The Savage Trail (11 page)

He expected one of them might lie flat next to the rocky outcropping to steady himself for the first shot. So far he was only seeing those blinding glints of sunlight bouncing off rifle barrels.

Three hundred yards, John figured, and his hands were sweating. His pistol was still in his holster, but he was ready to draw and cock whenever it was time.

Two hundred yards and closing, he thought. Perspiration dripped down from his armpits, soaking through the back of his shirt. He wiped his forehead and hunkered down slightly, peering past Gent's neck straight at the outcropping.

He heard Ben clear his throat and then spit again.

It was quiet except for the soft thud of the horses' hooves on dry ground, or the crunch of a twig, the rustle of sage. Even the quail were silent, and there wasn't a bird or a hawk in the sky.

The mountain shadows rose higher and higher and John could measure the sun's height just by looking beyond the rocks.

When he thought he was close to a hundred yards from the site of the ambush, John drew his pistol.

“When I start running, Ben, you stay right with me.”

“We're gettin' mighty close, I figger.”

“You might hear one of them shoot.”

“I hope this works.”

“So do I,” John said to himself.

How long were they going to wait before they took a shot? John wondered.

A hundred yards. He could almost feel the sights of a rifle on him. He lowered himself until his head was directly behind Gent's neck.

The rocky spires and the stones stood out red and clear in the full blaze of sunlight. Behind the rocks, shadows. Movement.

He saw the snout of a rifle slide alongside one of the spires, its muzzle pointed straight at him.

“Now,” John shouted and dug his spurs into Gent's flanks.

The horse rocketed beneath him and leaped into a full gallop,his head stretched out, ears flat, lips peeled back to brace the wind. John hugged the horse's neck, his head resting gentlyon its shoulder.

He drew his pistol, cocked it, held it tight against his leg. Below him, the ground blurred past. Beneath the pounding hoofbeats he could hear the thunder of his own heart, feel his throbbing pulse in his ears.

Next, he heard a loud
crack!
, like a bullwhip snapping the air.

Over his head, John heard the hiss of a bullet as it passed a foot above him.

Then there was another rifle shot and a bullet thudded into the earth below him, between Gent's legs, plowing a foot-long furrow before it struck a rock.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ben and Dynamite, a half-length off to his left. Dynamite was tearing up the distance,eyes rolling wide open so that the whites gave him the look of madness.

Thirty yards they covered, John figured, then forty, and three rifles boomed in less than three seconds. A bullet sizzled past his ear like an angry hornet and his throat went dry. He looked toward the rocks and saw how close they were.

Repeating rifles, he thought. A Henry, maybe a couple of lighter Winchesters, all .44s, each bullet with enough lead to smash a man's heart to a pulp, flatten like a hammer when it struck bone, splintering a man's ribs into slivers.

The men behind the rocks stepped out, rifles at their shoulders.

John saw them, judged them to be less than thirty yards away. He raised his pistol, took aim, and fired at the man most in the open.

His bullet went wild, but all three men crouched and fired at him or at Ben.

He heard the bark of Ben's pistol and saw a chunk of rock break off one of the spires. There was a glimmer of red dust as some of the particles disintegrated into powder.

“Get the bastards!” a man shouted.

“Kill 'em,” another yelled, jacking a cartridge into his rifle's firing chamber.

John swung his pistol on another man who had his rifle to his shoulder. He squeezed the trigger, felt the pistol buck in his hand.

Bullets whined as they skidded off rocks as Ben and John fired as fast as they could cock and pull the triggers of their pistols. The acrid smell of exploding gunpowder filled the air.

John knew he was ten or twelve yards from the rocks where the bushwhackers had waited for them.

Smoke wafted from the rifles and pistols.

He saw one of the men buckle as a bullet smashed into his midsection.

He heard a
thunk
and saw Ben's horse falter, stagger, and drop to its knees. Ben vaulted over the horse in a somersault and hit the ground, kicking up a cloud of reddish dust.

As one of the men swung his rifle to bear on Ben, John shot him. He saw his head explode like a melon, spraying blood and brain mush onto one of the spires. The man went down like a sack of lead sash weights.

One rifleman still stood there, his body partially concealed behind a rock.

That man, Roscoe Bender, swung his rifle toward Savage and took deadly aim.

John reined in Gent, pulling the bit so tight he knew he must be cutting the horse's mouth. The horse skidded to a stop and John bailed out of the saddle.

The sky, the mountains, the rocks, and the land twisted in a blinding blur. All time seemed to stop on the brittle cusp of eternity. He felt his feet hit hard ground and a shock went through his body. His legs went numb as he waited for a .44 slug to blow out his brains and obliterate all thought, all memory,all breath, all precious, fleeting life.

15

Even though john's senses were scrambled, spinning like a whirligig, and his brain jolted off its axis, he brought his pistolup and leveled it at the head of Roscoe Bender.

“Mister, you either lower that rifle or I squeeze this trigger.”

John knew it was a bold statement. The man's face was just a blur to him. The man had three heads, none of them in focus. But John held his front blade sight on the center image and it would take only a tick of his finger to bring the hammer down on a loaded .45 cartridge.

Bender's eyes narrowed. He looked at the pistol in Savage's hand. He saw the glitter of silver on the barrel, the rich bluing, the steady hand, the cocked hammer.

“You-you won't shoot me?” Bender stammered.

“Not if you lay your rifle down real quick.”

John heard a groan from Ben, but he did not look to see if his friend was all right. He concentrated on keeping his arm straight and steady and holding an unblinking gaze on the man with the rifle. He had no idea if the other two men were dead or alive.

Slowly, the rifle began to drop away from Bender's shoulder.

“Just let it drop to the ground, mister,” John said. “Then step away.”

Bender hesitated.

“I don't know if I can trust you,” Bender said.

“I'm the only one you can trust. Better do it now. I got a hair trigger on this pistol and I just have to hiccup and you're a dead man.”

Bender lowered the rifle another six inches.

John's jaw tightened and his eyes widened until they were as black as the twin barrels of a shotgun.

Bender eased the hammer down to half cock and dropped the rifle on the ground. Then he slung an arm up in front of his face to shield his eyes from the blazing sun at John's back.

“Now step away,” John ordered. “I won't shoot you.”

Bender took two steps away from the fallen rifle.

“That damned sun,” Bender said.

John heard a low groan and his gaze shifted to one of the men on the ground. Kerrigan was doubled up, both hands holding his stomach. His hands were drenched with blood. He writhed in agony, his eyes closed against the glare of the sunlight.

“Who's that?” John asked.

“Name's Kerrigan.”

“Your name?”

“Roscoe. Roscoe Bender.”

“Who put you up to this, Bender?”

Bender did not answer.

John stepped closer to Bender. Roscoe's eyes were fixed on the pistol in Savage's hand.

“If you live long enough, you can give Ollie Hobart back whatever he paid you. Not that it'll do him any good. He's goingto Boot Hill.”

“Me, too, I reckon,” Bender said.

John gave Bender a look of contempt. The man was wettinghis pants.

“No, you're going to have to live with yourself awhile longer, Bender.”

Ben was sitting up, holding his head with both hands.

“Cripes,” Ben said, his voice a rasp in his throat.

“You all right, Ben?”

“I'll live, I reckon. Poor Dynamite. I think his leg's broke.”

Ben crabbed over to his horse. Dynamite was lying on his side, holding a foreleg up. The leg and hoof were bloody. A black hole oozed blood just below his kneecap.

“You owe that man a horse, Bender. Maybe yours if he likes it. Where did you hide them?”

Bender pointed a thumb over his shoulder.

Kerrigan looked up at Savage with a cockeyed gaze. His hand slid away from his belly, crawled down to the butt of his pistol.

John swept his gaze away from Bender for a moment, fixed on Kerrigan.

“You won't live a second past the minute you touch the butt of that pistol,” John said.

Kerrigan hesitated.

“Don't do it, Roy,” Bender said, a tremor in his throat.

“I-I . . .” Kerrigan started to say, when a shudder rippled through his body. “I-I ain't dyin' . . .”

That was all he said. His right hand dropped to his pistol. He started to pull it from its holster. For being shot up as he was, he was pretty fast, John thought.

But not fast enough.

John's pistol moved like a striking snake.

The barrel swung on Kerrigan. John squeezed the trigger, just a slight flick of his finger, and the hammer dropped. The pistol bellowed a deafening roar.

The .45 spit out sparks, a brief orange flame and seventy grains of lead. The pistol's recoil slammed into John's palm, but he held the barrel steady after the shot. He thumbed back the hammer so quick, the snick of the mechanism was muffled by the explosion.

Kerrigan ate the lead as it smashed through his teeth and into his mouth. Shards of teeth crumbled from his lips. The ball slammed into his spine at the back of his throat. There was an ugly smacking sound, the sound of bone breaking. He stiffened.His hand went slack and the pistol hung there, half out of its holster. His eyes glazed over with the final frost of death, fixed on a point just above John's head, and stared lifeless into eternity.

“Stranger, you don't think long on a thing, do you?” Bendersaid.

“I gave him fair warning,” John said.

Ben got to his feet, stood on wobbly legs. The side of his face looked like raw meat where the stones and pebbles had ripped off hide. The red-streaked lines oozed droplets of blood.

“You did, at that,” Bender said.

“You were hoping he was quicker than me, Bender. I could see it in your eyes.”

“My eyes are plumb burned out from that sun. You took a chance riding in on us like that.”

“Hard to look square at the sun and not go blind,” John said.

“Lucky,” Bender said.

Ben looked down at Dynamite. His feet were planted, but his upper body weaved like a snake charmer's cobra.

“John, look at Dynamite. I can see bone sticking out. His leg's plumb shattered. You gonna shoot that bastard or keep jawin' with him?”

Savage saw a shadow flicker in Bender's eyes. Bender swallowed and his Adam's apple made the skin on his throat quiver.

“You-you gave me your word, mister,” Bender said, his voice pitched almost to a squeak.

“And what do you think my word's worth, Bender? What's yours worth?”

“Out here, that's about all a man's got, is his word, I reckon.”

“And sometimes a man's word isn't worth a dollop of cowshit,” Ben said. “That bastard ruined Dynamite. I got to put him down.”

“I know, Ben,” John said. “I'll do it for you, if you want.”

“No, damn it. I'll do it. I just don't like that feller standing there smug as a possum in a basket of persimmons while old Dynamite's got a busted leg.”

“Bender's going to give you his horse, Ben. He's going to take us where he hobbled them. We'll have two more to sell.”

“What about him?” Ben asked.

“He's going to walk back to Cheyenne and think about some things.”

“What things?” Bender said, a quaver in his voice.

“You maybe might start with life and death, you sonofabitch.”

Ben cradled Dynamite's head in his arms and put the pistol up to his left eye.

“So long, pard,” Ben husked. “You been a good horse to me.”

When the shot came, Bender and John both jumped. The report sounded like a cannon going off. Blood spurted from Dynamite's eye and peppered Ben's face so that it looked as if he had broken out with a severe case of measles. Tears streamed down his face and he gently let the horse's head down. Dynamite's high legs kicked out and twitched for a secondor two. Then stopped.

“Jesus, Ben,” John said. “I'm sorry as hell.”

Ben stood up, wiped the blood on his pistol barrel into the cloth of his trousers. He ejected the empty hulls and reloaded, holstered his pistol.

“Let's see about them horses,” Ben said, his voice laden with gravel. “And then let's shoot this bastard's legs out from under him.”

John looked at Ben as if seeing him for the first time.

“Ben, you ain't the killin' kind. Until now. What's changed?”

“I can't stand to see an animal suffer. 'Specially one I loved like a brother.”