the Sky-Liners (1967) (20 page)

"Flagan?" She was on the ground beside the fire, waiting for coffee water to boil.

"Yes?"

"Let's just ride away from here. I don't want to fight any more. I don't want trouble."

"Your pa's down there." I gestured toward the base of the mountain, almost within view from here. "He's almighty tired, but when I left them they were holed up in a good spot"

"I want to see him, but I'm scared for you. Black will never rest until he's killed you, Flagan. You and Galloway."

"We don't kill easy."

When the coffee was ready, we drank some, and nothing ever tasted so good. But I was worried. The Fetchens were close around somewhere on this mountain, and I knew I wasn't going to get another chance. The next time we met, it had to be all or nothing. Hurt as I was, I knew I couldn't last very long.

Putting down my coffee cup, I checked my guns. Just then somewhere up the slope a branch cracked, and we both heard it.

Taking up my cup again in my left hand and keeping my six-gun in my right, hand, I looked over at her.

"You get down behind that mess of branches. This here is going to be a showdown."

"You scared, Flagan?"

"I guess I am. I'm not as sharp as I should be, this here wound and all." I finished my coffee. "That tasted good."

With my rifle I pushed myself up, holstered my gun, and wiped off the action of my rifle, flicking the water away. Standing on a small mound of dirt pushed up by the roots of the fallen tree, I looked down the slope.

They were coming all right. I counted five of them. And there were others up the slope, too, closing in. There must have been fourteen or fifteen in all.

"This here's going to be quite a fight," I said. "You got a pistol besides that rifle?"

She tossed it to me and I caught it left-handed and put it back of my belt.

"What are you going to do?"

"Wait until they get closer. They want a showdown, they'll have it. When they get up close I'm going to step out and go to shooting."

There wasn't anything else to do. I wasn't able to go any further, and I wasn't of a mind to. Right here we would settle it, Black and me and the rest of them.

Right here, on this wet ground we were going to fight ... and some of us would die.

At a time like that you don't count the odds, and I had the odds against me, no matter what. It wasn't as if I had a choice. This was one time when there was no place to run. It was root hog or die, and maybe both.

But seeing them coming at me, I didn't feel like dying, and I wasn't even feeling that the odds were too great. I'd come to a place and a time where it no longer mattered, and I was only thinking about how many I could take, just how I ought to move, and which targets I should choose first.

My eyes searched for Black. He was the one I most wanted to get into my sights. And in the back of my mind I was thinking: Where was Galloway?

Judith waited there behind me, and I could feel her eyes upon me. "Flagan?" she said.

"Yes?"

"Flagan, I love you."

Turning my head, I looked at her. "I love you, too," I said. "Only we haven't much time ... When this fuss begins, Judith, you stay out of it, d' you hear? I can make my fight better if I know you're out of harm's way."

"All right." She said it meekly enough, and I believed her.

They came on, carrying their rifles up, ready to throw down on anything that moved.

It gave me time to pick my targets - to figure my first shot, and to see just how much I'd have to move my rifle for a second. The way I figured, I had two shots before they could get me in their sights, and if I fired those two and then threw myself down I could move along the ground and get at least one more before they located me. What followed would depend on how they came up shooting, and whether they took shelter or came on.

There was no way of telling whether they had located us yet or not, only they knew we were somewhere along that slope. At first I'd been ready to step out and go to shooting as soon as they got within easy range, but then I began to figure if there wasn't some way to make the situation work for me. So much of any fight depends on the terrain and how a body uses it

They were coming up from below and coming down from above, and we had the canyon behind us and no way out that we could see. But there was a dip of low ground running diagonally down the mountainside. It was shallow, and partly cloaked with brush, but it was deep enough so a crouching man might slip along it unseen.

If I did step out and go to shooting, I could start downhill, fire my shots, then drop into that hollow and go back up the mountain on an angle, under cover. From where they were, I doubted if they could see that low place, which had likely been scooped out by a rock slide with a lot of snow and weight behind it. With luck, I might make the hollow, get under cover, and come out where they least expected me.

All the time my thoughts kept shifting to Galloway. Common sense told me he must be dead, but there was something in me that refused to accept it. I knew Galloway, who was a tough man to kill.

The men below were well out in the open now, and they were coming along slow. Looking up, I could see the line of the ones above, spaced at intervals and coming down slope, but they could not see each other yet.

"I want to come with you," Judith said.

With my rifle, I pointed the way. "See that long gouge? If there's a way out, it will be up that way. When I shoot, or anybody else does, you hit the ground and scramble. Just keep going up that low place - there's brush all around it and they may not realize it's there. I'll be right behind you,"

The time was now.

Rifle up and ready, I stepped out. Judith scooted by me and was into that shallow place before they could glimpse her. I took another quick step, brought up my rifle just as they saw me, and caught a man in my sights who wore a gray Confederate coat. The rifle jumped in my hands, the report came smashing back, and I was already shifting aim. My timing was right, and my second shot was following the first before the report died away; and then, with lead flying all around me, I took a running dive into the brush.

Branches tore at my face. I hit rolling, came up in a crouch, and made three fast steps before I caught a glimpse of an opening and a Fetchen with his rifle on me. There was no time for aiming, so I simply turned my body slightly and fired from the hip. A rifle bullet hit the tree near me and splattered my face with bark, but my bullet scored a hit ... not a killing hit, but it turned that man around in his tracks, and I was off and running, going up hill with great leaps. Twice I fell, once I lost hold my rifle, grabbed it again, and ran on. My breath tore at my lungs ... it was the going uphill and the altitude. I slipped and fell again, felt the hammer of bullets in the earth ahead of me, rolled over under a bush, and wormed out on the other side.

That time I made three steps, but they were closing in on me. Half raised, I fired blind, left and right, and drew a smashing hail of bullets; I was just hoping they would kill each other.

Somebody hollered, and the shooting eased off. I heard them calling back and forth. They had me located, but I kept on squirming along the hollow. It seemed almost like a deer or varmint trail.

A rifle blasted somewhere up ahead, somebody cried out, and I slid across a wet boulder, hit a stretch of sand in the watercourse beyond, and managed four plunging steps before I fell, mouth open - my lungs seemed to be tearing apart.

Fear had wiped out the pain from my wounded leg, but I realized it was bleeding again. My pants leg was soaked and I could feel the squishing in my shoe, although a part of it was rain water.

There was a lot of shooting now. Judith must have opened fire from some place above me. Bleeding or not, exhausted or not, I knew it was death to stay where I was, so I scrambled. I could hear them all around me.

As I squirmed between two boulders, one of the Fetchen men reared up right before me and I hit him with my rifle butt. It wasn't much of a blow, because I held the rifle one-handed and I just swung it up from where it was.

He grabbed the rifle with both hands. But instead of trying to pull it away, I held it hard against him and swung my foot and kicked him under the chin. He went over backwards and I jerked the rifle away. He looked up at me for one black, awful instant, but it was kill or be killed, and I gave him the rifle butt in the face with both hands.

Holding up there, gasping for breath, I fed a few cartridges into the magazine of my rifle. My belt was running shy, so I reached down and ripped the belt off the Fetchen man.

Rain was pouring down, and the firing had let up. Nobody seemed to be moving, and I worked my way slowly ahead, nearing the crest of the ridge. Here and there the bottom of the gouge was choked with brush, and there were many rocks, polished by running water and the abrasion of other tumbling stones.

Once, crawling through the brush, I suddenly felt myself growing weaker, and almost blacked out. I fought against the dizziness for a moment, and then somehow I came out of it, and crawled on.

They had come in behind me now, closing off the way back, even if I had been willing or able to take it. I could hear them coming on, taking their time, checking every clump of brush or rocks.

There was no longer any question of running. I could pull myself up, and by using the rocks and brush I could remain erect long enough to move forward a few feet.

Then the ridge was close above me. I could see the bare wet rocks, the stunted cedars, and the occasional bare trunks of pines shattered by lightning.

At that moment I looked around. Four men were standing not much more than fifty feet away, aiming their rifles at me. Desperately, I threw myself to one side and fired my rifle at them. Fired, worked the lever, and fired again.

Bullets smashed into the ground around me. My hat was swept from my head, blood cascaded into my eyes, and my rifle was struck from my hand. I grabbed for it, and through the haze of blood from a scalp wound I saw that the action was shattered and useless.

Throwing the rifle down, I grabbed my six-shooter. Somehow, in throwing myself to one side, I had gotten into the cover of a rock.

A man came running down the gully, but the earth gave way and he slid faster than he expected, stones and rubble crashing down before him. I shot at point-blank range, my bullet striking the V of his open shirt and ranging upward through him.

He fell forward. I grabbed at his rifle, but it slipped away and fell down among the rocks.

Up ahead of me there was a shattering burst of gunfire - it sounded like several guns going. They must have caught up with Judith.

I could hear the ones close by talking as I waited. They were hunting me out, but they could not see me, a fact due more to the rocks where I lay than to any skill on my part. After the sudden death of the man who had slid down among the rocks they were wary, hesitant to take the risk ... and I was just as pleased. Right about then I must have passed out for a minute. When I opened my eyes again I was shaking with cold. The wind had come up, and was blowing rain in on me. I didn't have what you'd call shelter, just the slight overhang of a slab of fallen rock.

My hands felt for my guns. I had both pistols, and I reloaded the one right there. All the time I was listening, fighting to keep my teeth from chattering, and the knowledge growing in me that it would be almighty cold up here at night.

Nothing moved; only the rain whispered along the ground and rattled cold against the rocks. Even if I couldn't get out of this, I had to find a safer place.

On the downhill side there was a scattered stand of pine, stunted and scraggly, along with the boulders and the low-growing brush. On the uphill side there was even less cover, but the gouge up which I'd been crawling ran on for sixty yards or so further, ending just off the ridge.

It stood to reason that if they wanted me they could get me crossing that ridge. All they had to do was hold their fire and let me get out on the bare rock.

But Judith, unless she was dead or captured, was up there somewhere.

So I crawled out of shelter, over a wet boulder and along the downhill side of a great old deadfall, the log all turned gray from the weather. Maybe I made fifteen feet before I stopped to catch my breath and breathe away the pain; then I went on.

I was nearing the end of the gouge. The only thing for me to do now was break out and run for it. And I couldn't run.

Only I had to. I had to make it over that ridge. Lying there shivering in the cold rain, I studied that ridge and the ground between. Thirty steps, if I was lucky.

There was no sense in waiting. I came off the ground with a lunge, stabbing at the ground with my good leg, but hitting easy with the wounded one. I felt a shocking pain, and then I was moving. I went over the ridge and dropped beside a rock, and there they were, the lot of them.

There was Judith too, her hands held behind her, and a man's dirty hand clasped tight over her mouth so she couldn't call out to warn me. There were six of the Fetchen gang, with Black right there among them - Black and Colby Rafin.

At times like that a man doesn't think. There's no room for thought. I was soaked to the hide, bedraggled as a wet cat, bloody and sore and hurt and mad, and when I saw that crowd I did the last thing they expected.