He talked with Ben Holly. The man was still inclined to be resentful that McAllister had left him without a horse. He was honest enough to admit that McAllister could not have been anything but distrustful of him under the circumstances, just the same . . .
‘Ben,’ McAllister said, ‘maybe he lit out in such a hurry that he left some guns behind. Would you and your boy make a search. We’re desperately short on weapons.’
So Holly and his son searched the various places where the man had concealed himself and pretty soon they came on a cache of guns and gear. They brought a rifle in with Ben Holly’s own gun, but McAllister’s Remington had been on the mare and that was probably where it was still. The man had taken with him the mare and his own horse. So the mule and the horse Holly had ridden were safe. There were also the wagon team now in the corral. Sometime later, Ana’s plug came ambling into camp, wanting human company. McAllister regarded it with disgust.
McAllister cleaned the rifle and asked Holly if he had a spare belt-gun. The cattleman did better than produce one gun. He brought McAllister a fine Colt Army of 1860 and for Ana he produced a small 1859 Remington pocket revolver. He had plenty of ammunition, he said, and could help McAllister out there. He was apparently still determined to locate in the basin. It was too good a chance for him to miss. Range like this did not come a man’s way every day of the week. What about the timber? McAllister asked, knowing what could happen to cattle when they got among trees. Holly shrugged. Who could have too much timber when it came to building. He had the exact spot picked out where he would build a fine house. The man was dreaming. This was the place where he would live out the rest of his life. They would bury him here.
The following day, McAllister tried his leg out. His leg did not like it and nor did he. But he stuck at it, though Ana and Mrs Holly protested vigorously. He wandered around in the timber looking at the sign. Finally he got aboard the mule and followed the sign for over a mile. By the time he turned back for camp, he knew for sure that the man was not only hit, but badly hit. He found the place where he had fallen out of the saddle. At this spot, he had had trouble catching his own horse. While the mare stood, his own mount had tried to evade him. McAllister found blood spots on a rock and that convinced him. Not only was the man hit, but he might still be in the basin. The thought pleased McAllister in one way and worried him in another. He knew that the man was a menace to them all while he was still alive.
He returned to camp, ate a meal and swore to Ana that his leg felt fine and was giving him hardly any trouble at all. In the afternoon he filled his pockets with ammunition, saddled the mule and set out again. The girl wanted to come with him, but he put her off by telling her that he was merely tracking and had no thought of coming up with his quarry. Besides he had to be alone to think. She did not seem too happy about letting him go.
He followed along the sign again and halted where he had before. It was a rocky, wild place and for all he knew the man was holed up somewhere near and might even be watching him at that very moment. The thought gave him a creeping sensation at the nape of his neck.
McAllister was now near the north-west wall of the basin. Off to his right was the jumble of rocks which seemed to have been pitched there by a giant hand to form a rough ladder to the rimrock itself. That would have provided an ideal hiding place for a fugitive and one which would provide him with a fair view of the whole basin. Where McAllister now stood was on slightly higher ground than the floor of the basin. From here much of his view was blocked by masses of trees, showing here and there the light flash of moving water. He glimpsed the sun-dappled forms of a handful of deer. The whole had an air of profound peace and tranquility. Ben Holly had found a kind of paradise, all right.
McAllister walked forward, leading the mule, eyes now studying the ground, now lifting to make quick surveys of his surroundings in search of any telltale movement. The tracks of the man he searched for headed for a stretch of conifers tightly packed on a slight slope. Beneath them, the ground was dark, almost bereft of sunlight. The quarry, McAllister thought, was going to find it pretty hard to do anything really smart to hide his tracks if he was wounded. He also had two horses along, a fact which would not help him to be elusive in anything but headlong flight.
The most important thing McAllister wanted to know was how badly the man was hurt.
He approached the conifers and, as he went into the murk beneath them, his vision was greatly limited. For some minutes he experienced acute nervousness. The thought occurred to him that if the mare was with his quarry, she would know when he approached. Her call would warn the man, but it would warn McAllister also. He worried about that mare. He hated to think of her soft mouth being ruined by an ignorant rider’s harsh handling.
Now the pain of his leg wound started to be intolerable. He dismounted and took a short rest. The mule became a little fretful, for the ground under the trees was barren and there was nothing for him to eat. He was an amiable fellow and he came and pushed McAllister with his nose to make him get up and go on to a better pasture.
While he lay on the ground telling the mule to get the hell out of it, he thought. It occurred to him that, if he were badly wounded and was in the quarry’s position, he would be looking for … the little natural fortress where he and Ana had been going to fort up. Was it possible? Had the quarry spotted them there and remembered the place. If so, had he discovered the break through the rocks and the escape gully? McAllister grinned to himself. Under the circumstances, he thought not. There was just a chance ... He had pulled off some smart coups in the past on such chances.
He rose and pleased the mule by mounting him and letting him make his own pace through the trees. The pine needles carpeted the ground, making the hoofbeats of the mule almost soundless. McAllister halted once to look around. The needles also made animal tracks pretty indefinite in places and invisible in others. But now McAllister came to the spot where the man had fallen out of the saddle again.
This time he had kept his grip on the horses’ lines and they had stayed with him. On one spot the needles had been brushed aside and McAllister found a plain boot-heel mark in the dirt. From it, he learned that the man had at least been hit in the right leg. Which somehow seemed to make the contest of wits more equal, and McAllister cheered up.
The trees grew on a round shoulder of land and he rode out of them into a dip which must have lain about a half-mile from the cluster of rocks where he and Ana had sheltered. McAllister halted and looked around. Realizing with a small shock that he had lost the tracks he dismounted, tied the mule to a tree, walked back into the trees and cast around till he found them again. Here the quarry had abruptly changed direction and had gone directly west towards the wall of the basin.
So he had been wrong in his guess that the man may have hidden in the little fortress. Or so it seemed. Maybe the fellow was smarter than he had thought. But how smart? Was this a blind?
After a ride of about a quarter-mile he came out of the trees straight on to broken land, all rocks and thickets and willows growing on the edge of fast-flowing water. McAllister sighed, for he knew that this was the ideal place for a man to lose his tracks. The choice he had to make now was whether to turn up or down stream. That was a choice which foxed all trackers and divided all search parties.
If you had some luck on your side and instincts beyond those of the average tracker you might intelligently guess which way the pursued had gone. But you always bore in mind that he may not have gone either way. He may have gone straight ahead and was at that very moment looking along the barrel of a rifle at you.
If my man was hurt bad, McAllister thought, he could be up there in those rocks and trees for the simple reason that he could go no further. Just in case this was so McAllister moved off to the right, pushed through some brush and came to the water further down so that his mount could drink. This the mule did so nicely, drinking just enough for his needs. McAllister took his ease on a rock, surveyed the scene and turned ove
r his thoughts.
The first thought was that, if the man was hurt bad to the extent that he had fallen more than once from the saddle, he was not going to ride up the steep trail out of this basin. McAllister did not find that argument convincing. If a man was hurt bad, but was scared enough of being killed, he would have ridden just about anywhere. McAllister’s instinct though told him that the man was still in the basin, if for no other reason than to kill McAllister.
McAllister surveyed that thought and reckoned he liked it. It fitted the picture he had of this fellow—his driving force was vanity, his spur was pride. It was through those two things that finally he would be brought low. If ever. The man was smart, quick, he had plenty of sand and he did not have one single scruple to his name. The combination, McAllister had found in the past, was almost unbeatable.
Almost, but maybe not quite.
He carefully looked over all he knew about the fellow and all the little scraps of information he had gathered in the last hour or so following the tracks of the man running yesterday. Running in fear. How did a man behave when he was running scared.
Running scared? This man?
You’re crazy, McAllister. This son-of-a-bitch never ran scared in his life. So if he did not run scared yesterday, how did he run?
He ran using his brains as he always did. He ran because it was smart to run and for no other reason. So much of what McAllister had read in those tracks could have been eyewash. The blood? The unmistakable sign of him falling out of the saddle? Having trouble catching the horse?
Yes, McAllister had to admit, all that could have been eyewash. But how about the boot heel mark in the dirt. That was the kind of thing that was done without thinking. The man must be wounded in the leg surely? Why did it have to be? No, a man who knew that McAllister had few peers as a tracker would know that he had to be really smart to beat him.
Suddenly, McAllister was convinced. He had little or nothing to go on, but he was convinced. Hunches like this had been wondered at by some men in the past. Others had called it instinctive insight. Sometimes he had been wrong. A good many times he had been right. So which time was this?
He became conscious of the throbbing of his leg. It ached like hell.
So what did he do next? Did he spend a lot of time searching for fresh sign? Or did he follow his hunch? How quick a job this would have been if he had a man or two with him. For a short moment, he toyed with the idea of asking Holly for help; but he dismissed the idea. Ben Holly would have been willing enough, being the man he was. He would be feeling pretty murderous towards the man who had subjected him and his family to such mental suffering. But McAllister knew that he would have to finish this chore himself, alone. His quarry was not the only man with pride. He would bring this man in for trial and then go back to his horses. Maybe with Ana.
Good grief, he thought, was he as serious as this about the girl? Evidently. Well, now that would bear thinking on.
He got to his feet and mounted the mule. He knew what he was going to do. He turned his mount back for the trees. He was almost into them when the shot came.
It was curious, that shot.
He did not know what was so curious about it at the time, but later when he thought about it ... As soon as he heard the bullet rip through the foliage and heard its familiar flat slam of sound, he was out of the saddle so fast that he hurt his injured leg. The mule trotted on into the deep shadows of the trees and McAllister was left there in the deep grass, head down. At that moment, he remembered that his borrowed rifle was on the mule. He said ‘goddam’ a few times and started crawling. No other shot came.
When he was in the shelter of the trees and the mule stood and looked at him cynically, he found the lack of a second shot curious. About as curious as the first shot.
So what was unusual about that first shot?
Simple—his quarry was a crack shot and that shot had missed him by about six feet. So either the marksman was not shooting too well or that shot had been fired by another man. There was only one way to find out. He stood up, cursed the increased pain of his leg and tied the mule deep in the trees. Then he removed the borrowed rifle from the saddle and worked his way through the trees. He crossed the creek several hundred yards downstream and at once found himself laboriously climbing a steep slope of rough grass and scattered rocks. When he was halfway between the floor and the rim of the basin, he turned south and worked his way as silently as he could through a series of thickets and some massive boulders. This brought him roughly above the position where the rifleman had made his shot. Now came the time of the greatest caution. He started downhill as stealthy as an Indian, knowing that he could be wrong about the man’s position by a good distance at the time of the shot.
He did not doubt that the man had moved by this time. Maybe he had gone altogether, maybe he was still around. If so, it was a matter of one man out-indianing another. McAllister would bet on himself any day at that game.
It took over thirty minutes of cautious movement before he had his answer. The man had long gone—or so it would seem. He had been gone something like twelve hours or more. The shot had been no more than a delaying tactic. The irony of it was that the trap had been set with McAllister’s own rifle, the old Henry. Two thick stakes had been set up in the ground and the weapon lashed to it with rawhide. A trigger rig had been set up with a thin twine. Simple. McAllister had triggered it from below.
McAllister cut the rawhide thongs and recovered his favored rifle. Having it back pleased him. But the manner of receiving it did not. He knew as plain as plain that this could be a double-bluff. The quarry might be watching him now. He looked around him, studying the ground, seeing the clear heel marks. The man was still favoring one leg. Maybe after all … where was the good of supposing?
He scouted around for an hour and found where the man had lost his tracks in the water. So that settled that!
Or did it? Could anything be settled with a man like this? Could you ever tell if he was bluffing or not?
Once again McAllister was faced with the possibility of the man being mighty close and maybe even watching him. He decided what he had to do next. He felt that Ana and the Hollys were his responsibility and he had to do something about them. But his spirits were low and that anxiety for the others was a weight he could not carry. He wanted them out of the basin and out of this game. Such was his state of mind that he imagined that something bad had happened in camp during his absence. But it had not. As he rode out of the trees, prepared for a shock, the girl saw him and came running towards him.
‘Thank God you came,’ she said.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened. I was anxious for you. Isn’t it allowed that I’m anxious for you?’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but I’d rather have a kiss.’
‘You can’t have that. The Hollys think I’m a grieving widow woman.’
‘Aw, hell,’ said McAllister. ‘Where’s Holly?’ He could see Mrs Holly stirring something in the pot over the fire. The daughter was setting out crocks on a makeshift table. The son was not in sight.
‘He’s over there putting the markers out for his new house.’ Then she caught sight of the Henry. Her hand clutched at him. ‘You have your rifle again. Did you kill him?’
‘No.’ He told her what had happened.
She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Do you think he’s badly wounded?’
‘I don’t know what to think, honey,’ he replied. ‘All I know is I want you and the Hollys away from here.’
That, of course, met instant opposition from the girl. She was not going anywhere. He begged her: ‘Ana, use your head. Every other person in this basin beside me is a menace to me. We know the way this man operates now. It’s got to be between him and me and then I can settle it.’
‘You’ve had over a month to settle it.’
‘You can’t rush this kind of thing.’
‘What makes you think he’s still in the basin? He could be a
day’s ride off by now.’
Ben Holly, when he came into camp, said precisely the same thing. ‘That feller ain’t going to stick around here, McAllister. Not on your life. He’s long gone. You don’t have a damn thing to prove he’s still here.’
‘I know he’s still here, man. Every instinct I have tells me he’s here. Look, all I’m asking is for two or three days.’ Then a thought hit him. ‘Where’s your boy?’
‘He’s all right. He’s rid back to fetch in the cattle.’
‘What cattle?’
‘I brought a few hundred head of breeding stock from the old place. We left ’em on good grass a day or so back while we came on to locate.’
McAllister clutched at the opportunity. ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘Just go back to your cattle for a few days. That ain’t much to ask, for God’s sake. How many riders do you have?’
‘Four.’
‘That’s good. Are they good men?’
‘Sure.’
McAllister laid it on thick. He could be persuasive when he wanted and Holly could see that he was sincere. Mrs Holly threw her weight in on McAllister’s side.
‘Mr McAllister’s talking sense, Ben. You’re just being obstinate. You don’t want us to go through what we just did at this dreadful man’s hands, do you?’
When it was put like that, there was not much Holly could do. Slowly he gave way.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I reckon I couldn’t live with myself if that happened again. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take the wagons back to the herd and then turn around and drive back. How’s that?’
‘Suits me fine,’ said McAllister.
‘I agree,’ said Ana. ‘But I stay here.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ replied McAllister.
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