by Brett Waring
There was a strong wind blowing in across the badlands and it rattled some of the shutters, but the noise didn’t bother Swede Olsen: he was lost in Dickens’ prose.
Then, slowly, he lifted his head, puffing on his curved-stem pipe, frowning, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the doings of the rotund Mr. Pickwick and company. Swede’s frown deepened as he cocked his head on one side, his cropped hair catching the lamplight briefly.
He thought he heard a voice calling in the darkness. It was faint and the shutters banged, drowning out the sound. Swede sat there, wanting to dismiss it and return to his reading, but in the lull between the shutters banging shut and swinging open, he heard the sound again.
There was no mistaking it. There was someone out there.
Swede got up, set book and pipe on the deal table in the big room and walked to the cold fireplace. He took down the old Spencer repeater from the pegs and cocked back the large hammer as he clumped across the floor to the front door. He opened the door, stepping swiftly outside onto the verandah and to one side, so that the lamplight was not at his back.
There were stars, misted a little with a small scud of dust stirred up by the night wind, but there was no moon. A faint silver glow behind the Arrowheads over to his left told him it was rising, but that didn’t help him as his eyes strained to see through the darkness. Could be it was one of the Indians, drunk from a quick visit to the reservation, was having trouble finding his way to the station? No. He could catch a word now and again now. That was not an Indian’s voice.
“Hola, out there,” he bawled in his gruff, accented voice.
The wind blew across the yard and he didn’t hear the reply; if any.
“This is a Wells Fargo way-station,” Swede yelled, “What wantin’, eh?”
“Help!” He heard that clearly enough and the voice sounded raspy and near exhaustion. “He-elp—please.”
But Swede had been a long time managing way-stations. He knew that often things weren’t as they first seemed. He stayed where he was, straining his ears and eyes. There was another sound, too: a horse, moving slowly and plodding, unevenly. Could be someone in trouble all right, but he wasn’t about to chance it.
“Swede,” the voice croaked. “Our—hoss’s—just about—tuckered—we—I’m failin’.”
The man had said ‘we’ and that made Swede tense. They must be close, though, he thought as he tightened his grip on the old Spencer, for he heard the thuds of two bodies striking the ground. There were moans and he caught the sounds of two distinct voices. Then he spun with the rifle coming up but relaxed, heart thumping, as a dusty, droop-headed horse staggered out of the darkness near the end of the porch. It was caked with dried froth and its legs were rubbery.
Behind it, he saw a man crawling and he slowly lowered the rifle hammer. He knew now why the man had called him by name. It was Jack, the stage driver—and he was hurt. Swede propped the gun against the wall and jumped to kneel beside Jack.
“What happened?”
Jack pointed back into the darkness.
“’Nother man—hurt—” He grabbed weakly at Swede’s arm as the station man made to move away. “Wait—you gotta get a—telegraph away—to Jim Hume—Santa Fe.”
Swede frowned.
“We try—but the wind—sometimes it blow down the wires.”
Jack nodded. “Try. You gotta try. Or Clay Nash is dead.”
At the first showing of pale gray light, Clay Nash was stirring from his hollow under the rocks.
He sucked more of the moss and chewed on leaves from the elderberry brush and a few berries of the chokecherry. While he ate, he looked around him. Within a radius of thirty yards from the rocks, he saw three kinds of trees that were of interest to him: the chokecherry, the mountain mahogany, and the ash. A little higher up he spotted some service berry, too, but there would be no need to go that far for what he had in mind.
Lying on its side, down slope, was an uprooted mountain mahogany. He moved down to it, slipping a little in the uncertain light and on the rugged ground. After he reached the mahogany, he listened a spell, but heard only the natural sounds of the woods awakening to a new day. There was a faint odor of wood smoke that likely came from the outlaws’ camp, but he didn’t think they were close enough to hear him as he hacked at a slim, straight branch. He cut a ‘V’ notch in the section he wanted and continued to cut into it, deepening it until he had cut the sapling right through. He cut off the top branches about the level of his shoulder and then tested the wood for springiness. It bent and sprang from his hand, clattering loudly against the trunk of the parent tree, making him snatch it up and crouch low.
The noise had scared a few jays in nearby bushes but otherwise all seemed well. Nash balanced the stave in his left hand and climbed back over the tree. He used his knife to cut a longer and slimmer stick from the main body, then hurried away from the rocks and started up the slope. It was getting much lighter and he knew he had to hurry for the outlaws, would soon be stirring.
He found some bushes where he could work and also a tree that would furnish the kind of stringy bark that he needed. Nash worked fast and expertly, though he really needed a fire to bend his bow properly and to recurve the ends for greater strength and power. But he wouldn’t be wanting to use this bow over and over again. Just once would be enough. He scraped the thicker of the two staves, tapering the ends, leaving a section of the middle the natural thickness. He notched the ends about three inches in, then took his strips of bark and rolled them back and forth across his thigh, making them into a strong cord. Animal sinew was by far the most superior bowstring but he had to make do with what he had.
He tested the stave and found its most natural curve, hooking one end of his string into a notch and, keeping the stave bent, looped the other end into the bottom notch and fumbled to get a slipknot that pulled tight. The bark string ‘twanged’ when he plucked it and tested it for pull. The bow was powerful the way he wanted, and he took the thinner shaft, cut a notch in one end and measured off about four feet. It was as thick as his thumb.
He split the blunt end, then decided he wouldn’t have time to flake a stone arrowhead. The noise might just be heard. So he cut off the split end and merely sharpened it to a point, then rubbed it on a stone until it was round and smooth and sharp. He gathered up his spare string. It was daylight and he could hear a horse across the mountain slope as the outlaws got under way.
Nash moved swiftly to a thickly wooded area where there were many bushes and he went quickly to work with his knife. He made two props, drove them into the soft ground by his own weight until they projected about a foot. He lashed the bow at the main curve to the props, then tested the pull on the string again. Marking the place, he released it while he pushed another stake in, cut a notch and then looked for a bush with a ‘Y’-shaped fork in its lower branches. He cut one out, notched it and pulled back the bowstring, hooking it into the first notch on the straight arm of the ‘Y’. A deeper notch held it to the thick stake behind the bow at the limit of the string’s travel. Then he ran the remainder of the string he had made from a notch in the other arm of the ‘Y’ through the brush, hooking it behind small branches for about ten feet and then turned it in a right-angle around the base of the bush and pegged it across so that it was directly in front of the curved bow.
Then, very carefully, he laid the sharpened shaft against the taut string on the ‘Y’ notch, and on the thick part of the bow-shaft, between the two props he had first cut.
There was no time to try it, but the theory was that any man tripping that string directly in front of the bow would dislodge the ‘Y’ stick and release the long, arrow-like shaft.
The problem was, it had to be a man on foot and he was being hunted by horsemen. But Nash was working on that. He made sure the bow couldn’t be seen by bending and cutting some brush to prop in front of it. He looked critically at his handiwork and figured it would do.
That would be for one man. With luck,
he might be able to get the victim’s gun and that would even the score considerably. But in case he couldn’t, he had to prepare other man traps and risk his neck to lead the hunters into them.
They were working over to his part of the slope. He could hear their mounts and the occasional call as they picked up some of his tracks from the previous night. Then he spun about, startled, as a man yelled from below.
“Hey, Will. Looks like he holed-up here among some rocks last night. Been eatin’ berries and moss. And he’s been shavin’ wood.”
Nash cursed. One of them had stumbled on his hideout. That meant he had no choice. He had to stay at that level or go back up over the mountain.
Then a gun blasted and a bullet ripped bark from a tree near his head. Nash threw himself headlong into the brush. He didn’t stop; he plowed on wildly, slapping the branches aside, hearing guns banging behind him. Lead tore through the brush around him and he saw a man bearing down on him with a horse that looked like it had the bit between its teeth and was beyond control.
Nash skidded to a stop, not knowing the outlaw’s name was Talman. The killer fired and lead kicked stones near Nash’s feet. He stumbled and grabbed up an egg-shaped rock that just fitted his hand. He hurled it and it struck the horse squarely between the eyes. It whinnied and reared and fell sideways, unseating the rider. The man shook his head and snapped a wild shot at Nash as the horse bounded away.
Nash ran for it, figuring that he now had a man afoot and he was damned if he were going to waste that man trap he had set up.
He hurled himself down the slope with Talman skidding after him, swearing and shooting wildly. Nash glimpsed the other riders heading towards him, racing their mounts through the trees. It seemed he had chosen the part of the mountain that Dodd had reckoned on searching first. He smashed his way into the brush and Talman fell, bounded up and loosed off another shot. The bullet whipped air past Nash’s face as he lengthened his stride, and swung towards the stretch of brush that hid his man trap.
He leapt over a fallen log and turned sharp left, almost missing the area. He slowed, grabbing at his side as if he had a stitch, throwing back his head and gasping in agony. Talman stumbled through the screening brush and saw Nash seemingly in pain. He bared his teeth in a tight grin and lunged forward. His boot stomped on the bow cord but the bark string was apparently too thick, for it only sagged. Nash cursed, knowing the bow would not release. As Talman’s gun blasted, he threw himself to the side, his right arm straining forward to knock the ‘Y’ fork loose. It dropped from beneath the taut bowstring and the powerful stave straightened with a ‘twang’, sending the long shaft hurtling towards Talman. The man tried to stop his forward motion as he caught the movement but it is doubtful that he knew what it was that drove through the center of his chest and impaled him, the bloody point protruding at least a foot out of his back.
As he toppled, his eyes glazing, his hands clawing at the shaft, and coughing blood, Nash jumped for the gun Talman dropped.
A rider crashed his mount through the brush shooting and Nash rolled onto his back and triggered as the man leapt his mount across him. The man, Hackleback, reared in the stirrups as the lead drove up through his body, and he fell forward across his mount’s neck, the smell of warm blood and gunpowder panicking the animal. It leapt away and Hackleback bounced in the saddle, slipping lower and lower. It was only a matter of time before he would fall off.
Nash stumbled to his feet as the next horseman came thundering in. He was slightly up the slope and he was using a rifle. It was Hank Griffin. Nash whirled, shooting from the hip. He missed, but the bullet went close enough to have Griffin wheeling away. Then Nash dropped hammer again and swore when it fell on an empty chamber.
But Griffin was making up the slope still and Nash dived for the dying Talman as the man twitched among the bushes. He fumbled at the man’s gunbelt and just got it free as Griffin turned and threw the rifle to his shoulder again. His lead flicked at Nash’s hair and the Wells Fargo man dragged the cartridge belt completely free of Talman as he threw himself backwards.
He turned and plunged away into the brush, catching a glimpse of Will Dodd riding in from below. They were going to drive him up-slope through the trees, he knew that. As he ran he took shells out of the loops of Talman’s belt. Somehow he managed to get six of them into the chambers of the Colt and he rammed the gun into his holster, taking out the remainder of the shells and then discarding the belt. He dropped the shells into his pockets and turned up the slope.
On foot, he was making better time than the horsemen but he knew they wouldn’t stick to the thick timber. They would skirt it and work their way above him. Or, one of them would, while the other came up at him from below. Nash pulled out the Colt, his thumb on the hammer spur. Now that he was armed, he could give a good account of himself and he had already whittled the odds to a manageable size.
Panting, staggering, and gagging for breath, he kept going by sheer willpower, stumbling from one tree to another, his boots scrabbling for purchase on the slope. A few yards more and he caught his second wind.
There had been no gunshots for a while. The outlaws knew they would only waste lead shooting at him among the trees. But they would be ready for him. He stopped abruptly, leaning a forearm on the tree and resting his head on it, trying to listen, but the pounding blood roaring in his ears tended to drown out the sounds he wanted to hear.
A stone rolled down the slope a few yards away and he snapped his head up, notching back his gun hammer and swinging the Colt around at the same time. Hank Griffin was above him and riding down into the timber again, rifle cradled across his chest. He hadn’t seen Nash until the Wells Fargo man had moved. They both brought their guns around together and the weapons exploded almost simultaneously.
Clay Nash staggered back, hands clawing at his face as the rifle bullet spat bark into his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw Griffin on the ground, blood dribbling from a corner of his mouth as he fought to his knees, bringing up his six-gun. The horse ran off and Nash had time to curse the animal before he threw himself sideways, his Colt blasting. Griffin spun almost completely around with the impact of the bullet taking him through the chest and he landed face down, unmoving.
Nash jumped up and went skidding down the slope after the horse that had slowed and was trotting to a stop. At last he would be mounted again and then he would be able to—
He propped in his tracks as a rifle shot rang out and the horse’s head jerked violently to the left. It didn’t even scream. It just crashed over onto its side, all four legs kicking frantically.
Half crouched with gun in hand, Nash glanced down the slope and saw Will Dodd with his rifle to his shoulder again. The gun whiplashed and lead sent stones kicking into the air a foot from Nash’s boot.
“Run, Nash, run,” the outlaw yelled. “Run, you murderin’ bastard, but it ain’t gonna do you no good. I’m gonna ride you into the ground.”
He fired again and Nash winced as the bullet struck a tree and whined away across the mountain. Then he turned and ran into thick timber. Twice more Dodd’s rifle barked and bullets landed near his pounding boots.
Nash ran for almost half a day, dodging from the heavy stands of timber to the brush and, finally, into the rocks near the ridge crest. Dodd was amusing himself. He was mounted and he kept shooting at Nash, placing his bullets and driving the man towards the ridge. Nash exchanged a few shots with the man but wanted to conserve his ammunition. That kind of chase could go on for a long time.
Then, around mid-afternoon, reeling with fatigue, his throat burning with thirst, Nash figured he had had enough. By running like this, he was playing right into Dodd’s hands. He was acknowledging that Dodd was in control and that the psychological advantage was all with the outlaw. The man had food and water and ammunition and a horse under him.
Nash had nothing but the few bullets left in a strange gun. He was near exhaustion and he knew that this was what Dodd wanted, to drive him to t
he stage where he could barely crawl and then hound him along on hands and knees until he dropped completely. Then the man would dismount and begin his torment. Well, Nash wasn’t about to let him have his way. He was scarred and weak and hungry and thirsty, and he knew he would likely fall down the slope on the other side of the mountain.
So, when a man reached that stage where he had nothing to lose, it was time to make a stand.
Nash sprawled headlong among the same rocks he had used to ambush the outlaws the previous day. God, was it only a day ago? He was shaking uncontrollably with fatigue and he thought he would never take an adequate breath again. But he lay quietly, trying to will his thudding heart to slow down, to drive oxygen into his brain so as to clear his dizziness.
“Come on, Nash,” Dodd’s taunting voice reached him up the slope. “No time to rest, feller.”
The man’s words were followed by a rifle shot and the bullet ricocheted from the tallest rock. He knew where Nash was, it seemed. The Wells Fargo man dragged himself to a gap between the rocks and blinked several times in an attempt to clear his blurred vision. He saw only a hazy outline of Dodd casually riding his mount knowing he had Nash at his mercy
The fact drove Nash to his knees. He ran his tongue over his scaled and split lips. After a while, he got one leg bent and stayed on one knee. He looked between the rocks again. Dodd was coming, only twenty yards away, riding alertly, his rifle cradled in his hands.
Nash thrust upright, and planted his boots firmly in the ground. Dodd saw him and stopped his horse dead. Then a slow smile spread across his battered, stubbled face.
“Well, well, well. Decided to make your stand, huh, Nash? Like a cornered rat. No place to go, so you figure to fight.”
