Callaghen

by Louis L'Amour

  Animals move, birds stir, and the whisperings of the night become audible. The desert itself speaks, for the earth lives, and in the night's stillness one can hear the earth growing, hear the dying and the borning and the rebirth of many things. A bit of sand trickles, a rock falls, a tree whispers or moans—these are the breathings of the earth.

  If there were some way to speed up the sounds of the night, to bring them more precisely to the ear, one would hear the music of the changing earth—the ripples, the falls, the tricklings, all grown into one vast but infinitely delicate symphony that would charm the ear of men. Callaghen waited only a little longer, and then he drew back from his rock, rifle in his right hand.

  "Well, now, you moved just in time!"

  A flame stabbed the night just as he threw himself aside and swung with the rifle. It was not a considered blow, merely an instinctive thing with the rifle poorly balanced for it, but his grip was hard as the barrel drove forward.

  He felt the burn of flame, and then wild with sudden fear he caught the rifle with both hands and swung, forward and back, with butt and barrel. He heard a grunt, a blast roared from the gun, a choking blast that illumined for an instant a staring face. Then the pistol clattered among the rocks and he swung the rifle butt upward in an uppercut that smashed the man's head back against the rocks.

  And then, like a cat, Callaghen was scrambling upward, leaping from rock to rock, ducking the spines of prickly pear by instinct more than by judgment. Behind him a gun roared, and he heard the bullet strike off to his right, but he went between two junipers and on up the slope.

  His eyes were accustomed now to the darkness, and he could see to place each foot carefully, wary that he might have a broken leg or twisted ankle should he slip between the rocks. He had no idea who it was he had battled so fiercely among the rocks.

  He paused and listened. There was a stirring down there, a muffled curse and a murmur of voices. Somebody struck a light, and Callaghen's bullet spat where the light had been, the sound of the shot racketing down the slope. He moved instantly, putting himself away from the firing position, and went farther up the slope. He had a feeling they would try nothing more during the night. He had been lucky.

  He paused again to catch his breath and heard his heart throbbing, as much from reaction to fear as from the struggling climb. It had been a narrow escape. Somebody had crept close to him, and in another moment he would have been dead had he not moved and had the stranger not felt a compulsion to speak.

  Well, he reflected grimly, from the feel of that upper-cut butt stroke there was one man who wouldn't be opening his mouth for a while. If the man wasn't dead he would at least have a broken jaw.

  His hand was smarting as sweat got into the powder burn. He moved up higher, and had climbed for several minutes when he heard a soft call, barely audible. "Mort?"

  He moved in that direction, and saw that it was Malinda. "We've found a place," she said.

  It was a wind-hollowed half-cave in the mountainside, perhaps thirty feet wide, and less than half that deep, a poor shelter if a storm came, but a difficult place to get at. It was a sandy place, partly sheltered by a slight overhang, and scattered boulders were in front of it, rocks that had tumbled down the mountain and fallen off the edge of the overhang, hitting the ground in front of it to form a not very effective parapet.

  "Are you all right?" Malinda asked.

  "Yes," he said reassuringly, and Beamis moved over to him.

  "We heard a scuffle down there, and some shots."

  "I think one of them is out of it," Callaghen said. "I don't know which one, but he was a good Injun ... he came right up to me without a whisper."

  "Champion?"

  "I don't think so. He wouldn't have spoken, and had it been Champion I'd be dead."

  "Don't talk like that!" Malinda shuddered and moved closer to him.

  He liked having her close, but not now. A man had to keep his mind on the business at hand and not be thinking about a woman at a tune like this.

  "Get some rest, Beamis," he said. "I'll wake you up in a couple of hours."

  "We can watch," Aunt Madge whispered. "Both of you need sleep."

  Off to the northeast Callaghan could see the flat outline of Table Mountain, low on the horizon, and to the north the bumpy ridge of the Mid Hills. Due west, not much over fifteen miles away, was the Marl Springs redoubt. Suddenly he realized he was behind the mountains at which he had gazed from Marl Springs.

  Then he slept, and in the night he dreamed again of his battle with Nusir Khan when he and his wild tribesmen swept down from the Suleimani Hills. He stirred restlessly in his sleep, his hand gripping for the sword hilt that was not there. He awoke suddenly in the gray of dawn and lay still for a few minutes, trying to figure out where he was.

  He sat up slowly, feeling the stubble of beard on his jaw, and hating the stiffness of his clothes—the stiffness of sweat, dust, and bloodstains. His mouth was dry. He stared around him.

  Only Malinda was awake. There was a faint grayness along the ridge, a fading of the darkness overhead.

  "You were dreaming," she said.

  "I've not much to dream about ... battles and blood and gunshots. It isn't pleasant."

  "No women?"

  "Here and there ... one meets them."

  "You've fought a lot?" she asked.

  "Most of twenty years ... ever since I was a youngster in Ireland."

  He turned to look down the slope. It was rocky, and dotted with cedar and brush. He could see the hindquarters of one of the horses, so he knew they were still down there. It was a steep drop, some of it a tough scramble, some of it not too difficult for climbing, but there was a lot of cover, areas where one could not be seen.

  Malinda sat close to him. She was wide awake now, and was not frightened. She had been somewhat conditioned for times like these by the tales her father and uncles had told; and there had been the time she first met Callaghen, when he had ridden up out of nowhere, a dashing and handsome man who had saved them all.

  He did not look dashing and handsome now. She smiled at the thought. His clothing was torn from his scrambles through brush and rocks, but he looked tough, capable, and confident.

  "Do you ever worry about how it will all turn out?"

  He shrugged. "A man does what he can, whatever the situation. There's only one way to fight: to win, and anybody who uses force without using it to the utmost is playing the fool.

  "I have been fighting all my life, yet I believe in peace. That doesn't do me one bit of good, though, against those men down there, because they have no idea of peace at all. The only thing they understand is violence. They would like for us to go down there and talk peace, but they would kill us all, and that would be an end to it. They would have peace over our dead bodies.

  "I have sometimes noticed," Callaghen added grimly, "that the people who preach peace so fervently are doing it from a comfortable place—often after a good meal. It's quite another thing when you face armed men in the night in a lonely place, men who have no standards beyond their own selfish interests."

  "I think they are coming," Malinda said. "Something moved down there."

  "It's lucky," Callaghen said ironically, "or I'd be needing a pulpit."

  He slapped his rifle. "This is one of the best arguments for peace there is. Nobody wants to shoot if somebody is going to shoot back."

  He moved the rifle forward a little. "They are coming up the hill because we are in their way. There are only two men, and they believe they can handle us. If there were four of them they would not have even stopped.

  "They know Beamis is young, and they know from comments he's made that he didn't want to be a soldier. What they don't know is what a lot of good stuff the young man has in him, and in the last few days it has hardened into real strength."

  It was lighter now—light enough for good shooting, and the horses down below were looking up the slope.

  Callaghen looked around. On the far side
of the hollow there was a space between the side of the mountain and a slab of fallen rock. "Malinda, see where that goes, will you?" he said.

  Callaghen did not like cul-de-sacs. One man could not defend the position they occupied, and if he himself were shot, the others ought to have some kind of escape route. Sooner or later a detachment from Camp Cady would come looking for the vanished stage, but until then there must be some place where they could make a stand.

  He watched for any further movement below. He was sure he had put at least one of the men out of action. But he realized that the men who were coming up the slope were not tenderfeet—they were taking their time, sure they had their quarry where they could not escape.

  Once he saw a flicker of movement as a man moved into concealment behind a rock, but there was no chance for a shot. It was merely a shadow on the slope that flitted across his vision and was gone.

  Malinda was back. "Mort, there is an opening back there. I don't know whether it will be any help to us or not. I doubt if we can get your horse through."

  "Does it lead up the slope?"

  "Not right away ... I only went a few yards."

  "We'll chance it. You take the horse, and you and Aunt Madge see what you can do. Tie the stirrups up. That might help you get through."

  He saw a hat appear alongside a boulder halfway down the slope, but it seemed an obvious attempt to draw his fire and so locate his position. He had no ammunition to waste, and had no intention of responding to such a crude tenderfoot temptation. When he saw something he could identify with some chance of scoring a hit, he would fire.

  The sun was up behind Wild Horse Mesa, but his own position was shaded and cool. He located several possible approaches among the scattered boulders and sighted his rifle at those spots so his action, when it became necessary, would be quick and smooth.

  It was the right and left flanks that worried him, for the area was too large for Beamis and himself to cover with any success. Their natural parapet was too low to allow them to shift position very much.

  He moved over to Beamis. "Take your time, soldier, and don't waste any shots. You saw where the women took the horse?"

  "Yes."

  "When the time comes, run for it. Follow the trail until you come up to them. Then try to find another good position."

  "You think Major Sykes will send out a patrol?" Beamis asked.

  "He will. My guess would be they are marching now. If they can find us, we'll be lucky."

  A bullet struck a rock over their heads, showering them with fragments. Hurriedly, they moved to firing positions. Though Bolin was a dangerous man, as were the others, it was Champion who worried him most. The old outlaw was canny, and he could find a route where most men would not dream of looking. Moreover, he was not overly concerned with Callaghen. Whether Callaghen was alive or dead was of no interest to him as long as he stayed out of Bolin's way.

  A dozen miles to the north Captain Marriott rode up to the abandoned stage at Government Holes. Only a few miles back they had come on the body of the stage driver, and had buried it in a shallow grave.

  The stage itself showed no evidences of Indian attack. Those who had looted it—and little there had been worth taking—had known what to take and where to find it; and there seemed to be no Indian tracks anywhere near.

  "It's Wylie," Marriott told himself. Haswell, a stocky Missourian, indicated the moccasin tracks. "Them's Champion's," he said. "I seen 'em around Cady."

  Well, then: Champion, Wylie, and whoever else was with them—probably Spencer—had held up and robbed the stage. "A man was down yonder," Haswell said, "and there was some blood. I figure that man is alive."

  Marriott could do his own tracking, and he had come to the same conclusion. He was hoping that man was Callaghen ... and he was alive.

  "South?" Haswell puckered his forehead at Marriott's suggestion. "Ain't nothin' off south. I ain't been yonder, but they tell me it's a wild country."

  Marriott was wary, but with scouts out, they started south. Haswell rode back after a few miles. "Somebody else follerin' 'em," he said, "and he's poorly off."

  "You mean he's been hurt?"

  "Yes, sir. I figure he was hurt in that fight, but got away, and then he took after 'em. He's holdin' on, but we better keep a good lookout to right and left. He may crawl off en the trail somewheres."

  They found him before an hour had passed, almost at the end of the long western ridge running off from Table Mountain. It was Jason Stick-Walker, the Delaware, and he had been wounded and had lost blood, and had treated and bound up the wound himself.

  After a drink of water, and one of whiskey, he told them about the attack, and also said that he had seen the dust of other riders crossing the basin.

  "Callaghen's after them. I trailed him to where he crossed this ridge heading south. He was afoot."

  Marriott was trotting his troop when they reached the hole in the mountain and the body of Kurt Wylie. "Gun battle," Haswell said. "Wylie had his gun out, but he surely came in second."

  "One less," the Delaware said.

  Chapter 23

  CHAMPION HUNKERED DOWN in the cool shade of a cedar. He dug in his pocket for his tobacco, eyed it critically, then brushing off a few crumbs of dirt, he bit off a sizable chew.

  If those damn fools kept climbing up among those rocks, Callaghen was going to kill one or two of them. It made no sense for him to be one of the pursuers. He had suggested a flanking movement, but that was to get off on his own. He trusted his own judgment, but not that of the others.

  He looked up at the cliff towering above him. It was almighty steep, but he had a hunch that Callaghen would try for the top. Callaghen was a knowing man, and canny.

  Once you knew the kind of man you were hunting, you knew where to look for him. Callaghen would head for the top, and the toppest top around was yonder between those two shoulders of rock. And he would send the womenfolks first, with maybe that kid soldier. He himself would stay behind to stand off Bolin and them.

  Champion took another look at the cliff, and started up. What a man wouldn't do for a woman, especially a white woman! They wouldn't last like a squaw would, but for a few weeks he'd have things his own way. He kept on up the cliff.

  It took an hour of climbing and scouting to locate them. They had themselves a little hideout among the cedars and rocks, and the black horse was with them. He squatted down among the cedars and sized up the situation. No sign of either Beamis or Callaghen ... which didn't mean they weren't around. From time to time a shot told him that the ones down below were still fighting.

  Getting off the mesa would be the worst part, but afoot he could do it. Seemed a shame to leave that fine a horse, but it might still be here if he came back a few months from now.

  He moved off through the cedars, assured himself that the men were not around, and then, gun in hand, he came out of the trees. "Well, now." He spoke in a moderate tone. "Seems like I've found me some womenfolks, alone, and without no ess-cort."

  They looked at him from a dozen feet away. Both were tired, but both were wary, and neither one was frightened. Got to watch these two, he told himself. They ain't scared, and they're both thinkin'.

  "You gals come thisaway an' come steady. Don't try nothin' fancy, because if I have to kill one of you I'll just naturally kill both. You figure iffen you're thinkin' to make a try, that you might kill your friend as well as yourself."

  Neither one moved. "Come!" he said sharply. "Come steady!"

  They stood still. Both had realized that it was the thing to do; they doubted he would shoot them where they stood.

  Malinda remembered something Callaghen had once said to her. "Don't go with anybody who has a gun on you. A person of criminal mind just wants to get you away from help where he can do what he wants without interference. Wherever you are, you are usually safer than where he would take you."

  "I couldn't walk another step," Malinda replied calmly. "I've just climbed all the mountains I am going
to. Besides, I haven't had time to enjoy this place."

  He looked at her, admiring her in spite of himself. She'd be the one to watch. Turn his back and she'd have a knife in his ribs. He chuckled. "Ma'am, I like your spunk, but you're surely goin' to walk."

  He stepped out and walked toward them. "You walk, else I'll bat one of you right across the skull."

  A moment they hesitated, then started to move. At that instant Beamis appeared. "Hey! What's this?" He shouted.

  Champion spun and fired from the hip. The rifle bullet hit Beamis and turned him half around, his own shot going wild.

  Champion swung back. The women were gone! Cursing, he scanned the cedars and rocks with a quick, overall glance. "You git out here!" he shouted. "Or when I find you I'll whup the livin' tar out of you!"

  The sand told its story. One look at the tracks and he turned into the brush, swearing as he went. Suddenly from down the mountain there was a tremendous roar and a crash, and then silence. Dust rose over the edge of the mesa.

  Callaghen heard shooting from the top of the mesa, two quick shots within seconds of each other. He straightened up, fired two shots downhill, and turning, ran from the opening into which Beamis had disappeared some moments before. Through the hole, he turned quickly to see if pursuit was close. His hand touched the wall and sand trickled from under it.

  Glancing up, he saw a huge boulder anchored in the side of the cliff. The sand had trickled away from beneath it, and only a few rocks seemed to hold it in place. Such a boulder could hang so, sometimes for years, until rain or wind supplied the necessary push and down it came.

  Standing back, he smashed at the bank's face, knocking out great chunks of dirt and rock. The boulder gave a lurch; he started to stab at it again, and jumped back, barely in time.