Double Mountain Crossing

by Chris Scott Wilson

  He drew two final deep draughts of air and stepped once more to the task. He stooped, positioning his shoulder against the leaden grey buttocks. With a grunt, he concentrated all his weight behind a thrust. The mule displayed perfect timing. At the very last second, when Alison braced himself, the mule casually stepped forward four paces. Alison’s momentum threw him onto his back into the wide pool of urine stagnant on the rocks. Floundering as though he had fallen into a fathomless whirlpool, Alison thrashed around, engulfed in the ammonia stench. Like a heavy sea mist, not damp but pungent, it had him coughing and retching. When he crawled into a patch of fresh air he almost swooned with relief.

  His escape was temporary. His back and his legs sodden, the heat of the sun combined with that of his body had already begun to evaporate the urine. As he moved, the stink rose off him like the aroma of a sewer, drifting on the breeze.

  The mule was standing a few feet away, regarding him with what seemed to be an amused gaze. Furious now, Alison launched a fresh attack with his boot heels and when that failed to gain any advantage but teeth marks along his thighs, he searched until he found a short branch and began to whip the animal mercilessly.

  He finally threw down the stick in frustration, for the mule remained motionless under the assault but for the reflex blinking of an eye each time it saw an approaching strike. Besides, Alison’s hands were becoming blistered, and there was more than one jagged splinter of green wood piercing his skin. There was nothing left to try but grabbing the bridle and pulling the animal forcibly.

  With a sigh of exasperation, he grabbed the reins and leaned forward. His weight bore down on the leather and for a moment the mule bunched his shoulders and stood fast. Alison threw the whole of his bodyweight into play, then without warning the mule stepped forward obediently. Alison staggered forward, legs buckling as he scrabbled to regain his composure. Cursing and holding his nose at the stink rising from his clothes, he started walking. The mule followed calmly as though the trial of the last half hour had never occurred. From then on the mule behaved, holding a steady pace behind the fast tiring Alison.

  After they had travelled for an hour, Alison stood aside and when the mule passed he swung up onto its back. The animal stopped and refused to move. Alison repeated all his tactics of kicking and cajoling with no success. But he gained another set of teeth marks, this time above and below his right kneecap. Reluctantly, he again took the reins and began to walk. The mule followed.

  Disbelieving, Alison rolled his eyes to the sky and slapped at his shirt where one of his own little family of parasites nipped him as a reminder of their presence, then tilted his hat away from the bump on the back of his head, and all the while he maintained the bowlegged hobble in an attempt to ease his chafing thighs.

  “God almighty,” he groaned. “Don’t say I’m going to have to walk all the Goddam way to Clay Springs?” There was no reply from the infinite sky that hung over the rolling plains, but Shuck Alison had a strong suspicion the answer was yes.

  ***

  “You think it’ll be today?” she asked, gazing hopefully along the dusty street. Morgan shrugged his shoulders then realized she wasn’t looking at him. He glanced up at her profile. She looked tired. Her hair was pulled back severely from her face and a strand had escaped to lay wispily on her pale cheek. He knew she pretended to sleep when he lay awake at night, suffering the pain in his back, but when he placed an arm around her she snuggled in beside him, a small hand touching his grizzled cheek. She had wanted to sleep alone, but she had given in to him as she had many times in these last few weeks.

  He smiled as he watched her. Up in the mountains he had thought he was dead. He had no recollection of riding out of there. The last coherent memory had been of working in the gold diggings and the great explosion of pain in his back, coupled with a gunshot. When he woke, Anne Marie had been there, tending him like a helpless child and for the first week of his recuperation she had never left his side. She had told him, when he was attentive enough to listen, about the old negro finding him and the Eriksons bringing him to town on the buckboard to find a doctor. Of her own part she had said nothing, but he knew she had always been there; a cool hand on his forehead when fever raged, a softly spoken word when he moaned with pain, a glimpse of swishing gingham cotton through blurred eyes.

  He did not have to wonder at the deep lines of strain in her creamy skin. She had been through it with him, every step of the way. As he watched her now with a smile at the corners of his lips, she turned and glanced down. She blinked, startled he had been watching her, as if afraid he could see something she had carefully hidden. She regained control over her facial muscles and repeated her question.

  “Do you think he’ll come today?”

  Morgan peered at the slate grey sky. “Looks like it’ll rain before sundown.”

  “That isn’t what I asked.”

  He tore his eyes away from the massing clouds and regarded her anxious face. “I know.”

  “Well? What do you think?” she persisted.

  “I think if he comes in today, me and my friend here,” he patted the shotgun the negro had lent him, “will be just sitting here, waitin’ to blow his head off into the street, sharp eyes and all.” He shrugged and continued. “He’ll come when he comes, no matter how much you fret. We’ve only got to worry we picked the right town.”

  Anne Marie bunched a small fist and slammed it down on the railing. Her knuckles were white when she inspected them. “He’ll come here,” she said grimly, certain she knew him well enough to predict the workings of his mind. “He’ll come here, I know he will.”

  Morgan looked away from her lined face to the empty street, a hand absently fondling the well-cared for shotgun that lay across his knees.

  “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  ***

  Alison shivered and tossed another buffalo chip onto the fire. The nights were cold and his tattered clothing was little protection against the penetrating wind. He stretched his hands to the flames and scowled at his broken fingernails. It had always been a matter of pride with him he kept his hands in good shape. They were as much his tools as the many guns that had passed through them. They handled decks of cards with the same delicacy as when he worked the action of a rifle or when he stroked the skin of an accommodating woman. Not for him the callused hands of the man who drives fencepost and ropes cattle.

  Even when he rode he wore gloves, but the thin leather had worn out days ago, shredded by pulling the mule along behind him. That Godforsaken animal. It would not let him ride on its back, no matter how sweet he was. So he had walked, and walked, and when he grew tired he walked some more. The soles of his boots were now paper-thin, the heels worn right down so it seemed he was walking uphill most of the time. His feet were a constant reminder of the distance, blisters on blisters, blood running warm and sticky in his threadbare socks. After the first day’s march he had tried to peel them off before he slept, but the pain had been so intense he had given up and not tried since. Now he just cursed and ignored it as best he could.

  The sound of the mule blissfully chomping prairie grass annoyed the hell out of him. He had cooked and eaten the last of his supplies that morning, so he faced the prospect of a long night without hot food in his belly or even the comfort of a smoke to ward away the hunger pangs. He had no gun with which to hunt.

  His only consolation was that by his figuring he should reach Clay Springs the next day and his ordeal would be over.

  He pulled his thin coat around him and lay down, an arm protectively resting on the gold sacks. Maybe, he thought wistfully, the first thing he would do when he cashed in the ore would be to buy a gun and blow a hole right between the ornery mule’s eyes.

  With that thought churning over in his mind he slept.

  And the mule munched on.

  At sunup the fire had completely died. With no coffee to heat or food to cook, and with no gun to hunt food, Alison did not bother to light it. Instead, sti
ff with cold, he swung the ore sacks onto the mule’s back and slipped the bridle bit between the evil yellow teeth. Without much hope of success, he climbed onto the animal’s back, but the mule was as stubborn as ever.

  Resigned, Alison stepped back down to the ground and began to walk. Behind him, the mule leisurely matched his pace, holding back just enough so the man had to pull him. Alison sighed and considered the foreboding sky. There were no thunderheads yet, but the whole expanse above him was leaden grey. As if he hadn’t got enough trouble, now it was going to rain on him too.

  He scowled and jerked angrily on the reins.

  The mule merely regarded him with amused eyes and held back a little more.

  CHAPTER 15

  In the early afternoon it was warm enough in Clay Springs to provide all the men with a reason to visit the saloon to wet their parched throats, and the women to scurry home to their kitchens to do the kind of things women do in their kitchens on a hot afternoon. The main street was empty except for a few horses at the hitching rails lazily switching their tails at the troublesome flies, and the occasional mongrel dog that had exhausted the alleys’ tempting aromas and ventured into the open, nose to the ground and tail tucked between legs. It was warmer than usual. The low sky that carried the threat of rain dampened the hot air to stifle lungs and make men irritable.

  When Shuck Alison appeared over the horizon and limped between the two rows of false fronted buildings he was more irritable than most, but underneath his rising temper at the oppressing heat was also a mounting elation at finally reaching his destination. Whatever had happened back along the trail was now a thing of the past, and as soon as he checked in at the bank he would have enough money to forget it. He had come through. All the odds had been against him, stacked up like a loaded deck, but up his sleeve he’d had the ace to match the other three in his hand. He was a winner and that was all that counted.

  He had made it. He looked round the freshly painted store signs and his face cracked into a smile. He was here. Clay Springs. Goddam. Yes, sir, Shuck Alison was no quitter. He had made it.

  He started to laugh. At first it was a dry crackle in the back of his throat that came forward to rattle between his teeth, then it began to grow, swelling up from his rumbling belly to burst forth full throated and joyous. The booming laughter echoed back, bouncing off the planking on the other side of the street, outwitting even the muddy stillness of the rain heavy air. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his aching feet, but somehow the pain didn’t matter any more. He was laughing so hard his eyes filled with tears and his knees threatened to give way beneath his spasm wracked body.

  Another voice joined him in his laughter. At first Alison ignored it, but then he was pleased someone should share his pleasure even if they didn’t know why he was happy, and he turned towards them. Through the blurred vision of his tear-filled eyes he could discern two figures standing at the rail on the boardwalk. A man and a woman. Even as he strained to make them out the woman threw back her head and joined in the men’s laughter. But the sound was jarring. Judging from the timbre of her voice, her rippling laughter should have been tinkling and musical, but instead was high pitched, harsh, almost hysterical.

  It sounded familiar. A memory stirred and Alison’s laughter was choked off. Quickly, he rubbed at his eyes. The mirth from the boardwalk died away with his own, and then he could see.

  It was Morgan Clay and Anne Marie. And there was a shotgun in the prospector’s hands, twin barrels gaping black mouths. Unbidden, his gunman’s brain had already calculated the range. It was perfect for that type of weapon. The user could not possibly make a mistake.

  “You! You’re dead!” he shouted, mouth suddenly dry.

  “Am I?” Morgan replied evenly. “Then you’re havin’ a bad dream.”

  Alison’s eyes swivelled. “You, Anne Marie. What’re you doin’ here, and with him?” He jerked a hand.

  “What do you think?” she replied her voice flat.

  “…But…”

  “What?” Morgan asked.

  “How did you?…I mean…But I was sure…”

  Morgan’s smile was thin. “Does it matter? I’m here to collect what you stole from me. We’ll talk about evening up for the hole in my back later.” His eyes roved the gold sacks strung across the mule’s scrawny back. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  Alison’s mind was jumping back and forth, calculating odds and measuring distances. He felt naked without a gun and the only chance he had was to run. He wondered irrationally if his feet would be able to carry him. How long would it take Morgan to fire the scattergun, and could he put enough distance between himself and the gun to have a chance?

  The odds looked none too hot.

  “Indians,” he replied. “Trailed me across the Double Mountains and shot my horses one by one.” He gestured helplessly at the mule’s load. “That’s all that’s left. They got the rest.”

  “What kind of injuns? Can you tell a Crow from an Apache?”

  “Kiowas.”

  “You sure?” Morgan frowned. It was starting to add up. Maybe the dreams he’d had in Redrock during the winter had been premonitions of sorts. No, it was a foolish idea. They had only been dreams.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sure all right. I killed them all, and nearly lost my scalp doing it. Only got away by a polecat’s whisker.”

  “Were two of them boys?” Morgan asked, forehead creased.

  Alison shook his head. “No. Only one. Wiry little son of a bitch. Rode a roan mustang.”

  Morgan nodded. “He’s the one.” It looked as if Alison was telling the truth. He was in bad enough shape and he had no gun or any of the horses he had stolen, except the mule. He only wished Alison was holding a gun. It would have made it a whole lot easier to shoot him down.

  Morgan frowned, chewing his lower lip. He could not credit how his mind was working. This man was an evil bastard. He had shot him in the back and left him for dead, then stolen the gold that had taken him two months of sweat to dig out of that mountain. Not content with that he had also stolen his horses. By all rights it should be the easiest thing in the world to pull the trigger.

  And yet it was not.

  Morgan was indecisive. He raised the scattergun and levelled the twin barrels on Alison’s chest taking up the trigger slack. He looked into the gunslinger’s frightened eyes. Alison was gesturing, hands fluttering, mouth opening and shutting like a landed fish. The stream of words gushing from him was incoherent, a mess of fractured ideas and hopeful deals.

  “But listen…some kind of deal…I’m sure we can…No need to shoot…I mean…”

  But Morgan wasn’t listening. His mind was wrestling with his body’s disobedience. His limbs were frozen. He just could not do it. No matter how he applied his brain to the problem, his trigger finger would not function. A tendon writhed frantically in his cheek as he gritted his teeth. There was no reasonable explanation, but he could not fire the gun. He wished Alison would attack him so that it would not be like this. Then it would have been easy. But not in cold blood.

  The breath rushed through his teeth in a sharp hiss. Anne Marie glanced sideways at him and their eyes locked. His shoulders moved, a pale imitation of a shrug, his voice practically inaudible. “I can’t do it. Not an unarmed man.”

  Her face was a mixture of disbelief and horror. “After all he’s done?” she screamed, her lithe frame so tense her nerves were stretched almost to breaking point. She was shaking, eyes wide, then she blinked fast and her hands snaked out to grab the shotgun. She snatched it from his fingers, her face set in a mask of determination, frantic in her effort to demand revenge.

  The unexpected wrench jarred Morgan’s trigger finger. The first hammer slammed down and the scattergun roared. The boardwalk railing disintegrated into a thousand fragments of slivered wood that spewed out into the street. Completely off balance, the recoil threw him backwards to collide with the chair. Spasms of pain searing through his torso, he lay groanin
g.

  In the street, Alison witnessed the incident with a wild surge of hope. As Morgan and Anne Marie tangled he tensed to run. The sound of the shotgun and the flying splinters spooked the mule and the reins were torn from his hand. As the animal crossed in front of him, he spun and sprinted for the corral rails behind him. He had already surveyed the street when calculating his chances of escape and decided on the stock pen. It was full and the milling steers would provide a thick shield. There was only one more shell in the shotgun and as far as he knew Anne Marie had never fired a weapon in her life. If Morgan had still been holding the gun he would have been able to guess when and which way to swerve, but with Anne Marie the blast could be anywhere. But at least her aim wouldn’t be too good. Or so he hoped.

  Abused feet silently screaming, he ran and scrambled up the six foot high rails. He reached the top, crouched for the drop, and his leading foot was already in the air when he heard the scattergun roar. Below him, the pellets smashed into the rails like steel hailstones. He hit the ground running and forced his way between the nervous steers, already churning in a circle.

  Surprisingly, he was grinning. It would take Anne Marie forever to reload, even if she knew how. One more set of rails and freedom. Now he’d lost the mule he could always steal himself a horse and go back for the gold he’d buried. After all his bad luck the thought gave him something to aim for. A man had to have hope.

  So he ran.

  On the boardwalk, Morgan shrugged off the pain of his bad landing with difficulty and struggled to his feet. Anne Marie was cursing like a muleskinner as she broke one fingernail after another in an attempt to reload. He snatched the shotgun from her fumbling hands and started running across the street. He came up against the corral rails and paused. He broke the scattergun’s action, plucked out the smoking cartridges with deft fingers and jammed two fresh ones in and closed the breech.