Shooter weighed his chances, and they did not look good. He was hit hard, and probably covered by a rifle from the rim. A second Elder was coming at him, from further in, he judged.
Could he move? Galloway worked himself into sitting with his back to his tree. His left side felt afire, and his left arm did not work. Still, he believed he was thinking clearly, and his vision was more or less normal.
Could he run? He believed he could, at least for a short distance, but to escape being shot from above, he would have to dart and dodge among the trees without really knowing where the bullet was coming from. Gabriel doubted he could be successful enough to escape.
God, his arm ached. He grasped his left wrist and eased the useless hand into a vest pocket. It lay there and felt minutely better.
If he could not run he had to fight. The right pocket of the vest held its usual .44 caliber pistol, but the revolver was a puny tool for facing a rifleman at long range. How far? About one hundred yards, he figured. Shooter tried to remember what the rim looked like along here, but nothing clear came to mind.
He and Mop had shot hundreds of pistol rounds at one hundred and longer ranges, but this was life and death, and he was hurt—badly hurt Shooter feared.
Galloway fought himself erect, pressing hard against the tree to maintain balance and avoid exposing himself. Calvin Elder thought he had killed, and that might make him a little careless. He might expose himself just a little, and Shooter needed any edge he could get.
If he shot the brother coming through the woods first, Calvin would hunker down, and no quick glance would find him. Shooter did not try to reason further. He was leaking blood, his pocket was already wet, and the brother coming to finish him off would be getting close.
Galloway eased himself around so that he was facing the tree. He would have to look and shoot almost in the same instant. If he was unable to see Elder almost instantly, he would have to duck back and do his best to take the charging brother first and deal with the rifleman later. Nothing sounded inviting. Shooter got himself ready to shoot at the rim.
How much front sight would he hold? He could not measure in fractions of an inch, but he knew in his mind. Shooting sharply uphill, he would hold lower than across flat ground, but he could expect no more than a head for a target, and that awareness plucked at his resolve. Galloway forced doubts aside. He had no choice, so get on with it.
What he would do would be to raise his extended arm with the pistol pointing along the tree as he came around the trunk. He would scan the ridge as it appeared in his vision, and when he saw the ambusher, he would shoot. One shot only, as careful as he could make it. The ambusher would be waiting for him, and he could have his scope on the tree Shooter was hiding behind. Hell, he almost certainly did. Shoot once, duck back, and get set for the charger. It sounded simple, and simple plans were best. Galloway pumped air and made his move.
Calvin Elder wished he could light a cigarette, but he dared not look away. He watched for John to come through the woods, but the damned fool must have hidden himself a long way in. Idiot!
Cal kept his eyes on the small clearing where Galloway was hiding. It was possible, although hugely unlikely, that Galloway was behind the tree the rifle was leaning against. Elder waited. It would be only moments now.
When it came, Galloway’s movement was swift. Calvin Elder saw motion along a tree and whipped his rifle to his shoulder. It was Galloway, Elder could see most of his face, and the fool was pointing at him.
With astonishment, Calvin saw fire and smoke erupt from Galloway’s hand, but the bullet struck before full realization could arrive. Cal Elder felt the blow to his chest as if the end of a four-inch log had been driven into him. He knew his rifle fired but, for some reason, he was looking skyward. Then, earth appeared, and he was lying flat on his face unable to breath or move.
Elder blinked his eyes attempting to remove a sort of fog that had moved in, but his vision darkened even more. He found his mind wondering if Galloway had shot him from way down there. His mind was still wondering when everything that was Calvin Elder ended.
Shooter could barely believe. He had slid his arm around the tree, and there was a rifleman standing mostly exposed looking right at him—but with his rifle unready. Galloway made his trigger squeeze fast, but the rifle was coming up just as quickly, and until the shots were echoing, he was unsure of who had won.
Galloway did not duck back around his tree. With his enemy exposed almost from the waist up, Shooter intended to dump another round straight in.
The pistol bullet went in low. It struck the slanting rock directly in front of the ambusher and ricocheted into Elder’s chest.
Bullets do not bounce after striking the way pool balls do. A bullet tends to follow the wall or floor it struck. Galloway’s was no exception. It flattened and ricocheted, barely rising from the stone and entered Calvin Elder’s chest two inches below his throat. The 210-grain, soft lead .44 Special bullet expanded to half-again its size before it reached Cal Elder, and its momentum drove the lead deep, leaving a monstrous entrance wound and tearing everything loose inside. Elder was dead within moments.
Shooter Galloway could only be sure that Calvin Elder had disappeared. He froze his trigger finger and ducked back into the tree’s protection.
What had he seen?
He believed his bullet had gone low. There had been rock dust, he thought, but Elder’s rifle had dropped and fired, and the man had seemed to fall more than crouch. Galloway believed Elder was hit. How hard was unanswerable.
Shooter also collapsed as much as he ducked. His legs felt like wet spaghetti, and there was a tremor in his shooting hand that gave warning to his condition. Where was the brother?
Galloway heard him yelling. He was calling to Calvin, but he was not being answered. That was encouraging. Shooter sat with his back to his tree and rested his pistol on a raised knee. Unmoving, he would be harder to see, and it sounded as if the second attacker was panicking. He might . . . Galloway saw him coming.
John Elder had been moving with exquisite caution. He felt like a professional hunter closing in on a wounded lion or maybe a tiger. He was in control, deadly and coldly proficient with his double barreled shotgun ready to finish the hunt.
Then, there had been two shots, and one was not his brother’s rifle. He called out, but Cal did not answer. He called again, and found himself hurrying. The rifle had fired last, he was pretty sure of that, but maybe Cal was wounded, or maybe Calvin’s last shot had not finished Galloway.
That damned Galloway had to be laying right here somewhere. John’s eyes searched frantically as his legs rushed him through the woods.
Shooter watched John Elder coming. The man was leaping around dodging trees and poking ahead with a double barrel. Elder was moving straight into Galloway’s pistol.
The revolver held five shots, but he had used one. Shooter let John Elder get closer, but a shotgun was not to be trifled with, and before Elder’s eyes found him, Galloway centered his front sight and fired once. He re-sighted and fired a second shot. Hammered by .44 caliber bullets at fifteen yards, John Elder accomplished no dramatic posturing as he died. His legs folded, and he fell on his face. Galloway braced his pistol solidly on his knee and held on the top of Elder’s head and made his third shot.
Galloway was one hundred percent sure about John Elder, but there was that third brother. Shooter had one round left in case the last Elder appeared.
Calvin Elder must be wounded or dead and John was finished, but Roy Elder was uncounted, and he could still be out there. Shooter thought that if he could gain his feet, he would get hold of the unfired shotgun for the suddenly naked-feeling of hiking back down The Notch.
Shooter began to work at getting up. Eventually, he made it, and pistol hanging, he wobbled his way to John Elder. Dead, of course.
Shooter pocketed his pistol, bent painfully and picked up the unfired shotgun. He started for home and was grateful it was downhill. With luck, he
could make the house, and Emma and Hannah would be there.
Five down. One to go.
Chapter 24
Shooter saw the porch steps dead ahead and increased his speed—more like an uncoordinated waddle, he suspected. Momentum carried him up the three steps, but he stalled on the porch wondering rather vaguely if he should just drop the shotgun or try to lean it against the house wall.
He heard some excited calling, the storm door slammed open, and Emma Showalter and Hannah had him. Supporting him by his belt, the women marched him through the living room to the kitchen and sat him on a chair. Didn’t want him bleeding all over the carpets, he supposed.
Somewhere between porch and kitchen, Shooter had lost the shotgun. He wished to explain that there could be another killer coming, but he somehow lacked the will.
Hannah slashed his vest away with a long serrated bread knife and he heard the pistol in its pocket hit the floor. Even limited movement sent fires of hell through his left shoulder and side. He used his right hand to prop his left on his lap and tried to focus on what was being said.
Hannah spoke to Emma. “It looks as if a bomb exploded against his shoulder.” Shooter thought her voice was comfortingly calm.
Hannah said, “Find me some tape; a lot of it, Emma. I’m going to swab some of this mess away.”
Shooter laughed to himself. All they had in the place was a partial roll of adhesive tape that was probably too old to stick to anything, anyway.
Emma was quickly back, and she had a roll of duct tape. If he had felt better, Shooter would have applauded.
Hannah said, “Couldn’t be better.” She was scrubbing at his shoulder and side with a rag. Probably a dishtowel, Shooter laboriously reasoned.
After a while, Hannah gave more directions.
“I’ll need Saran Wrap, or something like it.” Emma banged cabinet doors and Shooter saw her hand holding a roll of plastic wrapping.
Hannah seemed to be closely studying his wound, but each time she touched him it hurt worse. Shooter thought that maybe they should just call the ambulance and let those experts work.
Hannah said, “Most of the bleeding is stopped. Nothing big ruptured, I guess.” She poked at his side under his left arm, which she had to raise, and Shooter’s breath hissed. “Looks like an exit wound right here. It’s weeping a little so I’ll pinch it closed.”
She used the knife to cut off the tape and slapped a length across Shooter’s belly. Hannah pinched the underarm hole closed before pressing the tape tight over the wound. The tape strip continued halfway around Shooter’s back, but its tightness felt supporting, and the patient was appreciative.
A large square of plastic wrap was placed against Shooter’s wounded shoulder and held there by multiple strips of the always-useful duct tape. A final wrapping secured his left arm to his body with his hand trapped against his naked belly.
Emma was directed to find a robe and two blankets. Then, Hannah was ready to talk.
First was her question, and Shooter thought it was about time. He answered carefully because his thinking was obviously clouded.
“The Elder brothers ambushed me. One shot me with a rifle. I probably wounded or killed him, and I definitely got the second one. There could be a third brother out there, but if he was part of this, I think he would have come by now.” Shooter had to pause to gather thoughts that were loosely drifting.
Hannah did not wait for more.
She said, “Whatever he shot you with seems to have blown up on your shoulder blade. Your back is a mess, and some pieces have gone down your side. There is a hole under your arm, and some other swelling that could mean more in there.
“The good news is that most of the bleeding has stopped, and you have feeling and movement. I am going to put an ice pack along your spine to hold down any bleeding or swelling there. A piece of bullet or whatever it was may have gone that way, and the less edema the better.”
Emma was back, and Hannah spoke to them both.
“I’m not waiting for the ambulance to get way up here. We will load you in the car and get you to Carlisle Hospital. I’ll drive, and Emma can stay here and make the calls that should be made—like the police and down to the hospital to tell them that a gunshot wound is coming in.”
Emma complained about staying behind as they marched a weak and wobbly Gabriel to Hannah’s car, but the nurse had taken charge.
“There are dead men up in that woods, Emma. We have to let the sheriff or the state police know, and somebody has to be here to show them where.”
Emma placed an old raincoat on the seat to spare the upholstery from Shooter’s bloody pants. A picnic cooler ice pack was pushed between his spine and the seat back.
Shooter said, “I bled a lot.”
Hannah was frank. “You are about bled out, and the quicker we get some new blood into you the better off you will be. The ambulance would have plasma or something, but by the time they got here we can be in Carlisle. That’s where we are going, now.”
She got behind the wheel, Emma slammed Shooter’s door, and they were off.
Just past the top of the mountain, Shooter passed out or went to sleep. Hannah was not sure which and did not slow to find out. She hammered down the mountain and pounded for Carlisle.
Almost to the hospital, a police car pulled in behind with lights flashing, but Hannah kept going. At the hospital’s emergency entrance, she leaped out and bolted inside. A moment later, while the police officer was still dismounting, a waiting gurney appeared and two orderlies began moving a bloodied and barely conscious figure from the automobile.
The police officer worked his radio and took notes, but the car driver, a registered nurse on an emergency run, was busy with the patient. A gunshot wound the officer was told, and his interest heightened.
Emma made the necessary calls. First she called Sonny Brunner. Sonny had been sheriff for most of Emma’s life, and his retirement meant little to most in the county. Brunner called the real sheriff who, to Sonny’s delight, was out of the county, and he called the state police. Then Sonny climbed into his truck and headed for the Galloway home.
Some day, he fervently hoped, the mountainous west end of the county would have cell phone service. Everybody else seemed to be using cell phones. Half the drivers he passed in the rest of the county had a phone stuck in an ear.
So the Elders had struck, and Gabriel Galloway had shot two of them—one dead for sure, Emma said. How on earth had he managed that? Brunner prayed that Shooter was not too hard hit.
The trouble was, there were few minor gunshot wounds. No matter how the press labeled them, bullets usually did damage that might hang on throughout life. Motion might be restricted, or organs not function quite as well. Athletes lost mobility or quickness, and operations to remove bits and pieces decades after a wounding were common.
Emma said that Gabriel’s shoulder looked like hamburger, and that she could see broken bone bits. Emma could be descriptive, Sonny thought.
Brunner had forgotten that Hannah York was a nurse, but he was grateful for her skills. Shooter was extremely lucky on this one.
With Sonny notified, Emma began calling other people who should know. Dan Grouse was first, then the school. Then Mop out in Montana, and Shooter’s best local pal, Timmy Carlisle, plus a few others as listed in his rather short personal telephone book.
Emma was pleased to get off the phone. Sonny had arrived and was guiding state policemen into The Notch and up to where the Elder home had once stood.
She cleaned up the blood and mess in her kitchen. She made coffee and a large pile of sandwiches with the bread crusts neatly removed. There was part of a pie and half a cake in the pantry. She put those out, and Shooter always had Oreo cookies handy.
Men got hungry when they were working, and she wanted to be prepared. Emma checked that the refrigerator held many cans of soft drinks. Terribly tired and worried, she sat in her rocker and waited for Hannah to call or for some of the investigators to come
in.
Galloway had killed them both. Brunner nosed around the investigation as if he had a right. Both state police investigators had worked the county for a long time, and they let the ex-sheriff stand close and listen in.
Brunner told them where they might find the rim shooter. He deduced that location from just looking at the scene and the way blood had splattered.
Brunner saved them time, and he was able to backtrack the ambusher Galloway had repeatedly shot to a lair along the other side of The Notch. Neither detective was sure he could have done that, and they were appreciative of an old deer hunter’s tracking skills.
Brunner said, “They thought they had him dead to rights no matter which way he came in.”
Shooter Galloway Page 26