The Bold Frontier

by John Jakes

  Huston pulled his woolen mittens from his pocket, stuck his hands into them for warmth. Soon he came to the alley just this side of the saloon. To the left in the alley’s black mouth he heard a stir of movement. Crouching low, he ducked past the window and into the lean-to where three horses were blowing out their breath.

  Huston stroked each one of the horses in turn, quieting them. The restless stamping diminished and he stole back to a window, squatting on his haunches and peering up over the sill.

  The three men seemed small, over there on the far side of the deserted saloon. Huston recognized Bart Gall, hatless, a thin smile on his lips, his pinched-together eyes shining like shoe buttons in the dim light. On the bar sat another lantern from the coach. Beside it Huston could see Carney’s bottle, almost empty now. Of the other two men, one was thick-chested, built like a bull through the shoulders. The second was scrawny and underfed-looking. Bart Gall reached out for the bottle, poured himself a shot. Their mouths moved in conversation but all Huston could hear was the wind.

  He pulled off his right mitten, dug some bullets out of his pocket and fed them one after another into the cylinder. Cautiously he rose to his feet. His heart thudded. He held on against the fear, beating it down, refusing to be taken over. Wild random thoughts darted through his mind. Run back to his horse. Head for Sierra … They rode fast, I lost them. Nobody would ever know.

  Very slowly, Huston tightened his hold on the Colt grip. Hesitating only an instant more, he dove forward at the window, rolling his shoulder to smash the glass. He fired a round as he fell through.

  He scrambled to his feet, Colt barrel swinging up on the three men who stood open-mouthed at the bar. “Don’t go for the irons,” Huston said. “I’ll shoot the first one who moves.”

  “And who might you be, pilgrim?” Bart Gall asked, tipping his hat back on his head in defiance of Huston’s words.

  “The name’s Huston. Sierra marshal. Throw your guns over here to me.”

  Not one of them moved. Even with the wind outside Huston could hear the tense rapid breathing of the bull-shouldered man.

  “Throw them down,” Huston repeated.

  Gall smiled. But behind his smile lay desperation, the same kind that had caused him to break out of prison. Huston marked him as one of those men who couldn’t stand to have the will of another imposed on him. Gall’s lips thinned out bitterly.

  “You heard what he said, Cody. Throw in the hog-legs.” These words to the bull-shouldered man, who grumbled something. “You too, Elwood,” Gall said to the other. Then he turned his back on Huston.

  Words growled up into the marshal’s throat and his finger tightened before he realized that it was a trick. In the split instant it took his eyes to flick back to Gody, the huge man had whipped out his gun and swung it sideways. The barrel crashed into the lantern, sent it spinning to the floor. Darkness closed in.

  Huston dodged to the right, away from the window, blasting out a shot. A voice shrilled in the dark. “Bart! I’m—” Then came a wild thumping of booted feet, the sound of a chair overturning and the flat thud of human flesh hitting the floor. The voice had been high and piping. Huston crossed off the man named Elwood.

  A fusillade of shots ripped toward Huston. Something tugged at his sleeve as he fired back at the flashes of red. But the killers were moving. Another volley slammed into the wall where he had stood a moment before. Huston turned and hurled himself out through the window, hearing more shots as he fell.

  He struck the snow and rolled. One of the horses bellowed in fright. Huston slapped a rump and pumped a shot at the sky to start them running.

  The horses bolted out of the alley, milling a moment at the sidewalk. Then a sharp whistle turned them to the left. Huston felt a raging frustration. Gall and Cody had evidently come out of the front door of the saloon and picked up their mounts.

  “All right,” Gall shouted from around the corner. The horses’ hoofs rattled, sweeping toward the alley mouth. Huston dodged around the lean-to and down the alley to the rear of the line of buildings, then cut left. He leaped into the intersecting alley just as a shot splintered the wood near his shoulder.

  He reloaded as he ran. The hoofs pounded after him in the snow-swept dark, relentless and ghostly. Once back on the main street he made a desperate run for the hotel, found the door and got inside just as Gall and Cody galloped out of the last alley in pursuit.

  It took him only an instant to get to the bar and blow out the brace of lanterns. The excited eyes of McNulty, the reddened ones of the woman Lil, all vanished as blackness claimed the room. “Get down!” Huston ordered. He heard them scramble, responding to the urgency of his tone.

  Hoofs thudded outside; guns exploded. More windows smashed and Lil Carney let out a startled cry. Huston rose to his feet and crossed to a street window, flattening himself against the wall, then peering out. The riders circled around and came galloping back.

  Huston made out four horses. They had his mount from the tree where he had left it tied. He snapped two shots through the broken pane, useless shots that found no target in the deceiving snow. More shots answered him. Within the room someone groaned hoarsely.

  “Pop!”

  Gall and Cody retreated to the far end of the street and didn’t return.

  Huston waited a couple of minutes. The snow fell like a white shroud over the street. Finally he put his gun away and turned toward the groaning man.

  Stumbling twice in the darkness, he found a small windowless room off the lobby. He carried Elihu Carney in there and set him in a chair. Then he helped Andy McNulty hobble in, found him a second chair and closed the door. On his orders, Lil Carney had brought one of the lanterns. Huston took a match in his numbed fingers and touched fire to the wick. A dim yellow glow threw their shadows on the walls.

  Elihu Carney sat slumped in the chair, face drained of color. A reddish stain was spreading on his soiled gray shirt front. He bit his lower lip. “Looks—looks like I’m cashed in for this game, don’t it?” He tried to smile; succeeded in wincing instead.

  Andy McNulty searched Huston’s face. “He’s hurt awful bad, Trow.”

  Lil Carney knelt down and pulled the old man’s shirt away. She gasped when she saw the gory wound. “Pop …” She buried her head on his chest for an instant.

  Then she rose, lifted her skirt and tore off a length of her petticoat. She pressed the cloth against the wound and held it there. Carney’s eyes closed and opened. Lil faced Huston.

  “What are you going to do about him, marshal?”

  “Do?” The question startled Huston. He’d been concentrating on the problem of Bart Gall and Cody, how to kill them. For he knew that it was no longer a question of taking them prisoner; he wouldn’t have a chance for that. He or they would die. “Do?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “Damn,” she said softly. One hand swept out to indicate her father. “I’m not just going to stand by and see Pop die. I’m going to get him to a doctor.”

  Huston shook his head slowly. “We can’t do it, Miss Carney. Not right now. Those men are desperate. They’d as soon shoot us as look at us. They’ve got my horse now, and you can’t make it to Sierra on foot. You’d freeze before you got half way there.”

  McNulty nodded, his injured leg stretched out stiffly before him. “Trow’s right. Nothin’ we can do but set a spell, and maybe do some tall hopin’.”

  “Then do something yourself!” Lil Carney exclaimed. “Get rid of them! By God, marshal, if you’re not man enough—”

  Hot anger washed over Huston. Before he knew it, his hand had whipped upward, ready to strike her. His hand trembled in the air a moment. Then, shaken, he lowered it.

  She swayed. He cursed himself for a fool; a fool who was letting the fear saddle him again, break him under its power.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. But it was a wasted effort and he knew it. If only the damned wind would stop howling. If only the storm would break … But it was many hours
until dawn.

  Lil Carney didn’t seem angry. Mostly she seemed hurt, as if a faint glimmer of faith, born in the promise he had given her, had suddenly been extinguished. She turned away from him and bent down over her father.

  He fiddled with his hat. “I’ll go out and see what I can do about getting a horse.”

  “Watch yourself, Trow,” McNulty murmured as he closed the door.

  Huston walked rapidly across the darkened lobby. He honestly didn’t know where to turn. The odds had piled up against him with frightening swiftness.

  He slid up beside the front door. The wind whistled through the shot-out panes, carrying puffs of snow with it. Huston eased his gun out, then risked a look.

  He saw no sign of the two men or the horses. Silence lay over the street, and a white blanket of snow. Carefully he pulled the door open and stepped out. There was an orange flash from the building directly across the street.

  He threw himself to the sidewalk as the slug smacked the wall over his head. He lay there, cheek pressed in the snow. He used his foot to feel around in back of him until he was able to hook his toe on the door frame. With effort he began to wriggle backwards along the sidewalk.

  When he had wormed his way inside so that only his shoulders and head stuck out, he folded his legs under him and came to his feet, firing a shot. Glass smashed across the street. Answering bullets whispered around him. He dodged back, the breath coming heavily in his chest.

  “Marshal!” Bart Gall’s voice—not exactly hateful, yet filled with the doggedness of a man fighting for his life. “Marshal, you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Huston shouted back. “What do you want?”

  “I’m not moving from here until I get you, marshal. You can’t stay there forever. You’ll get tired and go to sleep in the cold. Cody’s around back, so don’t try that way.” The last word was muffled by an explosion as Gall fired another shot. Huston hesitated, then drew away from the door.

  He made his way back to the windowless office. Andy McNulty glanced up eagerly when he entered. “Any luck?”

  Huston shook his head. “We’re boxed in. Cody’s got us sewed up in back—Gall’s right across the street.”

  “Then there’s no way out, is there?” McNulty said glumly.

  Lil Carney glared at Huston. Her father’s eyes were closed again. His breathing had shallowed and the red stain on his clothes had grown larger. “He’ll die if we stay here much longer, marshal. I’m not going to let him die. You’ve got to do something—”

  “I’ll do what I can!” Huston exploded. “Just leave me alone and let me work it out.” He jerked his hat down over his eyes, and left the room.

  His thoughts churned. The icy chill on his skin was matched by the chill that gnawed his gut. Gall would starve them, wait until drowsiness claimed them, and then it would be no trouble at all to put a bullet in each one’s brain as they lay in the icy stupor preceding death …

  Huston crouched down behind a window facing the street, thinking. Somewhere there had to be a key, a device to use …

  Suddenly he had a thought. Feeble to be sure; but he knew of nothing else.

  “Gall!” he shouted. “Bart Gall!”

  “Yes.”

  “Something you should know.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a posse forming in Sierra. I rode out ahead of them. They’ll be up here before daybreak. We can hold out that long, and when they get here, you’re all through.”

  Silence for a moment, punctuated by the howl of the wind down the mountain. “You’re lying,” Gall cried back, his voice distorted. “There’s no damn posse coming—you’re lying!”

  “Wait and see.”

  Gall yelled wordlessly, enraged, and pumped three shots at the hotel.

  Huston flattened himself on the floor, allowing himself a little grin. The echoes of the firing died. Huston crouched on his haunches, wishing he could light the cigar in his pocket.

  He watched the street. Give Gall enough time, an hour, two maybe, and he might get panicky and run. He wouldn’t dare wait and face a whole posse. It was a bluff, but if by some crazy chance it should happen to work—

  Huston didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until it was too late. He felt his Colt leave the holster and then the barrel jabbed hard into his back. “Stand still,” Lil Carney whispered. “Stand still or I’ll shoot you, marshal.”

  Desperation washed over Huston. He hadn’t figured on this, hadn’t even thought of it. He’d been a fool.

  Lil Carney jerked the front door open. “Gall! I’ve got a gun on the marshal.”

  “Who’s that?” Gall replied over the shriek of the storm.

  “Lil Carney. My father’s shot. I need a horse. I want to get Pop to a doctor in Sierra. I’ll trade you Huston for a horse.”

  “How do I know this ain’t a trick?”

  The gun jabbed deeper into Huston’s back. “Tell him.”

  “She’s got me, all right,” Huston called. He hoped that Gall’s natural suspicion would prevent him from even considering the bargain. But then he remembered his own words of a while ago. A posse on the way. Gall would be weighing Huston’s bluff against that of Lil Carney, with his life depending on the outcome.

  “Gall!” the woman called again. “If you come, bring the horse with you. You can be gone by the time I reach Sierra.” Bitterly, Huston admitted the girl had a shrewd head on her.

  “Gall!” once more, questioningly. The wind howled.

  “I’m comin’,” came the answer.

  3

  The Test

  Huston stood in the hotel doorway for several long minutes, his own pistol still pressed into his spine. He caught a flurry of movement in the street: Bart Gall slipping out of concealment in the store across the way and ghosting through the snow up toward the saloon. When Gall returned, he was leading one of the horses.

  He halted in the center of the street. “This is as far as I’m comin’,” he called. “Bring Huston out.”

  Huston’s stomach tightened. He felt calm; surprisingly so since he expected that death was only moments away …

  The woman interrupted his somber thoughts. “Look, marshal.” She seemed to be apologizing. “I can’t pretend I feel good about this, but—”

  “No sense explaining,” Huston broke in. “Gall’s waiting.”

  “You’ve got to let me say this first. Pop’s dying. I couldn’t stand by and let him die, I couldn’t—” She stopped. It was obvious from her choked speech that some realization of her guilt was beginning to break through the hard shell of practicality. Before she could speak again, Huston whirled and grabbed for his gun.

  Lil Carney gasped, struggling. Before Huston could get the Colt away from her, Bart Gall came charging across the porch. Hands seized Huston’s collar, tried to swing him around. With a savage slap, Huston knocked the Colt from the woman’s hand. Gall grunted, and Huston knew that only the darkness and the attendant confusion had saved him from a bullet …

  He whipped his arms out behind him. Bart Gall cursed. Huston lunged out of his coat and dove forward to where the gun had fallen. He seized it as it hit the floor, rolling his shoulder under and snapping a shot at the ceiling. Couldn’t risk killing the woman. The shot sent Gall dodging back out of the hotel.

  Huston scrambled to his feet. He kicked a table and some chairs out of the way, coming to a stop in the darkness just inside the rear door. The night air cut into his flesh now that he was without a coat. But he had to get out of the hotel, into the open …

  He threw the door open. The convict named Cody immediately blazed away, chipping splinters from the door’s frame while Huston pulled up a window and jumped through. Cody’s rifle banged again. Huston hit the snow and lay flat, squinting into the brush behind the line of buildings. He waited.

  From behind one of the big pine trees a shadowy figure hesitantly stepped forth. Huston brought his gun up, took careful aim and pressured the trigger.

 
The gun bucked in his hand, spitting red flame until the hammer clicked down and kept clicking. Huston was breathing harder. Cody was sprawled face down, not moving.

  Huston scrambled to his feet and started forward. Something heavy and hot caught him in the shoulder, hurling him forward. He turned as he fell, bringing the Colt up. The hammer clicked down.

  Huston pulled himself to his feet a second time. He stumbled back toward the buildings, aware that Bart Gall was coming rapidly toward him. Huston bent down and scrabbled in the snow until his hand closed on a small rock. He heaved it at the shadow-shape of Gall with all of his strength.

  Gall cried out, staggered, then dropped to his knees. Huston plunged down an alley, not looking back.

  He ran and kept running, out into the street again and down toward the saloon. His arm throbbed; felt wet. The howling wind muffled the sound of his feet. He reeled dizzily once, almost falling. The snow swirled around him, and the wind screamed banshee-sharp down off the mountain crags. Get away, get away, something cried inside him.

  He was dimly aware that the buildings had vanished; that he ran among the great black towers of the pines. His mind began to function a little more smoothly, catching hold of the wild fear; wrestling with it. He staggered under pine branches and leaned against the trunk, resting his cheek on the rough bark and sucking the night air in starved gulps. He felt flakes of snow cold on his tongue.

  Weak, he closed his eyes a moment. What kind of a nightmare was he living? Only hours before—this same evening, in fact—he had been eating a peaceful meal in the hotel. Then suddenly the world had been torn apart, becoming this nightmare of snow and spurting guns and killer shapes slipping through the gloom.

  He felt the gummy wetness of his left arm. He was bleeding, all right. And Elihu Carney was dying and Andy McNulty had a smashed leg and Lil Carney had turned on him. Bart Gall was still alive, unhurt, doggedly hunting him. He had a wild impulse to run again, keep running up into the mountains until he fell frozen in the snow, all terror and all cowardice wiped away by the healing nothingness of death …