The Law of the Trigger (8 page)

Dunc cracked the hard, half-burned kernels between his teeth, chewing and swallowing automatically, his mind on other things. When, several days ago, he had first discovered what the gang had done to his family and to the farm, a wildness had seized him, and he had been driven by it ever since. Now, at last, fatigue had subdued the wildness. Hopelessness had blunted his anger. What was left was a quiet, pulsating hate that he knew would be with him always. All these hills were now his enemies. And Ike Brunner could not be found.

Now that he could be more rational in his mind, Dunc realized that he was probably lucky that he had not been able to find Ike Brunner. In a fight with the gang, he wouldn't have lasted five minutes.

But this knowledge did not ease the tension within hint, or put down his lust for revenge.

And still it was not revenge alone that drove him and would not let him rest. At last he was beginning to understand a little of what Ike and Cal Brunner were doing to these hill people. If the Brunners would lie to them about one thing, it stood to reason that they would lie again. Dunc thought about this. For the first time in his life he began to wonder if the hillfolks necessarily had to be always right, and the lowland people always wrong. Ike Brunner's argument that they had the right to plunder from the rich sounded good to people who were hungry and tired of being pushed around, but how much real truth was there in the argument?

To a hill boy like Dunc Lester, this was a strange trail for the mind to take. It was like a deer trace in the woods that twisted and turned and circled in upon itself and led nowhere. Still, he had glimpsed something here that bothered him. He had set out with hate for the Brunners alone, but now he was beginning to doubt the motives of his own people. His own family, for that matter.

Had his pa tried to stop him when he decided to join the Brunner gang?

Dunc smiled with vague bitterness as he remembered. His pa had given him his blessings and the only saddle horse that the family owned. “Son,” he had said, soberly shaking Dunc's hand, “we're proud of you. These Brunner boys, they've got the right idea on how to handle these outsiders!” Dunc's ma had made up a grub sack for him, and her faded eyes had glistened with pride. Her son was joining the gang. Dunc's father had presented him with his most prized possession, the, shotgun, and his brother-in-law had pitched in with a saddle.

Oh, it had been quite a day, Dunc remembered, when he first rode off to join the Brunners. He had never seen soldiers marching off to war, but that was the way it must have been, on a smaller scale.

This was a shocking line of thought for his mind to be taking, but the facts were much too clear to be ignored. A monster of the people's own making was loose in the hills. This, Dunc knew, was the core of the matter that had been gnawing at his conscience.

Then from some dark room of his mind came the memory of how, long ago, Gabe Tanis had found a young wolf pup in the woods and had brought it home. Wolves were bad in those days; they would come right up to the cabin and attack the livestock. Gabe claimed he was going to bring this wolf up like a pet and teach it to fight off the other wolves. He fed the pup the best of everything and spent hours every day training it, and people came from all over to see the pup and praise Gabe for his ingenuity. The only way to fight a wolf is with another wolf, Gabe said. But when the pup grew up it turned on Gabe and bit him through the hand, and finally it had to be shot.

Maybe, Dunc thought, the Brunner gang is working out like Gabe's wolf. At first it seemed like a good idea, but now it had turned. In one quick bite it had devoured the Lester farm and family. The harmless pup that everybody liked to pet and feed had grown into a full-sized wolf.

Dunc Lester slept fitfully that night beneath his roof of stone, and awoke the next morning stiff and sore and still bewildered in his mind. He swore at himself for showing himself to Sarah Sue Tanis. His position was much more dangerous now, for members of the gang would be out looking for him.

After a brief breakfast of more parched corn, he un-hobbled the bay and got the animal saddled. Where he would go now, he was not sure. He felt empty and defeated.

The small sound of a distant rifle punctured the quiet of the morning. Dunc came erect in the saddle, listening hard. Had some of the gang spotted him? Were they shooting at him?

This prospect did not seem likely, considering the distance separating him and the rifleman. Possibly it was a hunter after small game, but it was pretty early in the day for that. After a moment Dunc reined the bay around and headed cautiously in the general direction of the sound, and after a few minutes he heard a second shot and this time was able to pin-point the direction as due north, somewhere in a heavily wooded draw between his hill and the neighboring one.

Cautiously Dunc dismounted near the bottom of the slope, studying the woods about him. Now he saw that he was close to what had been the second outpost when the gang had occupied Ulster's Cave. He thought about this for a moment. Could it mean that the gang had moved back to this neighborhood?

Now he heard the sound of hoofs and falling rocks as another horse made its way down the side of the opposing hill. Dunc led his bay deeper into a stand of timber and tied it there. Unbooting the shotgun, he moved forward to some high ground where he could lie on his stomach and look down on the draw.

He could see nothing, but he could still hear the horse coming through the woods. Suddenly the sound of a coyote lay on the still morning air, and Dunc flattened a little harder against the ground as the voice echoed and reechoed between the hills.

For a moment there was complete silence. Then a voice called out, “I seen you, goddamn it! There's no use tryin' to hide!”

Although Dunc could not see him, he knew that the voice belonged to Wes Longstreet, the young Arkansas hellion that had belonged to the gang since its beginning. Dunc peered hard into the green umbrella of leaves and branches that spread out below, trying to see who Wes was after. He could see nothing, and the forest was quiet.

Then there Was the sound of a second horse, and a second voice called, “You got her spotted, Wes?”

Dunc heard his breath whistle between his teeth. That voice belonged to Cal Brunner! Wes called back something that Dunc couldn't understand, and then there was silence again and Dunc guessed that the two men had met and were planning what to do next.

Now he heard the two horses moving aimlessly and knew that Wes and Gal had dismounted to make the hunt on foot. But who were they hunting? As far as Dunc knew, he was the only one the gang had it in for. Maybe, he hoped, one of the other members had found out how the Brunners were using the gang for their own ends and had made a break for it.

But he doubted this, knowing how stubborn a pack of hill boys could be when they got their heads set on something. Right now they were set on the idea that Ike and Cal were their friends, and it would take a Jot more than guesswork to jar them loose from that.

He could hear the two men thrashing around in the brush at the bottom of the deep draw. “See anything yet?” Cal shouted.

“Not yet,” Wes called.

“Goddamn it!” Cal swore, and this time Dunc heard the rough edge of anxiety in the younger brother's voice. “Ike'll be fit to kill if he finds out we let her get away!”

Her? This was the first time Dunc had noticed that they were referring to the hunted person as a woman. He pondered on this, a certain tenseness straining at his nerves, a vague new worry appearing in the lines of his hard, young face. On his belly, he slipped over the top of the ridge and began crawling forward.

At last Wes Longstreet called wearily, “Hell, we'll never find her in all this brush.”

“We've got to find her!” Cal shouted angrily.

“I don't understand this. Why's Ike so het up about Mort Stringer's girl, anyway?”

“None of your goddamn business!” Cal snarled.

The two took up their search again, cursing and thrashing among the tall, tough saplings and thick weeds. Dunc Lester lay flat on the cool ground, the chill of winter spreading through him.

He told himself that it couldn't be Leah Stringer that they were looking for. Leah was back at the ex-marshal's place, where he had left her; she
had
to be there!

But all the time he knew that she wasn't. She was down there in that draw somewhere, hiding in the weeds like a frightened rabbit. How she got there, Dunc didn't know. But he could feel her presence now in the singing of his nerves.

Damn it to hell! he thought angrily. I'm not goin' to take any more chances on account of that fool girl. She gets herself into these messes; let her get herself out!

And even as he thought it he began crawling forward again, dragging the clumsy shotgun along at his side. At the bottom of the draw he rolled quietly into a deep gully and lay there for a moment, listening. The gully, which had recently carried the runoff of spring rains down to the mouth of the Canadian, was still muddy and soft at the bottom, and Dunc took a moment to clean the sticky clay from his shotgun and revolver.

His common sense told him to stay right where he was and let the girl shift for herself, but he could no more do it than he could stop breathing. Because of him, Leah Stringer was still alive, and some stubborn streak in his Lester nature would not let him lie still and see all his effort go for nothing.

So he continued his crawling, this time to the north, along the sides of the boggy wash, cursing himself and the girl every inch of the way.

He could hear the two men clearly now, their swearing and tramping in the tangle of underbrush. Sooner or later, if they kept it up, they would flush Leah, no matter what kind of hiding place she had. Dunc thought of this and knew that the chances were a hundred to one against his being able to help her.

Suddenly he stopped his crawling, holding the shotgun hard in his two big hands. “Wait a minute!” Wes Long-street called.

The hills fell silent. Even the tall pines seemed to hesitate for a moment in their eternal swaying to listen. “There she is!” Wes shouted.

Dunc came suddenly to his feet, clawing his way up the slick side of the gully. The blunt, hard punch of a rifle jarred the stillness, and now Wes and Cal went crashing through the brush, converging toward a single point.

Dunc glimpsed Leah Stringer's faded short dress flashing among the trees. He yelled to her, but she was too intent on her flight to hear the warning. Swearing again, Dunc fought his way back to the gully, slipping and sliding as he struggled to get downstream fast enough to cut her off. Once more he glimpsed the fleeing girl and yelled again.

This time she saw him. She paused for a moment, her eyes wide and senseless with fear. “Down here!” Dunc yelled. “Get in the gully!”

Poised on tiptoe, breathless and frightened, she reminded Dunc of a young doe, or some white exotic bird about to take flight.

“It's me!” Dunc yelled again. “Get down in the gully!”

She must have acted on animal instinct, for there was no recognition in her eyes. She wheeled, turned toward the wash, and fell gasping with her face pressed to the wet, sticky clay. Dunc took her arm and tried to bring her to her feet, but she turned on him snarling, baring her teeth like a cornered timber wolf. Hell's fire! Dunc thought savagely as she clawed him. He heard Wes and Cal crashing down on them, only a few yards from the gully, and then he did something that no Lester had ever done before. He struck a woman.

With studied, controlled violence, he lifted the girl with his left hand. He dropped the shotgun for a moment against the bank of the gully and struck her quickly, feeling the tingle in his hard knuckles as his fist cracked sharply against her chin. He let her drop face down in the mud and did not think about her again for several minutes.

Calmly now, he recovered the shotgun and wiped the side plate on his trousers as Cal and Wes broke into the clear by the gully, Cal in front but limping badly on his wounded leg. He did not shout to them, for he knew that this was no time for talking. Methodically he lifted the shotgun and fired quickly from the shoulder at Cal Brunner.

With strange unconcern, Dunc watched Cal crumple against the thin air as though he had run into a stone wall. His arms flew out as the heavy buckshot tore into him.

Wes Longstreet was a dangerous hothead, but he was no fool. He jumped sideways with the instinct of a wild dog, fell in the heavy brush, and clawed his way back toward the trees. After a moment he yelled, “Goddamn you, Dunc Lester, you killed Cal!”

Dunc reloaded the shotgun and waited to see if Wes was going to force the play.

“Ike'll get you for this!” Wes cried wildly.

“I reckon,” Dunc said mildly, “I'm in no more trouble than I was before.” He spoke more to himself than to the man in the brush.

Wes fired once, twice, three times with his pistol, and Dunc lowered his head and let the bullets scream harmlessly over the gully. Carefully he lifted the shotgun again and fired into the brush. Wes swore and beat a hasty retreat into the woods.

Dunc stood still for a moment, thinking. He and the girl had to get out of here, and they had only one horse to do it with. There wasn't much chance of getting one of the horses that Wes and Cal had come on unless he could kill Wes first, and that was not likely. Wes Longstreet would stay where he was and come after them later, when he got his nerve worked up again.