the Man from Skibbereen (1973) (18 page)

Dropping down off the ridge he rode fast, keeping to low ground between two lines of hills. When he came up, a few minutes later, he saw the buffalo not two hundred yards away. He started toward them, walking his horse.

One big old bull lifted a ponderous head and stared at him. The beast took two hesitant steps toward him, then wheeled and started back in the other direction. Cris walked the black horse toward them, and uneasily they began to move away. The Parley outfit were nowhere in sight, no doubt concentrating all their attention on the hunting generals.

He circled warily, for he knew nothing of buffalo except from the casual talk on the train, not all of which he remembered; and some comments made by Reppato Pratt; and the raging tide of them that had come at the red shack in the night, the night when he'd turned them. Cris Mayo wanted no stampede, only an alternative target that might lead the generals away from the ambush, which he felt sure would be baited with buffalo.

If he could manage it, he might defeat Parley's crowd without a fight. He had no urge for a shooting match. Actual combat was a last resort. There were men out there whose lives were precious to their country, and there was Barda.

Cris pulled up and waited, watching the buffalo moving away. When they ran it was with a queer, loping gait, their heads bobbing, their long beards often touching the grass. Slowly, then, he walked his horse along a wide front, his appearance enough to keep the animals moving on.

The air was very clear, with almost no wind. Cris stood in his stirrups and tried to see beyond the low hills to where the hunting party might be.

There was nothing... only the shimmer of the clear, sunlit air, only the stillness. Somewhere a meadowlark called, and far overhead a buzzard swung in lazy loops, watching for what might develop.

He dismounted and walked on, leading the black horse. The buffalo he had started were moving across the line of march on which he had glimpsed the hunting party, and if they continued to move would offer an open target, away from the creek bottom where Parley's men must be waiting.

The wind was from him toward the buffalo and they drifted away as he approached, but because he was moving slowly, they did likewise. Where were Parley's men? He studied each fold in the hills, knowing that they were within half a mile of him, probably less, and. that any one of them would be willing to kill him on sight... only now they would be apt to hold their fire for fear of warning the generals.

Somewhere behind were Owen Brennan and his followers, whoever he had found in Laramie where there were many veterans of the war from both sides. Brennan would be riding by now.

Cris mounted again and began moving his horse forward, pushing the buffalo a little. Suddenly, some distance off, he saw the generals' party ride out of a draw and pull up. He could see the sun glisten on the flanks of their horses, but was too far off to make out details or numbers.

He cantered forward toward the buffalo, and after a look at him, they swung their big heads and moved off. Cris had been visible long enough for them to feel no great alarm at his presence, but they moved now at a more rapid pace, as he did.

A dozen were trotting... twenty or more, with others starting. They had been scattered upon the grass, now they bunched a little. He stared at the generals' party, shielding his eyes against the sun. They appeared to be hesitating, debating whether to follow the guide or try for this new lot who were coming at them.

The buffalo before him veered sharply to the north, shying from a crease in the hills that must be a coulee or draw. He took his rifle in his hands. His lips felt dry... well, he knew where some of the devils were, anyway. He started to swing wide of the spot, and three men appeared, as if from the ground.

They were on foot and not thirty yards away. What impelled him to do so he never could guess, but suddenly he kicked the black horse in the ribs and drove at them.

His action was totally unexpected, and the horse was in a dead run before they realized he was coming at them, not running away. He leaned out, taking aim at the farthest one, and firing on the jump. He missed... but he worked the lever, fired again, and then swung the rifle butt. And that time he did not miss.

He felt the shock of the blow clear to his spine, and at the same moment a gun went off almost in his ear and the ravine opened before him. He cut the black sharply away along the rim, glancing back. Two men were down but one of them was getting up, having either been upset by the horse or tripped in his haste to get out of its way. One of them was lifting a rifle, but at that instant the land dipped and Cris went into a low place and swung in and out among scattered juniper.

He heard whining bullets... or thought he did. At least he heard the reports, and then he was down even lower and making time away from them. When he finally topped out on the far side of the shallow place he was a quarter of a mile away and the men had disappeared. AH but the one he had hit with the gun butt, who still lay, a dark spot on the brown--gray grass.

Turning his horse, he saw that the creek was before him. Somewhere among those trees were the rest of Parley's men. He pulled up among some rocks and deadfalls and tying his horse in a sheltered place, walked quickly forward.

He did not know what to do, but they were somewhere in the brush down there and he wanted to smoke them out. He checked his ammunition... plenty. He looked down into the trees below and could see nothing, and much as it went against the grain to waste ammunition by throwing lead at an invisible target, he knew he must do something more to warn the generals, at least to move them away from the ambush.

He heard a voice raised down there in some kind of command. He knelt behind a fallen tree and resting his rifle barrel across it he began a searching fire into the woods. He had no target, only the necessity of stirring them up and creating a warning racket, so he fired, elevated the muzzle an inch or so, fired again. With deliberation he put ten shots into the area, searching along the patch of trees, hoping to get some action.

At the sound of the firing he saw from the tail of his eye the hunting party. They seemed to stop... he could imagine them swearing at the "damned fool" who was frightening the game, though as a matter of fact it only moved the buffalo toward them.

Justin Parley had held his file of men ready for a charge. Talk about Stuart, would they? Or Forrest? Or this upstart Yankee Custer? He would show them what a cavalry charge was like, and wipe them out in the process.

The frustration of his original plans had been gnawing at him. It had seemed a simple, dramatic gesture to grab Sherman, torture and kill him, and notify the world that he had avenged Atlanta, Then the added chance to kill all three, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, had come. He would be a hero... a hero!

"Major," it was Watkins, a tough Arkansas rebel, "that damn Irishman is movin' the buffalo!"

"What?" Parley's daydreams of heroism, of the day when he would be the toast of all unreconstructed Southerners, were interrupted. "What was that?"

"The Irishman... the fighter. He's movin' the buffalo."

"Kill him!" Parley snapped. "You, Watkins, and Murray and Hardt. Get out there and stop him. Kill him!"

They had gone on foot for better shooting, but in the meantime Cris Mayo had ridden nearer, and their sudden emergence had put him right on top of them; and then, instead of running, the idiot had charged them.

Hardt was down out there, probably dead. Watkins and Murray, bitter with anger at themselves, their luck and Cris Mayo, dropped into the ravine. Watkins had been knocked down by a glancing blow from the horse's shoulder. Shaken, he had stumbled into the brush, following Murray.

Murray had scrambled back for the rifle he had dropped, then run to the sheltering brush. "Where'd he go?" he demanded of Watkins.

"Disappeared," Watkins growled irritably. "He was there, then he was gone. What's the matter with him, anyway? Is he crazy?"

"He ain't crazy," Murray replied shortly. "He's just got more nerve than any one man should have. That damn mick would charge Hell with a bucket o' water!"

Parley was ready. The hunting party would come no closer with the buffalo moving as they were, but they were less than half a mile off and partially screened by scattered juniper and brush. He would walk his horses the first couple of hundred yards, trot for a hundred, then charge.

"Ready!" His voice rang out. He lifted a sword. "Ready," he repeated, wishing he could remember the proper commands. In the irregular outfit he had served with, such commands were rarely used, but he would have liked to know them now. "Rea--/"

A bullet kicked dust thirty yards off and the hard crack of the rifle sounded close. A second bullet struck a tree and spat bark, another thunked into the dirt almost at his horse's feet.

"Charge!" Parley shouted. It was the first word that came to him, and not at all the one he wanted. The whole line of horsemen surged forward, up the bank of the coulee and into the scattered juniper and sagebrush beyond.

Mayo heard the wild shout, and the next instant the riders came boiling out of the coulee, faced in the opposite direction. There must have been twenty--five of them. Whirling around, Mayo got off one quick shot, saw a rider fall, and then his gun clicked on an empty chamber.

Desperately, he began to reload. They were pulling away! He whipped up the rifle and pumped five shots after them, five that had no effect, and his gun was empty again. With quick fingers he again slid in cartridges, kneeling, determined this time to load the gun completely.

It was reloaded and he started to stand when he heard a footfall. He sprang up, turned, heard the bellow of a gun and a wild, angry, triumphant yell. "Got him!" And then the gun roared again.

He felt himself falling, threw out a hand to stay his fall but it caught nothing; tripped by the log, he fell over it and struck the side of his head hard on the ground beyond. He heard running feet and yelling, and he threw himself over into the ravine.

He was hurt, how badly he did not know, but his mind was confused and filled with panic. He had to get away, get away!

He hit some brush, pitched through it, struck heavily on something hard and then fell clear. He brought up with a jolt in the soft mud near a stream. He tried to get up, fell, and crawled. Half blind with dirt and mud, he saw a dark hole before him and scrambled toward it.

It was no hole... no safe place, only a dark hollow in the brush where some animal had crawled. He scrambled along it, his breath coming in great gasps. Above him on the bank over which he had fallen he heard shouting and swearing. "Get him, damn it! Kill him!"

He heard running feet. He suddenly emerged from the animal crawlway, staggered to his feet and lunged through the trees, bumping first one and then another. He felt a stabbing pain in his side, but whether from a bullet or simply exhaustion he could not say. His head was opening and shutting with fierce spasms of torment.

He fell down, got up. He had lost his rifle back there when he fell over the log. His horse was there, too. In the hands of the renegades by now, surely.

He ran a few steps, butted into a tree and grabbed wildly at the trunk to keep himself from falling. He turned, looking back. He could see nothing but leaves and brush. He ran on, desperately wanting a hole. Somewhere he heard a yell, then a volley of shots, but none of them came close to him.

Suddenly, running at full tilt, he saw the ravine narrow before him, a rocky place, solid rock underneath. He ran at the opening, saw the rock vanish almost before his eyes and he was on the lip of a cliff, a dry waterfall!

He tried to slow down, to stop himself, but his impetus was too great. He felt himself go over, his fingers clawing for the rocks. He caught a corner of stone and for a moment thought he had saved himself, but the rock pulled loose and he fell, struck some brush, crashed through, and the last thing he knew was a faint circle of light above and then darkness closing in.

A half mile away, Brennan with thirty riders pullecl up on the brow of a low hill. They could see nothing. Off toward the mountains he heard the bark of a gun from the hunters.

"Well," he said, "they're still--" At that moment Parley's men came up the bank in their wild charge, which had started too soon and too far from their objective.

"Take 'em, men!" Brennan slapped spurs to his horse and started forward. And they opened fire.

The shock of the unexpected flank attack was too much. Parley's men, poorly disciplined at least, broke before it. Brennan's hard riders, most of them cavalry veterans of the Civil and Indian Wars, relishing this sudden call to action, charged into the fleeing renegades with flaming guns.

In a moment, it was over. Half a dozen men were on the ground. Several fled, barely clinging to their saddles, and Silver Dick, one of the last ones up the bank in the ill--considered charge, had turned sharply at the first shot and gone back into the river bottom, Del Robb beside him.

There was a crashing in the brush, and Murray ran out on foot, eyes bulging with anger. "Where'd he go?" he yelled. "Did you see that mick?"

"Forget it, Murray! Get your horse and come onl We've been hit... hard!"

Turning sharply, within fifty yards of the dry waterfall over which Mayo had fallen, they rode back up the ravine under the cover of the trees. On the way they picked up Watkins and two more. Gradually others joined them until there were a dozen or so. There was no sign of Justin Parley.