They must have pushed forward for something like an hour. Will thought that they didn’t have much daylight left to them. He had hoped that they could have found some action before dark, but it looked as if that wouldn’t be possible.
Pretty soon, they all halted when they heard movement ahead of them. It proved to be Joe. He halted his tired horse and declared that he had gotten pretty close to the men and the cows. Whether they were the ones they were after, he couldn’t say for sure. He reckoned they had to be.
Will lost his patience a little.
“We have to be sure,” he said. “We’ll work our way around till we’re as close as can be.”
They went on, this time with Will in the lead. He was impatient to get on and wanted to end it. He tried to control this urgent mood, for he knew that it could ruin the whole enterprise. But he wanted his girl back, safe.
After some time when the walls of the gorge seemed to coming lower, Joe called from behind him.
“Right near here, boss.”
Will halted and stepped down from the saddle. He climbed the side of the gorge and found himself amongst brush on the edge of a giant hollow.
The sun was going down, casting immense shadows.
It seemed that there were cattle wandering everywhere, browsing. He put his glass on them and straightway saw his road brand. This was the place all right.
He looked for the horse herd—Sloan’s most vulnerable spot. He found it beyond the fire, slightly to the north. Joe could attend to that. Joe could run off and steal horses as good as any Indian.
He stayed there a good ten minutes, soaking up information about the scene, storing it for future use. There were no riders with the cattle; maybe a dozen moving figures near the fire. The distance was too great for him to make them out distinctly. None of them could he identify as Kate. He wished to God that he could be sure that she was there.
He slithered back down to the creek. The men were walking about, stretching their stiff legs. Mart and Manning looked as tired as ever. Somehow he had to get a fight out of these men.
Mart said: “Is she there?”
Will snarled: “How the hell should I know?” Then he calmed himself a little and added: “That’s a chance we have to take. Everything from now on is a chance. There’s a dozen men in there. We settle their hash.”
“Just like that,” Mart said coldly. They were all at the end of their rope, all too tired to be fully sane.
“Just like that,” Will said.
“Kill ‘em,” Manning Oaks said. “We’ll have half Kansas on our necks.”
Will said: “You want out, you ride back.”
Oaks looked terribly embarrassed.
“Hell,” he said, “I didn’t mean that.”
“Joe, “ Will said, “you spot the horse herd.”
“Sho’.”
“Run it.”
Joe grinned briefly.
“We come in from the south. The ground’s broken a little. That’ll give us some cover. We got to time this right. Give us time to get into position. We don’t fire till we hear them horses take off. Hear?”
“All right.”
They loosened the cinches on their horses and sat back and smoked while Manning Oaks crawled up the gorge side and watched the camp. They didn’t want to have some of those riders coming on them. The rest dozed a little, hunkered down with their forearms on their knees.
ill must have gone right off. He awoke with a start when somebody shook him. It was Oaks. He looked around and saw that it was full dark.
He stood up. This was it. His legs were stiff and his heart was pounding.
“Let’s have some light,” he said.
Mart struck a lucifer and held it in cupped hands. He and Will checked their watches and Will gave his to Joe, telling him that he had to be in position by such-and-such a time. Joe didn’t like that much, time wasn’t an easily divisible thing to him. It was elastic, one smoke, two smokes. But he agreed he wouldn’t move the horses till the right time.
They tightened cinches and tied the horses. They didn’t have enough men for one to stay with them. That was another chance they had to take. If anything went wrong up ahead there, they could be caught afoot and that would be that. The end of them.
“Go ahead, Joe,” Will said. “Luck.”
The others wished him luck. He set off along the creek side and in seconds was lost in the darkness. The others climbed up onto the plain.
At once, Will saw that they were in luck. The fire was burning brightly. Sloan felt secure. If it was Sloan over there. By God, it had to be—
Without another word, Will started to walk toward the fire. He heard the other two moving along behind him.
It suddenly occurred to Will that there were cattle scattered out all around them and that any one of them could give the game away. It was also very possible that a longhorn might take it into his head to charge them. A horseman would be safe among them, but a man on foot was fair game.
They heard animals stirring as they walked, once or twice they were forced to change direction to avoid them, but they didn’t have any trouble before Will thought he was close enough to the fire and halted. It would be crawl from here on.
There was some starlight added to fair moon light now. They got down on the ground and lay there. Now they had to raise up to see the fire through the grass.
“What time is it?” Will asked.
“Fifteen minutes to go,” Mart said.
They waited. Will raised himself up and watched the fire. He couldn’t see much—a couple of dark figures moving around.
Small snatches of conversation reached him.
Queer—those same men might be dead pretty soon and he could be the man who killed them. But it was Sloan he wanted. He wanted Sloan more than he had ever wanted anything in his whole life.
Impatience gnawed at him like a hungry rodent.
He laid his head down on his forearms, listened to the sounds of the earth. He tried to pray away the minutes.
Chapter Fourteen
Suddenly, he alerted. His ear near the ground caught a stir. He lifted his head. Mart was up on one knee. Manning Oaks whispered something he didn’t catch.
A shot from the other side of the camp. His heart was pounding ferociously again.
Then he heard the horses and knew that Joe had done his job. A man howled like an animal. Will saw the horses. He knew then that Joe had done his job better than he would have thought possible. The Negro had alarmed the animals into running through the jayhawkers’ camp. He could have laughed out loud. He saw the tossing manes, heard the animals hit the camp, bring the men there to the edge of panic, saw them burst through, men up and running.
He was on his feet, running, wanting to get in close.
Behind him he heard Mart cry out stridently—
“Will.”
Mart thought he was going to do something crazy.
Men were caught in the rush of horses. There were men running to right and left. The horses were scattering out. A wild whinny cut through the rolling of hoofs. One of the horses was headed directly for him.
He stopped, dropping to one knee, firing. Triggering and levering. Sloan’s own repeating rifle. Ironic justice. A man flung up his arms and fell forward. Into the flames.
There seemed to be horses all around him, dashing crazily into the night, fleeing from the man behind him, now frightened by the men in front. A dark shape flitted between him and the fire. He was up and running again. Get in close and kill before they had time to put up a defense. On either hand, rifles were going off. Mart and Oaks were doing their bit. &g He stumbled and nearly went over. Something ripped through the air near his head. He ducked instinctively. Now he could see the circle of fight from the fire clearly, see the figures of men. There was alarm in every fine of their bodies. He must get in there before any harm could be done to Kate. He was getting too old for running, he was too tired.
The horses were clear now, running mostly s
outh toward the creek. He could hear the Kansans shooting now. But there was no fear in him. He was far beyond fear. There was nothing in his universe except his determination and his urgency.
He heard violent movement to his left . . . that would be cattle running. He fired the rifle as he ran. He must take care. Kate was possibly ahead there and she mustn’t be harmed. But he wanted the men scared. He could hear Mart and Oaks running with him. Had they caught his craziness?
He saw a man running . . . away.
He was on the edge of the circle of light now. They could see him.
A man fired from his right.
He felt the wind of the bullet.
He dropped the repeater and heaved the Colt from leather. It jumped in his hand. There were. three quick shots from his right. That would be Mart. A man turned and pitched over, clutching himself.
Will ran forward.
There was a man in front of him, molded in deep shadow from the light of the fire. He raised his gun and nothing happened. Will ran up to him and almost thrust the muzzle of his gun into his belly as he pressed the trigger. The man’s face screwed up. Will didn’t wait to see him fall, but turned, searching for Kate.
There seemed to be precious few men there.
One was lifting his hands, yelling not to be killed. Mart shot him down. Oaks hit another with the brass-bound butt of his carbine, felling him to the ground.
Another fell to his knees as if his legs had failed him.
Will took him by the hair and thrust the muzzle of the Colt into his face, thumb on the hammer.
“The girl,” he said.
The man was too frightened to make a sound. He gobbled, inarticulately.
Will flung him back and he hit the ground, lying there and staring up at the man above him with eyes that were no longer those of a living man.
“The girl,” Will said again.
Mart was there. Gun away. There must be no others left there. With an almost superhuman strength, strength born of ferocity, Mart hauled the man to his feet by his clothes.
“The girl,” he said.
The man’s eyes darted, scared.
Mart was out of control. Another second and the man would have told him what he wanted to know. But there was no holding back the violence that was in Mart at that moment. He hit the man in the throat with his balled fist and the fellow fell to the ground, writhing and choking.
“You damn fool,” Will said desperately.
He looked around, looking for movement. Oaks was standing there with his gun in his hands, tense, ready to shoot at anything.
Mart kicked the man on the ground.
“The girl,” he said.
The man made a gurgling noise deep in his throat, waveringly pointed.
They heard a shout, followed by a shot.
“That’s Joe,” Mart said.
They were running. The night was full of the pounding of their feet and the panting of their breath.
Another shot and another.
Then silence.
They came on Joe. He was sitting on the ground. One leg was bent up and the other was flat on the ground. Will thought he’d been hit.
The Negro said: “Sloan’s up there. With the girl.”
He jerked his head sideways and Will lifted his eyes, saw the dark line of the ridge above them. They stood irresolute, staring at the ridge. What did they do now? Would whatever they did endanger Kate?
“Is Sloan alone?” Will asked. Anything to delay the action that might get the girl killed.
“They’s a bunch of ‘em. They spooked,” Joe said.
“Could we git around behind ‘em?”
“You could try.”
Will turned to his brother. The superlative shot. The man who might be able to pull this off.
“Mart, work your way east and see if you can git around behind ‘em. I’ll keep ‘em lookin’ this way.”
“Here I go,” said Mart. He started walking east.
“You hurt?” Will asked Joe.
“Me?” said Joe. “A littee-bittee scratch is all. I can shoot.”
“I’m goin’ up,” Will said.
“I’m with you,” said Manning Oaks.
“Keep off a bit to one side, Mannin’,” Will told him.
Manning moved away in the moonlight and Will started toward the ridge. He felt very exposed, naked. The ground started to rise in front of him and he was going up the side of the ridge. He wondered if they could see him and if they had their guns trained on him right that minute. He didn’t much care. All he wanted was Kate to be free of them. If he got his, the others would get her out of here.
Halfway up the slope somebody fired a gun at him. The light was poor and that saved him. The bullet rushed by no more than inches from him.
He stopped.
Funny how little afraid he was. He held the Colt close against his leg. He reckoned he had a couple of shots left. He should have reloaded, but it was too late to think of that now.
“Sloan,” he called. “Sloan—you up there?”
There was a slight pause, then he heard that calm voice— “Who’s this?”
“Will Storm. I’ve come to dicker.”
The dark form of a man appeared above him. It was a long shot with a pistol or he might have tried for him there and then.
Sloan said: “There ain’t nothin’ to dicker about. I got you by the short hairs, Storm. I got the cattle an’ I got the girl. Boy, you come one more pace nearer and I’ll blow her brains out.”
“Maybe it’s stalemate this time,” Will said, “but you don’t have me by the short hairs, Sloan. We’ve run off your horses and you’re afoot. This whole area is surrounded. You have to dicker, Sloan.”
There was silence as Sloan wondered how much truth there was in what Will had said. Certainly the attack on the camp had been devastating. His men had run like spooked horses. He knew there were dead men back there by the fire. He knew that he had two wounded men with him there on the ridge top, he knew that all four men with him were scared. The big man was coldly considering cutting his losses. The small dark figure of the man below him was like Nemesis. He knew there were other figures out there in the darkness, but he couldn’t know how many. Just the same, he held the trump card. With the girl, he could walk out of there unharmed. The more he thought about it, the stronger his hand looked. Storm might even be talked out of his cows if he got the girl back unharmed. But who could say that he would let Sloan walk out of there alive even if they struck a bargain. If he could kill Storm, the guts might run out of his men.
Get Storm up here, his mind told him, then kill him.
“All right,” he called, “come up here an’ talk.”
“Show me the girl first.”
Sloan considered that. It sounded like a good idea. The sight of her might clinch the matter.
Over his shoulder, Sloan called: “Bring the girl up here so her old man can see her.”
Will waited. His heart was thumping again.
The wait for Kate to appear seemed to stretch out into an eternity.
Then far above him beside the big figure of Sloan appeared a small knot of figures. He couldn’t make Kate out.
“You there, Kate?” he called. He could hear the shake in his voice.
“I’m here, pa,” she called back. He was amazed at the strength and clarity of her voice. Its effect on him was terrible. It made him irresolute and fearful. Now the full truth of her life being in his hands came to him.
“We’ll soon have you out of there,” he called. The words sounded empty and meaningless. All the people who heard them must have known that.
“Satisfied?” Sloan shouted. “One wrong move outa you and she gets a bullet through her head. Remember that?”
Will almost panicked. Should he tell her to run so that he could open fire on the men? She might not react quickly enough. The try might get her killed. Where the hell was Mart right now? Was he anywhere near them? He glanced around at Manning Oaks. The man
was standing very still and even at a distance of twenty feet in the dim light Will could feel his tension.
In that moment, there was a sudden burst of movement above him. A shout. A shot.
Almost too late, he saw a small figure leave the group of men up there.
Kate.
The girl was running down the ridge at an angle to get out of the line of fire. His heart turned over as a man up there started shooting at her.
He lifted the Colt and fired.
Manning Oaks was firing.
The Colt was empty and he was straining up the slope. There seemed to be shooting all over. Joe was firing from below. The air was full of flying lead.
Something burned his forearm and he ignored it. Nothing mattered except preventing the men up there from getting their hands on Kate again.
She was down.
Terror knifed through him. Her light body bounced on the uneven ridge side. He strained up the slope, his eyes on her dim form. She lay there, not moving. A man was firing down at him. His gun was empty. He hurled the weapon upward with all his strength, shouting his rage. The man staggered forward to his knees. Another was running north along the ridge top. Suddenly Mart was in front of him, smoking gun in his hand. He was panting.
“Sloan,” Will said.
Mart turned a man over with his foot. The man on his knees fell on his face. He was not Sloan. Manning Oaks came up. Will knew that the man who had run off was Sloan. He turned down the ridge, running, stumbling on the rough ground. There was a small figure sitting there almost at his feet. She rose as he came up and next second she was in his arms. They didn’t say anything for a moment, but stood there. He couldn’t believe it, that he had his daughter here in his arms, safe.
“You hurt?” he asked.
“No, pa,” she said. “I fell. I’m all right.” Her voice was steady and she didn’t cry, but her hands clung to him desperately.
He smoothed her hair, talking, not knowing what he was saying, but conveying in the nonsense all the love he felt for her then.
Mart and Manning came down to them, their hands full of weapons. They all walked back to Joe who was now lying flat on the ground.
Stampede! Page 12
