The E.R. Slade Western Omnibus No.1

by E. R. Slade

  With that, Riley let fly with the knife. It’s point dug deeply into the trunk of the cottonwood just above Carmen’s shoulder, quivering against the calico of the house dress. She stiffened, then relaxed. She went on with the silent motion of her lips and she did not open her eyes.

  Riley looked at Pirate. Riley’s lips twisted in annoyance. He went sauntering over to the cottonwood, leaned his left hand against the trunk just over her right shoulder and bent his head down so that his mouth was at her ear. In a hoarse, low voice he said, “Girl, you are so stupid you make me mad.”

  He pulled the knife from the tree trunk with his right hand, and then went on talking into her ear.

  “Girl, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take this here knife, and I’m going to put the point of it here, like this,” (he demonstrated by catching the razor-sharp point in the fabric of the dress on her abdomen) “and then I’m going to push it in to the hilt and cut down and around in a circle like this.” (He demonstrated by putting just a slight bit of pressure on the knife, so that she caught her breath at the feel of it scratching her skin, cutting the fabric out of her dress in a slow circular motion) “And it will spill out your guts in a bloody, ugly, painful mess that even you will open your eyes to look at. Do you want me to do that? I will, you know. You saw what I did to your father.”

  She was taut now. Still she did not open her eyes, but she stopped moving her lips. He had gotten to her a little, he knew. But he also knew that he had a long way to go to get anything useful out of her. And there was very little time. He was tempted, in his frustration, to plunge the knife in and do just as he had described to her, but he had a cagey idea in the back of his mind that she might be worth more alive than dead, as an ace in the hole, if he needed something to trade with later in dealing with Calloway. So instead of killing her that way, hoping she would talk before dying, he decided he would simply hurt her, not kill her.

  He went around to the back of the tree and smiled at Pirate, then forced a pinky out of her tightly clenched left fist. He laid the edge of the knife against it and drew blood.

  “Riley!” It was Gomez. “The dust is settling.”

  Riley put the knife away and went hurriedly to where Gomez stood looking through a pair of battered field glasses, leaning his elbows in the crotch of an old cottonwood.

  “Only about fifty yards away,” Gomez said and, pointing, added, “right about over there. You can see the last of the dust blowing away in a breath of air. I’ve been looking through the glasses, trying to see something move in the bushes, but they’re too thick.”

  Riley took the glasses, trained them on the place, braced in the cottonwood tree’s crotch, and had a long look, saw nothing, then handed back the glasses.

  “I reckon he’ll be cutting to the south across the river,” Pirate, who was just coming up, said, “so’s he can get a good look at our position: the only place he could get close enough to see in here is in that brush just across the river.”

  “Go take him,” Riley said shortly. “The rest of you, keep your eyes peeled. We don’t want anybody gettin’ the jump on us. That could be the fast-draw kid shot the other kid back in town last night. Fast, and they say he’s pretty smart. We cain’t afford to lose men, or waste a lot of time here.”

  Pirate’s eyes glittered as he hauled his drawers up a bit around his waist before setting out into the brush like a great, silent bear.

  ~*~

  Pirate decided the best thing to do was go west to the horse and then follow the tracks. Simple. There might be a trap, but in spite of Riley’s warning, he doubted the kid was all that smart. Talky talk, that was all. Just talky talk.

  He went along, ghostlike, from bush to tree to rock to bush, watching, always watching in all directions. This was not really his element. He felt his best on the sea. But when he had come across the scent of gold, he figured he’d just have to learn to like the desert country. It was like the sea in some ways. There was a lot of it in all directions, and when you got up on an occasional high spot, it was like being on a swell and looking over miles of sea around you.

  He saw the horse standing there, quietly. Very deserted-looking place, small clearing, tuft or two of dry grass, a lizard sunning itself on a rock. Dry silence.

  But he didn’t go into the clearing. Though it seemed deserted and he could even see the footprints of the rider going off to the right into the brush, he felt a presence of some kind. It was perhaps a sixth sense. Or maybe just caution.

  He circled to the right, cutting the trail. He looked at the tracks. Nothing unusual about them. Man on foot. So, follow the man, he thought. But something made him wait.

  Then he saw it and smiled. The knife blade caught the sun again, and then again, shining it directly into his eyes. The fool kid, he thought, and continued circling to get into position.

  Chapter Fifteen

  What Ford saw was a motion just beyond the thick thorn bushes behind him. He thought suddenly of the knife and realized it must have been reflecting the sun, possibly into the eyes of the man come to track him. Anyway, the damage was done now. Someone knew where he was.

  His heart thumped blood in his ears, as it had just before the shootout the previous night. His thoughts started to stray. That shootout: what had he let himself in for? Had he taken on more than he was able to handle? Should he have waited longer before allowing himself to be coerced into a gunfight? His father, in one of his rare sober moments, had once said that any man big enough to be interested in a woman was big enough to kill for her. Was that really sound logic?

  He didn’t know, but now was certainly not the time to think about it.

  He got his feet under him in a crouch, staying hidden in the same spot in the thicket, only turned around to face the approaching man, who was winding between the thorn bushes on absolutely silent feet. Ford held his knife in his right hand, ready to have it out with his attacker. He was sorely tempted to use his pistol but wanted to do this silently, since a pistol shot would tell the others where he was and could bring reinforcements, as well as foul up his plan of intended action, which depended on a surprise attack.

  He had originally planned to take care of anyone sent to find him, and then, with his back trail presumably taken care of—while those in the cottonwoods had no reason to think the man sent out to finish him off wasn’t still in the process of doing that—he would be able to go to the south of the stand of cottonwoods and get a clear shot at the gang hidden there.

  The stalking man stopped. Ford could see one boot and the knee of the other leg. Beyond that he could see nothing of the man. The thorn bushes were very thick between them. Ford considered getting up and moving, then decided against it. Since he was no expert with a knife and it was possible the other man was, whoever he was, Ford figured he’d do best to make use of all the bushes. Being thin and relatively agile, he would be well able to dart through the small openings in them and use the thorns to advantage. The other man was big, Ford judged, on the basis of what he could see of him so far, and would have more trouble trying to maneuver in the thorns.

  The man started to move again, coming out from behind the bushes so that Ford could see his face and most of the rest of him. Including the dirk. Ford caught his breath. His first impulse was to draw and fire, but he quelled it, trying hard to keep his plan in mind. He owed it to Littleton and to the girl, who might be in the middle of torture right now, though he doubted it. He had ridden in hard, so that Riley would see the dust and know an attacker was close and so that no one could afford to be paying attention to a torture session at the time someone was perhaps getting into position to shoot at them, maybe pick them off quickly one after the other. They would want him out of the way first and would hold off on torture, so he reasoned.

  But this was Pirate, the man famed for his dirk. The man who had killed three vaqueros singlehandedly, two with that dirk. The big, brawny, mean man that only Riley was known to be able to dominate or defeat. Was it stupid
to fight Pirate this way? Pirate was not as well known for his shooting. Perhaps if Pirate were forced into a gunfight, he would lose. Perhaps. But the last thing Ford wanted to do was bring any of Riley’s other men after him out here. It would be much better to find a good place to shoot from, get settled in and then quickly pick them off. At least he would be able to improve the odds greatly in that fashion and perhaps drive off any survivors, rescuing Carmen Haversam.

  Pirate grinned. He was obviously looking forward to the fight. The one eye riveted Ford with undivided attention. The ugly dirk shone in the sun. Pirate turned it so that the light reflected from it into Ford’s eyes, and Ford heard a little chuckle from deep within the throat of the bearlike man. He had a brief, sudden mental picture of how Pirate’s victims at sea must have felt, seeing this murderous, beastlike creature coming over the bulwarks with that dirk held ready to disembowel anyone who came within its range. The bloodstains of previous fights were still on the bone handle, though the blade had been wiped clean.

  Pirate stepped into a small area between the bush Ford was hiding under and the bush he had just come from behind.

  “Come on outa there and fight like a man.”

  Ford again felt the great self-defensive urge to draw and fire. He knew he could kill the man before the other could clear leather. Pirate didn’t even wear his gun comfortably. It looked out of place, as much so as if a horse or a bear were wearing it. He seemed only barely aware of it flopping around on his hip, and Ford just knew he could outdraw the man. Pirate probably would be dead before he could even remember he had a gun on his hip. But it wouldn’t do.

  He stayed where he was. If Pirate drew, then would be the time to draw and kill the man—there’d be no alternative—but otherwise it would be better to let Pirate come after him into the bushes, where Pirate would be at a disadvantage, or at least would have less of an advantage.

  Pirate swore foully.

  “I’ll just have to come in there after you,” he added, when he’d let off steam. “I offer you a decent chance to come out and fight like a man, where we both have room to move around, and ye turn me down. Just like a low-down, yellowbellied ...”

  He finished by making a sudden dive into the space under the thorn bush, the dirk out in front. If Ford hadn’t been alert, he would have been a dead man. As it was, he just barely escaped the point of the dirk, making a dive of his own to the left, tearing his shirt a little on thorns as he did so. He immediately rolled over into a crouch, facing Pirate. Pirate roared like a lion and came thrashing through the thorns towards Ford, the dirk flashing in the splattering of sunlight coming through the branches.

  Then the dirk flashed again, and Ford was amazed to catch sight of a thin red line on the back of his left hand. In fear, he lashed out with his own knife, and the result was even less reassuring: a viselike grip held the knife-wielding hand, and he was drawn towards the point of the dirk.

  He gave a last yank of desperation, feeling the point of the dirk scratching his throat, and broke free. Knife still in his hand, he dove under the lowest overhang of the bush and went crawling forward until he was in the furthest reach. He had no out. He was cornered. Here he would live or die. He was going to be no match for Pirate in a knife fight. Time for the gun.

  His hand went to his hip as he lay on his side on the ground. The holster was empty.

  ~*~

  Spike Littleton found the place where Harold Ford had ridden off the trail to top a rise and have a look at the landscape. Why? Hadn’t he been close enough to watch their dust?

  It could only mean one thing: that the dust had stopped. Ford had gone up the rise to see what had become of the Riley gang. Littleton saw no dust rising at all. That meant that Ford had stopped also. But where? Had he tried to attack Riley’s gang? Was he going to? Where was Riley’s gang?

  The answer to the last question became clear to him in a short while. He realized that they would have been following wagon tracks, and someone driving a wagon out this way would most likely go along not far from the river, since it was the best route. And if Ford had been here when he stopped seeing dust rising, that would put Riley’s gang somewhere around that clump of cottonwoods. But that still did not tell him where Ford was, or what he might be up to. Littleton didn’t want to foul up any plan of Ford’s.

  In the end, he decided to just follow Ford’s tracks and keep a wary eye out for anything unusual.

  He caught sight of Ford’s horse ahead, then thorn bushes jiggled to his left and closer than the horse. Littleton reined in and watched the bushes intently, drawing his heavy Colt.

  A big burly man emerged from under the bushes and headed for the horse, not noticing Littleton: Pirate Olberg. Littleton had an uncomfortable feeling that what he was seeing was similar to a snake coming out of a hole where it had gone to digest its kill. Where was Ford? That was Ford’s horse, for certain.

  Littleton sat his own mount, undecided what to do, watching the bearlike Pirate look around in the little clearing beside the horse. Then Pirate saw Littleton, and the issue was decided.

  The man stared at him for some seconds and then fumbled irritably with the gun at his hip. Littleton, with gun drawn, waited until he was sure the man meant to shoot at him and then let fly with three shots in close succession, more to let Pirate know that this was not going to be an easy kill than to actually score any hits. The distance was too great for that.

  Pirate, realizing that he had a few seconds, darted surprisingly quickly into the nearest brush. Littleton swung down from his horse and went on foot towards the place where he’d last seen Pirate.

  A shot, fired from closer than he expected, removed his hat and left it lying upside down in the dust, the brim torn by a bullet. Littleton dropped into a crouch and moved left a few feet, trying to see where the bullet had come from. He could not detect either Pirate or any motion of bushes.

  Another sharp report from close by, this time from a different direction, the south. It sang off a rock a couple of feet from his elbow. Having taken the opportunity to replace the spent shells, Littleton now fired two shots at the place where Pirate’s shot had been fired from. Then Littleton went circling to the right around a rock, through some brush, and then caught sight of bushes moving just in front of him about twenty-five feet away. He braced against the rock and squeezed off two more shots, the smell of gun smoke drifting past his nostrils, the air clearing, and then silence. The motion in the bushes was no longer.

  He waited, then heard something to his right, in the brush. Almost immediately after, he heard something else to his left. Littleton moved down the side of the rock to put it between himself and the sound to the left. He faced the direction of the other noise and watched carefully. More movement in the bushes; he fired again, and then again.

  The movement stopped. Then he caught sight of more shaking to the right of the last place he’d seen it: Pirate was circling. What had the other noise been? he wondered, as he reloaded his gun, keeping low and his eyes darting about.

  All at once a fusillade of shots ricocheted off the rock, sending little particles of it into the calf of his right leg, into his back, and stinging the side of his face. He fired back twice, feeling his head wound throb against the bandage, aware that he was getting dizzy from the heavy hammering sound of gunfire.

  Now, were there two guns firing? Or was it just that his head hurt so much that it only seemed that way? Or three guns?

  Bullets filled the air around him. He dropped flat onto his belly on the hot ground, feeling the heat searing into his palms as he let himself down.

  He lay listening, trying to figure out what was happening, and then something hit him a blow on the head, and darkness came flowing in around a hot white light that grew smaller and smaller before him, until it became a single, unbearably sharp point of light and heat, which mercifully lasted only a fraction of an instant, and then he blacked out.

  ~*~

  The sound of shots broke the desert stillness. Riley,
who had stayed next to Gomez since Pirate had gone into the desert after the fast-draw kid, motioned again for the glasses. He’d been taking a look through them every few moments since the new dust rising had been noticed. He’d speculated who this could be ever since, not really being able to decide. What was going on out there? Who was shooting?

  Now, able to stand it no longer, Riley turned to the men nearest him.

  “Keep an eye on the girl, Gomez. Elliot, you come with me.”

  They went out across the empty space of desert and then very cautiously entered the thickets. Riley, catfooted, kept motioning at Elliot to keep quiet and to keep down.

  The gun battle went on sporadically up ahead, not too far away, the participants seeming to be only two and both moving around quite a bit. Riley felt fairly sure he recognized the sound of Pirate’s heavy old pistol. It had the sound of a miniature cannon, which was, Riley had always suspected, the reason Pirate carried it rather than because it was very effective as a drawing gun. It was doubtful the pistol was much good for trying to hit a target more than ten feet away, at least in Pirate’s hand.

  The cannon gun went off again, to his left and just ahead. Riley motioned to Elliot to join Pirate and then he went circling to the right, going around thorn bushes as if each might have behind it a rattler waiting to strike at him.

  He stepped on a twig and cursed his eagerness. An old pro, trained by Two Fingers himself, had no right to be making such a foolish error. He stood still, listening. He heard movement in the bushes, then two shots.

  Then quiet again. More movement somewhere in the bushes, some distance off. No shots. He moved to the right, circling more, and came in sight of Littleton crouched beside the big rock. Littleton! Thought he’d been taken out. Guess not. Time then to see it was done. He was no man to have on your back trail: he’d been around too long out here in the desert, surviving. You didn’t survive like that unless you knew what you were up to.