The Law of the Trigger (5 page)

Deland laughed quietly. “I guess they figure this is a job for a specialist. And you're the only one around.”

“This is the damnedest thing I ever heard of!” Owen said angrily. He took Deland's arm and pulled him around to the side of the feed store. “Now start at the beginning with this nonsense; I want to hear it all.”

“You know the beginnin' as well as I do,” Arch said, hunkering down with his back to the plank wall. “But maybe you don't know that Will Cushman took some deputies and a pair of freight-company detectives into the hills lookin' for the Brunner hideout.”

“Will Cushman?”

“It surprised me, too, but he did it.” Not that it did any good. They came back last night empty-handed, and Will wired Fort Smith that the gang must have scattered out in their direction.”

Owen snorted. “That gang didn't scatter anywhere. They're right there in those hills.”

Arch nodded. “And that's where they'll stay, too, I guess, if it's left up to Cushman or a few outsiders like those freight detectives to bring them in.”

Owen paced a tight, angry circle. “What's Will going to do now?”

Deland shrugged. “You know Will. I guess he'll sit tight and wait for the Brunners to plan another raid... and maybe kill another couple like the Ransoms.”

“What do
you
think ought to be done?” Owen demanded.

“I'm just a deputy and an old man.” Deland smiled sadly. “I don't get paid to think.”

Owen turned abruptly and glared down at his old friend. “Maybe that's what's wrong with this country. People are too busy worrying about their pay to do a job that needs to be done.” Then he saw immediately that he had overstepped the mark. “I'm sorry, Arch. I didn't mean you.”

The old deputy was not angry. “I know you didn't. You were talking about Owen Toller.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don't know, exactly, but I think this thing is beginning to eat at you. Oh, I don't mean the pressure that McKeever's puttin' on, or the looks people give you here in Reunion: But I think you're beginnin' to have doubts about yourself. You think of the Ransoms and wonder if you could have prevented it if you'd done what McKeever said. You're beginnin' to wonder if these people are right -these people that don't have the least idea what it's like goin' after a killer. I'm afraid you're beginnin' to wonder if you don't have a duty to go after the Brunners.” Deland got slowly to his feet. “Don't let them confuse you, Owen,” he said earnestly. “You have no duty here. There's not a man in this county that's done as much for it as you have. These people...” He raked cold eyes over the faces of passers-by. “They always want somebody else to do the dirty work for them. Well, I figure you've done enough of their dirty work, and so have I.” Owen was silent.

“There's just one more thing,” Deland added after a pause. “The man that goes into those hills meanin' business stands a mighty good chance of not comin' out alive. Think about that, Owen, before you let this thing eat too much at you. A write-up in the
Reunion Reflex
and a good attendance at the funeral would be mighty poor comforts for Elizabeth and the children.”

That afternoon, riding back into the darkening hills toward the farm, Owen thought over the things that Deland had said. He had known all along, of course, that the Brunners were none of his business, but it had been good to hear Deland say it. He was easier in his mind, knowing that he did not stand alone in his beliefs.

Engrossed in his thoughts, Owen did not notice that Elizabeth was unusually quiet. They crossed the south bend of Lazy Creek and Owen let the horses rest for a moment before starting the hard pull into the foothills. Turning his head, he could see the rocky, dark green meadows below, and the orange sun moving sluggishly toward the western horizon.

“We'll just about make it by dark,” he said absently, noticing that the children were asleep in the bed of the wagon. Then he turned to his wife, and saw that she had not heard him. Deep in her own thoughts, Elizabeth had allowed her face to fall into a studied, thoughtful frown.

“A penny for those thoughts.” Owen smiled at her.

She looked up, startled. “Oh,” she said. “I'm afraid I was woolgathering.”

“What kind of wool?”

Her frown deepened as she shook her head slowly. “I don't know. Owen, I had the strangest feeling all the time we were in Reunion today. I can't explain it; it's not the kind of thing that can be put into words very well, but... well, I think it was a feeling that people were
avoiding
me.”

Owen scowled. “What do you mean?”

“I told you, I can't explain it. It's nothing anyone said. Perhaps it was in the way they looked at me-women I've known since childhood. Or the way conversation seemed to lag when I came upon a group of women in the stores. I just don't know, but something's wrong.”

“Well,” he said quickly, “it'll straighten itself out, whatever it is.” He cracked the lines over the team and the wagon moved slowly over the deep-rutted road.

Owen was surprised and angered that Elizabeth should become involved in McKeever's efforts to bring him to heel. If they snub my wife, he thought furiously, they're going to have Owen Toller to contend with. I don't care what they think about me, but when they bring Elizabeth into it...

“Now who's woolgathering?” Elizabeth asked.

Owen looked at her and made himself grin. “Not me. I was just admiring the scenery.”

The raid was more than a week old and most of the boys had scattered all over the hills. The wild, ragged peaks that surrounded Ulster's Cave were bleak and silent, and Dunc wished that he could have gone back with the others. This time of year his pa needed him to help work the fields, but here he was stuck in this wilderness, because this was the way Ike Brunner wanted it.

Sometimes he got sick of letting Ike boss him around, but he guessed this fact hadn't really occurred to him until after Bellefront. This was the first time one of the gang had been killed in one of these forays. For Dunc, it had been sort of a lark until now. But not any more. Not after he'd seen a load of buckshot almost take Dove Wakeley's head off his shoulders.

Dunc's stomach shrank toward his throat when he thought about it. Dove Wakeley, a simple, good-natured galoot. Dunc had been right beside him when that warehouse guard opened up on them with a twelve-gauge shotgun. There had been a dull thump, like an October pumpkin splitting on a sharp rock. Dove had run maybe a dozen steps, screaming, with no face at all and not much of anything above the shoulders. Dunc Lester would be just as happy if he never saw another sight like that.

Now, sitting on the ridge near the first outpost, Dunc leaned on his shotgun and wondered what Dove's woman would do now that Dove was dead. How long was that Bellefront plunder going to last without a husband?

Dunc got tired sitting in one place, and he got up to stretch his legs, walking around in a tight little circle. He looked down at the wooded crags below and shook his head. That dude sheriff in Reunion could scour this country till doomsday and never find the Brunner hideout. Just the same, Ike said the gang was to lay low a while after Bellefront. Except for eight or ten men to guard the cave, everybody was to go home and tend his fields as if nothing had happened.

That's where you had to admit that Ike was smart, whether you liked him or not. He knew when to stop.

But Cal-now there was a different story. Cal was a wild one, Dunc thought. Cal didn't take to these hills the way his brother did; he liked to be among people, especially women.

Dunc shook his head in wonder. If the younger brother ever took hold of this outfit, it wouldn't last a week. And Dunc was getting to the point where he didn't care much, one way or the other. He was thinking that the next time Ike sent out the call, he might get himself laid up with the fever. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor was all right, but there were limits.

He stood for a while, looking down on that dark sea of pine. He glanced at the sun and judged that he still had four hours of watch before Wes Longstreet would relieve him and he could go back to the cave. He began to get impatient and irritable. It seemed a sin and a crime that a man should do nothing in the spring of the year but sit on a hilltop holding a shotgun.

At last he tramped over to the far end of the ridge, and in the distance he could see a thin ribbon of wood smoke rising up from Mort Stringer's chimney. Preacher Stringer, some called him. They said that Mort had been the head of a Baptist mission for the Cherokees once. They also said that Mort had given up preaching to the Indians because he figured the whites needed it more, and maybe he had something there. What Cherokees Dunc had seen were as smart as any white man you'd likely run up against. One of them had figured out an alphabet and started a whole new language, so the story went, and Dunc guessed it was true.

So Mort figured the Cherokees were capable of looking after their own salvation, and he had moved up here to this cabin, where the hills were the wildest, where the woods were the darkest and the crudest, and started up to save the hillfolks. Him and his daughter.

Leah, the girl's name was, but Dunc had never seen her, not being much of a Bible-pounder himself.

Dunc gazed down at that lonely little clearing surrounded by darkness, the bleak little cabin with a mud chimney, and thought to himself that it was a mighty poor place to bring up a girl. Mort's woman had died a few months back, and they said the girl took it hard, not having any womenfolks at all to talk to. Now if I was Mort, Dunc thought idly, I'd stop bothering so much about these hill-folks and get that girl down among some women.

At last he turned and tramped back to his position, sat on a rock, and set himself to wait out the hours for Wes Longstreet.

Almost an hour had passed when Dunc spotted the gray stallion picking its way daintily through the rocks at the bottom of the long slope. He came instantly alert, his shotgun at the ready. Then he thought, Why the hell didn't I bring a rifle? A shotgun's no good at this range!

But then the rider cupped his hands to his mouth and the mournful bark of the coyote hung on the still air. Dunc returned the call and thought, That's Cal Brunner. What does he think he's doin' this far from the cave?

He watched with vague interest as the big gray picked its way to the far side of the slope and disappeared among the trees. Dunc shrugged. Well, he guessed Cal Brunner could do as he pleased... so long as Ike didn't have any objections.

He sat on the rock again and waited, idle thoughts drifting in and out of his mind. He was bored.

Perhaps another hour had passed when the muffled sound of a rifle mushroomed gently in the still of the afternoon. Instantly Dunc was on his feet again, running in the direction of the sound. Then he thought, That shot was too far away. I can't do any good without a horse. He turned and ran back to where his little bay grazed in the sparse grass among the rocks.

He had to take a tortuous, twisting trail down the west side of the hill; plunging headlong down that incline would have been suicide. The shot probably meant nothing, he told himself. Probably it was Cal shooting game. Dunc swore as the little bay stumbled over the rocky trail. Goddamn it, why hadn't Cal warned the outpost if he was going hunting?

When he reached the shelf at, the bottom of the trail, he brought the bay up for a moment, scowling. Here, he thought, was just about where he had seen Cal. Dunc called out the barking signal. The hills were silent.

Dunc kneed the bay to the south, toward a heavy stand of trees, and called out again. There was no answer. He considered the possibility mat a posse might have penetrated this deep into the hills and Cal had run into it, but he dismissed that idea immediately. No posse could have got past the forward outposts without raising a commotion.

Dunc worried this in his mind for a moment. Maybe it was another kind of trouble; maybe Cal had had an accident of some kind. This idea worried him more than the possibility of a posse. Ike would sure be hell to live with if anything happened to that hotheaded brother of his.

After another short pause to orient himself, Dunc put the bay into the woods, beating a slow arc around the base of the hill, keeping in mind the direction from which the shot had come. He was about to call out again when he heard the scamper and clash of steel-shod hoofs on the rocks behind him, and through the woods Dunc glimpsed Ike Brunner's paint mare crashing through the trees toward the sound, and the gang leader's face was twisted and red with rage.

Instinctively Dunc held back, glad that Ike hadn't seen him. When the elder Brunner got that kind of look on his face, he was nobody to fool with. Maybe Ike has taken this as a personal thing, Dunc thought carefully. Maybe I'd better let him take care of it to suit himself.

As Dunc gentled the bay, he could still hear Ike's paint snorting and blowing, pushing through that stand of heavy timber as though it were so much underbrush. There's something queer about this, Dunc thought slowly. Where did Ike come from, anyway? He must have been up there on the hill at the time of the shot, and he sure didn't waste any time getting down there. And from the way he's riding, he must know exactly where he's heading.

Pondering on this, Dunc shook his head. If this was a personal matter, he wanted no part of it. But if it concerned the gang...

He decided that he had better take the chance and move along a little farther. Putting the bay over to the left, he picked up Ike's trail and followed it. It was a steady, treacherous downgrade now, and only after several minutes of riding did Dunc realize that Ike's trail was leading him straight for Mort Stringer's cabin.

Wait a minute, he thought. If Ike and Cal have a fuss with Stringer, that's none of my business.

Dunc was beginning to guess what the trouble might be. He knew Cal, and he had heard that Leah Stringer was a long way from being ugly. Dunc Lester, he told himself, the smartest thing you can do is turn right around and head back for the ridge.

But he didn't turn around. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it, and the more he hoped that he had figured it out all wrong. Getting Mort Stringer turned against them would be the worst thing that could happen. That old man could rile up the hills all the way to the Verdigris, if he ever got his dander up at them.

Cautiously Dunc urged his bay forward. Almost immediately he stopped, hearing Preacher Stringer's shrill, high-pitched voice ringing through the trees. Dunc tied the bay to a young sapling and cocked his head curiously. He was still too far away to tell what Stringer was worked up about, but he was sure preaching hell-fire to somebody!

Well, since I've come this far... Dunc reasoned. He pulled his shotgun from the saddle boot and moved forward on foot, alert as a mother doe, silent as an Indian.

He reached a small rise at the edge of the Stringer clearing. Lying on his belly behind some brush, he could see four of them, Mort and the girl, Ike and Cal. Cal was stretched out on his back, his good-looking face ugly with pain, and Ike was slashing at his brother's trousers with a pocketknife.

“That old bastard!” Cal whined. “He shot me! You hear me, Ike? He shot me!”

“Shut up,” Ike snarled coldly. “You're lucky I don't finish the job for him!”

Violently Ike ripped the leg from Cal's trousers, slashed it with his knife, forming a compress with one half of the rough material and a bandage with the other. He worked angrily and silently at bandaging his brother's leg, completely ignoring Mort Stringer's shouting. The girl, on her hands and knees a little behind her father, did not utter a sound. Dunc judged that she had been knocked to the ground, probably by Mort himself, for she shook her head dumbly and made no effort to get tip.

“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword!” Mort Stringer ranted. Jabbing a bony finger at Ike as though it were a pistol, he screamed, “You're wastin' your time, Ike Brunner, for the wages of sin is death! Thus spoke the Lord, and you cannot thwart the will of the Lord! The black shadow of the Angel of Death falls over both of you! The curse of God is upon the name of Brunner and upon its followers!”

Ike glanced up in cold rage but did not speak. Dunc Lester, from his place in the underbrush, was slightly stunned by the steady flow of insane doggerel that came from Mort Stringer's mouth. Maybe Mort had been alone in these hills too long. Maybe the shock of losing his woman had done this to him; Dunc didn't know. But he knew that Preacher Stringer was not the same man that he had seen before on rare occasions. This man was not right in his head; his eyes were glassy and vacant, his voice was too shrill.

It gave Dunc a spooky feeling just looking at him, a dirty, gangly skeleton of a man whose baggy overalls seemed to hang on the sharp bones as a hat hangs on a peg. In one clawlike hand he held a long-barreled rifle, but his eyes said that he was not aware of having it.

Dunc looked at the girl again and felt a pity for her that he had never before experienced. It sure couldn't have been much fun for her, he thought, living here in these hills with that crazy old man. Of course, he had no way of knowing just what she and Cal Brunner had been up to, but whatever it was, he guessed that he couldn't blame her much.

“The Lord's judgment be upon you!” Mort cried, suddenly brandishing the rifle over his head. Ike continued to bandage his brother's leg and did not look up. “The Lord's will be done!” Mort shouted. “To you who have brought sin and corruption upon my own flesh and blood!” He stared glassily at the rifle and then at Cal Brunner, but the connection seemed to escape him for the moment.

“Oh, don't think I don't know what's been goin' on in these hills!” he shouted. “Don't think I haven't seen your evil comings and goings. Oh, I'm aware of your sins, Ike Brunner, but the day of Armageddon has arrived!”

And at that Ike Brunner turned slowly on one knee, drew his pistol, and shot Mort Stringer in the chest. Once, twice, the big Colt's bellowed in the clearing, and the preacher fluttered for a moment like some disjointed puppet and then fell to the ground as soundlessly as an October leaf. It happened so fast that Dunc was momentarily stunned. Ike's iciness, the offhand manner in which the man could commit murder, left Dunc unable to utter a sound.

He had never seen anything like this before. Oh, in the heat of rage or passion he had seen plenty of violence, and even killing, but he had not known that one man was capable of killing another as casually as brushing away a troublesome fly.

Cal Brunner, on the instant of the first explosion, came up on one elbow, groaning. “The old bastard!” he cried bitterly. “He deserved it!”

Ike blew thoughtfully into his smoking pistol and said nothing. The girl stared wide-eyed in panic at the crumpled body of her father.