He thought: I’m a dead duck.
He measured the distance between himself and the rimrock, the distance between himself and the two mounted men and he knew that he couldn’t make it.
He didn’t slacken pace, but ran on and prayed for a miracle, slipping the thong from the Remington and pulling the gun from leather.
Then he thought: I’ll bet them two jaspers can’t shoot a rifle from a running horse.
He hoped he was right, because if he wasn’t, he would be a dead duck after all.
The men were yelling now like wild Indians, turning their horses with skill around first one piece of rough ground and then another. They were jubilant, for they thought they had him. He was running and a running man was a scared man.
Suddenly both the men and the rimrock were twenty yards away from him.
He stopped and turned, raising the Remington. In that blurred moment of action, he could not tell one man from the other, but fired at the first one to come in his sights. The big gun boomed.
The result was startlingly violent. The horse screamed, drove its muzzle into the ground and somersaulted. The rider was hurled, all loose arms and legs like a rag doll, from the saddle. Almost from nervous reaction, McAllister snapped a shot at the man and missed.
In a second, the other rider was on top of him. McAllister jumped to get out of the way, but was too late. The shoulder of the horse caught him and bowled him over with a force that drove the wind from his body. He hit the ground hard, feeling that the landing had broken every bone in his body, but at once, knowing the danger he was in, he made an attempt to get to his feet. As he did so, he sighted the rider turning his horse.
The man’s face came into his badly focused sight. It was Foley, his features distorted with exertion and rage.
McAllister found that he still gripped the Remington in his right hand. As the horse was jumped in his direction he fired. And he knew that he had missed. Foley’s gun blossomed dark smoke, but no lead smacked into McAllister’s flesh and then the horse was on top of him again.
He sidestepped, grasped at Foley as the man went past, found a grip on his clothing and hung fast McAllister gripped the ground with his moccasined feet and hauled back on the man with all his weight. Foley yelled and came out of the saddle, was dumped on the ground and howled like a scalded cat.
McAllister cocked his gun and said: “Get up.”
The horse ran on a few paces, shied wildly from his fallen companion and ran off across the flat.
Foley got to his feet. His face was covered in sweat and dirt. He looked at McAllister as if Apache torture would have been too good for him. He looked also as if he were choking.
“Christ!” he said through his teeth. “McAllister luck.”
McAllister said: “I ought to kill you for what you pulled, Foley. I seem to be takin’ an awful lot from you lately.”
“Shoot an’ be damned,” Foley said softly. “I’ve taken more from you than I can stomach.”
McAllister said: “A low-down bastard like you don’t have no right to have guts too.”
A voice to McAllister’s right said: “Drop the iron, Mack, or I drop you.”
McAllister turned his head and saw the other man standing not a dozen paces off with a gun in his hand. He felt suddenly depressed. Chasing women must have taken the smartness out of him. When he had Foley in his sights, he had clean forgotten the other man.
“Drop me,” he said, “an’ I’ll drop Foley.”
It was a bluff. He knew it and the man with the gun knew it.
He said: “Not with a bullet through your head.”
“All right,” McAllister said. “It’s your play.” He dropped the Remington and felt a further depression hit him because he had dropped a fine clean gun into the dust.
Foley gave a lopside smile.
“I think I owe you one, Rem,” he said. He walked up to McAllister drew back his fist and let it go. McAllister moved his head to one side, the fist passed close by his face and he butted Foley right on the nose. The man’s face was already bloody from the bullet from McAllister’s gun that had grazed his cheek. To this was now added blood from his nose. His eyes watered and he stared at McAllister unbelievingly.
The man with the gun said: “Stay still or I’ll drop you.”
McAllister said: “Try again, Foley, you ain’t doin’ so good. Maybe you ought to hog-tie me before you do it.”
Foley stooped and picked up McAllister’s gun. His own lay several yards away in the grass. He made a backhanded swipe at McAllister with the barrel and brought the foresight across his face. The big man cursed and fell back a pace. Foley grinned.
“How’d you like that, Rem?” he asked. He turned to the other man. “Get your rope, Ransome.”
The other man went to his fallen horse and took the rope from the saddle.
Foley said: “There’s timber a-plenty up yonder for hangin’ a man.”
McAllister gave him a close look and saw that he meant it. Like master like man. Markham was a hanging man and so was his straw-boss. They had pulled in the same harness for years.
McAllister said, without thinking that he could do himself any good: “There’s law in this country now, Foley. You’d never get away with it.”
Foley grinned unpleasantly and said. “For me, the old ways are the best ways. In the old days we hung coyotes like you that molested women.”
Ransome flicked his rope and the noose fell over McAllister’s head and tightened around his neck. The first real flutter of fear went through him. The two men were looking at him with savage pleasure.
Foley jerked his head toward the shelf and Ransome pulled on the rope, forcing McAllister to walk forward. A cool feminine voice spoke.
“Drop that gun, Foley.”
They all stopped and turned their heads. McAllister was no less surprised than the other two. Carlotta Markham stepped out of the cover of some brush with a small lady’s pistol held steadily in her right hand. As she spoke, she cocked it. Never had a sound seemed more like pure poetry in McAllister’s ears. Never had the sight of a woman been more welcome. She was flushed and her eyes were bright and she looked as resolute as a man.
When Foley got over the initial shock, he said: “Quit foolin’, Miss Charlie, an’ put that gun away.”
“I’m not fooling,” she said. “Drop that gun or I’ll shoot you, Foley.”
Ransome said: “No woman could do it.”
Carlotta made a little grimace as if she were eating and had come on a bitter taste. She squeezed the trigger and the little gun bucked in her small hand. The dirt flew up at Foley’s feet and he jumped back in alarm.
“By God,” he said.
“Drop it.”
He dropped it. McAllister wrenched the rope out of Ransome’s hands, scooped up the fallen Remington and took the rope from around his neck.
Then he stood and looked at the woman.
“It’s your play,” he said. “Give your orders.”
She looked a little surprised and said to Foley: “Both of you get on that horse and go home.”
“What about my saddle?” Ransome wanted to know.
“Come back for it some other time.”
The man looked bitter.
“Markham’s goin’ to have somethin’ to say about this,” Foley put in.
Carlotta smiled.
“Markham has something to say about everything,” she said.
Foley hesitated for a moment, gave McAllister a baleful look and started walking across the flat to his grazing horse. Slowly Ransome followed. When he had gone a short way, Foley stopped and turned.
“It’s the only way you could of done it, McAllister. With a woman’s help,” he said.
McAllister didn’t say anything, but just looked at him bleakly. He and Carlotta watched the men walk to the horse, mount double and go slowly along the base of the mesa into the north. Finally, she turned to him.
“It sticks in your craw, being saved by a woman.”
Without a smile, he said: “Why should it? I’m always bein’ saved by women.”
“Rem,” she said, “was I supposed to stand by and watch them hang you?”
“You were supposed to be on your way home so those two wouldn’t talk about you. Now your name’ll be bandied about in every cow-camp in the country.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Had it been any man but you I would have cared. But it was you.”
McAllister knew that he should have felt good when he heard that, but he didn’t. He felt like he had been suckered in some way.
“All right,” he said. “I owe you one life.”
She came close to him and touched his face with a cool hand, smiling up at him.
“That’s the life I want.”
He softened to her a little then and said: ‘It’s just I usually make things happen. This time things happened to me. It ain’t so good for my confidence. You spoiled everything, Carlotta. Now your brother’ll know you rode out to meet me. You’ve given him a weapon against you.”
“I don’t give a damn for my brother. At last, I’m not afraid of him any more.”
He put an arm around her and she rested her head against his shoulder.
“You can’t go back,” he told her softly. “You’d best come into the hills with me.” She looked up at him.
“That would be wonderful,” she said. “But that’s not the way we’ll do it. I’m not running away from Markham. I have to beat him.”
“It’s your decision,” he said. “Now I’ll ride aways with you.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You’re in enough danger without riding straight for it.”
“I respect your decision not to come into the hills with me,” he told her. “You gotta respect mine to ride along with you.”
She didn’t argue. Night was coming down fast and she knew there could be safety in darkness. He went down into the canyon to fetch his horse, she walked across the flat to the mare. Shortly, they were riding side by side through the starlight. He rode with her till they saw the twinkling lights of Markham’s headquarters and then she halted.
“No further,” she said. “Turn back now.”
“You’ve got to face an awful lot of music down there.”
“I’m familiar with every note of it.”
“If you can’t take it, ride into town an’ take a room at the hotel. Jess Rose, the boy at the livery’ll bring word to me. I’ll come an’ fetch you.”
She rested a hand on his.
“It’s all right now you’re around,” she said.
He bent from the saddle and kissed her.
“I never thanked you for savin’ my life,” he said.
“It was a life I wanted,” she told him and rode slowly forward into the darkness.
McAllister stayed still until the sound of horse had died away, then he wheeled the dun and set off south at a brisk trot. He felt like singing.