lightness and stability. Perhaps we men lack that, for better or worse, or maybe we have other things to which we give our attention.

"In this wagon we have a bed that my wife's family brought over from Devonshire almost two hundred years ago. We have several other articles of furniture equally as important. We could very easily have left those articles at home and loaded the space with food or implements, but the happiness of Susanna is very important to me, and wherever we are, those things will be home to her. Do you understand, Mr. Vallian?"

Con pushed his hat back from his face and gave one shake of his head. "Yes, I expect I do. I understand mighty well. My own pa fetched things over the mountains with him that he never found use for, but that still ain't gettin' this wagon through that sand, nor along the Arkansas bottom, either, where there's quicksand."

"When we come to a bridge, Mr. Vallian, we will cross it."

"Quicksand ain't no bridge, and as far as these sand-hills are concerned, you don't have to wait. They are here right now. All you got to do is roll on ahead."

He turned his horse. "And don't use yourself up. One night soon you'll have visitors."

"You mean that bunch from back there? You think they'd follow this far?"

"I think they have follered you. I think they are just a-settin' back waitin' for you to get bogged down or in some corner of the breaks where they'll have you dead to rights."

Duncan McKaskel let his hands fall to his sides. He knew his mules could not last much longer with the present load and the terrain he was crossing. He knew Susanna would be broken-hearted at leaving behind her possessions, and he did not want her to have to leave them behind. He knew the trail before them was long and bleak with only uncertainty beyond that. And now this.

He had been frightened that day in the town. He had gone ahead, and he remembered how each foot came down almost of its own volition as he moved forward. He had been walking ahead, moving into a trap with no thought of turning aside.

That had been in the open. Here there would be unseen enemies ... and he remembered those men, a bad, bad lot.

"We will have to do the best we can," he said simply, "but now we have to be getting on."

He started the team, and they leaned into their harness, he took them gently, talking to them, urging them on. They started the wagon, and with the added strength of the sorrels, got through the first stretch of sand.

Night came before they cleared the sand-hills and got down to the bottom land near the river.

They camped where there was a good cool spring, with grass and water near Walnut Creek. As Duncan McKaskel stripped the harness from the horses and mules, he looked around for Con. He had disappeared. "Did you see Mr. Vallian leave, Tom?"

"No, Pa. He was here one minute and when I looked around he was gone."

"We'll have a quick meal," McKaskel said, "and then we'll put out our fire."

When the boy started to gather sticks at a place near the wagon, McKaskel shook his head. "No ... down in the hollow."

They wasted no time. Susanna made a quick pot of coffee and heated up some stew she had carried along in the wagon. When they had finished eating, the fire was put out and they moved back to the wagon.

Duncan had drawn the wagon among some trees and had the stock picketed nearby, but as darkness closed down he watered the stock again and brought them in close.

"Tom, you take the first watch," Duncan handed his gold watch to the boy. "When it's ten o'clock, you waken your mother."

Susanna slept in the wagon with the shotgun close by. She lay awake for a few minutes, regretting the red glow of the coals and worried by the rising wind.

Chapter
VIII

He came into the camp so softly she had no idea he was there until he spoke. "They're out there, ma'am. You'd better wake your man."

She had been sitting with her back against the wheel, the shotgun in her lap, and she had heard no sound nor movement but the wind in the trees.

"You move very quietly," she said.

"I don't know what they're figurin' on, but you'd better be ready."

He saw her move toward the wagon, then slipped back into the brush. The wind was strong and rising. It was going to rain ... maybe hail. Vallian glanced at the sky, but it was so dark he could see no detail of the clouds, just a solid blackness. Far-off he heard a rumble of thunder, and he wondered if they had ever experienced a prairie thunderstorm. If they had not, they were in for a shock.

He held his rifle ready and went down through the trees, easing down a steep bank by passing himself from tree to tree where he could not have walked without them. At the bottom, close against a tree trunk, he listened.

It was a good night for an attack, too much noise to hear clearly, and constant movement of trees and brush. They would come along the creek bottom ... their own camp was on the river or near it, not three hundred yards off. There was small chance that anyone else was anywhere around, but in the night the sound of the shots, if there were any, would not carry any distance at all.

By the dim firelight, he could make them out. There were eight. Doc Shabbitt was there, of course, and the Booster. Boston Pangman, Ike, and Purdy Mantle. The man crouching at the fire was Dobbs and then big Red Hyle. Con Vallian studied him for a moment. He knew all about Hyle.

Brutal, ruthless, contemptuous, and cold, Red Hyle was an Irish-Finn, quick with his hands, unusually strong, and a man utterly without regard for anyone. Red would be the worst of them. Purdy was good. Fast with his hands and a dead shot, but Purdy had a streak of decency in him, although how it ever got there was a question, and in that crowd it would be construed as weakness. He might hesitate to kill Hyle, but Hyle would not hesitate one instant to kill him ... or anybody.

Nor would Doc Shabbitt, but Shabbitt was cautious. Doc would always try to have two aces in his pocket and another up his sleeve. He would kill and quickly, but only if your back was turned or he had a clean shot at a distance. Doc was officially the boss, but Con Vallian smiled cynically into the darkness. Doc could lead only as long as he could stay ahead of them, and he would much rather guide from behind.

They were taking their time. Suddenly he wondered--where was the Huron?

Vallian crouched, squatting at the foot of the tree, then he moved suddenly, swiftly, staying low. His body merged with that of a clump of brush.

The Huron!

He was out here ... he had to be.

He had heard stories about the man. He was a skillful hunter, a stalker of game, and he had killed more than one man. He was like a ghost in the woods, and in this timber along the river, he was in his element.

Vallian strained his ears for sound, heard nothing. He straightened up, keeping himself merged with the brush, much of which was clumps of willow and some persimmon, and moved away. He was good, he told himself, but was he as good as the Huron? Was he even half as good?