McAllister (5 page)

Suddenly the led horse reared and whinnied. The upward and backward movement was so violent that Mcallister was nearly torn from his feet. He heaved the horse down onto all fours and the animal started backing hard, rolling his eyes in terror. Mcallister dropped the line, the animal whirled, ran a few yards then halted as it started to stumble on the rein. Mcallister turned fast and went ahead.

As he rounded a rock, he saw the pinto horse.

It was dead.

Mcallister looked around and the hairs on his neck went as stiff as a scared dog's. There was a small bunch of grease-wood and the pony had fallen in it. There were two bullet holes in its side and one in its head. The flies were already gathering. Cautiously, Mcallister trod around the brush.

Then he found the Indian.

A strip of red flannel around the long coarse hair, a battered stetson hat lying a short way off, red shirt spotted with white torn and bloodied in two places where the bullets had entered and taken away the savage life. The powerful mouth was still wide in its last defiant yell. The man's rifle had been broken off at the stock as he fell and the two pieces lay on either side of him.

Mcallister looked up and found the Navajo searching the surrounding country anxiously with his eyes. The big man whistled, got the Indian's attention and beckoned him down.

As José slid down from his mount, he gazed at the dead Indian in amazement. Then he saw the pinto and showed his rage.

“Look at those holes in his chest,” Mcallister said. “He was shot from ground level. How long do you reckon he's been dead?”

The Navajo took a close look at the wounds.

“Four-five smokes maybe.”

Mcallister agreed with that. He guessed that they hadn't heard the shots because of the broken nature of the ground.

“Take a scout around.”

Mcallister searched to the left and José to the right. It was not long before the Indian's low call brought him on the run to find José standing over clear sign. Here a man had lain in the rocks and fired a rifle. Several empty shell cases from a 30-30 rifle and a half-finished smoke, heel marks in the sand. The man had worn boots. Which proved nothing because Apaches were fond of the whiteman's boot. After further search they found the spots where three other men had also waited. Two of them had fired. One with a rifle and the other with a belt-gun.

“These're whitemen,” Mcallister said. The placing of the feet as they had walked away from their hiding-places showed that plain.

They collected the horses and followed the sign till they came to where the four men had left their horses. It was a good distance from where the Apache had died, showing that they had feared that the horses would smell the Indian and give alarm.

Mcallister squatted, the now burning sun driving into his back so that his whole body felt as though it were desiccated. He was perturbed. Why he didn't know. Four whitemen had killed an Apache and he should be glad of that. But he wasn't. He kept thinking of Franchon and somehow his illogical mind tied the gunman in with these men. He had nothing to go on, of course, but that was what his mind did for him.

“Mount up and let's get back,” he said.

Both men forked their horses and turned them, neither of
them sorry to be heading back into the company of friends

At that moment it seemed that something hit Mcallister in his right thigh and smashed it.

First There was a stunning pain, then the sound of the gun echoing and booming through the gullies. The thin bay horse staggered, tried to rear and fell over on its side.

As it hit the ground, Mcallister was doing his best to stop himself being crushed by the animal. The wind was knocked out of him and his right leg was suddenly numbed, but that instinct to survive drove him in the attempt. But it failed. He felt the crushing weight of the horse catch his foot and hold it.

He had a vague impression of José lashing at his animal with his rein ends, rocks scattered right and left and the Indian disappeared from his dim view.

The sun ripped its hot rays clean into McAllister's eyeballs as he tried to look at the ridge above and a rifle cracked. The bay horse, struggling to rise, screamed and became an inert dead weight on McAllister's foot. With all his strength the man tried to use his free leg to lever the animal up enough for him to free his foot, but this was his right leg and he could see the blood already seeping from it to soak the upper part of the pants' leg.

The rifle sounded again and the dust spurted viciously into his face, choking him. Grinding his teeth against the pain that encompassed both legs, he heaved the Remington from his belt and tried to see the ridge through the blinding glare of the sun. He might as well have been blind. But he fired the gun just the same.

Then he knew that there was more than one man up there. The air around him became alive with those leaden birds of teeth as they searched him out.

When the angry burst had died down and he found to his astonishment that he was still alive, he heard José shouting to him in Spanish.

“Be ready,
amigo
, I am coming back for you.”

Mcallister wrenched his head around and almost shrieked—

“No … no … my foot … I can't move.”

He started trying to reach the Henry rifle in the boot, straining through the red veil of pain that enveloped him. A bullet hit the horn of the saddle and sang away into the brazen sky. But he got a hand on the butt and falling back with the full weight of his body, heaved it clear of leather. Nearly fainting from the pain, he got to work trying to lever the horse from his ankle, working with feverish and desperate haste.

He heard a clatter of hoofs and glanced up to see José whooping savagely into view about a hundred yards away. The rifles above went insane, lead and sandstone chips filled the air around him. He didn't know how he or the Indian could survive in such a holocaust. With a last frantic heave on the rifle barrel that brought the sweat of suffering welling from him, he lifted the horse an inch and pulled out his leg. Hastily thrusting the pistol into his belt and toting the rifle in his right hand he swung to meet the charging horseman.

The Navajo's left hand held the mule's coarse mane, his knees held the sweating hide like a vice as he leaned over in the traditional Indian manner of picking up wounded and horseless men.

The riflemen tried for him, but some guardian angel must have been by his side. He thundered past McAllister, gripped his arm and leaned his weight against the whiteman's. Mcallister was torn off his feet and whirled violently as he made an agonising jump and buckled his game leg under him. This spoiled his jump and he nearly hurled himself over to the far side of the animal's rump. For a moment, José fought for balance, nearly thrown from his seat, but managed to stay where he was and sped on.

He hadn't gone far and the rifles were still vainly trying for them, when Mcallister said faintly in his ear, “Hold up.”

He pulled the panting horse to a halt. When he turned his head it was to see Mcallister disappearing over the tail of the horse. José dismounted hurriedly, got the horse into the cover of the rocks and returned for McAllister. The tall man was in a dead faint.

When he came round, he sat up and said—

“How long I been out?”

“No time.”

“Okay—give me that head-rag of yourn.”

The Navajo protested, but Mcallister bawled at him angrily till he complied. Mcallister quickly tied it around the upper part of his thigh, put the barrel of the Remington in the slack of the tourniquet and turned. When the flow of blood from his wound had subsided, he said, “Good.” He then tore a square of cloth from his under-vest, padded the wound with it and tied his bandanna around the outside of his pants.

“Went clean through into the saddle. Nasty. Have to watch it, I reckon.”

“Come,” José said, “let us go now.”

Mcallister cocked his head.

“I don't hear any shots.”

“There is no time. Come.”

Mcallister looked at him in disgust.

“I left a good saddle back there.”

“You can get another saddle, but not another life.”

“You're mighty extravagant with another man's money, ain't you now? You get on that crowbait and go tell the lieutenant what happened. I'll stick around. Don't feel up to riding with this leg, any road.”

The Indian protested that he did not want to leave his friend. Mcallister said, okay, let him stick around and they'd smoke those polecats out of there. But José wasn't enthusiastic about that either.

“Leave me water and git, then.”

The big Indian hesitated. Anger always made him say the few English words he knew.

“You … damn' fool.”

“Yeah ain't I? Now git.”

José tried again. This time in Spanish.

“There are Apache in this country.”

“The only Apache around here is a dead one.”

José was nearly weeping with rage and frustration.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Pussyfoot around those hombres up there and get their horses.”

The Navajo gave that thought. He nodded.

“I get.”

He gave Mcallister one last beseeching look and disappeared
into the rocks. The trader checked the rifle and gun for loads, loosed the tourniquet and bound the red rag tightly over his bandanna to increase the pressure on the wound. He reckoned that would hold till he had finished this chore. He wasn't a fighting man, he told himself, but once this kind of thing started, he looked to see it through to the end. Sticking the Remington in his belt, he got purchase on the rifle and heaved himself to his feet. The world rocked a little, but it steadied itself after a bit and he felt pretty good until a rifle started up again and the rock chips started flying too close for comfort. He got down on all fours and began to crawl.

He went up.

It was slow, hot and agonising work. Several times he thought he would pass out again, but he didn't because he had made up his mind that he wouldn't before he had caught up with the men who had done this to him.

Halfway up the broken ridge, he tossed rocks into the dip beneath him and made sure the riflemen were still around. They were. They acted like men with the jitters. Which seemed strange with the advantage they had against a wounded man and an Indian. It suited him.

The leg was giving him a little trouble and he guessed that age was starting to tell on him. Five years back he wouldn't have let a piece of lead through his leg to trouble him this way. He cursed, gritted his teeth and dragged that same leg as quiet as he could over the dusty surface of the
malpais.

After a while the sandstone changed to bare gray rock. It was pretty jagged in places and tore at his clothes and flesh, but a little more pain didn't count one way or the other and he pushed on till he reckoned he was getting above the riflemen in the rocks. That is, if they hadn't moved.

Those men started shouting. Their words were clear to him on the still air, bouncing back and forth against the hot rocks.

“Move in and cut him down.”

“He's moved. He ain't there.”

“Move in, damn you.”

Neither of these voices belonged to Franchon.

Loose stones rattled and the butt of a rifle thudded against rock. Mcallister raised his head cautiously above a rock and
saw a man moving slowly about fifty yards away to his left and slightly below him.

How many more were there and where were they? Was he above them all or was it possible that he could be attacked from the rear. Safer to climb a mite higher. He dragged that game leg of his another dozen yards and raised himself up on his arms to take a peek below.

The booming crash of the rifle came this time at the same instant as the lead.

Mcallister reared up on both feet, the injured leg buckled under him and he went down the grade in an untidy tumbling roll. The Henry rifle was thrown to one side and fell with a clatter.

A man's voice roared out—

“I got him. Got him with one. Come on up, you fellers, he's daid as last week's mutton.”

The marksman appeared on the rocks about thirty feet above McAllister's still form. A young man leaping with sinewy agility from boulder to boulder, carrying a small Spencer carbine. And laughing. Proud of his work.

From below came an older and wiser voice—

“You sure?”

“Sure I'm sure.”

“Be surer than that. Put a bullet through his head before you get up with him. I know that polecat.”

The man above came in closer, shouting: “I got him plumb center.”

The man below started to climb. He was thickset and bearded and the exercise was winding him badly. Another man appeared further along the ridge. The heat had got him and he drooped. His white shirt clung to his narrow back and the big .44 Colt's gun seemed too heavy for his slender hand.

Mcallister had to act as though he no longer possessed the faculty of sight. His ears were now his guides and they had to be good ones or he was a dead man.

The man who had last shot at him and who was approaching from above was the nearest and therefore the most dangerous. He carried a rifle and he might or might not have taken warning from the man below. Mcallister might or might not be near to having his brains blown out as he lay there.

The man below him was next in proximity. Say fifty feet
away. A difficult but not impossible pistol shot. But Mcallister would be hurried and in danger so the chances were he'd miss with the first.

The third man he would take as he came.

The odds didn't look so good. But there wasn't time to think of that. Only of staying alive.

The man above him had halted.

Mcallister heard the sound of the rifle being levered. He had to act now.

Hand and body moved as though worked by the same puppet string. He rolled onto his face and heaved the Remington from his belt in one move. In spite of the fact that the foresight caught in his belt, he got that gun out fast. Cocked and fired in one movement as he lined the long barrel up with the figure poised for its shot above him.