by John Maclay
This would not be a short skirmish between equal groups, it became plain at once. If he were to find his son again and to save his people and their horses, he must be wiser than the North Wind and more secret than the water beneath the earth.
His hand went up, and he pointed right and left. Those behind him, though their blood was hot for battle, understood. Their families were at risk, and they peeled off and scattered into the cottonwood and willow thickets along the river, riding for the village and their hidden women and children.
They would make lightning sweeps at the attackers as the opportunity presented itself. Scattered as they would be, the Shoshonni could not come at them in a body but must search out the thickets as they moved up the valley. This would buy time for the people.
The hunters in the mountains could be summoned with smoke. The battleground could be chosen, the enemy led into conflict with care and intelligence. Then, even outnumbered, the Mule Deer Band of the Absaroka might survive this raid.
As his paint tore through the brush toward the high stub of stone beyond the village, Wears-Many-Feathers was considering his options and deciding to scatter his villagers widely, so that few would be captured and carried away. When he arrived at the top of the butte, after leaving his horse below and climbing frantically, he found himself followed immediately by his four best friends and most trusted warriors.
“Signal with smoke,” he said to Panther-Stalker. “Tell the people to hide in the mountains until we signal again.”
While the fire was being kindled, he surveyed the valley, so peaceful earlier, now filled with confusion. Of his original group that had followed him southward, some triple handful was riding at full speed up the valley, taking with them any stragglers they found from the gatherers who had been there.
Most of his people had disappeared into the brush, and he knew that the women, the very old, and the small children would disappear into the rough country along the valley, surviving on what they could hunt or trap or dig from the ground until it was safe to come out again. He did not need to worry about them.
From his high lookout, he counted the line of Shoshonni that was dispersing to search through the valley for horses and women. A tight group of warriors—two hands of them, he thought—was gathered about a large man riding a black and white horse. He was gesturing, and Wears-Many-Feathers knew he was proposing a plan of attack against him, fully visible as he was on his stub of rock.
But the Absaroka had lived in the mountains about this valley for generations, and he knew its secrets. There had been other intrusions by Blackfoot and Shoshonni and Kiowa, and always he and his fathers had used the land itself as an ally.
Now he held his arm outstretched, palm down, and the dozen warriors who had followed him and now waited behind the butte moved into a long ravine that cut into the grassland, its edges screened by bushes. They could dart from that covert and bring down raiders, when the time came.
Wears-Many-Feathers slipped down the back of his elevated stone perch and mounted the paint again. The smoke that had told his people to hide still rose in an unbroken column, and he knew it was bringing enemies to his side.
But he did not ride out into the open. Instead, he joined Panther Stalker, Coyote-Tail, Leaps-Like-A-Rabbit, and Badger in the small canyon behind the stony height.
They urged their horses around it, through a cut so narrow that it seemed impossible for a horse to negotiate it, and pushed into a thick growth of alder whose roots grew in a hidden channel. Once beyond that, he found himself in a familiar place where slabs and arches of stone overhung the runnel.
The chief reached high and caught a rocky ledge that loomed over his head. With one smooth motion, he pulled himself up to lie flat on the stone.
His companions rode forward, and one by one he knew that they would find similar spots from which to ambush anyone following them along the difficult route. The horses would go on until stopped by the sheer rock face where the stream fell down from above, and in going they would leave a clear trail in the dust and debris of their path.
His breathing steady and slow, his gaze fixed on the narrow span of path below him, Wears-Many-Feathers waited for his prey.
The sounds of hooves scrabbling among stones alerted him at last, and the chieftain tensed, his flint knife ready, his bow strung and bound to his back, along with arrows.
When the first rider passed beneath him he allowed him to go on, for he wanted those who followed to be caught in a trap. Another moved into sight and out again, and another.
His ears noting everything, counting the number of horses, Wears-Many-Feathers knew when the last of the line came into view, and as soon as the rider was beneath him he dropped, silent as a serpent, onto the back of the horse, slipped one muscular arm about the young man’s neck, and cut his throat. The horse did not miss a step as his rider was lifted clear and dropped quietly into the cleft.
Now mounted again, the Crow followed his enemies along the channel, whose angles hid each rider from the next for most of its length. He turned one such bend to see Badger drop onto a pony and repeat his own performance with silent dexterity. Now two of them rode at the tail of this line that had begun as ten enemies.
By the time the leaders reached the end of the channel, where the spring that had worn it dropped down from a hole high in the cliff, the odds were only six to four. Wears-Many-Feathers felt certain of the outcome of this skirmish in his new-sprung war.
When the leader, his face-paint denoting a raid, turned to speak to his people, the right number was there, but he was a wise old man and he knew his own. “Ai-i-i-i-i!” he yelled, pointing toward the four at the end of the line.
Instantly his followers turned, weapons ready, but in this cramped space it was impossible to risk arrows because a comrade was as likely to be struck as an enemy. The Absaroka had no such problem for they were behind all the rest, and in ten heartbeats three of the Shoshonni had fallen to their arrows.
Coyote-Tail obeyed a gesture from his chief and moved back into the cleft. His horse gave a strange sound as an arrow took him in the barrel, striking through to his heart, and dropped beneath him, sending the warrior over his head and onto the pebbles of the streambed. That saved his life, for an arrow whipped through the place where his chest had been an instant before.
Wears-Many-Feathers, surprised, turned toward this new threat, but before he could assess it a feathered shaft caught him in the throat and sent the leader of his people down into blackness. His heart was angry and bewildered, for he had not expected this Shoshonni, however old and wise in the way of war, to bring warriors on foot a long way behind his riders. That was the thing that defeated him.
He could hear sounds of fighting, grunts and the grate of flint knives on bones, but he was struggling to breathe through the blood that filled his mouth. A foot came down beside his head, and a pair of fighters grappled and gasped, but he could not tell who won and who lost. He drifted, now, on a tide of blackness, only occasionally coming to enough to know he was still alive.
When he woke to himself, hands were carrying him. A familiar face bent over his and Badger looked into his eyes. Wears-Many-Feathers could not speak. He knew that death was standing beside him, waiting to take him Beyond, but he had to know.
He made the sign for Boy, barely able to move his hand. Badger nodded. “We found him. He is safe. But we have lost this battle and are running into the mountains. There were too many of the Shoshonni.”
The effort was almost too much, but the chief signed again. Heart. Heart.
Badger looked puzzled. Then his face cleared and he said, “We will take out your heart and hide it on the high rock. You will watch over our valley until we come again. It will be done.”
Then Wears-Many-Feathers smiled through the blood and let his spirit spin free of his flesh. His heart would wait and watch, and his son would ride again in this valley.
It was a good day to die.
THE PISTOLEER
I was reared with guns in the house and was taught to shoot as soon as I was physically large enough to hold one up. I used to be a good shot, when I could see better. I also love unusual western stories....
Even the gamblers tipped their hats when Marcus Gilliam ambled past, leaning only lightly on his cane, although his back was now held straight with noticeable difficulty. He didn’t glance aside at them, and not one expected him to, but that did not disturb anyone. It was enough to have a living myth as a part of Cooper’s Grove.
As usual, he took his place in the hickory-splint chair in front of Mrs. Barnwell’s Boarding House and leaned it back against the weathered wall. The spring sun lit his worn Prince Albert coat to dusty gold and purple-black as he closed his eyes and dozed, as old men will often do.
Clive, watching carefully from the window of his room at the boarding house, had taken careful note of the gunfighter’s schedule. Every day for the past four, Gilliam had left the boarding house, crossed the street, and walked slowly and carefully past the hardware, the millinery, and the feed store to the café that was patronized by all the old-timers in Cooper’s Grove. And he always returned to sit in that chair.
Clive had never seen anyone presume to approach him, once he was in his place, and often he would remain there until noon took him again to the café. Still, the young man went cautiously.
Killing the greatest gunfighter of his generation, even if he was in his late sixties, was not going to be easy, he knew. It would make his reputation, there was no doubt of that: the old man still wore his gun, and that made him fair game.
Who was going to count backward and find that Clive had killed him when he was old? People weren’t like that, he had found as he made his painful way through the world.
This was Friday. On Saturday mornings the street teemed with wagons of farmers coming to town for their weekly supplies. Ranch-hands came to get polluted and patronize Miss Sally’s Entertainment Center, across from the sheriff’s office.
There would be a big crowd to see him make his mark, and that was what Clive Keller wanted more than anything else. Once he was known as Killer Clive, he would have the respect that had so far eluded his pursuit. He need only wait another night, and then his name would become a household word, like those of the Clantons and the Earps.
He closed the blind and lay on the bedspread, after taking off his boots. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t kick the habit, for his mother had drilled that into him with a switch when he was too young to resist.
He envied his occasional comrades, with their tales of tearing up a whore’s bed with their spurs as they bucked and snorted. He’d never been able to do that.
Now he grinned at the fly-specked ceiling. He’d be Killer Clive the Bootless Bastard, that’s what he’d be. Ned Wilkerson and his bunch of ham-handed, would-be bank robbers would beg to get into his gang.
When he woke, it was dark, but he had dreamed satisfyingly of his future career as a desperado whose name spread terror among gunmen old and young. A quick trip to the dining room and its plentiful supply of food did little to wake him from his fantasy.
Only when he stood in front of the peeling veneer of the bureau taking off his shirt, did he thump back to reality. In the spotted mirror, the round face, marked harshly with the pits of acne, the washed-out blue eyes, the tangle of nondescript hair, did not jibe with his visions of himself in that rosy future to be bought with the death of Marcus Gilliam.
Skinning down to his long-johns, he got into bed again. Dreams were far preferable to his waking life. But tomorrow things would be different. He would become Killer Clive....
He woke very early, with dawn just touching the sky outside his dusty window. But he had slept too much and could not lie still any longer. He had to be up and doing.
Dressed in his shabby best, he tiptoed down the hall, his spurs tinkling faintly, and paused outside the door assigned to Gilliam. No snore, no sound of any sort came from the room beyond it, but he thought with pleasure that tonight the famous man would sleep in Ike Carter’s Undertaking Parlor.
The boarding house was quiet, though there was a hint of motion from the back where the cook was building the fire on which he would prepare breakfast for the tenants. Clive made no sound as he crossed the parlor, for he had removed his spurs and put them into his pocket.
He wanted to ride out onto the rolling country, letting the constant wind and the sand-blasting grit convince him that his day had come at last. That, however, was impossible, for his horse had died the week before, leaving him afoot.
He walked the dusty street, listening to the quiet whine of the wind around the inaccurate angles of the buildings. He passed the edge of town and turned, staring back at the huddle of low buildings, still dark against the pale dawn sky.
His heart was thudding wildly as he went back toward the boarding house. Today was his day!
* * * *
Clive was careful not to be noticeable as he waited for the morning routine to be acted out. Gilliam drank coffee at the café with two men as old as he. They said little, but every word they exchanged seemed loaded with hidden meanings, for Clive, drinking coffee at a table in the corner, would see them chuckle or frown together.
Some code common to their mutual past communicated much in a single word. He had never known that kind of closeness with anyone, and Clive envied that effortless comradeship. From today forward, he would build up a group who would interact with him just as these three oldsters did. That was a part of the brilliant future he wanted so badly.
When Gilliam rose, pushing back his chair, the others rose too, taking their places on either side and escorting him to the door. They remained there, watching him as he went away toward his usual morning perch, and Clive watched them, wondering why they took the trouble. He was no older than they, no more feeble.
Giving the gunfighter time to take his place, Clive paid for his coffee with one of his few remaining coins and ambled toward the boarding house. When he was directly in front of the spot where the old man was already dozing in the morning sun, he stopped, dead in the center of the street.
“Gilliam!” he called, his voice, for once, not cracking. It held all the authority and the challenge that he had dreamed it might, when the time came.
The front legs of the chair thudded to the floor, and the old man was on his feet. Staring into his face, Clive saw with horror that his eyes, shaded before by the brim of his wide hat, were milky and blind. But his hand went snaking for his gun with speed that left Clive stunned.
Before Killer Clive could raise his own revolver, the slug from Gilliam’s caught him above the eye, glancing off the bone and sending him into darkness.
* * * *
He woke to more darkness, though it seemed to swirl with bright patterns, at times, as if someone shot off fireworks behind his eyelids. A voice beside his bed said, “He is awake.”
Then a hand touched his chest, moved up to feel lightly the contours of his face.
“Just a damn kid!” That was Gilliam’s voice. “Doc, I didn’t know. I just shot at the sound—I know when somebody’s about to shoot me, if nothing much else. I couldn’t see who it was. He sounded a lot older and tougher.”
“Oh, he intended to kill you, Marcus. No doubt about that. He’s been around for a week now, though nobody knew what he was up to. Probably thought to make his reputation by killing you. If you’d only let us make it known that you’re blind, it might stop such things from happening.”
“No. I’ll not have every penny-ante gunslinger in the country knowing that I’m helpless, Doc.” There was a pause. “How many is this?”
“Well, this is the first that you’ve just blinded. The rest are planted on Boot Hill. But this makes seven, far as I can recall.”
Again the hand touched Clive’s face. “Son
, I’m sorry. Doc says you may be blind, but I intend to make it right with you. No matter that you wanted to kill me—that’s the way I made my own reputation. I killed Otto Schoendienst back when I was not much older than you. Nobody ever heard of him, nowadays, but he was the gunfighter when I was young.”
There came a heavy sigh. “I’ll pay your rent, along with mine. I’ll put you right there on the porch beside me, and we can talk about things, when we’re in the mood. I’ll teach you how to get about, when you can’t see. And if, one day, you heal and get back your sight, I’ll be as glad as you will.”
“Why?” Clive struggled to believe that he would be blind, like the man beside his bed, but such things didn’t happen to young men—not to him! He strained to see, opening his eyes as wide as the lids would stretch, but no trace of light came through.
He felt of the bandage about his head. Pain shot through his skull, and he snatched his hands away. “Why would you take care of me?”
Nobody ever had, in all his life, since his mother died. Why would a man he had wanted to kill take on such a burden?
“An old man needs company. You’re young. You haven’t heard all my tales, though everybody else in town is sick of them. I can help you, and you can listen to me. Seems a fair exchange to me,” said Marcus Gilliam.
* * * *
Clive sat in his chair, leaned back against the wall of the boarding house. The sun was now hot against him, for spring had given way to summer.
He had gained weight, for his benefactor was, in a small way, very well-to-do. His room was comfortable, though he could no longer look from its window or into its looking-glass. He had a companion who cared for him, talked with him, took him everywhere, just about, that he went.
The town had accepted him without reservation, knowing that he would never threaten their Legend again. He even had a couple of friends his own age who envied him his association with the great Marcus Gilliam.
