Beyond Fort North

by Peter Dawson

  At first as he waited here he had thought about Ash, about the things the man stood guilty of. But in the end he had put from his mind everything but what he was sure was to come. Sometime tonight Ash would be here. He would be after a horse first of all. But Gentry was even more certain that the man would come to his shack just thirty feet away across the breadth of the gate.

  The sounds echoing up from lower along the street were muted, seeming to heighten the stillness lying over the yard. It was perhaps because of them that Gentry’s wariness didn’t relax, so that when that whisper of sound, an alien note, shuttled faintly from the direction of the barn he caught it instantly.

  It lacked completely any definition. He had almost decided that it meant nothing when abruptly and plainly he caught the low grating of wood scraping wood and knew that the gate of the corral was being opened. His glance went swiftly back there.

  At first he could see nothing. Then suddenly Caleb Ash’s big shape moved out of the obscurity. He was leading a saddle horse this way. Gentry reached down and drew the Colt. But the next moment Ash swung in behind the nearest wagon and was gone.

  For an interminable interval Gentry caught no sound, saw nothing that let him know where Ash might be. Then all at once there was a movement at the limit of his vision. His glance whipped across to the shack. He was barely in time to see Ash’s shape easing in through the door and out of sight. The man was taking no chances. He had stayed out of sight by walking the narrow passageway between the rear of the stables and the fence. He was moving soundlessly, like a shadow among shadows.

  Gentry’s first impulse was to wait right here. But then the speed with which Ash had moved from the rear of the nearest wagon shed and on into the shack warned him that when the man left, there might be no more than two or three seconds in which to act. So at once he was reaching for the fence stake leaning against the wall behind him.

  He eased on out of the doorway warily, putting his weight on the stake deliberately, carefully. When he was sure that his bad leg wouldn’t buckle under him, he moved on. Only when he had gone several steps and was halfway to the shack did he realize that he was holding the Colt in his left hand, the stake in his right. But there was no other way he could walk, and, with thumb bent over the weapon’s hammer, he went on.

  He reached the corner of the shack, put his shoulders to its back wall. The window’s black rectangle was but an arm reach away. Awkwardly, angling his makeshift crutch toward it, he took a short sideward step, then another.

  Suddenly a flare of light wiped away the window’s blackness. A match was burning in there. An instant later Gentry leaned over and was looking in at Ash kneeling on the floor by the bed. Alongside the man’s knees was a board that had been lifted from the floor. And as Gentry watched, Ash bent over and reached deep into the opening where the board had been.

  It was Gentry’s intention to give the man a chance; he had never thought of anything else. So now, wanting to be sure of every move, he leaned the stake against the wall and took the Colt in his right hand.

  The thud of the stake falling to the ground behind him came like a gunshot. He had a blurred image of Ash straightening swiftly, of his dropping the match and his hand stabbing to the holster at his thigh. And as the room in there went suddenly dark, Gentry pushed himself out from the wall, wheeling back from the window.

  He groaned softly as his bad leg gave way. He fell sprawling backward as the thunder of a shot from inside the shack blasted out the window. Glass shards sprayed his head and shoulders. A second shot came, the bullet ripping through the shack’s thin wall, targeting the spot where he had been standing a second ago.

  He lay there half stunned a moment. The next, Caleb Ash’s massive bulk was wheeling fast out of the doorway. The violence of his sudden move lifted his left elbow from his side, and Gentry noticed that he had anchored that crippled arm at his belt, hand thrust inside his shirt.

  A rosy stab of flame lanced from Ash’s gun, lined at a spot waist-high along the shack’s wall. That shot was thrown blindly at the point where Gentry had been standing alongside the window. The next instant he saw Gentry lying instead of standing, and his gun tilted downward.

  Gentry caught that move as he threw the .44 into line. He was hardly aware of squeezing the trigger but saw Ash’s high shape jarred backward at the bullet’s impact. The man’s weapon streaked flame again, lined upward now. He had barely caught his lurching balance when Gentry’s second shot jolted him another backward step.

  The rolling echoes of those explosions were slapping back from the cañon’s near wall as Caleb Ash stumbled. With a broken, wheeling stagger, he fell heavily to the ground. A convulsive straightening rolled him onto his back.

  Gentry was looking at the man across his sights, his finger tight to the trigger. Then Ash’s shape went suddenly limp, and Gentry let his hand fall to the dust.

  Deliberately, having to think out each move, Gentry got to his knees and crawled across there. He wrenched the Colt from the man’s clawed hand. The knowledge that Ash was dead left him abruptly weak and not wanting to move. He was straightening his bad leg, leaning to the side with his head hanging, when the first shouts sounded from down the street.

  Faith and Mike Clears found him that way when they ran out of the yard door of Ash’s new building several moments later. Clears had a gun in his hand. He was cursing profanely and with a pent-up fury as he followed Faith across to the two shapes huddled there behind the shack.

  Faith came quickly to her knees alongside Gentry. “Dan!” she cried softly. “Are you all right?”

  Gentry’s head came up. He looked around wonderingly at her. And the slow smile that eased the bleakness from his lean face was very plain in the starlight. “Never better, Faith,” he said. “Never.”

  Clears sighed gustily in relief and moved around Gentry to peer down at Ash’s massive, loose shape. Barely audibly, he breathed: “I hope to hell it hurt, really hurt!” Then, hearing the pound of boots beyond the yard’s slab wall as men ran in on the gate, he reached down to take Gentry by an arm and say urgently: “Better move on inside and let me keep this crowd from hounding you, fella.”

  They helped Gentry to his feet and, each with an arm about his waist, were taking him in through the shack’s doorway when the first trio of men pushed open the gates and bolted into the lot. Clears said — “You watch him, Faith.” — and turned quickly back out the door, slamming it behind him.

  Gentry stood there in the blackness of the room, breathing heavily, hearing Clears call out to the newcomers. And now as he felt the pressure of Faith’s arm leaving his waist, he caught her hand and held it, saying: “Don’t go away.”

  Suddenly it seemed very necessary that he keep her here close to him. Her nearness was making him forget the complaint of his leg, the nightmare of that long wait out there in the darkness, what had happened afterward. And he had something to tell her.

  “But you must sit down, Dan! Your leg must....”

  The gentle pressure of his hand across her mouth cut short her words. And as his other arm went about her shoulders, turning her toward him, she seemed for the first time aware of the powerful emotion gripping him. He felt a tension leaving her, and a yielding to his embrace that awed him.

  “Faith, what does a man do when he loves someone and has absolutely nothing to offer?” he asked humbly.

  “Oh, Dan!” she breathed. “Dan, you’re everything to me!”

  He had his answer. He tilted her face up then and kissed her, kissed her tenderly, their embrace unlike that of the other night when they had been so swayed by that hunger for each other. Gentry was deaf to the sound of the many voices close outside, to everything but his awareness of the future’s promise because of the trust this girl was putting in him.

  Finally she put her head to his chest and he could feel her trembling. He ran his hand lightly over her hair, telling her: �
�You must be sure of this, Faith. We....”

  The sudden opening of the door against his back cut him short. Faith still in his arms, he moved aside. Mike Clears stood there holding the door open a scant half-foot.

  “Spires is here, Dan,” Clears said. “Him and Missus Fitzhugh. They both want to see you. How about a light?” He pushed the door wide then, wiping a match along its panel, adding: “There’s a lamp across there on....” He stopped speaking as he saw them standing there. An astonished, delighted grin came to his face. “I’m damned!” he said incredulously. “Wondered how long it would take you two to wise up to each other.” His grin broadened, and he turned back to the door still holding the match, adding: “Just give a call when you’re ready for the sawbones.”

  “Send him on in now,” Gentry said.

  He limped on over to the crate near Ash’s rumpled bed and took the chimney from the lamp there, nodding down to it. Clears came across, struck another match, and lit the wick. Then, pointing to the hole in the floor and the board lying near it, Gentry told him: “Reach in and see what you find, Mike. Ash was looking for something when I arrived.”

  He eased down onto the cot, and Faith came across to stand before him, both of them watching Clears as he went to his knees close by. And just then George Spires came in.

  A smile akin to Clears’s of a moment ago was wreathing the medico’s narrow features as he eyed Gentry and Faith. “What was that I saw from out there?” he asked as he shut the door. Chuckling, he shook his head. “Mary Fitzhugh happened to see it, too. She’d been on her way in to you, Dan. That changed her mind. She’s left.”

  Faith looked down at Gentry in a quizzical way that made him drawl: “Maybe she saw I was in good hands, George.”

  Just then Mike Clears said sharply: “Whoa! What’s this?” He rocked back on his heels, a loose sheaf of papers in his hand. He eyed the topmost ones a moment, and then held them out to Faith. “You may want these. That’s your mother’s writing, isn’t it?”

  Faith took the four small sheets, glanced at, them, and nodded. Then George Spires was saying: “Better turn them over to Sam Grell. He’s got orders to get what proof he can of everything Dan told us about Ash this evening.”

  “Proof?” Gentry asked. “Why? What’re they after?”

  Hesitantly, Spires answered: “I ought to wait and let Sam tell you himself, Dan.”

  “Tell me what?”

  With a sigh, the medico said: “That you’re ordered back to duty. That they’re burning the records on your courts-martial and holding a new hearing.”

  Gentry’s startled glance clung to Spires a brief moment before it lifted to Faith. He reached out and took her hand, trying to hide his excitement, his eagerness, and delight as he solemnly asked: “How does that sound to you, Faith?”

  “It’s what you really want, isn’t it, Dan?” When she saw the way his smile came, she added: “Yes, that’s where we belong.”

  the end

  About the Author

  Peter Dawson is the nom de plume used by Jonathan Hurff Glidden. He was born in Kewanee, Illinois, and was graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in English literature. In his career as a Western writer he published sixteen Western novels and wrote over one hundred twenty Western short novels and short stories for the magazine market. From the beginning he was a dedicated craftsman who revised and polished his fiction until it shone as a fine gem. His Peter Dawson novels are noted for their adept plotting, interesting and well-developed characters, their authentically researched historical backgrounds, and his stylistic flair. During the Second World War, Glidden served with the U.S. Strategic and Tactical Air Force in the United Kingdom. Later in 1950 he served for a time as Assistant to Chief of Station in Germany. After the war, his novels were frequently serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. Peter Dawson titles such as ROYAL GORGE and RULE OF THE RANGE are generally conceded to be among his best titles, although he was an extremely consistent writer, and virtually all his fiction has retained its classic stature among readers of all generations. One of Jon Glidden’s finest techniques was his ability, after the fashion of Dickens and Tolstoy, to tell his stories via a series of dramatic vignettes which focus on a wide assortment of different characters, all tending to develop their own lives, situations, and predicaments, while at the same time propelling the general plot of the story toward a suspenseful conclusion. He was no less gifted as a master of the short novel and short story. DARK RIDERS OF DOOM (1996) was the first collection of his Western short novels and stories to be published.