McAllister

by Matt Chisholm

  12

  What A man would like to do and what he actually does are usually never quite the same thing. And so it was with Clover. What he would have liked was to have reached Mesquite Springs the same day that he had taken the gold from the army. That being made impossible by circumstances, he wanted to reach the town on the following day, but human endurance and horse-flesh being what it was, that too was impossible. The earliest that he could deposit the gold into the safekeeping of his sponsor Carmody was three days after the taking of it.

  As darkness fell on the scene of the battle in the malpais and he and his men made a hasty departure, riding hard up the road in the direction from which the wagons had come and then turning abruptly east around the southernmost tip of the great outcrop of rock so that water could be reached. By midnight, when he reached his first objective, several of the horses were played out and the mules that had carried the heavy weight of gold were in such a poor condition that men were saying that they would be no use on the following day.

  The men themselves were not in good shape. They had done a lot of riding under the hottest sun in the world, they had been short on water, they were unwashed and all of them unshaven. None of them lovers of the wild and lonely places of the world, most of them hankered after the lights and liquors of what, for them, was civilisation. The taking of the gold had elated all of them, but they were not too happy about the men they had lost. Hardened as they were, Clover had promised them that it would be a walk-over, but they had lost two men dead and two badly wounded. When they halted among the aspens, they ate and discussed what they had done. Franchon sat apart from them. They had seen what he had done to the Apache and to the young soldier. Sure, the Indian didn’t count and if he hadn’t done it, they would. But one or two of them could not get the look in the boy’s eyes out of their head. It was not so much that they were consciously disgusted by what he had done, but that the act had somehow put him apart from them. They had all killed in their time, but they knew that here among them was a man colder than the coldest of them. Even Clover. And, God knew, he worried no more about killing a man than he did about eating a meal.

  As for Clover, he had now reached that time when all leaders of such raids knew that his life was in acute danger and if he lost his grip on the men for a moment, at least he had lost the gold and, at most, he himself was dead. He therefore rested with his back against a rock and the whole gold shipment at his side. He was taking no chances. But a man has to sleep and the strain of the raid was telling on this man. He was dozing with his gun drawn and cocked in his hand when Jase Harper came to him.

  Jase was an old associate of Clover and the nearest to a friend he had ever had. They had ridden many trails together and could match crime for crime. The only major difference between them was that Jase had no stomach for responsibility. He gave good council and he had a nerve as cool as any man could want, but he didn’t like to make the decisions.

  In appearance, he was a smallish man, square and strongly made. His face was not pleasant and though he liked women a lot, they never showed that they cared for him, a fact that had soured him a mite. He was not overly fast with a gun, but he had a name for deadly accuracy. A good man with horses, he was a tireless rider.

  He squatted by his chief now and Clover could see that he was grinning faintly in the firelight. His little pig’s eyes darted here and there as they always did.

  “What’s on your mind?” Clover demanded.

  “The gold—what else?”

  Clover knew that something was coming up now. He cursed to himself because all he wanted was sleep.

  He said: “Yeah?”

  “The boys had a tough time today.”

  “Their cut should ought to make them forget that, I reckon.”

  “Wa-al … you see, Clover, they’ve bin thinkin’ about us goin’ into Mesquite and it don’t seem to make sense to ’em.”

  “What is this? It makes sense to me and that’s all I give a Goddam for.”

  “Now, don’t go off half-cock, man. I’m just a-tellin’ yawl how the boys feel. Where’s the harm if you give ’em their cut right now. The chore’s done.”

  Clover said: “The chore ain’t done finished till we’re in Mesquite. Or do you fancy tangling with old man Carmody?”

  Jase thought about that. Nobody had ever dared cross the old man, his spider’s web spread too far.

  “We give the boys their cut, that’ll make your load lighter. Me’n you an’ the two Carmody men can see the gold into town.”

  Clover said in that reasonable voice of his that was a plain signal that he was at his most dangerous: “Jase, how come the boys agreed to the way we’d do this and now they changed their minds.”

  Jase shrugged.

  “They just told me how they felt.”

  “Did you tell them how you felt?”

  Jase grinned widely.

  “You know me. You call the tune, I dance.”

  “The tune I’m callin’ right now says we’re goin’ into Mesquite. That’s the way we planned it and that’s the way it stays.”

  Jase stood up and gazed down at Clover. He wasn’t grinning now.

  “Just passin’ on what the boys felt, is all,” he said. “You want we should go ahead—that’s the way it is.”

  Clover looked at him, poker-faced.

  “Thanks, Jase.”

  The squat man turned and walked away to the others by the fire. He didn’t say anything to them, but Clover knew that as soon as they were in their blankets, they’d be discussing this. Later in the night, they might do something about it. Or maybe they’d think the first light of dawn was a good time.

  The gun in his hand jerked involuntarily as Franchon appeared suddenly in front of him.

  “What’s the matter, Clover?” the gunman wanted to know. “Jumpy?”

  Clover eyed him.

  Franchon went on: “You had a visit from your friend Harper. Maybe he come out with it all and maybe he didn’t. For your information, those loyal men of yours are going to jump you as soon as you close your eyes.”

  Clover said: “So?”

  Franchon’s white face creased in a little smile.

  “So I’ll be on the other side of the camp and the first sonovabitch that puts a gun on you is plump dead as last week’s mutton.”

  “Lookin’ after Carmody’s interests, huh?”

  “That’s about the size of it. And when it’s all over, Clover, don’t get the idea you can rub me out. We have to get the gold into town and there’s Indians around.”

  Clover smiled now himself.

  “Franchon, we need each other. You remember that. I promise not to kill you till we get the gold to Carmody.”

  Franchon showed his teeth.

  “Suits me,” he said and turned on his heel. Clover watched him settle himself down on the opposite side of the fire.

  Maybe they both dozed and maybe they didn’t, but when Jase Harper and another man who called himself simply Brown put their guns on Clover in the first gray light of dawn, they met the reception they should have expected. Clover shot Jase in the stomach and Franchon put one through his head before he had hit ground. The second man fled into the darkness and, as far as is known, was never seen again. Maybe the Apaches got him. Maybe he wandered in circles till he died. One thing he dared not do was return to Clover. The other men who had thrown in with Harper, but who had held back till they knew which side to cast their chips on, declared their allegiance to Clover anew and declared they thought Harper a double-crossing sonovabitch for turning on Clover after all their years together.

  Clover said ‘sure’ and told them to load the mules, he didn’t have time to hang around here flapping his mouth all day. They moved out in half an hour and left Harper where he had fallen. No call to sweat digging a grave when the buzzards would do the job for you. None of them cared much for the man, any road.

  They moved away from the water with a Carmody man in the lead, holding the lead-rope
of the mules that bore the gold. Immediately behind them, came Clover and Franchon side by side. The rest followed after, chastened and not tempted by the fact that Clover now had his back turned to them. Clover was feeling pretty good and he began to sing softly to himself.

  13

  When The firing broke out in the camp of the White Eyes, Gato himself went forward to investigate. It was he who was confronted by the wild-eyed Brown as he fled from Clover. It was he who felled the whiteman to the ground with the butt of his Winchester before the six-gun which Brown still held in his hand could come into action.

  The outlaw had fallen on his face. Gato turned him over gently and contemptuously with his soft leather boot, drew his knife and deftly cut his throat.

  When he had listened and made sure that no more followed, he went on in the direction of the camp. Halting in good cover among the rocks, he found it difficult to see much through the foliage of the aspens, but he saw enough to check that when these whitemen had talked themselves out, they would move. They were alert now. Clover had posted two sentries on high points and did not call them till the last moment. When these men were mounted, the party moved out at once.

  Gato estimated their direction and speed of travel and went back the way he had come.

  The young men were eager when he joined them and he saw with approval that most of them had favored the old ways and were carefully painted for the test of strength that was to come. He bade an old warrior stay with the women and spare horses, guessing that he would want every man he could muster with him. Clover was a fighter and on those mules he had something which his race would die for.

  He gave the sign to mount and vaulted onto the back of his fine bay Spanish mustang. He led the way at a walk into the south. He knew just where he would hit the Yanquis and just when.

  14

  Mcallister Traveled six hours behind the Clover party. He had with him a horse and a mule and he rode them alternately to keep them as fresh as he could, knowing that Clover had the advantage in that he had traveled this first leg of the journey by night. On the other hand, McAllister, if his hunch was right, had gained time by cutting off a corner and something like twelve hours in time.

  He didn’t hurry himself, because he wanted to kill neither himself nor his animals, but he kept them at a steady trot for as long as they could hold it. This was a good gait for a horse, but a bad one for a man and it didn’t take many miles for Mcallister to feel that he had been on a rack. The mule’s pace was particularly murderous. However, it was a big, rawboned creature with ten league strides and that suited Mcallister fine.

  His main worry was neither heat, nor the enemy ahead, but the wound in his leg. It started playing him up after he had been in the saddle an hour and he knew by the throbbing pain it was giving him that it could go bad and stop him surer than a bullet.

  The first water he came to, a brackish pool among some rock that he came to around noon on his first day out, he stopped and cleaned the wound with the small flask of whiskey that von Tannenberg had insisted he carried. He was thankful to find that, though angry, the wound was still clean. He ate a little of the meat and biscuits that Mrs. Bankroft had given him and dozed in the shade of his animals for a while, thinking about the woman and wishing that he had met her under different circumstances. He wondered what her relationship had been with her dead husband and wickedly hoped that it had been bad. Yes, sir, she was a mighty handsome woman and if that Sam Pritchard didn’t keep away from her while he was gone, he’d sure bat that clown’s ears down.

  In the afternoon, he started edging into country he didn’t like—not with a bunch of outlaws and another of Indians maybe not so far away. It was mostly sage with a bush of Spanish Bayonet and organ cactus here and there. Such country ordinarily would have given him fair visibility, but now the terrain was starting to roll and every now and then he had ridges rising to a hundred, even a couple of hundred feet, and a man never knew what he was going to meet on the other side of one of those things. But he kept the animals moving and kept a chin on either shoulder to make sure that no bushwhackers were out-flanking him. Not that a man would know if one of those was there till a gun went off.

  A couple of hours before dusk, he spotted dust at a fair distance. He rode to the highest point he could find and took a look, but he could not spot the animals that were making it. He thought that it was ponies, maybe as many as a dozen, and they were being ridden fast. It could be cavalry or Indians. They were headed north, so it couldn’t be the Clover gang. Far off, though not so far as the dust, he saw buzzards circling. From this distance it looked as though they planed peacefully up there right atop of the peaks of the high sierra.

  Leaving the animals below the skyline, he bellied down on the ridge-top and for a long time studied the country. He was starting to get that uneasy feeling down his spine. Maybe that was some instinct he had inherited from his Kiowa or Navajo or Sioux mother. His old man never could make up his mind who had been his dam. It depended on how drunk he was. Sure, once when he had been almost sober, he told the young Rem that his mother had been a beautiful Mexican woman. A real lady.

  Wherever he got that instinct, it was with him right now and he knew better than to laugh at it.

  Scrambling from the ridge-top, he got on the chunky bay horse and gave it some steel to make it know he meant business. The old mule hung back on the lead-rope a mite, but when it thought it might get its fool head pulled off, it followed at a graceless gallop.

  Mcallister kept that pace till dusk, when he stopped long enough to wet his own and his animals’ mouths. Then he switched his saddle onto the mule and went on at a fair lick. He made three changes before midnight when he halted for three hours’ uneasy sleep. It seemed that he woke to listen to every coyote howl to check if it was really a little wolf. When one of the animals got restless, he drew his gun and dozed with it cocked in his hand. He wasn’t a man to take chances—if he could help it.

  Long before dawn, he was awoken by the bay whinnying. Half-asleep he staggered to his feet. The sound of gunfire brought him wide awake and stepping hastily into the saddle. The rest had done the bay good. There was spring in his action now. Mcallister got him to the top of the nearest ridge and pulled him in, listening. The land played hell with sound, but he reckoned the ruckus was taking place about a mile off and to the south-east. He put the bay down the slope and the mule came stiff-legged and complaining after.

  15

  When Gato jumped the outlaws no more than a ten minute ride from where they had camped, he knew that he and his men would not have everything their way. The men he attacked were desperate and they were accustomed to firearms. They earned their bread by shooting and being shot at.

  Gato was an Apache and they were a conservative people, who generally liked the old ways better than the new. But the chief was adaptable and had even been known to go as far as defying his guardian and hostile spirits by attacking enemy at night. He hadn’t done that now because he wished to employ the most unexpected method of all. He attacked in broad daylight, not only in the open, but actually on what appeared to be flat country offering no covering whatever.

  He had left two warriors guarding the horses in good cover on the plain. With them he had also left strict instructions and no doubt in their minds as to what would happen to them if they failed to carry them out. Meanwhile he and a dozen men concealed themselves in deep fissures in the land which were invisible as near as thirty yards. This arrangement of his little force had the asset of utter surprise, but it meant that Gato gambled on just where the whitemen would pass. Here the trail was broad and indefinite and it only ensured that the victims of the surprise would come within rifleshot. There was the snag. Maybe four or five of his men were really expert with the rifle. The rest were useful only in closer fighting or with the bow. However, he told himself, the whitemen were in the open and his men were invisible. The whitemen were undisciplined and his own were willing to die at the lift of his finger. This
should go well.

  “They are coming,” Gato said. “Do not fire till I do.”

  They waited. No one raised his head to watch the approach, but their sharp, desert-trained ears quickly picked up the thud-thud of the animals’ hoofs. Gato gave the sounds his whole attention, measuring in his mind, trying to determine exactly how near they were and when the leading rider came opposite his position.

  Suddenly a horse trumpeted.

  Gato did not hear everything that happened after that. The whitemen were between him and his own horses, but he guessed that one of the Apache ponies replied to the horse of the White Eye.

  One of the riders said loudly: “You hear that?”

  Another bawled out: “They’s hosses around here.”

  Gato was pleased to hear the high note of panic in the voice. His ears picked up the sound of horses bunching close together; some were halting.

  A strong throaty voice shouted: “Git on, damn you.”

  Now was the time.

  Gato straightened his legs and thrust his Winchester repeater over the natural parapet.

  There within sixty yards of him were his enemies, several of them bunched together, so close that a novice must hit one of them if he fired into them. And Gato was no novice. Joy sang in him like a wild song.

  When he fired, the whole desert seemed to be filled with the small, curiously flat sound of the rifle. For a moment, the knot of horsemen were so still that he could not believe that he had hit one of them. Then suddenly men were jerking this way and that in the saddle, trying to make out where the shot had come from. A shout lifted thinly in the early air. Then the horsemen all came apart like an expanding blossom of a dark flower. One was shouting for them to get back into the trees, another for them to make for the open.