He looked at her, disturbed by her coolness and the uncomfortable feeling that he might have been, for days, right under her rifle.
“Won’t do you no good,” he said. “You missed your chance.”
“I was making some coffee,” Gretchen replied. “Would you like some?”
Every delay was a victory, every moment she could keep him talking increased her chances of something happening, of some opportunity, some chance to do something, anything. But whatever she did must be right the first time: there would be no second.
“Well…I could do with some coffee,” he agreed.
Why not? Warm him up. It was mighty cold out there. He glanced around with new respect for Radigan. Had it mighty nice up here. Plenty of grub, warm shelter, feed for the horses and firewood; why, he could last out the winter here.
She walked right by him. She would never have believed, a moment before, that she could walk so close to him, but although her flesh crawled with fear, she did it.
“Pretty fancy,” Bitner said, indicating the dress. “You wear that in some dance hall?”
“It is a party dress, Mr. Bitner,” she said. “I wore it at parties in Mexico. I attended a convent there.”
He accepted the coffee. “You,” he was incredulous, “in a convent?”
“Why not?” she looked around at him. “I am seventeen, Mr. Bitner, and although you seem to doubt it, I am a lady.”
He sneered, yet he felt a rising doubt. “Likely story! Livin’ with two men!”
“John Child is my foster father. He and his wife were the only parents I ever had.” She had located the bowie knife they used to slice meat. “He is a very good man, and Mr. Radigan has been nothing but a gentleman.”
Bitner stared at her sourly. This was not going as he had planned, but somehow the right moment had not come. Meanwhile a cup of coffee would taste mighty good. He peered at her, trying to make out whether she was like she said, or like he had suspected. His opinion of her was convinced, however, and he decided she must be lying.
She stirred the coals under the coffee and got out two cups. The knife was just visible under the edge of an old coat she had used when she first got up in the morning, and she purposely avoided the area, not wishing to attract attention to it that might lead him to discover the knife. Bitner had seated himself close to her guns, which were useless under the circumstances.
When she handed him the cup he touched her hand with his and grinned at her meaningly. Gretchen seemed not to notice but inwardly she cringed.
“Ain’t nobody comin’ back here,” Bitner said suddenly. “If you’re expectin’ it, you’re wrong. We ain’t seen nothing of Radigan since he rode north.”
They knew that, then?
“He won’t live long up there. Not with Swiss Jack Burns around. And if he does the boss will take care of him on the way back.”
“He’s been away?”
“He’s away all right.” Bitner gulped the hot coffee and muttered a little, looking around the cave at the few sparse articles of clothing and the beds. “That breed is good as dead, too.” He puckered his brow. “We don’t know what happened to him, but he’s afoot out there in the cold, and he’s hurt. We found blood on the snow and his horse came in to the ranch, so we backtrailed the horse. No sign of Child, but blood on the snow.”
Sardonic humor glinted in his hard eyes. “No use gettin’ your hopes up. Nobody ain’t going to come to help you out.” He crossed one leg over the other. “Best thing you can do is make up to me. A woman can’t live in this country without a man.”
She dropped her hand to the haft of the bowie knife and swung it in a wide arc. It was her chance and he was warm, relaxed, momentarily off guard. She swung the wide blade and turned with it, swinging it almost at arm’s length, and she was just short. The tip of the blade slashed across his biceps and he dropped the cup and toppled over backwards as the blade slit his shirt and left a long, red scratch across his abdomen. Instantly, Gretchen knew she had failed, and that now there would be no respite, no further chance at delay, and she had no doubt that after he had stayed with her as much as he wanted that he would kill her: he must kill her.
Gretchen did not think, she ran. But as she ran she caught up her rifle and ran into the outer cave, then scrambled on up the slide to the top of the mesa. The wind was piercing, but she ran. She ran wildly, desperately, conscious of the clambering, stumbling footsteps of the man behind her.
Yet almost at once she was out of sight among the scattered piñons.
She had not lived among Indians for nothing, and quickly she fell to the ground among some scattered rocks and low brush, and she lay still, the rifle forgotten in one hand, the knife in the other.
She had failed, and now he would hunt her down. She had drawn blood, and the cut across his biceps might be deep, and if it was he would not devote much time to a search until he had done something to treat the wound. And after that he would come for her.
She checked the rifle. There was a shell in the chamber and three more in the magazine: four shots.
It was not enough.
She was not that good a shot, and unless she let him come close she would probably miss, and she could not afford to miss often.
Yet, a moment later when she saw him moving some distance off, she tried her first shot. It was a warning, to remind him she had the rifle, and he dropped from sight among some rocks, and being Indian in that part of her thinking at least, she moved at once. She retreated to a safer shelter, farther back on the mesa, and settled down there to wait for whatever move Bitner might make, and for a time he made none at all.
The day was drawing on and the air was cold. With night it would be piercing cold and windy atop the mesa and she dared not have a fire, nor was there any shelter she could find, nor a blanket anywhere.
She knew then it was well she had been an Indian, if only for a few years, for an Indian knows how to endure without crying to the sky, he knows how to withstand cold, hunger and the wind, and she would withstand them.
She knew then the dress she had on was the last thing she should be wearing; it was white, and too easy to see on the mesa’s top, or anywhere. But it was a woman’s dress, a dress for a woman to wear to meet her man, the last feminine thing she owned, and she was going to live with it or die with it, but dressed as a woman should be.
Gretchen remembered the cabin under the mesa and the warm fire, she remembered listening for Tom Radigan’s step, and knew she was in love with him, knew it deep in every throbbing corpuscle, knew it in her muscles and bones and in the crying need of her body, her loins yearning for the man he was. And she knew then she was not going to die alone on the mesa top, she was not going to be killed and raped by such as Bitner. She belonged in her heart to Radigan, and she would belong to him in the flesh or to no man. She was not going to save that last bullet for herself, she was going to save it for him, for Bitner, and she was going to give it to him, right in the belly at pointblank range.
She had never felt like this before, but right now she was backed up against death with all the nonsense and the fancy words trimmed away. The hide of truth was peeled back to expose the bare, quivering raw flesh of itself, and there was no nonsense about it. She had been taught the way a lady should live, and how a lady should act, and it was all good and right and true and the way a pretty girl should be taught, but out here on the mesa top with a man hunting her to put her back on the grass it was no longer the same. Save the manners for the parlor and the ball room, and save the womanly tricks for courting, but this was something else and there was no fooling about it. She was going to kill a man and when he died she was not going to be sorry.
There are times in life when the fancy words and pretty actions don’t count for much, when it’s blood and dust and death and a cold wind blowing and a gun in the hand and you know suddenly you’re just an animal with guts and blood that wants to live, love and mate, and die in your own good time.
Gretchen Ch
ild had the feel of the Indian in her, and she settled down behind the rocks and brush partly sheltered from the raw cold wind off the snow peaks, and she waited there, as ready to kill as any trapped lioness, and almost eager for it.
She was only a few months from a convent and a graceful house where ladies were gentle, fragile and delicate, but there was none of that here. She only knew in her guts that she wanted to live and that out there over those snow-dressed mountains her man was coming nearer, and she wanted to be waiting for him as a woman should.
Suddenly something fierce and wild came up in her and she jacked a shell into the chamber and made the sound ring, and then she called out, hoarse and wild, “Come on, Bitner! You want a woman, so come and get me, and if I don’t kill you, Radigan will!”
Bitner, two hundred yards off, caught her voice coming downwind, and settled down behind his rocks, not liking the sound of it. He heard the sound of the Winchester, too, and said to himself, “Why, she’s crazy! She’s gone loco!”
But the need for her was in him and he settled down to see what a cold night on the mesa could do.
She was dressed flimsy, with shoulders bare to the wind, and not much body to the cloth in her dress. Right now she was full of beans, but a cold night might do a lot to her, and he could wait. He had waited this long.
*
TOM RADIGAN HAD come out of the trees to the north of the mesa, riding with the wind at his back and his eyes busy, sure he had heard a shot, although the wind was away from him.
To the east a few miles Charlie Cade, Loren Pike and Adam Stark were flanking it down through the trees in a thin skirmish line, hunting for Foley riders and studying out the country. Come hell or snow blowing there was going to be a fight before the sun lifted to noon tomorrow, and Radigan had an idea there’d be blood on the mountains before Pike, Cade and Stark turned tail.
He circled warily to the west, not liking the faint sound that had seemed to be a shot. The day was far along, but light enough for clear seeing, and once he thought he’d glimpsed something white on the rim. Two hours later he had circled and was coming up on the south side, and there he found tracks in the snow, searching tracks of a horseman cutting for sign.
There was a cold feeling in him then, and he turned the black horse he was now riding and started up the slope toward the mesa, and he rode right out in the open. He rode up to the steep rock slide and drew up, not liking the thought of bracing that slide with God knows what at the top.
Once he thought he heard a voice cry out in the late afternoon, but the sound whipped away and he knew he must be mistaken. Everything seemed all right. He could see the edge of the boulder placed for rolling down, sitting right where he’d left it. He stepped back and sat down to pull off his boots, and then slipped his feet into the Blackfoot moccasins he always carried for woods work, and then he took his rifle and started up the slide.
He had taken only one step when he heard the shot. It came clear on the wind, but caught by echoes and slapped around among the rocks. A shot right enough, and from somewhere above, but somewhere. There was no pinning down the sound.
He put out a moccasined foot and tested the rock, then swung his weight up. He wanted no rattling stones to warn of his coming, no sound, anywhere.
On top of the mesa Bitner chewed at the ends of his mustache and grinned into the wind. The little fool had grabbed a rifle and it was his she had taken, not her own, and he knew how many cartridges were left. It was a thing a man always knew, if he wanted to stay alive.
That last shot was number three. One bullet left. She had tried to get him, and once she had been close. He had taken a chance this last time, allowing her to see him plain enough to make her eager. He knew she was not too good with a rifle, although she could shoot. And she shot a split second too late and missed by a narrow margin, but enough. He milked the rifle down to one shot, and he had an idea he was going to have to gamble on that one if he wanted the woman, and he did, more than ever now.
It would be a fight, but he liked his women full of fight. He bit off another chew and thought about it, taking his time. And she was a lot to think about. The wind blew cold, moaning around the evergreens and stirring icy snow around the rock where he sat.
Bitner rolled the tobacco in his jaws and decided she was a pretty canny woman. Small chance of her trying her last shot at a distance, so he could get close without too much risk. And when he got close he’d have to get hold of that rifle or chance a shot of his own to get the rifle away from her.
He moved out from the rocks and ran twenty feet to a tree. Nothing happened. He dashed thirty feet farther to a slab of rock, and waited an instant. Any time now, she was only over there a little way.
He Indianed it around the rock, and caught a glimpse of white at the edge of a rock. If she was there, he had her. He stepped out quickly, watching that edge of cloth, and just as he stepped into the open a rifle blasted.
He felt the hot burn of the bullet and sprang back, to see the girl standing there, fifty feet off in another direction.
Why, the dirty little—! Fooled him, fooled him like he was a youngster with an edge torn from her skirt.
And then he lowered his rifle.
She’d fooled him, all right, but she had missed, missed a clean shot. Sure, he’d burned his neck with the bullet and it would be raw and sore, but he’d have a woman to.…
“Bitner!”
It was a man’s voice, conversational in tone, and it was behind him. He sprang like a cat, turning as he leaped, and when he hit the ground, his rifle—hers actually—was hosing flame. He staggered and something hit his wind a wicked blow, and he settled on his feet, flat on the rocks, and saw Radigan standing there, standing straight, his right side toward him like a blasted soldier at attention on the parade ground; like a man in a duel.
Bitner got his Winchester up and squeezed shut on the trigger and felt the rifle jump in his hand, but the recoil or something staggered him and, puzzled, he saw his bullet kick dust from the rocks between them. Well, by God, he’d…he was lying on his face on the cold rock, and the snow was blowing away from his face because he was breathing hard. He heard the dying echo of his shot. It sounded like two shots, and he got his knees under him and started to get up.
It was the blood on the mesa top that bothered him. Somebody was shot almighty bad, somebody was really bleeding like a stuck hog, somebody—the blood was there, around his knees and on the rock where he had been lying. His eyes had refused to focus but now they did and he saw it was his blood and he had been gutshot.
He had gutshot a man once and it had taken the fellow a long time to die.
Bitner used the rifle for a crutch and got to his feet. He could see the girl, looking like an angel in her white gown, walking from behind the rocks toward Radigan. It was that dress that had thrown him, right there at the beginning; in a place like that he had not expected to see anybody in a white dress, and before he got himself adjusted to it she had taken a cut at him and gotten away.
It was a hell of a way to die, over a woman he had only seen a time or two and who didn’t want any part of him, anyway.
He was swaying on his feet, and wanting a shot at Radigan, but more than anything he wanted a bullet through the skull. He had always had guts enough, but did he have guts enough to die from a belly shot without crying like a baby? That man he had shot, he’d cried and screamed.
Something raw and horrible tore from his own throat, and he lifted the rifle and felt the slam of the bullet and knew he had won. He had won because he was dying, going, dead.
The last thing he remembered was lying with his cheek against the rock and remembering how he had helped his ma shave his pa after he had been killed. “A man shouldn’t be buried like that,” his ma had said. “He should face up to the Gates like a man, with his beard trimmed.”
He had no son, so who was going to shave him? Who would fix his body for burial?
A man should have a son.
He saw
his bloody hand lying inches before his eyes, the cold wind drying the blood on it, and he tried to open his mouth to tell Radigan that a man should have a son, and beyond that there was nothing further.
Gretchen had come to Radigan quickly. “You all right?” he asked. He asked it without looking at her, for he was watching Bitner. She knew the man was dying and Radigan knew it but he did not move his eyes from Bitner for even an instant.
“I’m all right,” she said, “I was hoping you’d come.”
“Sorry I was late.”
“You weren’t late. You were right on time.”
*
ROSS WALL CAME up to the house from the barn in the first bleak morning light. He stamped the snow from his boots and came in at Angelina’s call. He held his hat in his hand, his blocky head looking like the head of a big grizzly in the shadow cast by the lamp.
“Ma’am, I want we should saddle up and ride out of here, right away this morning.”
Angelina Foley felt something seem to turn over inside her. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing yet. Nothing I know of, only Bitner didn’t come back, and if Bitner doesn’t come back, he’s dead. It’s another man gone, and one of the best.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” he said bluntly, “it ain’t all. Not by a damn’ sight.”
If his other words had not impressed her, these did. It was the first time Ross Wall had ever sworn in her presence.
“It ain’t all. There’s strangers around, three or four of them. Mighty salty looking men, Gorman says. He came on three of them up in the trees last night; they just sat their saddles with Winchesters in their hands and looked at him. They didn’t say I, yes or no, they just looked, and he looked back. Then Gorman rode back here and asked for his time.”
“Is there more?”
“Yes. I never did cotton to what Harvey wanted to do. I never liked him nor trusted him, nor saw what you and your Pa saw in him. He’s brought you to trouble, and I’d like to see you out of it.
“Those men out there,” he pointed. “I think they’re waiting for him. I think he’ll come back through the snow and he’ll ride right up to here and they’ll shoot him right out of his saddle.
Radigan Page 15