McAllister (11 page)

He took his attention from the Indians, seemed to forget the men around him who watched him closely to see the depth of his courage and started checking on his ammunition and his guns. The Colt's gun had some dust in it and he cleaned it off carefully before he put it away. Each man then remembered that his life depended on his weapons and
looked to them, glancing every now and again up at the ridge to see if the Apache were still there. Schneider drew and felt the edge of his knife.

Suddenly Franchon said: “They've gone.”

They all looked and saw that the ridge-top was bare.

Men swallowed, tongues licked dry lips and eyes darted around the horizon in search of movement. The sun reflected painfully into their eyes and put fire behind their eyeballs. One or two shook their canteens to see how much water they had.

Clover didn't miss the movement.

“Any man takes a drink before I tell him gits a bullet between the eyes.” He left it at that and they knew he meant it and they knew how important it was that they conserve their water. For the first time, they realised that there was a greater enemy out here than the Indians.

Franchon was the exception. Even in that moment of danger, he saw fit to say: “I drink when I want.”

Clover chuckled cheerfully.

“Brother,” he said, “you best not want.”

Suddenly Carmody's driver shrieked: “Look!”

They all swung to face the north.

A thin cry like that of a wild bird on the wing, keened across the flat as a line of horseman came at a steady trot down a ridge. The whitemen could see nothing clearly in the heat, but here and there they caught a glimpse of bright cloth and the glisten of the sun on metal. They were still in line ahead when they hit the flat, but they scattered like deer when Rand, suddenly losing his nerve, sent a shot at them. He worked his lever for a second shot, but he did not trigger it off because Clover got to a knee and leaning forward cracked him hard on the side of his head with his clenched fist. Rand turned a raging and terrified face to him.

“Fire when I tell you, you goddam fool,” Clover told him. “Our shot might have to last us a week. Ever' time you fire, you hit an Injun, hear? Schneider, you keep an eye on the south, case the bastards're bein' slippery.”

“They're all there,” Carmody's driver said.

“Maybe.”

Clover lifted his rifle.

“Now,” he said, “I'm takin' the boyo on the pinto. Rest of you take your opposites.”

They straddled their legs, implanted their elbows firmly and sighted, preparing for shots that would tell. The Indians suddenly lashed their ponies into a mad gallop, yelling at the tops of their voices. Clover, cool as you like now, because he had to be for his life, sensed the tension rising in his men.

“Not yet,” he said and at least one of them was stopped from firing.

The Indians pounded to within a quarter mile, but Clover still held his fire. When he could see the ocher and vermilion paint clearly on the face of the savage on the pinto, he fired. As the man was driven backwards over the rump of his speeding horse, every man among the Clover party unleased his taut nerves by the simple means of squeezing a trigger with the gentleness of an artist. As the black powder enveloped them blindingly for a moment a sorrel pony leapt into the air and came down with a sound which they could hear clearly. Clover crawled rapidly to one side to get out of his smoke, spotted the unhorsed Indian scrambling to his feet and knocked him down again. He didn't doubt the man was dead any more than he doubted he had shot him clean through the head. The Indians were shaken, but they weren't finished. A couple of them turned and kicked their horses back the way they had come, but several more tried to carry out their instructions to get on either side of the defenders and swung off to either flank. The withering fire they met quickly told them they wouldn't make it. Inside a couple of minutes, the only evidence that Indians had been there was a thick pall of dust.

Among the Clover gang, one man was coughing his heart out on the acrid smoke, another spat to clear his mouth, another laughed as if he had just witnessed the funniest sight of his life. Only there was a queer uncontrollable note in the sound of it. That was Rand. He stopped when Clover slapped his face.

“Like I said,” Clover told them. “They didn't have the sand.”

“What now?” Franchon asked and Clover saw that even he looked to him for leadership.

“Fork your ponies and we'll ride.”

“Hell, they'll be back.”

“They'll be back a whole lot of times yet. But each time they come we'll be a mite nearer the Springs.”

They got aboard and started off south, most of them with their chins on their shoulders.

“Wastin' your time,” Clover told them. “He won't come that way again. That Gato's thinkin' up somethin' real special for us.”

He lifted his horse into a steady gallop, dragging the pack mules behind him. He'd get himself and the gold to Mesquite if it cost every man there. He didn't think it strange that a man like himself who couldn't be scared by such a man as Gato, should be keeping his word at the risk of his life for a feeble old man like Carmody.

Mcallister Headed toward the sound of gunfire acting as if danger might jump him from every clump of sage-brush he passed. Every ridge he came to, he climbed carefully, peering over cautiously into the country beyond before he trusted himself against the skyline.

He never did catch up with the men firing those guns that day, because he nearly rode on top of Gato's horse-guard.

He was dismounted, leading his two animals and topping a ridge when the bay started a whicker. Mcallister grabbed his nose and gazed in frozen horror at the back of the half-naked old man in the dip below him. He then lifted his apprehensive eyes to the bunch of a dozen or so ponies restless on their tie-lines. Watching the old man and clutching at his horse's muzzle, he slowly backed. The mule was at its most unco-operative and the minute it took to get back over that ridge seemed like an eternity, but Mcallister accomplished it, got aboard the bay and walked it quiet as he could away from the Indian horses. Before he had gone very far, he lifted it into a steady trot and headed directly west. That wasn't the way he wanted to go, but the immediate danger was the thing to consider. Having gone a couple of miles, with his eyes forever turned in the direction of the firing, he swung south and came around the noise of the battle in a gigantic circling movement, praying that in the height of the
action the Indians would not spot his dust. Certainly he sighted plenty of theirs.

As soon as he was to the east of the shooting it died away and, going to the crest of a ridge, he got his first good sight of the Clover boys. They were strung out, heading south at a good clip. At least it looked as though they were aiming to get to the Springs. As they were no more than half a mile away from him, he reckoned he must be too near to the Indians for comfort. Gato, he knew, might be thinking of outflanking the refugees from the east. He got aboard again and went slowly east himself, not daring to hurry for fear of raising telltale dust.

The heat by now was well-nigh intolerable, his clothes were saturated with sweat, his saddle was blackened by it and was agony to sit, his wound hurt him like hell. He told himself that he was the biggest damn fool he had ever known even to have started this ride. But that was not much comfort to him.

The desert had now fallen to a dead silence that was broken only by the plod-plod of his animals. He paused once to moisten their mouths with water and to switch the saddle to the mule, but apart from that he didn't stop until he considered that he was at a safe distance from any man that was trailing Clover. As a halting place, he found himself a fall of rock from a ridge that offered he and his animals a little shade and gave him a wall at his back.

He left the mule saddled, got his back against the rock and dozed. He hadn't intended to, but he must have done, because the next time he looked at the landscape the shadows were long and the overpowering heat had been drained from the sky. But you could have still fried an egg on a rock without any trouble.

It was the bay that woke him.

It was still whinnying when he reached full consciousness.

Instinct, experience, call it what you like, but some warning in him caused the hair on his neck to stand on end. Real danger was mighty close to him. The bay, which he had tied to his left wrist, suddenly flattened its ears and backed off. The mule, tied to the bay, tried hard to make a break for it. The horses were to the left and that was the way they were looking. Mcallister gave the tie-rope an extra turn around his wrist and drew the Remington. The heavy weight of the
old weapon should have been a comfort, but it wasn't much. He pushed himself to his feet, with his back close against the wall, knowing the danger could be above him. He craned his neck and stared up, but could see nothing but sandstone. He looked across the backs of the animals and saw nothing but desert. Glanced right and saw the same. But the animals knew there was danger here and they were never wrong.

He waited it out for about five minutes, during which time the animals quietened, though they never once settled down.

Mcallister decided he would have to make a move; he didn't fancy getting caught in these rocks after dark by an Apache. So he had to get into the saddle and get out of rifle range in no time at all once he was mounted.

The bay was the faster, but the mule bore the saddle. He counted the chances and played the bay.

When he moved, he moved fast.

He jumped out from the wall, heaving on the bay and turning it. As he did so, he whirled and faced up the low cliff above him, glimpsed a patch of vivid color and snapping a shot at it. In the moment of squeezing the trigger, he dived under the bay, came up the other side, heard a shot pass close overhead and fired again, this time at a brown face with the white teeth showing vividly in it. Then he was vaulting onto the bay's back, trying to turn the mule so it went in the same direction as the bay. All it did was to barge itself clumsily into the horse's shoulder and nearly bowl it over. Mcallister felt it stagger beneath him. He kicked the mule in the belly, yelling hoarsely. From the corner of his eye, he saw a dark shadow launch itself from the rocks above and in that instant Mcallister drove the spurs home savagely and the bay leapt in alarm and pain beneath him, knocking the mule out of its path.

Mcallister twisted in the saddle and drove a shot at the shadow. Like a shadow it was silent and apparently immune to hurt. It charged right into the face of his fire. Mcallister clamped his right arm across his body and fired at that charging, hunched-up figure, the bay frightened and stepping sideways now, the mule on the other side pulling on its line with all its strength, ready to bolt.

One of the shots went home. But the charging man did no more than break step before he came on again. As the
hammer of the Remington clicked on an empty chamber, Mcallister hurled the weapon into the contorted savage face and launched himself after it.

As soon as he touched the man, his hands slipped over the fat-laden skin. He fell sideways, hurting his leg agonisingly. At once the Indian was on him. Something as hard as rock almost shattered McAllister's right shoulder and he knew the man carried a stone-headed war-club.

Mcallister rolled desperately, first one way, then the other, heard the club strike ground and felt himself come up against the soft skin of the man's boots. These he embraced, driving his shoulder into the ankles with all his strength. The man cried out and went down. Keeping one arm around the thrashing legs, Mcallister plucked his knife from his belt, vainly trying to hamstring the man. All he gained was a kick in the teeth, that nearly stunned him. The warrior got free and reared to his feet, stamping down on Mcallister who rolled and drove to his feet, knife hand extended in a lunge for the man's belly. But his right leg failed him and he stumbled to his knee.

The Indian made a quick thrust with the head of his club, having no time for a full swing and Mcallister was able to catch hold of the haft of the weapon in his left hand and heave the man toward him. The impact was bone-shaking and Mcallister almost gave under it, but he managed to twist the club and heave the man past him, turning awkwardly for a thrust with the knife to the ribs. He felt the blade grate home on bone and the man's sob of pain. Hurling the warrior from him, he got to his feet and met the rush that showed the man was as fresh and strong as he was when he had started.

The light was so poor now that Mcallister felt rather than saw the descending stone of the club-head, barely had time to sidestep and kicked savagely at the Indian's legs. The man adeptly avoided the kick, caught Mcallister by his shirt, turned his back on Mcallister and hurled him over his head. The fall almost finished McAllister. The Indian retained his grip on the cloth and kicked him in the head. His senses reeling, Mcallister rolled, got himself free of the grip and charged back blindly into the fray. He managed to get his head under the other's chin in a ramrod movement that shook the savage to his doeskin boots and stabbed at the
brown body with an insane and, he feared, final burst of energy.

As the blade lacerated his flesh, the man gave a muffled cry, stepped back and swung the club, striking Mcallister in the chest. Mcallister seized the club and wrenched it from the failing grip. The man clung to the wrist-loop, but was quickly kicked free of it. But the man was not finished. He came in again at once and Mcallister knew that his weapon was now a knife. He warded the first lunging blow with a wrist and brought his own knife up from his knees into the belly.

The Apache exhaled in a long, sobbing sigh and leaned on Mcallister for support. Mcallister heaved him free and drove the knife into the heart right up to the hilt so that the meeting of the quillon with the ribs jarred his arm to the elbow.