The Lawbringers 4 Page 2

  He was in that kind of a mood now—a mood to do Holliday one better. His dismal glance met and challenged and damned the oncoming wall of weather.

  By now it obscured all but the nearest hills. The deputy’s head swung on a limp neck, bouncing regularly against Brand’s knee, and the horse’s plodding haunches bumped his thighs unpleasantly. He pulled the upturned sheepskin collar higher against his face and held it closed with one hand while he clucked ineffectually at the calico horse and prodded its flanks with his spurs.

  The loose, soft snow made for hard going; underneath was a treacherous maze of grass and stones and prairie-dog holes. He remembered the black bird and wondered if he should have shot it down. The horse’s hoofs kicked up little flurries of white powder and the smooth surface of the drifts beat against Jim Brand’s slitted eyes with a flinty brilliance. All of it was bleak and dismal, and made him wonder if perhaps his dreary past was catching up with him.

  The snow-blanketed route took him over gently undulating rises and dips of land, steadily closing the distance to the abrupt lift of the mountains, always searching for the signs of the drift fence. There was no foothill transition between the swelling plateau and the sudden jagged shoulders of the mountains; the land swept up to the flanks of the peaks, and sharply upward.

  It was there, in the thin margin of manzanita and juniper that bounded the edge of the mountain range, that he came upon the tracks.

  Two shod horses, as well as he could make out; perhaps three. The indentations were already partly slurred by wind-drifted snow. Coming in from the southeast and turning squarely against the mountains, seeming to ride straight into the massive wall of rock and brush. But there must be an opening; unless the riders were strangers, they must know the easiest trail, and the most practical way to find it would be to follow the tracks. They couldn’t be an hour old yet, or the snow would have drifted enough to conceal them. Jim Brand scraped the back of his gloved hand across the bristles on his chin. It was worth a try; he put his calico horse onto the trail.

  He considered the possibility that one of the riders ahead was carrying a big-caliber rifle, the rifle that had killed the deputy. The deputy now bobbed stiffeningly across the saddle. But the prime danger just now was the raging, rapid onslaught of the approaching storm.

  The horsemen he trailed seemed to have a clear idea of where they were going. If they knew about a shelter nearby, and were headed for it, Brand would settle that first and worry later about big-bore rifles.

  His troubled gaze lifted to the black seething wildness ahead, close now, climbing across the whole world over the nearest peaks, shooting long dusky lances of cloud forward out of its crest. The air hung still and gray about him, quite cold and sharp but motionless like dead air in a cold mine shaft. No sound broke the stillness but the muffled hoof beats of the calico, the faint jingle of bit chains and squeak of saddle leather.

  It was during this dead lull, crossing a barren open area, that he found a lonely fence post thrusting up through the snow, all that apparently remained of the drift fence. He followed the fast-blurring tracks of horses into the mouth of a slope-walled canyon that cut sharply to one side. It was this sudden turning of the canyon that had made it virtually invisible from out on the flats.

  The snow glitter made a common whiteness of everything and it was impossible to distinguish formations of land until he had practically achieved them. The white ground cover seemed formless. Here the wind was slight and broken, and went away after a few brief gusts, to leave the land in silence again, as though muffled by the snow banks. The tracks took him around several s-shaped bends while the canyon floor lifted him steadily into the growing timber of the mountain fastness.

  In a half-hour he was riding across the dangerous tilt of a four-foot ledge, still following the two or three horses, and now he came out upon a swaybacked meadow knee-deep in snow and broken by scattered pine trees that grew in occasional clumps as though someone had done a poor job of half-clearing off the land and then had gone away in disgust, leaving odd patches thick with timber and other areas clear of growth.

  The line of horse prints went down through this bowl and straight up the other side, disappearing over the ridge about a quarter-mile distant. A cool breath of dry air struck his face. The horsemen ahead had made no effort to hide their trail; if the deputy’s killer was one of them, they were depending on the storm to do the job of covering up for them.

  Or so Brand thought. There was not even time to be uncertain, not when something suddenly whip-thumped into the deputy’s body, and the distant crack of a big-bore rifle echoed across the meadow.

  CHAPTER IV

  INSTINCT SENT HIM slide-rolling off the horse’s rump, reaching forward and dragging his rifle out of the scabbard as he fell.

  The soft snow cushioned his fall and he rolled with agile speed behind the scrubby protection of a ball-shaped pinon plant, thick with low coiled and knotted branches. He strung out hot oaths and watched the calico horse wander imperturbably away.

  The rifle on yonder ridge set up a sharp, steady chatter now, raking the snow all around his shelter. A bullet cleanly broke a half-inch branch over his head and dropped it startlingly on the back of his neck. He almost jumped.

  When he looked at the sheared-off end of the broken branch, he knew that it had taken at least a fifty-caliber bullet to cut it down. Either it was the same gun that had killed the deputy or there was a sizable crowd of buffalo hunters in these mountains. And that was a poor possibility, since no buffalo had been sighted within five hundred miles of this part of Arizona within Brand’s memory.

  It was not a time for speculation. The rifle up on the ridge kept talking in crashing signals. The man was an erratic shot—bullets were flying as much as thirty feet distant—the law of averages limited Brand’s time.

  He dug in and pushed his rifle through the bush and waited while yonder rifleman reloaded; then, when the ridge erupted with gunfire, Brand put a clamp on his nerves and forced himself to ignore the bullets that searched the air and snow around him. He put the whole of his attention on the ridge, seeking the telltale rise of powder smoke that would reveal the location of the hidden gunner. Snow glare made the task a tricky and difficult one, but at the rifleman’s fourth shot he had a glimpse of what he sought—a wisp of rising gray—and that was the spot on which he brought his own rifle to bear.

  His was no long-range buffalo gun, but an ordinary .38-40 Winchester, and to make the 400-yard shot that he had to make, he would need not only an expert judgment of bullet drop and wind, but also a very large portion of luck.

  The rifle on the ridge kept up its fire, seeding the snow with lead, spraying the land in a wide pattern and now and then snapping off pieces of pinon over Brand’s head. His face was low enough against the bush’s trunk so that it was reasonably safe; but his legs stuck out awkwardly and there was no way to pull them in. Bullets thrashed the ground and split the air; one slug ricocheted off a shallow-buried rock and screamed away.

  It was unnerving, frightening, distracting; but there was nothing to do but concentrate on aim. If he did not silence the rifleman or drive him back, presently one of those massive slugs would find its intended target. Brand had no liking for pain. He lifted the front sight of the Winchester, uttered a brief curse that passed for a prayer, locked his breath up in his chest and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle bucked against his flat, thin shoulder. There was no way of telling where his bullet had hit, but he had the small satisfaction of having surprised the rifleman and given him something to think about. Up to now, the man probably had thought Brand was armed only with his sidearm. The distance was far enough to have made it impossible for the ambusher to have seen Brand drag the rifle with him.

  He put another bullet in the rifleman’s vicinity and levered a fresh cartridge into the breech. When the smoke dissipated from his gun muzzle, he surveyed the ridge.

  Nothing stirred. The buffalo gun had quit, perhaps to retreat, p
erhaps to reload. Brand made use of the time by thumbing two bullets out of his cartridge belt and into the Winchester’s loading gate, and replacing the glove on his hand.

  The buffalo gun opened up again, now with a savage haste that sent bullets well wide of their target. It told Brand something about the man who had ambushed him; retaliation had shaken that man badly. He hunched over the rifle and pulled the trigger.

  His shot did not make the rifleman hesitate again. The buffalo gun had the advantages of good cover, high ground and a target pinned down like a butterfly.

  After a snarling exchange of shots followed by a mutual lull, Jim Brand, reloading, felt the taut edge of desperation begin to saw against his nerves. The gun uphill was like an artillery piece slowly coming to bear on its distant target; in time it would find its mark. Before that time came, he would have to find a way out.

  His horse had drifted quite a distance back, and the nearest trees were forty yards away. Even at this extended range from the ridge top, the buffalo gun would have better than an even chance of nailing him down if he tried to run across that expanse of open ground.

  All that protected him now was the questionable shelter of the pinon bush, whose branches deflected those few bullets that came near; but sheer weight of ammunition would chop down the bush in time and leave Brand exposed. Still, there was the brighter possibility that the long gun would soon begin to run short of cartridges, and that in fact was what seemed to happen, for the gun now commenced to fire at a slower and more careful rate.

  Jim Brand answered with four quick-spaced shots. The volume of his fire served temporarily to shut the buffalo gun up, and during the ensuing silent interval he tried to take stock of his situation.

  Frozen earth, cold air and snow were gradually numbing his extremities. The air was cold enough to burn his throat and lungs when he breathed. A warm, damp patch along his upper arm proved to be a bullet bum, not serious by itself but threatening to become so if he didn’t tend to it. The massive blackening storm, still holding off, was wheeling forward with long strides. He had no gauge but his skin to measure the air temperature, but he knew it was steadily dropping.

  He laid a pattern of four quick shots on the buffalo gun’s position and then put his rifle aside to do what he could about the bullet burn along his left arm. The air remained dry and still and he could not change the fact that the buffalo gun up on the ridge had his own saddle carbine damned well outgunned.

  He packed snow on his arm, grimacing against the frigid pain, and bit down on the fingers of his glove to pull it off, then reached into his hip pocket for a kerchief with which he bound his arm as best he could. Then he put the glove on again, pushed his finger through the rifle’s trigger guard, cocked the hammer and once more shoved the rifle forward through the thick intertwining branches of the pinon.

  He peered again through the dense interlacing branches and felt a thin panic, realizing that he had lost the rifleman’s position by taking his eyes off it. After a futile moment of scanning the ridge, he knew he would have to wait for the gunner’s giveaway fire. Anger flamed in his eyes. To lose the fight through his own stupidity was something he would not accept.

  Freshly aware of the cold seeping into his fibers, he wriggled his toes inside the frozen boots and was surprised that he could still feel that movement. He set his teeth and laid down another series of shots on the ridge.

  The buffalo gun made no response. Brand frowned and reloaded quickly, and set his sights on the ridge again, intending to rake it laterally with a magazine of bullets. That was when a small object dropped lightly on the back of his coat. He ignored it; an idle corner of his mind thought it might have been a twig broken off by a bullet and dropped by a breath of wind. But then another small hard pellet dropped lightly on the calf of his pant leg, and a third struck his boot heel with a soft but audible thwack. The air was turning more noticeably gray and it was becoming more difficult by the minute to make out the outline of the ridge against the bleak sky.

  “Think of that,” he breathed. Another pellet hit the back of his leg, “Hail. Hailstones—I’ll be damned.” The falling rain was freezing into hail. He looked up again and could hardly see the ridge.

  When it came, it came fast. The hail came down with abruptly increased volume and force. It battered his legs and back and hat. It dappled the snow surface with sudden pockmarks. It shook the branches of the piñon and made a seething obscurity of half-distant things.

  A powerful wash of relief and reprieve swept through him. Sudden exhaustion, the aftermath of tension, coursed through his fibers like an exhaling long breath, and his head dropped. He lay with closed eyes, flat against the earth, feeling the pound of blood in his eardrums.

  But it was only the beginning of struggle. Knowing that much, he forced himself to his feet. He could not see the ridge. A hailstorm was no one’s friend; it might have saved him from the rifleman, but only for its own vengeance.

  Jim Brand wheeled, searching out the calico horse in the fast-dimming daylight, and caught sight of its faint outline down the slope a hundred feet distant. Bouncing the rifle in the circle of his fist, feeling the numbness of ears and nose and hands and feet, noticing the faint irritation of the flesh wound on his arm, he set off at a quick dogtrot, stamping his feet harder than necessary to work up circulation in them, and slowing the pace as he approached the calico, to avoid frightening it.

  The calico, already made spooky by the lashed-down corpse and the rising dismal wind and the quickening hail, proved hard to catch. Brand was cursing a livid stream before he finally caught up with the shying, unsettled animal and jerked its head down.

  “Stand still,” he said tautly, wheezing for breath, and managed to get a foot in the stirrup and swing his leg over the saddle cantle.

  The wind whipped up a sudden gust, almost tearing the hat from his head, and he quickly untied the bandanna about his throat, cursing his clumsy fingers and using the bandanna to tie the hat down, thus protecting his ears from the batter of the elements.

  He could see his breath steaming away and suddenly he had the belly-dropping sensation of being totally alone in a hostile sea, a foaming ocean of wind-blasted snow and hurtling pellets of ice. The air was a visible swirling blue-grayness, pounding the exposed flesh of his face. He hunched his shoulders and tried to shrink deeper into the thick sheepskin mackinaw for warmth.

  Batting his gloved hands together, he sat the motionless horse and tried to peer through the storm. It was certain he could not turn back. Behind him lay no cover of any kind, and no man alive could hope to ride out what was coming forward across the mountains—a blizzard for sure. Nor was there any shelter around here, or sufficient materials to build a substantial one. A branch-and:leaf lean-to would be no more effective than a bed-sheet in this undersea world turned upside down.

  There was only one choice. He had to press forward, ride into the teeth of the norther, try to make the ghost town of Rifle Gap and hope the years had left at least a single structure—and worry about the man with the buffalo gun later.

  The wind rose, whipping and wheeling. It seemed to be a foaming froth of some vast rage. And then a slow dark panic took shape and grew in the pit of his belly, shaking him bodily, lifting a great unreasoning anger into him and overlaying the anger with a soft, suffocating blanket of fear.

  Which way?

  CHAPTER V

  THE OLD MAN SAT on the floor of the shallow cave with his wooden leg thrust out along the earth and his good leg folded under, the reins of both horses held tight in his gnarled hand.

  His face was creased and folded and pleated and loose of flesh, and his eyes had the vacant stare of encroaching senility. Blue eyes, with most of the color washed out of them, very pale and very wide now, staring into the pitiful little fire that flickered and bent and weaved with every finger of wind that curled inside the cave mouth.

  The girl watched him sadly and could not make out what he was thinking, where he was at this moment. Somew
here back along the years, probably. She was a slim girl with a supple body, clothed in heavy trousers and the shapeless bulk of a knee-length bearskin coat. The coat’s hood covered her glistening dark hair, all except a few lawless wisps of it. Her skin was dark, smooth olive; her face was lean and showed a cool competence.

  Out of the depths of her black wide-set eyes came a gentleness. She said, “You feel all right?”

  The old man made no answer. He stared at the fire and the flames reflected frostily on the surfaces of his eyes. His hands were clenched tight on the reins of the two horses that stood patiently aside in the mouth of the cave.

  Hailstones covered the floor of the flat-sided canyon beyond the protection of the cave’s overhang. The wind thrust an arm into the cave and swattted the fire and it almost went out. The girl took the last sticks of wood and put them on the little blaze. Yellow-red flames licked around the sticks; there was underneath a bed of crimson coals.

  The old man’s hunched shape made a strange giant shadow that wavered on the low-curving ceiling of rock. The girl stood up, stooping to clear the ceiling, and went closer to the cave mouth where she could stand straight and touch the horse’s throat. It was still warm from movement.

  We can't stay here much longer, she thought. Should I wait for the fire to go out? She looked at the old man, at his hollow gaze. The storm might get worse by then. We ought to clear out now. But still she stood motionless by her horse.

  The old man’s head turned and he frowned. A glimmer of lucidity came briefly into his eyes and he said, “Daughter?”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “We can’t stay here, girl. The norther’ll grab hold of us and tear us apart. We got to get home.”

  “I know.”

  “We got to get home,” he mumbled, in a more uncertain tone, and lapsed back into vagueness, turning his slow stare against the fire again. It was getting lower.