Very early on what might well be the last day of his life, Sundance went to the livery stable and changed the water in his canteens. The town was still asleep as only a Mexican town can be in the hour before dawn. In the hayloft above the stables the stableman snored heavily. Sundance watered and grained the stallion, checked the supply of dried deer meat, and then his other gear, before he started back to the hotel. He had already seen to his weapons, all his weapons, but when he got back he inspected them again. Gray light showed from behind the high peaks of the Sierra; first light from the east always showed itself far up on the mountain. There was something about the high Sierra that fascinated him, as it has fascinated the Indians for centuries. For him, as for them, it wasn’t just a range of mountains. The Indians had a special feeling for the great mountain that he understood completely. Yes, he thought, it would end in the Sierra. Up there it would end for him or for Bannerman, or both. No matter if it ended for him too. Now his only purpose was make sure that Bannerman did no more harm in the world. There was no sense of nobility or self-sacrifice in his decision. At long last, after all the talk, it was something that had to be done, and he was the only man there to do it. If there were other men to do it—do it with finality—he would have stepped aside for he had much other work ahead of him, and he wanted to live as long as he could. But when he thought about it, it was the same work after all.
The mountain was where he would make his stand. In open country he wouldn’t have a chance, no matter how well or hard or cleverly he fought. The odds were too great for open country. Up on the mountain he would become the hunted, but that was his intention, his plan, the only plan he had. Loading huge .50 caliber shells into his pockets, he knew the heavy, long-range rifle would be his only chance to get out of this alive. They said the big sporting rifle could reach out and knock men down like the hand of God. Well, he didn’t know much about the hand of God, but he knew what the Remington could do. But there was no certainty in anything, even with the .50. It wasn’t likely that anyone in Bannerman’s party possessed such a rifle, but you never knew.
He waited until the cantina down the street opened, then he ate a big breakfast he didn’t have much appetite for. It was just part of the preparation for the fight ahead. The day could be a long one, and there could be more than one day. It was eight o’clock when he got back to the hotel. The owner’s son, Anselmo, the boy who guarded his weapons, was filling coal oil lamps. He smiled quickly when Sundance came in.
‘I would like you to do something for me,’ Sundance said. ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I will tell you there is no danger in this for you.’
The boy, who wanted to be a soldier instead of a hotel-keeper’s son, replied in Spanish. ‘I do not care about danger. Tell me what you want.’
Sundance asked the boy if he knew the gunman they called Cajun. ‘A tall, thin man, an American. He works for Bannerman.’
The boy nodded. ‘A bad man, I can tell. Yes, I know him, know who he is.’
‘I want you to give him a message from me,’ Sundance said. ‘You will have to ride out to the Bannerman hacienda to do it. Tell him I will meet him here—alone—at noon. In the street, here at noon. That’s all you have to say. You say in the plaza.’
‘I will tell him he is a coward if he does not come,’ the boy said fiercely.
‘I will never speak to you again if you say that,’ Sundance said. ‘You will no longer be my friend, do you understand? Swear you will just deliver the message.’
‘All right, Señor Sundance.’ The boy was reluctant. ‘I swear.’
Sundance gave the boy ten silver dollars and told him to get going. ‘Alone, at noon,’ he repeated. ‘In the plaza.’
He had picked up the challenge and he knew Cajun wouldn’t come alone. They would all come, and Bannerman would come too. Sundance was alone, and they were many, so they would all come. As he always did when there was no turning back, he felt a great calmness. He moved with the deliberation of a man who knew what he was doing. But it wasn’t the insolent calm of the killer who pushed a fight for the sake, even the love, of killing. For Sundance it was the knowledge that there was no other way.
As he walked to the stable to get his horse, once again he saw Luis Montoya watching him from the door of the calabozo. He hoped the Chief of Police would remain neutral, because he did not want to kill him too.
He rode out of town to where the first climb to the mountain began. It was just after nine o’clock now, and if he had judged it right the boy would be close to the Bannerman ranch. It was a short ride to the boundary of the big ranch. The boy had left in a hurry. He climbed a long ridge, then got onto the old trail that wound up the steep side of the mountain. He had ridden this way days before and had already picked the place he would shoot from. At that time he had hoped it would not come to shooting, now it had.
When at last he was out of sight of anyone watching from below, he dismounted and spoke a few quiet words to the stallion. There was no need to tether the animal; he never spooked no matter how fierce the fighting grew. Carrying the Remington, Sundance edged back the way he had come, staying low all the time, and then in minutes he could see down into the town. From where he was the plaza was more than six hundred yards away. Still too far. A shot was possible even at that distance, but if he missed there wouldn’t be a chance to get another one. It had to be closer.
On his belly, with the Remington cradled across his arms, he inched down through wiry grass. Now and then he stopped, then went on again. A centipede raised itself threateningly only inches from his face. A sting from the poisonous insect could throw him into convulsions, but he was too close to raise himself up without the risk of being seen. His mouth was dry but he managed to spit at the centipede and it skittered off into the dry grass. For a long moment he lay still with sweat running down his face. Then he began to crawl again.
A little more than five hundred yards was as close as he could get to the plaza, because now the grassy slope broke suddenly and dropped down about twenty feet. It would have to be here. Pushing the big rifle out between two small rocks, he sighted in on the center of the plaza, dusty and sun bright far below him, with people moving slowly in the heat or sitting in the shade in front of the stores and cantinas. The cathedral threw a long shadow to one side of the plaza. When he moved the sights into the shadow it wasn’t so easy to see. He could see after his eyes became accustomed to the shadow of the cathedral, but it couldn’t be done fast.
While he waited the town went about its business. He couldn’t see the calabozo because that was on the street where the stable was. The street was narrow and the houses on the east side of it were higher than those on the other side. Smoke from cook fires went up straight from the chimneys of the houses, then broke into spirals, and faded away. It was hot and dry up on the slope and he sweated while he waited.
He hoped but didn’t expect to see Bannerman walk or ride into the plaza with Cajun. Bannerman was too smart for that—not scared, but too smart. Because that wasn’t how you stayed alive, not why you paid other men to take your risks for you. As he had told poor dead Jorge—and it seemed so long ago—it wasn’t true that bad men were cowards and good men were brave. What a good man like Jorge didn’t know was that bad men were so often recklessly brave. Whether they knew it or not, they longed for death, and put themselves in its way by doing the things they did. Yet they struggled to stay alive so they could risk death again and defy it again.
Sundance, watching the town, wondered how long he would have to wait. He knew that Cajun would come alone if he had too; he would probably prefer to come alone. A killer like Cajun would always be looking for a man who could beat him, or try to, or die trying. For killers it was the same thing or, if not the same, much the same. You killed or you got killed. With real killers there was nothing personal in either. Sundance—no killer—understood.
He guessed it was after ten o’clock when he saw the boy coming back to town on the southeast road. It had to be the boy, raising the cloud of dust he was. He could see the boy when he was a fair ways out, and then he couldn’t see him because, up high though he was, the tall campanile of the cathedral blocked out the view when he got closer. In five minutes the boy galloped around the side of the cathedral, and Sundance could see him clearly now, bareback on his pony.
He watched while people resting or sleeping in the shade or moving across the sun-bright plaza stopped what they were doing and gaped after the boy as he raised dust spurring across the plaza, then out of sight again. Though the gawkers didn’t lose interest at once, they did after a while. The plaza resumed its usual morning quiet.
Nothing disturbed the plaza very much. Why should it? It was scarred by musket balls and bullet holes. Hundreds of men had been shot against its adobe walls, and even the ugly cathedral itself had been damaged by cannon fire. The cathedral stood. Tyrants and liberators, not much difference between them, had marched or straggled past it with their armies of accepting Indians and their foreign mercenaries. Whether the tyrants or the liberators had lost or won, the life of Las Piedras had remained, as it had for centuries, and as it would again. It would remain the same after all who were there now were dead, and their descendants were dead, and when even the oldest man now alive was dead—his flesh dust and his bones dry as sticks.
Then he saw them coming from a long way out. A dust cloud raised by many men and horses on the southwest road. After a while the dust settled as they slowed down to a walk when they got closer to town. He waited and let them come, the Remington at the ready, the big shell ready to be fired.
Now they were out of sight, as the boy had been, shielded by the mass of the cathedral. Sundance smiled. They were coming early to the party, getting ready for when he walked into the plaza at noon. Bannerman was thinking that he would play fair as Bannerman himself had played fair with no one.
They would be dismounted about this time and, with their horses tied on the far side of the cathedral, closing in from both sides. Suddenly the plaza was empty except for a dog that ran about in the center of it. The cathedral doors closed with a boom that he could hear up on the hill. Las Piedras looked like a town emptied by a plague or a gold rush. Five minutes passed, and then ten. They would have taken up their positions by now, after coming through the alleys and side streets. Nothing stirred down there in the town, and even the dog had run away.
Sundance squinted up at the sun, now almost directly overhead. He put the sights of the rifle on the far side of the plaza, and waited. He knew it was time when he saw a man scrambling across the roof of a cantina. It wasn’t Cajun so he didn’t try for a shot. Cajun was a man to be reckoned with; the odds would get a little better when the skinny gunman was dead.
Cajun walked into the plaza, a tall dark figure outlined in the glare of the sun. He walked into the shadow of the cathedral, and Sundance held his fire. Cajun walked out of the shadow, but Sundance wouldn’t try for a shot until the target had stopped moving. Two more ambushers were up on a roof; the others would be in alleys and doorways, behind wagons. After he killed Cajun he would shoot at the men on the roofs. One of the men looked like an Apache, and he would be the second to die.
Sundance moved the rifle as Cajun walked with his measured gunman’s tread. Cajun had been through this many times, but this would be his last walk in the sun. Cajun stopped walking and turned his head slowly. Sundance could hear his voice. Cajun was saying something, but the words were lost in the distance. Sundance didn’t have to hear the words—Cajun was telling him to come out and be killed. Cajun was still talking, yelling now, as Sundance raised the big rifle and put the sights exactly where he wanted them to be. A little lower to allow for the extra hundred yards. Now!
The rifle boomed and far below Cajun was thrown back ten feet. The .50 caliber bullet struck him and lifted him and dropped him in the dust. Echoes from the shot were still rolling when Sundance swung the rifle and blew the Apache off the roof. The two other men scrambled for safety as Sundance loaded another shell. One of the men got off the roof without being killed. The other man got the bullet low in the back and he went off the roof like a man trying to fly. That was it, Sundance knew. Three down—and how many others to go?
It was time to head out. If he stayed he could pin them down for a while. Later they would fan out and come at him from both sides of the slope. Even then he could hold them, but sooner or later one or more of them would climb up high behind him. Bannerman would send his best marksman up behind him. After that he wouldn’t have a chance.
Answering fire came from the town as he jumped to his feet and ran up the slope. The fire from the town was heavy, but the range was too great. He ran over the top of the slope, crashed through brush and called to his horse. The fire from the town continued, but it sounded far away now, as if it had nothing to do with him.
Protected by the first shoulder of the mountain, he mounted up. ‘Start climbing, boy,’ he told the stallion. The shooting began to die away except for an occasional shot. Then it stopped.
The trail climbed straight up until it crossed a split in a ridge. It had never been a wagon road, just a narrow trail for mules and horses, and there were no signs of recent use. The Indians had been driven out of the Sierra, and the only men there now were gold prospectors and hunters, but they were mostly on the far side of the range, on the Chihuahua slopes.
The trail went downhill for about half a mile, then began to climb again, all the time snaking its way up and into the razorback ridges that ran away into the distance. Many miles away the great peaks jutted up against the harsh blue of the sky. As he traveled, the old trail began to crumble away. It branched off in several places; the main trail itself became faint. It was hot and Sundance stopped to drink. Then he went on again.
It wasn’t time to make a stand against them. At the point he was now there was plenty of cover, but they would have cover too. He wondered how long it would be before they started up the mountain. Not long, he thought; Bannerman would want to finish this. Unless he had figured wrong, that was what Bannerman would decide. Sundance was satisfied: so far it had been a good day’s work: three men dead, one of them Cajun.
Unless he was wrong, Bannerman would have to take command of his little army. Sundance wondered how many men Bannerman had. He guessed ten or twelve.
Now he was riding up through the start of an oak forest, and the trees, twisted and gray, almost like stone, looked as if they had been rooted on the side of the mountain for a thousand years. Under the trees the ground was spongy and the stallion’s hoofs made hardly a sound. It was very quiet.
Sundance was looking for the stream he had watered the horse at about a week before. On the far side of the stream there was a long bare slope that climbed up into a line of rocks. The stream was fast and deep, the rocks in it were jagged. At that point, the place he had stopped, there was only one way across the stream, which came tumbling down from the heights in a white-frothing torrent.
He knew he could lie there at the top of the slope and kill them as they came. That could last for a while, but then he would have to head out again. There was no position secure enough that it couldn’t be taken from the rear. Even with a cliff at his back they could come at him with ropes.
Leading the stallion across the stream at the shallowest point, he guessed he had about an hour’s start on them. First, they would continue to throw bullets at the first slope. That would go on until they decided he had gone. But they’d be cautious starting up from the town. They had seen what the .50 caliber could do, and had done, and so they wouldn’t be any braver than they had to be. The Remington was a terrible weapon to go up against. It was the range that awed and frightened men who faced it. Some of Bannerman’s men might even want to turn back, or quit, but Sundance knew he would drive them on with threats and bribes. They understood both, and so they would go on.
Without fear, Sundance knew what would happen to him if he fell into Bannerman’s hands. His death would be at least as horrible as Silvestra’s and Jorge’s. If it were possible, Bannerman would make it worse. So he would save a bullet, and if there were no bullets he would use the knife.
Across the stream now, he led the stallion up the crumbling slope and through a gap in the rocks. There was a step in the side of the mountain, then it went up again. He lay on his belly with the Remington pushed out through the rocks in front of him. It was a good place, as good as he had come to since he killed Cajun. Below him the stream foamed over the sharp rocks, a natural defense that Bannerman’s men would have to break through before they could attack him at the top of the slope.
He could shoot them as they came across the stream, or as they tried to get across it. If some of them got across they would still have the slope to climb. He laid the Winchester .44-40 beside the Remington. The .50 caliber was fine for distance shooting, but it loaded only one shell at a time. For fast firing at a bunch of men coming at him at one time, the Winchester was the right gun.
He lay very still in the sunshine and listened to a bird singing on a branch. The bird and the rushing water below were the only sounds. There was no breeze, and it was very still on the side of the mountain. About half a mile up the first growth of pine began, and the trees carpeted the whole side of the mountain, green and dense. The smell of the pines was heavy in the sunwashed air. An hour later he heard them coming.
At first the sounds were very faint, though he guessed they were close enough but still cautious. The bird stopped singing and flew away before he heard the first sounds down on the trail. It could be anything, the fall of a rotting branch or a dislodged rock rolling in the shale, and so he listened and waited. Then he heard the scrape of iron shod hoofs on rock and gravel, and after that the muted voices of men. They kept coming but stopped in the cover of the trees about a hundred yards from the stream. They were in deep shade so Sundance held his fire. He kept his head down and waited for them to make the first crossing. One thing was sure, they wouldn’t all try it together. It was very quiet except for the sound of the rushing water.
Under the trees, some of them would be sweating, knowing what they might have to face in a few minutes. Sundance knew what it was like to go up against a hidden gun. You walked out into the open, or you ran, not knowing if the next moment would bring a bullet crashing through your skull. Through the skull wasn’t so bad, they said. Sundance smiled. Men who said that had never taken a bullet anywhere. A bullet, was a bullet. It was funny, he thought, that some men have a fear of getting a bullet in certain parts of the body, and they didn’t always have the cojones in mind. Sundance had known a man who was deathly afraid of being shot in the nose. It was something he could not explain, but it bothered him just the same.
They would be coming out in a moment. They had to cross the stream. It was either that or turn back. Bannerman would never do that as long as he had men to do his bidding. Life was cheap to Bannerman but, like all such men, he held his own life very dear. Sundance knew that some of Bannerman’s bravos were arguing that they ought to look for another crossing, upstream or down. That wouldn’t sit well with the ex-Confederate brigadier. And it was always possible that Bannerman wasn’t even there …