McAllister 5

by Matt Chisholm

That night they decided to take it in turns to stay awake with a loaded gun. They killed the fire and divided the night hours between them. The night was without incident.

  Like most cattlemen, Ben Holly was up with first light. Soon bacon sizzled in the pan, the coffee pot was on. Going on a trip needed food in a person’s belly, he said. Ana wandered about the camp, sleepy-eyed and sullen. She was not going to smile at anybody or anything this morning. When McAllister spoke cheerfully to her, she replied in Spanish: ‘It is no use your trying to get on the better side of me, McAllister. I do not have a better side this morning. I think that you are arrogant and domineering. Typical of your sex. I have had an injustice done me, but I am not permitted to do anything about it, while you, as a man, can do and go as he likes. If you think that you can treat me like a plaything, as Mexican men do, you are mistaken and you had better look for another girl.’

  McAllister, whose leg-wound was giving him hell, was pretty short with her. ‘Please yourself,’ he said. ‘I just don’t want to see you killed. I don’t see any reason I have to be ashamed of that.’

  Holly’s wife and daughter were busy packing the wagons. They seemed to take the move as a matter of course, but they were apprehensive of the killer maybe hidden out there in the basin somewhere, possibly watching them at this minute.

  ‘I do declare,’ Mrs Holly said, ‘it fairly gives a woman the creeps to know that kind of man is watching her.’

  ‘I’ll see you out of the basin,’ McAllister told Holly. ‘You may have need of another gun before you get clear.’

  ‘Sure, I’m grateful,’ Holly replied.

  The old gunfighter now had a gun strapped on. McAllister watched him draw and aim a couple of times and was witness to the fact that the man still retained the smooth skill of the professional.

  ‘You didn’t forget, Ben,’ McAllister said.

  Holly gave him a cold smile. ‘A man never forgets. Maybe he should.’

  ‘But not at a time like this.’

  Now Holly allowed himself a laugh. ‘You can say that again.’

  Everybody helped in hitching the teams and the horses were leaning into their collars within the hour after dawn. McAllister had to admire the efficiency of the Holly family. There was not much discussion about anything, they just all mixed in and went ahead. Now the two wagons went along the eastern rim of the basin to the pass by which they would leave it. This lay to the south-east. By noon they had climbed and were at the pass. They halted and looked back into the basin. They had moved through a morning mist, but now this had lifted and hung like a veil over the great depression, a pale curtain between it and the sun.

  Holly and McAllister paused for a last word.

  ‘I wish you luck,’ Holly said. ‘Maybe I ain’t doing the right thing and I should stay with you. I’m damned if I know what to do for the best.’

  ‘You couldn’t let the women go ahead without you, Ben,’ McAllister said. ‘And we both know it.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’ He held out his hand and they shook. ‘Luck.’

  As he turned his horse after the wagons and his wife and daughter called their goodbyes, Ana ran up to McAllister. ‘Be careful,’ she said.

  ‘As always,’ he answered. The mule butted her playfully with his nose.

  ‘If you left him alone,’ she said, ‘he might just go away.’

  ‘You’re forgetting,’ he reminded her, ‘that he has my horse.’

  He stooped from the saddle and kissed her. She watched him, large-eyed. ‘Stay close to the Hollys,’ he told her, ‘and I’ll see you in a couple of days at the outside.’

  ‘Go with God,’ she called to him.

  He smiled and turned the mule down the pass into the basin. She watched him until Holly called to her, but McAllister did not turn and look back.

  Eleven

  As McAllister headed down into the basin, he knew that he was constrained in a number of ways. He was wounded for one thing and that would curtail his speed and scope on foot. This was serious, for what lay ahead of him most likely would demand fast work on foot. His only animal was a mule, which could mean that with his quarry mounted on the mare McAllister would be left standing. Yet if the affair once more became a flight across the desert the mule would be some kind of an asset, for a mule would go on without water after the best horse had dropped.

  His greatest limitation was that he had no concrete idea of where the man could be.

  So he gambled. Wounded, the man would need a position which would offer him security and a good sight of the surrounding country. He not only wanted to be out of sight, but he needed to be in a position of being forewarned of anybody approaching him. The nest of rocks where McAllister and Ana had stopped would provide both. The situation called for a kind of mental double-bluff. It was an obvious place to be; therefore the man would not be there. If McAllister thought the place too obvious, he would dismiss it from his mind and not search there.

  What interested McAllister was where the man would conceal his horses. They would need to be on grass, but if he hobbled them on the shelf-land, they would be plain to the view of anybody below in the basin. McAllister in a like position would have hobbled one animal on grass at a good distance from the hiding place and kept the other among the rocks to be let out to graze under cover of darkness.

  As soon as he was down off the pass, McAllister turned the mule south and made his way first across a wide prairieland and then into deep timber. He rode with the greatest caution, rifle in hand, eyes skinned and ready to shoot at a moving shadow. In the middle of the afternoon he stumbled quite by accident on a hobbled horse. It was the quarry’s own horse, roughly hobbled with rawhide lines which looked as if they had been cut from a lariat. He had sidelined the horse and it was moving quite contentedly as it grazed. It greeted McAllister cheerfully and tried to follow the mule when McAllister started to back-track him. These tracks took him back into timber again, going north, and as McAllister expected were wiped out carefully after a while. McAllister did not waste time hunting tracks again, but continued on north until he came to the edge of timber and looked along the line of the escarpment which was the eastern edge of the shelf upon which the rock shelter stood. From where he had halted he could see distantly the rocks, a small dark smudge in the great sloping stretch of grass.

  Now he looked at the sky and assessed how much daylight he had left at his disposal. He debated with himself. Was it best to wait for dawn and do what he had to do in daylight? Or should he not risk the quarry getting away under cover of dark and start his move now?

  He decided upon now. The quarry might take flight and that was the last thing McAllister wanted. With the mare to ride, the man could stretch this chase out to another six weeks. The throbbing pain in McAllister’s leg dissuaded him from leaving his action till daylight.

  He rode openly from the trees and headed across the grassland below the escarpment so that anybody in the rocks could not fail to see him. As he went he did a pretty good act of a man who was nervous and expecting a bullet at any moment. In fact he did half-expect one, but no more than that. If the man was wounded and he was safely in the rocks, he would be sensible and wait to see if McAllister would ride on past.

  McAllister’s memory and feel for terrain now proved invaluable. He remembered clearly the goat-track below the spot where he had waved to Ana up in the rocks. The mule attacked this steep and at times dangerous climb with all the sure-footed confidence of his breed and deposited McAllister safe and sound amid the thickets and rocks which stood there at the bottom of the sloping bench. McAllister dismounted, performed a ritual cursing of the pain in his leg and made a long inspection of the rocks on the slope above.

  He saw nothing that could suggest a man and horse hidden there. Just the same, he was starting to get confident over the hunting of this elusive man. Now patiently he started his simple ploy. Taking his fifty-foot reata, he fastened each end of it to a couple of stakes. Then he used his knife to push the stakes do
wn deep so they could not easily be withdrawn. That done, he looped one of the mule’s lines to the rope, so that the animal could move along the rope to graze. With his pegging-strings, he tied two sticks to the mule’s saddle and fixed his hat firmly on top. The dummy was of sufficient height to be seen occasionally through the gaps in the thickets and rocks by the man above as the mule moved. If the man was up above, that was, and not below watching McAllister sardonically. McAllister told himself that chances had to be taken and that was one of them.

  Now, Henry in hand, McAllister wormed his way through the thickets until he had a clear view of the rocks. Taking out his glass he examined the rocks with a patient thoroughness. After about five minutes, he picked up the reflection of light on a small smooth surface and knew that he was looking at the eyeball of a man lying in deep shadow. This discovery gave him enormous satisfaction. Knowing now that there was a man concealed there, he could map out his immediate actions. He folded the glass, slipped it into a pocket and picked up the Henry. Knowing the interior of the natural fortress as he did, he could picture to himself almost the exact position in which the man was lying. He reckoned that the man had spotted his movements and possibly was at that moment curiously watching the movements of the mule-supported hat.

  McAllister quickly brought the Henry to his shoulder, aimed and fired, driving the bullet into the break in the rocks which was the quarry’s loophole. Immediately he fired, he flung himself down and bellied his way to a new position. Two shots now came from the rocks, widely spaced, showing that the man was shooting with due care and without panic. McAllister rolled away from the rocks, crawled back through the thicket and slid below the edge of the escarpment. The mule continued to graze contentedly as if nothing had happened. McAllister now gained his feet and went as fast as his injured leg would allow along the line of the escarpment edge, going north until he came to the faint break in the deep grass above him which denoted the start of the curving gully. He wormed his way into this and started to crawl west, going up the slope of the bench, knowing that he was concealed from the man above him. As he crawled he heard two more shots from the quarry and was relieved that the man’s attention was still being held. McAllister could not expect that the simple trick of the moving hat would work for any length of time, but he prayed that the man would not venture from the shelter of the rocks before he could carry out his plan. All would depend on how badly hurt the man was.

  Only once during that fast and seemingly unending crawl did McAllister pause to rest his leg. It was desperately hot in the grassy tunnel. He found that the dust and particles of grass in there were getting up his nose and giving him an overpowering desire to sneeze. Frequently now he had to make brief stops to press a forefinger to the base of his nose to stop a sneeze coming. Before long, however, the tunnel abruptly turned left and he found himself crawling in towards the rear of the rocks. The quarry fired once more, proving to McAllister that he was still in the desired position. McAllister could not believe his luck. His respect for the man’s cunning and resourcefulness prompted him still to believe that the fellow must be aware of his presence and would produce something to counter his move. However, when he reached the rocks and reached out to touch the flat rock which he had placed to block off the entrance to the tunnel, the quarry’s rifle sounded again and McAllister knew that he was comparatively safe.

  Gingerly he removed the flat rock from the entrance and laid it carefully and silently on the ground. Peering out into the bright sunlight he saw the soles of the man’s boots. The fellow lay face downwards and was in the act of jacking a fresh round into the breech of his repeating carbine.

  It was all so ridiculously simple that McAllister could scarcely believe that it was happening. He crawled silently from cover, rose to his feet and took a quick look around. The little mystery of how the man had managed to conceal Sally’s presence was at once solved. He had the mare lying on her side hogtied and helpless, her nose bound to keep her silent. The sight drove McAllister into a rage, which gave added strength to the blow he delivered to the back of the man’s head with his rifle butt.

  Its deliverance gave him profound pleasure. The killer’s head dropped forward onto the stock of his rifle, his forefinger pressed against the trigger and a shot sounded.

  McAllister wasted no time. He gripped the unconscious form by the scruff of its neck and hauled it away from the rocks. Tossing the rifle out of the man’s reach, he heaved off a boot, then, taking the handcuffs from a pocket, he clamped one cuff to the man’s wrist and the other over an ankle. After that he released the mare. She scrambled to her feet, looking totally disillusioned with mankind at the treatment she had received. McAllister patted her on the neck and drove her out of the rocks to grass. A moment later she was grazing contentedly, her chagrin apparently quite forgotten, and then when the mule spotted her and started braying she trotted down the shelf to satisfy her equine curiosity.

  Very slowly the unconscious man recovered his senses.

  Twelve

  All that McAllister was aware of for a few minutes was the anticlimax of it all.

  The man in the handcuffs looked shrunken. Just as a mustang looked after being roped and penned. Nothing like the wild and magnificent horse you had seen running free.

  The fellow was suffering from the blow from the Henry’s butt; his eyes were focused with the greatest difficulty. He was bent forward uncomfortably by the handcuffs which pulled one wrist down near one ankle.

  He eyed McAllister with what could only be called mild reproach.

  He was younger than McAllister expected, though what he had expected he did not know. But the eyes were knowing and ancient. It was as if they had seen all the evil of the world without being shocked.

  McAllister said: ‘Scobee Hibbard?’

  The man shook his head. ‘That’s not my name.’ The voice seemed to be no more than a whisper, a rustle of dry leaves under foot.

  ‘Henry Southern?’

  ‘Wrong again.’

  ‘James Bowyer?’

  ‘I don’t answer to that.’

  ‘All right,’ said McAllister, ‘what you hope to gain yourself from this tomfoolery, I don’t know. I have eyewitnesses. They’ll take one look at you and say: “That’s the man’.”

  ‘You can’t take me in and you know it. You don’t have a shred of jurisdiction out here.’

  McAllister said: ‘Nobody has jurisdiction out here. But I’m a citizen and I arrest you for the murder of William Mount and his common-law wife, Amanda Lee.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘If you don’t know them, I arrest you for the murder of Joseph Main.’

  ‘I don’t know him either.’

  The man was educated. Put a decent suit of clothes on him and he would be at home in any polite parlor in the East. McAllister could see him drinking tea and making conversation. Yet there was something totally dissolute and abandoned about him.

  ‘I also arrest you for the assault and kidnapping of the Holly family and of Ana Sullivan. I also arrest you for the murder of one Lemuel Sullivan. I reckon that’s about enough for a murderous little punk like you.’

  The man said something obscene and McAllister went on: ‘I leave aside the theft of a horse and mule for the moment. But you took my mare, mister, and you talk out of turn; look at me wrong even and I’ll take you apart for that alone.’

  ‘Oho,’ said the man, suddenly brightening up, ‘so that’s the way it’s going to be.’

  ‘What way?’

  ‘You’re getting yourself all worked up so you can knock me off with a clear conscience on the trail back to Black Horse.’

  ‘If I wanted you dead,’ said McAllister, ‘I’d of shot you instead of cracking your skull with my rifle butt. But you’ve given me an idea. However, I shall do my best to forget it because there’s a lot of decent folks eager to watch you hang.’

  The man tried to sit up straight, but the handcuffs kept him in a bent position. He looked more offended than ang
ry at his predicament.

  ‘Could you,’ he said, ‘just for one moment consider the possibility that you’ve made a mistake?’

  ‘Could you tell me how you got yourself shot in the chest?’ McAllister asked.

  The man stared at him for a moment. ‘I could tell you how I was shot, but I don’t have the least idea why. I was riding along minding my own business—’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ McAllister said, ‘why waste my time? I suppose you were minding your own business riding off on my mare.’

  The man looked astonished. ‘Your mare? Now who would have thought…? I found that fine little animal cropping the grass beside the trail …’

  McAllister said: ‘Hold out your right hand in front of you. Straighten your arm.’ The man obeyed, somewhat puzzled. McAllister took a length of pegging-string from a pocket and quickly built a small loop with it. That done, he stepped forward quickly and tightened it over the man’s extended wrist. He jerked on it till he could lash that wrist to the free ankle. The man tried to kick him in the face, but McAllister was too quick for him and cut him below the knee with the edge of his hand. The man went quite pale and sank back against the rocks. McAllister said: ‘Every time you give me trouble, it’ll hurt. So learn the lesson now and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief.’

  The man looked at him, aggrieved. ‘You’re a goddam Indian,’ he said.

  ‘Ain’t I?’ replied McAllister.

  Now he unlocked the handcuffs from around the man’s ankle and clipped them on to the other wrist, loosened the pegging-string and told the man: ‘Put your legs through your arms till your hands are behind you.’

  The man stared at him. ‘I can’t do that. It’s a physical impossibility.’

  ‘You don’t know what you can do till you try. Go ahead.’

  ‘Like hell I go ahead.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ McAllister told him, ‘or I’ll bend my gun barrel over your head. There’re no witnesses here and I just threw the rule book away.’