The Bold Frontier (23 page)

“Holy hollerin’ moses,” McNulty breathed. “I thought sure you was’ done for, Trow, with all them shots out there.”

“I was gone, almost.” Huston looked at Lil Carney as he tossed his gun onto the table. “That’s empty. I don’t have any way of fighting Gall, unless my coat’s outside.”

Lil Carney shook her head. “Gall searched it and took it. Along with all the ammunition in the pockets.”

Huston rubbed his hand across his eyes. Lord, he was worn out. He indicated pale-cheeked Elihu Carney. “How is he?”

“Just making it,” she answered. “But without a doctor he can’t last longer than a few hours.” She sucked in her breath sharply. “Why do you keep looking at me like that, marshal?”

“I was wondering why you weren’t gone a long time ago. That was part of the bargain.”

“Gall canceled the bargain as soon as you broke loose.”

“Where is he?”

She lifted her hand in the general direction of the street. “Right where he was before I snuck up on you. In the store across from the hotel.” She sighed. “Honestly, marshal, I’m so tired I could go to sleep right now and never wake up. That killer waiting out there—” She shivered.

“Changed your tune a little, did you?” Huston saw the thrust register on her face. She bit her lower lip for a moment.

“Yes. He—he acted like a crazy man after you got away. He hit me, cursed and waved his gun and threatened to kill all three of us. He’s afraid a posse’s coming, yet he doesn’t want to leave you alive—” She choked back a sob. “I tell you, he’s out of his mind.”

Huston replied with a thoughtful nod. “I’ll try once more.” He looked at his Colt on the table. “I wish I had something to use against him …”

He looked down dully at his bare hands. Lil Carney had been gazing at Huston’s bloody shirt. She took a step forward, touching it gingerly.

“Was it Gall?”

He nodded. She seemed lost in thought for a moment. Then she turned, hiked up her skirt and lifted one muddy red slipper and rested it on a chair. A tiny knife winked free of a leg sheath. She handed it to Houston with a wan smile.

“A souvenir of my profession. I thought about using it on myself if Pop died and Gall caught me. But you take it. Maybe it’ll help.”

Huston’s hand closed around hers for a moment. Their eyes met, and he thought that he understood her suddenly; her bitter life; her desire to protect her father; her swift and anguishing repentance. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

Huston left the room then. He circled from the rear of the hotel and crossed the main street where it dwindled into the rocky trail leading down the mountain toward Sierra. The knife felt light but reassuring in his clenched fist. He was sure that Gall couldn’t see him through the curtain of falling snow.

The great trees swayed and moaned in the wind. Huston clamped his teeth together to stop the chattering. He slid along the wall of the building in which Gall was supposedly hiding, rounded the corner and came up to the back door. He breathed deeply again, ice in his belly, and a more deadly chill creeping over his whole body. Yet the hand grasping the knife seemed warm.

The door opened inward. Huston eased the knob to the left until the lock was free, still holding the door shut. Going down into a crouch, he leaped forward and to the side as he let go.

The wind smacked the door open with a hollow bang and tore into the room. Still crouching, Huston dove into the room on his chest. He saw a vaguely human shape against the pale rectangle of a window.

“Who is it?” Gall’s voice … sounding frightened for a change.

Huston drew himself up on his knees. Groped forward with his free hand and bumped a chair. Gall’s gun blazed and Huston flung himself out again, deafened by the series of rolling explosions.

All the shots missed; Gall was firing at a man he presumed to be standing. Finally Huston heard the sound he’d been waiting for … the click of a hammer coming down on an empty cylinder. He jumped up and ran forward.

All at once, against the window, he could see Gall quite clearly. The killer’s arm flew back; he flung his pistol at Huston’s head. Huston ducked. Then he dropped his knife. It clattered on the floor.

Maybe he’d gone crazy, he thought- Snow-crazy; storm-crazy; death-crazy. But he wanted to finish Bart Gall with his bare hands … to cancel Pink Fisher’s judgment.

Gall seized a chair, raised it to smash Huston’s head. Huston dodged in, shot his right fist forward and jolted Gall in the belly. Gall
oofed
loudly. His hands opened and the chair fell. The tip of one leg struck a window, shattering it. Pieces of glass clinked and tinkled on the floor; other shards stayed in the frame. Wind whipped snow through the opening, and through the door. It swirled around the two men as they faced each other.

They fought close in, pummeling each other with vicious chopping blows. Huston blocked Gall’s punches with his left arm as best he could, grinding his teeth together each time a blow landed near the wound and started fresh throbs of pain. He punched with his right hand. Gall soon sensed what was happening, spun away quickly and held his hand up before his face, near the window.

“By damn, Huston. I got blood on my hand. And it’s yours!” He chuckled softly.

Huston brought his right hand clubbing down, but Gall danced away, then rained brutal blows on the other, injured arm. Huston gritted his teeth against the pain. Gall’s boot lashed out, tangling Huston’s feet and throwing him off balance. He caught Gall with his free hand. Gall jerked back instinctively, pulling Huston upright again. This time it was Gall who teetered. Huston’s smashing last-ditch punch to the jaw tipped the scales. Gall fell, uttering a filthy oath. The back of his head struck the window frame and he let out a shriek. Almost instantly, he stiffened, then went limp.

Gall’s weight dragged him to the floor. A narrow dagger of glass protruded from the base of his neck. Huston turned away into the darkness and was sick.

After a few minutes of sitting on a chair, letting his strength flow back, he summoned enough energy to move again. He went out through the front door, crossed the street and entered the hotel. He pulled the office door open and leaned weakly against the frame. Lil Carney and Andy McNulty watched him with tense expressions, eyes throwing back yellow pinpoints from the coach lamps.

“Gall’s dead.”

Lil Carney’s face loosened then, lost its stiffness as she began to cry. But Huston realized that their problem was far from solved. He turned to McNulty.

“Andy, I want to try to take Mr. Carney back to Sierra. Can you ride with your leg like that?”

“Hell—” McNulty grunted, attempting to rise. “Sure I can, Trow. You just watch me—
-ugh
.” He couldn’t get up by himself.

Huston gnawed his lip. He couldn’t rely on Andy McNulty for any help at all.

He went back across the street. Gall’s body smelled bad. Huston held his breath as he pulled the man out of his heavy coat. He climbed into the coat slowly, favoring his bloody arm. The coat kept out the chill wind, although Huston felt that he was now so frozen, it would take him an eternity to thaw out.

It took him nearly twenty minutes to locate the four horses. He found them tethered in the ruins of an old livery stable. He led them back to the hotel and tied them at the rack, rubbing their necks to warm them a little.

Then he began arranging transportation for his strange crew of pilgrims. He worked almost mechanically. He bundled a horse blanket around Lil Carney and helped her climb up on one of the mounts. He bundled Elihu Carney similarly and put him on a second horse, then helped boost Andy McNulty up behind him to keep the wounded man from falling. McNulty’s mouth was drawn into a line of pain.

On the third horse, the biggest and strongest, he put the stiffening bodies of Gall and Cody; Elwood he left behind. He mounted the fourth horse and turned to the small cavalcade.

“If you never prayed before, folks, do it now. Pray we get down this mountain.”

He clucked to his horse and they started off through the storm.

The hours seemed endless as the horses picked their way down the treacherous snowy trail. Every once in a while Huston would catch himself dozing in the saddle, shake himself awake. His wound tended to dull his senses. But his was the job of guiding them.

The snowfall slacked off after a while. Then the sky seemed to lighten in the east, turn a slate gray color. The nightmare ride ended at dawn, when they moved out of the last clump of trees and saw sleeping Sierra less than a mile below them, half hidden behind wispy veils of blowing snow.

Huston turned to speak to Lil Carney, but her eyes were shut. She was asleep, or close to it, clutching the saddle horn.

Huston rode back to her, touched her arm. Her eyes flew open. She peered at him blankly for a moment.

“We’re coming into town,” he said. After another moment, her eyes focused, and she nodded.

Huston led them up the deserted main street to Ma Erickson’s rooming house. There he got them rooms and went to fetch Doc Pfeffer. The doc complained about being awakened so early, but he came anyway. After a quick but thorough examination of Elihu Carney he stood up and wiped his spectacles.

“Well, we’ll patch up that hole and he should be good as new after some food, and plenty of warm blankets and a lot of rest. Now let’s fix up that arm of yours.”

Before long, Huston was on his way out of the rooming house. Lil Carney ran after him.

“Marshal!”

He turned back. “Yes?”

“Did you mean what you said about letting Pop and me stay here?”

Huston nodded. She smiled tiredly. “You’re a kind man.”

Their eyes held for an instant. Huston couldn’t hate her. Far from it. The snow had scrubbed some of the dance hall paint from her cheeks, leaving a fresh glow. He saw the clear prettiness that had only been hinted at before.

“I’ll call on you in a day or two, ma’am, to see how you and your father are getting along.”

She pressed his hand a trifle longer than necessary. “Do that, marshal. Please.” He liked her forthright way; liked the honesty in her eyes. She tended to be a reckless young woman, but she had a streak of fierce courage, and he felt drawn to her.

Yes, he would definitely call again.

The town had begun to stir. The wind still keened but only a few random snowflakes blew through the sparkling air. The street was drifted high.

Huston ate a huge breakfast in the empty hotel dining room, topping it off with several cups of scalding coffee. His bandaged arm felt better. It still hurt but it would knit and heal. All he needed was what Elihu Carney needed most, rest.

But he had one score yet to settle. With the town.

When eight o’clock came and the stores opened, Huston mounted up. The two corpses lay on the horse he was leading. He rode down the center of the main street. Men who knew him called out but he ignored them. He pulled up in front of the Mercantile. “Amos!” he shouted. “Amos, get out here.”

Amos Dean appeared in a moment. Huston drew his Colt, pointing it at the merchant’s chest. With his other hand he tipped one corpse off the second horse.

“That’s Cody.”

He tipped the other.

“That’s Bart Gall. I left the third body up in Moon Hollow.”

Dean’s eyes widened as he eyed the pistol.

“You still think I’m a coward, Amos?”

Dean’s mouth worked a moment before the words came tumbling forth. “No, Trow, ’course not …”

Huston’s mouth was a grim slit. “Good. Just remember that. And remember I’m still the marshal here.”

A gawking crowd had materialized around Dean. Huston swept his eyes over the men and took a deep breath. He’d won his second battle, the battle with the town. He shoved the Colt back into the holster, turned his horse and slowly led the other horse back up the street.

“W
HOA, THAT’S NEW,” ROLF
Greencastle said. He couldn’t help sounding alarmed.

“Yes, it is,” Jimmy said. She slid an old cloth along the short squat barrel of the .44-caliber Deringer she’d taken from the drawer of her writing desk. It was an old piece. Rolf always thought of it as the Gold Rush gun because his talkative uncle Wallace, one of the failed argonauts, had often mentioned the large number of .44 Deringers carried by men in the diggings. It was an outmoded weapon, but a murderous one.

Spring sunshine through the lace curtains ignited a little white fire at one spot on the metal. Jimmy rubbed and rubbed at the barrel, though it was spotless. Sunshine falling on her flexing wrist illuminated the white scars there. Rolf was silent and a little bug-eyed over the unexpected sight of the piece.

He considered the awkwardness of another remark. Her three-word reply had shut the door on easy continuation of the conversation. After several moments of combing his fingers through his shoulder-length hair, he decided that this was serious enough for him to bull right ahead.

“What is it?”

Jimmy gazed at him with those wide eyes that reminded him of a beautiful gray he’d ridden as a boy in Ohio. Jimmy’s eyes were her beautiful feature; she was otherwise a plain young woman, with wrinkles already laid into her face by the ferocious Kansas weather and no doubt by her trade, which required her to deal with all sorts of rough types, from customers to her pimp (she had none at the moment). He had known her a little more than a year, both socially and in the biblical sense, and in that time he’d learned that she had a history of violent behavior, sometimes directed against herself.

“Why, it’s a genuine Henry Deringer. I bought it in Dodge last Saturday.”

“I mean what’s it for, Jimmy? Is somebody bothering you or making threats?”

“Why, no, I’m going to use it when General Phil Sheridan arrives next month to inspect the fort. I’m going to kill him with it.”

Rolf Greencastle almost fell off his chair in the process of removing his bare feet from the edge of her table. He crashed them down on top of his fancy boots with the pointed toes and mule ears; Rolf was of the opinion that a cavalry scout had to project a special aura—one so strong and awe-inspiring that the officers who signed his pay authorization would think he knew exactly what he was doing even when he didn’t.