He remembered when he was a youngster, fresh to the plains, remembered the call of distance, the challenge of strange valleys, of canyons up which no man had gone, of far heights and the lonely places of the desert.
He had wanted it all then, he had hoped never to stop. He had loved the smell of lonely campfires, the crisp feeling of awakening on a frosty morning, even the smell of the buffalo-chip fires. He remembered seeing thousands upon thousands of buffaloes, each with frost on its shaggy shoulders and head. He remembered the creaking of the saddle and the challenge of a distant rider.…
That was for a man when he was feeling the first sap of youth in him. It was good to keep some of it always, as he would, but there was a time when any man worth his salt wanted a wife and a home and a son.
Gloomily he got to his feet and walked across the room. A man had to put roots down, to build something, not to be just a restless drifter with a saddle and a blanket roll.
A man needed something to call his own, something to work at and constantly improve. What was a life worth if it was wasted in idle drifting? Sure, a man had to see the world. He had to look at the far horizons, he had to see the lights of strange towns; he had to measure his strength with the strength of other men.
Beyond a certain age a drifting man was like a lost dog, and had much the same look about him.
Maybe he was a fool not to listen to Janice. After all, they might never see Barker again, and in the Blues or near Bear Lake a man might lose himself. There were a lot of Mormons down that way, and mostly they were a peace-loving lot. If he stopped wearing a gun, or wearing it in sight, then he might never have to use it.
“Better sit up to the table,” Dodie said. “I’ll start some more bacon.” She walked to the window. “That’s odd,” she said. “I don’t see anybody.”
“Probably in the barn.”
“All this time? Anyway, there’s hardly room in that little place for—” She broke off sharply. “King, something’s wrong out there!”
He put down his fork, his mouth full of eggs and bacon. Getting to his feet, he walked toward her, but stopped well back from the window, where he could see out without being seen. “Now what’s the trouble?”
“There was a rabbit,” Dodie was whispering. “He started past the cottonwood over by the corrals. Then suddenly he bolted right back this way!”
Mabry studied the situation. No rabbit would be frightened by anything out there unless it was a man.
He had been telling himself to put aside that gun too soon. Dodie was right. There was something wrong. Healy and Janice had been gone too long and there was nothing for them to do in the barn. Scarcely room to move around with those horses in there.
“You stay here. I’ll go out back.”
“They’d be watching the back, too. I know they would.” Dodie walked to the rifles against the wall. She picked one up and moved the shotgun nearer the door. “I can help, King. I can try.”
“Stay out of sight.” As he spoke, he was thinking it out. They could have been out there waiting. They must have been, or Janice and Tom would be back by now. They were holding the two of them and waiting for him to come out.
Suddenly he remembered the root cellar under the house. There was an outside entrance, too. And on the side of the house nearest the barn.
He opened the cellar door, lifting it up from the floor. “You sit tight. Hold the house and don’t let anybody in.”
Softly, on light-stepping feet, he went down the steps. At the bottom he paused to study the situation.
The cellar was under the whole house. There were several bins of vegetables and a crib of corn. There were also several hams and slabs of bacon. A dozen feet from the foot of the steps was the cellar door to the outside, and luckily, it was standing open. Windy Stuart had been careless, but his carelessness might save all their lives. Opening that door would have made noise.
Between the barn and the cellar door was the woodpile. The end of the barn was toward him. He studied it with care, then returned to the steps and went up into the house until his head cleared the floor.
“Dodie, you count to a slow fifty. When you get to fifty, open the door and then pull it shut. Don’t by any chance get in front of that door. Just open and close it, but make some noise.”
“All right.”
He went back down the steps and crossed to the outside door. He mounted those steps until his eyes were at ground level. Some scattered wood offered slight protection. He went up another step. There was nothing in sight.
The end of the barn looked solid. Having seen the care with which Windy Stuart had built, he doubted if there was so much as a chink through which wind might blow or an eye might look.
Gun in hand, he waited. He had a moment then of standing with his mouth dry, a moment when he knew that in the next instant he might clear those steps and feel the smash of a bullet, feel it tearing through his vitals.
It was only the fool or the witless that felt no fear. What a man must do was go on, anyway. Suppose he went back into the house and waited for them to move? He knew what they would do. They would wait just so long, then tell him to come out or they would kill Healy and Janice.
Now the move was his…and you did not win by sitting on your hands. Long since he had learned the only way to win any kind of fight was by attack, attack always with whatever you had.
The door slammed.
He sprang into the open and crossed to the shelter of the barn’s end in swift strides. He flattened himself there, listening.
Silence, and no sound within. Then a horse stamped.
Before him, in the open place in front of the house, he could see nothing. He could see some of the trees, but only a corner of the corrals.
There was probably a man inside with the prisoners, and another at the corrals. Yet if he was guessing right, and there were four, where were the other two?
Barker, Art Boyle, Joe Noss, and the fourth man who might be Benton. The man who had ridden through the Hole with Joe Noss.
Two in the barn, maybe. That was more likely. One with the prisoners, and one with a poised gun, to…
Where could the other be?
If he had come this far without attracting a shot, the fourth man must be where Mabry could not see him, or he Mabry. Considering that, he decided the fourth man must be in front of the house, between the cottonwoods and the trail.
From that point he could cover the front door, but he must also have seen Dodie’s hand when she opened and closed the door. So he might have guessed that their plan was not working.
A boot scraped. Then Healy called out, “King? Can you come out here a minute?”
“Louder!” King heard Barker’s voice. “If you make one try at warning him, I’ll kill her!”
“King!” Healy yelled. “Can you come out?”
There was a period of waiting, and Mabry heard a muffled curse. “No use.” It was Art Boyle’s voice. “They’re wise. That girl’s got a rifle.”
It was time to move. Time to move now, before they did. They had numbers, so it was up to him to catch them off stride. There was such a thing as reaction time. That instant of hesitation between realization and accomplishment. It was upon this that he must gamble.
There was little cover behind the trees, and it was cover only from the front, not from the flanks. Boyle had yelled from in front of the house when he had seen the rifle in Dodie’s hands. Mabry darted out quickly, not quite past the front of the barn, but enough for Boyle to see him.
Boyle saw him and started to swing the rifle. He was too slow. Mabry’s gun was breast-high and he glanced along the barrel as he fired.
There was an instant when time seemed to stand still. Mabry saw the man’s white, strained face. He saw the rifle swinging, and he stood perfectly still and cold, with no heat in him, and pointed the gun as he would a finger. The pistol leaped in his hand.
The teamster’s rifle was coming up when Mabry’s bullet smashed him in the teeth. His he
ad jerked back as if slammed by a mighty fist, and he fell. Then he rolled over, clawing toward the fallen gun, but blood gushed from his mouth and he stiffened out.
Mabry flattened himself back against the wall of the log barn, gun up, ready for a chopping shot. Boyle rolled over, choking on his own blood, and lay still.
From within the barn there was absolute silence.
One gone…three to go. One at the corral’s end and at least one in the barn, probably two. He thought of that and realized his advantage, if such it could be called. Four people in close quarters, two of them ready to shoot, but neither of them wanting to kill Janice, neither wanting to kill his partner. They would have one target, he would have two; they would be separated and his two friends would undoubtedly be shoved back against the wall or in a corner.
He remembered seeing Dodie’s shadow at she moved within the house. He remembered thinking that the sun was up, shining through the gray clouds like a poached egg in a pan of gray grease. He remembered hearing a wind rustle the cottonwood leaves. His gun was up and he was going in. He was going into two blasting guns, but he had the advantage of being the only one who knew just when he was going in.
He tried to recall the inside of the barn he had seen but once. He tried to figure just where they would be. One of them was close against the wall near the opening. That would be Barker.
There had to be one there. It was the logical place, as near the door as possible. And it was not a narrow door, but half the width of the barn front.
When he went in he could not get a shot at that man. That fellow would be too far over on his right, unless he managed to swing close enough and fire from against his body. But if he figured right, the prisoners would be in the corner behind Barker, and if he shot Barker the bullet might go all the way through and kill one of them.
He would have to take the other man first. He would have to nail him quick and fast, then drop and fire at Barker.
“You can’t make it, King!” Barker shouted suddenly. “We’ve got you! Come out and drop your gun or we start killing!”
They didn’t know where he was, then. Not from the sound of that order. They didn’t know he was so close. Or he did not think they did.
Throwing down his gun would be no use at all. They were out to clean the slate by killing them all. But there was that item of reaction time. And it was always better to attack than to wait.
His mouth was dry and his heart pounding. He wiped his palm dry on his shirt front, then gripped his gun. And then with a lunge he went around the corner and into the barn.
Outside a rifle smashed sound into the morning an instant before a bullet whipped past him.
He sprang through the door and into the barn. He saw Joe Noss first and fired as his feet flattened out. Noss had his gun up, but Mabry had calculated every move of his turn, and as his left foot landed solidly, he fired from directly in front of his body.
Mabry’s bullet caught Noss alongside the second button up from his belt, and Mabry had a confused realization that Healy had lunged forward, knocking Barker off balance. Noss’s shot went into the roof as he fell backward into a sitting position.
Barker had grabbed Janice for a shield and she was struggling to free herself. Suddenly Barker thrust her hard against Mabry and sprang through the door as Healy missed a wild grab at him.
Healy swung and grasped the gun from Noss’s hand as Barker tore free, but before Healy could get through the door, Mabry grabbed him.
“Hold it! There’s a man outside who’ll cut you down!”
King Mabry motioned Healy back. There were two desperate men out there who knew that not only fifteen thousand dollars, but their own lives turned on the issue of the next few minutes.
He grabbed the tie rope of the black and swung the big horse. The smell of blood had excited the animal, and he was trembling. Throwing a leg over his back, Indian style, Mabry gave a piercing yell and Healy slapped the horse across the haunches with his hat.
With a lunge, the black horse broke from the barn. A shot rang out, and then Mabry fired, shooting under the horse’s neck. Then he pulled himself to a sitting position on the horse as he saw Barker break for cover.
Slamming his heels into the black and yelling like a Comanche, Mabry started after him. Something jerked hard at his shirt collar and a gunshot slammed from somewhere near. He saw from the tail of his eye a man spring from cover near the corral and run for his horse. Bullets from Healy’s gun were dusting the ground around him.
Barker turned as he ran and tried to brake himself to a stop. He tried to bring his gun up fast, but it went off into the ground as the black hit him with a shoulder that knocked him reeling.
Mabry swung the horse so short the animal reared as he turned and Barker fired from his knee. The bullet laid a hot lash along Mabry’s cheek, and then King Mabry fired three times as fast as he could slip the hammer off his thumb.
Barker backed up, swearing. He swung his gun around as Mabry dropped from the horse to the ground. There was a spreading stain on Barker’s shirt.
Mabry held his fire, waiting in cold silence as the wounded man struggled to lift his gun. Outside the barn Healy and Janice stood, frozen in silence. On the steps of the house Dodie held her Winchester, halfway to her shoulder.
Barker’s gun came up, then the muzzle tilted down and Barker’s eyes glazed over. He took two bent-kneed strides on legs no longer able to hold his weight. Then he crumpled to the hard-packed earth and the gun slid from his hand.
King Mabry waited, his eyes cold, taking no chances. Barker’s body heaved at the waist, then slowly relaxed.
Mabry began to eject shells from his gun and to reload. Only a solitary bullet had remained in his gun. As he loaded up there was absolute silence. He was conscious then of the cottonwood leaves whispering in the cool morning air. He was conscious that his cheek stung and that otherwise he was unwounded.
Once more he had come through. How many breaks could a man get?
He walked to where his other gun had fallen from his waistband when he hit the ground. He picked it up, remembering to be glad that he always carried six shells in his guns…no problem in the Smith and Wesson. There was a faint trickle of blood down his cheek.
The wind rattled the cottonwood leaves and his hair blew in the wind.
Janice was staring at him, her eyes wide, her face white. He started toward her, but when he was within three strides of her she turned suddenly and walked away toward the house.
“She’s upset,” Healy said. “It’s been a tryin’ thing.”
“She’ll be all right, King.” Maggie had come out to them, walking carefully. “She owes you plenty. We all do.”
King Mabry’s eyes were gray and cold. “Nobody owes me anything, Maggie. You’ll be all right now. You go on to Fort Custer.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Maybe later.”
Dodie grounded the butt of her Winchester. “Give her time, King. She’s Eastern.”
Bleakly he looked at her, then turned away. He walked to the black horse and caught up the halter rope.
Chapter 19
LIGHTS FROM WINDOWS cut into the darkness of Wallace Street, where dwindling crowds drifted homeward.
Here and there the boardwalks echoed to the boots of walking men, or they splashed through the mud in the streets toward the few spots that remained open. Down by the eating house several horses stood three-legged at the hitch rails and somewhere a pump rattled and water gushed into a tin pail.
Tom Healy lighted his pipe and looked down the street. Janice should be dressed by now. They would get something to eat and return to the Five Story Hotel, which was their home in Virginia City.
This had been their last day in town, the last of a successful week.
He drew on his pipe, walked a few steps, and came back to lean against an awning post. A drunken miner stared at him, muttered something under his breath, and went on by, steering an erratic course down the muddy street. Heal
y glanced up the street, hearing the sound of a horse’s hoofs, some late rider coming in off the trail.
He looked, then slowly straightened away from the post, his breath going out of him. The big man on the black horse wore a black hat, pulled low, and a short sheepskin coat, and there was no mistaking him. It was King Mabry.
Healy took the pipe from his mouth, feeling sick and empty. He stared at the pipe.
So Mabry was back. This he had feared.
King Mabry had mounted and ridden away from Windy Stuart’s ranch without a backward glance. And later that day they had started on for Fort Custer.
At Fort Custer they had found Maguire. He was putting on a show there, and when he had accepted his money and heard their story, he quickly offered to stake them to a fresh start. They had played Fort Custer themselves, then Butte, and now here. It had been but three weeks since the gun battle at the horse ranch.
Yet that gun battle was already the stuff of legend. Windy Stuart’s name was no accident, and he had returned in time to help bury the bodies. He looked over the ground and heard the account of the fight, and rode with them to Fort Custer, refusing to allow this, the best of all stories, to be told only by others.
Nobody had seen Mabry. Where he had gone nobody knew. He had ridden from the horse ranch into oblivion, vanishing until now. Yet no night had come that Healy had not thought of what would happen when he did come.
Janice said nothing at all. She played her parts and sang as always. She was quiet, even less inclined to talk, always anxious to get back to the hotel after the theatre. Nothing in her manner or in what she said gave Healy any clue to what she was thinking or feeling.
King Mabry walked his horse to the tie rail before a saloon, dismounted, tied the horse, and went inside. If he had seen Healy, he gave no sign. He was wearing a gun.
Tom Healy knocked out his pipe against an awning post. The theatre was across the street from the saloon, and from the window Mabry would be able to watch the door of the theatre. Tom Healy put his pipe in his pocket. A man had to know. He had to know these things, once and for all.
Novel 1955 - Heller With A Gun (v5.0) Page 14