Once Upon a Time in the North (9 page)

But behind Lee, at the far end of the warehouse, McConville had a better place of concealment and a clear line of fire. If he'd just had a pistol it wouldn't be so bad, but those sounded like rifle shots, and Lee, pressed against the column, felt as well as heard the bullets striking his narrow shelter. McConville wouldn't miss too many times with a rifle.

The first volley of shots came to an end.

Lee ran again, past the second column, on to the first—a little further from McConville, making it safer as the angle tightened; and closer to the other man, whose shoulder—was it?—Lee could see, imperfectly concealed.

He raised the rifle. In the same moment he pressed the trigger and McConville yelled, "Duck!"

His bullet reached the man before the warning did, and there was a grunt, a thud as he dropped his weapon, then a long withdrawn breath, and then silence.

Lee looked at the tarpaulin, and calculated: five running steps away, from right to left across McConville's line of sight, in about a second and a half. It should be possible.

And it was. McConville fired twice and missed, but Lee made it, and found the other gunman sprawled on his back with his pistol too far away to reach, and the eyes in his pale face burning. A pool of blood was spreading out around him like a great red wing unfurling. His cat-daemon crouched by his side, trembling.

'You've done for me," the gunman said in the voice of a ghost.

Lee said, 'Yep, you're bleeding a lot. Reckon I have. Is that McConville over there?"

"Morton. Ain't no McConville."

"Wouldn't that be dandy. What's he carrying?"

"Go stick your head up your ass."

"Oh, you're a nice man. Now hold your tongue."

Keeping low, he patted the man's chest and sides to make sure he wasn't carrying another weapon, and then, ignoring him, turned his attention to the other end of the warehouse. In one way, it didn't matter if he and McConville stood and hid from each other all day long. Captain van Breda could load his cargo without being shot at, and get away with it. But sooner or later, either Lee or McConville was going to have to move, and the first one to do so would probably die.

Suddenly a fusillade of shots rang out, and bullets thudded into the walls behind Lee and the tarpaulin- covered machinery in front. Two or three struck the columns, and whined off into the corners.

And in the middle of the barrage, Lee—who was crouching low behind the machinery—suddenly found himself knocked to the floor and dizzy with shock. Had he taken a bullet? Was he hurt? It was the strangest sensation—and then with a horrible lurch of nausea, he saw his Hester in the grasp of the fallen gunman's good hand. He had her around the throat. Lee was choking with her, but the outrage—a stranger's hand on his daemon!—was worse.

He dragged his rifle round till the barrel was hard against the man's side, and shot him dead.

Hester leapt away and into Lee's arms, and he'd never felt her tremble so violently.

"All right, gal, it's over," he whispered.

"It ain't," she whispered. "There's still McConville."

"Think I'd forgot that, you dumb rabbit? Git a hold a yourself."

He rubbed her ears with his thumb and put her down gently. Then he looked out again, very cautiously, along the line of columns to the stack of barrels at the other end of the empty floor. There was no movement.

But Lee realized with a little flicker of hope that McConville wasn't only brutal: he was stupid too. A clever man would have done nothing, held his fire, kept as still as a stone until Lee had either killed or been killed by the other man. If Lee came out on top he might have thought all the danger was gone, and McConville could pick him off when his back was turned. Instead of that, what did the fool do but give himself away. So there might be a chance.

Those columns ... two rows of eight, equally spaced along the length of the building, back and front. When Lee looked past the left side of the row at the front, by the windows, he could see the whole room, almost, clear across the center of the big floor to the stack of barrels; but when he looked past the right side of the columns, he could see nothing but the narrow passage between the front wall and the row of overlapping columns, right down to the side wall at the far end.

But that meant in turn that McConville would have the same view. If Lee moved along between the row of columns and the front wall, he'd be invisible to the other man for some of the way, at least.

It was the best chance he had. He looked down at Hester, and she flicked her ears: ready. Lee quickly filled the magazine of the Winchester (and what a sweet weapon this was) and set off, making as little noise as leather-shod feet could on a wooden floor.

For the first three or four columns he was safely invisible, and he was ready to snap a shot as soon as anything moved into sight at the other end. The further he got, though, the more dangerous, because as the angle increased so did the gaps between the columns.

Couldn't be helped. Take the rest at a run. He stopped at the last point where he was still fully concealed, opposite the big doors right in the center that opened for goods to come up by the hoist, and then gripped the rifle and ran.

And in the same moment he thought,
My shadow—damn, he can see my shadow—

The sun was pouring in through the windows. McConville had been able to follow his progress every step of the way; and no sooner had Lee realized that than two shots rang out, and he dropped. He was hit, but he had no idea where. He'd sprawled in the space between the second and third columns. With all his might he dragged himself up and flung himself forward towards the rack of barrels. If he was close against it on this side, McConville wouldn't be able to see him.

Maybe.

He made it, and slipped down to the floor. Hester was close by, trembling. Lee brought his finger to his lips, and he could do that because his hand was free, and his hand was free because he'd dropped the rifle.

It lay out in the open, several feet away and unreachable.

He sat there with his back to the lower rack of barrels, smelling the stinking fish oil, feeling his blood race, listening to every drip and creak and scrape and click, and holding back the pain that was prowling around just waiting to pounce.

It was his left shoulder, as he discovered a few moments later. Where exactly he didn't know, because the pain inconsiderately took up residence like a bully and demanded all the feeling there was; but Lee tried to move his left hand and arm and found them still working, though badly weakened, so he guessed McConville's bullet hadn't found a bone.

Damn, there was blood all over the place. Where the hell was that coming from? Was he hit somewhere else as well?

He shook his head to clear it, and drops of blood flew off and splashed across his face. Simultaneously his left ear felt as if a tiger had taken a bite out of it, and Lee had to hold his breath to avoid gasping. Well, ears did bleed, no doubt about it, and if it was no worse than that, then it was better than it might have been.

Silence in the warehouse, apart from the drip of blood onto the floor.

Outside, the distant sounds of work, and the cry of seagulls.

Lee sat, stiffening with pain, with one gun that didn't work and yards from another that did, in the deepening stench of fish oil. Somebody's bullet—probably his— had punctured one of the barrels, and not far away from where he'd fallen a steady trickle of the stuff was leaking down from the top rack and spreading slowly across the floor. In another five minutes he'd be sitting right in it.

Hester sat crouched tightly against his side. She was hurt by his wounds, but she wouldn't complain.

"Scoresby," came a voice from the other side of the rack of barrels.

Lee said nothing.

"I know you're there, you cheap son of a bitch, and I know I got you," the slow grinding voice went on. "Course I don't know if you're dead yet, but you will be soon, you bastard. You think I didn't know who you were soon's I saw you? Ain't nobody I forgit once I seen 'em. You was next on my list back there in the Dakota country, you better believe it. You shoulda seen them two marshals when I finished with 'em, whoo, man. One of 'em had a serpent-daemon and he took his eyes off me and I picked her up by the tail and cracked her like a goddamn whip. You ain't never seen a man so surprised to be dead. That was by the Cheyenne River. And it left the other man on his own against Pierre McConville. That ain't good odds, Scoresby, you think of that. I can stay awake longer'n anyone. He tried to out-wake me but in the end he fell into the sweet arms of slumber, and the sucker thought he'd tied me safe, but ain't nothing can hold me down. I got a trick for that. I snuck out of my bonds and I lashed that son of a whore's feet and hands together and then I just picked up his daemon and tied her to his horse and unhobbled the horse. Man! That was funny. He woke up and he saw the terrible fix he was in. He kept saying, 'Here, Sunshine, good horse, don't go 'way now, come on, you dumb critter, please please now don't move.' As long as that horse didn't move too far he could just about live, but if something was to startle her so she ran off, well, bang, thassit. Like a hand coming up inside your ribs and feeling your heart still beating and pulling and pulling it till the strings and the veins all pop and it comes away in your hand. Man, you're dead then all right. In the end I took his gun and I fired it in the air and off ol' Sunshine took like a cannonball. You ain't never heard a scream like that marshal screamed.

"Well, I'm gone do that to you, Scoresby. There's that big hoist outside the doors there with a rope on it. I'm gone play a trick with that, you bet. I'm gone play with you and that scrawny jackrabbit for a
long
time."

The pool of fish oil had spread. It was close enough now for Lee to reach out and touch it, and then he saw Hester look that way too, and then at him, and then at his pistol, and he knew at once what she meant.

McConville was still talking, but Lee blanked out his voice and with infinite care reached for the pistol at his waist. Holding it on his lap, he touched a finger to the pool of oil and brought a drop to the pivot of the hammer, and another to the trigger mechanism, and another to the bearing of the cylinder. With his weakened left hand holding the barrel as firmly as he could, he turned the cylinder with his right, very slowly, and felt it loosen. He pulled back the hammer: it moved stiffly at first, and then freely. He made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber, and sat with the pistol cocked, waiting for McConville's deep grating voice to stop.

"Well, Scoresby, I'm gone start killing you now. This is your end a-coming. It's gone be a hard one and a long one. I made that other marshal's end last a good half-hour by his pretty watch, which I took. I think I might let you stick around a mite longer'n that. Depends how much you scream."

Lee heard the sound of a man getting to his feet and coughing slightly as if to cover a grunt of pain. So he had been hit!

And Hester pricked up her ears, tensing suddenly, as she and Lee heard another sound: the slither of a serpent body along a wooden floor, and the faint dry clicking of a rattle. McConville's daemon, impatient to get the torture started, was moving ahead of him.

And then, not six feet away at the end of the rack of barrels, the snake head appeared—and Hester sprang, and seized it.

She gripped the daemon just behind the head, and bit down hard. Lee felt every quiver of her muscles, and clenched his teeth in sympathy with hers.