‘You could of run.’
‘The idea occurred to me.’
‘The man said you’d been following him a month or more.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s wanted by the law. In Black Horse. I’m the law there.’
‘Then you ain’t the law here.’
‘I don’t see things that way, Mrs Holly. I’m kind of vain. I reckon I’m the law anywhere.’
Her face twisted in a one-sided smile. ‘I bet you wished you weren’t so vain, Mr McAllister.’
He smiled back. ‘That’s a fact, Mrs Holly.’
A twig cracked under a human foot and his right hand jerked and he had to tell himself that he packed no gun to draw. It gave him a naked and defenseless feeling. He wished to God that he had not decided to play the hero.
A boy walked into view. He was about fifteen years of age, well built and his face had the care-worn look of an old man. ‘Howdy,’ McAllister said.
‘Howdy,’ said the boy. ‘You McAllister?’
McAllister nodded. ‘Where’s your sister?’ The boy jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the timber behind him.
‘You must be crazy or something. You know this feller has a notion to kill you?’
‘I know,’ McAllister said. ‘Is he close?’
The boy looked wary, glanced nervously at his mother. ‘I don’t know.’
Mrs Holly said: ‘Where’s Ben, Mr McAllister?’
‘He’s back where he met up with me, Mrs Holly.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted it that way.’
‘The man said Ben had to come back here. Now you’ve only gone and done something to make him mad again.’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s done and I can’t undo it.’ McAllister turned, his eyes searching for the quarry. It seemed that not a leaf or a bough stirred. The forest was silent and motionless.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘I’m nigh starved. Could I beg a mouthful to eat.’
‘How can you eat at a time like this?’
‘I can eat any time.’
‘Go ahead.’
He found a plate and a spoon and filled the plate with some delicious smelling stew from the kettle. He sat down on a rock and started in. It was very good. A twig cracked and this time he did not automatically reach for the gun which was not there. He did not even lift his eyes. He felt sure that this was his quarry. A shadow fell across him and he slowly raised his eyes.
A girl stood there.
She was very tall and fair. She had her father’s grey eyes. McAllister rose to his feet and touched the brim of his hat with his spoon.
‘Miss Emma,’ he said.
Her eyes were on his face. ‘The man told me to tell you that he can see you clear. His rifle is pointed at you.’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. Like her mother, she seemed to be moving in a trance.
‘So far. So far I’m all right. But if you do anything wrong, he’s going to shoot me. If I try and run away, he’s going to shoot ma or Tommy.’
‘It’s me he really wants,’ McAllister told her. ‘Now I’m here, you’re safe.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘that doesn’t make us safe. I know. He’s going to kill us all any road.’
That shook McAllister, the girl making a statement like that. And she was right, he felt sure. They would all be killed. That would leave no witnesses.
‘How far off is he?’ McAllister asked.
‘I don’t know.’ She looked as if she were an automaton, moving and speaking under the will of another. She was tall and fair and the sun had bleached the front of her hair several shades lighter than the rest, accentuating the golden brown of her face. Normally, she would have been a calm, smiling girl. ‘There’s one other thing,’ she added. ‘The man says if one of us kills you, there will be a bonus in it for us.’
‘What kind of a bonus?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe he’ll let us go free.’
He was curious. ‘Why do you think he should tell you a thing like that and also tell you to tell me?’
‘He said why. It’s because you’re soft, he says. He said: “I reckon McAllister is not hard enough for this game. I’m surprised he’s stayed alive so long.’”
That sounded like something he would say. Now McAllister began to worry about Ana. Where was the girl right now? Would she stumble on the killer somewhere out there among the trees? Now McAllister felt a sharp barb of guilt that he had involved her at all in this lethal farce.
So where does it get any of us—me being here? This man is crazy. He does not think or act like the rest of us. I haven’t saved this girl Emma by being here. I’ve thrown Ana’s life and mine away for nothing.
Where was Ana? Was she near the killer without being aware of it? Had he caught her already silently in the timber and killed her as silently? Had McAllister’s mistake been right at the beginning when he had met Ana near the dead body of her supposed husband? Were she and the killer already riding hard away from here with her mounted on his beloved mare?
McAllister’s despair and frustration made him ache with the need for action, some sudden violence which would solve once and for all this agonizing dilemma. He would never know what damned foolishness the chaos of his mind would lead him to next. Even as he felt himself teetering on the brink of some unknown and unknowable abyss, he heard a voice: ‘Stand up so I can see you clear, McAllister.’
There was something uncanny about that voice. Or maybe McAllister’s nerves were playing merry hell with him and he merely imagined the uncanniness. He could not locate it. It could have come from any quarter in that thick timber near at hand. All he was sure of was that the man was close enough to knock him over with a thrown rock.
He became aware of three pairs of eyes on him. The woman, the boy and the girl looked at him as if he were a pitiful victim marked out for the sacrifice. While he was threatened, they were safe. And safety under such circumstances could be defined only in comparison.
He stood up. Every muscle in his body seemed to squeeze itself in anticipation of the shot.
‘That’s better.’ He had never heard the man’s voice before. This man who had been so close to him, whom he had tried to kill and who had tried to kill him, and his voice was unknown to him. He realized that this could be a hoax. This voice did not have to belong to anybody he knew at all. The voice continued: ‘You’ve been on my trail a long time, McAllister.’ As men had told him, the man was educated, had been to a good eastern college. A crazy bunch-quitter. A tame man turned feral. Always worse in the animal world than an originally wild one. ‘I owe you a whole lot of grief. And, believe me, I’m the one to return it to you with interest. It’s the thing I’m best at—handing out grief. So here’s the starter. I don’t kill you right off. Too easy for me … and for you. So first off I tell you that I have the girl. Ana Sullivan. How’s that sound?’
‘Like a lie,’ McAllister said, exhibiting the calm he did not feel.
‘So I’m lying, am I?’
There was a short silence. It was broken by a short, shrill and infinitely agonized scream. Something inside McAllister shrank with horror.
‘All right,’ he shouted. ‘So’s she’s alive.’
‘But you still don’t believe me. If I had my hands on her, I would have killed her. I know how you think, McAllister. You’re a goddam do-gooder suspicious of everything to do with a man like me. Well, I’m about to prove all your suspicions right. But first take a look at the girl.’
There was a light crash of brush, a soft crackling of twigs underfoot and Ana walked into sight.
He stared. At first glance she looked absolutely normal, quite unharmed. Yet she walked unnaturally, as if she could not believe that she had lived through what somehow she had just managed to live through. She walked towards McAllister, not hurrying, but showing in every line of her body that she yearned to reach him and touch him. He went towards her and the man in the thicket yelled in s
udden anger: ‘Get back.’ McAllister ignored him, took Ana in his arms and shielded her entirely, he hoped, from the concealed gunman.
She did not weep, just looked stricken, quite past weeping, as if no tear could wash away her experience of the last few minutes.
‘I’m all right,’ she said in a peculiarly dry, hoarse voice.
He walked her back towards the wagons, holding her tight. When they reached the light wagon, he said: ‘Remember. Stay still so he forgets about you. Pull yourself together, for crissake, all our lives depend on you.’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t worry.’
He placed her beside the wagon and Mrs Holly said: ‘Who’s she?’
‘The wife of a man that fellow out there killed,’ McAllister told her.
‘No talking among yourselves,’ the man yelled. He had changed his position. From that voice McAllister knew he was not the only one with tight nerves. That man hidden there was beside himself with anxiety and possibly fear. Any man under such strain was liable to be unstable and this fellow, so far as McAllister knew, was never stable at normal times. Now he would be ready to shoot at the slightest wrong movement on their part.
McAllister walked towards the thicket where he reckoned the man was hiding. The man almost screamed: ‘Stop right there.’
McAllister halted.
‘All right,’ said McAllister, ‘you have us all right where you want us. Let’s do a deal.’
‘I don’t have to do a deal. I’m holding the guns. One of them is yours, remember. Are you unarmed?’
‘That was your condition. I’m no fool—of course I’m unarmed.’
The man laughed. ‘I believe you. God knows you’re damn fool enough. And I have your precious mare, McAllister. I have enough mounts to ride change and change-about. I wipe you out, then I ride clear and nobody the wiser. The bodies might not be found for months.’
‘I doubt that,’ said McAllister.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I came across sign back there to the south.’
‘What kind of sign?’
‘Indians, and white men about an hour behind them.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘All right, I’m lying.’ McAllister’s lips were dry and he licked them. ‘Any shots you fire will be heard.’
Part of McAllister’s brain somehow remained aloof from the scene in which he was participating. He demanded this of it because he felt it was necessary to survive. Some part of him had to watch events dispassionately, to objectively weigh his desperate chances and to remember all the time that he was responsible not only for his own life, but the lives of all these others. That objective part of his brain told him that all their fates depended on whether he could trust Ana or not.
In the next instant, it did not matter. Trust in her would be too late. Abruptly and with no warning, the hidden man decided to take McAllister out of the fight. Suddenly the almost suicidal, last ditch action which McAllister had planned and whispered of to the girl came to nothing.
The concealed man fired just one shot.
Ten
The shock of the bullet hitting him was like a sudden relief. It ended the tension. The calamity for which he had waited had come. He was disabled. The bullet took him in the right leg. Looking back on that moment, McAllister reckoned the man had intended to shoot him in the knee. As good a shot as he was, he had made an error. The bullet did not strike the knee-cap, but the lower part of the femur immediately above it.
It was bad enough. It knocked McAllister’s leg out from under him and left him floundering on the ground, consumed by a sense of utter disaster. The brief explosion and the impact of the lead on flesh and bone spelled out the end. The weeks of dogged pursuit, the risk of life, the pitting of his wits against this man’s had abruptly come to nothing. Now the man would walk from his concealment and simply put a shot through his head.
The intense pain did not come immediately. That would probe through his senses only when the shock of the wounding had passed. He looked down at the wound with a curious impartiality, assessing the damage with a coolness which surprised him. For the moment, there was little blood. But there would be enough later. He reached down with both hands and pressed with his thumbs to hold back what bleeding there was.
At the same time, he was touched by Ana’s cry of distress.
The girl was running towards him.
He heard the man shout for her to get back, but the girl ignored him except to scream at him in near-hysteria: ‘You brute. You’re nothing but an animal.’ She fell on her knees beside McAllister, weeping and shouting. He palmed the little over-and-under as soon as the small butt touched his hand.
The man fired another shot and it ploughed the dirt near them. The girl started back in alarm as soon as McAllister hissed at her: ‘Get clear of me.’ As she moved back, he was thinking desperately: ‘Is this piddling little thing effective enough for me to hit him from here?’
Distance shooting had always been his strong point, but that was always with his old Remington belt-gun which he knew so well. He had only fired this apology for a weapon a couple of times.
In his excitement, the man had moved without caution. McAllister could see the dark drift of his gunsmoke, saw the leaves of the thicket stir and knew that he had as clear a target as he would ever get.
Thrusting the little gun out on a stiffened arm, knowing that he was shaking from the shock of being hit, McAllister cocked and fired.
There was an immediate thrashing of the undergrowth as though a wild beast in there had been hit. The man gave a short, muffled cry of surprise and pain. McAllister raised himself further and tried to put weight on the wounded leg, but it refused him and he almost went down. However, his whole intent was getting off his second shot.
Briefly, he glimpsed the man’s head and shoulders.
He cocked and fired again.
‘Get after him, for God’s sake,’ he shouted and saw the boy start forward and then stop.
That was the second of decision—the quarry’s decision. McAllister knew that he had hit him. So would he turn on them in a last strike and put them down? Or was he hit badly enough to prompt immediate flight.
The answer came at once.
The man was in flight. McAllister was scrabbling in his pocket for reloads. He emptied the breeches of the little gun and thumbed fresh loads into them. Again a glimpse of head and shoulders. The man was beating a hasty, but far from smooth retreat. McAllister did not want any changing of his mind. He fired another shot, but knew that now the range was too great.
He lurched to his feet and now the pain came. It leapt up his thigh and seemed to swoop with a destructive and crazy intensity through his belly. It made him nearly faint. He ground his teeth together and forced himself to go forward in a lopsided and shuffling run. As he reached the thickets, he saw the man halt and turn. For a brief second, they looked at each other. The man snapped off a shot with his rifle and the bullet tore its lethal path through the foliage above McAllister’s head. McAllister fired again and missed. The man was in the saddle and utter defeat seemed to drop on McAllister.
The man was mounted on Sally.
He tried to run forward, but the wounded leg failed him and he fell on his face. He lay there, his teeth gritting on dirt and could have wept with rage and helplessness.
Somebody was running through the trees behind him. He heard Ana’s voice. He turned his head to her. ‘The bastard has the mare.’
When he looked again, the man had turned the mare through the trees and was spurring her mercilessly towards the west.
‘I’ll never catch him now.’
Ana was kneeling beside him. With ridiculous faith, she said: ‘You’ll catch him. We both will, you’ll see.’
He laughed without much mirth. ‘Well, that proves one thing.’
‘What?’
‘I can trust you.’
‘You damn fool,’ she said.
~*~
After that, everything seemed like an anti-climax. The terrible tension of the last few hours was gone; a sleepy peace seemed to lie once more over the sunny basin. Once more the air was full of the sound of insects and the song of birds returned as though the creatures of the air who fled before the violence now felt the place was safe.
Holly’s boy had taken the mule and searched for his father. Together, father and son came into camp before sunset, the older man bemusedly relieved to find his family still alive. There was a touching, but outwardly unemotional, reunion between them. While the daughter and Ana prepared a meal, Ben Holly and his wife worked on McAllister’s wound. Plainly, gunshot wounds were nothing new to them. Holly discovered that the bullet had chipped the femur but apart from that had inflicted no more damage than a little torn flesh.
‘You’ll be riding inside a week,’ Holly declared. McAllister kept his mouth shut on his decision that he would be in the saddle the following day.
Lying near the fire, watching the women busy over the preparation of a meal, McAllister assessed his position, counting his assets and thinking how he could make the most of them. But however many factors stood in his favor still, he could not rid his mind of the unpleasant truth that his quarry now had the mare. There was nothing in McAllister’s opinion which could outweigh that. When he put himself in the quarry’s boots, at first he could think of nothing except that the man would run and keep on running. At some distant place, he would once more inveigle himself into a local community, charming the women and winning the goodwill of the men, presenting himself as a valuable addition to any community.
Something had happened to McAllister, as if some fundamental change had taken place in his nature. Maybe it was the effect of the wound on him, maybe the effect of the girl, Ana. Lying there in the shade of the trees, he seemed to be a different man looking out on a different world. His following this killer seemed somehow incongruous when set against his life as a rancher, a respected and responsible sheriff of his county. And now this girl had come into his life.
Just the same, he told himself, I know I can’t just write the man off. I can’t be sure that he isn’t somewhere lying up in timber licking his wounds and preparing to come back. That would be in his nature. He doesn’t have the rational fears of a sane man. Before anything else, I have to be sure that he’s no longer in this basin. After that, events will decide what I have to do.
McAllister 5 Page 7
