CHAPTER XXI

 

McCASFORD’S SHOUTS BROUGHT Brand awake, palming his gun instinctively. He came out the door, listened to the direction of the kid’s voice, and pounded down the hall cocking his gun, wheeling into the girl’s room.

Sitting up in bed, fresh blood staining the bandages, the kid bit his lip and said, “Elias. He took the girl—he knows where the gold is.”

Brand asked no questions; but as he wheeled away, a downward glance showed the floorboard askew, and he paused momentarily to look into the cache. By his count, one of the heavy pokes was missing. So Elias had found that, too. As he went through the door, he paused. “It will take him time to dig up those saddlebags,” he said.

“That’s why he took Michaela—for protection. He said he’d shoot anybody who came through the door after him.”

Brand glanced at the window. The storm by now had dwindled to occasional flurries of downy flakes; mainly the snow fell light and crisp and easy. He said, “I can’t bust in on him them. There’s got to be another way.”

“If you can think of one, you’re quicker than me,” McCasford said in a tone of ill-concealed misery.

At that moments boots pounded down the hall and Wayne Lutz burst into the room, closely followed by Zane and Andrews. Lutz said, “The son of a bitch. We couldn’t make a move—he had that gun in the pit of her back all the while.”

“Shut up a minute,” Brand said.

The old man hobbled in, crowding the room, and mumbled something Brand did not catch. He ignored the others and stared frowning out through the window. He knew Elias’ stripe, and knew the man would very likely assault Michaela when the opportunity came; worse, he might well kill her. And time was short; Brand knew he had to act quickly. A deep, sickening fear—fear for Michaela—gathered in a tight ball in the pit of his belly. Decided by that, he rammed the window open and put his foot over the sill.

“Where you going?” Lutz demanded.

“Stay put, all of you,” Brand answered.

He swung out the window and hung from the sill by his hands; he looked down, kicked himself away from the building and dropped into the soft coldness of a snowbank piled high against the wall of the saloon. He fell almost chest-deep into it and pawed his way clear, with snow quickly dropping to cover his hatless head and his body. He had come this way because he knew the stable had no windows; if Elias was keeping an eye on the stairs, he would see nothing to excite his suspicions.

Now he plowed through the snow toward the far end of the stable and, lifting his gun, posted himself silently beside the big door from which Elias would have to ride out.

In the second-story window from which he had dropped, he could see heads crowding the space, watching. He turned from that and put his whole attention on the door, and waited while quickly the chill worked into his bones and his hand numbed on the grip of the pistol. The sky was a gray, quiet dreariness and snow fell in silent drifting flakes.

Behind him he heard a thud hitting the ground, and when he looked around he saw Lutz bulling forward through the snow, carrying some bulky object. When the big man came up, Brand saw that it was his own mackinaw.

Lutz handed it to him and whispered, “Put it on or you’ll freeze,” and awkwardly lifted his own gun with a gloved hand.

Brand was surprised by this act of kindness and boldness on the big man’s part, but he had no time or inclination to appreciate Lutz’s belated courtesies now. He fixed his attention on the stable door, standing well aside from its hinges so that it would not strike him when it flew open, and blowing on his fast-numbing knuckles in which the heavy gun sat coldly.

And then, in time, the sound of a walking horse advanced within the stable. Brand tautened; he heard behind him the hoarse rasp of Lutz’s heavy breathing. There were, Brand decided, two horses moving in there. He turned his face and whispered to Lutz: “Hold your fire when the door opens. He’ll likely send the girl out first.”

Lutz nodded. With a grim fury of impatience, Brand stood fast, but for a long interval the door stayed shut. Then he saw the handle of the big bar latch lift; he braced his gun and waited. Then, abruptly, a hard kick drove the door wide and a horse bolted from the dark interior. Holding his fire, Brand recognized Michaela. She rode out at a standing gallop; and quick behind her came the dead-run flash of Elias’ horse.

But there was no target. Using an old Indian trick, Elias—always shrewd and always prepared—was clamped along the far side of the horse, hanging far down. His arm came under the horse’s neck and his gun belched and roared twice; the bullets went wide.

Then the Mexican was out of range, and Brand had not fired a single shot.

“Should have downed his horse,” Lutz grumbled, and Brand knew the man was right; but there was a longstanding range custom bred into him that had not let him shoot for the horse.

The two horses receded down-canyon, and then Brand saw a heartening sight: Michaela, in a desperate effort at escape, had wheeled her horse about and was ramming back toward them along the narrow canyon floor—headed directly toward Elias, who was galloping forward in the snow. Elias righted himself on the rocking saddle.

The dim echo of his enraged shouting reached Brand’s ears; the girl veered her horse at the last minute and wheeled past Elias, drumming forward toward safety, and Elias’ gun opened up in a turmoil of anger and hatred.

The girl rode low to the withers, following a zigzag path; and quickly the last four bullets in Elias’ gun were spent, and the Mexican wheeled away in desperate flight.

Brand’s breath hung still in his throat; he could not tell, in the whirl of impressions, whether one of Elias’ wild bullets had struck the girl. But then, kicking up high flurries of snow, her horse came to a precipitate halt near him and the girl slid from the saddle and came to him through the snow. He heard her gasp, he surveyed her with a quick glance; he locked her into his arms and felt the lurching of her sobs.

He heard Lutz’s voice: “The son of a bitch.” Lutz, he suddenly realized, had ineffectually emptied his gun toward the fleeing Elias, and now was feverishly plugging fresh cartridges into the chambers, clumsy with gloved fingers.

Brand pushed the girl out to arm’s length and said, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Then get inside,” he said with an unintended viciousness; he ran forward and gathered the horse’s reins in quick synchronization with his fast rise to the saddle; he reined the horse around savagely and drove it forward down-canyon, after Elias.