Radigan (1958) (21 page)

He felt the hot burn of the bullet and sprang back, to see the girl standing there, fifty feet off in another direction.

Why, the dirty little-! Fooled him, fooled him like he was a youngster with an edge torn from her skirt.

And then he lowered his rifle.

She'd fooled him, all right, but she had missed, missed a clean shot. Sure, he'd burned his neck with the bullet and it would be raw and sore, but he'd have a woman to .. . "Bitner!"

It was a man's voice, conversational in tone, and it was behind him. He sprang like a cat, turning as he leaped, and when he hit the ground, his rifle-hers actually-was hosing flame. He staggered and something hit his wind a wicked blow, and he settled on his feet, flat on the rocks, and saw Radigan standing there, standing straight, his right side toward him like a blasted soldier at attention on the parade ground; like a man in a duel.

Bitner got his Winchester up and squeezed shut on the trigger and felt the rifle jump in his hand, but the recoil or something staggered him and, puzzled, he saw his bullet kick dust from the rocks between them. Well, by God, he'd . . . he was lying on his face on the cold rock, and the snow was blowing away from his face because he was breathing hard. He heard the dying echo of his shot. It sounded like two shots, and he got his knees under him and started to get up.

It was the blood on the mesa top that bothered him. Some body was shot almighty bad, somebody was really bleeding like a stuck hog, somebody-the blood was there, around his knees and on the rock where he had been lying. His eyes had refused to focus but now they did and he saw it was his blood and he had been gutshot.

He had gutshot a man once and it had taken the fellow a long time to die.

Bitner used the rifle for a crutch and got to his feet. He could see the girl, looking like an angel in her white gown, walking from behind the rocks toward Radigan. It was that dress that had thrown him, right there at the beginning; in a place like that he had not expected to see anybody in a white dress, and before he got himself adjusted to it she had taken a cut at him and gotten away.

It was a hell of a way to die, over a woman he had only seen a time or two and who didn't want any part of him, anyway. He was swaying on his feet, and wanting a shot at Radigan, but more than anything he wanted a bullet through the skull. He had always had guts enough, but did he have guts enough to die from a belly shot without crying like a baby? That man he had shot, he'd cried and screamed.

Something raw and horrible tore from his own throat, and he lifted the rifle and felt the slam of the bullet and knew he had won. He had won because he was dying, going, dead.

The last thing he remembered was lying with his cheek against the rock and remembering how he had helped his ma shave his pa after he had been killed. "A man shouldn't be buried like that," his ma had said. "He should face up to the Gates like a man, with his beard trimmed."

He had no son, so who was going to shave him? Who would fix his body for burial?

A man should have a son.

He saw his bloody hand lying inches before his eyes, the cold wind drying the blood on it, and he tried to open his mouth to tell Radigan that a man should have a son, and beyond that there was nothing further.

Gretchen had come to Radigan quickly. "You all right?" he asked. He asked it without looking at her, for he was watching Bitner. She knew the man was dying and Radigan knew it but he did not move his eyes from Bitner for even an instant.

"I'm all right," she said, "I was hoping you'd come." "Sorry I was late."

"You weren't late. You were right on time."

Ross Wall came up to the house from the barn in the first bleak morning light. He stamped the snow from his boots and came in at Angelina's call. He held his hat in his hand, his blocky head looking like the head of a big grizzly in the shadow cast by the lamp.

"Ma'am, I want we should saddle up and ride out of here, right away this morning."

Angelina Foley felt something seem to turn over inside her. "What's happened?"

"Nothing yet. Nothing I know of, only Bitner didn't come back, and if Bitner doesn't come back, he's dead. It's another man gone, and one of the best."

"Is that all?"

"No," he said bluntly, "it ain't all. Not by a damn' sight."

If his other words had not impressed her, these did. It was the first time Ross Wall had ever sworn in her presence.

"It ain't all. There's strangers around, three or four of them. Mighty salty looking men, Gorman says. He came on three of them up in the trees last night; they just sat their saddles with Winchesters in their hands and looked at him. They didn't say I, yes or no, they just looked, and he looked back. Then Gorman rode back here and asked for his time."

"Is there more?"

"Yes. I never did cotton to what Harvey wanted to do. I never liked him nor trusted him, nor saw what you and your pa saw in him. He's brought you to trouble, and I'd like to see you out of it.

"Those men out there," he pointed. "I think they're waiting for him. I think he'll come back through the snow and he'll ride right up to here and they'll shoot him right out of his saddle.

"And that isn't all. The sheriff is down at San Ysidro. I don't mean Flynn, but Flynn's boss. Name is Enright, or something. He rode in yesterday with three deputies and he has been asking questions around, and one of those deputies has a horse with a Texas band."

Angelina Foley walked to the fire and picked up the coffee pot.
It was always a woman's way to turn to food in an emergency.
Fix a hot meal, make coffee; it was a sensible way. And that was what she should be doing, making a hot meal for some man rather than trying to prove how smart she was and how she could run a cow outfit as well as any man. She had not even managed to run a home, not anywhere.

So all their fancy dreams of wealth were empty. All Harvey's confident talk, his striding up and down, his gestures-they were as empty as he was-all those big ideas from men who would rather steal than do an honest day's work with their fine contempt for men who did work. Fools, Harvey called them, hayshakers, so now where was he?

"Can we get out of here?"

For the first time she saw hope in Wall's eyes. "I think so. I think they'd be glad to be shut of us. We couldn't take any thing, of course. Just personal stuff. But we could ride out, ma'am. ...

"Don't call me ma'am," she said irritably. "My name is Gelina. "

They were coming down Vache Creek now, six of them, one with his skull tied in a bloody bandage, one with a broken arm, now in a sling. Their horses' hoofs dragged and the men slumped wearily in the saddle.

Harvey Thorpe was numb as well as exhausted. They were all numb.

The ride had been cold and they had been anxious to get on with the holdup.
The stage showed up on time and they had ridden out and stopped it, confident of their numbers, confident of their guns.

Only the man on the box had a shotgun and he didn't drop it, he didn't hold up his hands. His first charge of buckshot had torn a man's face off and the second dropped a man, screaming. Amid plunging horses and wild shots he had coolly picked up a Winchester and opened fire. Other men were shooting from the stage itself and horses were down, men screaming, and Harvey Thorpe had been among the first to break into flight. A few miles away they had come together, and they had kept on going. And nobody had anything at all to say.

The thing none of them wanted to say was that the men they had called hayshakers, the men who worked for their money, had been ready for them.

What happened to the others Harvey never was to know. All he did know was that one man sitting up on the box of that stage had not thrown up his hands: he had simply opened fire. From then on it had been nightmare, pure nightmare.

It was not supposed to happen. Their guns were supposed to frighten the stage driver and express messenger into immobility while they were robbed. That was the way it was supposed to happen.

Harvey knew but one thing, and he knew deep within him self that when he heard that shotgun blast and saw that man's face vanish in a mask of blood, his own guts had turned to water.

They rode into the ranch yard and somebody said, "Harvey!" And it wasn't one of his own men.

The exclamation made him look up and he saw Radigan standing there in the middle of the ranch yard.

He was standing there with his hands empty, just waiting. And then Harvey saw Loren Pike in the barn door, and Charlie Cade at the corner of the corral, and lean, round-shouldered Adam Stark leaning against the doorpost of the house. And beside the corral and still farther away was John Child. And even a less wary man than himself would have read the story in their presence here, in their manner.

A man behind him said, "Count me out, Harvey," and Harvey Thorpe heard a gun drop into the dust. And behind him other guns dropped.

Harvey looked at Radigan and felt the hatred inside himself like something raw and sore. Radigan had been nowhere near that stage, but suddenly it seemed as if Radigan had been the man on the box who lifted that shotgun. Without him every thing would have been all right.

Out of the welter of thoughts left in his brain came a slow, cool knowledge that he could not win but he could still defeat Radigan. Alive, Radigan was the victor, but dead he was noth
ing
at all, simply nothing.

"Gelina let you come here?"

"She's gone," Radigan said. "She rode out with Wall and a pack horse. Heading for California, I think."

So that was over, too.

Behind him he heard horses walking away, getting clear of him, and Radigan stood there, waiting. Nobody had asked him to drop his gun, nobody suggested he surrender.

Of course, within a few days they would know all about what happened in Colorado, and he would be a wanted man. It was strange he had not considered that, but all his plans had been predicated on success.

Why, they could hang him! And they might.

And Radigan, standing there with his feet apart, just waiting for him to draw and die.

"I'll be damned if I will!" Harvey said angrily. "You're all just waiting for me to make a move so you can kill me! I'll surrender! You think I'll hang, but I won't!

I'll beat it! I can still win! I tell you-!"

He meant every word of it, believed it all. Why, so many things could happen in a trial, and he still had friends, he could still dig up some money, he'd show them, he'd ...

Harvey Thorpe had no intention of drawing, but he did. He felt his hand dropping for the gun and something in his brain screamed that it was madness, he could not win, but he could kill Radigan, he could. . . .

"I didn't think he was going to, there at the end," Pike said. "I thought he was throwing in his hand."

"Even a coyote in a trap," somebody else said, "he'll snap at anything, just to hurt, to kill."

"How'd you guess, Tom?" Cade said. "Because you had to guess, it was that fast."

"Can we do anything for him?" That was John Child. "I mean, is it too late?"

"Sure," Pike replied, "the man's dead." And he was.