McAllister (15 page)

“Quick,” he said. “Bring your gun. We got a job.” Shatloe was on his feet.

“Trouble?”

“No. Business.”

Shatloe picked up the revolver on the desk and dropped it into his holster.

“What about McAllister?”

“Hell, you won't be gone ten minutes. Nobody knows he's here.”

“I'll take a peek at him.”

Mcallister hastily lay down and closed his eyes. By the time the deputy stood peering into the shadowy cell, Mcallister had his eyes closed and was breathing heavily.

“Asleep.”

“Okay. Make it quiet and I'll lock the street door.”

They went on tip-toe and Mcallister heard the key turn in the lock, then their boot-heels thudded on the board-walk.

It seemed that their footsteps had no sooner died away in the distance than Mcallister heard a loud hiss from the window that was cut high in the rear wall. Turning he saw the head and shoulders of a man blocking the moonlight as he held himself up by the bars.

“Señor!”

“José!”

The guttural Spanish came—“Quick, here is a gun.”

Mcallister crossed to the window and reached up for the weapon to find the great weight of the Navajo's ancient Dragoon. Automatically, he checked the caps. When he glanced up again, José had disappeared from view. Mcallister listened intently and heard muffled tread in the dust to the rear of the jail. Climbing on the bed he looked out. His amazed eyes saw the Indian with two giant Percheron horses backed up to the wall beneath the window. The Indian called to him and he put his hand through the bars and caught the rope thrown to him. Passing it around the outer bars he dropped the end and José made fast. As Mcallister dropped from the bed he heard a wild shout from outside and his heart pounded as he thought they had been discovered. But it was no more than José urging his animals forward. Leather slapped viciously against the horses' great rumps and they went ambling forward in a muffled run.

Suddenly the whole building seemed to shake to its foundations
as the Percherons hit the end of the ropes. The bars groaned briefly, then the pull was relaxed as the Navajo brought the animals back for another lunge forward.

Somebody outside shouted and it wasn't José.

Mcallister yelled for him to hurry it up.

The big horses hit their collars with a crash, the bars were plucked from the wall and took a large portion of the adobe with them. Even before the dust cleared, Mcallister was through, scrambling and slipping through the gaping hole.

As he got clear of the dust, the Indian grabbed him by the arm and said: “Run.” They ran straight away from the buildings, stumbling over the cans and trash of the backlot, a man was illuminated briefly by the moon as he yelled: “Prisoner escaped!” but José tossed him aside like a straw and they went on.

When they were among the trees and the town came slowly awake behind them, they stopped and Mcallister said: “Clover and Franchon're dead.”

The Indian said: “I know. I saw.”

Mcallister snorted. “Get us horses. We'll be taking the gold. We'll need some stout pack-animals.”

José didn't like that. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“We're going to catch up the army.”

“I rather stay alive.”

“Now, listen. Carmody has the gold. I'm going to get it and I'm going to move fast. You have the animals north of town in one smoke. You got that?”

“You think I am insane.”

“I know it. Now get moving.”

He turned away from the Navajo without another word, walked along the edge of town for a block and found his way onto Main. The town was buzzing, but not as much as he would have expected. He made no attempt at concealment, but walked openly to Carmody's place. One or two men glanced at him, one greeted him, but he reached the house without being stopped. Openly, he banged on the street door. To his surprise it gave under the blow and swung creating inwards.

Mcallister snapped his hand down on the butt of the Dragoon gun in his belt.

Someone had got there before him.

When They hit the street, Shatloe broke into a run and reached Turl.

“My Gawd,” he said, “I don't like leaving a jasper like Mcallister without no guard.”

Turl laughed.

“With what I have in mind, I don't give a monkey's ass what happens to McAllister.”

“Where're we goin'?”

Turl turned his head and looked at him. He looked very pleased with himself.

“Carmody's,” he said.

“What we wanta go see that old goat for?”

Patiently Turl explained.

“Clover and Franchon rode into town with the army gold. They left it with Carmody. Mcallister kindly killed them two gun-hands for us. Now we go take the gold from Carmody. It's like taking candy from a kid.”

Shatloe looked at him in wonder and admiration.

“Yeah,” he said in an awed voice. “It is. That's jest what it's like.” His tone changed. “Yeah—but how about the old man? You know how he locks and bars that place of his'n. Hell, he ain't gonna let us in.”

“We're the law,” Turl said.

Shatloe considered that for a while, then he laughed. “Yeah,” he said gleefully. “We are, ain't we?”

They reached the house and Turl knocked softly on the street door. That didn't get any result, so he knocked again, louder this time. He had to repeat the performance several times before they heard furtive movements behind the door.

Carmody's voice growled out—“Who is it?”

“Marshal Turl.”

“Turl! I don't know what you want this time of night, but it can wait till morning. You disturbed my sleep. Get the hell away from here and come back some other time.”

“This is important.”

“Nothing's so important you have to wake me in the middle of the night and tell me about it.”

“How about Clover and Franchon?”

“How about 'em? What're they to do with me?”

“They're dead.”

That shook the old man. His voice quavered when he spoke again.

“Dead? But—”

“Mcallister killed them.”

They could almost hear the old man's furious thinking on the other side of the door. Finally his voice came again.

“So they're dead. Good riddance. They was a couple of no-goods.”

“Sure they were,” Turl told him. “But that ain't all. Mcallister knows you have the gold and he's on his way here to get it.”

Shatloe beamed in admiration at his chief's smartness and showed his approval by giving the thumbs-up sign.

There was a long pause while the old man thought that one out.

“So what do you want now?”

“All we want is McAllister.”

“And this gold you say I have? I ain't admitting it, mind you.”

“Wa-al, you could show your gratitude, I reckon.”

Another think on the other side of the door.

“All right. But, remember, I may be an old man but I can pull a trigger good as anybody. One of you plays any tricks and he's a dead man.”

A bolt was drawn and chains clinked. Shatloe started to draw his side-gun, but the marshal gripped his wrist and whispered: “Not yet.” When the chain had been unfastened, the old man swung the bar. The door creaked open and Carmody's gross face appeared in the dim light. The small eyes blinked once and he swung the door wider to show the greater grossness of his body. Against the bulk of his belly a revolver gleamed.

Turl stepped forward, saying: “No call for the gun, Mr. Carmody.”

“I'm the best judge of that. Strike a light, then walk over to the table and light the lamp. You move wrong and you're dead.”

“That ain't the attitude, Mr. Carmody. I
am
the law here.”

“Get on and save the talk.”

Turl reached into a pocket, found a match and ignited it on the seat of his pants. Cupping it in his hands, he started across the room, saying: “Where's the lamp at?” As he got halfway across the room, he stumbled on something, burned his fingers and, with a vehement, “Goddamit,” dropped the match.

For a brief part of a second Carmody's eyes fell to the flame on the floor. That was the last mistake he ever made. Shatloe swept his gun from leather with lightning speed and struck the old man a terrible blow on the base of the skull. He made a soft sound like a faint guttural shriek and fell heavily, dropping his gun with a clatter.

“Good man,” the marshal said and the excitement showed in his voice now. “Finish him.”

Shatloe said: “Aw, now, wait a minute.”

“Finish him.”

“That's just plain murder.”

“Sure,” Turl agreed, “that's what it is.” He drew his own gun and bending over Carmody dealt him a smashing blow on top of the skull. When he straightened up, he said: “Drag him out of the road. Quick, we have to find this gold and get out of here.”

First they pulled all the curtains, then lit the lamp and started the search. While Turl tried the desk, bureau and cupboards, Shatloe searched for loose floorboards. The floor was covered with debris from the drawers when Shatloe suddenly called from a corner of the room: “Hey, look here, Turl. This is it.” The marshal strode across the room to the sound of a board being torn from its nails, picking up the lamp as he went.

When he gazed over Shatloe's shoulder and saw the U.S.A. stamp on the sacks and small boxes, he said: “You found it all right, boy.”

The deputy hefted a sack and they listened to the clink of the gold. Neither of them had ever heard music so sweet. They started to get them out and range them on the center table, but before they could complete the task, Shatloe froze and whispered: “Somebody's comin'.”

“Quick!”

Leaving the lamp on the floor near the hole, they shrank back into the shadows, drawing their guns and watching the door.

A fist knocked on the door. The door squeaked open a few inches.

Goddamit
, Turl told himself too late,
I should of barred the door
.

His thumb was on the hammer ready for rapid cocking and firing; he found himself holding his breath ready for the killing shot. Already he was planning the next move and the next. Once guns came into play he and Shatloe would have to get out of town. Or they could say this man at the door was a thief after Carmody's gold and it had been him who killed the old man. Yeah, that was it.

But what was wrong out there? The man wasn't coming in. Turl licked his lips. Did the fellow smell a rat?

The door opened a few more inches, the marshal almost fired, but realised in time that there was nobody there outlined by the street-lamp. He found that he was sweating copiously.

Suddenly his stretched nerves nearly broke as one of the windows looking onto the street fell into the room with a resounding crash. Turl swung his gun, nearly fired again, but got control of himself and held back. Shatloe did not have so good a command of himself. He instantly fired two shots as though he were a machine set in motion. The roar of the heavy gun from the door followed so closely on his shots that its explosion seemed a part of them. Shatloe screamed, was hurled across the room, fell over the table and hit the floor taking the table with him. He missed the lamp by inches and lay with the cloth draped over him like a shroud.

Turl swung his gun for the door, but by the time he had fired, the shoulder and arm that had appeared there so briefly were gone. The shot crossed the street, hit a window in the stage office and smashed it.

A hand snapped around the door-jamp threw a careless shot from the cannon-like gun and missed. But it was near enough to make Turl jump in alarm and try to be somewhere else. As he leapt for a new hiding place, the man outside thrust the gun through the broken window and fired his second shot. It hit him in the lower left leg and smashed the bone. He fell hard, lost his gun and started yelling.

Mcallister came through the door fast, gave him a glance and said: “Like to help you some, marshal, but I'm kind of short on time.”

“Get me a doctor for the luva Gawd.”

“You don't need a doctor, you need a hangman.” Mcallister picked up the lamp, took a good look at Carmody and Shatloe, put the lamp on the table and got to work. Whisking the table-cloth off Shatloe he laid it out on the floor, piled all the gold into it and tied the four corners together. By the time he had done that the town was coming to see what was going on. Some came running. He pulled out that old Dragoon again and put a shot over their heads. They ran back the other way. He shut the door and dropped the bar into its bracket, hefted the gold painfully and walked out of the rear with the marshal's threats, curses and pleadings in his ears. Someone in the alleyway out back threw a shot at him, but he returned it and was given no more trouble. Going out through the backlots he worked his way north of town until he came up with the Navajo. By that time he was all in and the thought of riding all that way back across the desert sounded like a tale out of the legend of hell.

While the Indian packed the gold into the saddlebags he had somehow acquired, Mcallister lay down to take a breather, as he claimed. Not long after, José had to get pretty violent with him to get him awake. Swearing in his adept way, he somehow crawled aboard, loosened his belt and hooked it over the saddle-horn. Nothing more that he knew would keep him in the saddle. The last thought that came to him before he fell asleep again was:
All we want now to round off a nice week's work is a passel of Indians
.

Any Other leader among the Apache people but Gato would have counted the running fight with the Clover gang as a defeat. True, most of the whitemen had been killed, but Gato had lost half of his small band. The bloody and tired remainder squatted around him waiting for the pale light of
dawn. Their position was a small distance to the north and below a ridge within a mile of Mesquite Springs. It was this kind of daring that endeared the leader to such desperate men as these. To have taken a beating and then to rest almost under the eyes of the enemy!