He could glimpse the ranch, but he saw no movement there, nor were there any horses in the corral. That meant that all of the riders were out.
He moved among the trees, ears tuned for the tiniest sound. He was feeling better now. His headache was gone, his senses were alert. He liked the clear, cold air, and he felt keenly the excitement of the hunt. For he was both the hunter and the hunted.
He skirted a clump of aspen, moved through its outer edge, heard a hoof strike stone, and held himself still. The sound came from somewhere down the mountain.
Near the trail he squatted on his heels and studied the ground over which he must travel, looking to left and right where he might retreat. The rock on the far side of the valley stood up like a great stone loaf, with only one long diagonal crack seaming the surface.
They were coming.
He arose soundlessly and moved ghostlike among the trees, where there were occasional boulders and rock slabs. Close to the trail, he listened for the creak of a saddle, the grunt of a climbing horse, the rattle of gear.
Only the aspen leaves whispered in the wind until…something else.
He turned swiftly, drawing as he turned. It was Dave Cherry, and he had come up, Indianlike, through the trees. He was smiling as he aimed his rifle.
The gun bucked in Ruble Noon’s fist, and he saw Dave Cherry’s face stiffen with shock. Ruble Noon fired again, and saw the gunman’s shirt marked where the bullet struck.
Cherry backed up a step and sat down hard, a look of stunned surprise on his face, and then his rifle went off, the bullet digging dirt at his feet.
The echoes richocheted among the rocks, died away, and left only silence.
In the silence Ruble Noon thumbed two cartridges into his gun.
CHAPTER 13
HE WAITED FOR a slow count of twenty, listening. Then he moved, swiftly and silently, shifting position along the mountainside, choosing a place of concealment where there seemed to be none.
There was no sound. The sudden burst of gunshots had silenced the forest. Even the aspen leaves seemed to cease their trembling. Sunlight falling through the leaves dappled the earth.
He felt good. He was ready. He could feel it in his muscles and in his even, easy breathing. He liked the feel of the rifle, and he knew he was facing the fight of his life.
How many men were there? Ben Janish, of course, and probably half a dozen others. Dave Cherry had been one of their best, and he was out of it now, but they did not know that yet, though they might guess. He had seen many good fights among top-notch marksmen where nobody scored any hits, for a marksman was often adept at choosing cover, at moving. Even to a skilled rifleman, light, shadow, and movement can be deceptive.
He took his time, waiting, thinking it out. Cherry must have left the trail and come along the mountain on foot to try to outflank him. The others were no doubt still on the trail, and there were not many places they could leave it except on foot.
He studied the slope, his eye out for places for cover, with alternates in the event he was fired upon.
* * *
BEN JANISH WAS in no hurry. He had heard the shots up on the slope, and he waited a few minutes, standing beside his horse. Then he walked off the trail and squatted on his heels behind a tilted rock slab, close to Kissling. “Dave’s bought it,” he said. “Ruble Noon’s killed him.”
Kissling looked up. “What makes you so sure?”
“Dave would have yelled if he could. He’d have called us up there.”
“Maybe he’s still on the hunt.”
“Him? Dave never wasted a shot in his life that I know of. Sure, we all do, soon or late, but Dave…he’s a careful man with a gun. He never shoots unless he’s got his man dead to rights. I’m sure he’s dead.”
John Lang poked at the earth with a stick, offering no comment. Charlie shifted his feet and started to speak, then thought better of it. That there Ruble Noon, he reflected, must be the real old bull of the woods, because killing Dave Cherry was no easy trick.
“We going to set here?” Kissling asked.
“We’re goin’ to wait,” Ben Janish said. “If you want to go up there, you go ahead. I’ll put a marker on your grave.”
After a long silence, he said, “We’re going to let him sweat. If he can wait, so can we.”
“What about the judge? What’s he hornin’ in on this for?” Kissling asked.
Ben Janish glanced at him. “He’s all right. It’s good to have a judge on our side. We may need him.”
Kissling was not satisfied, but he could sense the irritation in Janish and kept his silence. There seemed more to this than he had thought.
Judge Niland had ridden into the ranch shortly after daybreak and had had a long talk with Janish, with nobody else sitting in. After that, he had gone up to the house and was still there, probably talking to Fan Davidge. Kissling had the feeling something was going on that he had no part in, and he didn’t like it.
He got to his feet abruptly and moved off among the trees. Somewhere on the slope above them the man known as Ruble Noon waited, holding them all here by the threat of his presence. Kissling looked up through the trees. Noon angered him, and why Ben Janish should decide to wait he could not guess. Was the great Ben Janish afraid? Ruble Noon was only one man. He could not watch everywhere.
“I’m going up,” he said suddenly.
“Go ahead.” Janish did not even look up.
Kissling hesitated. When he had spoken he had not really expected to go; he had half expected Janish to tell him to shut up and forget it. Now his bluff had been called and he stood there irresolute. He could go back and sit down and nobody would be apt to say anything, but he would know their contempt. On such small things are the lives of men decided.
Angrily, he stepped out and started up the slope. Away from the path the slope was steep and grassy, or sometimes rocky. Much of it was covered by trees where he could move from one to the next, scrambling, holding on with one hand, pulling himself up. When he had gone a little way he stopped and listened, sweat pouring down his face.
What the hell? Now that he was away from them, why go up there at all? This was no fight he wanted. He did not like Ruble Noon, and Noon was a threat to them, but it was a big country and he need never come back this way again.
Even as he thought this he knew he was not going to do it. He found a steep path through the trees and climbed up. Ben Janish wasn’t the only man who could use a gun. He would show them a thing or two. He had watched Ben Janish, and he knew that he himself was just as fast. What he was not allowing for was sureness of hand and accuracy in shooting. He knew he could be just as fast in drawing against Janish, but what he did not know, and was never to know, was that had they been in a gun battle Janish would have beaten him fifty times out of fifty.
He knew little about Ruble Noon except that he had heard he was a gunfighter, a killer of men. He thought of him in the same terms as he thought of himself, or Dave Cherry or John Lang. He knew nothing of Ruble Noon’s past. He did not know that in another life he had been a hunter, a skilled stalker of wild game, a man as at home in the forest as a leopard, and as deadly.
He moved up the slope now, his eyes searching the trees and brush, but his were eyes trained for open country, for riding after cattle, or for using guns in towns or in ranch yards.
He believed that he was moving silently. He paused from time to time, unaware of the rifle muzzle that tracked him along the slope and up through the trees. He had seen nothing, and believed he was unseen. Suddenly he emerged in a small sun-filled clearing where no shadows fell, and as he stepped out from the trees he reached up to pull his hatbrim down. When he took his hand away, Ruble Noon was standing where a moment before there had been no one, and he was holding a rifle in his hands.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Ruble Noon said conversational
ly, almost as though they were sitting over their beers in a saloon. “I wish you would turn around and go back.”
“I can’t do that,” Kissling said, and he was surprised at his own words. “I told them I was coming after you.” And then he added, “I made my brags.”
“Tell them you couldn’t find me. I have nothing against you, Kissling. You moved against me down there, but I did not come looking for you. I don’t want you.”
An hour before, even a few minutes before, Kissling would have said such conversation was impossible, yet here he was, talking with Ruble Noon without animosity.
“My fight is with Janish,” Ruble Noon said. “I want all of you to leave the Rafter D and let Fan Davidge lead her life the way she wants to. Her father paid me to see that you left. I have it to do, Kissling. I took his money.”
“Are you going to kill Janish?”
“If I must.”
“What about me?”
“Go back down the hill, and just say you couldn’t find me. After all, it was I who found you. Or if you want to, go back down to the ranch, get a horse, and ride out of the country.”
“They told me you never gave anybody a break.”
“Maybe you’re an exception.” As he spoke he was listening, one part of his attention on those others, on Ben Janish and John Lang. “I don’t want to kill you, Kissling, but you can see the odds. You might miss with a six-shooter, even if you got it out…at forty feet I am not going to miss with this rifle.”
Kissling could feel the sweat trickling down between his shoulder blades. He had an out, and he was going to take it. Maybe there was a lot of money here somewhere. Maybe. But a corpse doesn’t spend very much, and a corpse isn’t welcome in the red-light districts or in the saloons.
“I think I’ll walk,” Kissling said quietly. “You won’t think less of me?”
“If you want to know, I think you’ve just grown up. A kid would have grabbed for his gun and died.”
Kissling turned his back and walked back into the trees. He did not point himself back toward Janish, but started working his way back down the steep slope, using the trees for handholds. He moved almost as if in a trance, his mind empty, conscious only that he was pulling out, he was going to live.
Ruble Noon watched him go with relief. Kissling had been a borderline case…there was a chance for him, bullheaded as he seemed to be. There would be no such chance for Ben Janish or Lang. They were hardened, and steeped in evil.
Ghostlike, he eased back into the shelter of the trees. From where he now waited he had a diagonal view of the trail, and he would be able to see the men as they came into view. He could get at least one of them before they could drop from sight, and the man he had been would have done just that.
Farther down the slope Ben Janish swore. He had heard no gunshot. “He’s missed him! That calf-eyed Kissling couldn’t find a saddle in a lighted barn.”
“Give him time,” Lang said dryly. “That ain’t no pilgrim he’s huntin’.”
But no sound came down the sunlit hill, no movement disturbed the leaf shadows. “All right,” Janish said finally, “we’re movin’ up. Walk easy, an’ be ready to shoot. We ain’t likely to get too many chances.”
Janish moved ahead, and started working his way up the trail. Better than the others, he knew what a woodsman Ruble Noon probably was. A cautious man, Janish had read whatever items had appeared in the newspapers about gunfighters and gunmen whom he might someday meet, and he had listened to the campfire and barroom stories of gun battles. He had heard a great deal about Ruble Noon, and the one factor that stood out was that he was a man to be feared.
The failure to hear anything from Kissling worried him. What could have happened? Kissling had wanted to shoot. He was a trigger-happy kid…well, not so much a kid as a young man who acted like one more often than not. Kissling would shoot if he glimpsed a target, but he would surely shoot too quick, and probably die because of it.
He knew why Kissling had gone up the mountain, for he knew from experience that it was easier to go than to wait.
They moved along, wary of every shadow, but seeing nothing at all.
“How do we know that he’s been up there?” Charlie asked suddenly. “We ain’t seen nothin’.”
“She went this way and we’ve got to get her back. Suppose she gets off scot-free and goes to the law?” Lang suggested. And then he added, “You can bet she knew where he went. You recall he disappeared clean off the map when he went thisaway.”
Ruble Noon heard them coming and moved deeper into the trees. He was at home here in the woods, as at home as any creatures of the wilderness. He liked the stillness, with only the far-off faint murmur of voices, the sound of wind in the trees; yet now that he was faced with what must be done, he hesitated.
He had been a hunter of big game, a famous marksman, president and owner of an arms company, and a newspaperman, a writer of sorts. And then he had become a hunter of men. After that had come the blow on the head, and the amnesia. He seemed to have lost none of his skill because of it, but he had lost, or seemed to have lost, the concentrated intent, the purpose.
These men who were hunting him were outlaws, they were killers, and if they found him they would kill him, and they might kill Fan as well. Certainly they would terrorize her, bully her, keep her a prisoner. They were his enemies, enemies of society, beasts of prey. And yet he did not want to kill them.
Now his very lack of intent was a danger. In the situation he faced there could be no time for hesitation, no time for philosophical considerations. He must kill or be killed…and he did not want to die.
He waited, crouching low, hearing their movements. Twice he caught glimpses of them through the leaves, and at least once he had Charlie dead in his sights, but he did not fire. But every step brought them nearer to Fan, nearer to a moment when he would no longer have a choice.
How many were there down there? At least six, he thought. He had not seen all the outlaws at the Rafter D, and there might even be more, but six he had detected.
He tried to think of some way he might stop them without actually firing on them. They probably would not hesitate to kill or capture him if given the opportunity.
He lifted his rifle, eased the pressure on the trigger just a little, and took a breath. He let it out easily, and—
He heard the step behind him even as his finger was tightening to fire. He threw himself backward quickly, and took a wicked blow on the shoulder as he fell.
Rolling over, he came up with the rifle and fired…too quickly. He missed, scrambled back into the brush, and heard a yell from the trail. Then came a crashing of brush, and above him to the right he heard a voice.
It was a cold, contemptuous voice, and it was the voice of Judge Niland. “I grew up in the woods, Ruble Noon. I wasn’t worried about you, because I knew I could kill you myself.”
Coldness came over him. He was hit, he knew that, but he hoped not badly. It was the fact that it was Judge Niland that was such a shock.
He had been watching the group on the trail, and had allowed his attention to lapse elsewhere. He was a fool.
He eased back among the trees. He would need now every bit of woods skill he had ever possessed. He dared not shoot at Niland, for if he did half a dozen rifles would on the instant pour fire at the spot where he was. And Niland knew this.
Ruble Noon heard his voice speaking confidently. “Move in slowly, Ben. We’ve got him. He hasn’t got a chance.”
His left arm felt numb and he lifted a hand to his shoulder—it came away wet. Wiping it on his pants leg so the blood would not drop on the ground, he eased back a little more.
The steep mountainside was covered with pines or clumps of aspen. Niland was somewhat above and behind him, the others were coming from the trail, so he backed away, working his way down and across the face of the m
ountain.
Taking his rifle in his left hand, he used his other hand in slithering back among the trees. On the pine needles he made almost no sound as he moved in a crouch.
Something rustled in the direction of the trail, but nothing sounded from above, where Niland was. The Judge was good—he had not lost his touch.
He knew they might be close upon him, but he dared not lift his head to look. He went into the aspens almost crawling, squirmed downhill a bit more, then got up and scuttled several yards before dropping again.
Somebody shouted: “There! I saw him!” It was Charlie’s voice.
The brush crashed lower down, and in front of him, and suddenly Lang broke through not forty yards away. They saw each other at the same instant, and Charlie’s rifle came up. His eyes were bright with triumph as he tightened his finger on the trigger.
He was looking along the barrel at Noon, saw him there, dark against the green of the aspens and the white of their trunks. Noon was holding his rifle in his left hand, and Charlie took time to shout, “Come on! I got him!”
Even as he fired, he saw a stab of flame from Ruble Noon’s rifle. The butt was under Noon’s left arm, the rifle pointed with his left hand.
He’ll never hit anything that way, Charlie told himself as he fired.
Something seemed to turn under his heel, and his rifle went off into the ground. He stared…puzzled, wondering why he had dropped the muzzle. He started to lift it again, but he was overcome by a sudden weakness. The earth slid from under his feet and he lay face down on the pine needles. He got his hands under him and started to push up, and was startled to see the ground where he had fallen was red with blood.
He got to his knees and suddenly began to cough. It was a racking cough that hurt terribly. He put his hand up to wipe away the wetness around his mouth, and stared stupidly at the hand. The wetness was blood, a kind of frothy blood. He blinked, and was suddenly afraid.
The Man Called Noon (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 11