by Gene Curry
I don’t know how I felt. I guess I didn’t feel anything at all. The bastards opened up again and I jumped up like a crazy man to return their fire. Bullets tore at me and still I wasn’t hit. But then I threw myself flat when I saw I was giving DuSang a chance to kill me. I wanted to live, not because I was afraid to die, but because I wanted to kill DuSang. But this wasn’t the place to do it. I wanted to pick the place, to make sure the killing got done, because if I didn’t kill DuSang, all that Hella and I had been through together would have no meaning.
I looked at Hella stiffening in the snow. “I have to leave you,” I said. “You understand, yes?”
All I took was Hella’s rifle and the sled with the Judge’s coffin on it. I still couldn’t take it in. Hella had died for a dead man.
They opened up again and I returned their fire without giving them much opportunity to kill me. They couldn’t have seen me when I took my team and moved out. There was a long gulch on the far side of the slope and I headed into that, not knowing if there was a way out at the far end. DuSang had lost two men, had two men left, so maybe he wouldn’t be so brave about coming up that slope. That would buy me some time.
In the gulch there were deep drifts and I had to use the gee pole to get over them. My luck held and there was an opening at the far end that led to another slope. I looked back and there was nobody coming after me. So DuSang wasn’t so brave after all, or maybe he was just smart.
Beyond the next slope there was a wide canyon strewn with big rocks. Finding a way through was hell; if they came at me now I wouldn’t stand a chance. But nobody shot at me and I made it through. Hella’s death had left me numb. It might have been different if there had been some warning. That’s how it is with sudden death; no matter how many times you’ve seen it, it always comes as a shock. I wondered why DuSang had shot her instead of me before I realized there was no way to tell us apart at that distance. Two tall figures bundled up in furs. DuSang picked one and fired his big-caliber rifle, maybe a bolt-action English sporting rifle fitted with a scope. Whatever it was, it had broken her spine. Mercifully she had died, a lifetime in a wheelchair would have killed her great spirit.
I began to move up a wide slope, a great gash in the earth that must have been made in ancient times by a glacier. It cut deep into the side of the mountain. It might end at a blank rock wall, but I was gambling that it was the start of a pass. The day was bright and clear, but the wind-whipped powdery snow blew from the top of drifts, making it hard to see far ahead. Laboring under the weight of the coffin, the dogs were forced to slow down, yet I never even considered dumping the judge. If I hadn’t been a little crazy, I would have dumped the coffin, turned the dogs loose and gone over the mountains on foot. I had a rifle and plenty of ammunition, the weather was good now, and I could make it a lot faster. DuSang would have no more interest in me, once he got the judge’s body. But crazy as I was then—and I was to get crazier—I just couldn’t give up. The judge meant nothing to me, not a thing, and like as not he’d been the miserable old bastard everybody said he was. On the other hand, in my half-crazed state of mind, I felt somehow that he belonged to me. The judge and I were partners now. Come hell or high water, I was going to bring him home.
As I urged the dogs to move faster, I kept looking for a place to ambush DuSang. Doing that wasn’t going to be easy; DuSang had the look of a man who had hunted many men in his time. But I had to kill him before he killed me. Before he caught me in the sights of that big rifle. He was traveling light and I was burdened by the coffin.
At first I didn’t understand why he wasn’t making better time, then I knew he was playing the hunter’s game of letting me wear myself out. After all, where the hell could I go? If I ran the dogs too long and too hard, they would drop with exhaustion, and so would I. When that happened all he had to do was creep up close and kill me.
The pass ran straight into the mountain; now there was no way out. If I could climb up high I might be able to get a shot at him, but so far the walls of the pass went up without a break. The few places that looked halfway possible were sheeted with ice; even mountain-climbing irons wouldn’t have helped much. All I could do was move on and keep looking.
Going deeper into the pass I expected to get a bullet in the back at any time. I was braced for it, but it didn’t come. I knew DuSang wouldn’t try for a head shot. What he would do was take aim at my spine; try to kill me the way he’d killed Hella. It’s hell waiting to die; when it’s so close you almost want to get it over with.
It started to get dark and that evened the odds a little. Once it got dark DuSang’s big rifle wouldn’t have that much superiority over my Winchester. I had no idea what the men with DuSang were like. Killers certainly. Anybody accompanying DuSang on this expedition had to be a killer. Maybe they were half-breeds like DuSang. That would make them meaner than usual, because half-breeds get it from both sides on the frontier, so they might decide to kill me in their own special way.
I moved on into the darkness, stopping now and then to listen for sounds of pursuit. Nothing was close behind, or else DuSang was coming after me without the sled. After going on for another hour, there was nothing to do but hole up for the night as best I could. I gave the dogs far less than their usual ration of meat; they were still snarling with hunger after they gulped it down. I sat behind a rock chewing on a chunk of raw meat I had saved for myself. It was frozen when I put it in my mouth and I had to chew hard before the rank dog meat was fit to swallow. All I had to drink was melted snow.
The dogs dug into their holes and slept. Huskies have it all over humans when it comes to cold. I wrapped my face, breathing through my scarf, trying to keep the mountain air from freezing my lungs. I slept in fits and starts, all the time getting colder. The sleeping bag was on the sled, but I didn’t get into it, because I wanted to be ready to move fast if DuSang came in the night.
Move fast! That was a laugh. By the time I roused the dogs before first light I was so stiff I could hardly move. The bitter cold had seeped into my bones, making every movement painful. It took a long time before my muscles were working again, and even then I hurt all over. In that country the moment you stop eating hot food the cold starts to take over your body. No matter what you’re wearing, your body starts to freeze. The dogs weren’t as sluggish as I was, but they weren’t working well. A husky is more a machine than a dog, but these dogs needed fuel to keep going and there was going to be less and less of it as long as DuSang continued the hunt.
Night faded to gray dawn. The pass continued as before; it seemed endless, as if the mountains went on to the end of the world. Looking up at the jagged peaks I couldn’t understand why I was still alive. Just barely alive was all I was, but I struggled on, driven by anger, vowing not to give up until a bullet ended my life. At times I thought about burying the coffin in the snow and coming back to get it at some later date. That’s it, I thought. I’ll hide the coffin, push onto Valdez, then return in the spring, well fed and well supplied.
But all I did, in the end, was keep moving. Other ideas came to me, not one of them worth a damn. Killing DuSang was the only thing that would get me out of this fix. If I didn’t kill him he would probably kill me. There was no way around that. The long-range rifle gave him a great advantage. My death, if I didn’t do something, was as inevitable as death itself.
The sun came up bright and cold over the mountains. Now with darkness gone, I was a target again, a moving target outlined against the glare of the snow. Nothing stirred in the pass behind me; the world was white and empty as far as I could see. There were bad places that had to be crossed, where the snow had melted and frozen again, to form great sheets of ice. The dogs’ feet skittered on the ice and I fell more than once, hanging on to the sled to keep from sliding back down the slope. I was beginning to feel that awful sense of despair that comes over a man, no matter how tough, when he has been hunted too long, when the hunter seems to hold all the cards and all he has to do to win is wait. My m
ood grew worse because I knew I was doing Smith’s work for him. After DuSang got the body—I was more or less resigned to dying—he could get to Valdez without much trouble. From there he could find a boat to take him down the coast to Skagway.
“Got something for you, boss,” I could hear him saying to Soapy. And then they would have a good laugh at Saddler, the fool, who’d done most of the work for them.
Thoughts like this drove me on while my body begged me to lie down and die. They say death by freezing isn’t painful at all. You just give up and let it happen. Even so, I wasn’t ready to die like that. If it came to the point where I couldn’t go on, I would use my handgun to put a bullet through my head. I hoped I’d have the strength and the resolve to do it.
The pass flattened out for a while and the going wasn’t too bad until it began to climb again. The pace I was setting myself and the dogs was killing me, yet there was nothing else I could do. But if I didn’t find a place of ambush soon, it wouldn’t make much difference what I did.
I managed to beat on until it was close to noon and I saw a broken place in the wall of the pass. There had been a rock slide and it looked like I might be able to climb up high and shoot from cover. Ice covered the rocks and getting up there would be hell, but I saw it as my only chance. The cold sun glared in my eyes as I looked up, and I felt dizzy. The dogs were startled when I let go the steering handles and yelled at them to go on. The sled lurched ahead and the dogs kept on going. I knew they would eventually slow down and just stand there growling. I hoped they’d be out of sight by then. I looked at the track left by the runners and hoped that would be enough to fool DuSang if he glassed the slope from a distance. If it didn’t, I’d be high in the rocks with no place to go. DuSang and his men wouldn’t even have to attack—I’d freeze as solid as the judge.
There was a twist in the pass and the dogs went out of sight. I knew they wouldn’t go far before they lay down in the snow. When the shooting started, they’d be likely to move on, but that wouldn’t last long either. I could catch up ... if there was any catching up to be done.
I stuck the Winchester inside my belt and buttoned up my coat again. Then I heaved myself up onto the slick, icy surface of the first rock. I lay there, breathing hard, and when some of my strength returned, I clawed my way up to the next foothold. I went up like that, inch by inch, nearly falling in places but somehow managing to hang on. Halfway up, I rested again, not sure I was going to make it. I came to a narrow slit in the rocks where it was hard to get through because of the bulky coat, and I had to shift the position of the rifle before I was able to climb again.
It must have taken me thirty minutes before I was even close to the top. To get all the way up used up another ten minutes, but when I got there and lay on my belly on the ice, I was able to see down the pass for more than a mile. They hadn’t showed yet, so all I could do was wait and hope they wouldn’t take too long.
Minutes passed—just minutes—but it seemed like hours, and then I saw them coming a long way off. My face was numb with cold and I had to blink hard to get my eyes in focus. There they were all right, moving up the pass at an easy pace. One sled and three men, confident that they had me exactly where they wanted me to be. I saw the flash of binoculars and I jerked my head down and waited. They were getting closer all the time.
I stayed low and let them come to me. The distance was still too great to tell one from another, but I knew DuSang wouldn’t be driving the sled. The sled stopped when they were under half a mile away, and the binoculars flashed again. That would be DuSang using the glasses, following the tracks up into the pass until they disappeared at the bend. The sled moved on at the same easy pace, and in my rage to kill, I cursed them for not coming faster.
My gloved hands tightened on the rifle when the sled stopped again and one man went ahead of the others, holding his rifle at the ready. He came on up into the pass, stopping now and then to shield his eyes from the sun. In minutes he was passing right under me; I could hear his feet crunching in the snow. I dared a look and saw him looking at the tracks of the dog team and the sled. Still wary, he went up the pass a little ways, but stopped short of the bend. If the dogs started barking now, I was done for.
But he came down again and waved the others to come ahead. DuSang was in plain sight now, a squat figure dressed in black furs. It would have to be done fast. First, DuSang, then the others. I couldn’t let any of them get ahead of me. If they did that, they’d be able to shoot at me from two sides. Come on, you bastards, I swore silently.
There was a patch of ice about fifteen yards below my hiding place. A gust of wind sent snow flying in the air. It cleared just as quickly and I steadied the rifle and fired at DuSang, but instead of hitting him in the chest I got him n the leg and he fell on the ice and slid down from where he was shot. I fired at the man behind the sled and he went down without even a yell. The other man got off me shot before I killed him, too. I turned the rifle to look for DuSang and fired at his legs as he crawled behind a rock. The bullet tore up a chunk of ice and ricocheted off the rock wall of the pass. DuSang raised up to fire the big rifle and the bullet spattered rock splinters in my face. I heard the snap of the bolt right after the shot and knew I was going to have a hard time killing the half-breed.
Up in the pass all the dogs were barking: my own team and DuSang’s. DuSang’s team had run away. Now we were in a standoff. I was freezing on the icy cliff; DuSang was wounded in the leg. We traded shots, each of us trying to figure out the next move. My Winchester fired faster, but DuSang’s bolt action was a more formidable weapon. It had terrific velocity and even when its bullets smacked into the rocks close to me, there was always the danger of being blinded by the lead fragments. Most of an hour passed and we were still at it. I had DuSang pinned down, but as long as I remained where I was there was no way to get at him.
High up, in the wind, I really began to freeze. My hands were numb and I wasn’t shooting so good; it could only get worse as time dragged by. DuSang was wounded, but if it bothered him, it didn’t show in his shooting. There must have been a short action on his rifle, and he bolted cartridges about as fast as I worked the lever of the Winchester.
We kept on shooting until the sun had moved far across the sky. It would be dark if we kept it up much longer, and then DuSang would be able to slide away from where he was. Maybe that’s what he was trying to do: to wait me out until dark. And then when I came down from the rocks, he’d be there to kill me. Maybe he’d be able to do that. It depended on how bad his wound was.
I crawled away from my shooting position, trying to figure my chances of making my way to another place where he would be exposed to my bullets. There was a sharp drop to a lower level of rock. Jagged ice covered everything. No climbing was possible; it would have to be a sudden drop. I didn’t know how deep the snow was on the lower rocks; if I hit too hard I could break a leg, maybe both legs.
Sensing that I had moved away, DuSang fired, trying to make me return his fire. Instead of doing that, I crawled closer to the drop, and when I got there I lay on the ice and looked down. It looked like a place where a man could get crippled or killed.
Now DuSang was walking his shots along the top of the rocks, spacing them out, taking his time about how he did it. I looked down again, balancing one set of odds against the other. If I didn’t make up my mind fairly soon, I knew I was going to be sorry for it. Here goes nothing, I thought. I stuck the Winchester into my belt and hung over the drop as far as I could and let go. I fell like a stone. The fall jarred me all the way up to my teeth, then I stumbled backward and hit my head on the rock and I blacked out.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious. A fairly long time, I guess, because when I opened my eyes the sun was lower in the sky. A trip hammer beat inside my head. The pain was so bad that I could barely see. My body hurt in the places that hadn’t turned numb with cold. I felt for the Winchester and it was still inside my belt, but the buttons of my coat had tom loose and the
re was a good chance that the innards of the rifle had frozen. There was no wind now and it was dead quiet, and I couldn’t jack the lever of the Winchester without giving away my position. DuSang might be long gone by now. Or he might be crawling up, wounded or not, to look for me.
There was only one way to find out, so I crawled out onto the rocks that looked down into the pass. There I could see the rock where DuSang had been hiding. As luck would have it, he picked just that moment to show himself. I raised up to fire but the lever of the Winchester didn’t want to work. DuSang shouldered the bolt action and fired up at me and missed. I yanked down hard on the loading lever and a bullet went into the chamber. DuSang was bolting another round when I fired. The bullet went wide of the mark and DuSang tried to dive back behind the rock, but his feet went from under him on the ice and the rifle clattered far away from him. I jacked another round and aimed the rifle straight at his head.
“Stay where you are,” I shouted. “I’m coming down.”
Chapter Eleven
I held the rifle steady on DuSang as I came up close to him, and he looked from where I was to where his own weapon lay on the ice. He was calculating how much of a chance he had of getting to it before I shot him. I could see that he was in much better shape than I was. He looked again and I raised the Winchester and aimed at his head.
“Try it,” I said. “There’s your rifle, go get it. Crawl fast. Maybe you’ll make it. You’re good at killing women. See how good you are at killing me.”
When he didn’t move I went around him until I reached the rifle. Then I picked it up, still watching him, and went back to a safe distance. His black eyes followed me, still not wanting to believe that he was finished as a manhunter.
“Why does Smith want the body?” I asked him. “You work for Smith, so you have to know.”
