War Party (Ss) (1982) (17 page)

As it came into his hand, he threw himself to his feet just as Moffit sprang into the open. Jim Bostwick braced himself with the world rolling under him and the sweat in his eyes and the smell of blood in his nostrils, and he threw lead from his .44 and saw dust jump from Moffit's shirt. The smaller man fell back and hit the ground, but shot from the ground. Jim Bostwick felt the shock of that bullet, but he fired as he was falling, and missed.

He rolled over into the brush and, filled with sudden panic that he might get caught there in the open, he fought and scrambled his way through the brush. Fighting to get to shelter, he left a trail of scratched earth and blood behind him.

When he could stop, he rolled over to a sitting position and reloaded his six-shooter.

There was no sound. He knew that Cap Moffit was not dead, but that one of them would die here, perhaps both. His gun loaded, he looked to his wounds. He had a hole through the fleshy upper part of his thigh, and it was bleeding badly. He plugged that with a handkerchief, torn to use on both sides, then examined his chest.

He was afraid the bullet had struck him in a vital spot, for the shock of it had turned him sick. However, he was fortunate. The bullet had struck his hip bone and ricocheted off, making a nasty open wound, but nothing deep. He drew the lips of the wound together and bound it with his torn shirt.

There was neither sound nor movement. His canteen was on his horse, and the horse would come if he called. The black was probably waiting for just that.

Jim Bostwick checked his belt. His six-shooter now held six shells, for he was going to be using it, not carrying it, and there were still twenty-odd shells in his belt. If he could not win with that number, he would never win.

Rage welled up in him and suddenly, heedless of consequences, he shouted, "I'm going to kill you, Cap! You've drygulched your last man!"

"Come and get me then!" Moffit taunted. "You're so full of holes now you won't last the night r Jim Bostwick rubbed his unshaven jaw. He rolled over, thrusting his six-shooter in his belt. His arms were strong and unhurt, he could drag himself, or hobble if he could get up on his good leg.

Slowly and painfully, he worked his way along the side of the ridge into the deeper brush and trees. Dust and sweat caked his face, but his heavy jaw was set and frozen against the biting pain. In a dense clump of brush, he waited. The horse was his ace-in-the-hole. The black would not leave, and he could call to him. Had Moffit been active, he might have reached the horse, but smelling of blood, there was small chance of any stranger getting near.

Under the bushes, Bostwick lowered himself and lay on the pine needles, panting hoarsely.

He must not pass out-he must stay alert. Cap Moffit had not only money for a reason now, but he must kill Bostwick or die himself.

Pain welled up and went through the rancher. He gritted his teeth against it, and against the weakness that was in him. Soon he would start out. He would get going.

A faint coolness touched his face, a stirring breath of air. He lifted his head and looked around. There was a bank of clouds over the mountains, piled-up thunderheads.

The coolness touched his face again, breeze with the smell of rain in it. The country could use rain. The grass needed it. His head sank forward.

Only a minute it seemed, yet when he opened his eyes it was black-black and wet.

It was raining. He had passed out.

His eyes had opened to darkness and a vast roaring that filled the world, a roaring of gigantic masses of wind and almost continuous thunder. Like a solid wall the wind swept the ridge, bending the huge trees like willows and sweeping the rocks with icy scythes of driving rain, pounding the earth and lashing at his cowering, raindrenched body.

Suddenly, below the awful roar of the wind along the towering ridge, he heard another sound -faint, but definite. A vast bursting flare of lightning illumined the ridge with blinding incandescent light. Through the flare there was a vicious whiplash of vivid blue flame, and his brain seemed split apart by a rending crash!

The huge pine near which he had been lying seemed to burst under his eyes and the towering mass of the tree toppled, falling away from him, leaving the dead-white fractured center exposed to the rain and the wind. Lightning whipped at the ridge, and the earth and rocks smelled of brimstone and charred pine needles.

And below the roar he heard again that whisper of sound. Lightning flared, and in the white glare he saw Cap Moffit, eyes wide and staring, Cap Moffit, poised and waiting for the flare, gun in hand. Even as he glimpsed him, Moffit fired!

The bullet missed, and Jim Bostwick rolled over, grabbing wildly, desperately, for his own gun. Wildly he fired, hurling three fast shots at the place from which the shot had come. With a lunge he made it to his feet, shot out a hand and grabbed the lightning-blasted stump even as lightning flared again. They shot as one man, then Bostwick let go his hold and lunged through the driving wall of rain at the spot where he had seen Moffit. They came together, and Bostwick struck wickedly with his gunbarrel and missed, faffing forward. He rolled over quickly and saw the dark figure swaying above him. Moffit fired, the blast of flame only feet from Bostwick's face. He felt the wicked sting of burning powder and felt the blow of the bullet as it struck him.

Huge billowing clouds rolled low over the ridge, and the whiplike flashes of lightning danced like dervishes of flame along the ridge. The forest would have been aflame had it not been for the great masses of water that were driven along it.

Moffit fired again, but he was weaving like one of the bushes around them and the shot missed. Bostwick rolled over. Grimly he struggled, moaning with eagerness to get up, to get his hands on Moffit. He swung out a wild, clutching hand and grabbed one of the killer's ankles. He jerked and the man fell and, bloody and wounded as Bostwick was, he clawed to grab a hold on the man's throat. There was another vivid streak of lightning, then Moffit's gun roared....

Consciousness returned, but slowly. Jim Bostwick lay flat on his face on the rocks of the ridge, swept bare by the violence of wind and rain. Around him, where all had been rushing wind and roaring rain, there was dead stillness. His head thudded with hammer-blows of agony. His shoulder and arm were stiff, one leg seemed useless, and every movement seared him with pain.

The rain had ceased. The wind had gone. The might of the thunder in the lonely ravines to the south and west had turned to the far-off mumbling of a puppy. Storm-tossed clouds scattered the skies and vied with the stars for attention. And Jim Bostwick lay sprawled and alone on the ridge, his body spent, weakened from loss of blood and the whipping rain. And then he put out a hand and found his gun. Somehow he got his knees under him and lifted himself. He spun the cylinder of the gun and it turned.

Fumbling with clumsy fingers, he worked the ejector rod and pushed out the empty shells. Then he loaded the gun with care from his belt. There was nobody near him.

He could see that. Wherever Moffit was, he was not here.

Jim Bostwick fumbled around, feeling, then he found a broken limb. Using it for a crutch, he got to his feet.

Blackie would have gone. The storm would have driven him off. Bostwick knew that straight ahead of him and more than a thousand feet down was the ranch, and if he was to live, he must get back to that ranch.

It was no use to try going around by the trail. He would never make it. Somehow he must fumble and fall and feel his way to the bottom. How long it took him, he did not know, but he knew when he reached it, and his fingers found something else. A horse's track!

If a track was here, it had to be made since the storm. He called out, risking a shot from Moffit, if he was still alive and nearby. He called again, and again. Then he heard a low whinny and the clop, clop of hoofs.

"Blackie!" he whispered. "Blackie!"

The horse snorted and shied, then came nearer, snuffling in the darkness. He reached up, and the horse shied again. He spoke his name and Blackie stood still. One hand got the stirrup, and then he pulled himself into the wet saddle.

"Home, Blackie!" he whispered and, as if waiting for just that, the black turned and started out across the little valley toward the house.

Sagging over the pommel, he still managed to cling to it, and when the black stopped at the steps of the house, he almost fell from the saddle. And when he hit the steps his hand struck the face. He grabbed for a gun, then stopped. The face was still, the body unmoving, but warm.

In the still, cold light from a vague gray predawn, he stared down at the crumpled figure. It was Cap Moffit.

Jim Bostwick chuckled, a hoarse, choking sound. "You-you couldn't take it!" he sneered.

Turning over, he reached with his good hand for the girth and managed to get it loose and let the saddle fall. Then he pulled the black's head down and got the bridle off.

"Take a roll, boy," he whispered, "and rustle some grub."

He got the door open, then got a hand on Moffit's collar and dragged him inside, leaving one boot caught on the step with a spur. He got Moffit's gun and put them both near his hand.

It took him an hour to get his wounds uncovered, and another hour to get them bathed and dressed, after a fashion. As he worked, he looked grimly at the unconscious man.

"I'm still moving," he said, "I'm going to come through."

When he had his wounds dressed, he went to work on Moffit. He was working on nerve, he knew that, and nothing but nerve. He kept himself going, forced himself to keep moving. He got the wounded man fixed up and got water heating on the stove, then slumped in a chair, his face haggard and bearded, his eyes hollow, his hair tangled with mud and blood-the last bullet had cut his scalp open and given him what was probably a mild concussion. He stared across at the unconscious killer, his eyes bleak.

When the water was hot, he made coffee and laced it with whisky and burned his mouth gulping a cup of it, then another. Then he pulled himself, sliding the chair by gripping the wall, until he was close to Cap Moffit. He tied the wounded killer's wrists and ankles. Some time later, sprawled on the bed, he passed out again.

Hours later, with daylight streaming in the door from a sinking sun, he awakened.

His eyes went at once to Moffit. The wounded man lay on the floor, glaring at him.

Bostwick swung his feet to the floor and stared blearily at Moffit. "Trussed up like a dressed chicken!" he sneered. "A hell of a gunman you are!"

Moffit stared at him. "You don't look so good yourself!" he retorted.

Bostwick caught the ledge along the wall with his good hand and pulled himself erect.

He slapped the gun in his waistband. "I still got a gun," he said, and crept along the wall to the kitchen where he got the fire going, then fell into a chair. "You ain't so hot with a short gun," he said.

"I got you/'

Bostwick chuckled, "Yeah, you're holding me, ain't you? I'm dead, ain't I? You two-bit imitation of a killer, you never saw the day you could kill me."

Moffit shook his head. "Maybe you're right," he said. "You must have three bullets in you now."

"Four hits you made." Bostwick chuckled. "I'm carrying no lead."

His stomach felt sick, but he managed to get water on the stove and make coffee.

When he fell back in the chair again he felt weak and sicker.

"You better set still," Moffit said. "You're all in." He paused. "Whyn't you shoot me when you had the chance?"

"Aw-" Bostwick stared at him, grim humor in his eyes-"I like a tough man. I like a fighter.

You did pretty good up on that mountain last night, pretty good for a drygulching killer."

Cap Moffit said nothing. For the first time the words of another man hurt. He stared down at his sock feet, and he had no reply to make.

"You going to turn me in for a hanging?" he finally asked.

"Naw," Bostwick poured coffee into a cup and slid it across the table. "Somebody'U shoot you sure as the Lord made little apples. You ever come back around here and I will. This here torn Utterback who owns this spread, he's a good man."

"He's got a good man for a friend."

Two sick, wounded men struggled through four days, and it was Bostwick who struggled.

Moffit watched him, unbelieving. It was impossible that any man could be so tenacious of life, so unbelievably tough. Yet this big, hard man was not giving up. No man, Moffit felt suddenly, could kill such a man. There was something in him, something black, bitter and strong, something that would not die.

On the sixth morning, Gap Moffit was gone. He had taken a gray from the other corral and he had gone off, riding his recovered saddle- wounded, but alive. torn Utterback rode up to the ranch on the ninth day. He stared at the pale shadow of a man who greeted him, gun in hand. He stared at the bloody bandage on the leg.

"You wasn't in that gunfight in town, was you?" he demanded.

"What gunfight?"

"Stranger name of Cap Moffit. He had some words with Charley Gore and two of his boys. They shot it out."

"They get him?"

"Don't know. He was shot up bad, but he rode out on his own horse."