McAllister (7 page)

The scout saluted him and, rising, slipped silently into the darkness.

Clover Eyed the handsome Southerner warily. Sure, Clover was the big man around here or anywhere else he liked to go, but Franchon was deadlier than a rattlesnake. Only one other man in the world Clover feared and that was that old toad Carmody. His reason for his wariness of Franchon was obvious—the gunman was fast, faster than Clover or any one of his men, and he was totally reckless. He would kill a man knowing that in the act he could get himself killed. So when Franchon sneered at him now, although Clover knew his men were near and listening, he made no move. Carmody was another dish of beans altogether. Physically, Clover feared him not at all. It was something else about the fat man that brought obedience from the man who had inspired more wanted posters than any other man west of Kansas City.

Clover was watching Franchon's right hand and its proximity to his gun-butt when he noticed that the handle was cased by wood. That gave him a clue.

“What happened to the famous ivory-handled gun, Franchon?” he asked.

“I lost it.”

“That looks like an army model.”

“It is.”

That didn't prove anything, but it gave Clover the idea that Franchon had been disarmed and had made his escape from the ranch. He had an uneasy feeling that the gunman had killed a soldier. There'd be hell to pay if that were true.

“Tell me—how come you left the train? On foot?”

“You're asking a lot of questions, Clover?”

“Look—Carmody says you'll stay with the train. But you don't. Am I suppose to just take that without a word? I don't like it. This thing was carefully planned.”

Franchon stared at him, his pale eyes glittering in the lamplight. He looked as cold as a reptile.

“I'm not one of your men, Clover. I judged it best to leave the train and that's the end of it. I'm here to look after Mr. Carmody's personal interests. You and I have to get along till this chore's done. Leave it at that.”

Clover gave it a little thought, then said—

“All right. But stay close, Franchon. My boys're jumpy and there's Indians breathing down our necks. This may not be easy.”

Franchon smiled coldly.

“All we have to do is take a couple of bags of gold from four soldiers and a few mule-skinners.”

“I've lost two men.”

“And have eight left.”

Franchon turned his back on Clover and walked away to the rim of the circle of light. He sat down with his back against an aspen tree, tilted his hat over his eyes and apparently fell asleep. He didn't move when a rider headed into camp and told Clover: “Jed, they burned one of their wagons.”

Clover rose and walked over to Franchon, prodding with his toe. Franchon said without moving: “Don't do that.”

“McAllister's burned a wagon. That'll be Carmody's. He's on to us.”

Franchon's voice from under the hat said: “Is that all you woke me up to tell me?”

“You running out gave him the warning,” Clover accused.

The gunman pushed his hat back and raised his pale eyes to the man standing over him.

“Look, quit worrying. I'm going to kill this McAllister. I'll blow his brains out if it's the last thing I do.”

Looking at him, Clover knew he meant it.

The outlaw walked back to the fire, calling a couple of his men to him as he went. They squatted on their hunkers and accepted chews from him.

“Here's what you do first light in the morning …” he began.

The Three wagons rolled slowly across the arid sun-blasted land that was so hard now they were heading into the
malpais
that they scarcely raised dust. The neat feet of the mules clattered on the bare rock and now and then horses and wagons slid precariously. The mule-skinners drove cautiously and all their attention was on the road. Every man knew they were taking a gamble carrying straight on due west and that it might have been wiser to have lost them a day. Their water would not last for ever and their line of march was controlled by the amount of water they could carry. Four teams of mules and the saddle-stock needed a frightening amount of the liquid.

Mcallister drove the lead wagon with Young riding ahead with the Navajo flanking him. The lieutenant brought up the rear with a trooper with another flanking him. The two prisoners were in the second wagon, tied tightly together. Carmody's man had sworn to kill somebody for tying him to a stinking Apache, but it was generally agreed that it was an excellent idea to put them both together. With luck the Indian might kill the whiteman and if the Indian tried to escape, the whiteman would pay for his keep by raising the alarm.

Mrs. Bankroft, without being invited, placed herself on the wagon beside Mcallister who, strangely enough, made no complaint at her presumption. She was very quiet, but he found her presence a strange pleasure to him. Every now and then, he pointed something out to her in the desert he knew so well and she would nod and thank him for the information with a quaint formality. At the mid-day halt, she redressed
his wound and told him that it was looking very well and she didn't think it would go bad now if he was sure to keep it clean. At the halt, she made coffee and took some to the two prisoners whom she offered the cup to impartially.

The
malpais
which they had sighted two hours out from the ranch and had slowly marched on all day, they reached in the middle of the afternoon when the sun was getting a little more than any of them could stand. When they reached the great slabs of volcanic rock, they found that it could grow worse. Here they entered what they considered to be a hell on earth. Lieutenant von Tannenberg was seeing it for the first time, for he had taken the southern route from the Fort as passable for horses, but not for wagons. This was a short cut, for the freak road through this terrible country might be as hot as the nether regions, but it was comparatively smooth. This would save them that precious day that their water demanded.

Neither Mcallister or von Tannenberg had any doubts that if an attack was to be made upon them it would come in the next three miles, for there was scarcely a foot of the way that did not offer good cover for riflemen. Their only advantage lay in the fact that it would not be easy for any ambushers to make a mounted charge from among the sharp rocks.

Nothing happened for two thirds of the way and by that time they knew that their opponent, whoever he was, Indian or white, was a good general. By this time most men would have been near to reassurance that no attack was coming. They could also be almost beaten down by the overpowering heat.

They were within a mile of the desert and the worst of the rocks giving way to more open ridges when the shot came.

The offside leader of McAllister's wagon, a big dun animal, swerved sharply to the right and stumbled to its knees. Its partner spooked, trod over the traces and nearly went down. The pair behind collided with both of them and the offside dun was trodden on. It screamed and the following pairs got entangled with the traces and several fights broke out.

Mcallister moved fast. He pushed the woman beside him into the wagon, snatching up his Remington and firing immediately at smoke drifting among the rocks to his right.

At once someone fired from the left of the trail and he heard a bullet, ripped through canvas and thud into the goods behind him. Then Sam's rifle started to slam out its reply. As arranged, Mcallister concentrated on the right hand attacker. Firing broke out further along the train as each wagon came to an untidy halt. There was no chance of laagering here, for there was no room and bitterly he knew they would have to shoot it out and that would mean he would lose men. An unpleasant thought.

As he took another steady shot at the crown of a hat high above him, the woman shouted in his ear: “Get into the wagon.”

The long barrel of the Henry poked past his hip and he knew that she was going to join the ball.

“Can you shoot that thing?”

“As good as you.”

“Okay—give me cover. I'm going into those rocks.”

A heavy ball slammed into wood near his feet and a rear mule started an attempt to kick the wagon to pieces. The noise of guns, frightened animals and shouting men was deafening.

He heard the woman scream—

“You're crazy.”

He said: “Ain't I?” and jumped from the wagon.

His injured leg gave under him and he fell forward and rolled helplessly. That saved his life most likely because lead hummed close over him. Feeling foolish and furious, he drove himself relentlessly to his feet, compelled himself to use his right leg and limped grotesquely in a series of hops and jumps to the nearest cover. Which was not much because there were riflemen on both sides of the trail and one man on the other side had full view of him. He must have done—bullets began to flatten themselves against the rock all around him as somebody levered and triggered as fast as a man could. He didn't know it, but when the hail of lead had stopped it was because Sam had managed to get a bead on the ambusher and shoot him through his head.

Glancing over his shoulder, Mcallister saw that several mules were down and the lieutenant and another man had reached the rocks and were climbing rapidly in the face of heavy fire. That left the guard on the wagons pretty thin, but Mcallister reckoned it was worth the gamble. Sitting on
their rumps on the wagons they would never clear those bushwhackers out of the rocks.

He started crawling forward and up, hugging cover close and with the will to murder in his heart. Somebody from above spotted him and started shooting, but Mrs. Bankroft got her rifle lined up on him and soon discouraged him.

The stones were cutting the knees of his cord pants to threads and the heat was coming off the rocks with the intensity of a furnace so that the sweat ran down Mcallister in a continuous stream. Dust and the acrid fumes of his expended black powder choked him. Behind him was a deafening cacophony of sound: a mule hee-hawing, another down and screaming like a mortally injured woman, men bawling and guns racketing enough to split a man's eardrums. Above him the rifles sounded thinly in the rocks, booming on the echo. The attackers were voiceless. They knew what they had to do.

Mcallister crawled about fifty feet and settled down, allowing a little time to pass, waiting for somebody to give him a worthwhile target. He reckoned he was pretty near the closest men and if he fired at a man in so dangerous a spot, he wanted to be sure of killing him. The worst of this kind of country—there wasn't a stick of brush around so a man could lift his head without being seen. This he knew to his cost when he raised up to watch a man directly in front of him. The man was starting to show his head and shoulders and Mcallister was raising his gun to cut him down, when his hat was torn from his head and even as he was turning to return the fire a second shot splattered itself on the rocks at his side.

He was shocked to find that he had crawled to within a dozen feet of a man he hadn't known about. As the fellow fired his third shot, Mcallister snapped a shot at him that missed, but put him off balance. He saw the man jump in alarm and start to get back to cover and drove a shot into his body.

Lead whined meanly past his head and he dropped flat again, slewing himself around and finding that the rifleman he had been watching was trying to winkle him out. They settled down to a futureless shooting match, both of them reluctant to show themselves.

Well, there would have been no future to it, if through the
din of the battle, a scream had not come from the wagons below. And that was no mule that screamed. That was a woman and there was only one woman on that wagon-train.

Mcallister twisted his head around and saw the woman pitching forward out of the wagon. He got a brief glimpse of a man below her. His arms went around her and threw her aside like a helpless doll. Mcallister felt the impact as her body landed in the rocks.

Blinding rage ripped through him and he found himself yelling, but he knew that his yells were obliterated by the noise going on around him. He got to his feet and the game leg tried to give under him, but he cursed it and willed it to carry him. The fellow down below was firing point-blank at the wheelers and they were going down. Mcallister lined up on him, fired and missed because the range was too great, but he scared the man and drove him to cover under the wagon.

The rifleman above Mcallister tried for him, pumping shots frantically and showing that his excitement was greater than his skill. Mcallister swung around and pulled the trigger only to be rewarded by a faint click of the hammer falling on a spent load. He started down the grade, falling as the injured leg failed him, but lurching to his feet again and going on. The rifleman went on trying for him. Glancing up, he saw that men were coming out of the rocks on the other side of the road. Thrusting his gun away, he continued his agonising descent. During one of his falls, he filled both fists with rocks and these he hurled furiously at the man under the wagon and drew his fire toward him. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the flutter of cloth as Mrs. Bankroft started to her feet and he bawled for her to get down. One of his own men ran along the wagons, waving an arm and shouting something that was inaudible. Suddenly, in mid-stride, he collapsed and lay kicking violently on the ground. Mcallister stooped and filled his fists again and lurched onto the flat. The man under the wagon was close now and his gun was on McAllister. The big man shattered a rock against the wheels of the wagon and he tripped as the gun went off. Mrs. Bankroft screamed again.

Mcallister levered himself off the ground and found the Henry under his hands. Exultation welling up in him, he levered it and drove a shot at the man under the wagon. He didn't wait to see if he had made a hit, but turned to meet a
man coming down from above on the other side of the road. Across the kicking mules, he leveled the Henry and found that it was empty. Maybe the other fellow's gun was also empty, for he did not fire, but came leaping across the downed animals.