Guns Of the Timberlands (1955) (9 page)

Behind a dugout was a field of maize, now gone wild. It was only a few yards distant. On his second try Clay managed to get to his feet, and behind the saloon he found an old pickle jar. He dipped water, built a small fire of dry sticks from around the saloon, and soon had the water boiling. From the long abandoned field he got some maize and, having pounded it to fragments, made a poultice to put on his wounded shoulder after he had bathed it in hot water.

It was a slow process, and he stopped many times to rest. Luckily, the bullet had gone on through his shoulder. When the wound had been bathed and the poultice tied on, he got to the palouse and slipped off the saddle and bridle, then picketed the horse on the grass near the stream.

For himself he found a hollow inside the foundation of a ruined building and settled down with the sun to warm his bones. He awakened with a start and glanced quickly at the sun. He must have slept at least two hours. He made his way to the stream and drank again.

Clay seated himself and stared at the water. His face was hot and his mouth dry. He bathed the wound again and changed the poultice. Aware of his hunger, he ate jerked beef from his saddlebag, then gathered his blanket around him and lay on the ground.

His head throbbed with slow, heavy throbs, and a slow fire burned in the injured shoulder. He kept flexing his fingers, frightened of stiffness, knowing the danger that could come to him now, in this hour of trial, if he failed in gun skill.

Several times he lost consciousness, whether in sleep or weakness he did not know. Shadows seemed to peer at him from the darkness under the trees and he stared up at the wide sky, caught in some vague enchantment by a drifting cloud which he watched through long, intent minutes. A cricket chirped . . . cicadas sang in the hot, lazy afternoon. He lay quiet and, after a while, lulled by the heat, the crickets, and the stream, he slept.

He awakened in complete darkness. Night had come while he slept and with it a penetrating chill from off the high peaks. His fever had left him and he was shaking with chill, despite the blanket. He crawled to the stream and drank. The water was cold, but it went down his throat like some crystalline elixir, giving him strength and new life. He lay back after he had finished drinking and huddled in his blankets. His head throbbed and his shoulder held a small pulsating beat.

Wind stirred in the crests of the pines and off in the blackness of the forest a tree branch scraped. From the ghostly buildings came faint, creaking sounds. A loose shutter swayed on rusty hinges, there was a scurrying of tiny feet, and something small and animate stirred the tall grass. The moon was rising just above the ridge and it stretched long shadows behind the buildings, and turned the rank grass of the street into a silver flowing stream.

He had to move . . . His mind told him that he must move but his muscles did not respond. He huddled closer in his blankets and watched the moon rise until it swung free above the black, serrated ridge. The wide black eyes of glassless windows peered at him. He had to move. He must get up. He must get a saddle on his horse. He must get back. They would believe him dead. They would retaliate and men would be killed.

He rolled over and got to his knees. Near by his horse cropped grass and he went to it and led it to the saddle. He stooped, after the blanket was in place and free of wrinkles, and grasped the heavy stock saddle. He waited, mustering strength, then swung it free and to the horse's back.

Exhausted by the effort, he leaned against the horse and counted the heavy throbs in his skull. Then he got the bridle on and thrust his rifle back in the boot. Grasping the pommel, he pulled himself into the saddle, still clutching the blankets around his shoulders.

The Notch was closest--he would go there. There was no antidote for the throbbing pain in his shoulder, but he had never been a man who spared himself. Wounds were not new to him and he had seen many a bullet wound treated by pushing a silk handkerchief through the hole with a stick, and a little medicine dabbed on, of whatever kind was available.

A kindly man with others, he could be harsh with himself, and wounded or not he had no right to sit here when men were risking their lives to protect his property. He almost forgot his pain, shaken as he was by a deep-seated anger.

And that very anger frightened him. Clay Bell knew himself, and he was quiet partly to cover what lay under the surface. He was actually a man of violent and explosive temper, carefully guarded against and usually controlled; but occasionally, under exceptional strain, he had given way to outbursts of berserk fury. He was always better when thinking for others . . . he must get back to them and their sobering influence.

Reaching Deep Creek, he waded the horse through the stream and up the bank. The fever was on him again now, and his shoulder, aroused by handling the heavy saddle, was a steady beat of agony. No longer conscious of the coolness and the night, he was shaking with pain and with fury.

He had asked for none of this. He had lived quietly here, far from the old trails, the gun trails, the kill-hungry men he had known. He had built carefully here, planning for the future. Now the greed of one man could destroy all that, wreck lives and ruin the health of a pleasant young cowhand who bothered no one.

Bert Garry lay minus an eye and scarred for life, perhaps soon to die, because of the ruthless brutality of that one man.

And someone lying in ambush had shot Clay himself, had tried to kill him.

Branches slapped at his shoulders and his head felt heavy. There was sickness on him, and the heaviness of pain, and the moon seemed vague in the wide sky. The trees loomed right and left and all around him. He sat in the saddle like a drunken man, and like a drunken man there throbbed in his brain only the thought of what had been done and a driving urge to fight, to smash, to kill. . .

Suddenly he felt the mustang's muscles tighten and saw its ears come up. Instinct snapped him to himself, his long living with danger alerting him now. He drew up, listening.

A moment passed when only the stream rustled behind him . . . and then he smelled woodsmoke, and heard voices.

They were strange voices, and none of his men would be here, close to The Notch, yet away from it.

His mouth felt dry and something rose up inside of him. So they had broken through. Brown and Jackson might have been killed. . . . Red rage began to take him and he felt his body begin to tremble.

A stick cracked and someone said, "Pete Simmons took their heart out when he jumped the Garry kid. This fight's over."

Inside him something welled up and burst. He dropped his hand to his left gun and he yelled, a wild rebel yell torn with pain and fury. And then he slapped spurs to the horse and leaped him through the brush into the firelight.

Startled lumberjacks came to their feet, eyes wild. One man grabbed at a rifle, but Bell's gun smashed a shot and the man screamed, dropping the rifle to grab a broken shoulder. A bullet smashed the coffee pot, another ripped at the bed of the fire, scattering sparks and embers. He was across the camp and gone into darkness, his gun stabbing flame.

And then he wheeled, swaying in the saddle, his face hard and savage. Deliberately he lifted the gun and proceeded to put a hole in everything in sight.

Reloading, he smashed the frying pan, emptied the water bucket, smashed a rifle stock, and burned the ribs of a man scrambling for a gun.

Sitting his horse, he filled his gun again. Then he walked his horse back to the edge of camp.

Chapter
9

There was no one in sight. He drew up, then swung his horse and rode toward The Notch. They would have someone on guard there, and he must find out what had happened to his men.

His shoulder was leaping with pain, adding to his bitter savagery. But at this moment he welcomed the pain, for it was an added incentive.

He came up to the three men guarding The Notch before they heard him. He had come upon them over the pine needles where his horse made no sound. He saw them with the firelight on their faces, heard their laughter, and smelled the smoke of their fire, and the fine smell of coffee.

He came out of the shadows like a ghost and drew up, and Tripp looked around. Shocked, he came to his feet.

Clay Bell sat hunched in the saddle, his face a gray mask of savagery, his shoulder and shirt blood-stained, his eyes wild from the throbbing in his skull and the solid agony from his wound.

In his left hand he held a negligent Colt. "Take off your boots."

He did not seem to lift his voice yet it boomed hollowly against the black walled cliffs. Bob Tripp stared at him, his mouth opening and closing.

"Take 'em off!" He punctuated the order with a bullet into the fire.

"What's the idea?" Tripp demanded, fighting for time.

"Tripp," Bell's voice was dangerously calm, "take off your boots or I'll break both your knees."

Tripp saw the wildness in Bell's eyes. He backed up abruptly and almost fell into a sitting position. There was insanity in this, but . . . When all three had their boots off they looked up at Bell.

"Start for town."

"What?" Tripp's face turned sickly. "By the Lord, Bell, you-!"

"Start moving, Tripp, or you can die right here. Your boys stomped Garry, they've tried to kill me. Now start going or you can lie in a pile, right here."

There was crashing in the brush and then Duval burst through, followed by the others from the upper camp. "Tripp!" Duval was bawling the words as he ran. "That Bell, he--"

They had rifles. Clay Bell swung his gun. "Drop them!"

A lean redhead started to swing his rifle to shooting position and Clay Bell's gun bucked. The red-headed man turned half around and dropped, clutching a smashed shoulder.

"You, too. Off with your boots!"

Lining up the nine men in the two groups, he started them for town, moving them down the rocky Notch Trail in their sock feet.

He did not let them leave alone. A few yards behind, he followed, keeping them hustling. The socks tore, they wore out on the lava of the trail, their feet became bloody. When they reached the desert he started them well away from the shelter and shade of the hills, then let them go.

"You came hunting it," he said, "now see how you like it. Come back if you want . . . I'll be ready."

He was swaying from weariness, scarcely capable of keeping his eyes open. He turned the appalousa then and started at a canter toward the home ranch. His mind was a blur. Had anyone seen him then he would have been a sitting duck. His shoulder throbbed, his head felt like a half-filled bucket in which the blood slopped from side to side. He muttered and talked, but the palouse was going home now, and he kept moving.

Hank Rooney ran to meet him. "Boss! We figured you was dead!"

He clung to the pommel. "Sheriff been here? After Brown?"

Rooney was puzzled. "The sheriff? No--ain't seen him. What's wrong with Brown?" Tripp had managed to get some of his men up over The Notch on foot. They had come down on Brown and Jackson from behind and driven both men off. Bell ordered the two men back to The Notch. This time they would hole up in a cave that offered good cover and an almost impregnable position.

Hank Rooney stripped off Clay's shirt and worked over his shoulder. Long before he had finished cleansing the wound and treating it, Clay was asleep.

Two quiet days passed, and nothing happened. Shorty Jones nursed his injured wrist and grew steadily more ugly and morose. Whether Bert Garry was alive or dead no one had any idea.

Clay Bell slept, awoke to scout around the ranch, ate and slept again. There was no move from the lumberjacks beyond the white stone. They sat still, waiting, nobody knew for what.

Angry at their enforced idleness, and undoubtedly angry at what had happened at The Notch, they yelled at the guards from time to time, trying to start trouble. One came halfway up the trail, in a swaggering walk. When he came a step too far, Hank Rooney dusted his toes with a bullet and he wheeled and ran. More bullets helped him on his way.

There was no word from Hardy Tibbott. More days went slowly by. Bell worked over his accounts, rode twice to The Notch. His wounds were on the mend and he felt better. He could use his right hand, but not without pain and discomfort.

Bill Coffin checked the cows on his way back from Piety. "Fattenin', Boss. Be good beef there, mighty soon."

Nothing was reported from The Notch. Devitt had made no further attempt on that side.

Restlessly, the B-Bar riders patrolled the limits of their range. The ring of hills around the Deep Creek area made their problem relatively easy, for much of it was abrupt faces of rock or steep, rugged slopes over which a man might scramble with hand and foot, but where no wheeled vehicle or even a horse might be taken.

The B-Bar riders rode with their rifles across their saddie-bows, and in the mind of each man was a picture of Bert Garry with his scarred face and lost eye, laboring to breathe with a punctured lung.

Jud Devitt entered the musty office where Noble Wheeler sat behind his desk and dropped into a chair. He looked smug and pleased this morning. He was freshly shaved, and Wheeler caught a whiff of shaving lotion. Devitt bit the end from a black cigar and leaned back. For the first time since his meeting with Bell in the street, he felt that the situation was completely in hand.