Novel 1955 - Heller With A Gun (v5.0) (7 page)

Chapter 9

T
HEY WERE HUDDLED around the fire when they heard a low call. Tom Healy lowered his tin plate, suddenly watchful.

All of the others reached for their guns. The call came again and a rider appeared, walking his horse through the falling snow. It was Griffin.

He got down, then brushed snow from his coat. “All right,” he said, “it's done. I killed him.”

“You got Mabry?” Boyle was skeptical.

Griffin looked up, unfastening his coat, not taking his eyes from Boyle. “I got him. Want to say I didn't?”

Boyle's eyes were ugly. “I'd like to see the body,” he said.

“I shot him twice. Once in the body, once in the head.”

“You didn't go up to him?” Barker demanded.

“Think I'm crazy? No, I didn't go near him, but I watched him all of ten minutes and he didn't move. If he wasn't dead, then he is now. No man can lie out there and live.”

“Good!” Barker's face was hard with satisfaction. “Now we're clear. That's what I wanted to hear!”

He strode across the clearing, striking his fist into his palm. “Now, Healy—”

He broke stride. The log where Healy had been sitting was deserted. There had been a moment when all attention was on the rider and his news. And Tom Healy was learning. He had turned and walked into the night.

Boyle sprang for the brush and the others followed, except for Griffin, who went to the coffeepot. He glanced up from his filled cup and looked at the smoke coming from the wagon of the women, and his lips thinned down. Getting to his feet, he walked around to the door. When he saw the bullet hole, he nodded. “So that's it.”

He stood there, sipping his coffee for perhaps a minute, and then he said conversationally, “Mabry's dead. You can give up on him.”

There was still no sound from inside. “You got some money in there?” Griffin asked. “Say, about a thousand dollars?”

“And if we do?” Janice asked.

“Might help you.”

“You do it,” Janice replied. “You'll get paid.”

“Cash?”

“Cash. What shall we do?”

“Sit tight.”

He smiled to himself as he moved away.

I
T WAS COLD in the wagon. The fire was very small, barely kept alive by the last few bits of wood and some old clothing.

Dodie raised herself to an elbow. “You haven't that much.”

“He doesn't know that,” Janice said.

“But when he finds out?”

“By then we may be out of here. Maybe we'll have only one man to deal with.”

Maggie coughed, a hoarse, racking cough. Janice turned her head and looked toward the older woman's bunk, but said nothing. In the dark they could only vaguely see outlines, but Janice knew the older woman was very ill.

The continual cold as well as the closeness of the air was doing her no good. Unless she received some warm food and some attention…Janice walked the floor of the wagon, three steps each way.

Dodie was quiet. She had said almost nothing since producing the gun. Suddenly she spoke. “I don't believe it. I don't believe he's dead.”

“You heard what was said.”

“I don't care. I just don't believe it.”

Outside, Griffin stood by the fire. He was not a trusting man. He had received half the money for killing Mabry, but did not expect Barker to pay the rest willingly. Mabry was dead now, and Barker had two men to side with him.

Griffin sloshed the coffee in his cup, listening for sounds from the search. Snow continued to fall. This was no time to start anywhere. This was a bad storm and it might get worse. Nor would it be a good time to discuss money with Barker…not yet.

When he had Barker alone, that would be the time. And when the storm was over, so he could travel. If he could get the women away, so much the better. He was no man to mess with decent women; he knew the penalty for that in the West.

Wycoff was first to return. He stamped his feet to shake off the snow, then went to the fire and added some sticks he had brought back.

“They won't find him,” Wycoff said, “and it makes no difference. By now he's lost, and by morning he'll be dead.”

“Prob'ly.” Griffin studied Wycoff, thinking of an ally, but decided against opening the subject. Wycoff was a brute. The women would be vastly more important to him than any amount of money.

Boyle? No. Boyle was not to be trusted. He would go it alone. He would watch for his best chance.

Barker and Boyle came in together. “No sign of him. He got into your tracks and by that time you couldn't tell them apart.”

“He'll die out there,” Boyle said. “He ain't got a chance.”

T
HREE QUARTERS OF a mile west and stumbling through deepening snow, Healy was panting heavily. Once free of the camp, he had circled to find the horse tracks, thinking they would lead him to Mabry's body.

Griffin had not gone up to Mabry, hence he had not taken his guns. With those guns he might have a chance, Healy knew.

He had started to run, and had run until pain knifed his side and his breath came in ragged gasps. Then he slowed and for the first time gave thought to being trailed. But it was dark, and by the time they could seriously attempt trailing him, his tracks would be covered with snow. So he slogged along, head down, following the rider's trail.

It was bitter cold. He got out his scarf and tied it across his face. The earlaps on his fur cap were down, and that helped. Yet the tracks were fast filling with snow, and unless he found Mabry soon the trail would be lost.

He reached the end of the tracks suddenly. But where the body should have been lying there was nothing. Man, horse, and guns were gone!

So Mabry was not dead…yet there was a dark blotch on the ground not yet covered with snow, a blotch that might be blood.

Mabry was wounded. It was bitter cold and Healy knew no man could last in such cold when he had lost blood and was undoubtedly suffering from shock. A man needed a warm place, care, and treatment. He needed, above all, rest.

Healy was very tired. Today he had worked harder with an ax than he had ever worked before. And he must have run almost a quarter of a mile in deep snow, yet he dared not stop. He turned and followed the tracks of the horse bearing Mabry.

From the time it had taken Griffin to reach camp, and the time it had taken Healy to get to the place where Mabry had been ambushed, Mabry could not have been on the ground for long. Yet in this cold a man could die in a very short time.

Healy did not try to hurry. That was useless now, and he had not the strength for it. Head down to the wind, he pushed on, content to keep putting one foot before the other.

His forehead ached from the cold wind and his face was stiff. There was no place to stop. There was no definite place to go. He could only follow that rapidly vanishing line of tracks.

Twice he fell. Each time he merely got to his feet and walked on.

Pausing at the top of the hill, he listened. Common sense told him there would be no pursuit. Barker would not overestimate his chances of survival and finding him would be nearly impossible.

Somewhere ahead of him a wounded man clung to a wandering horse, but he could not be far ahead, for in such snow a horse could not move much faster than a man. Yet after a time Healy began to realize that the horse was not wandering. He was being ridden or was going by himself toward a definite goal.

The survival of Mabry and himself might well depend on how well he clung to that dwindling line of tracks. They were rapidly becoming only hollows in the snow.

Only movement kept him warm. There was no sound but the hiss of falling snow. He was lost in a white and silent world.

Starting on again, he brought up short against a cliff. Yet almost at once his heart gave a leap. Mabry's horse had stopped here, too.

And for some time. When the horse started on again, the hoofprints were sharp and definite. That horse was only minutes ahead!

Excited, Healy plunged into the snow. He tried running, but fell headlong. Getting to his feet, he realized how close he was to collapse, and knew his only hope was to move on carefully, to conserve his failing energy.

He lost all track of time. He lost all thought of himself. Numbed by cold, he staggered on, keeping the trail by a sort of blind instinct. He walked as a man in his sleep, forgetting the existence of everything but the vast white world in which he lived and moved. He seemed to be on an endless conveyor belt that carried him on and on and never ceased to move.

Once, a long time later, he thought he heard a faint sound.

Head up, he listened. Nothing. He walked on, head down, moving ahead like a blind, unreasoning automaton. He brought up suddenly against a solid obstruction. Lifting his head, he found himself against the bars of a pole corral.

Following the corral bars around, he saw dimly through falling snow a darker blur. It took shape, became real. It was a low log house, and at the door stood a horse, and in the saddle was a man.

It was a man upon whose clothes the snow had caked and whose head hung on his chest. How he had stayed in the saddle was a mystery until Healy tried to remove him from the horse.

He pounded on the door. No sound. He dropped a hand to the latch, lifted it, and opened the door.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Anybody home?”

No one answered.

Fumbling then, he got a mitten off a half-frozen hand and dug into his pocket for matches. His fingers were so stiff that he had to make several attempts before one burst into flame.

And the first thing he saw was a half-used candle. His hand trembled as he held the match to the wick. It caught, flame mounted, the room became light.

Lifting the candle, he looked around. The cabin was empty. Before him was a fireplace and on the hearth a fire had been laid. He used the candle, holding the flame to the kindling. As it flared up he returned outdoors and broke the frozen snow from around the stirrup.

Pulling, he found that Mabry's clothes had frozen to the saddle, and had to be freed by force. He toppled the big man into his arms but was unable to carry him, so he dragged him through the door and into the cabin.

Dragging Mabry closer to the fire, Healy added sticks and built it up until flames crackled and the heat reached out to war against the empty chill of the deserted house.

He got Mabry's coat off, then his boots. He had no experience with frozen men, nor was he sure that Mabry was frozen or even frostbitten, but he began to chafe his feet gently, then warmed the coat at the fire and spread it over his feet. He lifted Mabry's arms and worked them back and forth and around to restore circulation.

There was an ugly tear in Mabry's scalp and his face was covered with dried and frozen blood. Healy hesitated to touch the wound, deciding for the time being to let well enough alone.

With the fire blazing cheerfully and Mabry stretched on a buffalo robe and under blankets, Healy took the candle and walked around the cabin. Obviously it had been in use not many weeks before. In various cans there were dried beans, rice, salt, flour, and coffee.

Shrugging into his coat, he led the patient black horse to the barn. The building was snug and tight, half underground. In a bin he found some ears of corn, and he put them in the feedbox. He wiped the snow from the horse with his hands, then with an old bit of sacking. A couple of moth-eaten blankets hung on nails, and he put them over the horse, forked some hay into the manger, and returned to the house.

Mabry still lay on the floor. The fire burned steadily.

Dull with exhaustion, Healy backed up to a chair and sat down. He would rest. After a while he would make coffee. Outside the snow continued to fall, and the fire ate at the pine knots, and there was no sound within the room but the breathing of the two men. Occasionally a drop of melted snow fell down the chimney into the fire. It was very still.

Chapter 10

H
EALY AWAKENED WITH a start and for a minute lay still, trying to orient himself. Slowly he remembered, recalling his arrival and the finding of Mabry.

The big gun fighter lay sprawled on his buffalo robe several feet from the fire. His breathing was heavy, his face flushed and feverish.

Building up the fire, Healy put water in a kettle and hung it over the flames. There was little wood left in the fuel box.

He went to the window. It was growing light and everything was blanketed with snow. All tracks were wiped out. There was small chance of being found, yet while they stayed here, what would happen at the wagons?

He put the thought from his mind. There was nothing he could have done without being armed. His only chance had been to do what he had done, to find Mabry and get a gun. He had the gun now, but not the slightest idea where he was or how to locate the wagons.

Still, the Hole-in-the-Wall was a landmark that must be visible for some distance, and the Wall itself was miles long.

One thing at a time. If he could save Mabry they might have a chance.

When the water was hot he made coffee and then went to work on the wounded man. He took off the short jacket and found the other wound. Mabry had been hit low on the side right above the hipbone, and his side and stomach were caked with blood.

He bathed both wounds, taking great care and much hot water. He felt movement. Looking up, he saw that Mabry's eyes were open.

Mabry looked from Healy to the wound. “How is it?”

“I don't know,” Healy admitted. “You've lost a lot of blood. You've got a scalp wound, too.”

When he had finished bathing the wounds, he bound them with bandages torn from a clean flour sack.

“Where are we?”

“I don't know that, either.” He explained what had happened and how they had reached the cabin.

“Horse came home,” Mabry said. “That's got to be it. Bought him in Deadwood from a trapper from over this way. So when the horse found himself close by and without anybody to guide him, he just came home.”

“There was a fire laid, though.”

“Custom,” Mabry said. “Any man who leaves a cabin leaves materials for a fire. Custom in cold country.”

At noon Healy found a woodpile in a shed behind the house and brought in several armloads of wood.

“What'll we do?” he asked suddenly.

“Do the girls have a gun?”

“Yes. I didn't know it, but they had one.”

Mabry considered that. As long as their food and fuel held out, and if they did not waste ammunition, they could hold Barker off. It was unlikely they had more than one pistol load. Probably five bullets, and one fired. Four left.

T
OWARD NIGHT MABRY'S fever mounted. He was very weak. During the day he had examined his hands and feet. By some miracle they had not frozen. Yet he would lose some skin on his feet and ankles and his nose would probably peel. He had been luckier than he had any right to be.

Had Healy not found him at the door, he would have eventually fallen or been knocked from the horse to freeze in the snow. He would never have regained consciousness.

Mabry thought it out. They could not be far from the wagons. Several miles, but not too many. Yet he was weak, very weak, and something had to be done at once. Barker would not wait long. He would grow impatient and find some means of getting the girls out of their wagon.

How much had Healy learned? How much could he do? That he had nerve enough to act was obvious. He had chosen his break and escaped. He had, before that, made his try for the shotgun. He had nerve enough if it was directed right.

“You got to play Indian.”

“Me?” Healy shook his head. “I'd never get away with it.”

“You've got to. You've got to go back.”

Healy would be bucking a stacked deck, yet he might make it if he was lucky…and there was no other way.

Pain lay in Mabry's side and his mouth was dry. His skull throbbed heavily. He explained carefully and in detail what Healy must do, and what he would do if he was forced to fight or run. Yet somewhere along the line his mind began to wander and he found himself arguing with himself about Janice.

Vaguely he was aware that Healy was gone, that the Irishman had started out to do something he himself should be doing, but he could not bring his thoughts to focus upon the problem. Before him and through his mind there moved a girl, sometimes with one face and sometimes with another. He kept arguing with Janice and kept seeing Dodie, and the latter's warmth and beauty kept moving between himself and Janice, distracting him and making his carefully thought-out arguments come to nothing.

He told himself in his delirium that he had no business loving any woman, or allowing any woman to love him. He told the image that came to him in his sickness that he would be killed, shot down from behind, or sometime he would draw too slowly. Someone would come along and his gun would misfire, or some Sioux would get a shot at him and not miss.

His life was action, he was of the frontier and for the frontier, he was a man born for a time, and when that time had gone, he would go as the buffalo had gone, and as the Indians were going.

He knew this now as he had always known it, deep in his subconscious he knew it, and now in his delirium it came back to him with new force.

Before the quiet beauty and the ladylike qualities of Janice Ryan he seemed brutal and uncouth. She was something from the life he had known as a boy, a life long gone now, the life of Virginia before the War between the States. She was hoop skirts and crinoline, she was soft music and a cadence of soft voices. She was a lady. She was something left behind.

Back there along the line of his being there had been a war and he had gone into it from one world and come out of it into another. To him there had not even been ashes, not even memory. The others had tried to cling to the memory, to recall the past. They clung to it with desperate fingers, but he had never been able to see it as anything real. And he had gone West.

He had been only a boy, but a man by virtue of the work he did and the weapon he carried. It had not been far from those days to the XIT and that still, hot morning when he first killed a man without the excuse of war.

He tried to explain this to the shadow figure of Janice, but she kept leaving and Dodie would appear in her place, and somehow there was no explaining to do.

O
UT IN THE snow Healy had been doing his own thinking. What did Mabry have in mind? The man was a fighter. He would have known just what to do. But could he, Healy, do it?

He tried to think it out, to plan his moves. Mabry might have gone in to face them down. This Healy knew he could not do. And above all, he must not be killed. He remembered something he had read or heard about military tactics. “The first object of the commander is to keep his striking force intact.” And he himself was the striking force.

Tomorrow he might kill a man, or might himself be killed. What would Janice think of him then? It was all very well to talk of not killing, easy to be horrified by it when living in a safe and secure world, but out here it was different.

Nor was there any possibility of aid. There was no law. Nobody knew where they were or had reason to worry about them. They were isolated by distance and the cold, and it was kill or be killed.

Tom Healy was realistic enough to understand that whatever else was done with Janice and Dodie, they would never be allowed to leave the country alive. Their stories, wherever told, would bring sure retribution.

Returning to the house, he put wood on the fire and crawled into his bunk.

At daylight he could see that Mabry was a very sick man. There was little firewood left in the pile behind the house, and the last of Mabry's beef would be used that day. There were a few items of food in the house, but Healy was no cook. Whatever was done he must do.

Thrusting Mabry's extra pistol into his belt, he took up the ax and went out. The snow was knee-deep on the level and he waded through it to the trees in back of the stable. Remembering how far the sound of an ax carried, he hesitated to use it, but there was no alternative.

For an hour he worked steadily. He found the wood brittle in the sharp cold, and he cut up a couple of deadfalls and carried the wood into the house. If Mabry returned to consciousness he would be able to feed the fire.

He tried to put himself in Mabry's place and do what the gun fighter would have done.

Taking the rifle, he went up the ridge east of the house. The wind had an edge like a knife and the hills up there were bare and exposed, without timber and largely swept clean of snow.

Far away to the east he could see the long line of the Wall, which seemed to be no more than seven or eight miles off, yet he was aware of the amazing clarity of the West's air, and that distance could be deceptive.

Well away to the south he could see a notch in the Wall that might be the Hole.

If the wagons started to move, this might well be the route they would take, yet nothing moved anywhere that he could see.

For more than an hour he scouted the country, moving carefully, trying to use the shelter of ridges and tree lines, drawing on his imagination and remembering what he had seen others do, and the casual things Mabry had said, or others. Had he been well, Mabry would have known what to do; as he was not, it was Healy's problem.

Coming from a ravine, he saw a faint trail of smoke in the sky ahead of him. Crouching near a rock, he studied the place of its origin. It was far west of the Hole, almost due south of him, and apparently not over a mile away.

The ravine across the narrow valley was choked with brush but there was a vague game trail along one side, hugging the brush and trees. Along this he made his way. He felt jumpy inside, and knew that where there was smoke there would be men, and at this time those men could scarcely be friends. If it wasn't Barker or his men, it could well be Indians.

Healy was no fool. He had the beginning of wisdom, which was awareness of what he did not know. Yet he must go ahead and trust to luck and what his imagination would provide.

The brush was heavily weighted with snow. Once a rabbit jumped up almost under his feet. He hated the crunch of snow under his boots, fearing it might be heard.

He shifted the rifle to his other hand and worked up the ravine to the top, climbed out and went up the short slope to the crest.

He was just about to peer over the ridge when he heard a shout. Instantly he flattened out on the snow and lay still, listening.

“Can you see it?” The voice was Boyle's.

“Swing left!” That was Barker. “Big rock here!”

He heard the jangle of harness and knew the vans were moving. They had come out of the Hole at last.

Lying near the upthrust of a cluster of boulders, he watched them coming. They were still some distance away, but he could hear every sound in the sharp, clear air.

It was almost noon.

Art Boyle had never liked camping in the Hole. It was the logical route for any traveler going east or west, and evidently he had persuaded Barker to move back into the hills and out of sight. Within a few days, perhaps within hours, all evidence of their presence at the Hole-in-the-Wall would be gone.

Unlikely as it was that any traveler might pass, they were now safe from the risk.

Yet Healy instantly realized there was one thing he must do and could do. He must destroy their confidence. He must let them know they were not secure from discovery. That he, or someone, was still around.

As long as they were watched, or any witnesses remained, they were not safe. Without doubt they were moving back to the hills to accomplish their ambitions once and for all. And once they were back in the ravines and woods and free from discovery, there was only the matter of breaking into the wagons or starving the girls into submission. They might even, and the very thought frightened Healy, set fire to the wagons. Yet they would hesitate to do that without looting them first.

He lifted the rifle. He fired into the snow just ahead of Barker's horse. The rifle leaped in his hands, snow spurted under the horse's hoofs, and the sound went racketing off across the snow-clad hills.

Frightened, the horse leaped forward, then broke into a wild bucking that Barker controlled only after a hard fight. Then he swung the horse over the hill and out of sight. The teams, just now in sight, swung hard around, almost upsetting the vans, and then they lunged into the hollow behind the hill and out of sight. For luck, Healy fired again.

He knew they might very well attempt to locate and kill him, so instantly he slid back down the hill, then moved swiftly into the thick brush. Twisting and winding through it, he made a quarter of a mile before he paused to glance back. There was no evidence of any pursuit.

At least, Barker now knew his problem was not simple. He must find and kill Healy or abandon his plan, and this he would not do. They would know the shot had been fired by no Indian, for Healy knew enough of the West by this time to know that an Indian had no ammunition to waste. When he shot, he shot to kill.

Returning to the cabin, he found Mabry conscious and sitting up, his pistol gripped in his hand and the muzzle on the door.

Healy explained what he had done as he got out of his coat. “Think they'll come here?”

“Could be. Won't do any harm,” Mabry added, “taking that shot at them.” He lay back on the bed, relaxing his grip on the pistol. “I'm not much use to you.”

Healy rubbed his hands down his pants. Anything could happen now…and Janice was out there. If they hurt her…He knew suddenly how it was that a man could kill.