The Outlaws 2

by Brian Garfield

  Stepping aside from the door and flattening his back to the wall, McCracken said, ‘Now you, Calabasas.’

  Channing Pierce was slowly crawling to his feet. Calabasas, tall and lumpy, stared at him with an idiot expression and mechanically undid his gun belt. When it hit the floor, McCracken said, ‘All right. All three of you get over there where I can see you.’ He stepped forward and put a boot against Channing Pierce’s hip, shoving the little man ahead. All the while, half his attention was rooted to Cody Longwell, who sat with both arms visible on the table and a steady grin on his face.

  Chet Six said, ‘You’ll never make it stick, McCracken. Ain’t no man alive can get away with this.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Cody Longwell drawled. ‘Ben and me, we’re the only two gents in this part of the Territory who can hit a fifty-cent piece at fifty paces. Right, Ben?’ When McCracken made no answer, Longwell added suggestively, ‘That is, unless maybe you’re a little bit out of practice, hey, Ben?’ His grin widened.

  Keeping one gun on the three gathered men, McCracken caught the dry malice of Chet Six’s eyes and turned directly toward Longwell. ‘Cody, you tolled us into that bloodbath tonight.’

  ‘Hell,’ Longwell said, still grinning, ‘I can’t help it if Six changed his mind at the last minute.’

  But Six was beginning to smile, and that was all McCracken needed to know. It told him that Six had known of his arrangement with Longwell all the while, and that Six had deliberately planted Longwell on him with the story about the raid on Box B.

  Longwell put the flats of his palms on the table and shoved to his feet. His long, gaunt shape seemed to waver in the lamplight.

  McCracken said, ‘Your gun, too, Cody. Drop it.’

  ‘Nobody ever takes my gun,’ Longwell breathed. ‘You know that, Ben.’

  ‘I’m taking it,’ McCracken said flatly. ‘Unless you want to fight the drop.’ He gestured with his gun.

  ‘I guess not,’ Longwell murmured. Moving slowly, he folded his arms and grinned. ‘I’ll keep the gun, Ben. Unless you want to shoot me down cold. I don’t think you’ll do that.’

  McCracken cursed inwardly. Longwell had him stalemated, and knew it. By the bar, Chet Six was chuckling. ‘Smart,’ he said to Longwell.

  McCracken’s quick eyes spotted a rope coiled over the back of a chair. He pointed one gun toward Channing Pierce. ‘Pierce, cut that rope up in sections. Tie up Calabasas—hands behind his back.’

  Pierce, his button eyes gone wary, glanced uncertainly at Six. Six shrugged his immense shoulders. ‘Do like the man says, Channing. He’s just wastin’ time—the boys will come busting in here any minute and he knows it.’ He turned to McCracken. ‘Don’t you, bucko? Hell—you ain’t got a prayer.’

  Longwell’s voice cut sharply across the room: ‘Ben.’ McCracken’s head turned slightly. Longwell grinned lazily. ‘Don’t take your eyes off me again like that. I’ll gun you down if you do.’

  Looking at the man, McCracken believed him. He cocked the gun, pointed it straight at Longwell’s heart and said, ‘Get busy, Pierce.’

  Pierce walked to the chair, fumbling a clasp-knife from his pocket. As he cut the rope in four-foot sections, his eyes considered the knife speculatively. McCracken said tightly, ‘Don’t even think about it, Pierce.’

  ‘Judas,’ Six said, putting his hands on the bar and leaning there. ‘I’ll say one thing, McCracken. If I had five men with your guts, I’d own this country outright.’

  ‘All right,’ McCracken said to Pierce. ‘Drop the knife and tie up Calabasas.’

  Pierce left the knife on the table and picked up one piece of cut rope and turned toward the bar. That was when, at the edge of his vision, McCracken saw the swift flutter of Cody Longwell’s thin hand.

  In that split second, while instinct sent him diving sideways, his mind swept up images of the amazing gun-speed of this man Longwell, the swiftness with which that short-gun could whip into play. With Longwell’s first bullet chopping the air by his head, McCracken had just time to pull the trigger before his shoulder hit the floor, jarring him, almost making him drop the gun.

  But it was all the time he needed. Cody Longwell dropped the gun and sagged back against the saloon wall. His breath bubbled in his chest and at last he grinned and said hoarsely, ‘Well, you had it right, Ben. I crossed you.’

  McCracken spat and climbed to his feet, cocking the gun and leveling both pistols toward the three open-mouthed men at the bar. He said, ‘Cody, if you’ve got to live by a lie, have the decency to die by it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Longwell breathed, and grinned again, whitely, tautly. Then he slipped to the floor, rolled on his belly and died.

  The shots, McCracken knew, would bring Six’s crew scrambling down off the ridge in quick time. He said, ‘Never mind the ropes. Pierce, I want you and Waco and Calabasas. Both of you come over here and drag Waco out of the kitchen.’

  ‘Hell,’ Six said. ‘I feel left out.’

  ‘Your turn will come,’ McCracken said. ‘Come on, Pierce.’ Pierce turned reluctantly forward, dropping the rope.

  That was when boots rattled on the porch and three men swept in through the door.

  Knowing his time was gone, McCracken wheeled toward the kitchen door, spinning through it just as the first gunshots splintered into the jamb. He rushed across the room, gathered up his rifle and dived flat through the back window, rolling over once and climbing to his feet. Slightly dizzy, he ran full tilt for the trees. Achieving that cover, he wheeled just when a shot flamed out from the window. He lifted his rifle and put a quick brace of shots against it, driving the toughs back, and then ran up the side of the road toward where he had left the horse.

  Behind him he heard the enraged rise and fall of Chet Six’s thundering voice, like a fist pounding a man’s face: ‘Get after him, you chicken-livered fools!’

  He ran five more paces and turned into the trees with the first of the outlaw crew’s bullets winging overhead. He ran as fast as he could through the trees and stopped, breathing in hard gusts, in the timber just across the road from the place where he had left his horse. Now he forced himself to settle down and squinted through the gloom of the trees across the road. If they had found his horse, they probably had posted a guard on it, but there was nothing to do except brave the open crossing of the road. Cocking the rifle, he dug in his heels and ran for it.

  Bullets chopped the air, coming up from the long-tongued orange muzzle-flashes from down the road by the saloon. Men stood there braced, rifles to their shoulders, firing in savage haste. The acrid smell of sulphur clung to the air. He smashed into the trees, wheeling, and abruptly broke into the little clearing where the horse stood with its eyes wide and its ears laid back. No one was in sight. He gathered the reins and when he tried to lift himself into the saddle, he discovered that something was wrong with his arm.

  He had been hit. He cursed, rammed the rifle into its boot, and hauled himself into the saddle, ducking low to clear the branches and curling back toward the ridge slope. He put the horse up that tilt at a dangerous pace and cleared the top of the ridge bent low to the withers. No gunshots followed; they must have lost him. He put the horse down the back of the ridge and went skittering down across a talus slope of loose shale. The horse almost lost its footing; he yanked its head up by the reins and set out at a long-reaching dead run down the trough of the gully, hoofs clattering and wind whipping his face. A dull pain started up his arm and he clamped his teeth together.

  He broke out of the gully mouth and turned up into the timber, worked a way through it and walked the horse across a long stretch of granite that would leave no trace of his passage. Then he reined down into a wide shallow canyon where grass covered the earth and the faint bubbling song of clear-running water reached his ears. A bunch of cattle stood around foraging, and he regretted not having the time to inspect their brands. He found the creek, running a shallow course through the grass, and dismounted, hooking the fingers of his right h
and into the shoulder of his left sleeve, tearing the sleeve away.

  It was, thankfully, a bullet burn, not a hole. The slug had traced a groove across the fleshy outside of the upper arm. Blood welled from the wound. He ripped the sleeve free of the shirt, bent and soaked it in creek water, and dabbed the wound as clean as he could, grimacing against the stinging pain that shot up from the wound when he dragged loose chunks of clotted blood.

  He wrung out the sleeve, washed it as clean as he could, and tied it around the wound. It would have to serve. Then, rising into the saddle and noticing with some concern the coating of lather that glistened on the horse’s hide, he rode across the meadow into the timber, and began to climb. Eastward, the first pink touches of the sun shot up into the indigo sky.

  He was not through, not by a long shot. He had come into this country to capture Waco and Pierce and Calabasas. So far, all he had succeeded in doing was to have killed Cody Longwell, and that success was not of a kind to lift his heart. He regretted the man’s death, in spite of Longwell’s treachery. Once they had been friends.

  By now, he knew, Six’s crew would be mounted and riding, scouring the mountains for him. But it was a big range, the Arrowheads, and if he picked a spot with reasonable care, they would stand little chance of finding him until he was ready to be found. There was still unfinished business.

  With the sky paling in the east, he watered the horse at a spring, loosened the cinches and left it to graze, and lay back in the shelter of the trees to sleep.

  Thirteen

  The mid-morning sun, coming past a tree to warm his face, awakened him, and he rolled down against a tree to scout the country roundabout. Nothing stirred except his horse, which had drifted fifty feet away, grazing. He felt sharp hunger but there was nothing to eat; he tightened the cinches and stepped into the saddle, tipped his hat back to consider the sun’s position while he worked out his next action.

  No doubt Six’s crew had split up, scattering to scout for his trail. Going on that assumption, he rode back across the meadow the way he had come, traveled a half mile through the trees, went around the base of a rock ridge and found the canyon where before sunup he had dressed his arm wound. Here the same bunch of cattle still grazed and, riding through the canyon, he was satisfied when he saw Six-branded calves following Box B and Wagon Wheel mothers. It was evidence enough. At the head of the canyon he found a spavined steer rocking on its feet, eyes glazed with sickness, and after a moment’s consideration of the brand—a Six brand clumsily blotched over what had probably been Rafter-H—he stepped down, took out his knife and slit the steer’s throat.

  It dropped slowly, soundlessly. Working quickly, he cut out the patch of hide that carried the evidence of reworked brands, and stuffed the piece of hide into his saddlebags. Then, wiping the knife clean on the grass, he sheathed it and remounted.

  In the trees again, he looked around for the highest spot in the area, and presently decided on the top of a ridge that ran north-south not too far to the east. He headed that way, with the sun warming his face, and climbed through timber almost to the top of the ridge. He left the horse here and climbed the rest of the way afoot, making the last ten yards belly-down. The wound along his arm pained dully. From this point of vantage he could command a fair distance in almost every direction. Slowly turning his head, he scanned all the tilts and dips of land in view. Nothing moved. He settled down to wait, hunger gnawing his vitals. The climbing sun warmed his back and made the land glitter. Below him the horse browsed for feed. Images, all jumbled together, floated in front of his mind: Felix Ochoa, San Saba, Cody Longwell, all of them prone against the ground; Ada and Elena, two images fusing curiously together like pictures in a fevered dream. Bannerman, shrinking back from sight of the dead Ochoa; Mossgrove standing in the road with his bleak, kindly but uncompromising policeman’s expression; Scott Kramer, tall and unbending, with a ramrod of pride in his back; Waco and Calabasas, Channing Pierce and Six, all of them soundlessly laughing.

  A horseman drifted into view some distance away, coming forward across the ridges, moving unhurriedly with a rifle balanced across the saddle-pommel. The man’s features were concealed by his hat brim, which turned slowly from side to side as he ceaselessly surveyed the country through which he rode. McCracken was sure it was one of Six’s men, hunting for him. The man drew closer and McCracken dragged his rifle up beside him, holding his hand over the grip. There was nothing recognizable about the rider—neither his clothes nor his shape was familiar. The man rode past fifty feet below and McCracken let him go. Presently the rider climbed into the farther timbered slopes and disappeared. Ten minutes later there was a brief glimpse of him crossing the top of a hogback, going away.

  McCracken spun up a cigarette and smoked it through, waiting with a patience he had learned long ago. Last night’s high, taut rage had settled down in him so that now he was willing to wait as long as need be. He stripped the butt and blew the shreds away. A calm, cool breeze swept his cheeks; the sun climbed, passed its zenith, and started heeling over westward. Something moved into sight in a gully a quarter-mile distant, drawing McCracken’s heightened attention until he satisfied himself that it was only a grazing antelope. The rock was a hard discomfort under his big frame and his arm was throbbing dully. He untied the makeshift bandage and had a look at the clotted wound, and retied the bandage, satisfied that the wound was not festering and would heal in its own good time.

  Down in the gully in the middle distance, the antelope’s head shot up alertly, poised, listening and sniffing the air. For a moment afterward, it reached down to tug once more at the grass. Then, startled, it wheeled and fined out toward the trees, humping along swiftly, the signal spots of alarm showing white on its rump.

  Recognizing that sign for what it was, McCracken once again drew the rifle up toward his cheek and concentrated his attention on the hidden draw from which the antelope had fled. Soon his attentiveness was rewarded. A trotting horseman broke out into the canyon. The yellow buckskin vest, the flat-crowned gray hat, and the short thin structure of the rider told McCracken what he wanted to know. Even at this distance, he recognized Channing Pierce.

  Pierce was headed southwest. His direction of travel would not bring him much closer to McCracken’s position. So deciding, McCracken slithered down the back of the ridge until he was off the skyline, then picked up his rifle and dogtrotted down to his horse. While he put the reins over the horse’s neck and mounted, he made a swift judgment of Pierce’s direction and rate of travel, and turned downslope at a canter. He curled through the trees and hit the gully floor galloping, swept along the length of that trough and reined in within the concealment of a stand of timber.

  But he had been just a trifle too slow to cut Pierce off. Pierce’s roan was just then disappearing into the forest across the meadow. McCracken knew he could not cross that open without alerting Pierce, and so, chafing at the loss of time, he turned to his right and ran through the forest, circling the meadow.

  After covering a quarter of the circle he decided to run parallel to Pierce’s track instead of behind the man, and he pushed his mount straight ahead through the thickening timber growth. Heavy underbrush slowed his progress and five minutes of this kind of travel told him that it would not do. Thereupon he swung more directly west, climbing through the thinning growth until he achieved a higher point of ground, from which he surveyed the land south of him.

  In time, Pierce appeared from the trees and trotted across the dip of a canyon, going up the far side and again entering the trees about a half-mile away. If he knew he was not alone in the country, he did nothing to show it. A squirrel scampered across the ground in front of McCracken’s horse and shot halfway up a tree trunk, freezing there to blink at him. He chose a point a mile distant where he might be able to intercept Pierce, and headed that way, moving cautiously enough to avoid being skylined or caught crossing any open patches.

  He ran down the side of one ridge at a dead run, then slowed
his pace as he drew nearer the point of intersection. Once, pausing in the trees, he looked over his shoulder and glimpsed Pierce crossing a game trail. Pierce did not see him. Now, ahead of the man, he had a moment in which to prepare. Pierce would no doubt aim for a nearby notch that would carry him through the long limestone ridge that bounded this sector, and McCracken rode that way, finally posting himself in the trees to one side of the notch. Above him the limestone ridge lifted a sheer forty feet. Here and there were the crumbled loose slopes of broken-away slides.

  McCracken cocked the rifle. A few minutes passed, whereupon Channing Pierce rode into view, seemingly unconcerned. McCracken let him get close, then gigged his horse forward out of cover, at the same time lifting his voice: ‘Move and I’ll drop you, Pierce.’

  Pierce’s head swiveled slowly. His hands lifted with the reins, halting the horse. His eyes went wide and his nostrils dilated, and sudden fear was painted across his button-eyed countenance.

  Rifle balanced across his bent elbow, McCracken rode forward. He stopped beside Pierce, leaned over and took the man’s revolver from the holster. This he rammed into his own belt. Then he said, ‘Go on ahead of me, through the notch.’

  With a nervous glance, Pierce gigged his mount gently forward. ‘What you going to do with me?’

  ‘That depends,’ McCracken said tightly. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s a little canyon up ahead.’

  Following closely, McCracken pressed the man into the small wooded canyon. Once there, in the depths of the trees, he said, ‘All right. Get down.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Just get down, Pierce.’

  Pierce dismounted. There was a rifle in his saddle scabbard and he gave it a speculative glance, but stepped away from the horse without making a move for it. McCracken booted his own rifle, drew his pistol and stepped to the ground. Going to Pierce’s horse, he untied the coiled rope there and gestured with his gun. ‘Up there—in the trees.’