He climbed down the side of the arroyo, heaved the Henry rifle from leather and checked the loading. Then took three loading tubes from his saddlebags and stuck them in his belt. He smiled a little grimly. The Henry held fifteen shots and that gave him some advantage. He doubted if the Richards had a repeater that could hold that number of shots between them. It evened up the odds nicely for his money.
Rifle in hand, he led the canelo forward another couple of hundred yards until he reckoned he was within long rifle shot of the three men. He reckoned that if there was going to be shooting he would get in the first shots. He ground-hitched the canelo, knowing it wouldn’t spook at the sound of gunfire. Then he climbed the arroyo side again and lay on his belly watching the scene before him.
The three men had broken up now, scattering out to form a line of about one hundred yards long; they rode with immense caution at a slow walk, rifles held across their saddle bows. McAllister considered them – three grown men who were after another man with revenge in their hearts like three overgrown kids. They had nothing to gain by McAllister’s death, yet here they were risking their own lives to bring it about. It didn’t make any kind of sense to him. But the West was made up of such pride, men’s emotions were crude and their pride infantile. Maybe his was that way too.
Morny Richards was in the center of the line, Rick to the right and Seth to the left. Rick was nearest to him, therefore Rick would be cut down first because he was the most certain target. He waited, wanting to be sure of a hit. Slowly the horsemen came eastward, but they had forgotten a man could move as fast or faster than they could and the center of their line was directed at his former position. If Rick continued as he was, he would pass within fifty yards of McAllister’s left. His brother Morny was now some fifty yards to the right of him and further from McAllister. Seth was at a distance of more than one hundred and fifty yards. The distances offered on the face of it some chance to McAllister, but he knew that horses could move fast and bullets faster.
McAllister came suddenly alert.
Rick had started to angle left and was headed directly for McAllister. Clearly he had not seen the hidden man yet. McAllister jacked a round into the breech of the Henry. He wondered if Rick would catch the faint sound on the still plains air. But the sound of the horse’s hoofs must have muffled it. Rick came steadily on.
I’ll have to kill him, McAllister thought. There’s no other way if I’m to have a chance with the other two.
He raised the rifle, butt into shoulder and knew he couldn’t do it. He cursed himself for a soft fool, but he couldn’t bushwhack a man this way even if the man wanted him dead.
He lowered the rifle and crawled back into the arroyo well out of sight of the advancing man, listening for the sound of the approaching horse. He waited, still and tense until the steady plod-plod came to his ears. Then he simply came erect, waist-high above the lip of the arroyo and said: “Looking for me, Rick?”
The man nearly fell out of the saddle in alarm and astonishment. He went as still as a man can when his life depends upon it.
“Jesus God,” he whispered.
McAllister said: “Drop the rifle.”
The rifle fell into the grass and raised a small wisp of dust. McAllister looked past Rick and saw that the other two men had not yet noticed that anything was wrong.
His eyes went back to Rick. The man looked sick.
“Now the gunbelt.”
Carefully the man unbuckled the belt and let the holstered gun fall to the ground. His horse shifted a little.
“I could kill you, Rick,” McAllister said.
There was some iron in the man. He swallowed once and said: “You don’t have the sand.”
McAllister smiled,
“Stick around. You’ll see who has sand. Now, you’re out of this fight, hombre. Ride east and keep going. You come back and you’ll be dead all right. Hear?”
“I hear.”
“Hey, Rick.”
That was Morny, hidden from sight of McAllister by Rick. McAllister heard his horse on the move, coming in this direction. He had to move quickly or he could be facing disaster. He gripped the quirt hanging from his right wrist and slashed savagely at the rump of Rick’s horse, yelling loudly as he did so: “Aaaaah!” The horse jumped and ran east, leaving McAllister exposed. Morny halted his horse and stared for a moment, too surprised to move. McAllister didn’t waste any time; he jammed the butt of the Henry into his shoulder, fired, levered and fired again. Morny, in the act of raising his own weapon, was knocked over the rump of his horse to land on his back and raise a small cloud of dust. The horse skittered away to one side, took a dozen jumps and started grazing. Seth’s horse started pitching while its rider was trying to shoot. At the sound of the further shooting, Moray’s horse ran a little further off. Rick kept on going; he didn’t have any weapons and he knew what was best for Rick. McAllister started shooting at Seth, but he made a difficult target on an erratic horse. But he had the effect of driving the man to set spurs to his mount to get away from there as fast as he knew how.
McAllister watched the two horsemen departing, then walked slowly up to Morny, keeping the Henry pointed at him, promising himself he would shoot the sonovabitch in the head if he tried anything with his belt gun. But Morny wasn’t feeling like shooting anybody with anything. He lay on the ground with his eyes closed and moaned softly. McAllister took his belt-gun and shoved it under his belt and took a good look at the wounded man. He had been hit high in the shoulder and he was bleeding badly. He ripped aside the man’s shirt, used Morny’s own bandanna as a bandage and bound the wound up tightly. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it might save the man from bleeding to death, though why McAllister wanted to save the man’s worthless life, he hadn’t any idea. As his old man had said, he was soft.
Morny opened his eyes and said: “I’m dyin’.”
“You ain’t. You been hit in the shoulder and if your no-good brothers come back for you, you’ll make out. You should stick to horse-stealing. Trying bushwhacking is stepping out of your class.” He gathered up the man’s armament and added: “You come after me again and you won’t come off so lightly.” He walked back to the arroyo, picked up the other rifle and revolver and went down into the arroyo to the canelo. He reckoned he would count the weapons as the spoils of war. They’d make good presents for the Comanches. They’d do a lot for two rifles and two hand-guns.
He rode the canelo out of the arroyo, keeping his eyes on the distant figures of the two brothers and went back to collect the mule. Then he continued west. He hummed softly to himself as he did often when tension was relaxed. When he looked back Seth and Rick were venturing back to care for their wounded brother. McAllister had the feeling that he hadn’t seen the last of them. He would have stuck around and killed all three of them if he had any sense. But he didn’t have the stomach for killing.
Four
He had been on the trail a week when he sighted the carts. He was riding easily; indeed, he had taken it easy all the while, not pushing the animals because he wanted to conserve their strength. They were ganted down a mite, but they were in fine fettle. He would have liked a bait or two of corn for them to give that little extra something, but animals were like men, they couldn’t have everything they needed.
The carts were parked on the further side of a small creek among some stunted trees. McAllister’s eyes flicked over the scene, taking in the protective ridge to the north and the slightly broken ground to the south. But for those two features, the spot differed not at all from the rest of the plain. It was an ideal camping spot for the country. Smoke drifted up from several fires, ragged children ran between the carts, women worked at their cookpots and men lounged around. Everything about the place told him that probably these were Comancheros. He sat in the saddle watching the camp, several leather-clad men with bows and spears in their hands came to peer at him from the shade of their wide-brimmed hats.
Slowly, he walked his horse down to the creek
and into the water, heading for the men. One backed up a little as though afraid, but the other three stood their ground and, for a moment, he wondered if they intended to dispute his landing. He shifted the Henry that lay across his saddlebow an inch or two and that seemed to decide them. They parted to let him through.
On the bank he halted and gave them a polite greeting in Spanish. They merely stared back at him. He asked where he might find their chief. One of them pointed to one of the large-wheeled carts with his chin Indian-fashion. The jefe was yonder.
McAllister went on.
Children stopped to stare and then fled under the carts. Women looked up from their pots, looking as if they would take to their heels if he made a move toward them. He wheeled the canelo toward the cart indicated and found, sitting with his back to one of the wheels, a bearded man of gross appearance, a monstrously protruding belly, tattered sombrero, cotton shirt and leather pants. His dusty brown feet were bare except for rawhide sandals. He raised his eyes as McAllister approached, but gave no other indication of being conscious of his presence.
“You are the jefe here?” McAllister asked in Spanish.
The man gave one nod.
McAllister waited for an invite to get down, but it didn’t come.
So he got down anyway.
The man against the wheel stiffened a little. His eyes opened, showing them to be as black and pitiless as a reptile’s. His Spanish was crude and difficult to understand.
“Did anybody ask you to dismount, Yanqui?”
The question was blatantly an insult. McAllister heard a small sound behind him and turned his head to find the three men from the creek bank behind him. McAllister was glad that he had the Henry in his hands. He didn’t like the look of the spears and bows. Both might be primitive weapons, but at that range they could kill a man as effectively, even more painfully, than a rifle.
McAllister said: “I have looked for your camp for many days.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to talk with you on certain matters.”
“What matters?”
This Mexican was the exception to the rule. McAllister’s breath was taken away. His experience with Comancheros was that they liked to talk around a subject before they approached it. You lived and learnt.
“We will come to them by-and-by.”
“I think,” the man said, “we will come to them now.”
McAllister didn’t know what to make of it. He had expected the man to be half-afraid of him. But there was no fear in this small mountain of a Mexican.
McAllister said: “I have presents with me. There could be profit in talking with me.”
“And if I do not choose to talk? If I do not like talking with Yanquis?”
McAllister smiled which, if the man had known, was a bad sign.
“You are a Comanchero. Half your business is done talking with Yanquis.”
“But I do not talk with Yanquis when I am talking with Comanches.”
A chill went down McAllister’s spine. He had the sudden and terrible feeling that he had been suckered badly. He raised his eyes and looked around. At first he did not see them, but they were there right enough. Four of them squatting in the shade of a tree. Comanches. He would have sworn that they were not there when he had entered the camp.
“Maybe I too want to talk with the Comanches.”
The fat man smiled.
“But will they want to talk with you?”
“A Comanche will talk with anybody if he sees a profit in it”
The man nodded. There was some truth in that.
“It is not good,” he said, “that the Indians should see a white man in my camp. You will say what you have to say and you will go.”
McAllister was in a cleft stick. He did not know if this was the time for him to make his first move. If the Indians knew that he wanted the girl badly that might make them stubborn or it might make them put the price up. He decided to ease himself into the subject of what he really wanted.
“I am interested in prisoners,” he said.
“What else would you be here for?”
“I have to know for sure what band the person I am looking for is in.”
“That will not be easy. The bands come and go, form and disappear like dust.”
“Prisoners have been ransomed before. It’s your business.”
“That is incidental. I merely trade with the Indians and with the Texans.”
“But you do trade for prisoners.”
The man shrugged.
“It has happened.”
A movement caught the corner of McAllister’s eye. He turned his head. The Indians were standing up. They were armed with short spears, but one of them held a rifle in his hands. They started forward, walking awkwardly on their bowed legs. The leader, the man with the rifle, was especially ugly with the pot-belly developed by many Comanches in middle-age, and, as he got closer, he revealed that he had sticking out of his fat face a long and hooked beak of a nose. He was dressed in greasy buckskin, decorated with long fringes, his strong black hair decorated at the back by one feather held in place by a once gaily decorated but now faded headband. He waddled and kept his beady small eyes on McAllister all the time he approached him.
He halted some ten feet from McAllister and, without taking his eyes from him, said to the Mexican something in a harsh guttural voice. The Comanchero replied in the same tongue with a sardonic smile. McAllister didn’t like the sound of it.
“What did he say?” he demanded.
“He asked what you wanted.”
“And you told him.”
“I told him.”
“Who is he?”
“They call him Eagle Man.”
McAllister asked: “Is he the head of a band?”
“No. He belongs to the band of Iron Hand.”
McAllister knew Iron Hand. Who didn’t on the Texas frontier? Who hadn’t suffered from his devastating raids? Iron Hand had been on the ascendancy for some years now, attracting more and more warriors to his band. It was said that even some Kiowas had put themselves under his leadership. On one raid he led down into Texas it was rumored that he had had over three hundred men with him. McAllister didn’t like the look of things.
McAllister thought awhile. Mrs. Bourn had been taken by Comanches, therefore there was a fifty-fifty chance that she had been taken by Iron Hand. He had known that all along. This man in front of him with his beak nose and pot belly could lead McAllister to him; but who ever heard of a lone whiteman trailing a party of armed Comanches? It didn’t appeal to him overly.
Eagle Man spoke, at greater length this time. His speech sounded like the gobbling of a throaty turkey-cock. The Comanchero replied. They tossed words back and forth. Finally, the Mexican asked: “What prisoner do you want?”
McAllister wasn’t going to be caught with that one. Mrs. Bourn might be one they didn’t want to part with. If they knew that he was after her she might be spirited away before he could get to her.
“I will know her when I see her,” he said.
The Mexican interpreted that to the Indian and Eagle Man scowled ferociously. The men behind him made angry grunting noises. McAllister wished that he could get the Comancheros from behind his back.
The Indian gobbled some more.
The Mexican shrugged and said to McAllister in Spanish: “Eagle Man says that he has several white women, all of whom they would trade.”
McAllister said: “Tell him if he takes me to Iron Hand I’ll talk.” The mere thought of getting near Iron Hand in the midst of his band was enough to make a man break into a sweat. And McAllister sweated.
The Indian didn’t answer for a moment, then he spat out a reply. The Mexican passed it on. Eagle Man was going back to his band in the morning, but the Comanches didn’t like talking direct with white men, Let this business be contracted through the Comancheros as it had always been. That was the proper way to do the thing. But McAllister didn’t want to do that.
> “I must speak with Iron Hand,” he said.
That made the Mexican angry. He was the traditional middleman and he could see his profit going up into thin air.
“You will never get to Iron Hand,” he said heatedly. “You know that, Yanqui. The Comanches do not talk with white men. I am here. Talk with me. Give me the name of this girl. I will talk with Iron Hand. The chief and me, we are like brothers. Let me do it. I will get you a good low price and if I can I will ensure that the woman has not been harmed.”
“I’ll think about it,” McAllister said. “I’ll go now and I’ll come back at dawn maybe and talk again.”
“You are foolish to lose this chance. Perhaps I shall not be here tomorrow. We Comancheros move all the time.”
McAllister said: “You be here, man. Or I’ll find you.”
The men behind him growled. He turned and found that one of them had fitted an arrow to his bow. McAllister turned to the man by the wheel and said: “Tell your boy to behave himself or I’ll put him across my knee.” The jefe said something sharply and the man relaxed a little, but he didn’t take the arrow from the string. McAllister pushed through the men, reached his horse with the muscles of his back all tense and stepped into the saddle. Eagle Man said something to him in his own tongue. McAllister replied with his hands in sign language. He would return at dawn tomorrow. Then he would go with Eagle Man to Iron Hand. Eagle Man looked annoyed and McAllister wondered wryly what a trip to the Comanches with this bloodthirsty-looking bunch would be like. It would be no picnic, he’d bet on that.
He wheeled his horse and rode away down the creek. He traveled about a mile, stopped, drank deep, watered his animals and filled his canteen. Then he crossed over and rode about a mile out onto the plain. Thus he made pretty sure of some sort of a night’s sleep. The canelo would sniff anything out headed in their direction. He found a spot which would offer him a little protection against the wind that was starting to rise, unsaddled and staked the animals. He wanted them near to hand. On second thoughts, he put a long line on the canelo and tied the line to his left wrist. That would allow it to eat and at the same time help to prevent it from being stolen. He got in his blanket and catnapped through the night, rising on one elbow every now and then to listen.
McAllister Rides Page 3