Heller with a Gun (1955)

by L'amour, Louis

  He spoke to the horse and it backed slowly. The horse stopped when the reins drew taut, but the branches were brittle with cold and would snap. He backed the horse again and this time the branches snapped off, and he drew the horse’s head around and got the reins in his hands.

  Then he started the horse, looping the reins around the saddle horn. Where he was to go he had no idea, or what he was to do. He was hurt, and badly. His leg felt stiff and there was pain in him. The cold was a help in some ways. It would keep down the pain and keep him from bleeding too much. Feebly he struck his hands together, then beat his arms in a teamster’s warming, swinging them again and again.

  Warmth returned a little, and the horse kept moving. The black was going somewhere and Mabry had no choice but to trust him. All around was a tight white world of snow, shutting out all sound and sight.

  The wagons would not move. In the place where they had stopped, much snow would have to be moved before they could start even after the storm passed. By driving into the hollow out of the wind, Barker had trapped himself.

  Yet Mabry’s own plight was desperate. The warmth stirred by movement was the last warmth in his body. His toes might be frozen, and his face might be. It felt like a mask.

  He must get to shelter. He must find warmth. He must …

  A long time later consciousness returned and he was still on the horse and the horse was still walking. Yet he had never actually lost consciousness, only sunk into a half-world where he was neither dead nor alive.

  And the snow fell… . It fell softly into a cushiony silence, into a world where all was cloaked in white death and where there was no moving thing but the walking horse and the sifting flakes.

  Chapter Nine.

  THEY WERE HUDDLED around the fire when they heard a low call. Tom Healy lowered his tin plate, suddenly watchful.

  All of the others reached for their guns. The call came again and a rider appeared, walking his horse through the falling snow. It was Griffin.

  He got down, then brushed snow from his coat. “All right,” he said, “it’s done. I killed him.”

  “You got Mabry?” Boyle was skeptical.

  Griffin looked up, unfastening his coat, not taking his eyes from Boyle. “I got him. Want to say I didn’t?” Boyle’s eyes were ugly. “I’d like to see the body,” he said.

  “I shot him twice. Once in the body, once in the head.”

  “You didn’t go up to him?” Barker demanded. “Think I’m crazy? No, I didn’t go near him, but I watched him all of ten minutes and he didn’t move. If he wasn’t dead, then he is now. No man can lie out there and live.”

  “Good!” Barker’s face was hard with satisfaction. “Now we’re clear. That’s what I wanted to hear!”

  He strode across the clearing, striking his fist into his palm. “Now, Healy-”

  He broke stride. The log where Healy had been sitting was deserted. There had been a moment when all attention was on the rider and his news. And Tom Healy was learning. He had turned and walked into the night.

  Boyle sprang for the brush and the others followed, except for Griffin, who went to the coffeepot. He glanced up from his filled cup and looked at the smoke coming from the wagon of the women, and his lips thinned down. Getting to his feet, he walked around to the door. When he saw the bullet hole, he nodded. “So that’s it.” He stood there, sipping his coffee for perhaps a minute, and then he said conversationally, “Mabry’s dead. You can give up on him.”

  There was still no sound from inside. “You got some money in there?” Griffin asked. “Say, about a thousand dollars?”

  “And if we do?” Janice asked.

  “Might help you.”

  “You do it,” Janice replied. “You’ll get paid.” “Cash?”

  “Cash. What shall we do?”

  “Sit tight.”

  He smiled to himself as he moved away.

  It was cold in the wagon. The fire was very small, barely kept alive by the last few bits of wood and some old clothing.

  Dodie raised herself to an elbow. “You haven’t that much.”

  “He doesn’t know that,” Janice said.

  “But when he finds out?”

  “By then we may be out of here. Maybe we’ll have only one man to deal with.”

  Maggie coughed, a hoarse, racking cough: Janice turned her head and looked toward the older woman’s bunk, but said nothing. In the dark they could only vaguely see outlines, but Janice knew the older woman was very ill. The continual cold as well as the closeness of the air was doing her no good. Unless she received some warm food and some attention’… Janice walked the floor of the wagon, three steps each way.

  Dodie was quiet. She had said almost nothing since producing the gun. Suddenly she spoke. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he’s dead.”

  “You heard what was said.”

  “I don’t care. I just_ don’t believe it.”

  Outside, Griffin stood by the fire. He was not a trusting man. He had received half the money for killing Mabry, but did not expect Barker to pay the rest willingly. Mabry was dead now, and Barker had two men to side with him.

  Griffin sloshed the coffee in his cup, listening for sounds from the search. Snow continued to fall. This was no time to start anywhere. This was a bad storm and it might get worse. Nor would it be a good time to discuss money with Barker … not yet.

  When he had Barker alone, that would be the time. And when the storm was over, so he could travel. If he could get the women away, so much the better. He was no man to mess with decent women; he knew the penalty for that in the West.

  Wycoff was first to return. He stamped his feet to shake off the snow, then went to the fire and added some sticks he had brought back.

  “They won’t find him,” Wycoff said, “and it makes no difference. By now he’s lost, and by morning he’ll be dead.”

  “Prob’ly.” Griffin studied Wycoff, thinking of an ally, but decided against opening the subject. Wycoff was a brute. The women would be vastly more important to him than any amount of money.

  Boyle? No. Boyle was not to be trusted. He would go it alone. He would watch for his best chance. Barker and Boyle came in together. “No sign of him. He got into your tracks and by that time you couldn’t tell them apart.”

  “He’ll die out there,” Boyle said. “He ain’t got a chance.”

  Three quarters of a mile west and stumbling through deepening snow, Healy was panting heavily. Once free of the camp, he had circled to find the horse tracks, thinking they would lead him to Mabry’s body.

  Griffin had not gone up to Mabry, hence he had not taken his guns. With those guns he might have a chance, Healy knew.

  He had started to run, and had run until pain knifed his side and his breath came in ragged gasps. Then he slowed and for the first time gave thought to being trailed. But it was dark, and by the time they could seriously attempt trailing him, his tracks would be covered with snow. So he slogged along, head down, following the rider’s trail.

  It was bitter cold. He got out his scarf and tied it across his face. The earlaps on his fur cap were down, and that helped. Yet the tracks were fast filling with snow, and unless he found Mabry soon the trail would be lost.

  He reached the end of the tracks suddenly. But where the body should have been lying there was nothing. Man, horse, and guns were gone!

  So Mabry was not dead … yet there was a dark blotch on the ground not yet covered with snow, a blotch that might be blood.

  Mabry was wounded. It was bitter cold and Healy knew no man could last in such cold when he had lost blood and was undoubtedly suffering from shock. A man needed a warm place, care, and treatment. He needed, above all, rest.

  Healy was very tired. Today he had worked harder with an ax than he had ever worked before. And he must have run almost a quarter of a mile in deep snow, yet he dared not stop. He turned and followed the tracks of the horse bearing Mabry.

  From the time it had taken Griffin to re
ach camp, and the time it had taken Healy to get to the place where Mabry had been ambushed, Mabry could not have been on the ground for long. Yet in this cold a man could die in a very short time.

  Healy did not try to hurry. That was useless now, and he had not the strength for it. Head down to the wind, he pushed on, content to keep putting one foot before the other.

  His forehead ached from the cold wind and his face was stiff. There was no place to stop. There was no definite place to go. He could only follow that rapidly vanishing line of tracks.

  Twice he fell. Each time he merely got to his feet and walked on.

  Pausing at the top of the hill, he listened. Common sense told him there would be no pursuit. Barker would not overestimate his chances of survival and finding him would be nearly impossible.

  Somewhere ahead of him a wounded man clung to a wandering horse, but he could not be far ahead, for in such snow a horse could not move much faster than a man. Yet after a time Healy began to realize that the horse was not wandering. He was being ridden or was going by himself toward a definite goal.

  The survival of Mabry and himself might well depend on how well he clung to that dwindling line of tracks. They were rapidly becoming only hollows in the snow.

  Only movement kept him warm. There was no sound but the hiss of falling snow. He was lost in a white and silent world.

  Starting on again, he brought up short against a cliff. Yet almost at once his heart gave a leap. Mabry’s horse had stopped here, too.

  And for some time. When the horse started on again, the hoof prints were sharp and definite. That horse was only minutes ahead!

  Excited, Healy plunged into the snow. He tried running, but fell headlong. Getting to his feet, he realized how close he was to collapse, and knew his only hope was to ‘Dove on carefully, to conserve his failing energy. He lost all track of time. He lost all thought of himself. Numbed by cold, he staggered on, keeping the trail in by a sort of blind instinct. He walked as a man in his sleep, forgetting the existence of everything but the vast white world in which he lived and moved. He seemed to be on an endless conveyor belt that carried him on and on and never ceased to move.

  Once, a long time later, he thought he heard a faint sound.

  Head up, he listened. Nothing. He walked on, head down, moving ahead like a blind, unreasoning automaton. He brought up suddenly against a solid obstruction, Lifting his head, he found himself against the bars of a pole corral.

  Following the corral bars around, he saw dimly through falling snow a darker blur. It took shape, became real. It was a low log house, and at the door stood a horse, and in the saddle was a man.

  It was a man upon whose clothes the snow had caked and whose head hung on his chest. How he had stayed in the saddle was a mystery until Healy tried to remove him from the horse.

  He pounded on the door. No sound. He dropped a hand to the latch, lifted it, and opened the door.

  “Hello!” he shouted. “Anybody home?”

  No one answered.

  Fumbling then, he got a mitten off a half-frozen hand and dug into his pocket for matches. His fingers were so stiff that he had to make several attempts before one burst into flame.

  And the first thing he saw was a half-used candle. His hand trembled as he held the match to the wick. It caught, flame mounted, the room became light.

  Lifting the candle, he looked around. The cabin was empty. Before him was a fireplace and on the hearth a fire had been laid. He used the candle, holding the flame to the kindling. As it flared up he returned outdoors and broke the frozen snow from around the stirrup.

  Pulling, he found that Mabry’s clothes had frozen to the saddle, and had to be freed by force. He toppled the big man into his arms but was unable to carry him, so he dragged him through the door and into the cabin. Dragging Mabry closer to the fire, Healy added sticks and built it up until flames crackled and the heat reached out to war against the empty chill of the deserted house. He got Mabry’s coat off, then his boots. He had no experience with frozen men, nor was he sure that Mabry was frozen or even frostbitten, but he began to chafe his feet gently, then warmed the coat at the fire and spread it over his feet. He lifted Mabry’s arms and worked them back and forth and around to restore circulation. There was an ugly tear in Mabry’s scalp and his face was covered with dried and frozen blood. Healy hesitated to touch the wound, deciding for the time being to let well enough alone.

  With the fire blazing cheerfully and Mabry stretched on a buffalo robe and under blankets, Healy took the candle and walked around the cabin. Obviously it had been in use not many weeks before. In various cans there were dried beans, rice, salt, flour, and coffee.

  Shrugging into his coat, he led the patient black horse to the barn. The building was snug and tight, half underground. In a bin he found some ears of corn, and he put them in the feedbox. He wiped the snow from the horse with his hands, then with an old bit of sacking. A couple of moth-eaten blankets hung on nails, and he put them over the horse, forked some hay into the manger, and returned to the house. .

  Mabry still lay on the floor. The fire burned steadily. Dull with exhaustion, Healy backed up to a chair and sat down. He would rest. After a while he would make coffee. Outside the mow continued to fall, and the fire ate at the pine knots, and there was no sound within the room but the breathing of the two men. Occasionally a drop of melted snow fell down the chimney into the fire. It was very still.

  Chapter Ten.

  HEALY AWAKENED with a start and for a minute lay still, trying to orient himself. Slowly he remembered, recalling his arrival and the finding of Mabry.

  The big gun fighter lay sprawled on his buffalo robe several feet from the fire. His breathing was heavy, his face flushed and feverish.

  Building up the fire, Healy put water in a kettle and hung it over the flames. There was little wood left in the fuel box.

  He went to the window. It was growing light and everything was blanketed with snow. All tracks were wiped out. There was small chance of being found, yet while they stayed here, what would happen at the wagons?

  He put the thought from his mind. There was nothing he could have done without being armed. His only chance had been to do what he had done, to find Mabry and get a gun. He had the gun now, but not the slightest idea where he was or how to locate the wagons.

  Still, the Hole-in-the-Wall was a landmark that must be visible for some distance, anti the Wall itself was miles long.

  One thing at a time. If he could save Mabry they might have a chance.

  When the water was hot he made coffee and then went to work on the wounded man. He took off the short jacket and found the other wound. Mabry had been hit low on the side right above the hipbone, and his side and stomach were caked with blood.

  He bathed both wounds, taking great care and much hot water. He felt movement. Looking up, he saw that Mabry’s eyes were open.

  Mabry looked from Healy to the wound. “How is it?”

  HELLER WITH A (I’TN

  “I don’t know,” Healy admitted. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ve got a scalp wound, too.”

  When he had finished bathing the wounds, he bound them with bandages torn from a clean flour sack. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” He explained what had happened and how they had reached the cabin.

  “Home came home,” Mabry said. “That’s got to be it. Bought him in Deadwood from a trapper from over this way. So when the home found himself close by and without anybody to guide him, he just came home.”

  “There was a fire laid, though.”

  “Custom,” Mabry said. “Any man who leaves a cabin leaves materials for a fire. Custom in cold country.”

  At noon Healy found a woodpile in a shed behind the house and brought in several armloads of wood.

  “What’ll we do?” he asked suddenly.

  “Do the girls have a gun?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know it, but they had one.”

&nbs
p; Mabry considered that. As long as their food and fuel held out, and if they did not waste ammunition, they could hold Barker off. It was unlikely they had more than one pistol load. Probably five bullets, and one fired. Four left.

  Toward night Mabry’s fever mounted. He was very weak. During the day he had examined his hands and feet. By some miracle they had not frozen. Yet he would lose some skin on his feet and ankles and his nose would probably peel. He had been luckier than he had any right to be. Had Healy not found him at the door, he would have eventually fallen or been knocked from the horse to freeze in the snow. He would never have regained consciousness.

  Mabry thought it out. They could not be far from the wagons. Several miles, but not too many. Yet he was weak, very weak, and something had to be done at once. Barker would not wait long. He would grow impatient and find some means of getting the girls out of their wagon.

  How much had Healy learned? How much could he do?

  That he had nerve enough to act was obvious. He had chosen his break and escaped. He had, before that, made his try for the shotgun. He had nerve enough if it was directed right.

  “You got to play Indian.”

  “Me?” Healy shook his head. “I’d never get away with it.”

  “You’ve got to. You’ve got to go back.”

  Healy would be bucking a stacked deck, yet he might make it if he was lucky … and there was no other way. Pain lay in Mabry’s side and his mouth was dry. His skull throbbed heavily. He explained carefully and in detail what Healy must do, and what he would do if he was forced to fight or run. Yet somewhere along the line his mind began to wander and he found himself arguing with himself about Janice.

  Vaguely he was aware that Healy was gone, that the Irishman had started out to do something he himself should be doing, but he could not bring his thoughts to focus upon the problem. Before him and through his mind there moved a girl, sometimes with one face and sometimes with another. He kept arguing with Janice and kept seeing Dodie, and the latter’s warmth and beauty kept moving between himself and Janice, distracting him and making his carefully thought-out arguments come to nothing.