‘Course not!’
‘Killed anything?’
‘You’re goin’ to be my first.’
Hart kept his breathing even; her arms were beginning to sag at the elbows. He didn’t know if she realized that yet herself and thought that when she did she might decide to fire the gun before it was too late.
‘What you aimin’ to do after you’ve killed me?’
She blinked back at him, the wind that had begun to push down the street from the north-east sliding her hair over to the corner of her left eye.
‘You fixin’ to get him out of there, Jacob?’
‘I ain’t goin’ to leave him there to rot or hang just for—’
‘Then you’re goin’ to have to kill a whole lot more folk after you’ve killed me.’
‘I …’
‘You know that don’t you. You know there’s two men sittin’ tight guard on your precious Jacob inside and if you kill them there’ll be others when you get out.’ Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Hart was beginning to walk forward as he spoke. ‘Maybe you can get a gun for Jacob an’ he can kill a few with you. Pretty damn good at that is Jacob. Killin’ folk. You saw what happened to the sheriff I guess, Jacob blasted half his head away. From maybe thirty yards too. Sheriff never had a chance to draw his gun. You knew that, as well, didn’t you. Merle Wringer never as much as got his gun out of his holster before your ever-lovin’ Jacob blew him all the way to eternity.’
‘I … I …’
The arms were near bent into a V shape and the barrel of the gun was lowered almost to the point where it would have shot away one of Hart’s knee caps if it had been fired. There were no more than six or seven feet between them and Hart could see the tight lines alongside her mouth and extending either side of her eyes. Her shoulders were beginning to shake.
‘You ain’t goin’ t’ fire that gun, are you?’
Hart took another pace forward and her arms jerked awkwardly upwards, like the arms of a puppet whose strings were almost out of control. He lunged for the gun, turning his face and chest aside as he went forward. There was a blast of fire and Hart fell sideways, taking the girl with him. One of his hands was locked around her wrist and the Colt fell into the dirt of the street as she struck the ground.
‘You bastard! You rotten bastard! You …’
Hart moved onto one knee and pulled her half-up with his left hand.
‘You bastard!’
He slapped her across the side of the face, once, with the inside of his right hand.
She choked on her next shouted word, gasping for air. Tears tried to force their way from the backs of her wide eyes. Hart waited and watched and for a couple of moments he thought she was going to hurl herself against him and sob, but she was made of different stuff.
Rebecca screwed her fingers tight into her fists and rammed her fists into the tops of her legs. She twisted her head till her hair was back over her shoulders. There wasn’t a tear on her face, nothing but frustrated anger, hatred in her eyes.
Folk were coming cautiously across the street and back of them the two guards had left their checker board to see what the shooting was about.
Hart stood up, lifting the pistol she’d been threatening him with from the ground. He broke the gun and unloaded it, letting the shells fall into the palm of one hand. He dropped the shells into the front pocket of his vest and tossed the Colt back down towards the girl.
‘You want to have another try, go get yourself some more ammunition. Only next time, don’t waste your breath talking. Aim the thing and squeeze the trigger. For you there ain’t nothin’ else goin’ to work.’
Rebecca stared up at him, surprise modulating the anger and tension of her face and body.
From the depths of the jailhouse, Jacob’s shouts of rage and anger filtered jaggedly out on to the street.
Hart pushed his way through the circle of onlookers and headed up towards the livery stable, leaving a couple of dozen gawping people in his wake.
~*~
He was wearing a green wool shirt that was buttoned almost to the neck, his leather vest buttoned in a couple of places also; a light brown scarf was wound loose below his chin and the brim of his hat was pulled down till it all but covered his eyes. The wind was coming down between the hills skimming a layer of dust with it. None of the grass or the spare scrub was thick enough to hold the land. After a couple of hundred yards following the upward trail of the creek, Hart reined in and found a red and white kerchief down in one of the saddle bags and knotted it at the back of his head, lifting the front up over his mouth. He touched his spurs lightly into the gray’s flanks and they continued their slow, winding climb.
Just when he was beginning to think that the land was never going to level out and that Ethel Spencer’s memories had played her false, Hart saw the start of a widening away from the narrow run of the creek.
He rocked his body in the saddle and the mare climbed with more vigor until they came to a place where the terrain closed in on them again.
Hart let the mare drink what little water was running down from the hills, a slow and haphazard trickle down along the worn channel of the creek bed. He took the water bottle from the pommel, slid down the kerchief and set his back to the wind and dust as he drank, washing the coating from the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue.
‘Hell, Clay, you reckon we’re goin’ to find this Hollow place or not?’
The mare turned her head, tossed her mane and resumed her search for water. Hart glanced up at the antics of a bluebird, enjoying the wind and using it to good effect, celebrating each new insect taken on the wing with a shrill, triumphant threefold whistle.
He remounted and continued the climb, but now it was markedly less steep and he could see a band of light between the closing of the hills up ahead. For the first time in maybe half an hour or more a smile drifted across his face. He urged the mare towards the gap and pretty soon he could see for himself it was the way Ethel Spencer had described it.
The land had suddenly bellied out into a grassed valley broad enough to have held a good-sized herd of horses. At the far end was the shack that she’d spoken of, only from where Hart was sitting it looked to have been repaired some and a new tin chimney stack was poking up from the center of the flat roof. The broken-down corral had been mended and now it held eight or nine horses. A couple of saddles were draped over the top fence and here and there other bits of tackle were hanging.
If Ethel and her former suitor had ridden up there right then, they might have figured the place a little too occupied for much sparking to get done.
The man on the hillside some eight feet above the level of Hart’s head moved out from the partial cover of the scrub oak and levered a shell into the barrel of his rifle.
Hart sat perfectly still, making no attempt to go for his Colt, making it clear that he was doing anything but. He was getting a little tired of having guns pointed at him, but he figured that whoever had been left up there on guard was a shade more likely to press the trigger home than young Rebecca Batt.
He held tight rein on Clay with his left hand, the palm of his right curled about the top of the saddle pommel, listening to the lookout scrambling down the slope at back of him. He knew he was there when the firm barrel end of the Winchester jabbed deep into his back.
‘The Colt,’ the guard said. His voice was gruff and deep as if it was coming from a long way off; from the Winchester that was still poking a hole alongside his spine Hart knew that to be an illusion.
He used thumb and middle finger to slip the safety thong off the pistol hammer, then lift the gun clear by the butt and swing it slowly sideways until it was held out at arm’s length.
‘Let it go.’
He let it go. From the corner of his vision he glimpsed the man duck forward to pick it up. There was a half-chance of freeing his right boot from the saddle and taking a kick at the man’s head; if that landed he could hurl himself sideways from the saddle and dive on the
feller before he got a chance to use his rifle.
That way he might get clear but he sure as hell wouldn’t get inside the Hollow. He’d already seen enough to know that if Speedmore wasn’t holed up inside, someone else outside the law was there in his place.
Hart let the moment pass and the guard shifted back out of his range of sight.
‘Ride down to the place. Easy. Try anything funny an’ I’ll blow a hole in your back bigger’n a buffalo’s head.’
Give or take a little exaggeration, Hart believed him.
They moved down the valley at a slow walk, the mare scenting the other horses in the corral and throwing back her head once or twice. A black stallion ran up and down inside the fence, showing off. When they were almost level with the corral the man behind Hart gave a two-toned whistle, repeated twice. The shack door took a couple of minutes to open and when it did the men who came out were armed fit to stand off a sheriff’s posse.
One was a chunky-looking Mexican with a long drooping moustache that left his mouth a long way behind and all but tickled his neck. He had crossed ammunition belts over his sloping chest and a gun belt with two holsters sagging a little loose over his hips. Neither of the pistols were in their holsters; both were in his hands. The man alongside him was thin and gray and wearing the brightest yellow shirt that Hart had seen in a long time. He had a shotgun hefted across the crook of his left arm and a couple of pistols tucked down into his pants belt.
‘Who the hell’s this, T. J.?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘Then what’s he doin’ here?’
‘Don’t know that either. Why don’t you ask him?’
Yellow-shirt grinned lopsidedly and stepped forward. ‘Maybe I will.’
He poked the shotgun up through the air and motioned for Hart to get down from the saddle.
When he was on the ground, the guard came forward and led the mare off to the side, looping her reins around the end of the corral.
‘You got his gun, T. J.?’ said the Mex.
‘Sure I got his gun – what you take me for?’
The Mexican cleared his throat noisily but held it in his mouth. ‘Why you think I ask?’
The guard cursed and lifted the Colt .45 from his belt. “Pretty damned fancy, huh?’
‘Lemme see.’ called the Mex.
‘Go to hell!’ snarled the guard and jammed the Colt back into his belt.
They were, thought Hart, a pretty friendly bunch.
‘Who are you, mister?’ asked yellow-shirt, but before Hart got a chance to answer a voice from inside the shack called: ‘Get him in here!’
There wasn’t any arguing. The three men watched Hart closely as he went towards, then through the door. Inside there were two pairs of bunk beds, one against the right side wall and the other back of the door. A couple of bed rolls were stretched out on the floor, the first close up by the stove at the center of the room and the other on the opposite side of the door to the bunks. To the side of the stove there was a rectangular table with a lot of nicks along the edges as though someone had sat there with a knife and made what he figured were pretty patterns. A large black pot was on the stove, hot water bubbling gently. Close beside it was a coffee pot whose red enamel was half chipped or blackened away.
The lower bunk on the side wall was occupied by a man lying along it clothed and darning a brown wool sock. He was taking his time to get it right, hardly looked round when Hart entered the room.
At the table another man, this one with a scar sweeping down from below his right ear to below the collar of his check shirt, was reading what looked to be an old newspaper. Wire framed spectacles were pushed down to the end of his nose and he squinted through them at the small, smudged print.
Beside the stove, one boot standing on someone’s blanket, was a half-breed Indian with high cheekbones and shiny skin, a pair of dark eyes that seemed oddly luminous in the subdued light of the cabin. He had a cup in his hand and looked as if he’d been in the act of pouring himself a fresh helping of coffee.
It was, Hart reckoned, a nice homely scene; not at all like the squabbling that had been going on outside.
The man he figured for Cherokee Dave Speedmore looked him up and down and nodded to himself, reaching the lid of the coffee pot and going on with what he’d been about to do. The guard said something about being half-frozen by the damned wind and reached down a tin mug from where a line of them had been hung from nails hammered into the back wall. He lifted the pot from the stove and helped himself.
Still one man was tending to his darning and another was finishing a column in the newspaper.
Still no one else had asked Hart to explain just what he was doing riding in on their hide-out with a Colt at his hip and a Henry in his saddle scabbard, looking like he knew how to use either or both of them if he had to.
It occurred to Hart they weren’t asking on account of they figured they already knew. It wasn’t the first time he would have been mistaken for a lawman and if he got out of there it wouldn’t be the last.
That his gun?’ said Cherokee suddenly, catching sight of the carved pearl handle sticking up above the guard’s waistline.
‘Yeah, I—’
‘Give it here.’
‘I took it, I—’
‘Here!’
The guard shrugged his shoulders with evident annoyance but he pulled the pistol from his belt and handed it across nonetheless. Off to the side, the Mexican sniggered loudly. Cherokee examined the Colt carefully and nodded in admiration.
‘Those men over in the state capital are fools,’ announced the man seated at the table, removing his spectacles with a sigh and folding the newspaper carefully in half and then half again. ‘Fools and swindlers both.’
He turned in his chair and looked up at Hart, looking at him properly for the first time. Hart could see the livid welt of his knife scar, even in profile. It sent the memory of the two gunmen Fowler and himself had left out in Monterey racing across his brain. He wondered where they were right then; wondered if they’d gone after Fowler or himself. Maybe they’d just set it down to experience and gone on about their business.
Maybe not: right now it didn’t seem too important.
The man on the bed finished his darning and swung his legs round from the bunk. ‘What we got here?’ he asked in a pleasant voice, as if Hart had stopped by to pass the time of day over a cup of coffee.
Cherokee Dave Speedmore drank a little more of his own and passed the cup down to the bunk.
‘Thanks,’ the man said, wiping at the underside of his blonde moustache before he drank. Two swift swallows and he passed the cup back.
‘That his gun?’ he asked, nodding at the Colt in the breed’s hand.
‘Yeah.’
‘He totin’ anythin’ else?’
There was a moment’s uncertain pause.
‘Rifle in his saddle,’ said the guard.
‘Uh-huh.’ the man pushed himself up from the bench and it took him some time to get to his full height. Most tall men stop at a couple of inches over six foot but not this one. When he was standing as tall as he could, he was forced to bend his head some to stop from banging it against the roof.
Hart guessed this was High-Hat Thomas. Stick a fair-sized Stetson on him and he’d pass for one of them tall buildings he’d seen over in San Francisco.
Thomas stuck a hand out towards the breed.
Cherokee let him have the gun.
Thomas admired it for a few moments. ‘Where’s your badge, mister?’ he asked, looking at the Colt, not at Hart direct.
‘I ain’t got no badge.’
‘No badge, huh?’ Thomas was still looking at the gun, watching the snake struggling inside the pearly beak of the eagle, writhing inside its pearly claws.
‘No.’
‘Just happened on this place by chance, huh? Takin’ a ride for your health? Passin’ the time of day?’
‘Somethin’ like that,’ Hart nodded.
<
br /> High-Hat Thomas smiled wryly and moved faster than Hart had figured he might. The butt end of the Colt smashed down against Hart’s forehead and his knees began to buckle under him. Black jetted up over his eyes. He stuck out a hand but there wasn’t anything for him to catch hold of. Thomas swung the gun a second time and the butt connected with the top of the head this journey. The black was deep red and as Hart fell he tried to open his eyes but the lids seemed to be gummed shut. He heard something he half-realized was the sound of his own body striking the floor and then the side of his head collided with the base of the stove and he neither felt nor heard anything at all.
The Mexican laughed and cleared his throat again, only this time he turned his head and spat it out through the open door as if wanting to prove that he was house-trained.
High-Hat Thomas wiped a smear of blood from the pearl grip of Hart’s Colt and tossed it back to Cherokee, who stuck it into the front of his gun belt.
‘Search him,’ Cherokee ordered while Thomas went back to his bunk. ‘Go through what he’s wearin’, then his saddle things. An’ make sure any thin’ you find you bring in here.’
The men grumbled and got on with their task.
Cherokee finished that cup of coffee and started another. High-Hat found a shirt that needed some stitches in the seams under one arm. At the table, the scarred man had put his glasses back on and was reading a dime novel about Billy the Kid.
Chapter Eight
In his dream he was sitting in a restaurant with red and white check tablecloths and candles burning dimly from where they’d been stuck into the tops of wide-bellied bottles. Wax was clogged in deep rills against the sides. The light flickered and in his dream Hart blinked. Kathy was in the restaurant as well but she wasn’t with him. She was sitting off to the side and there was a man with her, though Hart couldn’t see who he was because his back was turned.
Hart tried to figure out where the place was and he guessed it had to be Frisco again on account of the clothes that people were wearing and the size of the interior.
There must have been food on his plate but he didn’t know what it was, didn’t know if he’d been eating or not; he couldn’t look down to see on account of a pain in his head and another, keener pain that jolted every now and then between his ears, cutting against bone.
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