by John Benteen
“He’d been shooting everybody who dared come into the Skulls, for fear they’d take it away from him. Then he had to start shooting people down in Bootstrap to make sure they didn’t come after him. The more he killed, the more he had to kill …”
“But he didn’t kill you,” Sundance rasped. “You came up here not once but three, four times, while he was sniping. And you stayed with him, made love to him.”
She stared. “How’d you know that.”
“Call it moccasin telegraph. You’ve got a lot of explaining—”
Billy drew in breath. “All right, I did come up here several times. Stay with him and ... do what you said. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. There was no pleasure in it anymore; it was like a snake crawling on me. But he would let me come in and out. And I kept thinking, hoping, sooner or later I could catch him off his guard. Besides, while I was with him, the sniping stopped.”
Her eyes met Sundance’s, and he read in them that she told the truth, saw remembered horror. “But you don’t catch Jeff Galax off guard, day or night, sane or crazy. He’s like a wolf. And after the last time, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I gave up. He was getting low on ammunition for Juanita, that’s what he calls his gun, and the best I could manage was to steal a couple of rounds he’d left lying loose. That might save two lives, anyway. That was four days ago, and he thought I was going to bring him supplies, but I’d made up my mind I’d never go into those mountains again. When I got back to Bootstrap, I went to the store to buy grub for myself: I was going to ride out, head for California, somewhere, anywhere. But Hargitt found those cartridges, took me to MacLaurin, and they nearly lynched me ... You know the rest. But when I found out you wanted me to come up here with you, I was suspicious. I thought it was just another scheme to find the mine, that maybe somehow you knew about me ... and that’s why I didn’t want to come. Besides, I was afraid Jeff would kill you, and I didn’t want that on my conscience.”
Sundance’s grin was cold. “I don’t think he’s gonna kill me, Billy.”
“Neither do I, now,” she said quietly. “I think you are going to kill him. And I want to help you, any way I can.”
“All right. Then you’re gonna have to trust me and give me more information. First thing, how far from here is that spring, the mine, the place where Galax makes his headquarters. Second ... what’s his movements? The kind of pattern he has for his day.”
“The spring and mine both are about six hours traveling from here, way back in the Skulls. The mine’s close enough to the spring so he can hole up at the mine and watch anybody who comes to water. Sometimes he does that, sometimes he ranges the hills, right out to the flats where he can snipe at Bootstrap. Then he holes up almost anywhere. He’s restless, driven, always on the scout. There’s no telling where he’ll be at any time. Except when I was there. Then we stayed at the mine. I was ... going to tell you all that, explain how I’d lied about finding them at a cave.”
“It don’t matter,” Sundance said. “I know now what I need to know. So … ” He thought for a moment. “I’ve got two things I didn’t have when I left Bootstrap. The truth —and those Big Fifties the rock rats from Green River brought in here. That changes everything.” Suddenly he was brisk. “Okay, Billy, come on. We got a lot to do before the buzzards start to circle for those corpses. Two dead men to bury and three more we got to handle before they stiffen up.”
“What?” Billy gaped at Sundance.
The half breed’s lips pulled back in a snarling grin. “You said Jeff Galax was like a wolf. Well, it’s a hell of a lot easier to trap a wolf than chase it. I’m not going after Galax any longer. Now I’m gonna let him come to me. And with any luck, by tomorrow night I’ll have his hide nailed to the barn door.”
Chapter Seven
The big rock cleft smelled like death. Carefully propped against the wall, the bodies of Horseshoe, Reese, and the man Sundance had shot in the draw, lips curled back in final grins, staring eyes blank, seemed to leer at the half-breed and the girl. The heat was already having its effect on them, faces darkening, bodies bloating. Billy Mercer looked at them, shuddered, looked away. “My God, Sundance, do we have to have ’em in here with us? They make me sick.”
“Sorry,” Sundance said. “No help for it. We can’t set ’em out until just before daylight. Don’t want the coyotes and wolves to get at ’em. Go ahead and get some sleep.” Carefully shielding his match he lit a cigarette. Maybe tobacco smoke would help disguise the rankness.
“Ugh,” Billy said. “I’ll have nightmares.”
“As long as you don’t holler,” Sundance said. He watched as she stretched out on the blankets, head rested on a saddle for a pillow. She would sleep, he thought. He would, too, later. It had been a long, grueling stretch of time for both of them since the battle of this morning. There was a lot to do when you get out to trap a wolf like Galax, and you weren’t allowed even one mistake.
Counting on Galax still being far away, Sundance had lost no time after the girl had finished her story, and he’d put her to work as well. Together they’d dragged the three corpses into the cleft, propped them up against the rock, crossed their legs beneath them. Billy had stared as Sundance had clamped Horseshoe’s dead fingers around a coffee cup, then propped up his arm, elbow bent, with a forked stick. Then he’d put her to stripping the gear off the rock rats’ animals, hiding that in the cleft as well. Eagle and the gelding had been brought in and hidden, the other horses, unsaddled, driven away. Sundance had dragged the remaining two bodies up the draw, climbed its bank, started a miniature landslide by jumping and kicking. The sandy, shelving earth caved, covered the corpses completely. Afterwards, he jumped around on it, packing it, and then scattered a few rocks across it.
All that done, he gave the horses a good watering from the extra canteens the dead men had packed, another feed of grain from the same source. Then he got down to the most important business, inspecting the Sharps rifles they had brought up here with them as defense against the sniper.
Two were in poor shape, barrels fouled and leaded. Sundance had spat dryly into the dirt at the sight of that. He had no respect for anyone who didn’t keep his weapons spotless. With a rock, he broke their hammers, made them worthless.
Of the other three, two were in only fair condition, cleaner, but worn, and he frowned in disappointment as he handled them. Laying them aside, he picked up the last one, hefted its sixteen pounds of weight. And then his eyes gleamed and a slow grin spread across his face.
Mass produced or not, guns were as individual as women, and as cranky. Some you could handle without feeling anything special; they were all right for what you needed them for, but they stirred no emotion in you. But others. Well, when you found the right one, you knew the moment that you touched it.
It was that way with him and this Big Fifty. Raising it, he felt its perfect balance become one with his own arms and hands; it suited him exactly, as if it had been made to measure. Eagerly he checked the bore: flawless, shining, lands and grooves clean-cut, sharp-edged. There was not a speck of rust on the inside or the outside of the octagonal barrel. The stock was old, scratched, dented, but of solid walnut, and there was an almost infinitesimal bit of slack between barrel and wooden fore piece, which meant that as the barrel heated, it would bed itself absolutely solidly. The action was smooth as silk, yet tight, and best of all there was a vernier sight mounted behind the breech. Sundance flipped it up, checked its calibration and adjustment for different ranges. That would equalize to some extent the advantage Galax’s scope sight gave him.
Carefully, he laid the fine gun aside— probably the men from Green River had stolen it from a buffalo hunter who’d known his weapon and respected it. Using the rock again, he broke the hammers on the two mediocre weapons.
“I don’t understand,” Billy had said. “Why break those guns?”
Sundance looked at her bleakly. “There’s always a chance I’ll lose and Galax’ll win. That happens,
no point in leaving him a full supply of replacement weapons.” Tossing the ruined guns away, he inspected the ammunition.
The big cartridges were expensive: they had brought in only ten rounds per man, fifty in all. Sundance saw with satisfaction that they were the maximum load—.50-170-700. If he could tag Jeff Galax with one of those, it didn’t much matter where. It would easily blow the arm off a man, or most of his leg, and shock would do the rest. His mouth tightened. That worked two ways, of course. If Galax tagged him with one, his man hunting days were over. Well, that was how the game worked. Nobody paid you big money for safe and easy jobs ...
And so the day had edged on by, as they stayed hidden in the cleft, with the bloating corpses stiffening and grinning at them. Come dusk, Sundance had gone out on scout again, now that shooting light was over. This time, he viewed the terrain with a different eye, and, satisfied, had returned to the shelter.
Now he stubbed out his cigarette. By this time tomorrow, there would likely be another dead man in the Skulls. Whether the corpse would be Jeff Galax’s or his own, only time would tell. Having done everything within his power to put the odds on his side, he shoved that thought from his mind, lay down on his own bedroll, and soon was sound asleep.
~*~
He had, within his brain, a built-in clock that awakened him exactly two hours before the sun came up. Reaching over, he shook the girl awake. “Okay, Billy. We got things to do.”
They breakfasted off of jerky washed down with water, the last of the corn dodgers. Then Sundance said, “I reckon you’re gonna have to give me a hand with our friends there,” and he jerked his head toward the corpses against the wall.
“Oh, God,” Billy whispered, but she bore up well enough as they went to work.
The stars were cold pinpoints of light overhead as they lugged the stiffened bodies from the cleft. Rigor mortis had frozen them until they were solid as grotesque statues. Carrying them was like handling so much furniture.
First Horseshoe, then Reese, and finally the man who’d held the horses: they lugged them to the hillside below the cleft and arranged them in a circle, sitting upright, cross-legged. As they lowered the last corpse into position, it let out a slow, unearthly moan: “Ohhhhhhh … ”
Billy shrieked, jumping back. “Good Lord! He’s alive!”
“Easy.” Sundance straightened the corpse. “That was just the gas that forms inside ’em comin’ up and out through the vocal cords.” He stepped back, looked at his work, was satisfied. “Now, let’s scratch up some firewood.”
That took a while: it was scarce up here. Presently, though, they had a substantial stack, including boughs of juniper, fresh and green, Sundance had hacked with his Bowie. In the circle of the sitting corpses, he carefully laid a fire, plenty of dry tinder, larger wood, and over that a juniper bough or two.
“Now,” Sundance said. “That does it. Billy, there’s still time for you to ride out. I’m gonna have Galax so busy today he’ll have no time for anybody else.”
“No,” she said determinedly. “I’m not riding out. It’s my mine and I’m not abandoning it. And ... I’m not leaving you, either, Jim. You might need me.”
Sundance looked at her. Guts, he thought. She had them to spare, a quality he admired in a woman. “Okay. Suit yourself. But you stay in that rock shelter and don’t you come out—not for anything, you hear? And if I’m not back by dark, you take that gelding and ride. Meantime, you keep a rifle ready, and if Eagle gives any kind of alarm, you be ready to use it. If it’s me comin’ up, I’ll give a Cheyenne war whoop before I’m in sight. Otherwise, it’ll be Galax, and you be ready to shoot him the minute he shows himself. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“One more thing. Just before the sun comes up, you light that fire. Then you go back inside and stay there. Now, I’ll be on my way.” He picked up his quiver and his bow, slung them. Then the Big Fifty and its ammunition in a leather bag. “Okay.”
“Jim,” she said.
Something in her voice made him halt, turn.
She was looking at him strangely, eyes enormous.
“Jim,” she said, “will you kiss me before you go? I’m scared.”
Sundance smiled, went to her. He bent his head, touched her lips with his.
“Be careful, Jim,” she whispered, when he straightened up.
“I always am,” Sundance said; and then, soundlessly, he loped off into the darkness.
~*~
It was a long run and a stiff climb. But within a half hour, Sundance, hardly panting, was in position on the mountain crest, which, long and serrated, like the blade of a nicked straight razor, ran above the rock shelter. Here, on a patch of level ground scattered with small boulders, was the place he wanted. From here, he could scan, unobstructed, the whole bleak crest, the slope below, with the three figures sitting in a circle beyond and to one side of the shelter, almost a thousand yards away. Fore and aft, he had a clear field of fire, and, when daylight came, he would be able to see for miles in all directions. That was necessary, because he had no idea from which way Jefferson Galax would come.
The stars were fading, now. Sundance worked quickly, deftly. Gathering rocks and boulders, he built a four-sided pen of stone two feet high, four feet wide, seven long. Carefully he made niches big enough to accommodate the big Fifty’s barrel in several places on each side. With a belt-ax he drove a juniper stake deep into the ground, pulled it out, drove it in again and again, until he had a series of deep sockets in the earth along each wall of his barricade. He muffled the ax’s sound with a piece of leather between its head and the stake. Then, experimentally, he screwed the butt of a heavy forked stick of juniper down into one of the sockets. With the crotch eighteen or twenty inches above the ground, it fitted solidly and unshakably. He laid out his gear, spreading it on a blanket: ten rounds of Big Fifty cartridges, patches, rammer, and a full canteen, plus his brass pocket telescope. With some of the water from the canteen, he made a paste of dust, smeared it through the blondness of his hair; when he was finished, it was no longer yellow, but muddy brown. Afterwards, he carefully rinsed and dried his hands, lest any dirt cling to them that might foul the rifle’s action. He left the bow unstrung on the blanket, along with the quiver full of arrows. Finally, he rolled half a dozen cigarettes, laid them out, ready to his hand, with matches. He rolled another, sheltered the match, lit it. The light was coming in the eastern sky, now. Sunrise: peeling back the darkness, driving shadows from all but the deepest, most contorted folds of earth. The sky eastward flamed with color, striking response from the raw, wind-scraped slopes of the Skull Mountains. Suddenly they flamed with every hue of the spectrum, pink, ochre, scarlet and vermillion, blue and violet. The wind freshened, blowing cool and clean across the range. And now, from his point of vantage, Sundance could see not only the forward slope, but the reverse one, a jumble of true badlands, convulsed and wind-eroded, before another jagged mountain rose. His jaw tightened. A man like Galax, a hunter by profession, could work his way through such a labyrinth and never once be exposed. And maybe, wolf that he was, Jeff Galax would not do what Sundance expected. Some wolves never did; instead of walking into the trap, they dug beneath it, overturned, and sprang it.
A risk he’d have to take, Sundance thought, stretching out within his rock barricade, waiting. Through a niche he saw, below, Billy Mercer scuttle from the rock shelter, dash among the circle of corpses, light the fire quickly. She started to run back to the cleft, bumped against the corpse of Reese and knocked it over. Sundance swore softly as she seemed hesitant. Then he relaxed as, reluctantly, she struggled with the stiff and ghastly thing and set it upright again. After which, she disappeared from view inside the shelter.
The fire caught, the dry wood burning brightly, almost without smoke. Then the flames licked around the green juniper boughs laid across the fire. Slowly a finger of smoke rose, first bent by the wind, and then, as the wind died, threading straight up, hundreds of feet in the air, visible for mil
es.
That would have to do it, Sundance thought. He used the telescope, shielding its lens to prevent telltale reflection, to scan the country for three hundred and sixty degrees. He had built the shelter wide enough to allow himself to turn his body without exposing it. And he was on the highest point of ground for miles around: no way anyone could look or fire down into his shelter.
Nothing stirred, save for a scraggly deer down there in the badlands on the reverse slope. But he did not expect Galax yet. What he did for now was to familiarize himself with every fold and wrinkle of the country, every rock and boulder, not only the way light struck it now, but imagining the way light would strike it as the day dragged on. He paid especial attention to high, sheer faces of rock, especially those that slanted somewhat outward. There could be, when the time came, a use for those: ricochets.
The morning inched along, the sun high and hot now. Sundance’s watchfulness was ceaseless. This was, he thought, like waiting for an eagle.
He had done that several times as a young Cheyenne warrior. You dug a pit, camouflaged it with a latticework of branches. Once you were inside it, underneath the camouflage, someone laid the carcass of a dead fawn or kid on the camouflage for bait. And then you waited, absolutely still, maybe for hours, maybe days, until a bald or golden eagle swooped down, sank its talons in the carcass. Then, with lightning speed, you reached up through the camouflage with a hand clad in leather, seized the eagle’s leg. And if its talons or its beak did not rip your arm or hand to shreds, you killed it and used the feathers for your war bonnet. Nothing, no sort of hunting Sundance had ever done, required more patience than waiting for the eagle—except perhaps for this.
Three shots, he thought. With maybe half a minute between each one. Ninety seconds. He would have that much time …
The smoke had dwindled now. And …
Sundance glanced up at the sky and cursed. High up there against the bright, stainless blue, black specks, no larger than so many pinheads, appeared. Vultures. And they could ruin it all. An hour, maybe two, before they dared to circle truly low, but sooner or later they could come, to rend the corpses—and spoil his bait, ruin his trap.