Now the plan amounted to nothing. Still, Ike was not worried, merely puzzled. Holding up the march, Ike put his sturdy paint up a hard slope to higher ground, and then he began to understand.
Silently he regarded the boulder-strewn hill with its dangerous footing and impassable shelves, and his estimate of the Reunion marshal began to grow. Ike came up in his stirrups and yelled to one of his men.
“Light out for the east and try to head off Gabe Tanis. Tell him to get his men over here!” He pointed toward the rock-capped hill to the west. “The rest of you follow me!”
They flogged their horses down the sheer slope, crashing through brush and timber in the draws and gullies. In the effort to cut off the escape, they had to completely encircle the stone-capped hill, and by the time they reached the eastern slope it was too late.
Lester and the marshal had already cleared the first jagged outcropping, and past that point there was no chance at all of using horses. Ike spilled from the saddle and raced on foot past the end of the shelf. He caught a glimpse of the marshal's broad back as the man clawed his way up toward the next outcropping, but by the time Ike had knelt to fire, the back had disappeared.
The prospect of a tougher fight did not displease Ike Brunner, but he knew that his men might not like it so well. He fired once futilely with his Winchester, and heard the ricocheting bullet scream harmlessly in the brilliant afternoon. Frantically he waved his men over toward the far end of the ledge, but by the time they got there the two had advanced to the stone shelf above.
The gang leader wiped his face and cursed. They would have to go up that hill after them; there was no other way. Wade Jeffers, a kid about Dunc Lester's age, yelled, “You got 'em spotted, Ike?”
“They're makin' for the top. Take four men around to the other side and see they don't come down on top of you.” Then he thought of something and jogged over to his men. “Wait a minute. We'll split the gang into three parts, cover the hill on three sides. There are only two of them, so they won't be able to cover three points at once.”
Jeffers frowned. “We're goin' up that hill after them?”
“How else would you get them down?”
The boy regarded the hill seriously and it was clear that he didn't like the idea. “It'll be dangerous. We'll be lookin' right into the barrels of their guns.”
Ike Brunner's voice was icy. “When you joined this bunch,” he said, “I never told you it was goin' to be easy. The two men on that hill have got to be killed or we're done for. Now,” and he fixed his gaze on Wade Jeffers alone, “if any man has any objections to the way I run this gang, I guess he'd better speak up.”
Jeffers swallowed hard. “I didn't mean that, Ike.”
“It's lucky you didn't. Now take four men and get on the other side of the hill. I'll send more when Gabe gets here.”
The small rebellion was completely crushed. The men shuffled uneasily; if they had to choose between the hill and Ike's fury, they'd take the hill. When Jeffers turned to carry out his leader's orders, Ike said, “Three fast rifle shots will be the signal to start climbing, and we'renot stoppin' till we get to the top, understand?”
They understood.
After Wade Jeffers had taken his men to the far side, Ike mounted his spotted pony and rode back about a hundred yards until he could scan the rocky slope from top to bottom. There was not much timber here, except for small stands of scrubby pine and blackjack near the base. The marshal and Dunc Lester were not to be seen, and Ike guessed that they had already reached the top. Well, he thought with grim satisfaction, that's as far as they'll ever get.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Gabe Tanis was leading the other half of the gang over the eastern crest and was headed toward the valley. Ike nudged the paint and rode around to the south, then to the north, leisurely searching out the best and most protected routes to the top. Well out of carbine range, he knew that he was in no danger.
At last he selected what he judged to be the three best routes and settled down to wait for Gabe's party to cross the valley. A kind of icy calm had settled within him as he calculated what it would cost to scale that hill. Three men, maybe. Four, if this happened to be their unlucky day. There was one thing that Ike had learned—a man had to pay for what he got in this world.
Now he heard the pound of hoofs behind him, and reined the paint around to face Gabe Tanis and the rest of the gang.
“We heard shootin',” Gabe said, wiping his sweaty face. Ike grinned. “You'll hear more. Dunc and the marshal pulled out of the cabin and made it up there.” He pointed to the hill.
Gabe's eyebrows lifted, then he spat a stream of tobacco juice with the wind. “It'll be nearly hell,” he said soberly, “goin' up after them.”
Ike laughed abruptly. “You're not goin' yellow, are you, Gabe? Fifteen against two; what kind of odds do you want?”
Gabe regarded the hill for one long moment, then shrugged. “All right, Ike. Whatever you say.”
Chapter Fourteen
The first bullet from the hilltop smashed abruptly at Ike Brunner's feet, showering powdered sandstone in his face. Quickly he clawed his way up to a stone overhang and lay panting. Gabe Tanis scrambled up and dropped beside him.
“I told you it wasn't goin' to be easy.”
“Shut up!” Ike snarled. He had split the party into three groups, and two thirds of the gang was out of sight on the far sides of the slope. Ike moved to the end of the overhang, lifted his Winchester, and fired three quick shots toward the jagged ridge. Maybe it won't be easy, he thought, but they'll do as I say. They know I'll kill the man who tries to back down!
There were three more men near the base of the hill, and the carbine barked twice as they started up. Ike listened to the sporadic firing on the other side and smiled. Lester and the marshal were going to have trouble splitting themselves three ways for defense. Over to the right he heard a sudden burst of fire.
“They must have spotted Jeffers' bunch,” Ike said. “Follow me!”
They fought for footing, clawed their way past a thicket of blackjack, and now the carbine and revolver fire shifted away from Jeffers and turned on Ike and his group. A lead slug screamed and spat into the thicket and started a small landslide as the five men huddled behind a massive boulder.
Ike laughed and lay on his Winchester. Suddenly there was another outburst of firing on their left. “What did I tell you?” Ike yelled at Gabe Tanis. “They'll go crazy tryin' to be everywhere at once!”
Ike crouched behind the boulder, then darted into the open, clawing at roots and loose rocks, pulling himself upward. The others came behind him, all making for the second big shelf, about forty yards away.
But something went wrong with Ike's plan. A steady, withering barrage of carbine fire caught the group in the open, midway between the boulder and the shelf of sandstone. Buckshot from Dunc Lester's shotgun tore into blackjack trunks, ripped off branches, and scattered rocks. A slug tugged at Ike Brunner's sleeve and went screaming toward the valley. Someone cried out, but Ike did not look back until he reached the protection of the shelf.
Dragging huge gulps of air into his lungs, Gabe Tanis fell beside Ike, who was cursing savagely.
“Goddamn it, I told you, Ike—”
But Ike wheeled on him and Gabe fell back before his rage. “I heard what you told me! I don't want to hear it again!”
Gabe Tanis' anger leaked out of him like air escaping from a punctured balloon. Ike stood in an animal-like crouch, holding his Winchester like a club, and Gabe threw up his arm as though to ward off a blow.
Perhaps the blow would have come. Perhaps, in his rage, Ike would have killed him if the second outcry of pain hadn't come between him and his anger. Ike suddenly straightened and said, “Who got hurt?”
“I don't know,” Gabe said nervously.
Ike shot him a withering glance and then crawled back to the lip of the shelf. He swore again, savagely, when he saw what those last forty yards had cost him. Her
b Fowler, a leather-tough old-timer, crouched in the blackjack thicket some twenty yards away, clutching at his chest with both hands. As Ike watched, the old man let go and began to fall by slow degrees until at last he lay on his back, arms outstretched, motionless.
Ike wheeled, turning his anger on the hilltop. Not that he gave a damn about Fowler, but his death made the gang one man weaker than it had been before. That marshal! Ike thought darkly. That goddamn marshal! And for the first time the gang leader began to take a personal interest in Owen Toller.
Five men had started up that slope and only two had reached the shelf. Ike raked the base of the hill with angry eyes, but the two remaining men were not to be seen.
“What happened to Ross Kale and Sam Russell?” he demanded of Gabe Tanis. Then, without waiting for an answer, Ike leaped up and plunged down the slope again. He hit the ground with his chest and rolled end over end, clutching at his Winchester, as a shotgun blast tore away his footing. He did not know that he was hurt until he stopped rolling, and then he saw the bright crimson spreading over his trousers a few inches above his right knee. He crawled into the thicket.
Quickly he ripped his shirt sleeve with his teeth, tore it off at the shoulder, and bound his thigh. “Ross!” he yelled. “Sam! Where are you?”
There was no answer. The carbine spoke again from the hilltop and the slug ripped savagely through the brush. Goddamn it, why didn't the bunch on the other side of the hill start moving? He would kill them, every one of them, with his two bare hands, if they backed out on him now!
By sheer power of will Ike Brunner made himself calm down and think of the problem at hand. If Ross and Sam were dead... But he would not cross that bridge before he reached it. He called out again, and again his only answer came from the marshal's carbine.
He couldn't push his luck much further. He had to get out of this thicket. He calculated the distance from the thicket to the boulder and prayed that the boys on the other side would start moving soon. Then his hard face split with a satisfied grin. Far to his right a cluster of rifle shots mushroomed in the afternoon. Wade Jeffers had got them moving.
He waited until he was sure that Dunc and the marshal had moved over to resist the new advance, then lifted himself in the brush and limped toward the boulder. He was right back where he had started from, with the protecting shelf still forty yards away. But behind the boulder he found his missing men.
Ross Kale was a youngster in his late teens, a tough, straw-haired kid who had joined the gang after the raid at Bellefront. Sam Russell was a gangly, chinless farmer in his late thirties. At first Ike thought they were both dead. They crouched behind the boulder, their arms over their heads.
For a moment Ike did nothing. A red haze of rage clouded his vision.
He stepped up to Russell and kicked him savagely with his good leg, and the farmer fell back on his side, his eyes and mouth flying open as his breath left him. “Get up, goddamn you!” Ike said harshly. He hobbled over to Ross Kale and with a short, vicious swing of the Winchester clubbed the side of the kid's face with the walnut stock.
Ike turned to Russell. “I said get up!” he snarled.
But the gangly farmer was paralyzed with fear. He worked his loose mouth but only gibberish came out. “I can't! I just can't, Ike! Herb Fowler, he was standin' right beside me! We'll all be killed!”
Without another word Ike leveled his Winchester at the farmer's head and pulled the trigger. Russell was instantly dead, with most of his skull shot away, but he flopped and quivered for several seconds, and Ike watched without a flicker of emotion. At last he turned on Ross Kale.
“How about you, kid? You want to stay behind this boulder with Sam?”
The boy swallowed hard, his eyes popping. “Ike, for God's sake!”
“You want to go to the top of the hill with the rest of us?”
“Yes! Yes, anything you say!”
“Then get on your feet and act like a man!”
The numbness in Ike's leg was beginning to fade, and the pain put a new sharp edge to his anger. He grabbed the boy, jerked him to his feet, and shoved him into the open. “Up there where Gabe Tanis is! And don't stop.”
Ross Kale didn't stop. Ahead of Brunner, with Ike's Winchester at his back, the kid clawed blindly up the rocky grade to the shelf. Gabe Tanis was waiting near the ledge to pull them up.
“Where's Sam Russell?”
“Dead,” Ike said bluntly, “along with Herb Fowler.”
If Gabe had heard the shot from Ike's rifle, he did not mention it. “I think somebody got the Reunion marshal,” he said. “I haven't heard anything from the carbine since you reached the boulder.”
“I guess it's time we headed for the top, then. I've got some business to finish with Dunc Lester.” He glanced behind him and saw that the sun was sinking behind the western hills. “We'll have to finish it before sundown. I don't want him to get away in the dark.”
On the other side of the hill a revolver sounded three times, punctuated at the end by a shotgun blast. Ike jerked his head at Ross Kale. “You first, kid.”
The boy's face was pale, his mouth a thin white line, but he did not hesitate. He slipped around the end of the shelf and started toward the crest of the hill when a sudden carbine blast knocked him off his feet. He came falling down in a shower of loose rocks, blood spurting from his left shoulder.
“I thought you said that marshal was dead!” Ike snarled.
Gabe Tanis shrugged, wiping his tobacco-stained mouth. “I said I thought he was shot. A man can be shot and still pull the trigger on a carbine.”
They retreated again behind their protective roof of stone, and Ross Kale began to whimper when he saw the stream of blood flowing down his arm. “Shut up!” Ike said. “Or maybe you want me to shut you up for good!”
The boy ground his teeth and was suddenly silent. Gabe Tanis gazed thoughtfully at Ike, then at the boy, and finally went down on one knee and fashioned a clumsy bandage about Kale's shoulder. “Maybe,” Gabe said quietly, “it would be better if we did wait till dark.” Ike looked at the sun again and judged that darkness was less than an hour away. That's what they were fighting for, the two men up there on the hilltop. They were waiting for darkness and hoping that they could slip away in the night.
There were a lot of things to consider before charging that rocky ridge again. One man had already lost his guts, and it stood to reason that there would be others. Still, the odds were heavily in favor of Ike and the gang, and he did not intend to leave this job unfinished. Maybe, he thought, the marshal was hurt bad; maybe he would die. It was pleasant to think about, but nothing to be relied on.
Now Ike began to get a new idea. Suddenly he moved to the edge of the shelf and shouted:
“You up there on top! The marshal from Reunion! Can you hear me?”
Gabe Tanis blinked in surprise, but Ike gazed eagerly toward the sandstone cap and waited. At last a voice came down to them.
“I hear you, Brunner.”
It was a weak voice, and this pleased Ike. He called, “We know you're shot, Marshal. I don't know how bad off you are, but you don't sound so good to me. I'd guess you might be needin' a doctor.”
No answer came from the hilltop.
“I've got a proposition for you, Marshal,” Ike called again. “You want to hear it?”
There was a short silence. Then, “All right. I'll listen.”
Ike grinned. He knew that they were playing for time, but this didn't worry him now. “Here's my proposition, Marshal. You're free to come down any time you feel like it. I'll give my men orders not to fire.”
“Thanks just the same, but I think I'd be safer where I am.”
“With a bullet hole in you? You need a doctor, Marshal. You come down by yourself and I'll have two of my boys help you get back to Reunion. Nobody but us will ever know.”
There was a long pause. All the hills seemed to listen. Then, “I'm afraid I can't take your word, Brunner. I'd be walking into a tra
p and you know it.”
Ike smiled, feeling himself on firmer ground. “I've got nothin' against you, Marshal. You're just another law dog tryin' to do a job, as far as I'm concerned. But you don't have a chance in the world of breaking up my gang, so why be a fool and get yourself killed for nothin'?”
“Like you said, Brunner, I'm trying to do a job.” Ike's face was a mask, showing nothing. His voice was almost amiable. “Get this through your head, Marshal: I don't care a damn about you, but I aim to settle a debt with Dunc Lester. If you want to stand in my way, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.”
“That's right, Ike. Nobody but myself.” Ike shifted his weight again, leaning heavily against the stone. The pain in his thigh spread slowly upward toward the hip. He had one more idea to try, and if that didn't work... Well, the sun was getting low.
The Law of the Trigger Page 16
