by Lauran Paine
“Let’s go!” Uriah called, taking the lead and pushing on through the darkness.
There was no time for talk. Ann looked once searchingly into Lee’s face and that was all. Kant U’Ren rode behind her, black eyes saturnine, flat face softened by the faintest of smiles. Lee took the shank from U’Ren. The half-breed relinquished it without a word. They rode together like that with Lee leading her horse, keeping it abreast of his own grulla, silent, full of longing, full of hunger but silent.
When they swung easterly, George Dobkins asked Uriah where they were going now. The answer came coldly: “I make few plans ahead. Life is how you find it.” After that no one broke the silence.
Uriah led them with the guile of Indian wisdom, with still watchfulness and cold implacability guiding his every step, his every move. When they came at last to the final thicket before the brushed-off prairie beyond the southernmost shacks of Union City, none was surprised. They had all long since divined his course if not his purpose.
He made them all dismount and check their weapons. It was a wasted moment. For the last half mile every hand had been closed around a pistol or a rifle and every mouth had been dry and every mind had been pulling away from what each man was afraid lay ahead. Still, none of them challenged Uriah. Not even Zeke. With several, fatigue and bewilderment had dulled thoughts, and with others, like U’Ren and the Mexican, there was a shrug, an indifference—even a tiny belief that Uriah could pull it off—whatever he had in mind. But George Dobkins and Lee had no such illusions and the older man looked around for the wispy man he had talked guardedly with before. He could not make him out in the black light.
Uriah had them leave their horses tied. He did not detail anyone to hold the horses. There were only eight of them as it was. This was his second mistake—his first was to lead them there at all.
“Forward,” he called softly, and led them first to a stinking sump hole where green scum and bones of animals lay. There was a rank growth to hide in but the stench was overpowering. Lee saw Ann’s silent distress and would have untied her hands but Kant U’Ren, crouching on her far side, stopped him with a scowl and headshake. Then Uriah’s voice caught their attention.
“You all know where the jailhouse is. That’s our destination. Whoever they got in there, we’ll get out.”
Dobkins spoke up in quick protest. “But, Uriah, dammit all … them fellers deserted us.”
“It makes no difference. They’re sheepmen and, by God, we cleave to ours like the cowmen cleave to theirs.” The insistent low voice trailed off for a moment, then rose again more strongly than before. “Besides, we need four more guns, boys. We need ’em bad, and I figure those men in there know by now there’s no way to escape from this fight except by winning it. They won’t try to run off again.”
Dobkins licked dry lips and closed them, tight. Like the others he looked ahead to the nearest shacks and beyond where Union City’s solitary wide thoroughfare ran arrow-straight due north and south. There were many lights and some noise, but not much activity. Unseen but starkly etched in each mind’s eye was the green-pine scaffolding northerly beyond town. It could strangle four men at a time.
Close ahead a fat woman came to a door and cast out slops from a tin wash basin. At another shack a man walked out into the night’s warmth and looked skyward. He was smoking a pipe from which irregular puffs of smoke rose straight up, and he was shirtless, his thick chest and corded arms encased in long summer underwear. He scratched his belly and smoked and studied the clear-curving night. They thought he would never go back indoors but he finally did, slowly, seemingly reluctantly. When the door closed after him, the night was empty again. It belonged to those crouching in wait by the sump hole.
“Quiet now,” Uriah said, unwinding stiffly from his crouch, using his rifle for leverage. “Don’t make a sound. We’ll work along the back of town a ways until we’re close by the jailhouse.”
Zeke waited to speak until Uriah was passing. “Leave the Fosters here, Paw. Gag ’em and tie ’em to a tree. They’ll be in the way.”
Uriah, moving now, eyes dancing first one way then the other, watching the shacks, the town, the north-south roadway, answered shortly. “They’re hostages. If we run into trouble, we’ll use ’em to bargain with. Now come along … quit talking and fetch the prisoners along. If they make a sound, slit their gullets. Hurry …”
In places they had to crawl because there was no cover but darkness. There was broken pottery as white as bones but sharper, and debris of many kinds. A man tore his shirt and drew blood and cursed softly. Uriah hissed angrily at him. Sweat dripped off their faces. Beside Lee, Ann Foster was ashen. Her lips were tightly closed. She did not look at him, not even when he put out a hand to touch her cheek. Lew Foster was with Pete Amaya. Like Ann he looked stonily ahead, pale to the eyes.
Lee kept worrying about retreat. Afoot, he felt helpless, naked. If there was serious trouble, escape back the way they had come to where the animals were tied would be impossible. Half the village would be shooting at them. By tossing his head he flung droplets of sweat off his chin.
Back a ways Kant U’Ren said: “We’re getting close.”
It was an unnecessary remark. Ahead of them, beyond where Uriah crouched, lay a dusty strip of earth. It separated them from the two houses that flanked the jailhouse on either side. Lee went flat beside Ann with his pounding heart. She turned, looked him squarely in the eye, and spoke in a whisper. Her first words this night.
“You’ll never make it, Lee. Your father’s wrong. Everyone isn’t out hunting you. Not after what you did to Captain Hardin.”
Lee would have replied but Dobkins spoke up sharply to Uriah. “There’s a rider coming down the alleyway,” he said, and every face lifted a little to strain for the image.
The horseman was riding loosely, tiredly. He was coming along the alley from the west, probably from one of the posses that were out. They watched him approach, then turn into the rear of a livery barn before he was close enough to see them. Lee looked around for Zeke. The older brother was sinking down again and the way he did it showed immeasurable relief. He did not see Lee watching him.
Lee squirmed closer to Ann, felt the warmth of her leg and hip. “Ann, it was the old man killed that soldier. Zeke tried to stop him. I would have, too, only it happened too fast.”
She had her gaze riveted to Uriah’s raw-boned crouching silhouette. She kept silent.
Pete Amaya whispered aloud: “He give up maybe. He got tired and come back.” He meant the horseman.
Uriah threw up an arm for silence, then began maneuvering closer to the livery barn’s wide rear opening. They all followed him as silently as Indians until the broad alleyway beyond was visible, with its guttering lanterns and moving men. Uriah kept his hard vigil. He saw the weary rider talking to other men who broke up shortly and went yelling for still others out into the far roadway. Into all this Uriah read meaning, for he nodded his head up and down.
“He come back to tell them something. They’ve found where we had a camp, I expect. They’re going to make up another posse.”
They remained, motionless and watching, until the fresh riders came together, milled briefly around the tired man who was mounted now on a fresh horse, then they all loped vigorously northward.
When the last sound had faded, Uriah stood upright boldly and said: “Now! Now!”
Lee got up with the rest of them. There was dust all over him. When he slapped his clothing it squirted outward in thick clouds. He moved ahead with the others, following Uriah, and like the others he was watchful.
Uriah led them noiselessly straight up to the strap-steel door of the jailhouse’s rear exit before he looked back. They were all there. All tightly wound and shaken but persevering now that they had followed him this far. He lowered his head, pressed an ear to the door a moment, then rapped sharply on the panel with his rifle butt. A hollow
echo came back muted by massive mud walls.
“Who’s there?”
“Ander,” Uriah growled. “Open up.”
There came a sliding, a creaking, and the door swung slightly inward. Uriah hurled himself against it, and as far back as Lee stood could be heard the grunt and gasp of the man inside. Pete Amaya whipped past Lee with great speed. Wraith-like he got inside with his cocked revolver. They all pushed in quickly and George Dobkins eased the door closed after them.
Inside, it was cool and nearly dark and with a sour smell to the air. They mobbed up close around the frightened jailer. He was a fat man and his mouth was still contorted from the pain where the door had slammed into his paunch. His blue eyes widened, showed pure panic in their depths, then glazed over. He was near to fainting dead away.
“Don’t yell out,” Uriah commanded. “Zeke, take his gun.”
Out of nowhere a knife appeared blurring with movement. It sank swiftly, and into the stunned silence they all heard it ripping flesh, grating past bone. Then the jailer fell in a heap, his mouth working soundlessly, his body writhing.
“U’Ren!”
The half-breed moved back and looked down. His knife was scarlet and shiny with blood. Across from him Lee half turned, disbelieving. It was Uriah standing like stone, looking down at spreading scarlet, who spoke then, closing his mind against this murder and reverting to his own ways.
“Zeke, slip up and see if there’s anyone else in the front office. Kant, you stay back here by the alley entrance. Bar that door again.”
He started forward after Zeke, turned once impatiently to watch the others step high over the dead jailer, then resumed his way.
Lee, frozen to the ground with Ann at his side, gulped for air, for relief from the internal constricting band behind his belt that would not slacken. A burning flared in his head. He didn’t hear the loud, high call of a name up ahead until Ann’s fingers closed over his arm and drew him along.
“He says to get the keys off the jailer, Lee. Lee … do you hear me?” She got the keys herself and forced them into his hand. They moved around the corpse with only U’Ren’s thin scornful look to see their paleness.
Beyond the marshal’s office was a second door, flung back. Through it came voices raised shrilly in relief, in fright and excitement. Uriah jerked away the key ring from Lee and gave him a bleak stare before pushing through where Harold Baker and Joseph Fawcett were straining against the bars, keening the same words over and over. Lee did not understand them, nor did Ann or Uriah until Zeke loomed up barring Uriah’s way with his massiveness.
“Paw …”
“No time for talk. Get out of my way, boy.”
“You got to listen, dammit.”
“Ezekiel, we ain’t got the time!”
He would have brushed past but Zeke’s big arm shot out, caught him tightly, and shook him bodily.
“It’s a trap, damn you! D’you hear me … it’s a trap!”
They all heard him, even Uriah who wrenched away and took one big stride forward before the full silence of their staring faces stopped him hard. He looked fully at Zeke.
“It’s a trap, Paw. They baited us in here.”
“They couldn’t have,” Uriah stormed. He thrust the key ring into Pete Amaya’s hand. “Here, let them out.” He faced fully around. “They couldn’t have baited us, Zeke. How would they know we were coming here?”
Ann Foster shot a flat answer. “Because they know you,” she said bitterly, giving Uriah as hard a stare as she got from him. “Because you did it before. You came in here thinking no one would believe you’d dare. That’s how.”
Uriah’s face tightened with care. The color was leached from it. Only his green, feverish stare was the same.
“Uriah!” The cry was full-throated and without caution; everyone of them heard and felt its rising, wavering apprehension.
Uriah made no answer. He simply nodded to George Dobkins with the words: “Go see what Kant wants. Hurry now.”
But Dobkins was working a key in Joseph Fawcett’s cell lock and ignored the order. His hands were shaking badly.
Ann pulled Lee around. They went together to the rear door where Kant U’Ren was crouching low behind the narrowest of door openings. He beckoned them closer and shifted slightly so they could see into the night.
“Look there, Lee. Out where we was.”
Lee moved closer and squinted. Breath whooshed out of him. He did not feel Ann clawing at his back. Without turning and with his mind gone suddenly icily clear, he said to her: “Go get my paw.”
When Uriah came he brushed Lee aside and kneeled, stiff and forbidding-looking, the long-barreled Dragoon pistol held tightly. For the space of a heartbeat there was total silence, then Uriah drew back, got erect, and gazed flintily at them. “Seven of them,” he said, enunciating very clearly. “It was a trap.”
U’Ren closed the door, shot the bolt, and leaned back. “They’ll have the horses sure’s God.” He stared hard at Uriah. “How? How did they do it, Uriah? We’re holed up here like a bear in his goddamned den.”
Joseph Fawcett came up to them, staring into each face. He was gray-faced. “I tried to yell to you, Uriah,” he said in a thin, frightened tone. “I tried …”
“Joseph, I don’t understand.”
“They planned it so’s if you come back, there’d be fellers all around town. They even had a fake posse made up to ride out and make you think everyone’d left … You walked right into it, Uriah. Right into this goddamned jailhouse and now they got it surrounded.”
“They planned it like this?” Uriah asked dazedly, understanding coming very slowly, coming hard and stubbornly.
Fawcett bobbed his head. “Hal and me been listening to them talking about it all day. They got the rifles, too, Uriah.”
“Rifles? What rifles you talking about?”
“The ones in the rack in Ander’s office. Go look for yourself. They took every weapon and all the shells.”
U’Ren spoke a vicious curse and started forward. Uriah’s arm shot out and stopped him in midstride. His haunted, strange eyes were clear now, and fire-pointed.
“You mind this door, Kant, and remember I’m the one gives orders here.”
He flung the half-breed back against the wall. U’Ren’s sharp glare dulled. He nodded without malice and moved toward the door. This was what he understood, this was the Uriah Gorman he would obey without question.
Uriah’s wrath did not completely die out. He heard others hurrying along the corridor and drew himself up fully erect, waiting until they were all jammed as logs together and barred by his bigness, then he looked upon them with his smoldering wrath. “Go study things out in the roadway,” he commanded them. “If there’s a way out, it’ll be that way.”
Lee would have followed the others, would have retreated into the town marshal’s office, but for Ann. She blocked his passage where a storeroom lay and steered him into it. Her phlegmaticism was gone now and in its place was a vitality he had never seen in her before.
“Lee, they can’t make it across the full width of the roadway. It’s crazy to even try it that way.”
“Then how?” he cried sharply.
“Probably no way at all,” she answered in a voice turning soft and sad. “But if there is a way, it’ll be along the back wall as far as the livery barn. In there will be horses.”
“I’ll tell my paw.”
“No, you won’t,” she snarled at him, moving quickly to block the doorway. “There are ten of them and only two of us. We might make it, but they never could.”
“But, Ann, he’s my paw. And there’s Zeke … and your paw, too.”
Small-fisted hands went up against his chest. “I don’t care, Lee. I don’t care. I’m sick to death of this … this hate, this fighting and killing and running. We probably couldn’t make it even
… just the two of us. They’ll shoot on sight. I know. But I’d rather be dead with you than go on like this. Lee, look at me. We’ve got something to live for.”
She was clutching his shirt front, shaking him, and her voice was rising. It cracked and fell away to a sob. Her hands dropped down and she cried without making a sound. He folded her against him with pain engulfing him, rocked her gently, oblivious to the sound of pounding boots beyond the storeroom door, deaf to the hoarse cries of his companions as they went scuttling through the building seeking for a way out. Then, when her body was no longer racked with visible anguish, he led her out into the corridor and up toward the marshal’s office where most of the others were standing helplessly about, looking at one another. The first voice he heard was Zeke’s, rising strong and oddly soft-sounding through the panic.
“How easy they did this. How goddamned easy … I reckon Ander out-generalled you, Paw. I’ve heard he was a soldier in the war.”
“Not Bob Ander,” Uriah grated harshly. “It was that infernal US marshal from Denver. I sized him up for trouble the first time I set eyes on him at the plateau.” He snorted in loud contempt. “Bob Ander wouldn’t have the brains or the guts.”
“Well, it don’t matter now. It’s done.” Zeke was staring blankly at the empty gun rack on the wall. “It’s done and here we are sitting in the middle of somebody’s trap as neat as greased pigs.”
Lee’s eyes followed his brother’s stare to the empty rack. This, more than anything else, even the frantic gesticulations of Harold Baker and Joseph Fawcett, brought home to him how their entrapment had been worked out carefully beforehand. He groaned and moved away from Ann toward the barred window where Pete Amaya was crouching, staring out into the hushed and empty roadway, his fixed, happy smile turned gray and strained now, and the dark little hand on his rifle visibly quivering.
“They want a fight,” Uriah told them in full throat. “All right! We’ll give them no rest!”
Lee turned to look back. Others, too, were staring from haggard faces at Uriah. There he stood, wide-legged, braced forward like one of the old-time Biblical prophets, with his fists clenched and his square jaw set like iron. It was more than Lee could stand. He closed his eyes tightly and faced away.
