As he thought this, he looked up and saw the man above him on the cliff.
In the same second, he saw the puff of rifle smoke and heard the shot.
The bullet winged its way by within six inches of him. He turned the dun sharply to the right and headed for the trees. He used iron and the animal ran. The blind rush for safety took no more than a part of a minute, but even so it seemed unpleasantly long. Time for a second shot. This one was wider. Will made up his mind what he meant to do and he knew he was crazy to try it at his age, but he didn’t give a damn. He hadn’t done it for ten years and he hoped to God he hadn’t lost the knack of it.
The dun thundered into the trees, Will turned it sharp right, kicked his feet out of the stirrup-irons and jumped. The horse ran on west towards the edge of the shelf. Will landed miraculously on his feet and ran. He heard the horse crashing away out of sight. Will tripped on a root and went down. Hard. The wind was knocked out of him. He lay gasping desperately for air. Damn fool. Too old.
But he must keep moving. Curse the slowness that came on a man in his forties. He must deny his years. He heaved himself to his feet, casting an anxious glance towards the cliff. He was pretty sure the fellow up there couldn’t see him. But he could see the rifleman plain. He was standing up and staring down at the trees. Will hoped that he could hear the horse going away towards the edge of the shelf.
Still panting, Will ran east, going as silently as he knew how, toting the rifle and feeling that it was an unbearable weight. He came out of the trees into brush and found that here the cliff petered out to no more than a man-high wall of rock. He glanced up left and saw that he was out of sight of the man above. He started climbing.
When he was up through the rocks, he found that he was at the bottom of a long narrow sloping shelf, much of it covered with long grass. This he prayed would provide him with enough cover for his purpose.
He hadn’t gone twenty yards when he saw the man ahead of him coming up from the face of the cliff. He dropped down into the grass. He reckoned the man was some fifty yards from him. He couldn’t be sure if it was Riley Brack.
He waited.
After a short while, he risked raising his head. He ducked down at once. The man was walking south in his direction, most likely coming to climb down into the trees to check if he had hit Will. If he kept the same direction, he would pass within twenty paces of where Will lay. Will wondered if the man had seen him. It seemed impossible that he had not. There was just a chance that his gaze had been on the trees below when Will raised his head.
Will listened to his footsteps, heard him go past and came to his feet with his rifle in his hands.
He saw now that the man was Riley Brack.
‘You’re covered,’ he called.
The man whirled, astonishment and fright on his face. For a moment, he looked as if he would try to use the rifle in his hands.
‘Drop it.’
The boy looked as if he would break into tears. But he dropped it. He stood looking at Will as if he could not believe what had happened.
‘Who the hell’re you?’ he demanded. His voice was petulant, angry and frightened, all at once.
‘Will Storm,’ Will said, ‘as if you didn’t know. Shuck those fancy guns, boy. Take ’em out easy and don’t get a full grip on the butts. You grip those guns an’ I blow a hole through your heart.’
‘You know who I am?’ the boy demanded. ‘You know who you’re doing this to?’
‘I know. Now move.’
Gingerly, Riley Brack took the two guns from their holsters and dropped them in the grass. He looked like a man throwing away his manhood.
But he still tried to cling to it. He said—
‘My old man’ll hang you for this.’
‘Your old man makes war on women.’ Will said. ‘I’m bearin’ that in mind.’ He told Riley to head for his horse. They gathered up the animal hidden in the rocks on the far side of the bench, then they climbed down and found Will’s horse among the trees. Will was wary because there could be another man around here somewhere.
When they were both mounted, the boy said: ‘What you goin’ to do?’
‘I’m goin’ to take you back to your daddy,’ Will told him. ‘An’ if he ain’t in an agreeable frame of mind, it’s sure goin’ to go hard for you, son.’
They headed back the way they had come, Will all the time watching out for the third man. He wondered how his luck was going this day and if he could get away with this thing. One thing was sure, when he faced Brack with a gun on the boy, he had to mean business. Bluff would never help him to pull this off. If he told Brack he would kill the boy if Martha and the girls were not returned, he must mean it. He asked himself if he meant it and he couldn’t find the answer. He hoped he had rid himself of his soft centre and was now as hard as his brother Mart.
They were half-way through the hills to Brack’s camp when he heard the horse above. At first when he heard it on the move, he thought that the rider was going to come charging down on them, but it proved to be a horseman hurrying down on to the lower slopes and then galloping hard into the north. Will guessed that he had been spotted by the third man and the fellow was now dashing off to warn Brack that his son had been taken.
Will found that he was in a curious state of mind. His brain was clear, but at the same time he wasn’t thinking much. He couldn’t really credit that he was moving through reality. This was all like a crazy dream. Soon something would happen to wake him up.
They came down out of the hills on to the valley floor. He saw no sign of riders until they came near Brack’s camp. But there were few men in evidence there and he knew that Brack would have armed men under cover with their guns on him. He moved so that Riley was between him and the hills, just to cut the chances down a little.
The boy was in a high state of nervousness and kept licking his lips. Will didn’t blame him.
As they came within sight of the camp, Riley said: ‘Look, Storm, I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll give you my word. Let me go ahead an’ talk to my father. I’ll reason with him. I’ll persuade him to let Mrs. Storm and the girls come back to you. I’ll swear it.’
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Will said, ‘I know what a Brack’s word is worth. No, I’ll talk to your old man with a gun at your head. An’ God help you, boy, if he ain’t real nice.’
Will found that he was extraordinarily calm.
A rifle shot from the camp, he halted Riley. Will had put away his rifle and held his revolver in his hand. He could see men standing near the tents staring in his direction. He thought he could see Martha and the girls beyond them.
‘Brack,’ he shouted.
At first, there was no sign of the man, but after Will had shouted the man several times, one of the men mounted and came riding slowly towards him. Will saw that it was Brack.
Will looked around him, planning his line of escape if the worst came to the worst. The hills were out because Brack would have his men hidden there. He would have to cut straight across the valley through the grass. He would go south-west straight away from the camp, so that the riders there would not be able to take a short cut to him.
As Brack came near, he saw that the man’s face was grim. He was glad to see that there was worry there.
Brack halted his horse.
‘Well?’ he said.
Will said: ‘One thing goes wrong, Brack, the boy’s dead.’
Brack folded his hands on his saddle horn.
‘Two can play at that game,’ he said. ‘I have your women.’
‘You dare hurt a woman?’ Will said. ‘You think any man in your crew however hard would let you hurt a woman?’
Brack said: ‘My men do what I tell ’em.’
‘Don’t bank on it,’ Will said. ‘Now just let’s keep our tempers and look at things the way they are. You have at least four dead and six wounded. A good number of your hands have run out on you. I’ve just run a bunch of your gunnies outa the country. You ain’
t doin’ so well, Brack.’
‘I can afford losses,’ Brack said casually. ‘I have plenty of reserves.’
There was something wrong.
Will knew that he had taken the biggest risk of his life when he had come in here with Riley at the point of a gun. But he knew that there was a danger more acute than he had anticipated. It was Brack who gave him the feeling. The man was too calm. There was too little rage showing in him.
‘Brack,’ Will said. ‘I hope you have it firmly in your mind that if any thin’ goes wrong, your boy gits his head blown off.’
Brack didn’t turn a hair.
Brack smiled.
‘There’s a fifty-fifty chance,’ he said, ‘you don’t have the iron to do that. If you do have the iron, you don’t have the chance.’
‘Don’t try bluffin’ me, Brack.’
‘I hope for your sake,’ Brack said evenly, ‘it’s you who’s trying to bluff mc.’
What did that mean?
‘Brack,’ Will said, ‘you’d best believe me, for the sake of this boy.’
‘Storm,’ Brack said, ‘you made your big mistake when you thought all men have your values. Your women don’t mean a thing to me. They mean just as much to the kind of men I have here. Now, if you have any sense, you’ll throw down that gun and admit you’re beaten.’
Will was sweating.
He saw now where he had gotten himself. He had worked himself into a position where he might have to shoot this boy. And if he shot him, he would have gained nothing, because then he himself would be shot down and his women would still be in the hands of this man. He was little short of a damn fool. Joe was right - he was soft all through. But he was softest of all in the head.
He had to make one more try.
‘You’d best think,’ he said, ‘I’m a man driven to the end of his rope. You’d best git it into your thick head I’d like to see this boy die.’
Riley Brack broke his silence.
‘Maybe he means it, dad,’ he said.
Brack senior gave a short barking laugh.
He raised his hand.
Somewhere Will heard a rifle being levered. He knew the shot was coming.
Shoot the boy now, a voice screamed inside his head.
And he knew that he could not.
He turned the gun on Ed Brack, fired and missed. He heard the shot come from the rifle on the heels of his own shot. A bullet winged past his cheek. Then he was turning his horse and jamming home the spurs. The boy’s horse was ripped around by the lead-line.
Ed Brack was yelling for the boy to jump. But his horse was on the move.
By God, Will thought, they won’t have the boy. He was the only card he held.
Will’s horse got its legs under it and was running south-west across the valley. Another shot came from the west. Turning his head. Will saw a man standing in the grass with a rifle to his shoulder. Will laid himself along the neck of his horse and yelled to it. The boy was screaming at him hysterically, alarmed that he might be hit.
Will looked back.
Riders were coming out of the rocks. He couldn’t count them, but there seemed to be a hell of a lot of them. Some of them were coming across the valley to cut him off. He angled right a little, praying that his horse would keep his footing on the rough ground.
They covered a hundred yards, two hundred. The pursuers were gaining. Riley’s horse was holding Will back. He cursed savagely.
Then suddenly the boy’s horse was down. Will didn’t know if it was a bullet or a gopher hole that had brought him low. It didn’t matter. His hold on the lead-line nearly tore him from the saddle. He let go just in time to prevent himself from being unhorsed. He looked back to see Riley’s horse floundering, the boy stretched out on the ground. Maybe that would stop the pursuit. Will raced on. No, it didn’t stop them. Men spurred their horses past the boy, firing as they came, trying for the difficult moving target. Will turned in the saddle and drove back some useless shots, trying to hold them back from him. They still came on. But now his horse was running well. He wasn’t gaining, but he was keeping his distance.
What he wanted now was some cover so that he could do some fancy shooting and discourage them a mite to gain some time. His horse wasn’t as fresh as theirs and he wanted all the advantage he could gain.
Half left in front of him was the saddle into the Three Creeks Valley. He angled towards it, urging his horse with voice and spur. The animal responded gamely, but there was no knowing if the animal could keep the hard pace for long.
A short way up the slope of the saddle were some scattered boulders. He aimed his heaving horse for them. When he rounded them, he piled from the saddle and pumped shots at the oncoming horsemen.
They scattered at once under the fierce rifle fire. He didn’t make a hit, but he surely warmed them up a little. They sought what cover they could, most of them; some rode back out of rifle-range. He got into the saddle on the run and headed up the slope.
They sent shots after him, but the range was too long for them. After a slight pause they were after him again. He had earned himself maybe fifty yards. Not enough. He’d have to make another stand on the saddle itself. A feeling of desperation was coming over him now. He started seriously to face the fact that in a very short while he could be dead. It didn’t cheer him much.
When he next looked back, he saw that the riders had spread out across the width of the slope so that, if he stopped to halt them with rifle fire, some of them would more easily be able to cut around behind him.
The horse was beginning to show the strain of getting up the ever steepening slope after the hard run down the valley. Foam flecked back from its mouth on to Will’s boots. The pursuers were now plainly gaining on him.
Then the worst part of the climb was over and the dun took him along the saddle, its pace increasing once more now that it was on more level ground. The Broken Spur men thundered after him. They were holding their fire now as if now they hoped to run him down. The man on a sorrel horse to the right seemed to be creeping steadily up on him.
It seemed to take him an age to run along the curving surface of the pass, but suddenly he seemed to burst out into the valley of the Three Creeks and he was clattering down the wide trail that had been beaten out by Ed Brack’s cattle. It was the downward slope that knocked the stuffing out of his horse. It faltered and would have gone down hadn’t Will somehow been able to keep it on its feet. He looked back again and saw the riders broiling down after him.
He thought that his horse would fail him before he reached the floor of the valley but it stayed on its feet and took him there, picking up a little when it came down on to the flat and running with a good heart, seeming to feel the desperate urgency of the rider.
There were cattle ahead of him.
He noted the fact idly at first, his mind more on the danger he was in. Then his mind grabbed at the fact.
Cattle!
He passed a big brindle steer, his eyes taking in the earmark. His own.
It wasn’t possible.
His mind somersaulted. There hadn’t been time for Clay and the boys to gather cattle and bring them this far up the trail.; How had Clay been able to find the valley. His mind must be playing tricks on him.
There was a roan steer sideways on to him. There as plain as day was his own brand - the Lazy S. By God, he thought, if only…
He rode through them, scattering them to right and left, his eyes searching everywhere. The men behind him were within easy rifle shot now. They too must have recognized the cattle, for they were starting to fire again. He angled his horse slightly to the west. That would lose him distance, but he knew that, if there were men with these cows, they would be on water.
He ran on another half-mile and then he saw it - smoke! Hope rose now. There was a chance.
The run was going out of the horse. It broke step. He felt it going out from under him. He brought it to a halt before it landed him on his face in the dirt.
Keep
your head and fire steadily. The boys at the creeks would have heard the shooting by now. They might even be on their way already.
The horse ran on a few paces, trying to avoid the dragging rein. A yell went up from the riders as they saw that he was on foot.
He fired at a man coming for him full-tilt. His breathing was heavy, but it wasn’t a bad shot. It must have taken the horse in the chest. The animal drove his nose into the ground and turned end over end, throwing his rider clear. Will levered and fired again as the rider tried to rise. He missed. No matter, you couldn’t win ’em all.
He swung the gun to the right, firing. A man pulled in his racing horse and got hastily out of the saddle, throwing himself down in the long grass. A man turned in from the left, yelling, firing at him with a belt-gun. Will drove a shot at him and took some of the recklessness out of him. The man turned away. One of the dismounted men was firing at him with a rifle. The bullets sang uncomfortably clear. Will dropped to one knee and drove shots back. Then his rifle was empty and he was shoving another loading tube home.
There came a tremor in the earth, the roll of hoofs behind him.
He turned and heard a faint yell. There were riders pounding towards him, coming from the direction of the creeks. He saw the line of horsemen, stretched out across the valley, their horses racing.
The Broken Spur men saw them too. Apparently they did not find it a welcome sight. A couple of them turned their horses right away and ran. One of the unhorsed men was shouting that he didn’t want to be left behind.
The line of horsemen swept nearer. Will stopped shooting and watched them. He had never seen a more wonderful sight in his life. He thought he recognized his sons Clay and Jody. They thundered on across the grass. One of them passed close to Will, yelling. Pepe Mora, the Mexican boy who had been a member of his crew north from Texas to Kansas the year before. Over there went one of the Quintin boys, shouting, banging away as though his life depended on it.
A rider skidded to a halt and leapt from the saddle, a wind-and sun-burned boy with a boy’s fuzz on his chin. His youngest boy, George. Will dropped his rifle and laughed. He felt he wanted to cry. He gripped the boy’s arms and said: ‘George, you sure arrived in time, boy.’
Riders West Page 14