Vampires Overhead (30 page)

‘Oh, I’m not worrying about him,’ I said. ‘I only just want to take that gun away. He’s done enough damage with it. I’m not really hurt, I suppose. But it smarts.’

From the cave, where we had stored medical supplies, Janet brought gauze, bandage, iodine, and with my wound bound we returned, to find Bingen lifting himself dazedly from the floor. He watched our entrance, not recollecting what had occurred. I went over to kick him as he rose.

‘Well? You’ve tried to do it, Bingen. Tried to bust up your half of everything. Up you get. The cave for you tonight. You’re going to be barricaded in, and then in the morning . . . out of the valley!’

‘Aw! I’m sorry, Garry,’ Bingen pleaded, and I saw that the blow on his chin had sobered him. ‘I didn’t realize what I was doing. You won’t have any more trouble from me. I’m through, Garry.’

‘Is that honest Injun? Is that true, Bingen?’

‘Of course it is. I’m sorry.’

‘Come on, then. Let me help you up. Have one last drink to send you to sleep, and then, in the morning, we’ll forget everything and start all over again. Will you?’

‘I will. ’Course I will.’

‘I’m sorry I walloped you. Feel better? Janet, things are all right again now. Bingen and I have apologized to each other. He’s going to have this last drink and then chuck it. I’ll have one with him too, I think. Will you?’

‘I don’t know. I think he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself, and I don’t think he ought to be forgiven so easily. After nearly having murdered you.’

‘Oh, let’s forget all that, Janet,’ I said.

‘Will you really be nice again? Will you, Bingen? Please! Then we’ll all have just one drink and be friends. You have been silly. We three here together . . . and bad friends. It’s ridiculous.’

‘That’s that, then,’ I said, and poured out three drinks. Bingen scowled when he saw I offered him but half a glass. ‘Not enough? Well, there’s some more in the other room. But, go careful.’

‘Oh. D’you want to be always telling me?’ Bingen grumbled, and went from the room carrying his glass in a shaking hand.

‘Garry. He’s not a bit sorry,’ Janet whispered carefully, and repeated emphatically, when I motioned that he was. ‘He’s not. He’s only fooling. Don’t give him a chance. He’s not sorry.’

‘SSSH! He’ll hear you. He’s sorry, all right. That sock under the chin I gave him would make anyone sorry. Don’t you worry.’

Bingen came back, and we sat yarning with an undercurrent of anxiety for some time until I yawned. The wound in my side began to throb and burn. I felt dizzy, tired.

‘What about bed? I’m tired. You ready, Bingen?’

‘Yes. I’m ready.’

Silently he got into bed, without undressing, pulled the clothes about him, without answering my good night. I went out to Janet.

‘Garry. I want you to sleep in the cave tonight and let me have my old place. Fix the curtain like it was, and then I’ll feel safe.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about now.’

‘I’m frightened of Bingen.’

‘Really? I’m a bit worried about him, too, but there’s nothing to be frightened of tonight. If you really want me to, I’ll sleep in the front of your cave.’

‘Please. I’m frightened. He wasn’t a bit sorry. I knew he was lying, even while he was speaking. Garry, I feel about him like I did about Rhodes.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I reassured her. ‘Bingen’s certainly a nasty bit of work when he’s drunk, but he’s nothing like Dusty Rhodes. You’d be safe with him, even when he’s like he is now.’

And while I said it I knew that I was fabricating. Bingen was not to be trusted with Janet! I knew that.

‘Anyway, I’ll be all right with you here,’ she smiled. ‘How’s your side feel now?’

‘Feels a bit rotten. I think it’s made me feel faint, too.’ I laughed at her alarm. ‘Nothing really. I’ll be all right in the morning.’

With my bed fixed across the entrance, I lay awake for a long time that night. Bingen, why the devil couldn’t you lose like a white man? Why couldn’t we three live contentedly together? And then I wondered again, how I would have taken it, had Janet chosen Bingen. Perhaps not so badly, for I had no expectations. Bingen had. If it had been me . . . But I would never know that.

The bullet wound troubled me, so that I twisted, turning from side to side, finding a position in which to lay at ease, and when finally I did fall asleep, slept heavily, exhausted by loss of blood.

Late in the morning I woke. I was feverishly thirsty and felt weak when I rose. The wound in my side must have been worse than I imagined. It burned, and the whole of my side ached, burning and throbbing. I lay down again, calling for Janet. For an hour I waited, and then, with no response to my calls, went out in the yard to search the cottage and valley for Janet and Bingen.

They were gone.

Heating water, I took off the bandage. It had stuck to my side; the wound had bled badly during the night. I bathed and re-covered it, wondering the while, but not seriously, where Janet and Bingen had gone. Making tea, I sat in the sun, languidly watching the hills, and noon drew into afternoon, and dusk came gradually with no sign of either Janet or Bingen. Where could they have gone? Anxiously, I climbed the hill, shouting vainlessly, having no thought then but what Janet had gone with Bingen, uncoerced, of her own free will. With evening purpling the valley, I wondered. A presentiment that Bingen was responsible intensified.

I got myself a meal as this feeling grew, thinking that, should it be so, I would want all the strength I possessed. What could I do? Leaving the valley meant risking having Janet return while I was away. I had no idea where to search. There was nothing I could do, except wait, and, as I waited, conviction that Bingen was responsible for Janet’s absence forced itself on me. She would not have left me alone. What had he done? How had he coaxed her away? That he dragged her away forcibly was unthinkable. He could not have done it. Janet would have fought like a wild-cat. Wakened me. Pain in my side increased, so that I was forced to heat water again, bathing the wound for relief. Returning, I sat waiting by the cave entrance, and now a rifle lay ready to my hand.

The moon rose over the hill, a crescent of silver in rosy glow from the sinister comet. The chill of evening seeped beneath the feverish heat of my skin. I shivered.

And then, against the glow in the night sky, I saw Janet poised upon the hilltop. She called and scrambled down in a slide of falling pebbles.

‘Garry! Garry!’

Meeting her at the bottom of the hill, we walked through the valley together. She trembled beneath my arm, swaying as though faint. In the cottage, a lighted lamp let me see that she was deathly white. A great purple bruise circled with scarlet was vivid on her forehad under tangled damp curls. I lifted her to a chair, kneeling at her feet.

‘Bingen! He did that?’ My fingers caressed the bruise on her forehead. ‘Janet.’

‘Garry! Oh, Garry!’ Her control broke, and she was sobbing in my arms.

I let her cry, holding her tightly, wondering dully what had occurred. It was a long time before she recovered sufficiently for me to leave her, while I boiled tea, lacing it with brandy.

She brushed curls from her forehead listlessly, and it was curious how her eyes evaded mine.

‘Are you better now?’ I asked. ‘D’you think you could tell me?’

‘Oh, Garry. I can’t tell you.’

‘But you must! Everything’s all right now. You’re back with me. But you must tell me. I want to know what happened.’

‘I can’t tell you. I can’t.’ Her voice rose shrilly, hysterically. ‘Everything’s not all right.’

‘Then I’ll have to go after Bingen and ask him. Tell me what happened. Where have you been?’

‘Where I’ve been! Oh, Garry. You think that I . . .?’

‘D’you mean he took you away by force?’ I asked incredulously.

‘You never thought I went away with him while you were ill. Garry, how is your wound?’

‘It’s nothing. Tell me.’

‘You were asleep. I bent over to see, pulled the clothes over you again,’ Janet whispered huskily. ‘You looked so hot, I worried about you. There was perspiration on your forehead. I tiptoed out of the cave to get Bingen. I felt sure that he would be nice, if you were ill. I went into the cottage because I couldn’t see him anywhere, put the kettle on, and then, when I came out . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘He was . . . Oh, Garry. He was mad! I’m sure he’s gone mad. I saw his eyes. He was waiting behind the door, and when I came out he hit me with his gun.’

‘Hit you with a gun?’

‘Yes. I saw it raised. But I was too scared to scream.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I was being sick. I felt awful. Being sick as if I was on a rough sea. I’m always sick when it’s rough.’

‘Yes? What do you mean about being at sea?’

‘I was tied down on to that barrow. It was rocking and bumping about. Bingen was pushing it down the hill. Running! We had turned out of the main road and reached the public-house where you found him before I felt better.’

‘He knocked you out and then carted you off on the barrow? Bingen?’

‘Yes.’

‘But . . . But . . .’

‘Oh, I tell you.’ Janet beat her hands together. ‘He’d tied that blue scarf, the one I got to tie round your side, over my mouth. He pulled me off the barrow and carried me down into the cellar. Garry, he . . . he . . . Oh, Garry, you’ve got to go and kill him.’

‘You mean he . . .?’

Janet buried her head in my shoulder, and shook with sobs. I stared vacantly at the wall over her hair. Her arms about me, though I did not know, loosened the bandage round my body. It slipped from the wound. For a long time we did not speak.

‘How did you get away?’

Janet did not answer for a while, and then her sobs broke out afresh.

‘I had to . .  had to . . . make out I liked him to . . .’

The kettle, boiling noisly on the stove, brought me out of my stupor, and I forced strong black tea, reeking with brandy, upon her. At first, then she gulped thirstily. I poured out more, holding her in my arms until at last she slept.

With Janet sound asleep from the spirits, the barricade set safely in place so that it could only be opened from inside, and a note upon her pillow that, whatever happened, she was to stay in the valley until I came back, I set off in the dawn light to find Bingen.

A bandoleer of cartridges slung over my shoulder, under my arm a rifle, and upon my hip a revolver. Climbing from the valley it seemed I rose to the stars, dimming in the morning. My head was light, swimming. The loosened bandage let my shirt glue with congealed blood to my side, and down my chin trickled a little stream of blood where my teeth bit into my lip. One purpose lifted me exultantly, banished weakness, swung me down the long slope. A refrain burned into my brain to the oblivion of everything else.

Bingen must be killed! Killed! Bingen must be killed!

The bandoleer thumped out the words on my shoulder and the revolver on my hip.

Bingen must be killed. Be killed. Bingen must be killed. Killed!

The sun came to banish the comet’s rosy glow, stars shone coldly, disappeared, the world was peopled with rushing shapes, looming out of the burned trees, crouching in roadside ditches. Leaving the main road, I turned towards the public-house where Bingen . . . Bingen. Bingen must be killed. Killed. My hot eyes smarted, so that blindly I staggered, left the road, stumbled into the ditch, climbed out, forced myself onwards. White-hot anger, vengeance, blinded me, while it carried me forward.