The Bold Frontier (21 page)

After a long minute he rose to his feet and climbed back up on his horse. His eyes searched the darkness ahead. Now he had to go on. More than ever, he had to go on. He kneed his mount, vengeful hatred filling him, seeming to burn the cold out of his bones. Laughing Pink Fisher, remembering Huston as a coward at the end …

That had to be proven wrong.

Approximately where the gunmen had lain in wait for them, he came upon an overturned coach. His horse shied away skittishly, letting out a whinny. Huston leaned over and rubbed away the snow on the side panel.

SIERRA OVERLAND.

Puzzling at the deserted coach, Huston then remembered that it had passed through Sierra early that same morning, on its run across the mountain through the pass. Cautiously Huston urged his mount forward again.

He covered about a quarter mile more before the ground levelled off somewhat and he saw the ramshackle buildings of the ghost town of Moon Hollow. Directly at the opposite end of the deserted main street, the mountains sloped down to a jagged V, through which the moon had risen.

Something tightened in Huston’s stomach. In the window of what had once been the Moon Hollow Hotel, a light glowed.

Huston scanned the street for horses. He saw none. Warily he dismounted and tied his horse to the low branch of a stunted pine. He drew his Colt and transferred it to his left hand, flexing the fingers of his right to get rid of the stiffness. Then, Colt held properly, he started walking through the curtain of snow toward the hotel.

He kept to the side of the street, moving rapidly. He slipped into an alley alongside the rotting walls of the hotel and sidled up to a window. Stretching, he looked in. A soft gasp came from his lips. He drew back, then ventured another look.

The first person he recognized was little gray-bearded Andy McNulty, the stage driver. He was stretched out on a sagging divan, one leg encased in what looked like a crude splint. Two other people were with him. An elderly man in a black suit, flowered vest and high black beaver hat, and a young woman with a hard, brittle face and rich red lips. From her gown, he thought it was not hard to determine her profession.

Two lamps, evidently stripped from the coach, glowed feebly on an ancient table. The older man was gesturing drunkenly as he weaved on his feet and talked to McNulty. Huston looked for Gall and the other two. He didn’t see them.

After a moment of debate, he rounded the corner of the hotel and walked toward the door, his gun ready. Perhaps they could tell him if Gall had ridden on. He put his hand on the door and pushed it open, stepping quickly inside. The woman gasped and the man in the beaver turned to peer at him with reddened eyes.

McNulty made an effort to rise, then groaned. “Trow Huston. What in hell are you doing up here?”

Huston closed the door behind him. “I might ask the same, Andy.”

McNulty shook his head. “The horses stumbled on the way up and the coach went over on her side and I got a broken leg in the bargain. These here are my passengers, Miss Lil Carney and her father, Mr. Elihu Carney.” McNulty glanced sourly at Carney. “Don’t mind him, he’s out on his feet.” The girl’s expression didn’t change; it was stiff, bitter, defensive.

“She carried me up here and fixed up my leg,” McNulty explained. “By then it was too dark to send her down to Sierra alone, what with the horses run off and Carney there too drunk to stagger. So we holed up here. Maybe Carney’ll sober up enough by mornin’ to go down for some horses. That is, if the snow lets up.”

Huston glanced to the black squares of the windows. The flakes were larger now, striking hard.

“I’m looking for three men,” he said.

McNulty looked grim. “They was here, just a few minutes ago.”

“They’re killers. Escaped prisoners. They just shot Pink Fisher.”

McNulty let out a curse.

“Where are they, Andy? Did they leave?”

“Naw,” McNulty spat. “Didn’t want to hang around here, though. They’re down the street in the saloon. They’re holin’ up for the night, too, so they said.”

“And they stole my bottle,” Elihu Carney said.

He was almost crying.

Huston turned to go. If Gall and the other two were up at the saloon, the quickest way to accomplish his task would be to walk up there, surprise them and drill them down where they sat. Working on the old man’s liquor bottle, their responses might slow a good deal. That coupled with the fact that the element of surprise favored him was enough to take the biting edge off his fear. But as he brought his hand down on the door knob, the woman’s voice stopped him.

“Who is he, McNulty?” Lil Carney asked. Huston turned around. “The law in Sierra?”

McNulty nodded. The lamplight heightened the blaze in the girl’s eyes, a blaze of animosity near to hatred. She kicked the hem of her scarlet gown around from in front of her with a flick of her foot. Then she planted her fists on her hips.

“Mister, I’ve a good mind to go down to the saloon and warn those men that you’re coming.”

Elihu Carney hopped from one foot to the other, “Lil! Don’t talk like that to the marshal. Them jaspers stole my one and only bottle. You know how that just plain ruins me. Let him go.”

“Let him go?” the woman said contemptuously. “Sure I’ll let him go—after I tell him what I think of him and his fancy town.”

Huston let out a long sigh. The woman had a rough kind of prettiness, a certain charm covered over now by the hard mask of bitterness. Huston felt nervous. He wanted to get the job over with, and yet it had suddenly become plain that he couldn’t antagonize Lil Carney if he wanted to surprise Gall and his companions.

“I’m afraid I’ve never seen you before, ma’am,” he said.

Lil Carney stepped forward, mouth twisting. “Pop and I were going to get off the stage in Sierra. But a whipper-snapper deputy, a young bobcat wearing a tin star, took one look at me and told me to get right back on the coach. But our tickets ran out there and we don’t have any more money, so right now we’re in debt to the company for all the cash it takes to cross the mountains.”

“We’ve got a town ordinance,” Huston explained, “against any new—uh—dance hall ladies setting up shop there. What ones we already have, we can’t do much about. But we can keep others out, keep them from making trouble. I’m sorry if it inconvenienced you.”

She snorted. “We’ve been run out of more towns than we can count, mister. If folks would just give us a chance, we’d show them that we wouldn’t cause any trouble. Pop deals a fair game of draw or stud. We might even go to work in some regular jobs if people didn’t take one look at us and tell us to move on.” She indicated the scarlet dress covering her shapely body. “But these are all the clothes I own.”

Huston’s mind worked quickly. “Tell you what I’ll do, Miss Carney. If I get these men rounded up, you can come back to Sierra with your father and look for a job. And there won’t be any extra coach fare.” He glanced at McNulty for support, received it in a nod.

Elihu Carney did a ridiculous dance caper. “Marshal, I won’t touch another drop again, I swear to God.” He raised his right hand and stood straight, blinking his reddened eyes. Huston noticed, however, that the woman still wore a look of suspicion.

“Fine,” he said quietly. His breath clouded before him as he spoke. “Suppose you also promise me not to go warn Gall and the others.”

The woman looked away. “All right, we promise. Only you can’t blame me for feeling the way I do. The kid with the star, if I’d had a gun, I’d have shot him.”

Huston jerked the door open. “That was Pink Fisher, my deputy. He was killed not a half hour ago.

Lil Carney’s mouth formed into a small sudden O. The closing door cut her off from Huston’s sight.

The snow came down faster now, a white curtain ripped to tatters by the wind. Fear hammered at Huston as he walked down the main street of Moon Hollow. Bart Gall and his cronies wouldn’t be able to hear his boots crunching in the fast-packing snow; not above the howl of the wind.

Huston pulled his woolen mittens from his pocket, stuck his hands into them for warmth. Soon he came to the alley just this side of the saloon. To the left in the alley’s black mouth he heard a stir of movement. Crouching low, he ducked past the window and into the lean-to where three horses were blowing out their breath.

Huston stroked each one of the horses in turn, quieting them. The restless stamping diminished and he stole back to a window, squatting on his haunches and peering up over the sill.

The three men seemed small, over there on the far side of the deserted saloon. Huston recognized Bart Gall, hatless, a thin smile on his lips, his pinched-together eyes shining like shoe buttons in the dim light. On the bar sat another lantern from the coach. Beside it Huston could see Carney’s bottle, almost empty now. Of the other two men, one was thick-chested, built like a bull through the shoulders. The second was scrawny and underfed-looking. Bart Gall reached out for the bottle, poured himself a shot. Their mouths moved in conversation but all Huston could hear was the wind.

He pulled off his right mitten, dug some bullets out of his pocket and fed them one after another into the cylinder. Cautiously he rose to his feet. His heart thudded. He held on against the fear, beating it down, refusing to be taken over. Wild random thoughts darted through his mind. Run back to his horse. Head for Sierra …
They rode fast, I lost them.
Nobody would ever know.

Very slowly, Huston tightened his hold on the Colt grip. Hesitating only an instant more, he dove forward at the window, rolling his shoulder to smash the glass. He fired a round as he fell through.

He scrambled to his feet, Colt barrel swinging up on the three men who stood open-mouthed at the bar. “Don’t go for the irons,” Huston said. “I’ll shoot the first one who moves.”

“And who might you be, pilgrim?” Bart Gall asked, tipping his hat back on his head in defiance of Huston’s words.

“The name’s Huston. Sierra marshal. Throw your guns over here to me.”

Not one of them moved. Even with the wind outside Huston could hear the tense rapid breathing of the bull-shouldered man.

“Throw them down,” Huston repeated.

Gall smiled. But behind his smile lay desperation, the same kind that had caused him to break out of prison. Huston marked him as one of those men who couldn’t stand to have the will of another imposed on him. Gall’s lips thinned out bitterly.

“You heard what he said, Cody. Throw in the hog-legs.” These words to the bull-shouldered man, who grumbled something. “You too, Elwood,” Gall said to the other. Then he turned his back on Huston.

Words growled up into the marshal’s throat and his finger tightened before he realized that it was a trick. In the split instant it took his eyes to flick back to Gody, the huge man had whipped out his gun and swung it sideways. The barrel crashed into the lantern, sent it spinning to the floor. Darkness closed in.

Huston dodged to the right, away from the window, blasting out a shot. A voice shrilled in the dark. “Bart! I’m—” Then came a wild thumping of booted feet, the sound of a chair overturning and the flat thud of human flesh hitting the floor. The voice had been high and piping. Huston crossed off the man named Elwood.

A fusillade of shots ripped toward Huston. Something tugged at his sleeve as he fired back at the flashes of red. But the killers were moving. Another volley slammed into the wall where he had stood a moment before. Huston turned and hurled himself out through the window, hearing more shots as he fell.

He struck the snow and rolled. One of the horses bellowed in fright. Huston slapped a rump and pumped a shot at the sky to start them running.

The horses bolted out of the alley, milling a moment at the sidewalk. Then a sharp whistle turned them to the left. Huston felt a raging frustration. Gall and Cody had evidently come out of the front door of the saloon and picked up their mounts.

“All right,” Gall shouted from around the corner. The horses’ hoofs rattled, sweeping toward the alley mouth. Huston dodged around the lean-to and down the alley to the rear of the line of buildings, then cut left. He leaped into the intersecting alley just as a shot splintered the wood near his shoulder.

He reloaded as he ran. The hoofs pounded after him in the snow-swept dark, relentless and ghostly. Once back on the main street he made a desperate run for the hotel, found the door and got inside just as Gall and Cody galloped out of the last alley in pursuit.

It took him only an instant to get to the bar and blow out the brace of lanterns. The excited eyes of McNulty, the reddened ones of the woman Lil, all vanished as blackness claimed the room. “Get down!” Huston ordered. He heard them scramble, responding to the urgency of his tone.

Hoofs thudded outside; guns exploded. More windows smashed and Lil Carney let out a startled cry. Huston rose to his feet and crossed to a street window, flattening himself against the wall, then peering out. The riders circled around and came galloping back.

Huston made out four horses. They had his mount from the tree where he had left it tied. He snapped two shots through the broken pane, useless shots that found no target in the deceiving snow. More shots answered him. Within the room someone groaned hoarsely.

“
Pop!
”

Gall and Cody retreated to the far end of the street and didn’t return.

Huston waited a couple of minutes. The snow fell like a white shroud over the street. Finally he put his gun away and turned toward the groaning man.

Stumbling twice in the darkness, he found a small windowless room off the lobby. He carried Elihu Carney in there and set him in a chair. Then he helped Andy McNulty hobble in, found him a second chair and closed the door. On his orders, Lil Carney had brought one of the lanterns. Huston took a match in his numbed fingers and touched fire to the wick. A dim yellow glow threw their shadows on the walls.

Elihu Carney sat slumped in the chair, face drained of color. A reddish stain was spreading on his soiled gray shirt front. He bit his lower lip. “Looks—looks like I’m cashed in for this game, don’t it?” He tried to smile; succeeded in wincing instead.