Janice was a fool. Tom Healy was all right. He was an easy-smiling Irishman, lovable and tough in his own way, in his own world. He was a man who could make any woman content … unless there was something that leaned to that hard strength and inner toughness, that needed it in a man.
Tom Healy was wonderful, but he was a tamed man. King Mabry was bronco stuff. He would never be tamed. Quiet, yes. Easygoing in his way, yes. But inwardly there was always that toughness of purpose, that leashed fury that could break loose as it had in the fight with Griffin at Hat Creek, and with the Indian. He had that indomitable something more important than mere prettiness or niceness.
Dodie picked up the gun that lay on the blanket beside her and handed it to Mabry. It was her father’s gun.
The one he had carried through all his Western years. “Where’d you get a gun like this?”
“It was my father’s.”
“Dead?”
“In Colorado. A fight over water rights.”
“Was that your home?”
“Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado.”
Thoughtfully he returned the Colt. She could see that he knew it was a good gun. The kind he himself might have carried.
Chapter Fifteen.
FOUR DAYS passed slowly, and there were no further signs of Indians. Mabry killed another sage hen, and through a hole in the ice he caught several fish.
Healy tried rigging his first snares, and on the third day he caught his first rabbit. He killed another one with a thrown stick while it struggled in the deep snow.
Once, scouting near the Hole-in-the-Wall, Mabry found the tracks of two shod horses coming northwest out of the Hole. They were riding into the rough country east of Red Fork, but what drew his greatest interest was the fact that, back trailing them, he found they had scouted the opening of the Hole with great care. Evidently they had expected to find something or somebody there.
The tracks of one horse were familiar, but it was late that night before a reshuffling of the cards of memory returned it to consciousness. He had seen that same track at Hat Creek Station.
It had belonged to the horse ridden by Joe Noss… . They had, he knew, stayed too long in one place. Yet it had been necessary to give Maggie a chance to recuperate. Another long ride without rest could be the end of her. Returning on the fourth day, he found that a rider had followed his previous day’s trail to a ridge overlooking the shelter. By now there were so many tracks that the shelter could easily be located.
There had been no sign of Barker and Boyle since they had left the wagons to find Healy and kill him. So far as appearances went, they had vanished into nothingness. The Indian attack had come, killing Wycoff and Griffin, but by this time Barker undoubtedly knew the girls were still alive, and that they, with the money, must now be with Mabry.
It was possible that they had now been joined by Joe Noss and his companion, who undoubtedly knew of some hideout in the Red Creek Canyon country, for, not finding anybody at the Hole, the two riders had headed northwest without any hesitation, obviously toward a known destination. It was probably at this destination that Barker and Boyle hid out following the destruction of the wagons. The tracks that came to the top of the ridge had undoubtedly been left by one of this group. Hence it could be taken for granted that Barker now knew their exact location.
King Mabry thought this out as he rode down from the ridge after finding the tracks. It was time to move. Regardless of Maggie, they must go on.
When they had finished eating that night, he turned to her. “Feel up to riding on?”
“Any time,” she assured him quietly.
“All right. We’ll sleep four hours. Then we move.” “It’ll still be dark,” Healy said.
“Exactly. We’ll have about three hours of travel in darkness, three hours of start on anybody who waits for daybreak. And unless I miss my guess, it will be snowing.”
Maggie rode the black, bundled up in blankets and the buffalo robe. Dodie and Janice were to take turns on the Indian pony.
King Mabry led off at a fast walk. He headed upstream in a fast, sifting snow, and he held to a buffalo trail he had located several days before. After the snow wiped out the details, the tracks made by the buffaloes would offer them some means of hiding their trail.
Despite Maggie’s weakness and the fact that none of the others was used to wilderness travel, Mabry held to a fast pace. At midmorning they stopped in a dense grove of pines, built a small fire, and had a hasty meal. When it was completed there was no rest allowed. Starting them on, Mabry remained behind with Janice to obliterate the remains of the fire.
“You’re careful,” Janice said. “Is it the Sioux?”
“Or Barker. Probably both.”
They walked on in the steadily falling snow. The temperature was only a little below freezing now. It was a good time to travel, and Mabry gave them no rest. After three hours they paused for a hot bowl of soup, then pushed on, with Mabry scouting the country ahead and around.
Where they now rode, fuel was scarce and growing scarcer. Mabry was worried. Sensitive to every change in the weather, he knew they were in for another storm. The snow was increasing, and it was growing steadily colder. The little wood where they now rode would bum faster than a man could gather it. What they must find was a well-wooded stream, and quickly.
Somewhere on his left were the Nowood badlands, across Nowood Creek. The stream richly deserved the name it had been given a few years earlier.
He took Janice’s arm. “See that tall, lightning-struck pine? On the point of the hill?”
“Take the lead. Tom will have to help Maggie. Head for that pine, then wait there for me. I’m going to take the pony and scout around.”
Mabry started off at a swift gait along the ridge. The wind was picking up, and within a few minutes the snow was a curtain that shut them from his sight when he glanced back.
They walked on, moving slowly. Janice kept glancing ahead to watch the pine, but blowing snow made it ever more difficult. Sighting a queer, rocky formation on a hillside in line with the pine, she used that for a mark.
The older snow was crusted and would support their weight, but the black horse often broke through.
During a momentary halt, Janice glanced at Maggie. Her features were taut and gray when she removed the scarf from her face.
“Can you stick it out?” Healy asked.
“I’ll be all right.”
There was no sign of King Mabry.
Janice came up to the rock, and when they topped the hill above it she looked for the blasted pine. She could see nothing in any direction but blowing snow. It was very cold.
“Tom, we’d better stop here. I don’t know whether we can go straight or not.”
“You came straight to this rock? And it was lined up with the pine?”
“Yes.”
He walked back in their tracks until he was a dozen yards from the rock. “Now you walk out this distance in line with the rock and me.”
When he moved back to the rock he had Dodie go out ahead and line up with Janice and the rock. In this way they moved on, their progress only a little less rapid than before.
Suddenly Healy called out. Through the momentarily thinned snow he saw the blasted pine to their left, not thirty yards off.
As they drew abreast of it, Mabry materialized out of the snow. Then he led them down the gradual slope. At the bottom, among the trees, they saw the faint gleam of a fire.
Docile took over the cooking when they reached the fire. Tom Healy began rustling wood, then noticed Mabry, who was scouting away from the fire, restless and uneasy.
“What’s the matter, King?” Healy asked.
“I saw the tracks of four riders … shod horses.” Janice knew that if he had been alone, he could have got away or rode out and hunted them down and forced an issue. Tied to her and Dodie and Maggie, he could not do that. The initiative was left to Barker and his men. Once they reached the Montana settlements, Barker was finishe
d. The story would travel, and once it was told, someone was sure to remember that he had been associated with Henry Plummer.
They improvised a shelter and Maggie dropped off to sleep, exhausted by the long ride. Healy wandered in search of fuel, and Mabry squatted near the fire, close to Janice.
“You never look into a fire, King,” she said curiously. “Don’t you like to?”
“It isn’t safe out here. A man should keep his eyes accustomed to darkness. If he suddenly leaves a fire after staring into it, he’s blind … and maybe dead.”
“Do you always think of things like that?”
He looked up at her, his eyes amused. “Sure. If I didn’t I’d be buried somewhere.”
The snow fell, covering their tracks, but making the new tracks they would make tomorrow even more obvious.
“What will you do now?” he asked suddenly. “You’ve lost your outfit.”
“Start over, I guess. Tom will figure out something.” “Won’t be easy.”
“No.”
“Town over in Montana. Coulson, they call it. About a year old, I think. You might start there.”
Tom Healy came back with an armful of broken tree limbs and chunks from rotting logs. He stood warming his hands over the fire.
“Stage line from there to Virginia City, most likely,” Mabry continued. “And from there you could go on west.” “And what will you do?”
“Hole up until spring. Then I’ll ride into the Blues. Or over close to Bear Lake. I always liked that country.” Janice did not reply. She was remembering the long dusty rides in the vans or on the ill-equipped trains. The cheap hotels that were never without drafts, the cold dressing rooms.
“I’ll run a few cows,” he said, “and maybe some horses.
Horses do better in cold country. I could build myself a nice place … somewhere a man could sit and look a far ways. I want a good spring of water, cold and clear, and some trees.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
“Will be. Lonesome, though, for a man alone.”
She saw Tom Healy turn away from the fire. He looked at King Mabry and there was no pleasure in his gaze. He was a man who felt animosity for no man. It was not in his nature, but she saw now that he was irritated. “You could always marry,” he said bluntly. “Isn’t that what you’re building up to?”
Mabry had been chewing at a bit of stick as he talked. Now his jaws stopped chewing. For a long, slow moment he said-nothing at all, and when he did speak his voice was low, and he looked from under his brows at Healy, who was still standing. “Yes, I could marry. Make a nice home for the right woman. That bother you, Tom?” “Not if it isn’t Janice,” Tom said bluntly. “You offer no life for a woman.”
“Tom!” Janice protested.
“No life for any decent woman,” Tom persisted, “a life that would last until you put a bullet into somebody and had to go on the dodge again. Then what would become of your wife and this pretty little house with the view?” King Mabry started to speak and then stopped. He got up and turned away from the fire.
Janice said quickly, “I can make up my own mind, Tom. And if King were to ask me, I’d say …” She hesitated. “I’d say yes.”
Mabry turned back, looking startled. Tom Healy stared at her. His lips started to shape words, then stopped. His face was shocked and pale. Only Dodie showed no evidence of her feelings. She poked at the fire with a slender stick, one eyebrow lifted.
“And why not?” Maggie demanded belligerently. “Why not, Tom Healy? Is this any life for a girl like Janice? Let her have a home, some real happiness! And where could she find a better man?”
Healy stood right where he was. He looked sick, empty of feeling. After a while he said quietly, “I’ll go to bed, King. You can have the first watch. Wake me when you’re ready.”
Taking his blanket roll, he went into the shelter.
King Mabry looked uncertainly around, helpless in the face of a totally unfamiliar situation.
“There’s stew ready.” Dodie’s voice was practical. “Anybody want some?”
She dished up food for Maggie, then for the others. Neither Mabry nor Janice would look at the other, but they sat together on a log.
King Mabry was embarrassed. He wanted Janice Ryan. He wanted her as he wanted nothing else in this world, but he’d had no hopes of getting her. Nor had he any right to ask her to be his wife. He had been building to just that, yet even as he talked he was sure he would be refused. Once she had refused him, the foolish notion would be out of his mind; it would be all too evident how foolish he had been. When Dodie told him Janice loved him he had not believed it, not even for a minute.
He knew her attitude toward his kind of man. Nothing in her background had prepared her for him, or for the harsh terms of life on the frontier. She had the strength, the quality … that he recognized. Yet that she might accept either the life or himself he could not believe.
Now he groped for words and could find none, for he was a man without words, given to expressing himself in action, and the few words he used were those preliminary to action or associated with it. His philosophy did not come from books or religion, but from the hard facts of a hard life coupled with a strong sense of fair play, always linked with the realization that survival was for the strong.
Nothing in his adult experience prepared him for what he must do now. Afraid to look at Janice, afraid even to believe what had happened, he ate hungrily, as much to render himself incapable of speech as because of hunger. Dodie alone seemed unexcited. He glanced at her, but her face was composed. Remembering the few minutes in the woods, he might have expected some reaction. Yet he knew better. Not from Dodie. Dodie was a soldier. She took things in stride and crossed her bridges when she came to them.
“Tom?” Dodie called. “You want to eat now?” “Leave it by the fire.”
Dodie put her hands on her hips and stared impudently at Janice and Mabry. “What is this? Why doesn’t somebody kiss somebody? Are you two going to marry? Or are you scared, King?”
He looked up and growled at her. “I’m not scared. You … you talk too much!”
Dodie laughed. “But I don’t always talk. Do I, King?” He looked up at her, remembering the moment in the woods. It was in her eyes that she remembered, too, and was laughing at him.
“You go to bed!” he growled. “You’re too smart!” “Well,” Dodie replied, “at least I’d know what to do.” King started fussing with the fire. He was guilty and embarrassed. For a few minutes he had been afraid Dodie would mention his kissing her. And then he realized she would not, she just wasn’t the sort. In fact, she was pretty regular.
He tried to switch his thoughts to the problems of tomorrow, yet he was too sharply aware of the presence of Janice and that they were now alone.
He looked around at her finally. “Mean it?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t always be easy.”
“Nothing is. At least, I’ll have a home.”
The word shook him. A home … He had not known a home since he was a child. But what kind of home could he offer her? A home where he might be brought in a wagon box any night? He had seen others taken home that way, some of them mighty good men. And he was asking Janice to share that.
King Mabry got to his feet. He felt he should do something, but he did not know what or how. He could not just walk over and take her in his arms. He picked up his rifle.
“Going down to the creek,” he said.
He swore bitterly at himself as he walked away. Behind him, when he glanced back, the fire was tiny and alone. Janice sat where he had left her, staring into the flames.
Snow crunched under his feet, and he glanced at the sky, finding breaks in the clouds. Against the pale night sky the trees etched themselves in sharp silhouette. A star gleamed, then lost itself behind drifting clouds.
At the creek bank he stopped and rigged a snare, placing it in a rabbit run he had seen earlier. He needed no light. This he had done of
ten enough to know every move. Out in the darkness a branch cracked in the cold, and some small animal struggled briefly and then was silent. He had been a fool even to think of marriage to Janice. Now she would tie her life to his, and his destiny was tied to a gun. If they got out of this alive, there would be more trouble. And there was no assurance they would get out.
So far they had been fortunate. With the Indians they had been lucky, and only the fact that snow had come in time to blot out their trail had kept them alive. It was not his doing, although he had done his part, as had Healy. The real winner here was the very thing they were fighting now, the weather.
He listened into the night. There were only normal night sounds. On winter nights, if anyone moved within a great distance, it could often be heard. He shifted his rifle and turned back toward the campfire.
The fire had burned low, so he laid a foundation of several chunks of similar size and length, then shifted the coals to this new base and added fuel. When the fire was burning well, he cleared the ground where the old fire had been and unrolled his bed on the warm ground. It was an old wilderness trick, used many times.
How many such nights had he spent? How many such things had he learned?
Gloomily he walked to the horses and whispered to them, rubbing their shoulders. The black stamped cheerfully.
He tried then to visualize the trail ahead, to plan what could be done, and to put himself in Barker’s place. Of one thing he was positive. Andy Barker would come again. He would not give up while there was still a chance, and now he had three men to help.
After a rest, he took his rifle and scouted away from the fire toward the creek that separated them from the No-wood badlands. At times he was as much as a quarter of a mile out, but he saw nothing, heard nothing.
He was not relieved. Barker had to make his move. He dared not let them get to Montana and the settlements with their story. He must kill every one of them. And besides, there was that gold on the paint pony-or that would again be on it in the morning.
Heller with a Gun (1955) Page 11