“Not this waddy,” Cain swore.
It occurred to him that the raiders might not know just how many were in the cabin with him. If Mitch was with the raiders—that spying son-of-a-bugger pretending he was only a neighbor dropping by the other day!—he’d probably tell them there were at least two others in the cabin with him. Timberline and Harry. Hambone they had caught but Hambone’s being there might suggest he had brought others with him. Cain nodded. The gun-fighters would hardly rush the cabin even if Timberline was out there lying on the ground.
“What I better do is fire a shot from each window every little while. Make it seem they’s a half-dozen of us tough hellions in here.”
He made the rounds. With the Winchester he pinged a shot off the first support of the bridge, splintering off bits of wood. He next creased one through the largest clump of greasewood on the ridge to the south. On the barn side he dropped one low and off to the right of the barn door on the theory that someone might just be kneeling for a look through a knothole he remembered seeing there only yesterday. He had been meaning to plug it but had forgotten it.
He watched Timberline crawl on. The big man had covered another dozen feet. Shots still came popping at him intermittently and mud flew up in little black geysers around him.
“What lousy shots!” Cain muttered. “Onless they’re in such shape they can’t get a good bead on him. Maybe they dassent show for fear I’ll get ’em.” Cain smiled grim. “Or all of us get ’em. The ones they think are in here with me. If Hambone ain’t snitched on us.”
Again he made the rounds of the windows, this time changing the order, to keep up the pretense that there was more than one in the cabin with him. When he shot out of the window to the south he saw that the wind had come up again from the northwest. He could see it moving like waves across the new grass in the meadow.
He looked out of the window on the barn side. Timberline was still coming on, inching on, undulating like a wounded caterpillar. They’d kept after him with an occasional shot and he bled like a riddled wine barrel.
The sight of Timberline’s terrible determination made Cain shiver all over.
Intent on Timberline, he forgot himself, let his head come too close to the window. There was a loud pop in the barn and then a ping through one of the remaining windowpanes. His black hat flew off. Instantly, instinctively, he dropped out of range.
He picked up his hat. Seeing the neat hole in its crown, he calmed over some. He even saw humor. “Now how could that duck know how much of my head was in this hat and still not hit it?”
And seeing humor, it began to close over him, the inevitability of it. Unless help came, unless Harry or some stray cowpuncher heard the shooting, he was done for. He was lost. He was sure that by now they had tortured Hambone into telling how many were in the cabin with him. If Hambone told, they would eventually rush the cabin and either put a crossfire on the door and windows or burn it and shoot him down when he flushed.
The terrible feeling that life was slowly unraveling out from under him, that, worse yet, he could do nothing about it, moved over him like a great storm cloud. Life was falling apart, it was all slipping away from him, and he could do nothing to stop it. Calamity was coming down on him like a sliding rockfall falling down on a man already pinned to earth. No matter what desperate measures he might take, no matter how he might jack first one way and then the other, in the end, finally, he was doomed, and no longer would he be around to enjoy his green meadow and life beside the Shaken Grass.
Then he rallied. Like a grizzly tormented into one last desperate lunge and bite, his animal came up and rose terrible in the back of his head, rampant. His eyes opened terrible under his dark brows, glowed liked balls of silverish fire. His carven walnut face set rock hard. Who was Hunt or Mitch or Jesse or any of the hired killers to cow, even kill, a Hammett? He was a grandson of the great Gramp Hammett. All his life he’d had to hold his wild one in check for fear of going too far, of hurting someone, of overstroking when a light stroke would serve. Here now was a chance to let it out full force without having to worry about hurting the good. The odds were more than equal at last. A young army was out there to get him and he now had the right to fight with all he had. And he would. They might get him, but he would get some of them too, a lot of them.
He made another round of the windows, placing shots where he thought the killers might be hiding.
When he turned his attention to Timberline again, he found him almost at the foot of the stoop. Timberline’s trail through the mud looked like someone had dragged a heavy log across the yard.
Cain set aside his rifle and got out his six-gun again. He set himself at the heavy door; gave it a sudden jerk inward and emptied his gun in the direction of the barn as a covering fusillade; then threw his gun into the house behind him and leaped down beside Timberline. With all his might, grunting, he hauled Timberline up by his great shoulders and dragged him up the stoop. Timberline’s limp legs and boots clumped on the two steps. Instantly another hail of bullets came rattling from the barn, wild, spraying all around them in the doorway, singing like swift hummingbirds. Cain’s mind raced. Cain’s mind raged. So clearly did it see and feel all things, so clear and wide and deep did it reflect the moment, he found he could actually see bullets winging toward them, coming on as straight as whistling wheat spears in a gale, coming on like swift blunt bumblebees. The bullets came on and at the last second seemed to veer off just enough to miss them. Except one bullet. It nicked his mustache, giving it a tick as if someone were trying to pull out a hair with tweezers. With another heave he pulled Timberline over the doorsill. Just as he was about to reach for the door, still one more bullet came singing straight for them. It did not veer. It splashed into Timberline’s belly. Then he got the door shut.
Pouncing, he grabbed up the Winchester and made the rounds of the windows to let them know that he and his army were at their posts again.
He was immediately answered by a splintering shattering barrage of flying lead, from the barn, from the bridge, from the low bluff. Windows exploded out on the west and south sides of the cabin and fell to the floor with a brittle tinkling sound. Old dust stived up. Hard chinking spilled to the floor.
Cain nodded. The barrage from three sides told him an army of killers was out there just as he’d guessed. The fight was now bigger than a mere grudge fight between himself and a vengeful Hunt, between himself and a Jesse. A whole way of living was now at stake. The thing had finally come down to this: Would the state go big cattlemen or little cattlemen? Yes, a whole army of big cattlemen and their killers, including even a governor and a United States senator, were out to destroy the small-holder way of life. And he was plumb in the middle of it. Even the President was in it. He too had invested money in a ranch near Cheyenne.
“Well, there’s nothing for it but to battle them all, if that’s the way the cards want to fall. Hold out till help comes.”
He noticed mud on his boots. He went over and carefully cleaned them on the gunnysack by the door.
He shot off yet another round through the windows to let them know he and his army were still on the alert.
The smell of gunpowder in the cabin became nauseous. It reminded him powerfully of an old heavey mare’s loose flates in the night.
He knelt beside Timberline to see what he could do for him. Timberline’s old patched shirt and pants and vest were soaked with islands of blood. Cain got out an old washed shirt of his own from a shelf and ripped it into strips and cleaned and bandaged Timberline as best he could. There was a wound across Timberline’s scabby unwashed pate where a rifle bullet had creased him. It wasn’t deep. But it had nicked him enough to stun him and make him fall. There were a dozen punctures in his arms and shoulders, most of them flesh wounds and not fatal. Cain found only two thigh wounds; not deep, just bleeding slowly. Worse was the right hand. The thumb had been completely shot off and the palm was badly shattered. But the very worst was the belly wound, where the la
st shot had hit him. Greenish blood oozed from it. Cain guessed it had plowed into the liver and gall bladder, that it was fatal.
He noticed a bump in Timberline’s near pocket. He reached in. He came up with a money bag. It was made of a leather he had never seen before, neither horsehide, nor cowhide. Nor for that matter even sheep hide. He turned it over; smelled it; turned it over. The rough side was turned out, the smooth side in. He felt silver coin inside, and curious to see how much Timberline carried about on him, he untied the buckskin thongs and looked in. He found two silver dollars and an assortment of small change. There seemed to be a lump stuck in a fold, so he opened the maw of the bag wider and turned it over. Out rolled a dried-up human ear.
He cried out. The last time he’d seen a severed ear was when Clara Jager showed him one she’d got in the mail. Hah. This was Dencil Jager’s other ear. He and Dale had found Dencil’s body without ears hanging from a tree. Cain looked at the money bag in his hands again, looked closely, and suddenly an idea, a horrible idea, struck him. He turned the bag completely inside out. There they were. Two little bumps on the smooth side of the bag exactly like dried-up dog dugs. So that was why the front of Dencil’s chest had been skinned.
Cain’s face first went as black as bile, then as pale as winter grass, then as blue as a dead man’s cheek.
Jesse and his men hadn’t hanged Dencil after all.
He gave big hairy Timberline a rough shake. “You blackhearted bustards!”
Timberline groaned. “Uh.”
“Buzzards!”
“My thumb.”
“T’blazes with your thumb. Listen, you big moose, can you hear me?”
“Uh.’’
“Listen! Did you and Harry hang Dencil?”
“Uh?”
“Did you and Harry string up Dencil Jager?”
“Not—Harry.”
“But you did?”
Silence.
Again Cain shook big hairy Timberline, rough, fierce. “Listen! Can you hear me? Did you hang Dencil Jager?”
“Uh.”
Cain’s teeth set down tight together. He raged within; was calm without. “But why? Dencil was a wonderful fellow. I got my horse Lonesome from him. He was as honest as the day was long. And he was making it out with that nutzy Clara when any other mortal man would long ago have left her. And on the run.”
“Thumb.”
“T’blazes with your thumb, you strangling son-of-a-bugger. I ought to let you lay there and die, you bloody-minded beast. That was a terrible cowardly thing to do.”
Timberline stirred. His eyes opened some. “No,” he gasped, slow, “no. We thought—killin’ him—would rouse the valley—get rid of Jesse.”
“Tell me. Tell me honest Indian. I’ve got to know, Tim. Did my brother Harry have a hand in this too?”
“I did it alone.”
“Don’t lie now, Tim. Tim, you’re dying now and you wouldn’t want to die with a lie on your lips, would you? So tell me the truth. Did my brother Harry order you to kill Dencil?”
Silence.
“Did he?”
Timberline groaned.
Cain sensed instantly the groan was show. Timberline was covering up for his pardner. Harry had given the order then.
He was outraged at the idea of his brother Harry’s ordering so gruesome and so cruelly wrong a killing. Yet at the same time he couldn’t help but admire, a little, Timberline’s loyalty. The Red Sashers did stick together. Even with death in his belly Timberline was no squealer.
“Thumb.”
“Yeh, your thumb’s all right.” Cain let out a long shuddering sigh. So many things. Men waiting to kill him. Now this. “Once a wild one always a wild one.”
“Thumb.”
“Your thumb is going to be all right.”
“It feels like it’s gone.” Timberline tried to raise his arm and look at it; couldn’t quite make it.
“Lay quiet. I’ve got it all bandaged up.”
With an effort, he recalled the waiting enemy outside. He got to his feet and, straddling, made another round of the three windows, firing one shot out of each. Again there were answering broadsides from all three barricades. Lead whistled and cried around his ears.
Cain took stock of his ammunition. With both Timberline’s and Hambone’s supply on hand, plus his own and Harry’s, he had enough to hold out for a week provided he was saving with it. “Cowards get murdered; brave men get killed. So I’ll have to do what I have to do. Shoot when necessary. Save my cartridges. Place my shots one by one, careful, steady.”
“Rum?”
“Tim, you know I never drink rum.”
“Drink?”
“Hambone went to get the water, remember?”
“Uh.”
“Just lay quiet. Maybe tonight I can sneak out across the meadow and get you a hatful.”
“A—good—drink—of—water—beats—all.”
Cain stared out of the window. He saw the vague movement of a human form deep in the open barn window. He fired at it; saw the form jerk out of sight.
Dust itched in the corners of his eyes. “Well, I guess at that a man has to die sometime. And it might as well be one time as another.” He fired again at what he thought was a second form in the open window. “And what better time than this—holding off a whole army for the boys.”
He thought of Gramp Hammett getting shot in the back. Same with their fathers Gordon and Raymond Hammett. Same with brother Dale.
He thought of Rory. Of Gram. Of Joey and little Cain.
“Now I can think of it,” he said aloud. “Now at last I can think of it.” He nodded to himself, grim. “Yes, life might have been better had I married Rory. It might have been richer bein’ father to Joey. Yes, I know that now.”
He thought of Hunt. “He did do me a favor in a way, like he says. Though it was too late when he did it. And yes, maybe Rory was right after all that I should’ve killed him on sight to avenge Gramp and our fathers and Dale. And all the others that low-down skunk may have drygulched.”
He thought of Hunt some more. “He did me a favor, yes. But now I am free to kill him if I can. I never did kill for pleasure or profit, having always preferred peace. And I am right sorry I had to shoot down Cecil Guth, even if everybody said I done right because he was no good and had it coming. But now at last I’ve come to the place where I must kill to live and where I will kill to live. I am free to kill now because I have no chance.”
He thought: “My God, then I am going to die at that!”
“Cain?”
“Say it.”
“Be sure to tell the boys—to watch out for a red moose—with a nick in the right front hoof.”
“I will.”
“Be sure now.”
“Don’t worry.”
Blood began to froth from Timberline’s lips and run down into his red whiskers.
Cain made the rounds again, carefully selecting points to shoot at. Again a hail of bullets rampaged against the cabin. Old dust rained on him. Chinking fell underfoot.
Through one of the cracks came a solitary bullet. It hit the wood stove, caromed off, narrowly missed him, finally spent itself in Hambone’s old fiddle, splitting the dark wood open. A second later, as if in protest, the bass string punged loose with a half-smothered gulplike sound.
“But who will know how it went,” he thought, “and who will care?”
He thought: “The boys will.”
He thought: “Dead men tell no tales.”
On an impulse, he dug out an old stub of a pencil from a pocket. From under the clock he got a small red book given to him by a cattle commissioner in which to keep accounts and addresses. The pages in the back were blank, marked Memoranda.
“Here’s one killin’ they’re going to know all about. How it happened,” he muttered to himself. “There’ll be no story in the papers about how Cain Hammett came to his death by parties unknown to the jury. I’ll leave a kind of last will and testament behind me so
they’ll really know.”
He sat down at the plank table. He wetted the point of his pencil with his tongue and wrote in dark blunt strokes.
Me and Tim was making breakfast when the attack took place. An old man was here with us. The old man went to get a bucket of water. When he didn’t come back, Tim went to see what was the matter. I told Tim to watch out, there maybe was somebody out there waiting for us. Tim said he thought it had finally got me.
Tim called from the floor, weakly, “Cain.”
Now Tim is shot, but not dead yet. He is awful sick. I must go and wait on him.
Tim called again, this time stronger, clear. “Cain.”
Cain put down his pencil and went over and knelt beside Tim. Gently he brushed back Timberline’s red whiskers. “Here I am.”
“Cain, you’ll take my word for it?”
“For what, man?”
“You will, won’t you, Cain?” Timberline tried to raise his head off the floor; couldn’t quite make it. His eyes burned out of his whiskery face with a feverish almost holy light. “You will, won’t you?”
“Lay down. Rest”
“Harry had nothing to do with it.”
“It’s all right, man.”
“You won’t take my word for it?”
“Quiet now. Rest”
Timberline’s eyes closed over, very slowly. He moaned to himself. “He won’t take my word for it.”
Cain thought: “I know how he feels. I’ve been oncommon fond of Harry myself.”
Cain got to his feet, hand to a knee. As he stepped toward the table, the raiders in the barn caught the movement deep within the window. A barrage of shots peppered all around the window frame.
“The more I think on it,” Cain thought, “the more sure I am Harry knew this attack was cornin’. It ain’t the first he’s slid out from under. Like that time up in his Hidden Country cabin.” Cain pushed his hat to the back of his head. When he grimaced both his scalp and his stub ears moved. “He knew they was comin’ for me all right. That’s why he left early in the night.”
Riders of Judgment Page 37
