McAllister 5

by Matt Chisholm

  He stood up and wondered what he should do next. If he stood right where he was, he did not doubt that sooner or later the man would come to him. He could not see him departing without having killed him, McAllister. It suited the man’s character.

  As he started away from the girl, his foot caught on something lying in the dirt. In his weak state that was enough to make him lose his balance. He fell to his hands and knees and, as he did so, he heard the flat slam of a rifle shot. The ball passed above him and ripped through the foliage of the trees.

  He stayed very still, knowing that he had been shot at by his own rifle. Lying face downward, he felt around with his hands awkwardly, pinioned as they were, for the object which had tripped him. To his amazement, he touched the smooth handle of a gun. When he had run his fingertips over it, he knew that he had stumbled on his own Remington. Now a sort of crazy and unbelieving joy ran through him. The girl had had his gun when the man shot her.

  He took a grip on the worn cedar butt and checked the loads one by one with a fingertip. Loaded in all chambers. Maybe his luck was turning. He crawled a dozen yards from the girl and rested before he rose cautiously to one knee. The pain in his head seemed to rock him from side to side with bursts of energy. He reckoned that the shot had been fired from a point between him and the camp, but he could not be sure.

  So there they were once more, he and this murderer, dueling, pitting their wits against each other, a rifle against a belt gun. And there was not too much weighing in McAllister’s favor. His only strong point was his ability to shoot accurately over long distances with a revolver. And the revolver he had was his very own. Maybe that gave him a slight edge, after all.

  He headed back through the trees, not quite knowing why, glad to find his wounded leg going well. He decided, slightly insanely, that he would finish the man and then bury the girl. That would complete this business and he would ride back to Black Horse. Life would be resumed as if nothing had happened.

  But he knew that was not true. The girl had happened. And now she was dead. When he was deep in the trees, he raised his voice to a shout: ‘I’m going to nail you, Jack, like a man was never nailed before. You’re a two-bit, no-account, woman-killing punk.’

  He did not know why he did that. He guessed maybe he was a little feverish. He walked out into the open as if he did not have a care in the world. Sally was out there happily nibbling at grass. She raised her head up and whinnied as he came near. He sat down and thought about the key to the handcuffs and how the man had thrown the key away. That made him laugh a little. He had met so much trouble in the past about cuffs and keys that he had always taken the precaution since of carrying a spare key. It wasn’t easy to get at, nor was it meant to be. He found a saddle-pocket, thrown aside by Jack when he had searched it. At the bottom in a corner under a strip of soft doeskin lay the key stitched there for safety. He worked on the stitches for a while, then he had the key in his hand and it unlocked the cuffs. It felt pretty good to get them off.

  They had galled his wrists, but the discomfort was nothing compared with the pain of his face and head. And that pain had merely become a background to the misery engendered by the loss of the girl. That was something he should have been able to prevent. He had known that the man would kill her. He told himself that over and over again. It was a memory that he would never be able to live down.

  It was growing light.

  The wind was moving the clouds along now, they scurried and scudded before it and the new sun hit them, ringing them with gold. He whistled to the mare. She lifted her head and came trotting towards him without hesitation. When she was alongside him, he tried to vault on to her bare back, but his leg would not permit it, so he pulled himself aboard ignominiously and turned her towards the trees. When he reached the clearing, he saw that the man’s horse had gone. So he had run without a saddle, just fled away as fast as he could go. But could McAllister believe that? The thought that this was just another ploy on the fellow’s part crossed his mind, but he didn’t care. If he was in the trees drawing a bead on McAllister right that minute, let him go ahead and shoot.

  When they got near the girl and Sally smelled the blood, she refused for a moment, acted up and did not quieten down until McAllister dismounted, led her back a few yards and tied her to a tree. He fetched his saddle from the brush and saddled her, then he approached the girl.

  She lay just as he had felt her and he could see where the bullet had taken her between the breasts. Used to bloodshed and horror as he was, McAllister still found it impossibly painful to look at her. Just the same, he picked her up and laid her across the saddle. That exhausted him and the struggle with the reluctant mare exhausted him more. However, she quietened under the sound of his voice and the steadying of his hand and he led her back to camp. There, overlooking the endless mountains, McAllister scraped a shallow grave. He wrapped her in the buffalo robe and tied it tight about her with a rope. For the next hour, he piled rocks in a cairn over her. Then he formed a cross of two sticks and lashed them with a pegging-string. He cut the flap off a saddle-pocket and burned the short epitaph on it before fastening it to the cross. The date and the words: AN UNKNOWN WOMAN.

  He fetched the mule and packed his gear on to its back, then rode down to the creek and filled his canteen. He had not eaten in a long time, but he was not hungry. He drank a little water, but it only made him retch. Back at the camp, he looked at her grave and he said: ‘Now we catch our Jack, we plant him and we put over him the words AN UNKNOWN MAN. Then we go home.’

  He picked up the mule’s line, mounted the mare and rode for the clearing to pick up the man’s trail. This time, he thought, it would not be a long drawn-out business. This time it would be a quick run-down. Before, he had wanted to stay alive; now all he wanted was to kill.

  Nineteen

  The damp ground presented him with a set of tracks which a greenhorn could have followed without difficulty. It was one of those clear high country days when the brilliant sunlight, the brisk breeze and the heady air usually made a man glad to be alive in a wonderful world. All it did was mock McAllister’s present mood. He rode with a deadly indifference to everything around him which was not a part of his catching the quarry and finishing him. His eyes and ears were alert to danger, while he remained indifferent to it. His reason for survival was simply to kill the man ahead of him. Sunlight making glory of a branch of larch or birch failed to catch his eye; the same sunlight on a gun barrel would have instantly alerted him.

  Sally wanted to run and he let her go. The mule protested noisily and tried to hang back, but after a while found that his objections were to no avail and picked up his hoofs willingly enough, his rough pace straining the packs and their lashings to the extreme. When the mare had run out some of her ardor, she settled for a hammering trot, which McAllister knew she could hold endlessly. The mule agreed to this apparently and kept pace.

  And so they ran through the morning, dirt clods flying, eating up the miles they had already consumed, heading west again and this time McAllister was resolved to keep going until he ran up against the man he wanted. No more subterfuge, no more cunning. This time he would charge in for the kill.

  Noon found them still hammering away at the miles, heading down a slight gradient in open country, a great sloping shoulder of the mountains, reared apparently as high as the surrounding peaks, scattered here and there with rock and brush.

  And it was here that the man, Jack, waited for them, under very different circumstances from when last he had laid down fire against McAllister, for in his flight he had told something of his own condition. His tracks had told of his state of mind as clearly as if McAllister had peered into his skull and seen what went on there. Every footprint of his horse in the soft ground gave his secret away. Before he had fled with cunning and triumph, thinking himself the master of anyone who followed. Now he ran scared. The horse had been pushed too hard from the start and he had continued to push it for mile after mile. By the end of
the day, the animal would have out-run itself. Tomorrow, it would be ruined beyond saving. Yet still the rider spurred it on. And the emotion that spurred the man was fear.

  Now there came a shot from ahead and slightly to one side of the trail. And that shot told McAllister something more. He had ridden scared and now he was shooting scared. He had fired too soon and the range was too long for him. McAllister simply reined in and waited. The man shot the Henry empty, scattering lead short of the target and all over the place.

  There was a short pause as if it took the man time to believe that the gun contained no more bullets. Then he appeared from cover, bent over the neck of his racing mount, spurring it recklessly west again.

  McAllister knew that this was the beginning of the end.

  He dropped the mule’s lead-line, knowing that he was going to demand of the mare what the mule was unable to give. The animal looked a little surprised, then wandered off the trail to crop the grass. McAllister lifted his lines and called softly to the mare.

  Sally knew what was asked of her. She whinnied softly as she did always before she ran, then almost at once she hit a run, going forward with her light springing pace that always looked effortless. McAllister had chosen her after a close study of her blood line and the breeding potential of her sires and dams. She would drop foals with speed and stamina and she exhibited both virtues herself. She was no casually chosen range horse, she was his treasure for which he had emptied his bank account. She was everything he had ever looked for in a horse. And now she showed that his choice had been good. She got the bit between her teeth and she ran and she did so in a way which told McAllister that she would hold that same pace until her heart broke if he so demanded.

  She kept the pace for an hour, unstraining, easily loping along and shortening the miles beneath her, slowly gaining on the over-ridden horse in front of her. She hated to be outdistanced and now she increased her own pace to make good, but McAllister intervened and kept her back to her former speed. So she pounded on, inch by inch pulling up on the fleeing horse and man. They swooped down off that shoulder of hills, clattered into a valley and through the rocks of a rushing mountain torrent, breasted the ice-cold water and rose dripping on the far side. Here they heaved up a steep climb through some birches, the quarry now gone from sight, but his tracks as plain as the nose on your face. At the top of the rise they stopped and the mare blew, eager to go on, the excitement of the chase stimulating her instinct to run. McAllister spoke to her and stroked the darkly sweated neck. ‘Easy, girl, easy.’ Then he was rearing up into the saddle again and on, the touch of a quirt or spur unnecessary. She hit the narrow trail through the spruce and then got down on her haunches for a steep drop into the V of another valley, running along it out on to a great sweep of grassland where the grass grew stirrup high. They followed the swath made by the quarry and within a few minutes caught sight of him again on a far slope. His right arm rose and fell as he fiercely quirted his flagging horse.

  At the top of this rise the quarry halted again, this time in the cover of a great scramble of boulders. Now when he shot he failed to allow7 for the ground falling away before him and again the lead fell short. Pretty soon he would be out of ammunition. Again McAllister reined in the mare and waited. This time he took the opportunity to dismount and loosen the cinches. He did not hurry and, when the quarry was mounted again and quirting his wretched animal, McAllister heaved the saddle off Sally so that she could enjoy the relief of a roll.

  So they ran on through the afternoon.

  There was a time when the quarry showed signs of returning sanity, for instead of running in panic straight ahead of McAllister, he now began to realize the inevitability of his being overtaken if he continued on this course. He began to twist this way and that, now darting off to the right, now to the left, now riding a zigzag course as if he expected bullets and was all set to dodge them. His diversion from his almost straight line of flight merely brought McAllister more rapidly nearer, for all he had to do was direct Sally to cut off the angle she would have run if the man had kept his course. So, as the sun seemed poised in the sky for its final plunge into the distant ranges, both pursuer and pursued knew that the end must come before nightfall.

  Once again in McAllister’s mind the man ahead was simply ‘the quarry’, as if the fellow’s name had never been mouthed by man or woman. And it was better that McAllister could see no humanity in the man.

  Now the horse ahead began to stumble and, as they started down a great downward sweep of country into a tumbling valley, all timbered and cut by rushing streams, so the speed of the descent brought the exhausted horse to its knees and the man was pitched from the saddle. The man rose to his feet and gazed back at the approaching horse and rider as if he watched a booted and spurred Nemesis. Then his own horse was up and he was in the saddle again, flogging it forward.

  McAllister called out to the mare. No need even for a flick of quirt. She lifted away as if he were borne by air and, though she had run for so many hours, she gave the man on her back all the speed she had, exhilarated by the challenge to her wind and muscle, neck extended, flaring nostrils sucking in the late warm air, her hard hoofs pounding like a hound on the track of a jack rabbit. She rode the horse down, McAllister rode the man down—the huntsman on the quarry. Once the naked steel barrel of the Henry appeared and was fired one-handed—five failing shots—and then McAllister’s precious old weapon was tossed to one side. It clattered and bounced, discarded, the gun which had stood between McAllister and death more times than he could remember. The distance between hunter and hunted rapidly lessened. McAllister drew alongside and the man fired one shot from his belt gun, his face contorted in desperation and rage. McAllister, who held the Remington in hand, withheld his fire. Instead, as Sally swept him past, he leaned from the saddle and struck the man a terrible blow between the shoulder blades. The man pitched from the saddle no more animate than a sack of dirt.

  Sally ran on a way and McAllister circled her gently as she slowed. She was sweating he noticed, but her breathing was easy. He smiled to himself, never more pleased with a horse. To have showed such acceleration and sprint power after a hard day’s run marked her as the remarkable horse she was. Every horseman likes his judgment confirmed. By God, he thought, she’ll give me good foals.

  The man was lying on his face, head resting in the circle of his arms. He appeared to be more tired than injured. As for his horse, the animal stood with head down and front legs splayed wide—a sight that McAllister hated. The mouth gaped and the tongue hung helplessly. McAllister doubted if it would be useful for anything again. A damned shame, he thought.

  McAllister put the Remington away and dismounted. He dallied both lines around the horn so that Sally could walk around and find a patch of grass to suit her. Walking up to the man, he turned him over with a boot toe. The eyes snapped up at him as malevolent as ever. They eyed each other wordlessly for a moment.

  McAllister laughed softly deep in his throat with genuine delight.

  ‘This is nice,’ he said. He chuckled again. ‘But it gets nicer as it goes on.’

  The man tried to speak, but no words would come. He fought his wordlessness and won, but with no more than a hoarse whisper.

  ‘You bastard. But you haven’t finished with me yet. I’ll kill you.’

  McAllister nodded.

  ‘You’re dead right,’ he said amiably. ‘It ain’t finished. Do you know what I’m going to put over your grave? “An unknown man.” Sounds kind of dramatic, don’t it? I’m going to tote you back and plant you right next to the girl. You might call it a human sacrifice. I like the sound of that. I never yet failed to bring a prisoner in, but there always has to be a first time. And when I kill you I shall feel no more than if I was killing a polecat.’

  The man said: ‘You’re all talk. You don’t have the goddam sand.’

  ‘Sand?’ said McAllister in surprise. ‘Hell, it don’t take sand to kill a man. Look at the punks who do it a
ll the time.’ He took hold of the man by his clothes and turned him unceremoniously on to his face again. He hauled up his coat and removed his own knife from the back of the belt. When he had put this away, he said: ‘Get on your feet when you’re good and ready, friend.’

  He looked up the trail and distantly saw the mule coming steadily after them. This made him smile. The animal must have kept up a fair pace to have gotten so far. Sally spotted him and whinnied. She liked company and the broken horse did not seem interested. McAllister removed her saddle, then did the same for the other animal. Sally started a joyous rolling session. The other horse watched her pitiably. McAllister knew that if it lay down to roll it would not get up again. He sat down, filled his pipe and lit up. For the first time that day, he became aware of hunger. Acute hunger. He looked forward to eating a meal to end all meals as soon as he was rid of this son-of-a-bitch and he went into camp.

  By the time he had smoked his pipe out the man was sitting up.

  He looked at McAllister slightly aggrieved. ‘I haven’t eaten all day. I’m hungry.’

  McAllister laughed.

  ‘You mean you get hungry just like ordinary men? Still, one way and another, you being hungry don’t much matter, do it? I mean—hell, it ain’t going to last long.’

  ‘Quit fooling,’ the man said, ‘and get us something to eat.’

  McAllister looked at him in wonder. ‘By God, you really mean it.’

  ‘Of course I mean it. You’re the arresting officer and it’s your responsibility to see that I’m fed and cared for.’

  McAllister beamed on him as a teacher does on his brightest pupil.

  ‘Now you get on your feet,’ he said.

  The man eyed him warily. ‘Now wait a minute,’ the man said, ‘you look like you mean me a mischief. You’ve gotten me all wrong, you know. It was Ana’s doing. You see that, don’t you? As I said: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. She hated me and she told a bunch of lies about me. If you will sit down and talk about all this like a reasonable man, I can explain everything.’