The tune he whistled was an old Texas trail-driving tune called “Hangtown”, about a poor Texas cowhand who fell afoul of a Yankee sheriff in some Kansas town and got himself hung for a murder he didn’t commit.
Carmody could recognize a tune, but he couldn’t carry one, singing or whistling. It was a wonder to him that the Hatten boys didn’t draw on him, then and there. Looking at him, and what was worse, listening to him, they got pretty annoyed after a while. Carmody grinned with satisfaction when the Hatten boys set down their plates, hitched up their gun belts, and started to come his way. He didn’t stop grinning. The grinning, like the whistling, was supposed to get them riled. From the way their long-jawed faces were set, they were riled all right.
Carmody poured a trickle of whisky into the bottom of the mug and made a big fuss about gulping it down. By the time he stopped gulping they were right in front of the porch. “Howdy, boys,” he said.
Bud Hatten looked at Corey. “Enjoying yourself, are you?” he asked Carmody.
“Sure thing, Corey.”
Bud Hatten said, “I’m Bud—he’s Corey.”
“That’s fair,” Carmody said. “Nice morning, ain’t it?”
He tilted the bottle again. This time he had to fill the mug, to make it look good. It went down at one time, the whole mugful. There was no need to fake the shudder. “Hot damn!” he declared. “If that ain’t good.”
Now it was Corey’s turn to speak. “Suppose you pass the bottle, friend,” he said. “You ain’t the only feller wants a drink on this mountain.”
“Sure,” Carmody said. He reached out with the half-empty bottle. Then he took it back before Corey Hatten’s hand could grab it. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it ain’t right. Maybe Frank wouldn’t like it.”
Bud was less interested in a drink than Corey was, but he said, “Let’s have the bottle.”
Carmody jerked the neck of the bottle to his mouth, spilling some of the whisky while he drank. The liquor ran down his chin, soaking his shirt. He managed to spill more than he drank. The Hatten brothers looked at the widening stain on his shirt. “Pass the bottle, I said,” Bud Hatten said.
Carmody copied his laugh from an old, crazy prospector he once knew. The old man hadn’t found more than a trace of gold in forty years’ looking. Carmody’s laugh sounded more than a little crazy. It was the laugh of a madman, or a drunk. “You fellers ain’t supposed to drink,” he said. “You’re the hired hands—I’m company.”
While he was tilting the bottle again, Bud Hatten drew his gun. Corey’s gun came out a split-second later. There was no shooting at the end of Bud’s draw, and Carmody relaxed. He was taking a big chance, needling the Hatten boys like that. He knew he could have killed both of them; that wouldn’t have done him much good when Garrison came back with the girl.
“Put it away,” Bud Hatten said to his brother, holding the six-shooter even with Carmody’s heart. “I could take this goddamned drunk with my eyes closed.”
Carmody pretended to see the leveled gun for the first time. Knocking over the chair, he stood up. “You talking to me, mister?” he asked. The bottle crashed on to the porch and didn’t break. Not all the whisky ran out of it.
Bud Hatten sneered. “Go on, old man,” he said. “Try it. Try it and die.”
Carmody went into the stupid gunfighter’s crouch he never used when he had to kill a man. But Hatten had the hammer back. Carmody allowed his arms to sag. Thickening his tongue, he called Bud Hatten a son of a whore.
Bud Hatten raised the gun, then thumbed the hammer back to the safe position, and slid it back into its holster. He walked up on to the porch and backhanded Carmody across the face. Carmody took it. Bud hit him again. Carmody fell against the porch rail at the far end of the porch.
Corey stepped up, too. He wanted to get at Carmody. Bud told him to leave it be. When Corey tried to pick up the near-empty whisky bottle, Bud told him to leave that be, too.
Corey did what he was told. “Ain’t he the great one,” Bud Hatten said, sneering with his hard face. “The big bad Texican gunfighter, Carmody. The bad old man.”
Carmody was two months shy of being thirty-eight. That was old for a man in his line of work. Old for men like the Hatten brothers, especially. He hoped they would think of that, and keep on thinking about it. He wished to hell he could kill them quick and easy with a gun. But that wasn’t possible. Garrison and the girl were long gone by now, but gunshots in the mountains could be heard for miles.
“Wait’ll we tell Frank,” Bud Hatten said.
Corey laughed. “The big gunfighter, Carmody— Frank’s friend,” he said. “The big man don’t want us to have a drink.”
“Just think of it,” Bud Hatten said. “Frank thinks he’s so big and everything. And it turns out he’s just a yellow-livered drunk.”
Corey started into the cabin. Carmody yelled, “You stay out of there, hear? Frank said to leave that whisky be. Frank said ...”
Bud Hatten hit Carmody with his fist, knocking him clear through the porch rail. The wood was rotten but it hurt just the same. Carmody, a little knocked back from the whisky, promised himself that he’d do something for Bud Hatten someday. Maybe even this morning, or maybe even today. If not then, then later.
The ground came up and hit him and he stayed on it for a while without moving. He was beginning to get tired of lying like that when Corey Hatten walked out on to the porch with a mug of whisky in his hand. He said back in the door to Bud, “What pisses me, the girl even cooked him breakfast.”
Carmody stayed where he was and listened to them getting drunk on Garrison’s whisky. He waited for Corey to come out again. Corey didn’t. Bud didn’t come out, either. After a while they started to quarrel and then they both said they were sorry, and started to sing. Corey said more than once that he should go out and kill Carmody. Bud said Carmody, the drunk, wasn’t worth a bullet. Besides, Bud said, they ought to wait till Frank got back and saw the spineless thing his old pard had turned into.
Carmody, face down in the dirt, listened to their talk and their singing. Their singing was worse than his whistling, and that was hard. When Corey began to complain about Bud’s singing, Carmody decided it was time to go looking for that one, or two, or three sticks of dynamite.
It wasn’t hard to find it. It was in a metal box, exactly where he thought it would be, in the big Army tent where the Hatten boys slept.
After he found it, he went back and woke up the Hatten boys. Corey was snoring but Bud wasn’t completely asleep yet. Carmody woke them up anyway. He wasn’t too gentle about it.
Chapter Nine
He had spilled the shells out of their six-shooters. Bud was still tiddly with whisky, but glaring at him. Corey was still inclined to nod off, and Carmody had to keep his attention by tapping him on the nose with his revolver. A drunk who woke up suddenly yelling that he didn’t know where he was could be a bigger warning than an Indian village full of thin-ribbed mongrels.
The Hatten boys were in porch chairs, tilted back against the wall of the cabin. Though Corey Hatten couldn’t read, Carmody had fixed him up so he looked like he was reading a catalogue from a St. Louis mail order house. It was an old joke but it wasn’t older than the catalogue, which was dated seven years before.
Bud Hatten sat stiff and still in his chair. “You sure as hell are going to get it when Frank gets back. Frank’ll cut you to pieces. And that ain’t nothing to what Corey and me’ll do.”
Carmody leaned against the wall, watching them. They had gone through most of the two bottles of Garrison’s whisky. Now the booze was wearing off and they were more vicious-looking than usual. Corey’s catalogue thumped on the porch as he fell asleep in his chair. Carmody let him sleep.
“How’s about a drink?” Bud asked Carmody. There was a fresh quart in Carmody’s hand. Bud moved and Carmody brought out his gun with an easy motion. Bud stopped moving and stayed quiet.
Garrison had said something about getting back about noon.
Carmody squinted at the sun. It was directly overhead. His blanket roll, with two extra blankets taken from Garrison’s bed, lay tied and ready at the other end of the porch. There was a good supply of jerked beef in the cabin. He had stuffed his saddle bags with that, passing over the canned stuff. Before they got over the mountains they’d be good and sick of jerky, but canned goods added too much weight.
Carmody went over it again. There were two quarts of whisky rolled in with the blankets. Also a small hatchet. The girl would carry the saddle bags. It might take some persuading to make her do that. There was plenty of jerked beef in the bags. A real Texas gentleman, he had packed a bar of yellow soap for the girl. One canteen of water would do. There was water in the mountains; the canteen was for emergencies; there was no telling when they might get boxed up in some dry corner. His pockets were filled with extra ammunition. He had filled one pocket of his shirt with Garrison’s cigars. In the other pocket the single stick of dynamite stood up, concealed by his coat.
He had destroyed as much of Garrison’s food and supplies as he could find, chopping through the canned food with the hatchet and dumping it into the stove. A lot of it had been canned peaches. As it burned it made the cabin smell like a big peach pie.
They were short on a lot of things that would make the trip easier. There was no way around that. He was pretty sure the girl wasn’t going to like it. Carmody thought he heard horses coming up through the canyon. Bud Hatten started to say something. Carmody told him to button his mouth or get a broken jaw.
They were coming all right. “Just rest easy,” Carmody told Bud. There was no need to tell Corey anything. He was still asleep. Carmody decided to let him sleep.
Katherine Yates, riding a chestnut mare, came out of the canyon mouth, followed by Garrison and three men. Two of the men were Emmett O’Bryan and the half-breed, Sangster. Carmody didn’t know the other man. He might be one of the lookouts from the trail into Silver City. He might be new. Including the Hatten boys, that made six men he had to deal with right away. There would be more than six after they started out. The look-outs from the trail and the canyon would be called in.
They came closer to the cabin. “One word and you die first. Bud,” Carmody reminded the gunslinger. He walked to the centre of the porch, still holding the bottle in his left hand.
The girl jumped down and started up the steps. Still in the saddle, Garrison looked quickly from the broken porch rail to Carmody. “Hold it,” he said to the girl. The girl was up on the porch now. Garrison started to say something else. Before he finished it, Carmody drew his gun and grabbed the girl by the waist at the same time. Garrison’s gun came out too, but he didn’t fire. The half-breed was behind Garrison and his gun came out fast, and fired. The bullet splintered the wall near Carmody’s head. Carmody knocked him off his horse with a single shot.
“Hold it, Frank,” Carmody said, holding the smoking muzzle of his .44 against the side of the girl’s head. “Shoot at me and she dies.”
O’Bryan’s hand was poised above his gun. The man Carmody didn’t know just sat there on his horse.
“No shooting,” Garrison told O’Bryan and the other rider. But he didn’t put his own gun away.
The girl cried out with pain as Carmody dragged her arm up tighter behind her back.
“Let her go, Carmody,” Garrison said. “You’re not going to make it. I can kill you before you can squeeze the trigger.”
“Maybe,” Carmody said. “Only you might just kill the girl instead. And where would that leave you. Besides, even if you did miss the girl and kill me, you might set off the stick of dynamite in my pocket. Kill the girl, kill me. Maybe even yourself.”
Garrison’s eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing,” he said. “You got dynamite, let’s see it.”
Carmody grinned at him. “Don’t teach me my business, Frank,” he said. “You shoot, maybe you’ll find out soon enough. Now why don’t you put that gun away. Then you and me can come to terms.”
“What’re you saying?”
“What I’m saying is this. You and the others climb down off those horses and Bud here’ll tie you up. Before you get free, we’ll be long gone.”
Holding the girl steady was a hell of a job. “Don’t do it, Frank,” she yelled. “Shoot the son of a bitch.”
“I’ll break it, you keep that up, honey,” Carmody warned her. “What about it?” he said to Garrison.
“I don’t know,” Garrison said. “Why don’t you just forget this. Be a smart feller. Ride on out of here. There’s no way you can make it.”
“Maybe,” Carmody answered. “One more time-climb down off that horse. Tell your men to do the same. Start shooting and we all go up. The girl especially.”
Garrison’s grin was mean and twisted. “You ain’t fooling about the dynamite, old pard?”
“You know me,” Carmody said. “You be smart— take it on trust.”
Garrison slid his gun back into its holster. “Do what he says, boys,” he said. He got down off his horse and turned the animal loose. The other two men dismounted.
“Goddamn you, Frank,” Katherine Yates yelled. “You going to let this son of a bitch take me?”
“Start tying, and make it tight,” Carmody told Bud Hatten. He didn’t want to mess with Corey, still asleep, even while the half-breed was being killed. Carmody raised his gun and cracked Corey across the skull. Corey didn’t even move off his chair.
The girl was yelling again.
Garrison put his hands behind his back and let Bud Hatten tie them. He said to the girl, “Don’t you worry, honey. He ain’t going to take you far. He ain’t about to get far himself. He’s going to be sorry he didn’t.”
Garrison looked up at Carmody. He always had some kind of grin on his face, no matter what he was saying. “Maybe you’d best kill me now, old pard,” he said. “Cause the things I’m going to do to you would turn a Comanche’s stomach.”
Carmody was thinking that was exactly what he should do—kill Garrison. With Frank the gang would fall apart. But Hatten might try to take over. He had the nerve, but not the brains. If he killed Garrison he could just about stroll out of there with the girl. But he’d made Garrison a kind of deal, and Garrison had taken it when he got down off the horse and let himself be tied. If ever a man needed killing, Frank Garrison did. Carmody didn’t try to talk himself into it. He knew he wouldn’t do it. He could if he had to, but he wouldn’t.
He figured Garrison knew that, too. That was why he let himself be tied. If things were turned about, Garrison would have killed him as easily as another man swatted a mosquito. That was what made them different.
Bud Hatten finished roping the other two men. O’Bryan, the Alabaman, took it more personal because he knew Carmody. The other man, a short, thin cow-puncher type with a pinched nose and a Montana crease in his hat, didn’t even look at Carmody.
After Bud Hatten finished his work, Carmody told him to stand right where he was. Pushing the girl in front of him, Carmody stepped down from the porch and laid his gun barrel across the back of Bud’s neck. He sure was leaving a store of goodwill behind him, he thought. He scooped up the guns Garrison and the others had dropped and pitched them into the stream.
“Be seeing you, Carmody,” Garrison said.
“Sure, Frank,” Carmody said. “Any time you’re in my part of the country.”
The girl didn’t want to leave. She tried to run when he turned her loose, and he had to trip her. When she turned on him, clawing for his face, he backhanded her, right and left.
The saddle bags were lying beside the now bulky blanket roll. Carmody hit her again and told her to pick it up. “I’ll keep hitting you as long as needed,” he told her. “I don’t care how damaged you are by the time I get you back. Understand?”
He had to give her some more rough treatment before she hoisted the saddle bags onto her shoulders. Carmody slung the blanket roll across his back and picked up the Winchester with the other hand.
“U
p there is where we’re going, honey,” he said, pointing with the rifle barrel. “Up and over. Easy or hard—it’s up to you. Now start walking.”
They started up the long hardpan slope that led up and away from the hideout. There was no need to get the girl togged out for the trip. She was wearing a lined canvas coat over the wool shirt. Her boots looked good and sturdy, but no boots were sturdy enough for walking over this country. Double-soled boots were what you needed for that. Carmody told her to take it easy.
It took ten minutes to make the top of the ridge. From up there he could see the tiny figures of Garrison and his boys pushed together with their backs turned. Maybe it would take them another five minutes to get untied. After that, he didn’t know how long it would take them to get started after him. The guns were lying in the stream and it would take a long time to get them cleaned and oiled. There might be other guns stored away that he didn’t know about. An old hand like Garrison would be certain to have some extra guns hidden away. Food, too.
On the other side of the high ridge the mountains stretched away, jumbled and broken, for fifty miles. Carmody didn’t know that country—nobody did—and there were no landmarks to travel by. They would head west and south. That was all he knew.
Off the ridge it wasn’t so cold. The forward slope was sand and gravel that broke and ran under their feet. The girl lost her footing and started to slide. Carmody jumped after her, digging his boots in deep.
When he grabbed her by the back of the coat, she lost her hold on the saddle bags, and they rolled to the bottom. Carmody said the next time she dropped those bags he’d give it to her good.
The girl was winded from the climb and her green eyes were bright with rage.
“You wanted the wild life. Well, here it is,” Carmody said. “Keep moving.”
There wasn’t time yet to think much about direction. The important thing was put some distance between themselves and Garrison. Later he’d think about trying to cover their tracks. At the moment there wasn’t time for anything but increasing the distance.
Carmody 5 Page 7
