Out on the prairie, Carmody rode easy, making good time without pushing his mount too hard. If nothing else happened to slow him down it would take four, maybe five days to reach the town of Grady. There was no point in traveling hell for leather all the way. He wasn’t even sure the rest of the Greenwood bunch would be in Grady when he got there.
There was hill country up ahead. Twenty miles on the other side of that there was flatland again. That was how the country lay, the best he remembered.
Riding the low country was bad for a man trying to catching up with somebody without them knowing it. They could spot you miles off. The good side of it was they didn’t find it so easy to set up an ambush.
The way things had happened since Ringgold, there was more than a fair chance Luke and his boys didn’t know he was dogging their trail. There was no way to be sure the half-breed hadn’t sent a fast rider across country to warn the outlaw. The regular trail wound around a lot. An Indian on a fast pony could be miles ahead of him by now. It was something to think about.
It was getting close to nightfall when the trail began to climb. Carmody followed it up into the hills. The trail narrowed as the low hills scattered with rocks and bushes closed in on both sides. It was rough, and from the looks of it not many riders passed this way. Carmody walked the horse, letting it set its own pace, but his battered body cried out with pain every time the horse’s feet slipped on a rock. He kept going.
It was dark now and he kept moving. He was tired and sore. The thought of heating a can of beans over a fire was mighty tempting. A long drink and a longer sleep in his blankets would be even better.
Carmody cursed and took a short drink without slowing his mount. Sometimes a long drink put fire in his belly when he was tired out. Other times when he was riding a mean trail it made him not give a hang about anything. That was bad. He cursed again and put the bottle away.
There was no moon yet and the hills crowding down from both sides darkened the trail even more. When the horse stumbled and nearly fell, he climbed down and walked on ahead, holding the reins. It was a hard trail, any way you looked at it. It was rough, traveling a bad trail at night. It was just a little better than riding it by day, when a would-be bushwhacker had good light to shoot by and all the advantages. The slopes looking down on the trail were jumbled with big rocks and tangled with thorn bushes. By day a dry-gulcher would have to be half-blind and fully drunk to miss what he was shooting at.
Something moved on the right slope and Carmody’s gun came out, the hammer cocked. The dry click of the hammer going back seemed to make a lot of noise in the dark silence. There was another scraping noise and the thorn bushes rattled. Carmody waited, listening, crouched down.
It was moving slowly, whatever it was. Probably it was some night-hunting animal. Or it could be somebody dragging a piece of deadwood on a long rope. It was exactly the kind of trick an old bushwhacker like Luke Greenwood would use. There were only four of them left and maybe they weren’t all together. Or maybe they had heard about Carmody’s gun and wanted to make it easy.
Now it was moving down the slope, coming his way. Carmody relaxed and put away his gun when he heard the funny snuffling sound. Most Indians and some white men could do a take-off on a coyote or an owl. Nothing but a night-prowling badger would make a sound like that.
Carmody moved on. The moon was trying to break loose from behind the black, rolling clouds. He hoped it would come out just enough to make traveling easier. He didn’t want to become a slow-moving target, with the moon lighting every step of the way.
At the rate he was going, it would be close to first light when he got clear of the hills. He meant to be down out of those hills come morning, if he had to leg it all the way. It might be all for nothing, but there was no way of telling that now.
The clouds cleared suddenly and the moon lit up the hills. After the darkness it was so bright on the trail that Carmody felt he was standing in front of the headlight of a locomotive. He decided to keep traveling for a while, moon or no moon.
A mile up ahead the hills sloped away sharply and the trail dipped into a long shallow basin, floored with sand and grown over with thorn bushes. It was about five hundred yards to the other end, where the hills closed in and the trail got narrow and rocky again.
Keeping a short rein on the horse, Carmody started down into the basin. The moonlight dimmed some and a long way over in the shadows there was a wild squawk and a loud flutter of wings as a bobcat went after the eggs of a ground-nesting bird.
A hundred yards past that there was no noise except for the crickets. Then the crickets stopped too and the oily black clouds rolled over the moon. Carmody got down and waited for the crickets to start up again. He could barely see the dull shine of the shotgun in his hand.
The shotgun felt solid and heavy. The horse whinnied when Carmody turned him close. Carmody had to shake his arms at the animal to make it move. But it stayed on the trail, kept there by the thorn bushes.
Carmody followed the animal at some distance until the thorn bushes thinned out. The horse kept moving while Carmody edged off the trail. He gritted his teeth as the bushes tore at him. The noise of the horse covered the sound of the bushes scraping.
The horse stopped and whinnied again. It started moving again, slow and confused. Ten feet off the trail Carmody followed in near darkness, parting the bushes with the twin barrels of the scattergun. There was no time to listen for any more sounds. Slowed down the way he was, the horse was starting to get away from him. It would be hell to be stuck out there in the hills just because a lot of crickets decided to spend a quiet night for a change.
Four guns flashed and blasted in the darkness. The horse screamed and Carmody couldn’t tell if it was hit or not. He couldn’t even tell if the horse was down or running. They were firing fast with Winchesters, levering and shooting as fast as they could load and eject the shells. The flashes split the darkness and the explosions ran together like a drum roll.
Carmody yelled like a man hit bad. The fire slackened and he could hear the frightened horse running, then turning and running back the other way. There was more shooting. The two shooters on Carmody’s side of the trail were close enough. Carmody moved up closer.
One of the bullets hit the horse and it went down kicking and screaming. Carmody didn’t like to hear his horse dying like that. The sons of bitches sure as hell wanted to make a good job of it. They shot some more. By then he was nearly close enough.
One of the bushwhackers on his side called out. Carmody didn’t know which of the Greenwoods the voice belonged to. “Damn, I think we got him, Green.”
“That’s right,” a voice from the other side chimed in.
Big Chihuahua spurs jingled in the darkness, but not close.
Luke Greenwood hissed, “Keep quiet, goddam. Listen.”
Carmody looked up at the night sky. It was darker than before and not about to break. He heard the shooter nearest to him cursing the thorns. Carmody stood up and loosed one barrel in the direction of the noise. The heavy cartridge exploded like a small cannon. The noise rolled and echoed far back in the hills. The bushwhacker screamed. He screamed something about his face.
He screamed and started to run. The other man close to Carmody shot first. He shot so fast he almost got off a second shot before Carmody blasted him with the second barrel. Carmody heard Luke Greenwood yelling. The man Carmody blasted, the second man, died without a sound. The first dead man wouldn’t lie down. He ran and he fell and he got up again. Taking no chances in the dark, Luke and the other bushwhackers tore him to pieces with bullets.
Suddenly it was quiet. Flat on his belly in the sand, Carmody put two new loads in the shotgun. Two more men down and two to go. He pried one of the thick cartridges loose from the shotgun belt and heaved it into the darkness. It rattled through the branches of a thorn brush and two rifle bullets tore after it.
Carmody stood up and both barrels of the scattergun boomed. A rifle cracked twice and Carmody felt the breeze of the passing bullets in his face. He reloaded the scattergun and rolled over fast as he snapped the breech shut Nobody fired at him this time.
“You all right, Linsky?” Luke Greenwood called out.
Carmody knew it would not do any good to shoot now. Greenwood would be well out of sight.
“Sure, Green,” Linsky yelled back. “Never touched me.”
“Good boy,” Greenwood told him.
Carmody crawled closer to the trail, then stayed where he was. He looked up to see what the moon was about to do. It wasn’t doing anything. The basin was still dark.
“Hey, Carmody,” Luke Greenwood shouted.
“I hear you, Luke,” Carmody answered.
“Your name’s Carmody, haw?” Greenwood yelled.
“That’s it, Luke,” Carmody yelled back. Crawling, he moved away from where he was. He wanted Greenwood to know who was lying out there in the dark, waiting to kill him. He didn’t figure to tell old Luke anything more than that.
Luke Greenwood started to laugh. He was crazy all right, the way he laughed. He sounded like he was having one hell of a good time. Carmody knew Greenwood wouldn’t laugh like that if he didn’t think he was out of effective range of the scattergun. Carmody hoped to do something about the range. It would take some doing.
“Can’t take a joke, can you, Carmody?” Greenwood yelled.
Greenwood didn’t have to yell. Carmody listened for sounds of the other man, Linsky, crawling. There weren’t any. But that’s what it had to be. It was the oldest trick in the bushwhacker’s manual. It was one way to bring him in close.
Carmody didn’t answer Greenwood. Greenwood yelled, “Can’t take a joke, so you come after me like a mad dog. Listen, Carmody, whoever you are, there’s no call for us to be a-fighting this way. Why don’t you join up with me and we split this territory wide open. Split it right down the middle. Share and share alike is what I always say.
Carmody still couldn’t hear the other man.
Hidden by the darkness, Greenwood shouted, “Why don’t you say something, you yellow livered son of a bitch?”
Even with all the yelling, Carmody heard the thorn bushes move.
Greenwood heard it too, “No offense, Carmody,” he called out. “Calling you a yellow son of a bitch like that. It’s just that I had a sort of personal fondness for them boys you killed. ’Specially old Buckie Buckland. Why’d you have to go and do old Buckie like that, Carmody?”
The bushes scraped again and Carmody rolled over on his back and brought up the shotgun. He heard the jingle of Greenwood’s Mexican spurs on the other side of the trail.
“Now listen, Carmody, you shit-eating dog,” Greenwood roared, losing his crazy temper or trying to get Carmody to lose his. Carmody didn’t know which it was. Greenwood, it looked like, had crawled away from where he was.
Carmody wasn’t watching the sky. It happened fast. The moon broke through and flooded the basin with light. Suddenly, the other man, the one Greenwood called Linsky, was crouched only a few yards away. He looked surprised. He was young enough to look like a boy caught in the bushes with a corset catalogue.
Linsky fired the rifle at Carmody. The bullet zipped into the sand, scattering some of it in his face. Carmody couldn’t take a chance on missing. The two barrels fired together blew Linsky’s head off his shoulders and tossed his body back into the bushes.
Thinking Greenwood would rush him, Carmody put two cartridges into the scattergun faster than he’d ever loaded a weapon before. But Greenwood wasn’t rushing him. The son of a bitch was running away. He could hear the big spurs ringing. The loudmouth killer was running away.
Carmody saw the horse Greenwood was making for. The rifle was still in Greenwood’s hand. Carmody started to run, yelling himself as the pain in his body stabbed at him. The range was too long, but he fired anyway. He aimed and fired one barrel. He ran and stopped and fired the second barrel.
It was closer in when he fired the second shot Some of the buckshot caught Greenwood in the arm and he dropped the rifle. The horse was spattered too. It started to scream and kick. Greenwood grabbed the reins and held on. With the animal’s front hooves flailing at him, Greenwood held on. He grabbed the saddle horn and dragged himself aboard.
Carmody tried to reload on the run. Holding the reins with his good hand, Greenwood pulled his belt gun. He fired but with his arm full of buckshot he missed. Carmody, still running, snapped the shotgun shut and fired. The horse plunged, throwing itself and Greenwood out of the way. The big Mexican spurs dug in savagely and the horse started running.
Carmody threw down the shotgun and aimed his .45. He held it steady with both hands and fired. He fired again and missed again. Trying to knock down a man on a running horse at night at that distance was a waste of time.
After reloading the shotgun, Carmody picked his way through the bushes until he got back to the trail. Luke might take it into his head to come back. It didn’t seem likely, not with that injured arm, not without a long gun.
There was no use taking a chance that any one of the three outlaws might not be altogether dead. It took some doing but Carmody checked every body before he even thought about doing anything else. They were dead all right.
Carmody found the money on two of them. The third one didn’t have it on him. That made Carmody curse. There were three horses tied out there in those bushes. He hoped the damn animal with the money didn’t tear himself loose before he got to it. Because that would be one awful shame, after all he’d been through to get it.
The dead horse lay where it had fallen. Dragging the saddle off took some doing. Carmody didn’t want to lose that saddle. A saddle wasn’t just a saddle. It took years to break it in. Horses came and went, like this dead one. A right saddle was a little less valuable than a good belt gun.
Carmody didn’t want to start after Greenwood in the dark. Luke still had the six-gun and a man like that always carried plenty of shells. Luke could turn loose his horse and hang back. Even holding a gun with a bad arm, a man didn’t have to be a sure-shot to kill a rider as he went by. Course he could still try it after the light came. Carmody didn’t think he would. Bushwhacking by day called for a long gun. Anyway, old Luke’s arm wouldn’t be feeling all that great, come morning. Luke, it seemed like, would try to get off some place and get that damaged wing tended to.
There was some jerked beef in one of the dead men’s saddlebags. Carmody sat on his heels in the dark and ate that. The best horse of the three was the bay gelding. He took off the dead man’s saddle, whichever dead man’s saddle it was, and put on his own, leaving the cinch loose until morning. He was too tired to go about unsaddling the other two horses the right way. He cut the cinches with his knife and shooed the animals away.
Walking the bay to the end of the basin, Carmody got down. Down there the trail was hard-packed and rocky. He put his ear to the ground and could hear some faint noise. It was faint but it looked like old Luke was making his horse move. It would be a pure pleasure, he thought, if Luke’s horse threw him in the dark and broke his neck. Carmody changed his wish. He wanted Luke alive and well so he could kill that old boy himself.
It was cold in the hills. Wrapped in his blanket, his back against a rock, Carmody went to sleep. He woke up once when some animal came snuffling around the dead men back in the bushes. When he woke up again it was getting light.