Starbuck made his way back into the rocks and looked toward the coulee. The dead outlaw still lay as he had fallen. There were no signs of the others. He turned as Dave Gilder moved in beside him.
“Think they’re still down there?”
For a reply Shawn pressed off two quick shots into the clearing. Instantly the outlaws returned a barrage of bullets that whined and thudded as they struck the boulders.
Gilder grinned wryly. “Reckon that’s as good an answer as a man could want.” He lay back, eyes on the bodies of Moody and Able Rome. “I wish’t we could drag them off there. Ain’t right, letting them lay.”
“Nothing we can do about it now.”
“I know that ... Sure too bad. Like you said, died for nothing.”
To our way of thinking, perhaps so, Shawn thought, but he was not so certain how Rome and Moody looked at it. But he didn’t feel like going into it with Gilder.
“Sure hate that about your brother. Wasn’t no reason why the marshal couldn’t’ve let you find out for sure whether he was down there before he started shooting. You think he’d a answered you, if he was one of them that’s left?”
“Hard to say,” Starbuck replied. “Pretty sure he would.”
Well off to the west and high in the heavens, two dark shapes were wheeling lazily, drifting closer ... Buzzards.
“Well, if he is, reckon there ain’t much chance of you ever seeing him alive again. Brandon’ll kill them both when he gets to them.”
Starbuck nodded. Ben would have answered his call, he was sure, unless he had turned his back irrevocably on the family. He reckoned he should have gone with Harry Brandon but if he had done so Gilder would be alone in the rocks and there was no assurance that he could be depended on.
Dave, however, seemed to have changed for the better. The coming to grips with the killers, the shooting, the deaths of Rome and Moody and the hard, thrusting tension that went with it all appeared to have had a salutary effect.
His features were not so haggard, the bleak desperation had left his eyes and a stability had come over him. Shawn glanced to the sky again. There were four buzzards now and they were much nearer. He jerked his thumb at the dark, broad-winged silhouettes. “They’re moving in.”
Gilder swore, raised his pistol and fired several times at the scavengers. The birds seemed not to notice.
“Just got to get them two off there,” Gilder said worriedly. “You think, if I was to get a rope, we might—”
“The way they’re laying there’s nothing we could throw a loop over.”
Dave swore. “Must be something we can do.” Starbuck loosened his collar. Heat was beginning to build in the rocks and the evidence of rain, where the sun could get to it, was vanishing. In among the trees and brush it was a different story; soft mud would still be underfoot and the foliage of the growth would be wet with the moisture that had fallen.
“We keep shooting at those buzzards we’ll hold them off for awhile,” he said, and then turning to the rocks, fired three more bullets into the coulee. As before, the response from the outlaws was immediate.
“How long you figure it’ll take Brandon to get down there?” Gilder asked.
“Be slow going, and he’ll have to circle wide, come in from the side. Thirty minutes, I’d say.”
“Ought to be about there, then.”
Shawn made no reply. He glanced once more at the soaring vultures. They were staying high, not following their usual pattern of gradual descent. It could mean they had spotted movement—possibly Brandon or the outlaws—and were holding off. At once he turned to the coulee, emptied his pistol into the small brush-bound area. Gilder added three more bullets and then sank back to watch Starbuck reload and fill his own weapon while the outlaws hammered at the rocks with their rifles.
“I’ve been wanting to thank you for last night,” he said after a time.
Shawn paused. “Forget it. Brandon was out of line.”
“I cussed you some, too, for doing it—got to tell you that because I sure wanted that drink. Then I was glad you done it ... I reckon you know I’ve got trouble with—with—”
“Whiskey,” Starbuck said flatly, bringing it out into the open where it belonged. “You’re not alone. Plenty others with the same problem.”
Gilder toyed with the empty brass cartridges he had removed from his pistol. “I reckon so. A man always feels like it’s only him having a bad time of it, though. It’s a regular sickness.”
“Same with everybody else that’s fighting it—and you’re the only doctor who can cure it.”
Dave shifted nervously, tossed the spent casings into the brush. “It’s not the first time I’ve been told that.”
“I know it’s easy for me to say it, but it’s the truth. You’re the only man alive who can make you lay off a bottle.”
Gilder swore, brushed at his lips as if the mere talking of it was arousing a thirst within him. “It ain’t that I haven’t tried—God knows that! Got off it a hundred times—more, but I always end up right back where I started. It cost me my wife, my boys—my home—and they meant plenty to me. You think I wouldn’t leave it alone so’s I could get them back, if I could?”
Starbuck considered the man quietly, knowing what he would say would be brutal and cut deep.
“Maybe, inside, you don’t want them back as much as you claim.”
Dave Gilder started visibly. “The devil—” he began and then fell silent. He rubbed at his mouth again, lowered his head. “I’d give anything if I could lick it, but it’s got such a hold on me I can’t do nothing. Man that ain’t been through it just plain don’t know what a hell it is.”
“Every man’s got some kind of a private hell. Whiskey’s not the only one.”
Starbuck half turned, threw two shots into the clearing. Rifles crackled as he came back around, swung his glance to the vultures. They were circling at a high level and there was an even dozen of them now. It must be Harry Brandon moving along the edge of the slope that was keeping them back ... The lawman should have reached the coulee by then, it seemed.
“What you said about me not wanting to quit drinking bad enough—I think I do, but maybe that’s it. Maybe I could want to more only I don’t realize it. How the hell’s a man know when he’s trying his best?”
“Something else that only a man can answer for himself ... Brandon ought to be close enough by now. Time we laid a barrage into that clearing, gave him some help. Do your aiming at what you can see—the marshal could be in that brush and we don’t want to hit him.”
Gilder checked the cylinder of his pistol and moved up beside Shawn in the rocks. They opened fire together, thoroughly lacing the small circle of ground with lead. Their shots were returned instantly and once more the canyons and slopes rocked with continuing echoes.
“If Brandon was there, that should’ve fixed it so’s he could move in,” Gilder said, thumbing fresh shells into his weapon.
Shawn agreed. “I expect we’ll be hearing him sing out pretty quick.”
“Drove them goddam buzzards off a mite, too.”
His own pistol again ready, Starbuck looked skyward. The vultures had withdrawn a considerable distance. That worry should end soon now. Brandon would signal and the outlaws would either be his captives or his victims and no longer a threat. Either way they could soon remove Rome and Moody from the plateau.
The minutes dragged on and the signal did not come. A quarter-hour passed. Starbuck and Gilder, holding their fire for fear of hitting the lawman, waited restlessly among the rocks. Once again the buzzards began to drift in. The quarter-hour became a full half.
Abruptly Shawn came to his feet. “Something’s gone wrong,” he said in a tight voice. “You keep watching—I’m going down there.”