The Overlanders (13 page)

He squeezed off his single shot with the snout of his rifle almost touching the sash, the black-powder flare briefly showing him Crotton’s face. He bitterly knew that he had missed and cast the useless weapon aside. There was now only solid blackness in that room, for the door had been closed to keep out the light, but Grete knew that somewhere in this dark Crotton waited.

There was sweat in his palms, his heart was thumping when he wiped them across the canvas of his pants. He caught the pistol up out of its leather and, writhingly remembering Idaho’s last look, cleared the sill in one dive that took him deep into blackness, piling him up in bleak shock against unyielding wood that shouldn’t have been there. A gun battered the room with the wild fists of its racket, the rip and slap of those slugs nearly turning Grete crazy. He couldn’t find his pistol but the search of his hands told him what he’d run into was Crotton’s desk moved out of its corner. He dragged himself around it by pure animal instinct and, back of it, pulled himself onto his feet, feeling the stickiness of blood as he stood braced there hunting for Crotton with eyes that burned and watered trying to see through that acrid stench.

Either Crotton had shot his gun empty or was holding his fire till he had something to shoot at. If the man had reloaded Grete hadn’t heard him, but he now heard the pounding of guns outside and knew that time wouldn’t wait for him. Time was Crotton’s friend; and any man slick enough to have planted this desk in the path from that window would have been smart enough to have a couple of extra guns. He wouldn’t have to reload, and any moment now some of that bunch who had come back here with Stroat were like to bulge into this room hunting cover. Grete’s dug-in guns, by the sound, were still holding, but without benefit of crossfire it could be only a matter of minutes before Stroat’s superior numbers engulfed and silenced them. Stroat’s voice came over the yard to him now, cold, dispassionate, dry as stove wood.

There were spurs on Grete’s heels that he would have to get rid of before he dared risk any attempt at changed placement. If he did not break out of this situation soon… He was driven to thought of rushing Crotton but gave this up, having no faith in miracles.

He found it hard to bend over without losing his balance, but someway managed, catching hold of the rowels and worrying the leathers. They finally came loose and it looked for a moment like he was not going to get back up. When he got up he was filled with dizziness, freezing to the desk with his empty right hand — he had the spurs in the other. He knew where the door was but he did not know if he could get there.

A sudden racket of boots crossed the floor of the gallery. Grete heard them pause outside the window. Forced back on the oldest trick in the deck he flung both spurs at the wall he had come through, straightaway charging across the room, deafened by Crotton’s firing. His legs, stumbling over a chair, pitched him headlong. The continued grunt of Crotton’s slugs smashed wood all around him. The fellow on the gallery got into it too, most of his lead drumming into the desk.

On his knees Grete snatched up a part of the chair, hurling it at the flash of Crotton’s pistol. Crotton yelled as Grete lunged for the door. Grete went through falling, rolling frantically away from that bright threshold and the stretch beyond it that was in Crotton’s sight. Doubled over with pain he tried to push himself up, hearing boots coming after him, knowing he wasn’t going to make it. His muscles seemed to have got uncoupled, the line of command from his will severed someway. He got a leg under him, catching hold of a table and — seeing the lighted lamp that was on it — sending it toppling, childishly pleased with the lurid blaze that sprang up. Crotton’s shape filled the doorway, savagely swearing.

The man could see Grete’s hands were empty but he had never been one to throw away an edge and would not now. Grete laughed in his face. “You’ll never hear me beg and you’ll never get back to where you were in this country. Go ahead and shoot.”

“God damn you!” Crotton snarled and tipped up his pistol: but he never pulled the trigger. A gun cracked once behind him, the roar of it bending the leaping flames that now were running like mad across the floor. Crotton’s eyes dilated. His whole shape stiffened. He staggered a quarter-way round and collapsed.

Idaho, gray-cheeked and bloody, stepped over him. “Jesus God, man —” he gasped, “we’ve got to get out of here!”

He thrust down his left hand, hauling Grete to his feet. “Sling your arm about my neck. We’re goin’ to show a few jaspers we ain’t trimmed yet —”

“Wait a minute,” Grete said, and bent and picked up Crotton’s pistol. He saw that it was fully loaded.

“They’re gettin’ ready,” Idaho said, “to rush the barn. We better git out there.”

A rush of feeling tightened Grete’s throat but he had no way of unlocking the words. He gripped Idaho’s shoulder — hard. The man grunted, “We’re goin’ to play hell gittin’ back through that winder.”

This was the room, now swirling with smoke, in which Crotton had been accustomed to entertain those who came to court his forebearance. It was elegantly appointed, lavishly furnished; none of this mattered to Grete or the gunfighter. All they wanted was to get out of it before Stroat’s crew rushed the suddenly silent barn. The same gnawing fear wrenched at both of them.

Directly across the room as they now stood was a door leading, as Grete knew, into other parts of the house. The main entrance to the house was on their left, hung with stra-iron hinges. There was too much fire between them and this, but only one bad spot keeping them away from the other. “Let’s get at it,” Grete said. He slid his left arm over the gunfighter’s shoulder, Idaho’s right solidly clamping about Grete’s waist. In this manner, sideways, they stumbled, gasping, into a hall, Idaho almost lugging him until he got some of the smoke coughed out of his lungs.

The left leg of Grete’s pants below the knee was smoldering. The gunfighter’s shirt showed several burned places, one of these still glowing. “Pull over,” he growled as they came into the kitchen. Grete would have ignored this in his haste to quit the place, in the reproach of his concern for Sary Hollis, but the gunfighter’s stubborn weight was not to be denied. It took them to the sink where he pumped a bucket of water, sloshing it over Grete’s clothes, then up-ending once over himself. “Never hankered,” he muttered, “to bein’ took for no damned lightnin’-struck tree.”

Grete got the back door open, Idaho breaking the lamp with his gun-barrel. Grete, burning up with impatience, saw that the near end of the barn wasn’t over a hundred feet away, but between them and it was a spring wagon with the shapes of three men watching the barn from the house side of it. When the lamp went out the nearer man jerked a look over his shoulder. He let out a yell and, backing into the fellow next to him, brought his rifle up and around. Idaho shot him. The middle man got off two rounds from his shooter before Grete knocked him in a heap with a leg hit. The other jigger, rattled, tried to get around the wagon and ran head-on into a slug from the barn.

“Watch it,” growled the gunfighter as Grete after the manner of a man in his cups began to flounder toward the wagon. “Give a broken-backed sidewinder a good enough chaw an’ he’ll git you just as —”

“I’ve got to —”

“Here they come!” yelled Idaho, running toward the corner of the house. The elongated shadows of the Swallowfork pack, driven forward by the flames, raced over the yard, cavorting like devils across the boards of the barn. Only one gun showed its muzzle wink there as Grete stumbled after him gripping the repeater dropped by the first man downed at the wagon.

Idaho had stopped just short of the yard, crouching there, waiting for something to throw his lead at. Grete, too, pulled up now, locking rimless lips against the pain that clawed through him, fighting the nausea and fear that had hold of him, trying to shut out the pictures that crowded his mind.
Only one answering gun left inside that barn
.

No shouts, no jeers, no crazy running marked the mopping-up tactics of Stroat’s advance across the yard. By the look of those shadows he had his men spread well apart, but they were moving inexorably nearer, battering the barn with a steady fire. If anyone still lived inside those walls…

Idaho’s pistol, wickedly cracking, fetched up Grete’s rifle at the fanned-out line of Swallowfork gunmen moved into wavering sight beyond the corner of the kitchen wing. Grete saw one pitch flat on his face, another one staggered; farther over in the flickering flame-splattered dark a third Swallowforker spun, clutching himself. Another fellow’s whipped-around face loosed a frantic yell as Grete squeezed off the first shot from his captured Henry. The yeller toppled.

“Get that pair,” Stroat said dry as dust.

Grete abruptly found his face in the dirt. But he still had the rifle and now, squirming around in bitter disgust at the circumscribed status of his own activity, he lined its sights on the nearest of Crotton’s bully boys and dropped him. Three more immediately crumpled just beyond this fellow. Panic hit the rest as a ragged yell broke out of the muzzle-rimmed murk along their far flank. Powder rings blossomed all across that side of the yard. Stroat’s crew, demoralized, deserted him right then, each man striking out for himself, running blindly, some in their fright even dropping their rifles. One panicked walloper loped straight at Idaho who, caught with an empty pistol, hurled the useless weapon completely missing him. For one stark instant a pillar of leaping flame, rocketing skyward from the collapsed roof of Crotton’s office, garishly illuminated Ben Hollis’ twisted features. Grete’s shot took the man between the eyes, killing him instantly.

• • •

Then suddenly it was over. Squatters and dispossessed ranchers led by Lally and Frobisher made short work of what was left of Crotton’s gunhands. Stroat and three others caught with emptied weapons were straightaway hanged from the hay hoist. It was Sary who told Grete after the doc had gone off to patch up some of the others that Barney Olds was going to make it. Patch was dead and Frijoles, too. Some of the townsmen, led by Stamper, had gone after the mares. The Lally and Frobisher adherents were squabbling now over which was to get what part of Crotton’s range. “But Lally has promised you can have those springs, and Idaho says he’ll get over there right away to…”

She saw that Grete wanted to say something. He didn’t have the strength to explain all that was in his mind but, catching hold of one of her hands, he did manage to get out the part that most mattered. And Idaho, bumping Grete’s shoulder with a careful fist, said, “What I told him before still goes. He better take good care of you.”

This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com

Copyright © 1959 by Nelson Nye. Copyright © renewed 1987 by Nelson Nye. Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.

Cover Images ©
www.123rf.com

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 10: 1-4405-4946-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4946-5
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4944-3
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4944-1