by Bill Crider
That was what had made him wake up. There was someone talking close by.
He kept listening. He heard a horseshoe click against a rock, and he worked himself up until he was sitting a little straighter against the tree.
It wasn’t easy. He had to push himself along with his good elbow and dig his boot heels into the dirt. It made his arm throb harder than ever. But he did it.
His blood was rushing in his ears, but he could still hear the talking. He knew it wasn’t Ben and O’Grady. They wouldn’t be talking friendly like the voices Jink could hear. So who the hell could it be?
He wondered if he could stand up. If he could, by God, he’d find out who it was. He didn’t think it would be anyone he wanted to see.
By pushing with his heels and scrunching his back along the trunk of the tree, he managed to stand. After that he didn’t do anything for a while. His head felt about three times its normal size, and he was so weak and dizzy that he wasn’t sure his legs would hold him up.
The dizziness passed finally, but then he noticed how much his arm was hurting. Well, that didn’t matter. He knew what he was going to do.
He waited until his head was about as clear as it was going to get, and then he tottered off in the direction of the voices.
“They came by here somewhere,” Jonathan said. He’d lost the trail a while back, but he was sure he and Ellie were headed in the right direction. “We’ll pick ’em up before long.”
“We’d better,” Ellie said. “The sun’s going down.”
“Don’t matter. I can follow ’em anyhow.”
Ellie was beginning to have her doubts. Jonathan didn’t seem quite as strong as he had earlier, and she was worried that they wouldn’t be able to pick up the trail again, especially if it got dark.
She thought about what she would do if they didn’t, and to her surprise she realized that she didn’t really care any longer.
She wondered why, but not for long. She was normally a sensible woman, and she knew now that what she was doing was not sensible. In fact, she thought, she was acting just like Burt had, in a way. He’d gone out to punish the men who’d raped his wife, and he’d gotten himself killed.
Now she was going out to punish the men who’d killed him.
And for what?
Nothing that she could do to them would ever bring Burt back. Nothing that she could do would help Burt, not in the least.
But what about herself? Couldn’t she punish them for what they’d done to her?
Not really, and she knew it.
There was no way to take back from them what they had taken from her in the floor of the wagon. Killing them certainly wouldn’t do it.
Whatever she had lost, it was something that she would have to find in herself, and it came to her then that it was something that she had never really lost after all.
It was still there, in her determination, and it was there in her realization that she no longer had to do anything at all to get it back. She could go back to Blanco and pick up her life again and manage pretty well. Things would never be the same as they had with Burt, and she’d have to work the farm double hard, but she could do that.
She started to tell that to Jonathan, but as she started to speak, he said, “There’s the trail, right up there. I can see where somebody broke off a tree limb. They went by here, all right. You comin’, or not?”
His tone was eager and excited, and that was when Ellie knew that Jonathan, for some reason or other, needed to find those three men even more than she did. What he’d told her at the ranch explained his attitude to some extent, but not completely.
That didn’t matter, however. She realized that she still wanted to go on as much as he did, really. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself differently, she knew she couldn’t leave the job undone.
She no longer believed she had to kill the three men, but she knew they had to be punished. The law could do that, and that was just fine, that was the way it should be, but she and Jonathan were going to give the law all the help they could. Otherwise, they’d both have lost something, one way or the other.
And she wasn’t going to let that happen.
“I’m coming,” she said.
FIFTEEN
There was a little ridge of ground between Jink and the voices, so he didn’t think there was much chance of anybody seeing him, but he didn’t take any chances. The setting sun caused the scrubby cedars and oaks to cast long shadows on the rocky terrain, and Jink used the shadows for cover as he stumbled from one tree to the next.
It was a short journey, but not an easy one. The shadows seemed to Jink to be moving, and then he noticed that the trees were moving, too, which didn’t seem right to him. A tree ought to stay in one place. He missed one when he put out a hand to steady himself, but he grabbed a limb and caught himself before he fell.
When he got near to the crest of the rise, he lay down on his belly, holding back the moan that tried to escape him. He scooted along, every scoot sending pain thrilling through him, until he could see over the top of the ridge.
What he saw scared him so much that he almost cried out. His heart speeded up so much that he thought his arm was going to burst with the pain and spray his blood all over the ridge.
He jerked down his head and tried to calm himself, but his breath was rushing in and out so fast that he was sure they could hear him on the other side of the ridge.
“They.” There were two of them, that was for certain, but he told himself that it couldn’t have been the two he thought it was. It just wasn’t possible, but then it wasn’t possible for trees to move, either, and they were damn sure moving.
He looked at the trees again. They weren’t moving now, but by God they had been. Hadn’t they?
If they hadn’t been, then maybe he hadn’t really seen who he thought he had when he looked over the ridge top. He knew he’d have to look again, to be sure.
He didn’t want to look. He was afraid that they’d still be there, and he didn’t know what the hell he’d do then.
He had to look, though. If they were there, they’d find him sooner or later. He had to get the drop on them if they were really there.
So he looked, and there they were all right, just like they’d looked back in Oklahoma before he and Ben had killed them.
It was the dead Indian woman and her dead husband, come looking for him, just like in his dream, except that they weren’t all rotted or anything.
They looked pretty much like normal people, and they were sitting there on their horses, looking at the ground, trying to pick up his trail.
He jerked his head down again. They hadn’t seen him this time, either, and that was good. It meant that he had a chance. He could kill them before they spotted him. He sure as to God hoped they’d stay dead this time.
He turned over on his back, eased his pistol out of its holster and pulled the hammer back slowly so as not to make any sound. He discovered that it was just as well that he was taking it slow. Pulling back the hammer took just about all the strength he had.
When the pistol was cocked, he lay there waiting until he thought he could lift it and fire. The man and woman were talking again, but he still couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Probably talkin’ Injun talk, he thought. Or dead people talk.
He turned over and looked across the top of the ridge as the two of them began riding away.
Pulling the trigger of the pistol was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. It came back slowly, slowly.
Finally, after what seemed to Jink like an hour, the pistol roared, and its powerful kick thrust it backward and out of Jink’s nerveless hand.
O’Grady had been so close to what he was looking for out of life that he could taste it, but now he could feel it all slipping away from him.
It had seemed easy when he’d talked about it to Gerald Crossland down in Mexico. A small-town bank, not much law to speak of, and a lot of money in the bank, all for the tak
ing. What could be easier? He’d just do that one little thing and then be well-enough off never to have to resort to any kind of crime again.
But the money hadn’t been there. That was galling enough, but then Ben and Jink had to get trigger-happy.
Well, things could still have worked out. There was as much money in the bag as he would have gotten as his share if things had gone well. He could do fine as long as he could keep it away from Ben and Jink, who, he was now convinced, were crazy as bedbugs.
And as long as he could keep clear of the law long enough to get to Mexico.
He didn’t think the law would be a problem. He didn’t really think he’d have any trouble eluding Ben and Jink, either, if he could just put enough distance between himself and them. They weren’t likely to be smart enough ever to find him after a little time had passed, and he’d been on the very verge of getting away from them. He was sure of it, and if it hadn’t been for that damn rattler, he’d be so far ahead of them that they’d never have seen him again.
Now, though, they were going to have a chance to catch up with him if he didn’t find that horse soon.
Not only that, he didn’t have the money. The damn horse did, and because of the damage to his ankle, he could hardly walk. He was sure now that he was never going to escape the kind of life he had been living. He was going to spend the rest of his life hiding from the law and trying to scrape together enough money to keep himself fed.
Maybe he shouldn’t have shot the damn snake; maybe he should just have walked over and let it bite him. At least he’d have been out of his misery.
He didn’t see how things could get much worse.
The sun was just about to sink below the horizon now, and there was a breeze that rustled in the leaves of the oaks. O’Grady hoped he could find the horse before dark.
He heard a rock click against something off to his right and turned in that direction. “Is that you, boy?” he said. “Come here now.”
Ben, who had thrown the rock, stepped out of the shadows to the other side of O’Grady, his pistol pointed straight at the Irishman. “Ain’t no boys over there,” he said.
O’Grady whirled around, clawing at his own pistol as he turned. His ankle gave way under him with the sudden movement, and he fell sprawling to the side.
His pistol fell just out of his reach, and as he twisted himself to make a grab for it, Ben fired a shot into the dirt near his hand.
“Don’t try that again,” Ben said. “I’d hate to have to kill you before we had us a little talk.”
O’Grady sighed. It never did to think things couldn’t get any worse; as long as you were alive to think they couldn’t, they damn sure could.
“All right if I sit up?” he said.
“Just don’t do it too fast,” Ben said. He walked over and picked up the fallen pistol and stuck it in his belt, never taking his eyes off O’Grady.
“Where’s your horse?” he said when O’Grady was sitting up.
“That’s just what I’m wanting to know, myself. You haven’t seen him, by any chance?”
“Nope. You don’t look any too light on your feet, either. What happened to you?”
“Rattler. Spooked the horse.” O’Grady looked around. “And where might your partner be?”
“Jink? He took to feelin’ poorly. Had to leave him back up the trail a ways.”
O’Grady nodded. “I thought the blood poisoning might get to him. Still, a man ought not to go off and leave his partner.”
“His idea, not mine,” Ben said. “He was mighty sick.”
It might even be the truth, O’Grady thought. “Sorry to hear it,” he said.
“Yeah, I bet you are,” Ben said. “Now why don’t you tell me where my money is.”
“Your money?” O’Grady shifted his position slightly. It was getting darker, the shadows getting deeper, but the full moon was already rising in the sky. Before long it would be giving plenty of light. O’Grady wasn’t going to be able to get the jump on Ben unless something happened to distract him.
“Damn right, my money,” Ben said. “Jink won’t be needin’ a share.” Ben looked straight at O’Grady. “Nobody else will, either.”
“What about that marshal?” O’Grady said. “He might think it ought to go back to the bank.”
Ben just laughed, and O’Grady was sure the marshal was dead, just like he’d figured.
“I’m not worried about any marshal,” Ben said. “Now, why don’t you just tell me about the money so I can be gettin’ on the trail. I’d like to get a little ways on down the road before mornin’.”
O’Grady smiled. “I don’t know where the money is.”
“That’s a damn lie,” Ben said. “I don’t want to have to kill you, O’Grady, but I’d just as soon do it right now if you don’t tell me where the money is. I can find it without your help if I have to.”
O’Grady knew that Ben was going to kill him anyway as soon as he had his hands on the money, but that didn’t change the fact that O’Grady was telling the truth.
“I told you that I don’t know where it is,” he said. “That’s the truth. It’s still in that bag, tied to my saddle horn. And the saddle’s on my horse.”
“Well, ain’t that a shame,” Ben said. “I guess I’ll just have to find that horse and take that bag for myself.”
“That won’t be easy,” O’Grady said. “That horse and I have been through a lot together, and he won’t be coming to anybody but me.”
O’Grady didn’t know whether that was true or not. But it might be. So far, he hadn’t even been able to make the horse come to him.
“We got to find that horse before he goes roamin’ too far off,” Ben said. “Get your ass up.” He lifted the barrel of the pistol to indicate that O’Grady should stand.
“I have a bad ankle,” O’Grady said. “I’m not sure I can do any walking.”
“You can walk, by God,” Ben said. “You’ll walk or you’ll crawl, but either way we’re gonna find that damn horse. Now get up.”
O’Grady got up. His ankle didn’t really hurt too much if he didn’t put his full weight on it, but Ben didn’t need to know that.
“I might be able to make it if you’d let me lean on you,” he said.
“I ain’t that dumb,” Ben said. “You keep away from me and start lookin’ for that horse. I’ll be right with you.”
O’Grady looked at the pistol that Ben had stuck in his belt, but Ben said, “You can forget that idea, old son. You won’t be gettin’ your hands on your pistol again.”
O’Grady grinned. “You should be a more trusting of your fellow man, Ben.”
Ben snorted. “Hell with that. You just find that horse.”
O’Grady started to walk with an exaggerated limp. “I’ll try,” he said.
“You better try damn hard,” Ben said.
Jink’s shot didn’t hit anything, unless it was a tree off in the distance. The bullet whistled between Ellie and Jonathan and buzzed away.
Jonathan didn’t waste any words. “Somebody’s shootin’. Head for those trees.” He took off at a lope, with Ellie close behind.
When they reached the shelter of the trees, Jonathan reined in, and Ellie did the same. The horses snorted and stamped.
Jonathan was turned in the saddle, trying to see where the shot had come from.
“Who could be shooting at us?” Ellie said.
“Couldn’t be anybody else but those fellas we’re after,” Jonathan said. He thought the shot had come from the little ridge that he could see not too far away, but there was no sign of anyone up there now.
“Hidin’ down on the other side,” Jonathan said, half to himself.
“Who?” Ellie said. “Where?”
“Somebody’s back of that ridge,” Jonathan said, pointing and wondering why there had been no more shots. “Maybe they were just tryin’ to scare us.” He didn’t really believe that, not for a minute.
“What should we do?” Ellie said.
Jonathan turned away from the ridge and looked at her. “Now that’s a pretty good question. What do you think?”
“Me?” Ellie didn’t understand.
“This here was mostly your idea,” Jonathan said. “I was just comin’ along for the ride.”
“They killed your son,” Ellie said.
“They did. And I’m sorry for it. But he was mixed up in somethin’ that he should never’ve been a part of, and it got him killed. He was old enough to know better.”
Ellie thought that was a hard attitude, and she said so.
“Maybe. I’m not sayin’ that Gerald deserved what he got. I’m just sayin’ he’d still be alive if he hadn’t fooled around with robbers and killers. I came along with you because I needed to come, but what we do now is up to you.”
“All right, then,” Ellie said. She didn’t want to talk about Gerald any more. “What choices do we have?”
“Well, we could just try ridin’ away. They might even let us. ’Course they might come after us, too. Or we can try goin’ to ground somewhere. These trees won’t hold ’em off for very long if they’re serious about hurtin’ us.”
Ellie looked around her at the skinny oak trees, most of them hardly any taller than her head as she sat on the horse. They didn’t offer much shelter at all.
“Or we could go after ’em,” Jonathan said. “That’s what you came for, ain’t it?”
Ellie remembered what she had been thinking only a short while before. “I guess it is,” she said.
“Well, then,” Jonathan said.
“All right,” Ellie said. “We’ll go after them. Will you tell me how?”
Jonathan smiled. “I guess I could do that,” he said.
SIXTEEN
The moon was up over the tops of the trees, round and yellow, so bright that the evening stars were not yet visible, though it was dark in the trees and hollows where O’Grady and Ben were looking for the strayed horse, and night birds called in the distance.
“You ought not to ever have shot at that snake,” Ben said. “What with that horse bein’ spooked already, firin’ a gun was enough to scare him to Mexico. Besides that, I’d never’ve found you if I hadn’t heard the shot.”