Gunhawk

by John Long

  ‘Ride!’ Rand began yelling, holstering his weapons and charging round in circles. ‘Make a break, boys! Into the desert; follow me! Ride, you blasting half-wits! Ride!’

  The darkness had greatly increased. The heavens were growling queerly. The earth was beginning to lift itself in a hissing river of sand. The desert was on the run.

  Rand dug spurs into his animal, and with what appeared to be a standing leap, he cleared the water-hole and the old-timer’s poor body. He ran with the sand. He fancied other figures imitating his example. At that moment the storm engulfed the scene.

  Overhead the howling dropped lower, wilder, sucking up the sand in great spinning columns. Within a few more seconds everything was on the move, and the unreal night was transformed into a hideous inferno of choking filth and blinding flashes. The water, the rocks and cacti and ghostly balls of tumbleweed, even the dead bodies, as well as wounded men and horses, all started to drift before the unseen power. Still the enemy guns kept pounding flashing and barking with redoubled force, seemingly more enraged to find the confused remnant of the gang being preserved from a massacre, being driven after that streaking form of horse and rider, which was Rand.

  The chase began, but the chase was brief. Only once did the raiders catch a glimpse of their attackers, of a furiously yelling and shooting company of miners, more than fifty-strong, thirsting for blood and in hot pursuit. Then the flying sand obliterated the view of that surging horde which chilled one’s heart. Gradually the shooting subsided, swallowed up by the more giddying roar of the storm. Even so one still kept fancying shots and shouts, imagining chasing figures, sensing whistling lead, coming from all directions for long afterwards. Time passed. The wind had developed. The riders felt as though they straddled winged beasts, whose hoofs noiselessly flayed the air, whose sides panted like noiseless bellows, and whose destination was some mysterious place in a lost and wasted world.

  Sand, white and fine as snow, yet dry and hot as cinders; sand that blinded and deafened and gritted between one’s teeth, driving men crazy. Killer sand which had turned this one-time luxurious cattle-country into a plain of the nether regions, ultimately breaking the hearts of the old pioneers.

  How long the miserably reduced Bruce Gang had been riding, they could not tell. Their pockets and shirt-fronts were a-bulge with tight-packed grit; the nostrils of their beasts were caked over. Each animal now quivering and floundering between each rider’s legs, was ready to run wild or drop dead. Rand ruthlessly led them onward; through belly-deep drifts his own mount gamely struggled, haunting him with a fear of a broken leg, for without a horse a man would be wrestling hopelessly in the arms of death.

  A rift in the storm momentarily exposed a feverish yellow light streaked with red, like an indian’s war-paint: it was close on sundown. Several hours had therefore passed in delirium since the ambush at Sulphur Springs, all without a halt, without a word, and in the dread of another sudden gunbattle from that army of Flintstone miners. Some of the men were wounded, one was dying, and every fellow was baffled, scared and cringing in the pressure of thirst. Six men had died back there, two had wandered away in the storm, half the booty, about half a million dollars had been lost, and now in this merciless desert they had lost themselves.

  It was Rand who eventually led them into comparative shelter between howling dunes, rising like canyon walls; and thus, never realising it, Rand made the greatest mistake of his life.

  The men dismounted and drank from half-empty flasks, screwed dust from eyes and ears and began to breathe and think again. They regarded with sullen and distrustful looks the remaining saddle-bags of dollars. Fear and anxiety became submerged in a rising anger. Each man’s selfish thought made him hostile and wary of his neighbour.

  Big Bruce panted and wrathfully beat the sand from his clothing as he crossed over to the lone rider, who was washing his horses nostrils. For the past couple of hours one vital question had rankled in Bruce’s brain, and now feelings erupted.

  ‘Rand! Who runs this outfit, you or me?’ he exploded in a dry and barking voice. ‘Who gives orders?’

  ‘Who tipped off the sheriff of Flintstone? There’s the real question.’ Symes roared above the wind, as he stood with feet astride and hands on his hips, facing Rand and all of them. ‘Someone here thinks he’s smart, and I aim to find him if I kills everybody in the derned process. Who is the dirty spy?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Who done it?’the men echoed in fierce chorus, clearly afraid of being singly accused by Symes, and all sending suspicious glances to Rand.

  ‘That sheriff knowed we was busting his bank.’ Big Bruce snarled in uncontrollable rage, his attention on Rand who completely ignored him. ‘That sheriff had a posse of a hundred diggers; leastways fifty, all prepared, anticipating our moves, knowing we’d stop for water at the spring. What’s the opinion of our new leader, Mister Rand?’

  ‘Lucky for us the storm blew in, otherwise it would have been a clean sweep for the sheriff,’ mused Mister Sturdy.

  ‘Why, it’s wuss than murder!’ somebody shouted in rising passion. ‘Think of that old man, what never hurt nobody.’

  ‘Some lousy sidewinder here has double-dealt his buddies,’ Symes repeated venemously. ‘Look sharp and sort him out, boys, or there’s the devil to pay, and that’s me.’

  ‘Mebbe we don’t have to search far,’ shouted Bruce, who did not try to conceal his suspicion at all. ‘We men have operated together for a long time. We know each other pretty well. There’s only one queer new-comer in this outfit. Well, Rand, what do you say?’

  Symes grunted and looked displeased, fell thoughtful for a few seconds, then suddenly raised his head, laughing hideously. The men started to close in around Jeff.

  ‘Wait!’ Mister Sturdy leapt up the side of the dune behind Rand and raised his arms in a peace-appealing manner. ‘Just a moment, boys. We have no time for a lynching. Sure we’ve lost half our men, but shareouts will remedy that. First, let’s quit this infernal desert, if we can, then let’s sort out the culprit at Sweetwater, hold trial in fine style, and satisfy ourselves with a hanging.’

  ‘That’s a load o’ ballyhoo! I allow you’re a clever schemer, Mister Sturdy,’ confessed Bruce, balling his fists, ‘and if it weren’t for you we wouldn’t be rich men today. But keep your hand out of this affair. We don’t need no trial.’

  ‘Naturally not. We know who killed the Crocker boys to begin with,’ growled Shorty.

  ‘We know who stirred poison from the start, and who disappeared queerly when we hit town,’ pointed out Mex, looking murderously at Rand retying a small parcel to his saddle.

  ‘Rand called at the hardware store, that’s all,’ said Sturdy. ‘He was only buying some leather to patch his saddle.’

  ‘So that was his excuse. Did you fellas know the hardware store is next to the sheriff’s office? You paid the sheriff a private call, didn’t you, Rand?’ Bruce drew closer. ‘Never mind, you don’t have to speak; you don’t need to do a thing, Mister. We’ll soon straighten things out for our murdering squealer. Mebbe the sheriff was a-going to pay you well, clear your record, give you a new start, huh?’

  Symes’ humour expanded into insane guffaws; apparently he discovered something uncommonly funny in the last remark.

  ‘Rand!’ Bruce screamed in his rage, as he crouched there like some awful human monster in the flowing tide of sand. ‘Rand my buck, you always roused fire in my innards, but now you’ve kindled a blasting furnace. I’m a-going to rip yuh bone from bone, yeah, with my bare hands. Take his guns, Symes!’ He ended with a vicious command.

  At that Jeff spun around, tensed for speedy action. Blearily he looked over Bruce’s massive frame.

  ‘Bet I get four o’ you lousy rats afore I check out,’ he wagered. ‘Come on. Try your bone-dissecting, big mouth, and you’ll be first to die.’

  Such was the confidence of his steadily delivered threat, as to repel them at once. Dismay twisted Bruce’s face, while the other men fell
motionless but nonetheless hostile.

  ‘Get him, Symes!’ the boss yelled again in a frenzy. ‘You’re the gunfighter in this outfit. Get him! It’s an order. I didn’t hire you to stand laughing like a jackass. Kill him, Symes!’

  Long and solemn became the face of Mister Symes as he regarded first the furious boss, and next the taut figure of that wild beast, Rand.

  ‘Sorry about this, Jeff,’ sympathised Symes, making a preparatory act of hooking his thumbs in his belt, just as he behaved before poor Merrick died. ‘Why is it that every fella I fancy, does a dirty trick and get himself under my guns?’

  ‘Kill him, Symes!’ Bruce kept panting ferociously, drinking in the scene with wicked pleasure.

  The men edged away, fearful alarm on their faces. Rand faced the killer.

  Not for one second did Jeff believe he could beat Bruce in fistwork – yet the possibility of beating Symes in gun-draw, well, it was sheerly ridiculous! But there was no way out; death trapped him; and this agony of waiting would not be prolonged, not under these circumstances. There would be no long torture as Smily had suffered in the gulch. Symes was ready to force forward the gunfight.

  ‘Drop your belt!’

  Rand felt guns prodding into his back. Sturdy’s voice arose from behind him. A fresh anticipative growling passed among the men; they might yet have personal satisfaction. Rand hesitated, heard the command a second time, and slowly complied, his mind working rapidly though uselessly. Mister Sturdy picked up his guns with the greatest care imaginable, as if he moved in the vicinity of some unsafe load of gunpowder; and he also led away Rand’s horse.

  ‘Aw, that was a dirty trick!’ objected Symes, looking mournful. ‘I no sooner get me a job and some other fella swipes it. If this goes on it will give me a bad temper, and ruin my gentle nature completely.’

  ‘Never mind, Symes. This should be real live entertainment,’ prophesied Bruce, leering at his now helpless prey as he unfastened his own gunbelt. ‘I’ve dreamt of this day. Let me catch him without them guns. That’s what I kept saying to myself. Stand back, you boys!’

  ‘Come out the way, fellas. Let Bruce in at him,’ urged Mex, grinning and twisting his own large fists together.

  ‘I ain’t ever seen a body ripped bone from bone,’ Symes mused loudly. ‘You know what? I feel like a kid at his first sideshow. I can hardly wait. Go at him, Bruce!’

  Capable as Bruce was with his fists, and with a long history of experiences behind him, he now swept his shirt from his brawny body and attacked Rand over-eagerly. One second Rand was standing limply and sadly awaiting the punishment, yet next moment he had sprung into energetic action. Drawing back both fists at waist-level, he lunged for the boss’s middle. Shock, pain, fury, recorded themselves on the big man’s face. He staggered back, panting and turning blue, wheezing and sucking in the flying sand.

  ‘Bone from bone, remember,’ drawled Symes, biting his thumbnail ruminatively. ‘Lordy, lordy me! Just whose skeleton was you meaning, Brucy-boy?’ he added with a disdainful chuckle. ‘Guess I had best use my guns after all.’

  ‘Shut up! You just wait. I’ll fix the varmint. You’ll see.’ Bruce, raving madly, regained his balance and his wind, and began to circle like a coyote. ‘Watch this, Symes! See me maul this gun-grabber so’s he never – never draws irons agin.’ He came nearer. ‘Rand! I’m a-going to smash your hands to little bits!’

  Here was Jeff Rand’s foremost dread: damaged hands. Nothing else Bruce might have said could have struck home with real fear: it sent a shudder through Rand, who had spent most of his life avoiding certain tasks and physical violence to preserve his life-guarding hands. Now, during the succeeding moments Big Bruce sought to carry out his threat, filling Rand with frenzied action. The boss attacked shrewdly, forcefully, using tricks totally foreign to his opponent. There was little Jeff could manage to do against the pounding onslaught, except keep backing away and trying to hide his face and those precious hands. Yet soon his face and ears were bleeding profusely, while an agony of breathing implied that his ribs were being broken apart. He never struck another blow: he felt his fingers bruised at every joint; but it was not serious, not yet; back, back, back he floundered up the side of the dune. He tried to use his feet on the great monster’s head, but Bruce wrenched at his ankles and hauled him down in the tons of flowing sand. It was with a continuous stream of threats and foul-mouthed remarks that Bruce worked, brutally worked, seeking to beat and break Rand’s body. Nothing save a miracle could rescue Rand from being pounded to death.

  Due to his retreating and unresisting behaviour, the whole onset became delightfully easy to the boss. Over-confidence, deliberately played for by Rand, soon returned to Big Bruce, helped by the bellowed admiration of the men who milled around them. The penalty came of a sudden. Unexpected energy returned to Jeff, when down again came both his fists; and once again, this time with all the strength of his long and flexible body, he rammed the same double blow into the big man’s stomach. Bruce stiffened, released a beast-like howl, and collapsed.

  Rand nevertheless understood that, at precisely this time, he had reached his limit. If Bruce came again it would be final.

  Believing their leader to be beaten, the mounting emotions of the men rose to a climax. Fiercely and collectively they fell upon Rand whose wild-cat opposition was just wasted power.

  ‘Break his fingers! Crush his hands! Kill him, boys!’

  Bruce – he was up again; he was shrieking like a maniac, pained, humiliated, flaming with uncontrollable wrath. Nothing but an axe seemed powerful enough to lay low that great mad bull of a man. Groggily he charged into the struggling mass of men, bent on assisting the end of the slaughter.

  Symes was laughing. Symes was laughing hideously and shrilly, and rocking to and fro, and clenching at his belt till veins stood out on his well-kept hands. He sounded and acted like a son of the devil.

  Had the Bruce Gang forsaken its senses? Had the long ordeal of tensed waiting at the gulch, the nerve-straining robbery, and the ultimate tragedy frayed and snapped the chords of commonsense, turning men into beasts? Or was there something in this ruthless desert that imparted strange savagery, that stirred some primal instinct in the breast of man? All the fellows, seeming to forget they were human-beings, ferociously struggled over their single enemy, madly thirsted for Rand’s blood. Blood alone would satisfy and when they saw it fresh hatred impassioned them. With bare hands they sought to destroy; and then with rocks they sought to crush Rand’s broken hands.

  Round that scene of violence swirled the desert, being lifted and hurled in dense clouds by a yet mightier wind, whose howling ascended to a screach upon the dune-tops. The storm attuned itself to the hellish spectacle, incensed it – then, unexpectedly, offered a chance of escape and refuge to the half-dead victim.

  The sand dune started to slide. It became a rapidly flowing river, in which each man grew desperate to preserve his own life. They began to swim down it; and a strangled scream, as one of them was smothered and lost forever, forced home the grim death confronting everybody. Exactly what occurred, or under what circumstances Jeff Rand managed to reach the desert floor and tumble clear, was all too confused to relate. He thought he heard Mister Sturdy screaming in his ear. Somehow he found his guns and belt slung around his neck. A moment afterwards he was clinging giddily to the back of his leaping animal. The feel, the smell of its soft hide was downright affectionate, real soothing, and he was riding, stumbling, tearing away. God be thanked! He was free. He was alone.

  ‘Ride, Jeff m’lad! Ride, son, or die!’ He kept hearing Mister Sturdy’s voice. Suddenly the voice altered its tone. ‘This way, Bruce! There he goes!’

  The shooting began; and it had almost died away into the roaring of the storm when, convulsing the limp body sprawled along the speeding horse, a bullet tore into Rand. He was done.

  The wind moaned dismally. The animal swerved and whinnied pathetically, its master’s blood coursing down its neck. Sand swept above a
nd below; and into the full blast of it the horse bravely battled of its own accord. Darkness was closing in like oblivion.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dawn slanted across the desert, and the desert was hushed, its sand was motionless, ribbed like a seashore, and just as grey as that dawn. A prevalent air of waiting spread itself across the world, while in the distance receded an awesome wall of blackness, contrasting greatly with the green shoreline of the desert in the opposite direction. Towards this shoreline of weeds and rocks travelled a lone rider, lurching oddly in the saddle, and never once raising his head to scan the desolate expanse of land. His horse plodded at random, sometimes halting to sample bunches of crisp weed, and sometimes snorting and running from crawling creatures that began to scurry back and forth over the sandy ribs. This was the outer edge of the running desert.

  At first little breezy disturbances lay in the wake of the storm, though these soon dwindled away: gradually the air acquired a quality of stillness that was strangely perfect. It became difficult to breathe. The sunrise was a long time coming; certainly it needed a break after stewing such a course of hot days, yet it had no call to hang-fire altogether. Even the grey light already spread around was losing itself. Great herds of cloud were stampeding across the sky. Nearer and nearer the solitary rider came drifting to the desert’s rim, seemingly heading from nowhere into nowhere. Then, with shocking suddenness, a tumbling of thunder rocked the world. The crawling creatures out yonder ceased to scutter, crouched, tensed, alert, more keenly waiting. The horse had leapt and whinnied, and now, with a wild shaking of its body, it broke into a smart canter. The rider had not stirred.

  At once large drops like dollar pieces started to fall upon the earth: little balls of dust began to swarm everywhere like an invasion of funny little bugs. The earth murmured back at the skies in a prayer of thanksgiving; a merry hiss arose from the brown weeds; a far-away mesquite bush rocked and twittered; the crawling creatures darted around with revived life, held out their tongues, rolled over, showed their hot bellies to the rain, and set up a pleasant chirruping and croaking. Sure enough all things were downright glad, and all slaked their burning thirst, all except that single rider. He gave no attention; he just rocked to and fro in the saddle, leaving his horse to climb across the craggy desert edge, and to head for the refreshing prairies released by the running sand.