Dolan’s hand fluttered briefly under his coat and produced a pocket Colt with such dexterity that McAllister could scarcely believe his eyes. The little agent informed him that, now he was a married man, he chose a safer pursuit than breaking up hold-up gangs, but a year at a desk had proved irksome. “Some action,” he piped valiantly, “will be like a tonic to me.”
McAllister told him to find himself a shot-gun and a pocketful of shells and to get aboard.
“No,” Dolan told him. “We’ll have to play it smarter than that. I’ll go back into my office, out the rear and cut through the backlots to beyond the town limits and you can pick me up there.”
Idlers were pressing in now, curious about the stage and arguing the possibility of it being held up a second time in one day. Dolan shook hands sadly with McAllister and retired to his office, shaking his head and saying he couldn’t bear to watch a man ride off to certain death. The crowd was inclined to agree with him and shouted encouragement to McAllister as he climbed aboard and took up the lines.
From the height of the driving-seat, he looked down on the upturned faces, taking his time over starting in order to give Dolan time to reach the edge of town. He saw two red-headed men, one wearing a gray hat and another without one. Taking up the whip, he gave it a preparatory swing, wondering how long it was since he had handled a team this size. Must have been in his early twenties down in Jackson County, Texas. The fresh leaders were dancing and getting themselves in a lather. They looked like a couple of half-broken mustangs and he guessed he was going to have his hands full.
Somebody shouted for him to get going, he was taking up valuable drinking time. That got a laugh.
He kicked the brake off, cracked the whip loud as a pistol-shot around the leaders’ ears and yelled: “Haaa-aaaa!” The team jumped in their collars, found they couldn’t move the heavy stage in the mud, slipping and stumbling and he had to literally hold them on their feet. He yelled and let them hear the whip again. They leaned into the leathers straining. The coach started to move and an ironic cheer went up from the crowd.
The stage rolled, lurched sideways in the mud, sank on the off-side, then righted itself. A third whip-crack and the team hit the traces as one and he was on his way, heading for the curve in Main at speed, sawing the lines to turn a reluctant team that seemed to want to get up on the sidewalk. He ran them to the edge of town and started looking out for Dolan.
He still had not caught sight of the little man when the stage rumbled over the timber bridge and started the slow climb into the timber that overlooked the town. The grade took some of the kinks out of the team, but it was hard work to make them pull as one. By the time he reached the top and heard the wind through the trees, he had developed a deep respect for Woolly Parsons who had handled this bunch.
Then he saw Dolan sitting on a log by the side of the trail. The little man jumped up and signalled to him to keep moving. McAllister put the horses into a trot and Dolan got aboard on the run, piling inside and yelling to McAllister to use the whip. McAllister did so, the team fought for purchase on the now drier ground and the vehicle rocketed down a slight grade toward a bend between towering rocks.
The country changed abruptly as they left the timber, hit the turn and thundered through the rocks. It started to rain heavily and through the downpour McAllister saw away to his left the barren brown face of the badlands, eroded and anguished. To his right was a rough, rolling expanse of poor grassland, broken here and there with outcrops of rock and sandstone, gullies and occasional lonely buttes looking lost and incongruous. Ahead, the road showed empty for as far as the eye could see through the wet murk.
McAllister checked that the butt of the Le Matt still protruded from his belt. Men on fast horses could have ridden across country from town to find cover ahead of the stage. Back there talking to Sime he had been confident that he would get the stage through with no trouble, but now in the weird atmosphere of this lonesome high prairie, premonition nudged him. The old animal instinct of danger that he had learned never to ignore. One comfort was that the team seemed to settle down now and were behaving more reasonably. The nearside wheeler took nips at his partner now and then, but he learned fast after McAllister flicked him in the face with the whip a few times. The big man settled down to keeping them going, using horse language well-larded with succulent profanity.
After ten minutes, the rain slackened to a steady drizzle and visibility increased a little. They reached a creek with a ford and slowed to cross. The little man inside the stage yelled for him to keep the horses moving and McAllister roared back that if Dolan could do any better, he’d best come and goddam well do it. They exchanged a few hot words and the horses came dripping from the water in poor order and fighting among themselves. In spite of McAllister’s efforts, the leaders slackened off and the offside animal stepped over a trace and the real fight broke out. With the stage half in and half out of the creek, McAllister kicked the brake on and climbed down.
Dolan yelled: “Don’t stop here.”
McAllister bawled for him to get out and walk if he didn’t care for the locality, got up with the leaders and tangled badly with them, but finally succeeded in getting the offside leader free of the trace.
When he returned to the stage, Dolan’s frightened face appeared at the window.
“This is just the spot for a hold-up.”
“Ain’t it?” McAllister said cheerfully. He climbed aboard, kicked off the brake and they heaved themselves out of the creek and rolled on. There didn’t seem to be any sign of life around. The team got them up the bank from the creek and hit comparatively flat going again, pulling with a will now and settling down to a good hammering trot. That was the pace that McAllister wanted if the beasts were going to have enough reserve for a dash if any road-agents appeared.
A couple of miles beyond the creek, the rain came down in earnest again and McAllister wished to high heaven he’d brought an oilskin along. He was soaked to the skin by now and feeling more wretched by the mile.
Ahead, dimly, he made out a red stone butte that seemed to rear up immediately above the road to the left. To the right, the country suddenly broke and became a crazy tangle of brush, rock and gullies. Soon they hit a newly-formed stream that was coming from the butte and doing its best to wash the road away. The stage lurched insanely as it bumped from hard to soft patches and it was all McAllister could do to stay in his seat. The team lost cohesion, the stage almost came to a halt and started to slide to the right. Brush scraped its sides. Dolan yelled in alarm, shrill as a woman and McAllister plied the whip, yelling like a Comanche in at the kill. The team pulled themselves together and jumped as one, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes wildly, the stage nearly righted itself as the animals fought desperately for a footing on the treacherous surface.
Dolan was shouting: “Don’t stop. For the love of God don’t stop.”
Something crashed through the brush to the right.
McAllister glanced in that direction and saw a mounted man ploughing through the mud within a dozen yards of the stage.
There was only time to see the cloth covering the lower part of the man’s face. The whip was in McAllister’s right hand, the lines in his left. He did the only thing he could do. As the rider lunged closer, McAllister gave him the whip full in his face.
The man jerked back in the saddle, raised his hand to show that it held a gun and his faint yell came through the teeming rain. McAllister laid the whip on the horses, bawling hoarsely at them and saw several figures on the road ahead of him, crouched up in the saddle against the rain. A gun-barrel glittered dully. He heard a distant shout. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew that he was being ordered to stop. He continued to ply the whip and yell at the team.
They responded, hitting their collars in a titanic sixfold effort, wrenching the heavy stage forward and taking it, as McAllister swung them recklessly, straight at the horsemen ahead.
One of the riders spurred his ho
rse off the road in a panic, seeing the charging team coming down straight on top of him. His horse slipped in the mud; horse and rider went down.
A gun banged dully in the wetness and a bullet sang forlornly past McAllister’s left ear. He jammed the whip away and reached inside his coat for the Le Matt, never stopping his shouting at the team. The fallen man scrambled to his feet and tried to get clear of them, but the near-side leader caught him with a shoulder and knocked him off his feet again. Another rider jumped his horse for the stage and fired two shots at McAllister. One tore his hat from his head, the other passed harmlessly behind him. For a fraction of a second, McAllister glared into the wide eyes of the man below him before he fired the Le Matt almost point-blank.
The bandanna became red shreds, the face a horror. The man was lifted violently from the saddle and flung away like trash. The horse reared and went over backwards.
Then, as McAllister got to work with the nine brass cartridges and the top barrel, guns seemed to be going off all around him. Inside the stage, the little stage-line agent was banging away; the horsemen scattered out to left and right, the stage lurched between them and the team kept running. Riders wrenched their horses around, pounding after the stage, McAllister reckoned there was a round half-dozen of them left. It he got himself out of this one, it meant he had more luck than any man deserved. He prayed some smart man didn’t down one of the team.
A rider drew alongside of him on the right. McAllister turned his gun on him, but before he could fire, the man shot the nearest wheeler and the animal went down. The stage staggered a few yards and came to a halt. McAllister fired and the horseman swung away, hugging his saddlehorn and dropping his gun.
McAllister turned, swiveling on his backside on the seat.
Another rider came up on the left, grasped the roof-rail and heaved himself aboard. McAllister swung hard with the pistol at arm’s length and smashed the barrel into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground.
Only one thing was sure. Up where he was, he was too good a target. He jumped to the ground on the left side in time to meet the man he had knocked off the roof coming to his feet. The fellow was groggy and had apparently dropped his gun, but he flung himself unhesitatingly at McAllister. The marshal kicked him hard in the knee, then laid his gun-barrel alongside his head as he went over.
Turning, McAllister caught sight of a rider coming around the rear of the stage. The man was having trouble with his horse that didn’t seem to like gunfire. McAllister shot him out of the saddle and cocked again as three others drove out of the rain. They were bunched close and offered an unmissable target.
But McAllister never fired.
One of the men fell forward onto the neck of his horse and the animal took him out of the fight, slipping and sliding in the mud. The animal tried to climb the side of the butte, lost its footing and went down. One of the other horses screamed in agony and fell to its knees, pitching its rider onto the road. He landed on his head, tried vainly to rise and stayed down. The third man wrenched his horse’s head around and high-tailed west, lashing it with his quirt.
Gingerly, nerves taut, McAllister approached the rear of the stage and looked around. A couple more of the attackers were pulling out, pounding away into the rain. A rifle cracked damply.
The man whose horse had been shot, got shakily to his feet and yelled: “This ain’t my fight,” when McAllister turned his gun on him.
“Tell me whose it is,” McAllister said.
Dolan stepped from the stage, saying: “Well, that’s over.” He stopped when he saw the road-agent and took a pace backward.
“Get around behind him and keep him covered,” McAllister ordered, approached the masked man and wrenched the bandanna from his face.
Hard-bitten, dark features were revealed. Nobody McAllister knew. A week’s stubble on the long chin, hair uncut, a wart on the nose.
McAllister searched for a gun and found none. Taking a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, he clipped one to the man’s wrist, pulled him to the stage and fastened the other cuff to the handrail by the door of the vehicle.
A horse was approaching them at a trot from the direction of town. Both he and Dolan turned to cover the rider.
“Sing out,” McAllister shouted, “or you’re mutton.”
The rider pulled up and yelled back: “Don’t mention the word to me, pard. It ain’t decent.”
Sime!
“What the hell’re you doin’ here?” McAllister demanded. “I told you to stay in town.”
The deputy laughed and heeled his horse up to them. When he had climbed stiffly from the saddle and thrown away the water gathered in the brim of his hat, he said: “It was a lovely day for a ride. Lucky for you I’m a disobedient son-of-a-bitch. These boys had you dead to rights.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe my ass. Had half a mind to leave them finish it and draw a full marshal’s pay.”
“You don’t have half a mind.”
“I got enough mind to watch the west of town instead of the east like you said. Caught a bunch of’em breakin* down timber out of there and followed ’em.”
McAllister grunted. “All right, so you’re smart. I don’t know what I’d do without you. And you left two good witnesses back in town with no protection.”
Sime shrugged. “That’s the way she goes, I reckon. Now, let’s go ahead and get this crate into Deadwood before them bad boys see you’re a cinch for a hold-up.”
McAllister snarled: “You get back into town.”
“Now, wait a minute -”
“Git.”
Being a somewhat privileged man because he had ridden with McAllister in the old days, Sime called him a few choice names that made Dolan shudder, mounted his horse and turned it.
“See you,” he said.
As he lifted the lines, McAllister said: “Sime.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Sime nodded affably and said: “Don’t get sentimental.”
“Watch out for them bastards. Maybe they didn’t go too far.”
“I’ll do that.”
He touched the gelding with the spurs and sent it at a canter down the road.
McAllister said softly: “They stopped breeding that kind, I reckon.” He approached the man handcuffed to the stage and said: “Inside, you.” The man protested and McAllister lifted him bodily inside, then turned to take care of the other fallen man, saying: “We’ll bury the dead on the way back.”
The other man was a big fellow, wearing a fish, and looking pretty sick from two blows on the head. McAllister got him into the stage and chained him to his colleague.
Nothing of moment happened for the rest of the trip, except that once they were bogged down in mud and had to manhandle the heavy vehicle onto firm ground. And about five miles out of Deadwood they met a party of about a hundred men tramping heads down in the rain. They were armed and desperate enough for gold to challenge both the Indians and the Army that were out to stop them. Gold was the right of every free-born American and nobody was going to stop them.
McAllister did not stay to argue. The Army might not have its heart in stopping them, but the Sioux with their homeland at stake would be hacking them to pieces inside a week.
The City was reached, the gold left, the team changed and, unshaven, dirty and red-eyed with weariness, McAllister turned the stage around and headed back. Dolan protested that they should wait over a day to travel on schedule, but McAllister cheerfully told him to go to hell. Next Dolan protested against taking the two road-agents back with them. McAllister ignored that one and whipped up his horses.
They reached Malcolm City near dusk on the following day.
It seemed muddier and fuller than when they had left it. The return of the stage created quite a stir. The two bemused and raging road-agents were a sensation. McAllister threw them in a cell together with Sime’s help and within ten minutes was faced by a shifty-eyed man wearing broadcloth who claimed he was a l
awyer and demanded their release. McAllister told him to go to hell and the man declared that he was Henry Mulligan who had practised law for twenty years and was well known in the Capitol. The marshal would be hearing more from him. He had no right to arrest anybody outside the city limits. McAllister asked him if he would choose to walk out or get thrown out.
He walked. Fast.
Jenny Mann came into the office to tell him that her patient looked a little better. Just as he was going in to see Diblon, a messenger came from the stage-agent with a wire in his hand. It was from the federal marshal, appointing McAllister temporarily as a deputy United States Marshal. Letters of appointment followed and would reach him within a week if the roads, the road-agents and the Sioux allowed.
McAllister went to see Joe Diblon. Jenny Mann followed him in.
Joe looked pretty sick, but a sight better than he had previously.
When McAllister asked him how he was, he managed a grin.
“Can you talk?”
“Sure.”
Jenny Mann came forward. “Mr. Diblon must not talk for long or be excited under any circumstances.”
“There are some things I have to ask him,” McAllister told her. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind leaving us alone for a while.”
She refused, he insisted, she refused again and finding that he couldn’t bring himself to tell so pretty a woman to go to hell, he allowed her to stay.
“On one condition,” he told her. “Anything we say must not be repeated to anybody.”
She looked indignant and swore herself to silence. She went and stood by the window which was the furthest she could get from the bed.
McAllister sat on the side of the bed and leaned close to the wounded man. “Joe – do you know who shot you?”
“No.”
“That jasper was waiting for you. Who would want you dead?”
“A dozen men.”
“Yeah – but they’d be men who’d want to kill you on the open street so folks could see them do it. Maybe somebody wanted to rub you out because you knew something about them.”
McAllister Justice Page 5