McAllister

by Matt Chisholm

  The long barrel of the Henry poked past his hip and he knew that she was going to join the ball.

  “Can you shoot that thing?”

  “As good as you.”

  “Okay—give me cover. I’m going into those rocks.”

  A heavy ball slammed into wood near his feet and a rear mule started an attempt to kick the wagon to pieces. The noise of guns, frightened animals and shouting men was deafening.

  He heard the woman scream—

  “You’re crazy.”

  He said: “Ain’t I?” and jumped from the wagon.

  His injured leg gave under him and he fell forward and rolled helplessly. That saved his life most likely because lead hummed close over him. Feeling foolish and furious, he drove himself relentlessly to his feet, compelled himself to use his right leg and limped grotesquely in a series of hops and jumps to the nearest cover. Which was not much because there were riflemen on both sides of the trail and one man on the other side had full view of him. He must have done—bullets began to flatten themselves against the rock all around him as somebody levered and triggered as fast as a man could. He didn’t know it, but when the hail of lead had stopped it was because Sam had managed to get a bead on the ambusher and shoot him through his head.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Mcallister saw that several mules were down and the lieutenant and another man had reached the rocks and were climbing rapidly in the face of heavy fire. That left the guard on the wagons pretty thin, but Mcallister reckoned it was worth the gamble. Sitting on their rumps on the wagons they would never clear those bushwhackers out of the rocks.

  He started crawling forward and up, hugging cover close and with the will to murder in his heart. Somebody from above spotted him and started shooting, but Mrs. Bankroft got her rifle lined up on him and soon discouraged him.

  The stones were cutting the knees of his cord pants to threads and the heat was coming off the rocks with the intensity of a furnace so that the sweat ran down Mcallister in a continuous stream. Dust and the acrid fumes of his expended black powder choked him. Behind him was a deafening cacophony of sound: a mule hee-hawing, another down and screaming like a mortally injured woman, men bawling and guns racketing enough to split a man’s eardrums. Above him the rifles sounded thinly in the rocks, booming on the echo. The attackers were voiceless. They knew what they had to do.

  Mcallister crawled about fifty feet and settled down, allowing a little time to pass, waiting for somebody to give him a worthwhile target. He reckoned he was pretty near the closest men and if he fired at a man in so dangerous a spot, he wanted to be sure of killing him. The worst of this kind of country—there wasn’t a stick of brush around so a man could lift his head without being seen. This he knew to his cost when he raised up to watch a man directly in front of him. The man was starting to show his head and shoulders and Mcallister was raising his gun to cut him down, when his hat was torn from his head and even as he was turning to return the fire a second shot splattered itself on the rocks at his side.

  He was shocked to find that he had crawled to within a dozen feet of a man he hadn’t known about. As the fellow fired his third shot, Mcallister snapped a shot at him that missed, but put him off balance. He saw the man jump in alarm and start to get back to cover and drove a shot into his body.

  Lead whined meanly past his head and he dropped flat again, slewing himself around and finding that the rifleman he had been watching was trying to winkle him out. They settled down to a futureless shooting match, both of them reluctant to show themselves.

  Well, there would have been no future to it, if through the din of the battle, a scream had not come from the wagons below. And that was no mule that screamed. That was a woman and there was only one woman on that wagon-train.

  Mcallister twisted his head around and saw the woman pitching forward out of the wagon. He got a brief glimpse of a man below her. His arms went around her and threw her aside like a helpless doll. Mcallister felt the impact as her body landed in the rocks.

  Blinding rage ripped through him and he found himself yelling, but he knew that his yells were obliterated by the noise going on around him. He got to his feet and the game leg tried to give under him, but he cursed it and willed it to carry him. The fellow down below was firing point-blank at the wheelers and they were going down. Mcallister lined up on him, fired and missed because the range was too great, but he scared the man and drove him to cover under the wagon.

  The rifleman above Mcallister tried for him, pumping shots frantically and showing that his excitement was greater than his skill. Mcallister swung around and pulled the trigger only to be rewarded by a faint click of the hammer falling on a spent load. He started down the grade, falling as the injured leg failed him, but lurching to his feet again and going on. The rifleman went on trying for him. Glancing up, he saw that men were coming out of the rocks on the other side of the road. Thrusting his gun away, he continued his agonising descent. During one of his falls, he filled both fists with rocks and these he hurled furiously at the man under the wagon and drew his fire toward him. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the flutter of cloth as Mrs. Bankroft started to her feet and he bawled for her to get down. One of his own men ran along the wagons, waving an arm and shouting something that was inaudible. Suddenly, in mid-stride, he collapsed and lay kicking violently on the ground. Mcallister stooped and filled his fists again and lurched onto the flat. The man under the wagon was close now and his gun was on McAllister. The big man shattered a rock against the wheels of the wagon and he tripped as the gun went off. Mrs. Bankroft screamed again.

  Mcallister levered himself off the ground and found the Henry under his hands. Exultation welling up in him, he levered it and drove a shot at the man under the wagon. He didn’t wait to see if he had made a hit, but turned to meet a man coming down from above on the other side of the road. Across the kicking mules, he leveled the Henry and found that it was empty. Maybe the other fellow’s gun was also empty, for he did not fire, but came leaping across the downed animals.

  Mcallister lunged at him, using the rifle like a lance, catching him in the belly and putting him howling on the ground among the thrashing hoofs. A swipe with the brass-bound butt stilled his energies.

  The woman was beside Mcallister saying, “My God, my God,” over and over.

  Mcallister said: “There’s no chance. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  A bullet hit a screaming mule and killed it. One animal only was on its feet alive. Mcallister dropped the Henry, pulled out his knife and got to work on the leathers, slashing through them and expecting to feel the impact of lead at any moment.

  When he had the mule free and was fighting it to stop it running, he yelled at the woman: “Get aboard.”

  She screamed back: “No—no.”

  “God damn you, git up,” he bawled. He dragged the terrified mule over to her and caught her by the arm. White-faced, she allowed herself to be hoisted up. It wasn’t easy, getting himself on the mule’s back, but he made it. The rifle above was still trying for him. Suddenly the mule staggered and screamed, but Mcallister jammed the spurs home and yelled at it. Though wounded, it didn’t need any second bidding, but lit out of there as if all the devils in hell were after it. Once it stumbled, but Mcallister kept it on its feet, holding the woman tight against him and using the spurs mercilessly. The animal rocketed down the road, hoofs clattering on stone and suddenly they were out of the battle and there seemed no sound in the world but the sound of their flight.

  Mcallister let the animal run for a mile, then as they came to the edge of the malpais, he turned the mule into the rocks and halted. Lowering Mrs. Bankroft to the ground, he got down painfully himself. Holding the mule’s lines with one hand, his other hand took in the woman as she collapsed against him.

  “The others,” she said.

  Mcallister told her: “They got any sense, they’ll get out the same as we did.”

  “But I can’t bear to think of them
back there.”

  “I can bear to think we’re both still alive.”

  She backed off from him and looked at him in a way he didn’t like. But he didn’t have the time to worry too much about that. He had to get his gun loaded and this he did. Before he had got the last load in, they were startled by a clatter of hoofs coming toward them down the road from the wagons.

  10

  Peeking Through the rocks, Mcallister saw that it was the lieutenant and the corporal, riding hard. He yelled and waved to them and they swerved into him and reined in their heaving mounts.

  “Mein Gott,” the officer said. “Mein Gott.”

  The corporal almost fell off his horse and stood staring vacantly and wilting like his legs didn’t want to hold him.

  Another rider pounded into sight and they turned to see Sam spurring an army horse to the limit of its speed. Sam turned in as the others had and gazed at them with the bemused eyes of a man who has heard too many guns go off and had too many turned in his direction. He climbed down and said: “They got the gold. They musta had a Goddam army. They’re killing the mules now. Actin’ like crazy men. Who’d kill mules like that?”

  Mcallister asked: “Any of the others git away?”

  “Coupla sodjers holed up in the rocks. They should stay alive. Them bushwhackers left ‘em strictly a-lone.”

  “Did anybody recognise any of’em?” Mcallister asked.

  “Yes,” von Tannenberg said. “Franchon. I saw him clearly.”

  Sam said: “If one of ’em wasn’t Clover, well I’ll be happy to eat my spurs.”

  The corporal was put on the edge of the road to keep guard, while the others discussed what they should do. While they did this, Mrs. Bankroft stopped the bleeding in Sam’s cheek where a spent ball had struck him. He declared that had saved his life. It had stunned him and put him out of the fight for a while. That way he hadn’t been shooting and nobody had paid him any attention.

  They discussed the situation this way and that and it was generally agreed that they must return to the train to find if the raiders had left anything of it. Sam cheered the situation slightly by telling them that he had cut all the mules loose he could and that with luck some of them would still be in the rocks.

  Von Tannenberg was bitter and he blamed himself.

  “We should not have split. If we had stayed together we would have had a better chance. To think that I have spent my life soldiering and now I behave like a raw recruit.”

  Mcallister didn’t agree.

  “It on’y looks bad because we lost. If we’d pulled it off we’d be thinking ourselves pretty smart. Anyways, it was my idea.”

  “I went along with you. I am responsible.”

  “Shucks—they had more guns, is all. They had the cover and they were above us. You can’t have many advantages more than that.”

  The lieutenant looked grateful for the opinion, but he didn’t accept it. He looked like a general that had lost an army.

  “And,” he said, “the gold is lost.”

  Squatting on his haunches and looking up at the officer out of slitted eyes, Mcallister said: “We have to get it un-lost.”

  Sam said: “Aw, hell, Rem, how can we do that?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s what we have to do. It’s no affair of us civilians, but that sonovabitch Clover … begging your pardon, ma’am, but I never knew a man that deserved the name more … that Clover, he’s got me all riled up and I reckon I won’t sleep nights till I get a gun lined up with him preferably at about six foot range.” He looked around him. “Anybody seen that damned Indian of mine?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Reckon he showed Injun sense,” Sam opined, “and broke down timber outa there.”

  “Maybe,” Mcallister said, but he didn’t sound convinced. The corporal came scrambling through the rocks.

  “Riders coming,” he told them.

  Mcallister got to his feet and limped away to the road. The sun was down and shining in his eyes. Having no hat, he shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted at the oncoming men. He couldn’t see much in the dust, but it looked to him as though there were three of them. He called to the others and told them to get down in the rocks. Not to make a move till he did. They scrambled into position and waited.

  It turned out to be George Rawlins and his brother Jack followed by the Navajo. They pulled up at the sight of the others and dismounted. Handshakes all around followed and the three men told what they could. Sure it was all over back there and the Clover gang had departed. Yeah, they’d swear on their lives it was the Clover boys. Franchon was there too. They’d killed the Apache prisoner. Just put a gun at his head and blown his brains all over the inside of the wagon.

  “But my men,” von Tannenberg wanted to know. “Are any of them alive?”

  “Sure,” Jack said. “There’s a couple of ’em standing guard over a half-dozen sabers back there.”

  Von Tannenberg ran to his horse and mounted.

  Mcallister said: “José, get onto high ground and check that Clover’s on his way.” The big Indian nodded and sent his pony through the rocks at a reckless run. The rest of them mounted, Mcallister taking the woman up in front of him, and set off down the road at a brisk trot. By the time they reached the wagons, complete dark had fallen over the land. A momentary dusk and then darkness so thick they could not see the ears of their mounts. They were at a loss now, being helpless in the darkness, but not daring to light a lamp, if they could find one, till they heard from José whether the raiders had gone. The chances were that the light had not been good enough for the Indian to see any distance.

  But they decided they would take the risk. They had to do something. First off, they lit a lamp in one of the wagons to see what remained to them. The raiders it appeared had taken nothing but the gold and some of their supplies. McAllister’s supply wagon was almost untouched. They scattered out through the rocks calling, trying to locate their wounded. One soldier came out of cover. He was an Italian trooper by the name of Remo Benedetti and he seemed to have forgotten any English that he had ever known in his excitement and horror. He told how the Clover boys had killed the Indian, then set about systematically killing the wounded. He had heard Clover himself describe the process as “eliminating witnesses.” Mcallister then saw that everybody had a drink of strong liquor; they got the spades out and the picks and started digging graves. They didn’t feel like talking. They all felt like hell—and getting hold of Clover and using some ancient and time-proven Apache torture on him.

  “And, by Gawd,” Mcallister said, “if I have my way, I’ll give every man the chance of that.”

  The lieutenant said some good and solemn last words and Sam Pritchard damned the souls heartily of the raiders that had been killed. They were two of them. After that, Mrs. Bankroft set about finding the men something to eat and von Tannenberg took Mcallister aside.

  “At dawn we must hitch what mules we can to the wagons and go as fast as we can to the Fort.” He coughed apologetically. “I do not suppose that you would sacrifice your stores for the sake of speed. There is a chance that Gato is within a hundred miles of here and if he is that, he will find us.”

  “No,” Mcallister told him. “I ain’t sacrificing anything, mister. I was wrong today. But I ain’t going to be wrong once more. We gather the mules that have to be loose around here, then you head for the Fort.”

  Reading between the words, as it were, the soldier knew what was in McAllister’s mind.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “Me? Why, I’m going after that sonovabitch Clover.”

  “No, my friend. I know the gold is worth much and there is nothing I would like more than to have it back. But enough men have died for it already. You stay with me.”

  Mcallister told him: “Catching Clover ain’t as bad as it sounds. He’ll be pretty damn sure he’s hit us so hard we can’t move.”

  “It’s still crazy and I will not allow it.”

&nbs
p; “Now, wait a minute—”

  “This is a military train and I am in charge here.”

  “You’re sure making me tremble. Mister, I’ve bin trailing men like Clover and giving ’em their com-uppance since I was knee-high to a prairie-dog. You’re going to look pretty sick when you stand in front of Bill Browning and tell him you lost the pay-roll. Have you stopped to think what’ll happen with those soldiers when they hear they still ain’t going to be paid?”

  Von Tannenberg sighed.

  “There you have touched a sore point.”

  “So I go. If there wasn’t any gold, I’d still go. I’d go and git me that bastard if there was just me and a mule left.”

  The soldier said: “You’re sure it can be done?”

  “It’s going to be done.”

  There was silence between them while von Tannenberg thought about it. Finally, he said: “I suggest that you take the best one of your men and a soldier with you.”

  Mcallister said: “No, I go alone, travel light and fast.”

  “But Clover has men with him. You cannot possibly—”

  “When I come up with Clover he’ll be on his lonesome. And that’s the way he’ll die.”

  11

  The Scout came to Gato around midnight and gave him the news that the White Eyes with the wagons had been attacked by their fellow-countrymen. The scout knew the name of the leader of these raiders and when Gato heard the name, he smiled. It amused him too to think that gold, which had never meant much to the Apache, but which would now buy guns, was there for the taking.

  He gave his guttural orders and rolled himself in his blanket to sleep with a peaceful mind. Never had a tomorrow promised so much.

  With the dawn, he and his people were moving out of their camping place, heading for the high ground, travelling immediately below the skyline so that they would not be observed by the people below. His first objective was the Clover gang. They would be moving faster than the wagon-train and they had the gold. So first Clover and then the slow-moving wagons. Gold, mules and horses—the next two days would be profitable. He sang happily to himself as he rode and his young men, hearing him, became light in heart.