The Law of the Trigger (13 page)

“You don't have to see too well to locate a battle.”

“Well,” Owen said grimly, “we'll have to end the battle.” He checked the carbine and reloaded his revolver. “You stay here. I'll be back before long.” Dunc started to protest, but Owen had already slipped around the boulder and disappeared in the brush.

The guns up ahead ripped the night wide open. Quickly Dunc blasted his shotgun at the flashes, then grabbed his ancient revolver and emptied it. Suddenly it was quiet again.

Dunc felt weak, and the sweat was cold on his face. He peered into the darkness until his eyes began to jump, but there was no sign of the marshal anywhere. What the hell's he tryin' to do? Dunc raged to himself. Does he
want
to get his fool self killed?

The seconds dragged slowly by and little ripples of nervousness crawled up Dunc Lester's back as he reloaded shotgun and revolver. Seconds were getting more precious all the time. Why did I ever get in this mess in the first place? he wondered angrily. And for a moment his cornered savagery went out in all directions, and he hated Toller and Ike Brunner alike. Now that fool marshal's got himself killed, he thought. And the old deputy's shot in the groin and can't move. What the hell am I goin' to do?

Then his sharp, trained ears picked up a whisper of sound in the darkness, a gentle, almost silent movement of stones and brush. Dunc's rage deserted him and he felt only relief. Toller was out there somewhere, still alive.

Still the seconds ticked away. They were tied to this particular piece of ground. Brunner's men wouldn't let them leave. All they could do was wait for the rest of the gang to find them. And that would be the end.

But Dunc had recovered from his moment of panic. For one wild moment he had considered desertion, but he had recognized the impossibility of such action, simply because he had so much at stake here, too much to run away from.

Several yards in front of Dunc Lester, Owen lay perfectly still, hardly breathing, in a dark thicket of scrubby blackjack. A short distance away Brunner's men were waiting, but Owen could not see them. Vaguely he could make out the shapes of many boulders, but there was no way of knowing behind which boulders the gunmen were waiting. I've come as far as I can, he thought, without giving myself away.

He reached out with his right hand and found a small stone the size of his fist. His rage lay tight within him like a coiled steel spring, and he thought, I hope Dunc's ready. I hope he doesn't shoot me in the back.

Then he flipped the stone over to his right and suddenly the darkness was ripped and torn by gunfire. Owen smiled bitterly, spotting the two guns and the boulder, and then the noise was compounded by the bellowing of Dunc Lester's shotgun, and then by the boy's revolver. In that brief interval of quiet, before Dunc could start up again, Owen leaped to his feet and rushed the boulder recklessly.

To make things worse, the moon chose that particular moment to appear again, and Owen experienced the brief terror of a man racing naked through a nightmare. But perhaps, after all, the moon was the thing that saved him. Dunc Lester held his fire and Owen crashed through the brush with all the noise of a range cow in stampede.

The sudden noise and his abrupt appearance in white moonlight must have startled the two gunmen for just an instant, and an instant was all that Owen asked for. Suddenly before him loomed the flushed, youngish face of one of the gang members. He's just a kid, Owen thought. But there was no time to think of it further. Surprised, the young man curled back his lips in rage and swung his heavy saddle gun to face the charge.

He did not get to complete the turn. Owen triggered Deland's carbine once, and the face fell away.

Another man appeared from behind the boulder, and this one was also young and angry, and his hair was the color of burnished copper. Owen knew that this must be Wes Longstreet, for his pale blue eyes held the bitterness of great age, although his body was young and tough.

Snarling, the young hothead fired once with a revolver, and the heavy slug smashed sickeningly against the boulder. With elaborate deliberateness that came of long experience in deadly matters, Owen let Wes have the first wild shot, and then he gently squeezed the grip of the carbine, firing from the hip, but carefully, and he knew that it was over.

As it sometimes happened, even among older and more experienced men than Owen Toller, a sickness rose up inside him and left him weak and sweating. It was all over. Only the echoes of the shooting remained in the hills. Owen let himself sag against the cold bulk of stone and wondered vacantly how long it had been since he was last forced to kill a man. This was something a man never got used to.

“Marshal!” Dunc Lester called, his voice high-pitched and excited.

“Yes,” Owen answered wearily.

“Are you all right?”

Dunc, holding his shotgun across his chest, came crashing through the waist-high growth of brush. He stared at Owen as though he had never see him before. He looked down at one of the sprawled bodies.

“Wes Longstreet,” he said with a touch of awe. “Wes was a quick man with a gun.”

“But excitable,” Owen said flatly.

Together they left the two bodies and found the third several yards down the slope, this one riddled with buckshot from Dunc's shotgun. “Homer Clinkscale,” Dunc said.

He walked a little more heavily and his shoulders were not quite so straight as they went back to see about Arch Deland.

The old deputy lay exactly as Owen had put him, his faded eyes gazing blankly at the dark underbellies of the flying clouds. “It's over?” he asked weakly.

“Yes,” Owen said.

Deland smiled. “You haven't lost your touch, Owen.” The ex-marshal and the hill boy knelt beside the deputy. Death stared frankly and unafraid from Deland's old eyes. Owen said, “Dunc, break open the packs and tie the tarps together for a sling stretcher. I'll cut some poles.” A kind of vague outrage appeared on the deputy's face.

“Don't be a fool, Owen!” His voice was little more than a whisper. “I'm done for and you know it.” With great effort he moved one hand and let it fall across his chest. Dunc got up and began to open the packs.

Deland said, “Get out of here, Owen, you and the boy. Ike will have the gang on top of you in a matter of minutes.”

“He's got no shooting to guide him now. He can't find us in the dark.”

“He'll find you,” he said, as though this were the one ling in the world that he was sure of.

Owen wouldn't let himself think of that. For the moment he dismissed Ike Brunner from his mind and thought only of his old friend. I shouldn't have let him come! he accused himself. But it was too late for accusations; somehow they had to get Arch to a place where they could care for him. Slowly he got to his feet and tried to establish their position in his mind. Once he had known these hills as well as an outsider could ever know them... but that was five years ago. The few old-timers-men like Mort Stringer, whom he might have counted on-were now gone from this country or dead.

“Dunc,” he said at last, “don't you have any friends you can trust?”

Owen could feel the bitterness of the boy's grin. “I guess Gabe Tanis was the closest friend I had.”

“How about Manley Cooper, the man whose place was burned out? He sure can't have much love for the Brunners. Do you think he'd help us?”

“Maybe, if we could find him. But he's probably headed toward Arkansas with his family by this time.” Then the boy frowned, worrying at the beginning of a thought. “I remember,” he said, “that old Cooper had a brother down south of here.”

“Do you think he'd put us up until Arch gets better?”

Dunc shrugged. “That depends on how strong he stands with Ike. It wouldn't hurt to try, though. We have to head in that direction anyway, unless you want to go right over the top of Killer Ridge.”

It seemed as though a shell of numbness had closed around Owen's brain. He had lost all interest in Ike Brunner; he no longer remembered the principles that had driven him into these hills in search of a killer. He wanted to forget that they had been important to him.

He borrowed Dunc Lester's knife and found two spruce saplings, long and reasonably straight, for stretcher poles. He worked steadily, cutting and trimming and notching until his work-toughened palms were raw.

At every step Owen expected to hear Brunner's horsemen charging down on top of them, but the night remained mysteriously silent, disturbed only by their stumbling and tortured breathing. At seemingly regular intervals, Owen, who carried the forepart of the stretcher, blundered into tall boulders, or stumbled in thickets and over rocks, and once he fell sprawling into a dry wash and Arch Deland rolled limply from the stretcher. At some point in that endless night the deputy had passed into unconsciousness.

At last it seemed that they had become lost in space and time, and had somehow blundered onto a devil's treadmill that had no beginning and no hope of an end. Reason had lost its power and only instinct was left to them; the instinct of the hunted. For a long time Owen worried at the riddle of the silent hills. Where were Brunner and the gang? Certainly someone had heard the firing and known that something was wrong. Owen had prepared himself for the dangerous game of run and hide and run again, trusting to the night for protection. But the gang did not come.

In some perverse way this worried him more than an attack would have done. Ike was not deliberately letting them escape-of that he was certain.

Eventually, as the eastern hills became capped with the first light of dawn, they were forced to stop for several minutes of rest. They sprawled on the cool ground beneath a dark umbrella of pine and dragged huge quantities of air into their lungs. Finally Owen shoved himself to his knees, and only then did he notice that his palms were bloody hooks still shaped to fit the stretcher poles. Deland's old face sagged in uneasy rest. His forehead was hot; his lips were cracked and dry. The deputy did not move when Owen spoke to him. “How is he?” Dunc asked. “Feverish. But his heart seems strong.” Dunc looked at his own bloody hands for a moment, then sat up and studied the grayish hills. “We slipped off the trace,” he said. “We'll have to bear more to the west.” But that wasn't the thing that bothered him. He got to his feet and walked unsteadily to a small rise and again studied those dark-green mounds that seemed to grow slowly out of the darkness. “I wish I knew what Ike was up to,” he said. He waved his arm in a wide arc from east to west. “They're out there somewhere.”

Owen frowned. “You don't see anything, do you?”

“I don't have to.” Then he added, “My ma came from Indian stock,” as if to explain how he knew.

And Owen could not dispute it, for he had had the same feeling for hours.

“You know what I think. Marshal?” Dunc asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer. “I think the gang must have found Wes Longstreet's party and Ike's developed a sudden respect for lowland shootin'. Maybe that's why they're hangin' back, maybe they're playin' for time.”

Owen did not wholly agree, but this did not lessen his respect for Dunc's judgment of hillpeople. He asked, “What else do you think, Dunc?”

“Well, it's just guessin', of course, but I figure maybe Ike's beginnin' to have trouble holdin' the gang together. We counted eighteen men yesterday, and he used to have thirty or more. Now with Longstreet and Fulsom and Clinkscale dead, he's left with fifteen. Ike's no coward, but he's smart, and he won't risk losing any more men if he thinks he can take us without a fight.”

Owen thought about this, thinking the boy might be right. The gang's morale was going to take a drop when they found those three bodies, but he still didn't know how Brunner meant to take them without a fight.

At last they took up the stretcher and resumed their stumbling march to the south. Owen's only thought was for Arch Deland; not until he got the wounded deputy to safety could he turn his mind to Ike Brunner.

If Dunc Lester had thoughts of his own, he did not voice them. For good or bad, he had thrown in with the marshal, and this seemed no time to split their meager forces.

Near noon both men fell in exhaustion. “We'll never make it,” Dunc Lester said hoarsely.

“How far is it?”

“A mile. Maybe two. I don't think I can lift that stretcher again.”

“We'll make it,” Owen rasped.

They lay quiet, soothed by the sound of running water. Finally they staggered to the bank of a narrow stream and drank their fill of cold, iron-tasting water. Owen filled his hat and took it back to the stretcher, where he dribbled a few drops between the deputy's cracked lips and bathed his hot face.

Dunc Lester watched dispassionately. He had liked Arch Deland, but the old man was as good as dead. It seemed a criminal waste of time and effort to use yourself up on a dead man.

But Owen closed his eyes and senses to the things that Dunc Lester saw and knew. The skin of Deland's face had gone yellow, as dry as parchment. The eyes were glazed, the breathing shallow, the heart fluttery.

Owen would not see these things. Arch, he told himself,
had
escaped death a thousand times, and he would escape it this time. He would not consider the enormous odds against them; he had to believe that Deland would pull through once they got him to a place where he could be cared for. And that was what he believed.

Owen took hold of his end of the stretcher. “You ready, son?”

Dunc shook his head, not in a negative response, but in bewilderment at the marshal's unreasoning singleness of purpose. And yet it was that very thing about the marshal that made Dunc believe that there was a bare chance that they might come out of this alive. He abandoned the hope of bringing in Ike Brunner. All he wanted now was escape, and he knew that he must depend on Owen Toller's strength for that. Slowly he bent down, took the bloody stretcher poles in his raw hands, and lifted.

It was midafternoon when they finally sighted the Cooper cabin. They eased the stretcher to the ground and Dunc said, “Maybe I'd better go on ahead and see how things stand.”

Owen nodded, then sat beside the stretcher and fanned the flies and insects away from Deland's masklike face. He thought, It's almost over, Arch. Soon we'll have you fixed up with a bed and some food and maybe even some white hill whisky. He deliberately ignored any possibility that Ike Brunner might disrupt his plans.

He watched Dunc Lester walk unsteadily down the long green slope. The cabin, a sturdy boxlike structure of logs and mud, was set in a lush draw between two hills. Behind the cabin there was an outhouse, a stockade shed, and perhaps five acres of broken land. Tender shoots of corn and green tobacco grew out of the reddish earth, but Owen noticed that the young crop had grown up in weeds and that the shed was empty. There was no sign of livestock of any kind, and the only show of life was a ribbon of wood smoke curling up from the mud chimney.

Dunc disappeared around the back of the cabin and several minutes passed. Then two men appeared in the yard and began the climb up the long slope. One man was thick and heavy, his work-rounded shoulders hunched powerfully as he plodded forward. The other was loose-jointed and gangly, and he walked with the spring of youth, on the balls of his feet. Both men carried long-barreled shotguns in the crooks of their arms. They walked directly to the stretcher, and there was caution and distrust in their eyes as they looked first at Owen and then at the unconscious deputy. The younger man rested the stock of his shotgun on the ground and shook his head. “He sure looks like a goner to me.”

The older man had his thoughtful eyes fixed on Owen. “Young Lester claims you're a marshal from Reunion.” It was more an accusation than a statement.

“Just a deputy,” Owen said heavily. “My friend here has been hurt. Could we put him up at your cabin for a while?”

“You got Ike Brunner's bunch after you?”

Owen saw that lying would not help. He nodded. “Yes, I guess we have.”

“Then we can't help you,” the man said shortly. “Nobody can.” He looked tired; there were deep lines of weariness around his eyes and around his mouth. “You can't fight Ike Brunner. I know.”

“I'll fight him,” Owen said flatly, rising to his feet, “When the time comes.”

Surprisingly, the man laughed. “It looks like you haven't had much luck so far.” Suddenly the laughter went out of him and grimness took its place. “My name's Harve Cooper, and this here's my boy, Morris. We haven't got much use for outsiders, Marshal... but then, we're not exactly friends of Ike Brunner's, either. So I guess you can use the cabin if you want to. Me and my boy won't be here much longer, anyway.”

With a physical effort Owen pulled himself out of his exhaustion and studied the faces before him. In their eyes he saw suspicion and anger and fear. “Do you mean,” Owen asked slowly, “that Ike is forcing you out of the hills?”

“Mister,” Morris Cooper said, “when Ike Brunner tells you to do somethin', you do it.”

What surprised Owen was the tone of pride in the young man's voice. Although he hated Ike Brunner, he received satisfaction in the knowledge that the gang leader could not be taken by an outsider.

“That's enough talk,” Harve Cooper said sharply to his son. “Give me a hand with the stretcher.”

The two Coopers placed their shotguns across Arch Deland's chest, took up the stretcher, and began a slow, steady march toward the cabin. Owen did not offer to help; he felt that the last of his strength had slipped away from him, and he followed behind, stumbling like a drunken man.

When they reached the cabin yard, Owen became aware of the rank, sourish odor of a whisky still off in the trees somewhere, and then he saw how the place had been stripped of everything that could be moved. All the rugged, hand-hewn furniture had been moved out of the cabin, along with clothing and bedding, cooking pots, and a conglomeration of plows and tintype pictures and hand-loomed rugs, all the things that a family gathers over a period of years. Everything was stacked outside now and the cabin was bare.

The two Coopers took Deland into the cabin and put him down in front of the fireplace, where Dunc Lester was waiting. “I reckon the rest is up to you, Marshal,” Harve Cooper said, and he and his son walked out to the yard. “He doesn't look much better,” Dunc Lester said, kneeling beside the stretcher.

“At least he can rest,” Owen said heavily. But he knew that would not be enough. At last reality began closing in around him and he felt his own helplessness. “If we only had a horse, maybe I could get Doc Linnwood in Reunion.”

“If we had a horse, and if Ike Brunner would let you through, and if Deland wasn't goin' to die before sundown anyway, maybe we'd have a chance,” Dunc said, facing the cruel wall of facts.

“How can you be so sure he'll die?” Owen demanded angrily.

“I've seen the look before. There's nothin' we can do.” Then Harve Cooper came through the doorway carrying a red chunk of venison haunch and an iron pot half filled with water. “I had this meat ripenin' in the woods,” he said, “but I guess I won't be needin' it now.”

“Thanks,” Owen said. “A strong broth is what Arch needs; that will snap him out of it.”

Cooper hung the pot on a hook in the fireplace. He glanced briefly at Deland, shrugged, and walked out again. “I've been thinkin',” Dunc said quietly. “I had a little talk with Morris Cooper and he told me how things were here. Remember Manley Cooper's place, the one that was burned out? Well, it seems like Ike tried to bring Manley in with the gang, seein' as he lived so close to their hide-out. But Manley wouldn't listen.”

“Did Ike kill him?” Owen asked vacantly.

“I don't think so. The family got out before the place was burned. But it's like I was afraid of; Harve and Morris are afraid Ike Brunner'll turn on them because of Manley.”

Owen had guessed this much. “Yes. They're afraid of Ike, so they run.”

“Sure they run!” Dunc's eyes flashed in quick anger. “My own family ran, because they had enough sense to know you can't fight a gang like Ike's! If I'd had any sense myself I never would have come back here!”

“Where would you have gone?” Owen asked quietly.

“Anywhere. A man doesn't
have
to live in these hills.”

“And what about Leah Stringer? She knows that Ike killed her father; she could testify to it if Ike ever came to trial. Do you think Ike is going to forget a thing like that?”

“I don't care whether he forgets or not! Leah and I can go where he can't find us.”

Owen looked at him. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I guess maybe you could.”

“All right,” Dunc went on, dropping some of his anger. “This is what I've been thinkin'. Harve had his brother take a load of the stuff and the womenfolks down to the foothills yesterday, and he's supposed to bring the wagon back today and pick up the rest of it. The furniture and stuff they've got piled outside. Now Ike's got nothing special against Harve and Morris, so he'll probably let them get through. What's to keep us from hidin' in the wagon and goin' with them?”

“The ride would kill Arch,” Owen said.

“He's goin' to die anyway, Marshal! I tell you this is our one chance to get out of these hills alive!”

Owen walked to the door and stared out at the green peaks. They did not frighten him now, and he knew that he was not going back without Ike Brunner. He had reached a point-because of exhaustion, perhaps-where he was no longer angered at people who would not fight for their own rights, but this did not lessen the drive within him. The actions of the Coopers and the Lesters could not change him from the kind of man he was. “All right, Dunc,” he said. “You go with the Coopers.”