by John Jakes
Amos Dean, owner of the Mercantile, stood on the broad front stoop of his store, pistol in hand. He stood in the cold night air without a coat, mindless of the chill his thin shirt and flowered vest couldn’t keep out. In the light of the lantern in his other hand, his blue eyes snapped excitedly.
“Hello, Trow. Glad you got here.”
“Who were they?” Huston noticed that the Mercantile’s front door hung crookedly on its hinges, minus glass, as if it had been smashed open.
“Dogged if I know,” Amos Dean said. “But they stole three suits of clothes, and three of my best sheep-lined coats, and six-guns and a whole bucketful of lead to fill ’em up with. And that ain’t all.” He jerked his head inside. “Come see.”
Huston and the curious onlookers followed the short storekeeper into the darkened interior. Dean held his lantern high so that light fell on a pile of rough clothes lying in the center aisle. Dean put down his pistol and lifted a pair of trousers with broad black and white stripes. “Get an eyeful of these, marshal.”
“Convict suits,” Huston said. A warning bell went ringing in his brain.
“I swear if I’d made trouble, they’d of shot me down,” Dean said with a shake of his head. “Mean looking, all of them. And they were about froze, wearing only these duds.” His blue eyes narrowed. “You’re going after them, ain’t you, marshal?”
“Why sure, I suppose so.”
“They can’t get very far, if they don’t know the trail over the mountain,” one of the men in the crowd said. “ ‘Sides, it’s dark, and there’s a snow coming.”
“I’ll get a posse together,” Huston said. “Round up a dozen men and—”
“Posse!” Dean snorted. “By the time you try to find enough guns around here, they’ll be half way back to Kansas. You got to get after them right away, marshal. Hell, they’re owlhoots from some prison, that’s plain enough. And it’s your job to catch ’em. Besides,” he added in a grumble, “I want those duds and my guns back. I can’t afford to lose merchandise like that.” He glowered at the marshal.
“I don’t know,” Huston said, shaking his head. “I don’t like to start up the mountain by myself—”
Dean’s lips curled. “What’s the matter, Trow? You goin’ yellow of a sudden?”
Huston’s eyes flared wide. “You’ve got no call to say that.”
“No? It seems to me, Trow, these last months you’ve been mighty careful to keep your nose clean. You act like you’re gettin’ right scared of any jasper with a hogleg in his hand. If that’s the kind of marshal you are, you aren’t doing anybody in this town any good.”
A murmur of assent followed his words. Huston whirled around to the other men. Eyelids lowered. Mouths clamped shut like traps. Somebody chewed a plug loudly.
In that instant, Dean’s words lanced into Huston’s brain. The very thing he’d been thinking while he ate. More and more he was coming to want security—safety for himself—when it was his job to guarantee safety to the other residents of the town, even if it meant personal risk. What a damned fool I am, he thought now. I’ve just become aware of it and they’ve seen it for—how many weeks, and months? Still, it didn’t lessen the fact that the men who had robbed Dean were escaped prisoners, probably killers with nothing to lose in killing one man more. He was still afraid, with the terrible fear of death, a black unknown void, born in him when cannon thundered on the battlefields.
“All right,” Huston said softly. “I’ll go after them.”
He shouldered his way through the silent crowd and walked down the front steps. He turned right, walking quickly until he reached the rude wooden building that served as his office and Sierra’s jail. Lamps glowed yellow through the windows. Pink Fisher, his black-haired twenty-year-old deputy, was waiting for him. Pink usually laughed a lot. Tonight he was frowning.
“Howdy, Trow,” he said, his voice quiet. Immediately he walked back toward the first of the jail’s three cells. “Come take a took at what we got.”
Huston followed him. Pink pointed. A boy hardly more than fifteen or sixteen lay on the cell bunk, his pale face turned to the light, looking delicate and thin as fine china. Beneath the thrown-back coat, an irregular stain of blood had dried on his shirt front.
“Deader than anything,” Pink said. “Jake Robards found him on the trail less than ten minutes ago. This was inside his shirt pocket.” He handed Huston a slip of yellow paper.
One edge of the paper bore a brownish stain. Huston recognized the handwriting of Lem Swope, a justice of the peace in a town down the mountain. Three escaped criminals headed your way, the note ran. Gall, Cody, Elwood. Watch out for them, Trow. They are dangerous. Lem.
Huston crumpled the paper. He’d had a poster on Bart Gall a few months before. Wanted for stage holdups, and two murders in Sacramento. Evidently prison couldn’t hold him. Huston remembered the mean, pinch-eyed face in the poster sketch and shuddered.
“These are the same gents who did the shooting a little while ago,” Huston said. “Robbed the Mercantile of some clothes and extra guns.”
“I heard the shooting, but they brought the boy in just then. Sorry I couldn’t make it down.”
Huston didn’t answer. He was thinking of this boy, sent to warn Sierra and being ambushed with what had perhaps been Bart Gall’s last shot. Maybe the boy’d spotted them; or made too much noise following them. Whatever happened, he’d wound up dead on a cell bunk with the mountain wind singing his funeral dirge outside.
Huston pulled his heavy sheep-lined coat off the wall, put it on. He rummaged through his desk for more ammunition and put the surplus in his coat.
Yes, Dean was right. He had yellowed. He was yellow now; scared because up in the mountains Bart Gall was riding toward an escape through the pass. There was no other way he could go. And Huston knew he had to go after him. His job was to protect the people of Sierra, not himself.
There was nothing wrong in being afraid, he knew that. The wrong part was letting the fear rule you. Being alone too much, no wife, no family, he thought of the war a great deal. And it had soured him. But now he knew he had to ride up the mountain and try to stop Bart Gall and the two other killers before they reached the pass. He had to, because now that he knew, something in him grew sick at the idea of being ruled by fear. A man couldn’t live that way.
Pink shoved his arms into his coat. “I’m coming along, Trow.” It was a statement, not a question. He strapped his guns across his lean hips.
Huston faced him. “Pink, let me ask you something. Have I gone yellow?”
Pink didn’t answer for a minute. Then: “Why, Trow, I don’t see why you ask something like that.”
“Have I, Pink?” Huston’s eyes burned fiercely.
Pink turned his back on him, shrugging. “People talk, Trow. I don’t give it much heed—”
“What about you? How do you feel about it?”
Pink turned around again, a touch of sadness in his eyes. “Trow, I don’t like to say it, but if you ask me, I guess I’ll tell you. You act like you’re scared to make a move any more. Almost scared to raise your voice to a drunk.” He looked down at the rough plank floor. “I’m sorry, Trow.”
The wind made a mad whining around the corners of the jail. “That’s all right, Pink.” Huston clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “We’ll go out and bring those three back and maybe I won’t be yellow any more.” A note of self-inflicted bitterness edged Huston’s voice.
“Sure, Trow.” Pink smiled wanly. “We’ll bring them back.”
Huston jerked the door open. The wind lashed his face with new fury, stronger now, bitter with the bone-cold feel of winter. They bent against the wind as they made their way around the jail to the stable at the rear. Each man saddled his own horse by lantern light. Neither one spoke. The animals blew out their breath in long streams of vapor and stamped frequently. At last Huston extinguished the lantern and swung up into the saddle. He made sure his rifle rested tightly in the boot and gave
a tug on the reins. Silently the two men headed up the main street toward the mountain trail.
Huston figured the outlaws might make camp for the night in Moon Hollow, an old ghost town half way up the mountain to the pass. Pink agreed with this estimate. They rode rapidly, hoofs rattling with sharp sounds on the rocky soil, their only light the pale glow of the stars outlining the shadow-forms of the great trees. They had been on the trail perhaps twenty minutes when a few snowflakes began to drift down, big and soft and wet. Huston licked one from his upper lip.
How in God’s name can we find them? he wondered dismally. Up here there was nothing but a barren waste of lonely trees and hard earth. The cold pierced to the very heart of him, lulling him in the saddle, filling him with a sense of helplessness. When the rifle cracked, he was a moment late in reacting.
He jerked the reins wildly, pulling his horse off the trail. More shots racketed from up ahead, dim orange smudges behind the thickening wall of white snow. Huston dropped from the saddle and fired a futile shot in answer.
He listened. Somewhere up ahead he heard muffled voices. Damn, he thought, a moment longer and they’d have gotten us, just like they got that kid. We came too fast, too loudly.
Another shot boomed. He heard the slug bite a tree two feet above him. Then silence, and the soft whisper of the snow, coming faster now, driven by the rising wind.
Hoofs clattered in the darkness ahead. Then there was a rapid volley of three shots. Pink’s horse went bucketing down the trail toward Sierra, flinging noisy echoes behind it. Huston saw that the saddle was empty. His stomach went hollow.
The outlaws moved further away up the trail. Huston fumbled in the darkness until his hands came into contact with an arm, stretched out rigidly. Shifting around on his heels so that his back was to the pass, he struck a match and cupped it in his stiff fingers.
Pink lay hatless on the snow. Mouth wide open, he stared upward with a grotesque kind of smile. A flake drifted down into his mouth. The match burned Huston’s fingers and he turned away.
After a long minute he rose to his feet and climbed back up on his horse. His eyes searched the darkness ahead. Now he had to go on. More than ever, he had to go on. He kneed his mount, vengeful hatred filling him, seeming to burn the cold out of his bones. Laughing Pink Fisher, remembering Huston as a coward at the end …
That had to be proven wrong.
Approximately where the gunmen had lain in wait for them, he came upon an overturned coach. His horse shied away skittishly, letting out a whinny. Huston leaned over and rubbed away the snow on the side panel.
SIERRA OVERLAND.
Puzzling at the deserted coach, Huston then remembered that it had passed through Sierra early that same morning, on its run across the mountain through the pass. Cautiously Huston urged his mount forward again.
He covered about a quarter mile more before the ground levelled off somewhat and he saw the ramshackle buildings of the ghost town of Moon Hollow. Directly at the opposite end of the deserted main street, the mountains sloped down to a jagged V, through which the moon had risen.
Something tightened in Huston’s stomach. In the window of what had once been the Moon Hollow Hotel, a light glowed.
Huston scanned the street for horses. He saw none. Warily he dismounted and tied his horse to the low branch of a stunted pine. He drew his Colt and transferred it to his left hand, flexing the fingers of his right to get rid of the stiffness. Then, Colt held properly, he started walking through the curtain of snow toward the hotel.
He kept to the side of the street, moving rapidly. He slipped into an alley alongside the rotting walls of the hotel and sidled up to a window. Stretching, he looked in. A soft gasp came from his lips. He drew back, then ventured another look.
The first person he recognized was little gray-bearded Andy McNulty, the stage driver. He was stretched out on a sagging divan, one leg encased in what looked like a crude splint. Two other people were with him. An elderly man in a black suit, flowered vest and high black beaver hat, and a young woman with a hard, brittle face and rich red lips. From her gown, he thought it was not hard to determine her profession.
Two lamps, evidently stripped from the coach, glowed feebly on an ancient table. The older man was gesturing drunkenly as he weaved on his feet and talked to McNulty. Huston looked for Gall and the other two. He didn’t see them.
After a moment of debate, he rounded the corner of the hotel and walked toward the door, his gun ready. Perhaps they could tell him if Gall had ridden on. He put his hand on the door and pushed it open, stepping quickly inside. The woman gasped and the man in the beaver turned to peer at him with reddened eyes.
McNulty made an effort to rise, then groaned. “Trow Huston. What in hell are you doing up here?”
Huston closed the door behind him. “I might ask the same, Andy.”
McNulty shook his head. “The horses stumbled on the way up and the coach went over on her side and I got a broken leg in the bargain. These here are my passengers, Miss Lil Carney and her father, Mr. Elihu Carney.” McNulty glanced sourly at Carney. “Don’t mind him, he’s out on his feet.” The girl’s expression didn’t change; it was stiff, bitter, defensive.
“She carried me up here and fixed up my leg,” McNulty explained. “By then it was too dark to send her down to Sierra alone, what with the horses run off and Carney there too drunk to stagger. So we holed up here. Maybe Carney’ll sober up enough by mornin’ to go down for some horses. That is, if the snow lets up.”
Huston glanced to the black squares of the windows. The flakes were larger now, striking hard.
“I’m looking for three men,” he said.
McNulty looked grim. “They was here, just a few minutes ago.”
“They’re killers. Escaped prisoners. They just shot Pink Fisher.”
McNulty let out a curse.
“Where are they, Andy? Did they leave?”
“Naw,” McNulty spat. “Didn’t want to hang around here, though. They’re down the street in the saloon. They’re holin’ up for the night, too, so they said.”
“And they stole my bottle,” Elihu Carney said.
He was almost crying.
2
The Devil Wears Red
Huston turned to go. If Gall and the other two were up at the saloon, the quickest way to accomplish his task would be to walk up there, surprise them and drill them down where they sat. Working on the old man’s liquor bottle, their responses might slow a good deal. That coupled with the fact that the element of surprise favored him was enough to take the biting edge off his fear. But as he brought his hand down on the door knob, the woman’s voice stopped him.
“Who is he, McNulty?” Lil Carney asked. Huston turned around. “The law in Sierra?”
McNulty nodded. The lamplight heightened the blaze in the girl’s eyes, a blaze of animosity near to hatred. She kicked the hem of her scarlet gown around from in front of her with a flick of her foot. Then she planted her fists on her hips.
“Mister, I’ve a good mind to go down to the saloon and warn those men that you’re coming.”
Elihu Carney hopped from one foot to the other, “Lil! Don’t talk like that to the marshal. Them jaspers stole my one and only bottle. You know how that just plain ruins me. Let him go.”
“Let him go?” the woman said contemptuously. “Sure I’ll let him go—after I tell him what I think of him and his fancy town.”
Huston let out a long sigh. The woman had a rough kind of prettiness, a certain charm covered over now by the hard mask of bitterness. Huston felt nervous. He wanted to get the job over with, and yet it had suddenly become plain that he couldn’t antagonize Lil Carney if he wanted to surprise Gall and his companions.
“I’m afraid I’ve never seen you before, ma’am,” he said.
Lil Carney stepped forward, mouth twisting. “Pop and I were going to get off the stage in Sierra. But a whipper-snapper deputy, a young bobcat wearing a tin star, took one look at me and to
ld me to get right back on the coach. But our tickets ran out there and we don’t have any more money, so right now we’re in debt to the company for all the cash it takes to cross the mountains.”
“We’ve got a town ordinance,” Huston explained, “against any new—uh—dance hall ladies setting up shop there. What ones we already have, we can’t do much about. But we can keep others out, keep them from making trouble. I’m sorry if it inconvenienced you.”
She snorted. “We’ve been run out of more towns than we can count, mister. If folks would just give us a chance, we’d show them that we wouldn’t cause any trouble. Pop deals a fair game of draw or stud. We might even go to work in some regular jobs if people didn’t take one look at us and tell us to move on.” She indicated the scarlet dress covering her shapely body. “But these are all the clothes I own.”
Huston’s mind worked quickly. “Tell you what I’ll do, Miss Carney. If I get these men rounded up, you can come back to Sierra with your father and look for a job. And there won’t be any extra coach fare.” He glanced at McNulty for support, received it in a nod.
Elihu Carney did a ridiculous dance caper. “Marshal, I won’t touch another drop again, I swear to God.” He raised his right hand and stood straight, blinking his reddened eyes. Huston noticed, however, that the woman still wore a look of suspicion.
“Fine,” he said quietly. His breath clouded before him as he spoke. “Suppose you also promise me not to go warn Gall and the others.”
The woman looked away. “All right, we promise. Only you can’t blame me for feeling the way I do. The kid with the star, if I’d had a gun, I’d have shot him.”
Huston jerked the door open. “That was Pink Fisher, my deputy. He was killed not a half hour ago.
Lil Carney’s mouth formed into a small sudden O. The closing door cut her off from Huston’s sight.
The snow came down faster now, a white curtain ripped to tatters by the wind. Fear hammered at Huston as he walked down the main street of Moon Hollow. Bart Gall and his cronies wouldn’t be able to hear his boots crunching in the fast-packing snow; not above the howl of the wind.