by Nelson Nye
The man’s eyes bugged out. Sweat gleamed through the pulpy shine of his face. He tried to squirm himself around to relieve the pressure but Ben went with him. Turner savagely rammed a knee at his crotch and Ben, eluding it, twisted harder.
Pain tore a wild cry out of Cy’s throat. The veins on his temples swelled almost to bursting. Again and again he tried to break that hold. The fingers of his free hand gouged for Ben’s eyes and, when that didn’t work, tried to tear his right ear off.
Ben exerted more pressure. The snapping of the bone was like a miniature explosion, plain even above the labored sobs of their panting.
Reifel loosed him then and staggered erect. He put a foot on the knife and snapped it too. Turner tried to get up but he couldn’t quite make it. A knee buckled under him and he moaned when his weight fell across the broken arm.
Reifel stared, morosely scowling, and went over by the desk and picked up the pistol which had jounced from his holster. He hung onto the desk till the room quit whirling and then carefully straightened. He started, with the gun swinging forgotten from his hand, toward the door.
But he stopped when he reached it, remembering something. He said with a glance backflung across his shoulder, “You’ll be paid for that bronc — you hear me, Turner? What you got just now was only a patch to what you’ll collect if you start yowlin’ horse thief.”
An enormous weariness lay heavily upon him and he sagged against the doorframe. He had to summon the will to move again. Every muscle felt as though it had been dragged through a knothole.
He turned into the stable, the change in light making him wary of his footing. It was almost as bad as coming in from outside and he stood still a moment, waiting for his eyes to get used to this gloom, inhaling the pungence of dung and racked hay. One small sound came out of the darkness, and the whicker of a horse; and then remembrance of Schmole and the law’s aroused anger moved him into the light of the lantern-hung entrance.
He saw the roan where it stood with its reins round a sycamore ten feet away and something, in his mind, did not seem as it should be. He tried to dredge up the sounds Cy had made coming out here and recalled in that moment the definite slap of dropped reins. Cy hadn’t tied the horse.
Reifel flung himself backward, trying to get himself out of the reach of that lantern. He made his move too late and in the wrong direction. Flame burst out of the darkness behind him and something crashed into him, flinging him around and then slamming him roughly against the planks of the flooring.
He lay grotesquely still with both eyes open, half in sight and half in shadow, one outflung arm and the hand at the end of it licked by the smoky glow of the lantern. He lay with a leg doubled awkwardly under him while the acrid stench of burnt powder grew rank and the report of that shot struck the roundabout walls and dribbled its clamor away in gray whispers.
He lay with his face wholly covered by darkness. He tried to make out where the drygulcher crouched but the shadowy places, crossed by that one streak of light from the office, loomed entirely too black to reveal any lurker.
The leg twisted under him commenced to cramp. The cramp set up an intolerable anguish yet he dared not move by the faintest fraction lest a second report from that unseen gun do what the first had failed to accomplish.
Out of sight in the office Cy Turner groaned. So it hadn’t been Turner who had triggered that pistol.
Reifel felt like groaning himself. Mighty like it. The hole in his chest was commencing to throb now, to burn like the bite of a white-hot iron. His leg was still stuck full of pins and needles and he drearily wondered how much blood he was losing. Would he lose too much to be able to ride before this damned vinegarroon stepped from the shadows?
A cold wave of nausea suddenly gripped him. He had to exert every ounce of his willpower to keep from retching. The shirt on his back felt clammy with sweat. And he closed his eyes against the swirl of the shadows and heard Turner move in the office, heard him moan again. It sounded like the bastard was trying to get up.
The drygulcher must have choused up the same notion. Worried perhaps lest he be identified or fearing to find himself caught in a crossfire, under cover of Turner’s commotions he moved; and Reifel saw the black crook of an elbow limned against the office light.
Relief howled a jubilant strength through his arteries. The gun-weighted hand stretched before him in darkness made a half inch bend at the wrist and tipped upward. The big gun rocked against Ben’s palm.
The shape in the shadows loosed one high screech. Booted feet sent wild clatter winging into the uproar and Ben didn’t have to see the man now. He drove his shots at the ghost blur of motion that was frantically making toward the feedroom window. Three times his pistol ripped a trail through the darkness and the final explosion trapped the shape in mid-stride.
It went down without sound in the thunderous pounding.
Ben lurched erect. He ducked across to the window. With gun still in hand he rasped a match on his levis and in the stick’s yellow flare Breen’s eyes stared back at him.
They were ugly, wild-rolling and white rimmed with fright. They caught the cold wink of the flame on Ben’s gun barrel and his lips peeled back in a whimpering snarl.
“God, Ben — don’t do it!” he bleated. “I wouldn’t hev no more chance’n a gopher! Hell,” he whined, “I come here t’ help you — you wouldn’t throw down on your own pardner, would you?”
“What’d you do with it?”
Breen cringed away. He started shaking all over. His eyes skittered round like the eyes of a coyote, and that’s what he was. It was what he had been all the time, Ben reflected, only now he was a cornered one. The things he had concealed weren’t quite so well hidden. Hell, he wasn’t even hurt! The only mark on him was that crease across the elbow.
Reifel’s lips curled contemptuously. Then his match flickered out and he scratched another. “Get up on your hind legs.”
From the fact that he was still alive perhaps, Breen picked up a little courage. A tinge of color crept into his cheeks and with his baleful glance watching Ben’s gun warily he got onto his feet.
“Now get over in the light from that door where I can see you.”
Breen glowered. “You tryin’ to make me stand round till I bleed to death?”
“You’ll bleed all right if you don’t get over there.”
Still muttering profanely Breen did as ordered.
“Now what did you do with that money?” Reifel said.
“Why …” Breen’s eyes met Ben’s straightly, “we done like you told us an’ divvied — ”
“You know what money I’m talking about!”
“Ben, as God’s my witness — ”
“Quick,” Ben said, tipping up his gun barrel.
“I — I — Honest, Ben, I — it’s right here in my pockets,” Breen whined, cringing away again. “I wasn’t fixin’ to try an’ run off with it. I seen that goddam Turner snoopin’ round an' — ”
“Never mind lying. Just shell out my share and be quick about it.”
Breen’s eyes juned around but he dug a roll of bills from a pocket and, with his face turned sullen again, began counting. “Three thousand’s my share,” Ben reminded, “and I want every dollar I got comin'.”
Turner groaned in the office but Reifel paid no attention. He remained in the shadows where he could watch both Breen and the approach from the street though the barn’s open entrance. Gunplay was nothing to get worked up about in this camp but there was always the chance some fool wouldn’t know that.
Breen, done with his counting, reluctantly extended a fat sheaf of currency.
“Just put it on the floor there and dig out the rest of it.”
Breen’s jaw went slack. His eyes began to goggle. For one graphic moment he didn’t say anything; then the hatred and suspicion, the black fury that was in him, surged beyond restraint of caution and he cried in a raging half-strangled voice: “I give you your share! You want the whole goddam business?�
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Reifel tipped up his gun snout and thumbed back the hammer.
It looked as though Breen would blow up right there. His hands spread like talons. The shirt pulled tight across his swelled-up chest and his tiger stare turned bright with violence. Murder was in him all right in that moment but it was stoppered by the bore of that gun focused on him. Snarling obscenities he jerked the money from his pockets and slammed it on the floor. “You won’t git away with it! You won’t never git out of these goddam mountains!”
“Now shove those counted bills back in your pockets and get out of those clothes.”
Breen’s snarl skreaked off in mid-career and he stiffened. The upper half of him leaned forward to peer at Reifel disbelievingly.
“I ain’t goin’ to fool with you much longer,” Reifel told him. “Put my pile in your pockets and get out of them duds.”
Breen licked his lips. He sidled off a step nervously. “Y’ mean plumb nakid?”
Reifel, scowling, started forward. Breen almost tore the shirt getting out of it.
Three minutes later, with Breen’s clothes on him, Reifel called out to Turner, “I’m leaving your six hundred right here in the doorway.”
He didn’t bother hunting for the gun Breen had dropped but he picked up the gunbelts and Breen’s other pistol and heaved them through the feedroom window.
He went outside then and untied the blue roan.
He never looked back. He acted like a man who couldn’t get away fast enough. Almost before he’d settled into the saddle he was slashing the horse with the knotted reins. He left town, pointed west, with the roan wide open.
4. CANYON CROSSING
NOT FOR an instant did Reifel imagine he could escape by heading west. He was laying the foundation for an appearance of panic which he hoped might deceive — at least for the moment — not only Bo Breen but anyone else who’d taken note of his departure. He’d done some pretty dumb things in his time, he suspected, but trying to fool himself hadn’t ever been one of them.
He was in a tight spot.
Schmole’s killing, out of all relation to its actual significance, would be seen as the culmination of a trend the civic-minded of this region had long been threatening to wipe out. They would envision it as a challenge and it would band them all together in a spirit of indignation. Where erstwhile they’d been muttering they would now become vociferous. Past connections would be abandoned, past relationships forgotten. The Law would be spurred to action and it took no effort on Reifel’s part to understand what would happen.
There’d be hell along the owlhoot.
And this was only a part of his problem. Turner he could forget about but powerful needs would be at work in Breen. The man’s need to cover his own trail would spur him on where shame might not.
And Ben was graveled by his own code of conduct. While perhaps not strictly orthodox, this was strict enough to rub his pride raw. He had never been able to abide the kind who dug for the tules at the least hint of danger. Yet here he was backed into a corner from which flight seemed the only plausible answer.
It turned him furious, for by his own way of looking at things this placed him too exactly on a footing with the country’s untouchables.
Yet he saw no way around it. He knew he couldn’t in his present condition expect to stand off the law and Breen too. Nor could he stand many grueling hours in the saddle.
The hole Breen’s shot had torn through his chest looked pretty damned ugly. The slug hadn’t lodged and he had patched the thing up as well as he’d been able, but he could tell from experience there was going to be fever and the only safe place for a man with a fever was flat on his back.
Ben Reifel cursed.
It would be sheer suicide to hole up here. Within two days these roundabout mountains would be crammed full of scalp-hunting jaspers. Nor would Breen be content to keep his mouth shut when a few choice words dropped in some dim barroom could so effectively get Ben taken care of for him. All the law had to go on right now was what Perkins and his passengers might happen to remember of his probable height and general build plus, of course, his clothes and the horse he’d been forking. If he had paid Breen off in the coin his duplicity so richly merited he’d be having no occasion to remain in the saddle. He’d be free to go or stay as he chose. The law would be hunting a buckskin horse and the duds he’d dropped, rock weighted, in the creek behind Tim Foley’s.
Chicken hearts had no place on the owlhoot. He should have turned that new page long ago. He should have put a slug through Breen’s damn head, then dressed him up as Curly Ben and left the buckskin’s reins in his fist. That would have been the end of this deal.
Instead he had left Breen free to squawk. And squawk he would — no doubt about that. The skunk would make his pitch to the first piece of tin he could latch an eye on. And anything he’d leave out wouldn’t be worth mentioning.
Irascibly Reifel checked the roan and pulled up and took a long look behind him. He hadn’t been riding more than two or three minutes but the horse had covered considerable ground. Town lay well below and behind him, its lights like jewels in the moon-dappled night. He listened hard but caught no sound of pursuit.
Breen, of course, would have to get some clothes on before he would dare set up an alarm. He’d never risk being seen bare naked. That would lose him too much face in this camp. He would get on some clothes and probably wait for the rest of the crew to ride in. Then he’d spin some yarn about Reifel cutting west with the gang’s buried swag and, after that, if the gang caught up with him Ben wouldn’t have a chance for talking.
If the law came first he’d make sure they found out the man they were hunting was Curly Ben. They could get his description from anyone then and, acting downright surprised, he would probably admit to having seen the fugitive heading west like a bat out of Carlsbad. “Was on a blazed-face roan that looked a lot like that Bugler horse of Turner’s.”
Breen would find a way. Or he would make one.
He might even admit to having had a few words with him. Or an argument maybe which had ended in gunplay. There were plenty of lies Breen could tell which would give him the chance to guess Ben had been wounded. And once they knew that …
He could feel the rough bite of the hemp around his neck. There was just one possibility. If he could get far enough east before Breen’s jaw got to working there was an outside chance he might still make it clear while they were scouting these mountains. Or get enough of a start that he could hole up some place they had already searched.
But to get east at all he’d have to backtrack through Paradise. If anyone lamped him he would be a cooked goose.
He would be cooked anyway if he kept traveling west. Turner hadn’t supplied him with that rifle he’d requested. He had no provisions and barely enough shells to fire three rounds from his belt gun. Against a man with a rifle you could do about as well with a peashooter.
Even if he eluded Breen’s bunch and the law — which wasn’t hardly likely — there was still this hole in his chest to be reckoned with. When the fever set in he’d probably go off his rocker. Or he sure as hell would when the buzzards started gathering. He had seen guys before after the buzzards….
Reifel swore.
Already his cheeks were beginning to feel flushed.
He kneed the roan around and sent him jogging back toward camp. He kept his eyes peeled grimly.
He reached the camp’s west edge without trouble. Three shacks away, and to the left of the road, the front of Carradine’s showed in the moonglow.
He slowed the horse to a cautious walk and turned him right through a stand of scrub ash that took him back of the buildings across the road from Turner’s. He clung to the gloom of the wind-tossed foliage until he saw the dark bulk of the gulch’s south wall before him and then moved east with both ears cocked.
Crickets made a steady throbbing and the clatter of branches was an eerie thing but one which helped considerably to keep his progress secret.
He slowed the gelding’s pace still more.
If the buckskin hadn’t wandered off he might catch their scent and whinny. Or someone may have found him and, even worse, be waiting now for Ben’s return.
But these were things he had to chance. Unless he were willing to risk the street he had no other means of getting east of his town except by continuing the way he was headed.
He lifted the sixgun out of his holster. This was a sample of life on the owlhoot. This was what it meant to be hunted, to know no rest, no security ever. Eternal vigilance was the price a man paid for continued living the moment he stepped outside the law. No place you dared call your own. No friends.
Cold sweat broke through the pores of Ben’s skin. He commenced to see spots in the darkness, to conjure up shapes where none existed. The gloom seemed to curdle; it appeared to close in on him with a creeping stealth that shortened his breathing and once, when the wind tapered off for a moment, he thought to catch the rumor of booted feet making toward him.
Every nerve in his body was twisting and jerking. Dilated, his eyes stabbed wildly about. Blind panic was reaching its hands out for him when, about to scream, he got hold of himself with a lifting anger which recognized this for what it was. He slipped his gun back in leather and, trembling a little, urged the roan circumspectly forward again.
The wind turned more violent, slamming through the trees with the roar of a waterfall, tossing their tops about, whipping them savagely. It was impossible to hear any lesser sounds but there wasn’t as much danger from nickering now. No man could hear their approach in this racket. It seemed a good time to hunt for the buckskin. If he could get hold of Bucky he would have his rifle and that was something that was certainly worth trying for.
