Brian Garfield

by Tripwire

  In the ticking silence of the flooding night he ducked low to clear the barn doorway and rode out of the stable. He walked the horse around the front of the house and stopped it square in front of the big adobe steps that went up to the main doors. There were windows beside the doors. Boag tested the weight of the gold bar in his hand. There was no note tied to this one; there didn’t need to be. Boag hurled the brick through the window and before the clattering of crashing glass had subsided he was moving at a gallop toward the head of the road.

  When he hit the top of the sloping cut he was half sure he heard a door slam back there.

  Somebody yelled at him from out on the cliff but Boag kept going right down the road.

  2

  From the edge of the trees he watched the dawn pink up Mr. Pickett’s mountain.

  What was it going to take to make them mad enough? Boag had waited all night in the pouring rain and they hadn’t stirred from the mountain. When the rain stopped and the first premonition of dawn came, Boag had moved back from the foot of the mountain to the forest and continued his vigil from there.

  But finally they came. Because it was easier to act than to wait.

  Boag watched them ride down the cut. Five of them. The big buckskin horse in the lead, that had to be Mr. Pickett.

  Boag put his horse out of the trees, showing himself. He had rehearsed the whole thing in his mind during the night, over and over again, and there was only this one way to do it.

  He rode straight toward them, not hurrying; the horse had an easy-gaited walk. Mr. Pickett reached the bottom of the cut and came trotting out away from the foot of the mountain, staying on the road, coming right down toward Boag with his four outriders in a pack right behind him. There was no dust in their wake because of the six-hour rain.

  The ruts were a little muddy and Boag put the horse along the side of the road in the grass, still walking it. His eye measured the distance as it closed between him and Mr. Pickett. The stretch from the base of the mountain to the edge of the trees was almost exactly a half mile; so he had distance yet to cover.

  They would watch him coming and assume he wanted to talk; they would have heard all the tumult and thunder of battle yesterday and they would know by Boag’s appearance that Ben Stryker had been whipped, and they would have to assume that Boag had a lot of guns covering him from the edge of the forest behind him. Still they had come down to see what he wanted—and to kill him if they could.

  Boag stopped his horse about two hundred yards out from the woods. He did that because it was what Mr. Pickett would expect of him. He was staying within easy rifle range of the pine forest, where his “army” of rifles could cover him.

  Mr. Pickett came on at a grinding deliberate trot, not hurrying it up and not slowing it down; moving forward like an engine.

  Regardless of what Mr. Pickett believed about the army behind Boag, the fact was that there was Boag on one side and five of them on the other. His plan didn’t have much chance, not really, because once the ruckus began they’d realize quick enough that Boag was all alone out here.

  But there weren’t any alternatives that made sense so Boag just played it out.

  They came along and then they stopped about halfway out from the mountain. The low sun was behind Boag’s right shoulder. In its light the ground fog lifted gently off the dewy meadowland and the breeze made ripples in the shining grass. Mr. Pickett sat on his horse a little better than a quarter of a mile away, not moving, and Boag knew he was too far so he gigged his horse and advanced at a slow walk with both hands resting on his saddle horn like a man who wanted to talk a deal.

  Mr. Pickett put his horse in motion again and now Boag recognized Gutierrez behind him and a rawhider who went by the name of Hooker, riding bareback. The other two were Mexican gunslingers with rifles across their saddlebows.

  His eye kept ranging the distance. Four-fifty, he estimated, and he let the horse carry him on closer to them.

  Four hundred. All right now.

  He steeled himself against the pain and made his moves in quick synchronized coordination. Turn the horse crosswise to the road. Stop the horse. Loop the reins over your left fore-arm. Lift your right leg over the cantle behind you and step down onto that right foot. Pull the left boot out of the stirrup and set it firm on the ground a couple of feet away from the right boot. Lay the .40-90 across the saddle. Aim.

  They were in motion of course but he wanted Mr. Pickett only, he didn’t care about the rest of them; and they weren’t moving so very fast because they didn’t credit anybody with much luck at four hundred yards’ range. That was one thousand, two hundred feet and a lot of things could happen to a bullet in that distance, starting with the inaccuracy of the shooter.

  It was Gutierrez who fired the first shot but that was from the back of a moving saddle and Boag ignored it. He had Mr. Pickett in his sights. Mr. Pickett was yanking the horse around to the left and Boag gave it the lead he thought it needed and squeezed the shot, holding both eyes open and maintaining the focus of his vision not on the target but on the front sight of the rifle because that was the important thing to watch.

  The bullet went home. He knew it had, but Mr. Pickett was still on the saddle out there and the horse was still wheeling. Gutierrez had overcome his surprise and was ramming away to come in at Boag from a circle; Gutierrez was flat on top of the horse, making a low silhouette, firing a left-handed revolver at Boag merely as a diversionary thing, not expecting to hit. Boag had to ignore it, had to keep his sights on Mr. Pickett while he jacked a fresh shell into the chamber and settled the sights and waited for his God damned horse to still its feet. If he lost his horse he’d have to get down on the ground to shoot and he’d never get back up on his feet again so he kept the reins wrapped tight around his forearm and spoke softly:

  “Gentle down, now. Gentle down.”

  Mr. Pickett was riding in a dazed circle and one of the Mexicans was leaning over to reach for the reins of Mr. Pickett’s horse. Boag shot Mr. Pickett again and this time it did the job. It knocked Mr. Pickett off his horse.

  The Mexicans split in opposite directions and broke into dead gallops. They weren’t giving it up, they were doing what Gutierrez was doing: attacking circularly. In the meantime Hooker was stopping his retreat to find out what had happened.

  Gutierrez was closest and it was Gutierrez Boag picked on.

  But Guttierrez was down flat across the withers and Boag only knew one way to handle that. In the Cavalry you had it drilled into your bones.

  Shoot the horse.

  He gave it a lead and squeezed, and missed completely.

  But there was time. The next one took the horse somewhere in the forequarters and it shuddered, breaking stride in mid-run, and when Gutierrez fell off the saddle Boag had the clear view he needed.

  But Gutierrez came up with revolvers snapping and Gutierrez was damned good. Boag felt a half-spent slug ram into the horse; Boag was firing then and he got his shot off but when he went to jack the rifle the horse just slid over against him and Boag had to windmill back away from it before it fell on him.

  That’s all then. He was standing right out in the bare-ass open with no shooting rest, and Gutierrez was out there wounded but still shooting and the two Mexicans were circling in and now Hooker, riding bareback, was barreling straight down the road at him.

  3

  He didn’t have to stop and calculate the loads; he was a soldier, he always knew how many rounds he had left. There were two in the magazine and one in the chamber.

  Gutierrez was out there in the grass reloading his revolvers. Two hundred yards and he’d downed Boag’s horse with a six-gun.

  But Gutierrez had a slug in him and he was afoot. He wasn’t the one to worry about.

  Boag did the only thing possible. He laid himself down behind the dying horse and braced the rifle along his left hand and watched Hooker drum straight at him and shot Hooker spinning out of the saddle.

  The Mexicans had gallo
ped out in a V to straddle Boag’s position. He picked the one to his right because the other one was getting close to Gutierrez’s position and at least that would put the two of those where Boag could watch them both at once.

  The rider to his right was going at a dead run on a course straight across Boag’s line of vision. That meant he was moving fast and Boag gave himself a long lead before he fired. It was three hundred yards or better and he was bleakly unsurprised when the bullet did nothing visible. He used the last shot and that one missed too, and then he slid down flat on the ground and wondered as he thumbed cartridges out of his pocket if he had time to reload the long gun.

  4

  When Boag looked up, the Mexican on his right was within forty yards of the trees behind him. It left Boag no time at all. He leveled the rifle, only four cartridges loaded so far, and jacked it and aimed with painful slow care and squeezed it.

  A little too much of a lead but it creased the horse on the forehead; at least that was the effect Boag observed. The horse’s head snapped to one side under the impact and the Mexican made the mistake of trying to get the horse under control when he should have jumped clear. It gave Boag time to sight on a fairly motionless target and in two shots he had the Mexican.

  Back to one bullet left. He swiveled toward Gutierrez and the other Mexican and reached for cartridges.

  There wasn’t anything in sight but a riderless horse wandering away.

  He knew what it meant. The Mexican had dismounted somewhere near Gutierrez and they were both out there in the grass, worming their way toward Boag.

  He didn’t know how bad he’d hit Gutierrez. He knew he hadn’t hit the other one at all. And he knew one other thing: he was at the end of his capacities and he had no strength for a drawn-out stalking game. They would shoot him to pieces before he had time to react.

  Boag didn’t care about them now. He wanted to get out.

  He had one of the hand bombs left but it might have got too wet last night to work. He might as well try it. He opened his packet and struck a match, got the fuse sputtering and hurled the thing as far as he could into the grass on a line with Gutierrez’s horse. It didn’t go more than sixty feet. All he hoped for was that it would make noise and encourage them to hesitate.

  But it didn’t go off, so that was that.

  He took the rifle and eeled into the grass. It would be sensible to crawl back into the woods. That was what a smart man would do. That was what Gutierrez and the other one would expect him to do.

  So it was what Boag didn’t do.

  He headed up through the grass parallel to the road. Heading straight up toward the foot of the mountain.

  Because that was where Mr. Pickett had fallen and Mr. Pickett’s horse was still standing there waiting for his rider to get back up and ride him.

  5

  The wind rubbed itself against the damp grasses. Boag’s legs were all gone now and he was hitching himself along on his elbows with the rifle across the crooks of his arms. He’d left his sombrero behind and the sun beat against the back of his head. That was all right because he was wet and chilled clear through and the warmth was comforting.

  He doubted there was any flesh left on his elbows. He lifted his head and saw the horse wasn’t far away now. Another fifty feet to cross.

  He found Mr. Pickett almost by accident; he parted the grasses and there was Mr. Pickett lying on his side looking right at him.

  There’ was a heavy smear of blood glistening on Mr. Pickett’s shirt. His face bulged, thick with blood and anger; the pulse throbbed at his throat and he worked his lips around a word:

  “Boag.”

  “You keep quiet now, Mr. Pickett. This bullet comes out your back it’ll make a hole as big as a coconut.”

  Mr. Pickett just stared at him.

  Boag thought of a lot of things he ought to say to Mr. Pickett. All the agony that had led up to this. But there wasn’t anything left to say, the guns had said it all. Boag brought himself around until he was lying parallel to Mr. Pickett and then he used his arm to sit up. He looked out across the waving grass. Nothing stirred except the grass itself. They were still there but he had the feeling they were nowhere near him.

  He lowered himself onto his side and rolled his knees under him. When he sat up again he was kneeling. Mr. Pickett just watched, neither moving nor speaking.

  Boag balanced himself on one knee and hauled his left leg up, knee against chest, placing the left foot flat on the ground. All his nerves twanged with taut pains. He braced his left palm against the upraised knee and pushed himself upright, dragging the right leg up under him until he was standing there precariously, bent double, one hand on his knee and the other on his rifle.

  When he began to walk it was like the movement of a puppet. His legs jerked around loosely under him. He had to get balanced on one foot and then drag the other one forward a few inches, rearrange his weight onto it and repeat the process.

  He made his way around Mr. Pickett and Mr. Pickett’s head turned to watch him. Mr. Pickett seemed to have lost his guns. His holsters were empty; there was no rifle in sight.

  His eyes were fixed on Boag with single-minded concentration; they never even blinked.

  Boag reached the horse. It shied away from him and he shuffled toward it again and hooked up the trailing reins in his left hand. He turned to look at Mr. Pickett.

  “If I leave you to heal, you’ll come after me, won’t you?”

  Mr. Pickett made no response of any kind.

  Boag said, “I ought to shoot you now.”

  But he slid the rifle down into Mr. Pickett’s saddle boot. It was not impossible getting himself aboard the horse because he used his arms to pull himself up, but swinging his right leg over was the hard part. He had to pull the leg over with his right hand. It took him a while to get his toes into the stirrups.

  Mr. Pickett had laid his head back and was lying that way, looking up at Boag with the back of his head on the ground. Boag said, “You come after me I’ll have to kill you next time.”

  He eased the horse closer. “You hear me, Pickett? I got your gold but don’t you try to do to me what I done to you. You ain’t as good a fighting man as me.”

  Pickett’s raw eyes just stared.

  Boag leaned down a little. “You hear me Jed Pickett? I’m a better man than you are. You hear?”

  It was not clear whether Pickett heard or not. Somewhere in those few moments he was dying. When Boag moved out on the horse the dead man’s head did not turn to follow him; the eyes kept staring at the sky where Boag had been.

  Somewhere out there in the grass or the trees Gutierrez and that Mexican were still moving around but Boag was all finished here. He made a long ride along the base of the mountain and entered the trees a mile east of the road. He would go by the gully and see about the Gatling gun. If it wasn’t occupied by Ben Stryker’s people he’d retrieve it for Captain McQuade but he wasn’t going to fight for it; he’d only told Captain McQuade he’d return it if it was possible, and fighting was no longer possible today.

  6

  Miguel and the señora stood in the doorway and watched the coach come across the hills. It was a handsome brougham drawn by matched teams of greys and it stopped sedately in front of the villa. A liveried coachman climbed down from the driving seat.

  Don Pablo came softly out into the sunshine and Dorotea touched his sleeve. The coachman opened the ornate door of the brougham and Dorotea lifted her chin.

  Boag stepped to the ground, putting his weight on a gold-headed cane. He had a cigar in his mouth and a tailored grey suit on his back.

  He said to Don Pablo, “The dowry’s in the coach.”

  “You are alive, mi amigo.”

  Dorotea said, “You will stay here now?”

  “I’m going up to Arizona to look for a little girl that goes by the name of Carmen.”

  Don Pablo said, “Of course you will take Dorotea with you,” and turned back inside the door because it was
too hot for him out here.

  Boag handed his hat to Miguel. Dorotea gave him a suspicious and dubious eye. Boag said, “That would be up to the lady.”

  “The lady will think about it,” Dorotea said.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1973 by Brian Garfield

  cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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