That left McAllister with a wounded friend on his hands, a gullyful of dead and dying and a bunch of miners who were hightailing it back the way they had come. First thing he did was to dress the wound in Sime’s side the best he could. Next he caught up a wandering mule and rode after the miners. They wanted to shoot him at first, but somebody recognized him and after that he started to get things organized. The train pulled into the Willows and the gruesome business of burying the dead including Elk, began. They cut willow-poles to make travois for the wounded. At a distance they could see their fallen comrades’ pack-animals being driven at a fast trot toward the south. And there wasn’t a thing they could do about it.
Sime was hurt, but not fatally. The ball had ripped into his side, traveled around the ribs and come out the fleshy part of his back. He was, he told the world, a lucky sonova-bitch. McAllister left him protesting with the miners, borrowed a saddle-horse from a dead man and headed south.
He had seen Paston and Dix. Come nightfall if he had his way, Paston was going to be behind bars and Dix was going to be dead.
Chapter Eighteen
It didn’t happen as quickly as that.
Neither Paston nor Dix were in Malcolm when he reached it after dusk. Straightway, he called on Jenny Mann and found that she had taken the stage to Deadwood. He went back to the office. By now he was slowing up because he was tired to his bones and his shoulder was giving him hell. In the office, Joe Diblon had sat himself behind his desk. He looked white around the gills still, but he wasn’t complaining.
McAllister helped himself from the bottle on the desk, drank and said: “Jenny Mann took the stage to Deadwood. I ride there and this is finished.”
“You mean,” Diblon said, “if Jenny went to Deadwood, it means Paston is there?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“And if she’s in Malcolm, Paston will be here?”
McAllister looked at him hard.
Diblon nodded.
“She didn’t ride any stage to Deadwood. She walked past the window just before you got into town. My guess is she was headed for the livery stable.”
McAllister stood up and helped himself to another drink. Some life seemed to flow back into him. The fiery liquor took some of the kinks out of his tired mind.
“Paston’d be crazy to be here,” he said. His voice showed his doubt.
“I saw two men on the street an hour back that I reckoned always ran with Paston. One had a scar and a thumb missing.”
“Dix?”
“The same.”
McAllister went to the cupboard and opened a box of shells. He put a couple of handfuls into the pockets of his denim jacket and loaded the gun to even the chamber under the hammer. He took off his gun-belt and laid it on the table. The gun he thrust into the top of his pants. He grinned, briefly.
“Same old way,” Diblon said, looking back over the years and remembering the times he had seen this man draw from his pants’ top.
“If you’re good,” McAllister said, “you’re good from anyplace.”
“That’s so.”
McAllister walked to the door.
He turned and said: “See you, Joe.”
Diblon raised a hand.
“Luck, Rem.”
McAllister nodded and walked out onto the street. He wished he didn’t feel so damned tired.
He angled across Main until he was opposite the feed store and looked down street to the livery. He could see a light hanging in the yard. Another showed a dim light in the depth of the barn. McAllister didn’t like it, but he knew it would have to be here or he would lose the men he wanted. The one man he wanted in particular.
No time to lose. He walked across the street, noting that the mud was now dried hard underfoot in deep ruts. A man could break his ankle or his neck running on them.
The moon was starting to show some light. The clouds were whispy and light. It was going to be a beautiful night. He thought of the woman who had been his life shot down in that border town by a man who was kill-crazy after a fight with the law that had been McAllister. He saw her black hair lying back in the dust and the large dark eyes looking up into his for the last time. Some of his tiredness lifted.
He had to be sharper than he had ever been before in his life for what was going to happen in the next few minutes. He touched the butt of the gun with the tip of his forefinger to judge its exact position. This killing would be played by the rules. Rules the other fellows had spat on all their lives.
He reached the street gate of the livery and stopped.
A man standing in the shadows inside gave a shrill whistle through his fingers.
McAllister said: “Use your smoke-pole or throw it down and walk away.”
The man went very still and said: “This ain’t my fight.”
“Throw it down.”
Gingerly, as though the weapon was hot to the touch, the man drew it with finger and thumb and tossed it into the center of the yard.
“Walk by me. I see you in town after tonight, likely you’ll hang. This is a good chance I’m giving you.”
The man said: “I know that,” and walked past McAllister, head turned to the ground but watching him out of the corner of his eye.
McAllister waited till he had reached a safe distance before he moved. There was no hurry now. He knew Paston at least was here and had been warned.
His senses taut, he started the walk across the yard, feeling the rays of the lantern fall across him like bright tangible things. His right hand hung straight at his side, braced.
A man came and stood in the doorway of the barn. It was Jefferson, the owner.
“I don’t want no trouble here,” he said. “I don’t want you here.”
“I’m the law.”
“My ass.”
McAllister did not stop.
“Get out of the way, old man,” he told the liveryman, “or you’ll be dead.”
Hastily, the man stepped out of the barn and hurried into the shadows.
McAllister stepped into the doorway of the barn and, glancing to the left, saw Paston standing, watching him with a smile on his face.
To his left stood another man, trailing a short carbine. He wasn’t Dix.
“I could waste my breath and say you’re under arrest, Paston,” McAllister told him. “But I won’t.”
“You have a lot of gall,” Paston told him with genuine admiration.
“Don’t I?” McAllister said. He was dealing with a prosperous-looking snake. He reckoned he would try playing this by snake’s rules. “I could hang you ten times over for what you done.”
Paston laughed.
“You have to take me.”
“I’ve good as got you.”
“There’re four men in this barn,” Paston said evenly. “You touch that gun and you’re mutton.”
McAllister said: “You think I didn’t know that when I come here. I’ve had worse odds.”
“You can’t see these men.”
“No, but I can see you.”
Paston thought about that and the silence was heavy. You could hear the horses breathing in there. McAllister flicked his gaze into the gloom and caught the gleam of a drawn gun among the stalls. There would be another gun in the loft. After his first shot, he guessed he would go back into the bales of straw behind and slightly to the right of him. A difficult move, but he thought he could make it. If only he wasn’t so tired.
First the snake rules.
“I’ll do a deal,” he said.
The smile returned to Paston’s face.
“I don’t need a deal with four guns lookin’ at you-all.”
“Not a deal that says you four go free if I have one in return.”
The man near Paston said: “Cut that kinda talk out.”
Paston held up a hand.
“Hear what he has to say.”
“Nobody ain’t gettin’ sold out.”
Paston snarled: “Shut your mouth.” He turned to McAllister and a
sked: “Who?”
“Dix.”
The silence came back. McAllister wondered if Dix were in the darkness listening to him. His back muscles started to creep.
“You want him that bad?”
“Never wanted a man more.”
“And we go free?”
McAllister nodded and said: “Yeah,” joyful that he could catch this murdering coyote with a lie.
His eyes, fixed on Paston, caught the small movement as the man next to Paston flicked up the muzzle of the carbine.
McAllister flung himself to the right and dropped to one knee, fingering out the gun from his waist, palming it, cocking and firing, all in one smooth, beautifully co-ordinated movement. The carbine cracked deafeningly and the heavy ball thudded into the close-packed straw. Frantically, the man started to. lever a fresh round into the breech as the bullet from McAllister’s gun caught him high in the chest and knocked him backward. McAllister moved to the left as he shifted from one knee to the other. Paston’s hand was on his gun.
“No,” the Texan yelled.
His hands went high.
McAllister stood up.
“Pity you didn’t draw,” he said. “Saved everybody a whole heap of trouble.” His eyes shifted around, looking down the horse-stalls. “Come on out of there or Paston gets it in the belly.” Puzzled as to why he hadn’t shot, McAllister watched the man walk out of the shadow. “Drop your gunbelts.”
They unbuckled and the belts dropped. McAllister herded them to the door and checked that the fallen man was dead.
“Head for the jail.”
Paston nodded and smiled. The smile was genuine and McAllister didn’t like it. They paced ahead of him across the yard and the old man came forward to stare at them with some amazement. When they reached the gate, the crowd was already there, drawn by the sound of the shooting. McAllister ordered them to stand back and they obeyed him. The two prisoners turned right and went down the street, stumbling a little on the deep ruts, their hands held high.
On the sidewalk, McAllister saw a woman standing, watching them. It was Jenny Mann. Regret for her washed through him. A waste of a mighty sweet woman. Why did the fine ones go for the bad men?
They were within a stone’s throw of the office when Paston halted. The other man went on a few paces, then stopped too.
“Get on,” McAllister said and as soon as the words were spoken saw what had stopped them.
He knew right off that he was caught in a cleft stick. He had walked into a trap and it was as tight as could be.
A man stood at the mouth of the alley with a gun in his hand. McAllister couldn’t see his face, but he knew it was Dix. It had to be.
Lifting his eyes to look across the street, he saw the second and third man.
In the brief seconds that followed, his mind automatically took stock. His gun in his hand, thumb on hammer for cocking. Paston and the other prisoner three yards in front of him. Dix ahead and to the right of them. One man directly to McAllister’s left and the other to the left and ahead of him. The situation could be worse, but not much.
“So you walked me into it, Paston,” he said softly. The crowd that had followed them, took the situation in at a glance and were backing up to get out of the way of possible stray shots.
Paston said: “Yeah, I did.”
“I ought to back-shoot you.”
“But you won’t.”
Before Paston had finished the words, McAllister drove a shot at Dix and ran forward so that he was between his two prisoners. Paston gave a yell of alarm and tried to escape, but McAllister caught him by the sleeve. A bullet sang over his head and the other prisoner ran for it. McAllister let him go and laid a shot across the street. A gunman ducked back into the cover of an alley, while the other opened up with his gun. Paston struck McAllister a terrible blow on the side of his head and knocked him down. A shot sounded from the sidewalk near at hand and one of the men on the far side of the street, rolled out onto the hard mud and lay kicking feebly.
Dix fired and the bullet kicked up dust in McAllister’s face as he dazedly raised himself on one elbow. He let Dix have another shot and was aware that Paston was running down the middle of the street. The unknown gun on the sidewalk shot him in the leg and tripped him up. He tried to crawl like a dog with its back broken. Dix fired twice. A ball plucked at McAllister’s sleeve, then the marshal fired a steady slow shot and watched the thumbless man walk slowly out into the lamplight. His pace was slow, his footsteps dragged. He lifted his face and for a moment his dead eyes met McAllister’s. He started to lift his gun with the gunman’s instinct of trying for his opponent in his death throes, but another bullet knocked him over and spread him motionless on the iron-hard ruts.
Footsteps hammered as a man fled.
A man walked slowly toward McAllister who raised tired eyes and saw Sime holding his side with one hand and a smoking pistol with the other.
“What in hell’re you doin’ here?” McAllister demanded.
Sime grinned.
“Reckoned you couldn’t stay alive without me,” he said. “An’ I was by-Gawd right.”
They collected Paston and drove him, complaining that he was crippled and couldn’t walk, into the office. McAllister marched up to Joe Diblon and tossed his badge onto the desk.
“He’s all yours, Joe. The whole damned shebang’s yours from here on.”
Jenny Mann came in and stared at Paston. She looked as though her world had come to an end.
“Go back to your sister,” McAllister told her. “He ain’t worth a thought. When there’s time, I’ll spend a coupla days tellin’ you what a yeller dawg he is and what he done.”
Sime prodded his fellow Texan in the direction of the cells. Jenny gave him a stricken look and left. McAllister said: “There’ll be a load of gold down at the livery, Joe. Best get it before anybody else does.”
“What’re you goin’ to do right now?” Diblon asked.
“Sleep.”
He felt that he could sleep for a hundred years. His big hunt was over. The wasted year was over and done with. Now there was a barren future stretching out before him. He went into the rear room and lay down on the blankets on the floor, putting his hands behind his head. Tomorrow… hell, tomorrow, he’d feel different. There was Mrs. Tyson … there was Jenny Mann. There was a whole world full of beautiful women and fine horses. There were plenty of lives to live and he intended to live them all. He closed his eyes and slept.
1. See Joe Blade by Matt Chisholm. Panther Books, 1958
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © P. C. Watts 1969
First published by Panther Books
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McAllister Justice Page 13