"Hold everything, boys, hold everything!" Gander Eye yelled at the top of his lungs. "I've cleaned them all out in here—quit a-trying to plug me!"
He thrust the rifle forth into view and frantically waved the towel back and forth in the air.
Something like a cheer rose outside. "Is that you, Gander Eye?" came the hail of Doc Hannum.
"It ain't one of them outlander gun-toters," Gander Eye howled back. "Don't shoot no more, save your cartridges. Come on over. The fight's done come to a screaming halt!"
But he looked again at Crispin's body, and the exultation oozed away from him and out.
"You ain't a-playing no tricks?" rose Duffy's voice, from somewhere more distant.
"No, the tricks is all played and the deck done flung out the window," Gander Eye shouted. "I mean that thing, Duffy, I got the last one of them. Now hold them damn trigger fingers, I'm a-coming out."
Again he extended the rifle at arm's length and moved it to wave his makeshift banner. Then, summoning his resolution, he stepped into the front yard where he could be seen. Again a chorus of happy yells greeted him.
He stood looking down at where sprawled the bodies of Struve and the other man he had shot from a distance, while Doc came trotting over and, behind him, Duffy and Bo. All three of them carried rifles. Up on Main Street, a knot of others had assembled. Among them stood Ballinger with a rifle that looked like a twenty-two, and Longcohr with the shotgun he had carried to talk about Duffy marrying Peggy. Others came and joined the group.
"I seen you pick off that fellow by their car, Doc," said Gander Eye as Doc joined him. "You done right good with that old gun of yours."
"Thanks," said Doc."Maybe I was pretty fair, seeing I hadn't fired a shot since I don't know when. And if you got the three who were here, that's well done, too." He drew in a breath. "But how about Jim?"
"I'm afraid they settled his business."
Others came hurrying into the yard. Duffy and Bo goggled at Gander Eye as Doc hurriedly told what had happened at the cabin. Ballinger came and put a hand on Gander Eye's shoulder.
"You did what had to be done," he said earnestly. "You won't have any trouble about it with the law. Listen, I'll go right now and call up the sheriff—"
"I'm afraid the phone wires got themselves cut by this bunch of boys your friend Struve fetched into town," Gander Eye said.
"That's true," seconded Doc. "I tried my phone and it's dead."
"Then I'll send somebody," prattled Ballinger. "You go, Duffy, find somebody with a phone that works. Go fast. Get them to understand we killed here in self-defense."
"We?" repeated Gander Eye. "Looks to me like as if I'm the one you got to speak up for. I don't recollect nobody but Doc shooting off a gun, except just me."
Still others gathered. Slowly was there. She came toward Gander Eye.
"I told Captain Kimber all the things Mr. Jim told me," she half whispered. "Told him what was going on, what was really happening."
"Jim's been killed," Gander Eye informed her.
"Oh," said Slowly. "Oh. That's too bad."
"Yessum," said Gander Eye, "ain't it?"
"But I was telling you about Captain Kimber. When I talked, all of a sudden he seemed to understand something. He said he had to get back and tell the rest of the Kimbers there'd been a big mistake about things."
Doc came to the cabin door. "Slowly," he said, "I wish you'd go to my cabin and fetch some sheets to put over these dead bodies."
"Yes, sir."
She turned away. Gander Eye thought how beautifully she walked.
Bo was at his elbow. "You must have hit somebody with near about every shot you fired," he said.
"I don't reckon I let off more than one time that I didn't kill right where I aimed," said Gander Eye, not proudly.
"Shoo, I done heard you tear down with more than three shots."
"I got me a couple of Beyonders in the woods."
"Beyonders?" Bo looked blank. "What about them?"
"You ain't heard the full tale on them, but I got two and another left out of there before I could get him in my sights. I reckon he was a-going for help. But look here, Bo, let Doc and Slowly tell you what the score really is. Then you can go take a look in the woods. You'll find them two Beyonders right where I knocked them down."
"You—" began Bo.
"I'm a-going."
He tucked the rifle under his arm and started out of the yard.
"Where are you off to?" Bo called after him.
"I done told you the Beyonders would be after us," said Gander Eye over his shoulder. "I reckon the best thing is meet whatever they got, halfway here or near to."
XV
He heard them calling his name. Bo's voice was loud and frantic; Slowly's was soft, almost pleading. Doc sounded authoritative. They called to him, but he did not turn around, did not slow his steps. Those Beyonders would be out, but Crispin had said they weren't fully armed yet, wouldn't be fully armed unless they got the right place to make into a headquarters, an arsenal. No point in giving them the time to do that.
He went along the street, then stamped across the hard, pebble-strewn surface of the old schoolyard. On the way, he fed fresh cartridges into the magazine of the rifle, six to replace the ones he had fired to strike five living targets. He took time to feel thirsty, to realize he had better do something about that.
From the dusty-red old brick wall of the school building jutted a corroded iron faucet. Gander Eye hurried to it, slung his rifle to his shoulder, and wrestled mightily with the handle until it grudgingly turned. Out gushed brown water—the town had never shut it off, even after all the years the school had gone empty and silent. He waited for it to clear, then stooped down and drank big swallows. He kept a mouthful of water to soak into his tongue and throat. Again he exerted his strength to shut off that rusty faucet. Then he headed for the road that went to the Kimber settlement. His shoes still made wet sounds.
The Kimber settlement. What might be going on at the Kimber settlement?
Slowly had said she had told Captain Kimber some of what Crispin had told her. The Captain had listened and had said something back about talking to his own folks about what the business might mean. Now, the Kimbers might be getting out in the woods with their own rifles. However badly prepared the Beyonders might be, the Kimbers were on their own ground, and they knew how to use their weapons. Captain Kimber had read Gander Eye a warning to stay clear. What would it be like, having to fight Kimbers as well as Beyonders?
But Gander Eye did not slow his steps on the rutted, stone-lumped road. He had made his brag that he couldn't be scared. No point in taking time to be scared now, after what he'd done about Struve's carload of murderers and the Beyonders who now lay dead and melting away beside Bull Creek on the edge of town.
The Beyonders had some kind of bomb to throw, and they'd missed him with one. He'd have to watch, in case they threw more. That Beyonder who had run from him could hardly have reached the cave by the baptizing pool and fetched back friends just yet. Meanwhile, Gander Eye was a mile on the way, better than a mile. For them to meet him on the road now—
Something like thunder rolled upslope ahead of him, dry thunder if there could be such a thing, a battering rush of sound from higher on the mountain. Then, immediately, a massive clatter of hard surfaces striking together.
He knew what that had to be; perhaps he had expected it. He turned and charged at the steep, wooded rise next to the road. It was high and abrupt, almost like a wall, but he tackled it because he must. He got both his hands in among thorns, making himself clutch the stems that grew them. Up he pulled himself, jabbing with his toes to get some kind of a purchase. His feet refused to take hold, and powerfully he dragged himself up by his grasp on the thorn bush, to seize a gnarled root above. Up he climbed, up, while the noise greatened, filled his ears, filled the whole air and world.
Now he managed to clamp a foot where it would hoist him. He hugged a trunk with his arms and pu
lled himself to it, above it. From there he scrambled on up the height, while earth slid from under his soles. Crash, rumble, the noise was rushing along the road and he must get above it, far above it, for it meant that the mighty pile of rocks had been loosed upon him.
It was upward, climb upward. No place could be too high for him to reach for safety. He found himself at a ledgelike place and scurried across it on hands and knees to a lesser slope beyond. Pines grew there, and he pushed himself in among them. At last he turned around to see.
The loudness was on the road below, a shattering crescendo of it, shaking the pines all around him. He leaned between two trees to look down into the road. There came the avalanche, the stream of hurtling, clashing fragments, dancing down the steep way as nimbly as kernels in a corn popper, churning up a misty cloud of whirling dust above and around themselves. The road must be fairly streaming with rocks, like a millrace in flood with water. And more came behind, a great torrent of rocks. Smaller chunks sprang to pepper the height up which Gander Eye had made himself accomplish that squirrellike climb.
Turning away, he went higher. He came to where he could see better, see boulders jumping down into the creek and others rushing along in their wake. He drew in his breath and shook his sweaty head.
"Didn't get near to me," he said half aloud in the din from below. "That was like a-trying to hit a cricket with a sledge hammer."
He found himself panting, and dabbed at his face with his sleeve. Below him the noise was diminishing. Did the avalanche grow less? Perhaps there was more to send down that road. He hoped that Bo and Duffy and the rest hadn't tried to come after him out of Sky Notch. Where he'd known what to do, had made it miss him, they might be hit and crushed, might be left like greasy blurs down there on the Kimber road.
He moved again, high above where the rocks were now dancing away to lower levels of the road. Straight he headed for where those rocks had been gathered for just such a smashing launch. He changed direction to get above them. It wouldn't be far now. He unslung his rifle and carried it at the ready.
Through the dense trees ahead of him, he heard the flat snap of a shot.
So his wasn't the only rifle out on Dogged Mountain today. That was bound to be the Kimbers, summoned by their chief, the Captain. And one of them had fired at something, more likely somebody. It wasn't at Gander Eye, he hadn't heard the whipsnap of a passing bullet anywhere. The Kimbers were trying to shoot something. All right, if there was any shooting to happen, he'd better try to get in on it.
As he stole forward on a half-lost old deer trail around the pine-plumed jowl of a slope, he heard two more shots. Not at him, either, he decided. He wondered if maybe some of the Sky Notch people, maybe Bo, maybe Duffy, had followed along, had somehow missed the avalanche and had opened a fight with some Beyonders. But how would anybody have pushed ahead of him to where that shooting sounded?
There it came again, pop-pop-pop. Nobody fired volleys if it was just hunting squirrels or rabbits. That was a battle.
Gander Eye went ahead, cautiously but fairly rapidly, keeping upward along the rise of the mountain. Now, just ahead there, he ought to come in sight of where the rocks had been collected, could see what was going on there. Another rifle spoke. He set the sling of his own rifle to be ready and held his thumb on the safety catch. He had come to a point where he had been before. The yellow light of the sun meant open ground just ahead there. Gander Eye came up behind a massive, knotted black walnut tree and peered cautiously around to the right, his rifle set to raise and aim.
He looked out upon the expanse where the rocks had been heaped. It didn't look the same, for lots of those rocks were gone. Here and there, at a place where a post was still lodged upright in a pile, at another where the rocks had rolled away, and two more close together at a greater distance, lay Beyonders.
They sprawled limp and motionless, like crude, dark toys flung down. A couple of them exuded foggy vapors. No living thing stirred in the open space.
But something stirred in the woods behind him. He wheeled swiftly, clicking off the safety as he brought his rifle up.
"Oh, just hold your damned tater a second," grumbled a voice he knew, and into sight pushed Captain Kimber, gray shirt rumpled, hat shoved back.
He, too, had a rifle. It must have been an old, old rifle, but it was as carefully kept as a precious jewel. Captain Kimber's sleety beard swirled above it, and his eyes blinked.
"I ain't about to pull down on you, so don't you pull down on me," he said. "Looky here, what us Kimbers is a-doing is show them Beyonders a short way back to where they come from."
"I heard me some shooting," said Gander Eye. "Don't hear none of it now. "
"That's because we got them on the run. Hell, they can't fight a single lick."
"They never brought along nothing much to fight with," Gander Eye said. "Jim Crispin done explained it to me, before he got killed."
"He's killed?" barked Captain Kimber.
"Struve and some fellows settled him, and I settled them."
"Is that a fact?" Captain Kimber pondered on it, face hard. "Well, let's go have a look at what's happening here."
He led the way above the open space. Neither spoke while they prowled along to where the far side was.
"One of them Beyonders come a-sailing back along the road, went into their cave, and come out with more of the same sort," the Captain said at last. "I reckon they flung the rocks down to try to get you."
"They never got me," said Gander Eye thankfully.
"I could see they didn't. But I was busy at the settlement, a-passing along the word Slowly give me. Once she spoke, all sorts of strangenesses sort of fell in place. We'd been a-going at things all wrong, Gander Eye, for another sight longer than I've been alive."
"It's easy to go wrong one way another," Gander Eye commented diplomatically.
They were moving above the road now, where the slope toward Sky Notch ended and a gentler incline led to the Kimber settlement. They could see the way down to the hollow where the baptizing pond was. Nothing moved, no shape stirred. There was only a gentle bobbing of green branches in a puff of warm wind.
"I reckon it's been near about tended to," said Captain Kimber.
He stepped down into the road itself. He and Gander Eye walked to where the path led downward toward the baptism hollow, and stopped.
"Looky here," said the Captain, as if it was hard to say. "I take back what I said. You can come on up hereabouts if you want to. "
Gander Eye smiled. "I reckon the law and the hunting regulations said I could all along, but thank you kindly."
"Another thing." Plainly this was harder to say. "Be friends with us. You come on up here some day, have some supper and some drinks with me at my place." He paused. "Fetch Slowly with you if you feel like it."
"That'd be nice, but it would be up to Slowly, whether she wanted to come with me."
Captain Kimber seemed to smile, deep in his beard.
"I got it in mind she d want to. It wouldn't surprise me, I wouldn't wonder myself none if she did"
Garner Eye gazed down the path and took a step. He still held his rifle ready.
"Now you've give me leave to hunt round here," he said, "I'll just go have a look and see if they really did all go home."
Captain Kimber shook his head. "I ain't got much puppy in me, but I don't know how close I'd crowd to that place."
"Just let me give it a try."
Gander Eye started downhill, toward the pool, toward the yawn of that craterlike opening in the side of the mountain. He saw the blink of the blue light within it.
Captain Kimber said no more from where he had stopped, up on the road.
XVI
Gander Eye picked his way down the path, past the point where once Struve had appeared to tell him how to run his business. He took his trigger finger away from the rifle. For the first time in a long, deadly while, he hoped he wouldn't need that rifle.
The Kimbers had changed their m
inds in a swift hurry, or at least Captain Kimber had changed his and told them to change theirs. Maybe that was how folks acted when they turned away from their gods. Love and worship turned into hate, into dealing death to what hadn't been gods after all. It must have seemed like sudden finish of all the good hopes for the Beyonders, getting shot down at long range by the Kimbers, who'd worshipped them. Gander Eye wondered if he ought to feel sorry for the Beyonders, just trying to find things out here, maybe make a life here, and finding death here.
He descended to the grassy hollow, and there in the rich grass lay a Beyonder, close to the pool. He bent down to study this one, too. Its metal casing was beginning to flake, like iron left out to rust all summer and all winter. He looked through the window at where it didn't have a face, just a lardy area tufted with fly-leg bristles. He wondered what you might find if you had some sort of a can opener and ripped that armor open and had a good look. He wondered how much science it would take to figure on a Beyonder s body, if you could call it a body, if any scientist from any big town would have any basis to figure on something from not even in our space, our universe.
The odor smote his nostrils and made him sick. How could you tell someone how a Beyonder smelled when the air was let in on him? A Beyonder who, if you decided to help him, would give you lumps of gold, make your crops grow, maybe even try to treat you right from whatever angle a Beyonder figured right and wrong? Gander Eye walked away from the silent shape, then paced around the pool and toward that doorway where the blue shimmer hung like a curtain.
The blue danced wildly. He stopped at a distance and watched, his forefinger again resting lightly on the trigger of the rifle.
Then, almost as he stopped, all the bright air around and above him was rent and shaken with awful sound.
He reeled and stumbled, as if on a floor that was giving way. That sound had a metallic jangle to it, and an explosive roar that both pounded and wailed. The blueness there inside the cave suddenly danced with what must be great, falling chunks of rock, like the chunks that had come dancing down the Kimber road.
The Beyonders Page 16