McAllister

by Matt Chisholm

  In that moment, there wasn’t a man in the Clover group that wasn’t unnerved. Clover himself was about to shout for all of them to follow him in a wild ride south, when the Apaches saved them. As the cold wraith of the false dawn deceived men over the entire desert country, the actuality of the Apache coming shrieking and yelling out of that ghostly grayness, the men stood firm in the face of the reality of the danger.

  Schneider remarked in a suddenly calm voice: “There they are, see ’em?”

  “Sure,” Clover said, “there’s one for the pot,” and knocked a man from the back of his racing pony with one shot.

  Franchon said: “You’re not a bad shot, Clover, but I’ll bet you ten to one you have to shoot for the body.”

  “It kills ’em just the same.”

  “In time. But the head shot puts them out right off,” the gunman told him and suited the action to the words. The second Indian of that fight fell almost at their feet so that the whitemen’s ponies shied at the stench of the bear-grease and blood.

  Another buck, low over the neck of his speeding pinto raced by, shot an arrow at them and went on. As the arrow passed among them, harming nobody, Schneider followed the uncertain shape with his rifle sights and fired. The pinto turned a somersault, the rider leapt clear and came down on his feet running.

  “Bad, man, bad,” Clover told him. “This light’s puttin’ you off. Watch it or you don’t git no bonus.”

  Schneider laughed and laughing died as a man on foot dashed among them and swung a war-club that smashed his skull like an eggshell. Franchon turned in the saddle and shot the Indian through his open mouth as he howled his hate and defiance. The man fell against Schneider’s horse as the dead whiteman pitched from the saddle. Dead whiteman and dead Indian fell in a heap together and Schneider’s horse took off like all the devils in hell were after it. Clover and Franchon fired steadily as the Indians out there tried to catch so valuable prize as a whiteman’s saddler.

  When there wasn’t anything more to shoot at, the two men started reloading.

  Franchon said: “Well, Clover, that leaves just the two of us. Real cosy.”

  Clover chuckled amiably.

  “How about a little bet on us both reaching Mesquite, Franchon?”

  “Lay you a hundred.”

  “You call that gamblin’. Man, you didn’t remember. We’re rich.”

  Franchon allowed himself a cold smile.

  “Right. Five hundred we make the Springs.”

  Clover roared: “Goddamit, that’s my bet.”

  “All right,” Franchon remarked, “that suits my book. We both think we’ll make it.”

  He gathered up the lead-rope of a pack animal from Schneider’s dead hand, bending gracefully from the saddle to do it. He next took a hold of the reins of Carmody’s man’s horse, then said: “Ready to go when you are, Clover.”

  The outlaw looked through the gloom speculatively and said: “I’m goin’ to kill you mighty soon, Franchon, but by Gawd, I never aimed to kill a better man.”

  Franchon said: “Flattery won’t save you, Clover.”

  When true dawn came, they moved on. There wasn’t an Indian in sight, dead or alive. The only evidence that they had been there at all was the dead pinto pony that Schneider had killed. And, of course, there were the grisly remains of Rand. The Apache had done the job crudely because they were in a hurry.

  18

  Mcallister Planned to reach Mesquite Springs at dusk and that’s the way it was. He and the Navajo rode slowly in from the east on jaded mounts, Mcallister acting like a man in drink because the fever was on him. The experience wasn’t new to him and he treated it like an overdose of whiskey, forcing himself to think slowly and carefully. On the outskirts of town, he made José untie his legs and clung tight to the saddlehorn as they walked their horses slowly down the street. The light was poor and the lamps were not yet lit, they kept to the darkest part of the street, cut down a side alley halfway down Main and got around the back of McAllister’s corral without knowing that they had been seen by anybody they knew.

  They dismounted stiffly and Mcallister handed his reins to the big Indian.

  “Give the animals a good feed of oats and a rub down. They earned it. Git old Josh Perkins out and tell him to hold himself ready. He’ll be riding with us.”

  José showed astonishment.

  “He is old and feeble.”

  “He looks old and feeble and he’s been trading on that for years. Maybe he is, but he can shoot out the eye of a gnat at a hundred feet. Now, listen—you saddle up a couple of good horses for you and me. And I want three four good pack mules.”

  He heard the Indian gasp.

  “You going back?”

  “Sure. You don’t think I’m going to sit here just staring at that gold. Now I’m off to see the doc. Maybe I can get this leg fixed.”

  There wasn’t much fun to walking, but he made it to Doc Hebrun’s at a painful crawl. Old white-haired Mrs. Hebrun answered to his knock, looked pleased to see him and bade him go in. Mcallister liked her. She was a damn-sight better man than her husband and a better doctor too. If Hebrun had been any kind of a medical man, he wouldn’t have hung out his shingle in this dead and alive hole.

  As soon as he got into the lamplight in the parlor Mrs. Hebrun looked at him in alarm.

  “For heaven’s sakes, Mr. McAllister, what happened? You look terrible.”

  Mcallister said: “I don’t feel so gay, ma’am. Running a mite of fever and I’ve gotten a hole in my leg.”

  “This is terrible. The doctor’s out … on a call you know.” The saloon, Mcallister thought.

  “I’d admire for you to dress the leg, ma’am, if you could do that for me.”

  “Surely I could. But I’m no doctor.”

  Mcallister sank into a chair.

  “Best doc I ever did see, ma’am. Remember the time Herb Wise got himself all shot up and you spent all one night picking buckshot out of him?”

  The old lady laughed.

  “Should I ever forget it? Herb kept on drinking to kill the pain and I kept on drinking to keep my courage up and come dawn we were both so … well, I was purely ashamed.”

  “You done a fine job, Mrs. Hebrun, ma’am.”

  She nodded brusquely.

  “All right, sir. You take them pants off and clear that table and lay yourself down on it while I boil up some water. Whiskey’s in the bureau yonder. Don’t drink it all, I’ll need some.”

  They both laughed and Mcallister cleared the table while she bustled into the kitchen. Next he found the whiskey, lay on the table and started taking regular twenty second intervals between sips of whiskey. The level was pretty low by the time the doctor’s wife returned. She took the bottle from him and killed half of what remained. Then she got her tools ready and took a look at the leg.

  “You mean you have been walking around town with a leg like that? You must be out of your mind.”

  “I was way out of town, ma’am.”

  “Lordy, I remember now. You took a train to the fort. Now you just lie there quiet and tell me all about it while I get to work.”

  An hour later, a bottle of whiskey inside him, but cold sober and damp with icy sweat, he left the giggling doctor’s wife with ten dollars in her hand and walked down Main. It would be boasting to call it walking. The right leg which Mrs. Hebrun had worked on so hard now showed no inclination to walk and plenty to drag. Just the same, it seemed to feel better after the old girl cleaning it and Mcallister wasn’t grumbling. He was too occupied searching through the fiery ocean of his fever for familiar landmarks in the town.

  The name Carmody has been branded into his brain by a hot-iron and that was where he was heading.

  Carmody, his brain said. Carmody … Carmody … Then when that theme had nearly played itself out, his brain said, Clover, that big bearded sonovabitch with a gun growing out of his arm. I’m going to kill him. That took him maybe fifty yards before another fantasia sounded disco
rdantly inside his skull. And that said simply: Franchon.

  And that name made him cold enough to quench some of the fever. By God, he should of brought a shot-gun along. That was the kind of tool a man used on back-shooting dogs like those.

  He reached the intersection of Main and Smithson and halted, leaning against an upright of the covered sidewalk. Maybe he leaned there a couple of minutes and maybe he leaned there an hour. There was no way of knowing.

  There was a face in front of him. A face he knew, but no matter how hard he tried to he could not put a name to it.

  The mouth was moving, but he had difficulty in hearing the words.

  “Huh?” he mumbled. “What’s that you’re saying?”

  “Thought you was in the daysert, Rem. With the sodjers. How come you’m back in town?”

  Mcallister chuckled lunatically.

  “Got thirsty,” he said. “Had to have a drink.”

  He took his hand off the post and weaved away from the man who stared after him and said: “By-Gawd drunk or I’m a Christian. I’d’a never a-thought it.”

  Twenty paces down the street, Mcallister found himself faced by the horse-trough. Dam little water in it and that not very clean, but he ducked his face in it and found refreshment in the brackish luke-warmth. He rested against the trough, water dripping from his face. There was a man standing silhouetted against the lighted window of a saloon called The Mary Belle.

  Maybe I’m a-fevered, Mcallister told himself, but that don’t mean I’m a damn-fool. No, sir. And it don’t mean I can’t shoot the navel out of any yaller dawg that comes creeping around.

  A man walked out of the saloon and joined the other. They both stood looking across the street at McAllister. He watched them from under the brim of his hat, unable to see their faces and sure that the ball wasn’t ready to start yet. Nobody could tell him that Clover had reached here yet.

  However … It was not too early to prepare for the trouble to come. He heaved himself off the trough and stepped into the shadow of a wagon. That was no more than partial concealment and he went from there into the blackness of an alleyway that ran between the First National County Consolidated Bank (a title that had always puzzled McAllister) and the Heddington Universal Emporium. If he had gone to the end of the alley and turned left or right he would have come either to Mex Town or Smithson and that’s what he hoped any watcher would expect him to do. Of one thing he was sure—no one that knew him at all well would follow him into a dark alley if there was trouble in the air.

  Halfway down the dark and narrow way and when the smell of new-sawn timber was in his nostrils, he halted and felt along the wall with his hand. He found Dan Pearsall’s gate. Lifting the latch and pushing, he found that it was barred. He swore and reached up to see if he could touch the top. He could, so he pulled himself slowly up, wondering if he would ever manage it. It took him a long time and when he was on the other side of the wall in the timber yard, he felt like hell and took a ten minute rest till he was strong enough to go on.

  It took him another ten minutes to cross the yard without waking the many dead on boothill, but he made it and went back onto Main along the side of Pearsall’s house. The timber man’s dog started kyacking, but a well-aimed boot sent it yelping to cover. Old Pearsall came out and demanded angrily of the night who the hell was there, but Mcallister was gone by then and in the shadows of the stage-office. He sat himself down in the dust and was glad of the much-needed rest, leaning back against the plank-wall of the office, hearing the clerk, Ben Tunstall talking to himself as he did always.

  Mcallister walked around the rear of the building and tapped on the window. Ben turned his head, alarm showing in his eyes. He dived for the desk, whipped up a pistol long as his arm and pointed it in McAllister’s direction. Through the glass, his voice came muffled.

  “Git ’way from thar. This yere’s stage com’ny property.”

  Mcallister pressed his face against the pane and mouthed his own name, feeling ridiculous. Ben’s face dropped a couple of inches and approached as McAllister’s finger beckoned.

  “Come on in,” the clerk was saying and Mcallister wagged his fever-filled head till it felt as if it would drop off.

  After several frantic signs, Ben comprehended and opened the window.

  “What’n heck’re you doin’ out thar, boy?”

  “Keep it quiet, old-timer. I’m asking a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “I’m bushed and I have to sleep. I aim to take a nap out here, but I have to know if anybody calls on Carmody.”

  He let that sink in and waited for the dawn to light on the old man’s face. Finally, it did.

  “I git yuh. Yessir, I git you good. But, say, come on in and use my bed, Rem boy.”

  “I don’t want to be seen.”

  “A man can lock the door and pull down the blinds, cain’t he?”

  “Okay—go ahead.”

  Ben pulled down the blinds and locked the door, then let Mcallister in the rear door off the loading platform. He showed him into his own little room and Mcallister sank down thankfully on the bed. He and the old man took a couple of shots of whiskey and Ben asked: “How do you know they’ll go in front?”

  “I don’t.”

  Ben chuckled.

  “Wa-al, I’m shuttin’ up office, boy. Takin’ my smell of night air. I’ll keep an eye on the old goat and I reckon a snake couldn’t git past ol’ Ben into that shebang. No, sir.”

  He shuffled out, gun stuck in belt and locked the door behind him. Mcallister at once fell into a deep sleep.

  19

  Ben Tunstall woke him around midnight, gave him a drink of whiskey and told him he could now get on his way. Two men had gone into Carmody’s by the front door. They’d ridden up on wore out hosses and three pack-mules that was walking on their fool knees.

  Mcallister sat on the edge of the bed, blinking in the lamplight. Clover and Franchon were here. He couldn’t be sure it was them, but he knew it was. That old instinct again. It had to be them. The pack-mules looked as though the gold had not fallen into Gato’s hands. Sitting there with the room turning crazily around him, holding his head in his hands and waited for the room to be motionless, he told himself that mighty soon that gold was going to make another journey out of here.

  He took out his gun and checked the loads carefully. He didn’t want a misfire, a loosened cap or any of the other little mishaps that could cost a man his life.

  Old Ben gazed at the gun in disgust.

  “Why the goddam hail don’t you git yo’se’f oner them new-fangled brass ca’tridge guns, son?”

  Mcallister smiled, knowing he could not explain what kept him to the old cap-and-ball. A man didn’t waste shot this way. Every round counted and he kept up to standard.

  He stood up and swayed a little. The sleep had done him good and, although his hand shook when he held it out in front of him, he knew that it would steady up when he had a gun in it, his thumb was on the hammer and the muzzle looked at another man with cold lethality.

  “ ’Nother drink,” Ben said.

  “No, thanks. Well, I’m beholden to you, pop. Buy you a drink next time I’m in town.”

  The old man came and put a hand on his arm.

  “I git it,” he said. “It come to me who that was went in Carmody’s. Clover and Carmody’s man—Franchon. Jesus, boy, you ain’t goin’ to brace them two sidewinders.”

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘brace’. I’m going to kill them.”

  The old man cackled.

  “Backshoot the bastards,” he said.

  Mcallister looked at him a moment as though he were considering the possibility.

  “Maybe that ain’t needful,” he said.

  “Needful! God A’mighty, them two’s fast.”

  “Ain’t they,” Mcallister agreed and let himself out of the rear door of the office.

  The moon was up and the night was almost as clear as day. His tired mind took in the fa
ct that there was nothing so beautiful as an Arizonan night and the possibility that this could be the last he ever saw. Or the last those two killers ever saw. He’d do his best to make it that way around.

  He eased his way onto Main about a couple of hundred yards west of the stage office, crossed over as nonchalantly as he could and entered a noisome alley that smelled as though a dog had died there last week and had lain in the sun there ever since. He passed the hole in the wall that was the laundry of Chung Fu, heard the patter of Chinese voices, walked briefly through a bright shaft of light and plunged on into deep moon-shadow. As he circled through the trash-filled backlots, stumbling on empty cans and debris, he came within sight of the lighted windows of Carmody’s house. The blinds were drawn, but he saw figures moving inside silhouetted against the light. For a moment, he toyed with the crazy idea of kicking the rear door in and going in there with his gun out and cut down the first man that came in his sight, but he was clearer headed than that. He approached the house, close enough to catch the murmur of voices inside. Clover sounded louder than the others and from him Mcallister caught a word or two. The big outlaw’s booming laugh sounded.

  McAllister, searching around for a way to do this, saw there was a fair space between Carmody’s house and the next which was a saddler’s. Even from here he could smell the heady smell of leather. Halfway down this narrow alleyway for some reason was a large rain barrel. Mcallister walked to this and crouched down so that, from the rear of the house, he could not be seen against the lights of the street. Drawing his gun, he checked the percussion caps with a careful finger.

  He crouched there long enough to consider the world and life that allowed a man to cower here furtively in wait for two other men in order to kill them. The only compensating factor was that there were two of them and only one of him. Maybe they had a better chance, but he would not entertain that possibility. He was going to kill both of them. They were going to pay in the accepted way of the West for the men dead on the trail and he was going back to the lieutenant with the gold. This was a fight for survival and Mcallister was going to survive and stay solvent. And maybe he was doing a good thing along the way. That was his code and he was sticking to it.