The Lawbringers 4

by Brian Garfield

  He was an earnest young man; there was a soft fire in his eyes. She was about to speak again when a soft, lyrical voice said casually, “Sure, Billy, you’ll make out fine.”

  When she lifted her eyes, she saw Armando Elias in the doorway, one leg crossed over the other, his arms folded and his shoulder against the jamb.

  He let his arms drop to his sides, smiling with all his teeth. And said, “I wish to have a few words with you, amigo.”

  McCasford’s head turned on the pillow. He seemed to summon his words with some effort: “Go ahead.”

  “It concerns a little matter of saddlebags.”

  “What saddlebags?” McCasford said quickly—too quickly, she thought.

  “Do not fool with me, amigo. I do not wish to lose a good partner, eh?”

  “You’ve already lost one,” McCasford said. “I ain’t going anyplace with you, Armando.”

  And Michaela said, “He’s in no condition to ride. You can see that.”

  “Sure,” Elias breathed. “I can see.” He grinned again and took a pace forward into the room. “Amigo, this girl—she’s been putting words in your ear, eh? She’s been talking to you of sweet things, of flowers and sun. She wants you to take her away, no?”

  “No,” Michaela said immediately.

  Elias ignored her; he went on speaking to McCasford. “It is a fool thing, amigo. A young man has much pepper in him—the blood races too fast, and he does not think. Do you believe all her talk? There is no love in the world, amigo. It is a dream of poets and priests and similar fools. What she does not say now is that she does not want a one-armed man.”

  McCasford’s face turned, shadowed with uncertainty; Michaela shook her head back and forth. McCasford said, “You got it wrong, Armando. I’ve got nothing with her.”

  “No? Then you are twice a fool—for wanting her and for letting her discard you.”

  “Shut up,” the youth said wearily.

  “It is no matter. I have come to speak of other things. I wish to know where the saddlebags are.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No?” Elias showed his easy grin; he stooped and flicked the knife up from his boot top, and turned it so that it reflected light against the kid’s eyes. “You are sure?”

  “I’m sure. Go ahead and slice me up—I ain’t going to tell you anything.”

  “It will not be necessary to slice you up, as you say. The flesh of this girl is more tender for the knife, I think—”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  Elias touched his thumb to the blade edge, as if testing its sharpness. He walked forward, coming around the bed toward Michaela.

  Shrinking back, she darted her hand toward her own knife in its belt sheath and brought it out, holding it before her warily, eyes flashing angrily and body moving into a crouch.

  Elias laughed and McCasford said with a strain on his voice, “All right—all right, you bastard. That’s enough.”

  “The saddlebags, amigo.”

  “Buried in the stall where my horse is tethered.”

  “Bueno,” Elias murmured, and shot a sharp glance at the girl. “If anyone comes into the stable before I am gone, I will shoot. Comprende?”

  “You won’t get far,” she told him between her teeth.

  “We will see.” Elias turned and, turning, looked down; now he halted, a gleam rising in his eye, and stooped at the foot of the bed. Michaela stood frozen, watching like one in a dream as Elias scooped up the heavy bag she had left there. An involuntary grunt of satisfaction left him as he looked into it, and then he rammed it into his mackinaw pocket, quickly sheathed his knife, drew his gun and waved it toward Michaela. “Señorita, you will please drop the knife and come with me.”

  “Come with you? Where?”

  “On a little journey,” Elias said, still smiling as he always smiled, with his lips only. “It will perhaps discourage the others from following.”

  McCasford lunged forward on the bed, grunting with pain. “Wait a minute, Elias—you can’t …”

  Elias cocked the gun and rammed it forward. “Lie back, amigo. You will never get well if you break the wound open.”

  McCasford sat glaring at him; Elias said, “I will shoot you if I must, my friend. Do not force it.”

  Then, prodding Michaela ahead of him, he went to the door. She felt the hard round muzzle of the gun in her back and, eyes cast down, went ahead of him down the corridor. When she passed Brand’s door she wanted to cry out; the gun prodded her back, and she went on.

  CHAPTER XXI

  McCASFORD’S SHOUTS BROUGHT Brand awake, palming his gun instinctively. He came out the door, listened to the direction of the kid’s voice, and pounded down the hall cocking his gun, wheeling into the girl’s room.

  Sitting up in bed, fresh blood staining the bandages, the kid bit his lip and said, “Elias. He took the girl—he knows where the gold is.”

  Brand asked no questions; but as he wheeled away, a downward glance showed the floorboard askew, and he paused momentarily to look into the cache. By his count, one of the heavy pokes was missing. So Elias had found that, too. As he went through the door, he paused. “It will take him time to dig up those saddlebags,” he said.

  “That’s why he took Michaela—for protection. He said he’d shoot anybody who came through the door after him.”

  Brand glanced at the window. The storm by now had dwindled to occasional flurries of downy flakes; mainly the snow fell light and crisp and easy. He said, “I can’t bust in on him them. There’s got to be another way.”

  “If you can think of one, you’re quicker than me,” McCasford said in a tone of ill-concealed misery.

  At that moments boots pounded down the hall and Wayne Lutz burst into the room, closely followed by Zane and Andrews. Lutz said, “The son of a bitch. We couldn’t make a move—he had that gun in the pit of her back all the while.”

  “Shut up a minute,” Brand said.

  The old man hobbled in, crowding the room, and mumbled something Brand did not catch. He ignored the others and stared frowning out through the window. He knew Elias’ stripe, and knew the man would very likely assault Michaela when the opportunity came; worse, he might well kill her. And time was short; Brand knew he had to act quickly. A deep, sickening fear—fear for Michaela—gathered in a tight ball in the pit of his belly. Decided by that, he rammed the window open and put his foot over the sill.

  “Where you going?” Lutz demanded.

  “Stay put, all of you,” Brand answered.

  He swung out the window and hung from the sill by his hands; he looked down, kicked himself away from the building and dropped into the soft coldness of a snowbank piled high against the wall of the saloon. He fell almost chest-deep into it and pawed his way clear, with snow quickly dropping to cover his hatless head and his body. He had come this way because he knew the stable had no windows; if Elias was keeping an eye on the stairs, he would see nothing to excite his suspicions.

  Now he plowed through the snow toward the far end of the stable and, lifting his gun, posted himself silently beside the big door from which Elias would have to ride out.

  In the second-story window from which he had dropped, he could see heads crowding the space, watching. He turned from that and put his whole attention on the door, and waited while quickly the chill worked into his bones and his hand numbed on the grip of the pistol. The sky was a gray, quiet dreariness and snow fell in silent drifting flakes.

  Behind him he heard a thud hitting the ground, and when he looked around he saw Lutz bulling forward through the snow, carrying some bulky object. When the big man came up, Brand saw that it was his own mackinaw.

  Lutz handed it to him and whispered, “Put it on or you’ll freeze,” and awkwardly lifted his own gun with a gloved hand.

  Brand was surprised by this act of kindness and boldness on the big man’s part, but he had no time or inclination to appreciate Lutz’s belated courtesies now. He fixed his
attention on the stable door, standing well aside from its hinges so that it would not strike him when it flew open, and blowing on his fast-numbing knuckles in which the heavy gun sat coldly.

  And then, in time, the sound of a walking horse advanced within the stable. Brand tautened; he heard behind him the hoarse rasp of Lutz’s heavy breathing. There were, Brand decided, two horses moving in there. He turned his face and whispered to Lutz: “Hold your fire when the door opens. He’ll likely send the girl out first.”

  Lutz nodded. With a grim fury of impatience, Brand stood fast, but for a long interval the door stayed shut. Then he saw the handle of the big bar latch lift; he braced his gun and waited. Then, abruptly, a hard kick drove the door wide and a horse bolted from the dark interior. Holding his fire, Brand recognized Michaela. She rode out at a standing gallop; and quick behind her came the dead-run flash of Elias’ horse.

  But there was no target. Using an old Indian trick, Elias—always shrewd and always prepared—was clamped along the far side of the horse, hanging far down. His arm came under the horse’s neck and his gun belched and roared twice; the bullets went wide.

  Then the Mexican was out of range, and Brand had not fired a single shot.

  “Should have downed his horse,” Lutz grumbled, and Brand knew the man was right; but there was a longstanding range custom bred into him that had not let him shoot for the horse.

  The two horses receded down-canyon, and then Brand saw a heartening sight: Michaela, in a desperate effort at escape, had wheeled her horse about and was ramming back toward them along the narrow canyon floor—headed directly toward Elias, who was galloping forward in the snow. Elias righted himself on the rocking saddle.

  The dim echo of his enraged shouting reached Brand’s ears; the girl veered her horse at the last minute and wheeled past Elias, drumming forward toward safety, and Elias’ gun opened up in a turmoil of anger and hatred.

  The girl rode low to the withers, following a zigzag path; and quickly the last four bullets in Elias’ gun were spent, and the Mexican wheeled away in desperate flight.

  Brand’s breath hung still in his throat; he could not tell, in the whirl of impressions, whether one of Elias’ wild bullets had struck the girl. But then, kicking up high flurries of snow, her horse came to a precipitate halt near him and the girl slid from the saddle and came to him through the snow. He heard her gasp, he surveyed her with a quick glance; he locked her into his arms and felt the lurching of her sobs.

  He heard Lutz’s voice: “The son of a bitch.” Lutz, he suddenly realized, had ineffectually emptied his gun toward the fleeing Elias, and now was feverishly plugging fresh cartridges into the chambers, clumsy with gloved fingers.

  Brand pushed the girl out to arm’s length and said, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then get inside,” he said with an unintended viciousness; he ran forward and gathered the horse’s reins in quick synchronization with his fast rise to the saddle; he reined the horse around savagely and drove it forward down-canyon, after Elias.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE TRAIL WAS plainly marked. Heavy snowdrifts made hard, slow going for the horse. But as soon as the canyon widened, Elias had shrewdly swung up onto the ridge where an old slide had split the rimrock away and dislodged it in a long ramp to the canyon floor.

  Rather than breast the deep drifts, the Mexican was swinging toward the high ground. The trail swung along a northward ridge, holding along its broad summit where the blasting wind had swept the denuded rock almost clean of snow.

  Now the sun broke in long shafting streamers through shreds of banked clouds; its bright midday blaze threw a glaring whiteness off the snow surface, hurting a man’s eyes, making him strain to pick out detail.

  The air was bracing, no longer wet with swirling hail; it bit his lungs frostily. Beside the hot anger he sustained against Elias, a new feeling rose in him. Once again his dissipated soul caught the flavor and essence of the big country, the vast landscape rolling up to a rolling sweep of mist-girdled mountains; it was good to be alive in this land—and the thought was sudden and strange, as if he had come out of a green-swirling coma, like a moth emerging from its dusty cocoon.

  The ridge tapered off at its far end and the tracks followed a steep winding trail to its base, wheeling and circling to avoid deep drifts. Beyond this a vast fault of rock lifted in monolithic massiveness, heaved up as if by a mighty convulsion. It rose sheer, some hundred feet, and ran east and west as far as he could see. Here the tracks twisted sharply left and followed the base of the cliff, where the steep overhang had kept it relatively free of snow.

  Elias would be pushing west looking for a way around the cliff. Brand put his horse onto the bare rock along the cliff base and lifted it to a canter. He had to pick his way around tumbled slides of rotted shale and vast chunks of rock fallen from the rimrock above; and he came presently upon a pass, a great wedge driven from crest to base of the cliff, thrusting back broad and long into the mountain formation. Here the tracks swung in, headed for the timber country.

  The floor of this wide declivity was bowl-shaped and largely free of rock litter, but snow hampered his progress until almost imperceptibly the gorge began to narrow and the walls grew steeper.

  Vast drifts began to choke the cramping corridor, but here Elias had already broken trail and Brand had only to follow; but Elias would know he was being followed, and might have set up an ambush anywhere in these rocks. Brand had only his pistol, and regretted that; he held it cocked in his hand, and steadily scanned the rocks and shadows roundabout. He came around a canyon bend and saw, a quarter mile ahead, a flat, stark abutment of rock—dead end; the gulch Elias had blundered into was a box, and there appeared to be no way out.

  It meant the Mexican was somewhere in the rocks ahead. The horse tracks led in; none came out. Realizing all this in a fractional time, Brand swung off the saddle—just when lead whined off a rock a yard to his left and a rifle shot cracked high and sharp.

  Clutching the pistol, he ran for the nearest tumbled rocks while a second shot ricocheted at his feet and a third carved a white patch along the rock beside his head when he dived for cover. Gunshot echoes hung in the crisp air and he was briefly reminded of yesterday’s ambush; but this time the sound was higher, sharper—the crack of a .44-40 rifle.

  He leaned against the slab, his cheek pressed to the cold rock, his eyes cold and steady on the rimrock, searching it with care. The shooting had stopped, and when a minute passed he had the feeling Elias was probably crawling around trying to flank him and catch him by surprise. Deciding to forestall that effort, he turned to his right and threaded the miniature gullies of fallen rock until he reached the base of the wall.

  At that moment a horse came cantering around the bend behind him and he whirled in time to see Wayne Lutz, recognizing the riderless horse, rein in abruptly and slip from the saddle. Brand waved to him and Lutz came pounding forward afoot, lugging his rifle. When Lutz crossed a stretch of open ground, the rimrock gun opened up again and chipped the ground around Lutz, who flattened himself behind a rock and crawled the rest of the way. Brand placed Elias by the shooting—halfway up the wall on a ledge, well-guarded by a parapet of boulders.

  Occasional flakes of snow drifted down, making vision uncertain at times. Lutz crawled forward bulkily through a slot in the boulders and flattened himself against the rock beside Brand.

  “He’s pinned, up there,” Lutz said. “This is Oxbow Canyon—no way out except the way he came. We can wait him out.”

  “He’ll take a lot of waiting,” Brand said. “It won’t work. Come dark, he’ll sneak past us.”

  “We could build a fire.”

  Brand shook his head. “No good.” It was impatience more than reason that goaded him. He put his head our again and surveyed the ledge where Elias was posted. He was aware of Lutz’s broken breathing. Looking overhead, he studied the curving wall of the gorge. In a number of places the rimrock had crumble
d into long shale slides of shattered rock by which a man aloft could negotiate an ascent to the heights. Elias had done so, to lay himself up in ambush.

  Brand said, “Let’s get up there. We can’t hit anything from here.”

  “We’ll have to circle back and climb if farther down the canyon. Otherwise he’ll pick us off that wall like flies.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  Brand cocked his gun and left cover, lunging in a low-bent run back down the canyon. He heard Lutz pounding behind him. Elias opened fire now, but they achieved a bend that cut him off. Brand picked a slide and, reaching it, began a half-crawling ascent, scrambling nimbly over the rough fallaway. Lutz was close behind, breathing heavily, heaving his great bulk upward.

  They achieved the rim and swung back along it, moving slowly and with care. The rimrock was eroded and rotted, and any slight jar might start a fresh slide. By now, Brand knew, Elias would have guessed ahead, and would be waiting for them. But here the chances were better of getting within accurate range and perhaps catching the outlaw in the open.

  His foot dislodged a loose slab, and he jumped aside while a small avalanche tumbled down the cliff, clattering hollowly when it hit bottom.

  Lutz said gruffly, “Easy, now. This stuff’s all ready to give.”

  “Slow down,” Brand answered. “He should come in sight pretty soon.”

  They went around an odd solitary stunted tree and climbed the gradual lift of a rise, the sloping wall of a continuing cliff against their shoulders.

  And then, abruptly, Brand felt the rimrock quake unsteadily. He heard his own shout and started a run, too late. A massive chunk of rim broke away almost at their feet, tumbling ponderously outward, leaving only a loose shale slope and a two-foot ledge on which they stood; and the earth began to dissolve under their feet, dragging them helplessly downward.

  Brand clawed and dug, almost losing his gun. The crumbling slide struck a ledge and spewed off; Brand tried to ride the sliding rock, bracing himself and finally desperately snatching an outthrust slab that, by some chance, supported his weight. The world spun and a falling fist sized rock bounced painfully off his bicep; the tumble of rock was a clattering roar in his ears, and a sudden cake of snow shattered against his head.