He climbed into the seat and was about to whip the horses into a run when John Madie jumped up from the ground and came in a weaving, dodging run for the back of the buckboard.
John, having crawled to his father’s side, had lain quiet, unable to believe that his father was dead. He had kissed the tears and blood from the old man’s wrinkled face and then Isaac’s eyes had opened. Grasping John’s skinny shoulder, the old man had pulled him close and whispered:
“Boy, get him! He’s the devil’s pawn and will damn the world if you let him live. Get him, boy, for your pa!”
Now John was running, tears of grief on his sallow cheeks. He could still see his father’s butchered body, could hear the whine of his dying breath within his massive chest. But he could also see the man clambering into the buckboard’s driving seat.
John ran fast, his feet no longer awkward. He had his gun in his hand but he couldn’t make himself shoot. He had never fired a gun, not even in practice, like Matthew, Mark and Luke were always doing. There was so much he didn’t know and he realized he was stupid.
He was rapidly closing in on the buckboard when suddenly Nyall turned and lifted his gun. John jerked his own gun up and fired, then he watched Nyall desperately. His face lit up as he saw Nyall fall to the side and then tumble from the buckboard. John jumped triumphantly into the air and pounded his chest with his gun. The blows hurt but he didn’t care.
He had killed Ringo Nyall—he, John Madie, Isaac Madie’s youngest son!
John finally stopped jumping. He turned and broke into a run, back to his father. He was almost to him when Nyall rose from the ground, lifted his rifle and aimed it at the running youth’s back. He punched off a shot.
John felt the blast hit his spine. He was thrown forward several feet before he fell to the ground. He lay there for a moment, almost within reach of his father’s outstretched hand. He saw his father’s stare fixed on him, saw the old man’s bloodied lips moving.
“Did it, Pa,” he croaked. “Did it!”
Isaac Madie’s eyes softened and the fingers of his hand moved. John reached for the fingers but could not get a hold. He lifted himself onto his elbows and dragged his bony, starved body the few feet to his father. Tears and sweat ran down his haggard face and pain tortured his body.
“Did it, Pa!” he said again.
Isaac Madie nodded. John grabbed his father’s hand and worked his fingers up to the bulky wrist. His head dropped then and he lay panting, feeling the pain dying inside him. He didn’t understand that either. In life he had understood very little and it was the same in death.
Isaac Madie’s fingers folded over his son’s hand and he muttered, “Boy, you proved to be the best of ’em. The best, boy.”
John’s face lifted and his eyes gleamed with joy. Then the big man’s fingers curled open and his chest heaved one last time. John looked at his father and he could feel the night closing in. It struck him as strange that night should come so quickly. He held his father’s hand firmly but gradually felt his own fingers losing their strength ...
Blake Durant had positioned himself between the hills and the buckboard. He was only fifty yards from Nyall when he saw him knocked to the ground. He watched in anger as John Madie rushed back to his father, only to be shot in the back by Ringo Nyall. Blake came off Sundown and hitched him in tight cover. Then he climbed to the top of a boulder and cupped his hands about his mouth.
“Nyall, listen to me!”
Ringo Nyall went down in a crouch beside the buckboard. Blake had a fair chance of hitting him from that distance but he was still worried about Angela Grant. Where was she?
“That you, Durant?” came Nyall’s call a moment later.
“It is, Nyall. I’ve got you cut off. You can’t go back because Sheriff Lasting and a posse of men from Glory Creek are coming from the north. You’re trapped.”
“The hell I am, Durant. I got the gold and I got the girl.”
“You won’t make it, mister.”
“Who’ll stop me? Now you draw back or by hell I’ll put a slug in the woman right now.”
Blake felt a surge of relief at knowing Angela was still alive. But Isaac Madie was most certainly dead. So was John Madie. That left him, Angela Grant and Ringo Nyall, and Nyall held all the cards.
“Leave the gold and the girl,” Blake said. “Do that and I’ll let you ride out. Go while the going’s good.”
“The going ain’t so bad from where I sit, Durant. You come closer and the girl gets it. Then you. I can match you mister, as easy as spittin’. I got them others and I’ll get you, too!”
“You killed men who walked into death, Nyall. A kid could have done the same. But I’m a different proposition.”
Nyall snorted angrily and crawled under the buckboard. Then he rose on the other side of the buckboard and stood against the warped timber, looking at the gold bars on the floor. He licked his lips. So close, so damned close.
“Durant, hear me now,” he shouted. “I’m pulling out. I ain’t wastin’ time talkin’ to you, not with them lawmen comin’ up fast. You stay put, mister, right where you are. You fire at me or move at all, then Miss Grant gets it.”
Blake wondered what chance he’d have if he charged Nyall now. But he decided that Nyall would carry out his threat to shoot the girl.
“You hear it, Durant? Follow and you get her killed. If you want her alive, you keep to hell off my heels. Past the hills I’ll leave her trussed up where you can find her.”
Getting no answer, Ringo Nyall climbed into the buckboard. He lifted Angela’s unconscious body and pulled her beside him. He had to put an arm around her shoulder to keep her from falling. Then he picked up the reins and hit the horses into a run. He worked the buckboard out of the clearing and sent it rocking along the main trail to the hills.
Behind him, Blake Durant wiped sweat from his face with his bandanna. Sundown stood quietly by, flicking flies away with his tail. Blake Durant, for one of the few times in his life, didn’t know what to do.
Finally he led Sundown back to where the buckboard had stood. Then he walked to the bodies of Isaac Madie and his son, John. He knew with a glance that there was nothing he could do for them. He carried them into the shade and propped each against a tree. Then he swung onto Sundown. Having given Nyall ten minutes’ start, he was going to dog the man to the edge of hell. He owed it to Angela Grant, and he owed it to the Madie family.
Sheriff Curly Lasting looked at the wide grave and frowned heavily. His men had checked out the clearing and discovered the tracks of the buckboard and a single horse, then tracks of two more horses.
Lasting said, “Looks to be two in there, and three went on after the buckboard. We were following five before.”
None of the posse members spoke in return. The day’s heat had taken the strength out of them. They looked worn and mean.
Curly Lasting looked ahead at the heat-seared country. Having put the desert behind them, he had intended to strike camp and give the men and the horses a breather. But with the evidence of people getting killed in this hell country, his own weariness dropped from him like water off shale. He said, “Okay, we’re gaining on them, so we might as well keep the advantage. Ride as you like. If you get tired, drop out, then come on when you want. But keep comin’, because we got forty thousand dollars’ worth of bullion to get back and a killer to hang.”
Curly Lasting hit his leg-weary horse into a run and led the way. When he looked back he was not surprised to find the townsmen following. They were a good bunch, he decided.
He rode through the noon heat and into the long afternoon. Coming to the clearing where Ringo Nyall had camped and left the buckboard, Lasting stopped just short of the two men propped against a tree.
He recognized Isaac Madie and his son, John, and came wearily out of the saddle. His mouth was pinched tight and he had his own private thoughts about Isaac Madie now. But he kept them to himself. He directed a detail to bury the dead and the others to rest up.
But he didn’t rest himself because there were too many disturbing thoughts in his head.
For one, the buckboard had been loaded with the bullion. The deeper tracks proved that. Also, one wheel was wobbling. That meant Nyall and the Grant woman could not proceed as fast as before. If they did, they would certainly come to grief on the way. And he knew that Nyall was driving for the horse behind had so even a stride that it had to be tethered short. The only other tracks were those of a single long-striding horse.
Durant’s? Yes, Curly Lasting figured; Durant was still trailing Nyall. But since Madie and his sons had been killed, he couldn’t work out what Durant was up to. Had he parted company with them? Had he in fact joined up with Nyall, and were they now partners? The more he thought about it, the more confused he became, and as soon as the burial party returned, he climbed back onto his horse. Four men immediately saddled up and came alongside him. But the others sat about watching him, waiting.
Lasting said, “I’m pushin’ on. If you’ve read those buckboard tracks, you’ll see that Nyall’s loaded the gold bullion into it. So he won’t be going on at any great rate now, and I think we’ll catch sight of him before evening. Those who want to be in on the kill can ride with me. But nobody’s pushing anybody. Some of you ain’t young anymore and maybe all that enthusiasm you showed back in town has kinda dried up in you.”
Lasting turned his horse and rode to the edge of the clearing. Then a smile broke across his mouth. He could hear the creak of saddle leather and the jingle of spurs. Within a few minutes the whole posse had formed up behind him. He said nothing as he rode into the heat.
Ten – Baptism of Fire
Blake Durant rode slowly, looking ahead. About him the terrain lay desolate, dead, bathed in burning sun glare. Nothing moved and now there was no wind. He thought of Isaac Madie and his four sons, all gone now. He thought, too about life and how strange it was, how a chance meeting with Isaac months ago had helped him to escape trouble with John, Mark and Luke Madie.
He’d gone to Glory Creek because he’d never come into this territory before. There had never been any time. The ranch and rearing his brother had taken up all his working moments and his spare time had been spent with Louise Yerby.
Blake touched the golden bandanna. She had given him the bandanna. Not a day without a thought of Louise, especially during the hours when he just drifted along, as he was doing now. Glory Creek had done nothing to erase her memory. Nor had the meeting with Isaac Madie and his boys; nor the meeting with Angela Grant.
He thought about Angela now, in the clutches of a killer. He remembered how pathetic she had looked in the rooming house foyer, a woman making a sacrifice of herself to get assistance for an ailing brother. He admired that in her, the unselfishness of the woman. But he remembered, too, the way she had looked at him, judging him as a man. He wondered if she studied other men in the same fashion.
He shrugged the thoughts away. He had to catch up with Nyall and either capture him or kill him. It didn’t matter much either way.
He topped a rise and saw the buckboard ahead, close to the brooding hills and still going slowly. Ahead there was a break in the hills, a black mouthed passage which he knew led to the border country. Once through that gap, Nyall would be in territory where he could buy help from other hellions like himself.
Blake kept Sundown at an even pace, but the big black, showing no effects of the long ride across the barren country, kept straining for his head, as if he knew all this hardship would end only when Durant caught up with the buckboard. They travelled another two miles and Blake could see Nyall in the driving seat, his rifle propped against his thigh and Angela Grant seated with her back to Nyall. Blake checked the country ahead. He had no fears about taking on Nyall. He had met his kind before. But the girl presented a problem and he could see no way of solving it. As long as she was at Nyall’s side, he would have to hold his fire for fear of killing her. So he had to trail in the hope that evening would come before Nyall reached a point of safety. Under cover of night, Blake felt he had a chance.
Another mile or so farther on, the buckboard swung towards the mouth of the passage. Blake was only three hundred yards to the rear of the buckboard, eating Nyall’s dust, but out of range. He cursed when he saw the buckboard gather up a little speed and saw Nyall bringing a whip across the backs of the weary horses.
Blake spurted ahead, gun drawn. He drew himself upright in the saddle when he saw Angela suddenly jump from the buckboard and run, her hair and skirt flying wildly. Blake put Sundown to a run. Nyall had quickly whipped the buckboard about and was chasing Angela with it, working his rifle under his armpit as he went. Blake closed in. When he was about fifty yards from the buckboard, he opened fire.
His shots gained Nyall’s attention and forced him to draw off from the chase. Blake kept going, his bullets splintering the sides of the buckboard. Nyall came about, drawing the horses to a dusty halt. He dropped into the back of the buckboard and Blake saw his rifle edge up. He swerved Sundown from one side to the other. His gun became empty and he hastily prodded fresh bullets from his gunbelt as he rode. Refilling the gun he kept swinging to the right and to the left, hearing Nyall curse him viciously.
Then he was only ten yards from the buckboard and Nyall was rising to his knees, the rifle at his shoulder. Blake dived from the saddle and let Sundown run on. He hit the ground on the point of one shoulder, rolled and came up with rifle slugs blasting the hard ground about him. Nyall stood above him, hate-filled eyes glaring down.
Blake’s gun bucked in his hand. His bullet slammed into Nyall’s shoulder and sent him reeling to the other side of the buckboard. He tripped over a bar of bullion and pitched to the ground. Blake fired under the buckboard’s flooring and smashed the rifle from Nyall’s hand. Nyall let out a howl, grabbed his torn wrist and looked anxiously about him, then he turned and broke into a run. Blake got to his feet, ran to the end of the buckboard and fired off two more shots.
Nyall was sent reeling by the first bullet and the second caught him behind his left knee. He went down near a boulder, then dragged himself forward as Blake triggered an empty gun.
Blake thrust cartridges into the cylinder. Angela Grant stood behind another rock watching him intently. He waved for her to take cover. When she bobbed from sight, he stepped into the open.
His movement brought a shot from Nyall. Blake’s bullets gouged the rock face as he ran in a crouch. Then he leaned against a dead tree and refilled his gun. The fight was on, one he had not asked for. But it had come his way and there was no backing off.
He sleeved sweat from his face and dried his hands. Out in the clearing Sundown had stopped and was looking his way warily, legs quivering in indecision.
Blake waved him away.
Then he shouted, “You’re hurt, Nyall. Throw out your gun!”
Nyall’s answer was a bullet that ripped a slice of bark from the tree. Blake sighed. It would have to be to the death. The afternoon sun was burning on his skin, tightening the tension already in him. But inside he was completely cool. Nyall meant nothing to him now.
He walked from the cover of the tree and worked his way around the boulder. He held his gun at his waist, his hand rock-steady. His face was expressionless and not a nerve in his body moved. He walked on, his even-paced steps beating out sound from the hard ground. Nyall’s head showed and then he stared in disbelief. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Durant must figure he was dead.
Nyall punched off a shot, but then a bullet took him squarely between the eyes, shutting off his cry of triumph. Blake Durant’s calculated risk had paid off.
Nyall dropped onto the boulder and clawed his hands along its gritty surface. His gun slid from his fingers and he pitched down the side of the boulder, a jagged end of a rock catching at his cheekbone and slicing it open.
Blake walked to him, then holstered his gun. Suddenly he felt bone-weary.
Angela Grant watched the big man, Blake Durant, in the silence of pur
e astonishment. She found herself admiring him tremendously. No man had ever done for her what Durant had done. From the very beginning he had helped her. He’d sent the Madie brothers packing, had escorted her through the town, had listened to her story and given her advice she now knew to be correct.
She set her teeth together hard. Nyall was dead. She had no doubt about that. Durant had shot him down mercilessly but she felt nothing. She had left her brother back in Cheyenne, and he was awaiting word from her. She had come into this hostile country to give herself to a man, to use his money to save her brother’s life. But all that was finished with Nyall dead. There was no Zeb Ragnall. And there was no money, at least not for her.
Angela suddenly straightened. She watched Durant turn Nyall over with his boot and inspect the bullet holes. The buckboard horses had shifted down the clearing, away from the gunfire, and were now standing quiet. The passage to the border and hence to freedom was just before her, and Durant’s horse was cropping grass at least a hundred yards from his master.
Angela gave a gasp at the simplicity of it all. Then she was running, going as fast as she could for the buckboard. She pulled herself up the side, sparing only one quick glance for the bullion loaded in the back and gleaming in the harsh sunlight. Angela felt excitement almost choking her. She picked up the reins and slashed them over the horses’ backs. The animals lunged forward and Angela swung the buckboard in a circle and kept leathering them, driving them at all possible speed for the passageway. She saw Blake Durant draw back from Nyall, then turn, his gun leveling on her. But she didn’t think for a moment that he would shoot at her.
Then she was into the passage opening and travelling through a dimness which frightened her. A long way ahead was the narrow corridor to freedom.
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