The Kid was in one of his sulky moods and he reckoned he had acted so bravely and so much in a manner befitting a real hero that he had earned himself some good drinking time in town. To a boy of his limited intelligence, manhood meant the right to use a gun and to drink hard liquor. He grumbled his way mile after mile in the arid heat, but he stopped grumbling when it suddenly entered Spur’s head to climb higher. The man was acting out of character. The girl being taken seemed to have addled his brains. Usually, he worked to a well-thought-out plan. Sure, he took what other men would consider to be terrible risks, but Spur didn’t look on them as risks. If you did the unexpected and reckless thing, he would argue, you did what the other man would never expect.
So he climbed into the hills, cutting directly west and it wasn’t long before, on a dusty upland trail, they came on the sign. It was the patternless mess left by driven horses. Even the Kid could see that. He could also see that the animals had been driven south toward the Border.
‘We’ll follow ’em,’ Spur said.
The Kid looked at him sorrowingly.
‘Just a bunch of loose horses bein’ drove by a feller,’ he said. ‘That ain’t goin’ to git you the girl back in a month of Sundays.’
‘Just the same,’ Spur said, ‘we’ll follow ’em.’
The Kid showed signs of outright rebellion. The thought that he should cut loose from this man Spur forever seemed to come to him. A wild look appeared in his eyes and his hand jerked in the direction of his gun. Spur turned along the rough trail, the Kid hesitated for a moment, cursed foully and followed. By God, he thought, one day ...
Spur was thinking. He had a rough plan of the country in his head. The whole of this vast area had become his bailiwick. It was his job to know his way around in it. But he had never ridden this way before. He knew that five miles or more in front of them lay a massive spread of malpais, a flat low plateau of solid rock that stretched south into the Paso Verde country. If the man driving those horses headed out onto the malpais, he could lose an army for a few days. He could leave the rock any place in twenty miles or more. Sure, his exit sign on the soft earth beyond could be found in time. But only in time.
Perhaps, if he had not been so worried about the girl, he would have turned back then. Plainly, the main body of raiders was not ahead of him. Maybe he was wasting valuable effort when it was needed elsewhere. Just the same, he had a hunch.
There was some sense in the hunch—it was not all intuition. He was uncertain of the location of the gang that was most probably away behind him. He had some idea of the direction taken by this man with the horses. A man possessed a tongue and the tongue could wag. Spur would have him talking within an hour of finding him. Where the girl was concerned, he would forget he was a lawman. This was one of those times when laws were made to be broken. He had ridden the owl-hoot trail himself for too long not to know the kind of scum he was up against. Any man who would take or help to take a woman deserved what was coming to him. Hell, he thought, even Cusie Ben was foxed by the loss of sign back there. No, this was the only thing he could do—keep on doggedly until he came up with the jasper ahead.
They reached the malpais and they halted. The horses had not drunk water for some time and they would suffer crossing the rock. The mare was willing enough, but the Kid’s horse was showing signs of wear and tear. Spur drank sparingly from his canteen, then emptied the remainder in his hat and gave Jenny a drink. The Kid swore and followed his example.
When they stepped back into the saddle, he said: ‘You’re wastin’ my time. You know that? You’re plumb wastin’ my time, Spur. I got better things to do than wear a hoss out goin’ across that kinda country.’
‘Your horse’ll hold up,’ Spur said. ‘You sure you can?’
The Kid would have spit, but his mouth was too dry.
They started climbing up onto the rock. The immense heat hit them in the face like a great monster that snatched away their breath and brought the sweat flowing from their pores. They wilted under it as if they had ridden into a great hot oven. The hoofs of the horses clattered noisily.
The Kid panted for a while, then he burst out.
‘You don’t know what the hell you’re at. There ain’t no goddam sense to this. This ain’t goin’ to get us no place. You could hunt sign a week and you wouldn’t find nothin’. Not even a Injun could find them hosses an’ you know it.’
Spur turned in the saddle resignedly.
‘If you can’t take it,’ he said, ‘you just turn back, boy. I don’t need you.’
The Kid stopped his horse. Spur rode steadily on.
‘You wouldn’t of caught Wayne Gaylor without me. You wouldn’t of gotten no place without me. You rely on me—you know that? You jest can’t git on without me.’
‘All I need you for,’ Spur called back over his shoulder, ‘is for the laughs. An’ right now you don’t sound so funny.’
The Kid screamed: ‘I oughta back-shoot you. An’ one day I’m goin’ to do it.’
‘You don’t have the nerve.’
The Kid ground his uneven buckteeth together.
Then he simmered down as fast as he’d simmered up and said to himself: ‘Why do I waste my breath on a goddam fool like him?’
He urged the tired horse forward.
It was the middle of the afternoon when they reached the edge of the malpais.
Suddenly, it was as if they had ridden into another world. Suddenly, as though through some blessing from heaven, the land was green. Before them they could see the shimmer of water and the verdance of trees. There was grass. Sure, it was dried on the root, but it was grass and the two horses knew it. They moved forward with a will, lifting their heads and pricking their ears.
The Kid was all wonder.
‘Ain’t that somethin’?’ he exclaimed. ‘Boy, look at thet water. Ain’t thet a sight for sore eyes?’
Spur rode down. He said: ‘Somewhere near that water are the horses we came to find.’
‘All I’m interested in right now,’ the Kid cried, ‘is thet water. Come on, Spur.’
He lashed his horse with his quirt and went at a run past the older man. Spur started up in his stirrups in alarm.
‘Come back,’ he shouted. But the Kid was away, riding hell-for-leather down toward the water.
‘The damn fool,’ Spur whispered.
He lifted the mare to a trot and went after the racing boy. Inside a few seconds, the Kid was out of sight behind a fold in the ground. Jenny hit a rough trail that must have first been trodden back in the days of the Indians. Ahead of him, Spur heard the pounding hoofs of the Kid’s horse. He turned down the trail and the mare hit a canter.
They turned a bend in the trail and Spur saw boy and horse disappear into the willows on the banks of the creek.
As he neared the water, but not yet in sight of the Kid, he heard the shot.
He yelled to Jenny and she flattened out into a full run. He swerved to the right off the trail, hit rough ground and slowed the pace. The shot, he guessed, had come from the far side of the water, but he couldn’t be sure. One thing he was sure of and that was that he wouldn’t go charging straight at the spot from which the shot had come. If one of them had been hit, that was enough. He turned again and went toward the trees, reached them and piled out of the saddle. He had not heard a second shot. That meant either that the Kid was hurt or dead, or he was in cover and couldn’t see his attacker.
Spur hurried through the trees and reached the edge of the creek. There was a pretty sharp bend in it and he couldn’t see where the Kid had reached the water.
The ground on the other side of the water was high. It was maybe thirty feet across to the other side. If there was only one man around, it might be safe to cross so that Spur could outflank him.
He climbed down into the water and started to wade across. The water filled his boots and slowed him. He swore. He reached the other side and landed on a narrow sandy beach. Here he lay on his back and put his feet in th
e air to get the water out. When he stood his feet still felt soggy and heavy. But they would have to do. He started climbing the steep bank, grabbing a hold of tree roots and kicking a foothold in the soil with his toes. He had nearly reached the top when the shot came.
It hit the bank about an inch from his face and blew dirt into his eyes.
Terror hit him.
He had no idea where the shot had come from. It could mean there was more than one man after all. By the way the bullet landed, it looked as if the man were behind him.
He held fast with his left hand and drew his Colt, twisting himself around and searching the shore he had left with his eyes.
The second shot came.
It snatched his hat from his head and gave him the fright of his life. It also told him roughly where the marksman was. He was dead ahead of Spur up the creek.
Spur looked around hastily, saw a part of the bank jutted out into the creek between him and the man shooting. He let go his grasp on the root, hit the beach flatfooted and felt as if he had jarred every bone in his body. In that same instant, there came a third shot and the bullet kicked dirt from the spot where Spur had been hanging. Spur ran forward and flung himself down behind the jutting bank. He found that he was sweating and shaking.
Spur didn’t like to shake; it hurt his opinion of himself. So he became mad. But he didn’t lose his head. He was in a tight spot and he knew it. The man up the creek had plenty of room to move around, Spur scarcely dared to lift his head without getting it shot off. And he didn’t fancy that possibility.
He thought that the man would most likely climb and get above him.
Not daring to stick his head out, he crouched as still as a possum and used his ears. After the passage of a minute or so he thought he heard a sound of movement but couldn’t be sure.
His mind switched for a moment to the Kid. The little rat was his responsibility and might be lying bleeding to death along the creek there. Spur had to cut this jasper down and get to the boy.
He listened again, intently.
The whole world seemed to be as still as death.
That was the operative word—death. It waited somberly no more than thirty paces away.
He thought of all the possibilities, of different moves the man might make and he liked none of them. Whichever direction the man came at him, it would be from above. Was there any way Spur could surprise him without exposing himself? The fellow would have reloaded by now and would have a full gun.
Slowly, he started to back up away from the small headland which gave him cover, going softly backward along the tiny beach, his eyes fixed on the high ground above him, just hoping desperately that the man was working his way along the bank above and expecting to find him where he had been crouched.
Minutes passed and each more less sufferable than the last.
Spur’s eyes tired, flitting here and there above him. He dared not stop searching every inch of the ground above him as rapidly as he could. He knew that a small fraction of a second lost could mean finish.
Further down the creek, a horse whinnied. The mare replied and started to work her way slowly through the trees toward the other animal.
For a moment, Spur’s attention was taken.
It nearly cost him his life.
If his sharp ears had not caught the faint sound of a gun being cocked he would have been dead.
He could have flung himself sideways against the bank and once more attained cover. But his instinct was that of a gun-fighter. This was something, it seemed that he had been born for. The split-second reaction. The capacity to become oblivious to any other need than that of incredibly fast movement.
He turned, crouched and fired.
As the shot left his gun, the hammer was cocked for the second shot. There was a sound above him as a twig snapped.
The gun above him fired and he was moving to the right, light-footed, his movements slightly slowed by the sand on which he stood. The bullet passed within inches of his left shoulder and he fired and cocked again.
For a brief moment, the uncertain form of the man, dappled by the brilliant sunlight and the heavy shadow from the trees, moved back out of sight.
Spur stayed still, concentrating, strangely relaxed, waiting.
Abruptly, the man stepped into view again. Spur reacted without thought, letting go two shots that thudded into the man’s heart and head. Only when both shots were expended did Spur realize that both shots were unnecessary. The man was finished before they were fired.
The man stepped to the spot just above where Spur had clung when the first shot had been fired. He seemed to trip. He pitched forward and dove forward, turning almost completely in the air so that he hit the beach on his head and shoulders. His feet went with a splash into the shallows. His eyes were wide, staring sightlessly into the sky, dead.
Spur stayed still for a moment, staring at him.
Another, he thought.
His hands were moving instinctively, reloading his gun, ejecting spent shells, feeling sensitively, sliding new shells into the chambers of the Colt gun.
There was another man. Where?
He walked backward up the beach, going away from the spot where the Kid had run into gunfire. The man could be anywhere, but Spur worked on the assumption that he was in front of him. There had been no time for him to work his way around to the rear. But he could be wrong. While his eyes watched his front and flanks, his ears were alert for any sound behind.
The high ground fell away. The trees came down close to the water’s edge. Spur slipped into them, worked his way deeper, stopped and dropped to one knee behind the trunk of a tree. He was unaware of any sound or movement.
He stayed very still, waiting.
The man had to run or fight. If he ran, all well and good, if he decided to fight, Spur would out-wait him. He hoped the man would stay and fight. He wanted him. Alive. He wanted a wagging tongue. He wanted a name, just one name.
Thirty minutes passed. There was the fate of the Kid to fret over during that time, but to Spur’s way of thinking a dead Spur could do no good for the Kid if the boy was still alive. A man grew hard in Spur’s game. If he wasn’t hard enough for it, he should get out of it.
Then he saw the man.
A silhouette against the sunlight that streamed down on the creek. A long shot for a revolver. Spur reckoned he could make it.
The man was halted, rifle in hand, staring down at his dead companion in the shallows. The fool—the last place on earth he should have been.
Spur rested his left hand against the trunk of the tree and rested the barrel of the Colt against it. He aimed and fired carefully, knowing that he would have to be at his peak to make the shot.
The bullet took the man in the left leg.
His reaction was one of shocked surprise as much as pain. The heavy slug staggered him, but he didn’t go down. He gave a clumsy hop in an effort to maintain his balance and brought the rifle around, but he couldn’t see Spur in the deep shadow and he had it pointed about twenty feet to Spur’s left.
Spur called: ‘Drop it.’
The man hesitated. But he knew and Spur knew there was nothing he could do about it. They both knew that in such circumstances he could and should be dead.
He dropped the rifle.
‘And the belt-gun,’ Spur said. ‘Easy does it, now.’
The man lifted his revolver from leather and threw it clear.
Spur rose and walked toward him. When he reached him, he saw that he knew him. Rule Makin.
That meant he didn’t have to ask the name of the man who had Netta. It was George Maddox. Makin had run with him for years.
‘Who’s the stiff?’ he asked conversationally. ‘I never saw him before.’
‘Clem Dokes,’ Makin said. His tone was easy in spite of the shock he was in. He had taken one of the risks a man took in his profession and it didn’t pay off. So he hung or he died from a bullet. Makin would accept either without fuss. He had been lucky to
survive this long. There were dodgers all over the West with his name on them. His pride was salvaged a little by being taken by a man of Spur’s rep.
‘Did you kill the Kid?’ Spur asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the man said, ‘it all happened so goddamed fast.’
‘Walk back to him,’ said Spur.
‘I’m hit in the leg,’ the man said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m bleedin’ all over.’
‘I ain’t aimin’ to carry you,’ Spur told him.
‘You’re a goddam Indian,’ Makin said. ‘I could bleed to death.’
‘I could of shot you in the head.’
‘Don’t know why you didn’t.’
‘I want you, Rule. Use your neck-scarf for a tourniquet and don’t take all night about it. I don’t have too much time.’
The man stared at him for a moment, unknotted his bandanna and wound it above the wound. He found a stick and put it through the loop and twisted it. He screwed up his face a little.
Limping badly, shaking a little with shock, his face ashen, the man walked.
They worked their way along the side of the creek and in a moment, Spur saw the slender form of the Kid lying half-in and half-out of the water. He was face upward with his arms spread wide.
‘Cross over,’ Spur ordered and Makin waded into the water.
When Spur reached the other side, he couldn’t see if the Kid was dead or alive.
‘Drag him out,’ Spur said.
‘I can’t,’ Makin said. ‘I’m all crippled.’
‘Do it.’
The man obeyed. With one hand, he gripped the Kid by a booted ankle and dragged him from the water. It took enormous effort and his face grimaced and twisted. When he had the Kid on the sandy beach, he stood panting.
A short way off, the Kid’s horse grazed where it had run at the sound of the gunfire. Spur called to it, but it ignored him. It didn’t know him. He whistled to Jenny and he heard her moving forward through the trees. A moment later, she appeared, stepping sideways to avoid the dragging line. She came up to Spur and he lifted down the rope from the saddle.
He said to Makin: ‘Put your hands behind your back.’
Gun (A Spur Western Book 8) Page 9
