He came clean awake, totally aware of where he was and what situation he was in, but he had forgotten the girl till he heard her whisper: “Listen.” He lifted his head from the saddle and listened. When he heard the sounds from below, he thought: My God, what’s gotten into me? I slept through a racket like that.
A party of horsemen was passing along the trail below the bench. It was five hundred feet below their position at the base of a cliff that high, but the sound carried clearly up to them on the clear, quiet night air. He could hear the distinct sound of iron shoes striking rock and the more muted sound of bridle chains. Once he heard a human voice.
In the darkness, he reached for his rifle and found it. He knew with startling clarity that, if it was Southern below them, the posse could be on them by dawn.
“Wake the others as quiet as you know how,” he told the girl. He was pulling on his boots.
“What will we do?” Pilar asked.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said, and mentally retraced their steps of the day before. He knew that he was automatically searching for a place where the posse could be stopped. “Tell them to saddle up and prepare to move. Make it quick now. Every minute can count from here on.”
She knew urgency when she heard it; but she took a moment to kiss him quickly. He liked that. It was good to know a woman who got her priorities right. He slapped her bottom and told her she was a good girl. She held on tight to his hand briefly and said: “Be careful, my heart.” That sounded just right in Spanish. Then she was gone and he heard her waking Ignacio who was a dozen paces away. Boots on, he shrugged himself into his coat, strapped on his gun and checked that he had shells in his pockets. He found his rope and headed for the animals. Manuel was on guard there, asleep. McAllister woke him and told him they were moving. The Mexican started talking, but McAllister told him to shut his mouth, the posse was almost on top of them. Manuel was suddenly all business.
McAllister found his horse with some difficulty in the dim starlight and snubbed a rope on him. Within minutes he had the animal back in camp and was getting his saddle and gear aboard.
Charlie Arbiter came rushing up, all alarm. McAllister tried to calm him. “Charlie, you an’ the others push ahead. Everythin’ rests with speed now. I’m goin’ back to perform a few delayin’ tactics.”
“That’s hellish risky, boy.”
“That’s what I’m bein’ paid for, Charlie. Remember?”
“Aw, hell, son, I didn’t mean for you to get yourself killed dead.”
“I don’t mean for me to either, Charlie. Now, git.”
He was up in the saddle with the others bustling around him, men torn between haste and need for silence. A burro started braying and somebody cursed it beautifully in Spanish. The girl was beside his horse, a hand on his knee.
“Did I hear you tell Charlie you were going back there?”
“Yep.”
“You must be crazy. At least take Clegg with you.”
“He’s the last man I want, honey. You just watch that boy.”
“McAllister, don’t do it. Please.”
Why did a woman always want you to be a hero and never want you to take risks?
“Pilar,” he said in English, “I’ve done this a good many times before an’ I’m still alive an’ kicking.”
What she wanted to tell him was something that would not sound right in English. In her own language, she said: “I shall not live until you return to me.” He bent, kissed her and kicked the horse into action.
He rode as fast as was safe in the dark, down the bench to the place where they had entered it. He dismounted to remove the brush, then tied the horse among the rocks and brush there. The chore he had to do was best done afoot. If he was where horses could not go, he stood a better chance.
He walked about a mile until he came to a small V-shaped valley, almost small enough to be called a gully. The trail along which the posse would have to come was on the left-hand arm of the V. It climbed steeply. He went down into the depth of the V and climbed fast until he was high on the right-hand arm of the V. He knew Southern could not reach the spot until after daylight. If McAllister could catch the riders halfway up that steep and narrow trail, they would be entirely at his mercy.
He made himself comfortable, took out his ancient pipe, filled it with foul, black tobacco (a pigtail which he had bought from a sailor at Galveston) and fit up. He puffed away with entire satisfaction. The smoke soothed him and he allowed himself to half-doze, a condition which allowed him to rest with his eyes open.
Thus he watched the dawn come up.
~*~
An hour later, he wished he’d had breakfast and he thought wistfully of a cup of piping hot coffee. Instead he had to content himself with a few cuts of jerky from his pocket where it lay along with his ammunition.
An hour later still, he began to think that he had made the biggest mistake of his career, because nobody appeared on the narrow trail. The awful thought that somehow that Mohave of Southern’s knew some secret way of getting ahead of Charlie’s party brought a first flutter of panic with it.
Then the young sun touched the barrel of a rifle and another and another. The horsemen came silently on to the trail at a distance of about a mile. Small creeping figures which looked no larger than ants. He moved back into the rocks. He started to feel better. For a moment, he had imagined the girl under fire and he had not liked the thought at all.
As he stared at the tiny, creeping figures, it seemed impossible that they represented men who could love and hate, who could ride down on a party of Mexicans and wipe them out for a heap of gold. Because that was what he thought was in Southern’s mind. The chain of events which had led to this moment had to add up to just that. There could be no other explanation. Now this moment had come, now that he had all those men in his sights and under his hand, giving him the power of life and death, he weighed the several futures that lay awaiting him. If there were Crewsville men back there he had known for a good many years and he killed just one of them, maybe he would hang and deserve to hang. Maybe there were men there who had been talked into catching a hardened criminal. Two hardened criminals. At the same time they could be a part of this whole bad deal. Charlie Arbiter, Jack Clegg, maybe more could be in cahoots with the sheriff. Maybe even the girl.
Play it alone, McAllister, he told himself. Alone you came into the world, so you might as well play it through to the end alone. What the hell difference did it make? Put the chance of a rope aside. Sit alone for a moment with your own conscience. That was all that mattered when you got down to it.
Now he could make out some details of the horses and riders. The Indian was out in front, dismounting now because the trail had become so perilous. It was too steep and too narrow. He could feel the man’s caution. He reckoned some of the possemen behind him were feeling even more cautious.
He sighted ahead of the Indian. It was a long shot, but not a difficult one to a man like McAllister who enjoyed the challenge of a greater range. It was the same when he handled a pistol. He might not be a showy gun handler, but he could hit almost anything he wanted at a hundred paces. He smiled to himself with grim amusement when he remembered the gunmen who had expected him to come within a third of that distance for a lethal shot. It helped a lot to know your guns, of course. And this old Henry had been with him a good many years. The same as the old Remington revolver he wore, it was like an extension of himself.
He fired and at once levered a new round into the breech.
His quick glance touched the Indian and darted to the rearmost man of the file.
The Indian had halted and stood staring across the valley. No doubt he had spotted the drifting rifle smoke. The whole file came to a halt. He could feel the nervousness of the men as they held their animals as still as they could on the narrow trail. The Indian’s horse, nearest to where the bullet had struck rock, was spooking. The Indian held its bridle. McAllister could almost hear the man’s voice as he tried to calm it.
While they still stayed where they were, McAllister quickly shifted his position. He did not envy any of those men. They would not be able to turn and go back. Pretty soon he would have them too scared to go forward.
When he took up his new position, he could see that the Indian was still having trouble with his horse. He could also see that men were pulling their rifles from scabbards. He fired again, this time aiming behind the last man. This was an even longer shot, so, for safety’s sake, he gave the target a wider margin. He saw the last man jump as he fired. His horse was kicking with both hind legs. There was panic in every line of the man’s body.
Then somebody over there shouted. His voice was shrill with alarm.
McAllister spotted him. The second man from the front. That was Southern. McAllister fired a third shot. This time, he put it close over the sheriff’s head. He watched the man freeze. The Indian’s horse was fighting to free its head. In despair, the man released it. It started to back and ran its rump into Southern who pressed himself back hard against the cliff face.
Now, thought McAllister, we are beginning to get somewhere.
Southern began to scream something incomprehensible to McAllister at the top of his voice.
McAllister saw the smoke and heard the impact of the bullets before he heard their reports. He got his head down and crawled on his belly to a new position. The firing stopped.
When he looked again, the Indian had one of his lines in his hand and was trying to pull the animal forward. At first the animal resisted, then suddenly changed its mind and consented to follow.
There was nothing McAllister hated more than having to shoot a horse. He had had too many good ones in his life.
He swore a little to himself and aimed with enormous care. He knew that he was asking too much of himself. Just the same, he had to try. It was better than shooting men.
He fired.
He knew he had hit the animal in the rump. He hoped he had done no more than crease it.
The horse erupted. It seemed to rear and to throw itself against the face of the cliff. The next moment its hind legs went over the edge. Its thin shriek of terror reached McAllister and for a moment it appeared to clutch at the ledge with its forefeet. Then, with a sickening abruptness, it seemed to pitch far out into space. It hit the precipitous slope a hundred feet below and bounced as it went on to the base of the V.
The effect on the others was electric. Automatically they dropped their horses’ lines as if they were too hot to handle. They crouched back against the cliff as if they feared they too would go over the edge. The man at the rear of the file abandoned his horse and ran back down the narrow trail, his left hand touching the rock as he went. He leaned away fearfully from the chasm.
McAllister levered the Henry.
Southern was screaming an order again. He had his rifle up and was shooting.
McAllister ducked down and shifted his position again. When he took another look from his new position, Southern was still firing. McAllister put a shot between him and the Indian. Southern lay down against the rock wall. The Indian started running forward.
“That,” said McAllister out loud, “is something we cannot have.”
He placed a shot in front of the running man, but he ran on. McAllister thought: We don’t want that son-of-a-bitch reading sign even on foot.
Now he had to shoot with the greatest care. He could not afford many misses or the man would reach cover. His grim humor came into play again. The further the man ran, the further he would have to crawl back.
He fired.
The man ran on.
McAllister ripped off some rich profanity and jacked a new round into the breech. The second shot was made faster, but was none the worse for that. The Indian went down. In fact, he nearly went over the edge, but managed to save himself.
Now that the first hit of the fight had been made, the posse seemed to really get it into its corporate head that if it tried to advance, it would be shot. They started to abandon their horses and to start back. McAllister laid a shot near Southern. The man sprang to his feet and started back along the ledge as fast as he dared. The tracker was yelling that he was hit bad and somebody would have to help him. For all the attention the others paid him, they might have been deaf. It did not take the wounded man long to realize that he did not have many friends in the posse. He started crawling, dragging his left leg painfully.
McAllister thought: Poor bastard. All he'll get in return is a few dollars and a bottle of whiskey.
He fired a couple more shots to keep them moving, then he decided there was little more he could do there. So he crawled away until he was clear of the valley, rose to his feet and broke into a run.
As he mounted his horse, he wondered how long the posse would have enough scare in them to shrink from the idea of following. One thing he was sure of— that tracker was out of the game for a while.