Gunsmoke for McAllister (5 page)

He levered another shot into the Henry, waited.

Suddenly, there was a man within twenty yards of him, knife in hand. McAllister whirled, fired and missed. The third miss in almost that number of minutes nearly unnerved him. The man dropped from sight. McAllister didn't like it one little bit. This meant that there were Indians between him and his horse.

A flutter of bright cloth to the left. McAllister swung the rifle, fired and made a hit, catching the man in mid-leap and knocking him backward.

A rattle of rocks to the right.

He turned.

The man was on him before he could lever and fire. His eye caught the glitter of the knife in the sunlight, the encarmined face was contorted with effort and rage, the eyes terrible in their ferocity. McAllister did the only thing he could under the
circumstances. He fell backward, kicking his feet into the man's hard belly as he went.

The Indian somersaulted, landed miraculously on his feet and whirled, knife in hand. He drew his breath through his teeth with a hard hissing sound. McAllister got to his feet, fascinated by the baleful eyes and the terrible intent. Even as the man leapt to the attack, McAllister levered the Henry. But it was too late, the man was on him and the knife was arching for his belly. He avoided the gut-ripping blow, slammed the butt of the rifle around and smashed the man on the side of the head.

The Indian went down like a scalded puma, snapping and screaming, but it didn't finish him. It seemed that he was on his feet as soon as he was down.

Over his shoulder, McAllister saw others running in.

This is the finish
, he thought.

As the Indian ran in on him again, he jammed the muzzle of the rifle into his belly and fired. The man fell away, his red shirt afire from the muzzle-flame, brown hands clutching his belly.

McAllister whirled again, levering and firing, knowing that he could not stop the flood. The wounded man, dying, was making frantic efforts to reach him with the knife, hating to destruction even in death.

The nearest Apache were within twenty yards of him, leaping over rocks as nimble as goats, shouting their intent. McAllister fired with the speed of utter desperation. It would all be over in seconds now.

From far off he heard the stutter of rifle fire.

An Indian collapsed in mid-leap. Another suddenly veered to one side and fell among the rocks.

Every man left on his feet stopped as if he had run into a solid wall. Heads turned, searching for the source of the shooting. A man cried out shrilly, pointing upward.

McAllister raised his eyes and saw the thin dark lines of the rifles, the puffs of dark smoke. Lead smacked into rock and whined to the heavens, kicked up dust, whacked sickeningly into bodies. Indians were turning and running, scampering like frightened rabbits through the rocks, racing each other now to get away from McAllister. He saw men hastily throw themselves onto their horses and quirt them away. They fled, racing down the canyon, sometimes two men to a pony and the gunfire followed them for as long as they were in range.

The gunfire died away.

McAllister stood, suddenly bereft of strength.

A soft whimper drew his eyes around and he saw the Apache he had shot give his last kicks before he died. There seemed dead all around him – men lying huddled between rocks, a man stretched across a boulder, a man lying on his back with his face shot away. Death was everywhere.

He looked up and saw nothing. No sign of the men who had so miraculously rescued him. Puzzled, he reloaded the Henry and walked out into the canyon toward the still standing canelo, eyes wary for any wounded Apache, because one wounded was as dangerous as a lion. But none lived. The gunfire from above had been totally lethal.

He wondered who the men were who had saved him and wondered more why they did not show themselves. One thing he was sure of was that the men up there had been the reason why the Apache had attacked him with such resolution.

As he stepped into the saddle, he wondered if the men up there had anything to do with Sam Spur's disappearance. Uneasy, he moved off down canyon. As he rode, he kept a chin on either shoulder, not only for the Indians, but for the men who had saved him. There was something here that he did not understand and not to understand is to fear. Healthy fear was what had kept him alive on the frontier for so long.

He reasoned that, as the men on the canyon wall had not shown themselves, it was possible that their intention had been more to do damage to the Apache than to rescue him. If it had been a normal rescue in Indian country, somebody would have hailed him. But the canyon wall was still utterly deserted. Not even a wisp of dust came from up there. Something was wrong.

He came to the spot where Sam's tracks had disappeared. If he had sense, he would have ridden the canelo horse away from there as fast as he could go, but he knew that he would not. Something had happened to Sam and he wanted to know what. Maybe Sam was in real trouble. He had been set afoot here about a week back and he could be dead by now. He could have been injured in a fall, but neither of the horses had shown any sign of having a fall. Besides, there was that bullet graze on the bay. McAllister reckoned that Sam had been fired on and it would not have surprised him to find his body among the rocks. Maybe mutilated by the Indians. That seemed the obvious explanation. But it didn't explain the wiping out of the sign to his satisfaction.

Maybe the explanation lay with the men who had rescued
him … maybe …

He dismounted and ground-hitched the canelo, finding his way among the boulders to the wall of the canyon, searching it more carefully than he had before. His search was long and patient, broken every few moments for a good watchful look up and down canyon. He could be caught again like a rat in a trap and he didn't like it overly.

Then he saw it.

The edge of a hoof mark in the sand close to a boulder. Somebody had wiped tracks carelessly here. He concentrated now with a fierce intensity, searching to left and right and finding flat rock on both hands. He got down on hands and knees and crawled a dozen yards, examining the rock minutely, and found nothing. He went back and tried the other way, giving the rock the same close attention.

He was about to give up when he found it. The faint mark of an iron-shod horse's hoof. He went on.

Another and another mark. He had no idea how many animals had come this way, but he knew that at least one had. He rounded a giant boulder and there was the trail in front of him, snaking up the side of the canyon, narrow and possibly dangerous, but it could be negotiated by a man leading his horse.

He went back and fetched his horse, leading it through the rocks and starting slowly up the narrow trail.

It was something of a nightmare, that climb, but he made it, arriving breathlessly at the top to find himself into a wild and rugged country, a chaotic jumble of scattered rocks and gargantuan boulders that seemed to compose a barren shelf of the mountain a mile wide before it rose to possibly more wild shelves as it climbed into the mighty sierra. It was not, he thought, the place to get lost in or set afoot in.

Although it was an oppressive sight, he cheered considerably when he reached the rimrock of the canyon, for here he found sign in profusion. Here whoever used that trail considered themselves to be safe.

He walked around, studying the ground and knew within a short time that many riders had been here many times over a fairly long period. There was an absolute jumble of sign. He mounted the canelo and rode slowly toward the frowning heights above, studying the ground, going in the general direction that all the riders who had used that trail had taken.

Gradually, as he moved along he became aware of a sound. It seemed to creep gradually up on him, so that he did not know how long he had been listening to it before he became conscious that he was listening. It was as though the air around him and the earth beneath reverberated with it. He stopped, frowning, looking all around him, uncertain of its origin.

When the truth finally came to him, many occurrences fell into place – the Indian attack, the men on the rimrock who had rescued him, maybe even Sam's disappearance.

Suddenly, he knew that he himself could be in acute danger.

He swerved the canelo away to the right and in a moment was in the cover of rock, slipping from the saddle and tying the canelo to a large stone. Now, taking his rifle, he worked his way through and up the mass of boulders and brush that barred his way to the sound which now he was sure was coming from the east.

It was a hard climb, not easy in his highheeled cowman's boots, tough on his hands, but he made it to the peak and found himself at the summit of a steep wall of rock, looking down into what could best be described as a deep basin composed mostly of rock.

He was looking down on a busy scene, one that seemed totally out of place in the vast solitude of this wilderness. To left and right were two cabins made of stone and wood. The one to the right had a handsome stone chimney from which smoke issued. In the centre of the basin was a sideless building from which the sounds he had heard came. There were men busy about it, stripped to the waist in the broiling sun. The roof hid from his view, he knew, a crushing mill. Nearer to him was another, similar but taller construction from which, even as he watched, came a second and more easily identifiable sound. The great thudding that issued from it seemed to shake the whole basin and its walls, so that he felt the vibrations through his body. This, he knew, was a stamping mill.

He was looking down into a gold or silver mine. He did not know which because he knew so little about mining. It was something he had never cared for, grubbing about in the ground for riches.

Raising his eyes, he saw the entrance of the mine beyond the crushing mill, a dark maw in the side of the hill, its wooden props visible, a scar freshly hacked out of the hillside. And even as he watched there came four men pushing a small car on wheels, something that looked like a tip-truck.

It was these men who caught and held his attention with something like horror.

They were chained hand and foot.

Movement to his right caught his attention. A man had walked out of the crushing mill and was standing in the sun wiping sweat from his face and half-naked body. An emaciated, half-starved man, chained like the others hand and foot.

His mind went at once back to the scene in town back there at the jail when he had made his escape – the men being chained by the light of the lamp under guard. Was it possible, he thought … it didn't seem credible that the sheriff could be conveying his prisoners from jail in town to work the gold in these hills. But that was what it looked like.

He knew then that Sam could be down there.

Slow rage burned in him.

He stayed where he was, watching. A man came out of the house with the chimney and with him, as he saw from the flutter of the skirt, was a woman. He reached into his pocket for his glasses and put them on the pair.

The man was the sheriff, the girl was the one who had been in the cage with the other prisoners. As he watched, the man put an arm around her and she laid her dark head on his shoulder. He swung the glasses and put them on the men with the tip-truck. Yes, one of them was the cowhand, Chalk White. One of the others was a Mexican he had seen in the cage.

He ran the glasses over every man there, but he couldn't see Sam. But he'd bet his last dollar that his friend was somewhere down there. He had to be.

He put the glasses on the sheriff again.

I don't even know the so-and-so's name
, he thought curiously. And he wondered how he was going to check if Sam was down there. There was always the possibility of the mine shaft. Sam might be down there on the face with pick and shovel.

He put the glasses away and backed out of there, working his way back to his horse, thinking, reckoning that he must hide out for the rest of the day and get down there into the basin under cover of dark. He put his foot into the stirrup-iron and went to heave himself into the saddle.

A voice said: ‘Hold it.'

He froze.

There came the soft shuffle of moccasins in the dust and a man came up close to him. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the dark and lank hair on either side of it, the sweat band around the forehead. Black reptiles eyes stared into his. He reckoned the man was a halfbreed Apache.

In the next instant his right leg was kicked from under him and he measured his length in the dust. The man's hard toe struck him in the side of the head. McAllister kept his senses, but he went still, feigning unconsciousness. He felt the man's hand lift the Remington from its sheath.

Dazed, but enraged, McAllister opened his eyes slightly and saw that the man was stuffing the Remington away in his belt. For a second the man's attention was off him. He twisted as fast as he could, gripped the man with hands of iron around each ankle and heaved. The fellow pitched backward and hit the ground on his shoulders. McAllister launched himself through the air, landing both knees in the man's belly. The stench of unwashed flesh filled his nostrils. The man squirmed beneath him. McAllister hit him full in the face with his clenched fist. For a moment, the man went limp, then suddenly exploded into violence.

McAllister was thrown clear of him, rolled and came to his feet. The man had dropped his gun and now made a dive for it. McAllister kicked at the extended wrist and the weapon spun harmlessly away as he got a grip on it. The big man charged, seeing the man's hand snap down on the butt of the Remington. The full weight of McAllister's charging body hit the man as the weapon came free and the man went down again. He somersaulted and came up on his feet in one movement, but McAllister was still moving. As the gun came up in line with his body, his right hand batted it aside and his left swung across to a punch that lifted the man from his feet. As he did so, the gun went off and the shot echoed through the hills.