Novel 1955 - Heller With A Gun (v5.0) (9 page)

Chapter 13

W
ITH JANICE ON one side and Mabry on the other they held the sick woman upon the horse. Maggie seemed only vaguely conscious of what was happening, and Mabry was worried. The sooner they got her into a house and in bed, the better.

Behind the saddle the black was piled high with blankets and quilts from the vans. Upon the Indian pony were supplies and the gold intended for Maguire in Butte.

Dodie walked ahead, carrying the shotgun. Suddenly she stopped, hesitated a moment, and then called, “King?”

Healy took his place beside the horse and Mabry walked up to Dodie. By now it was dark, and the sky was heavily overcast.

“I smell smoke.”

Mabry lifted his head, testing the air. It was smoke, all right. And there was a smell he did not like. It was not merely wood smoke.

Telling her to stay with the others and to bring them on carefully, he went on ahead. When he had gone several hundred yards, he stopped again. His imagination had reached ahead and he already knew what he would see. Below him in the darkness a dozen small red eyes winked at the night.

They were all that remained of the fire that had destroyed the cabin.

Gone…and the barn also.

Alone in the darkness on the hill, he knew he faced his most desperate hour. For himself it was a small problem, not more than he had often faced. For the others, and particularly the sick woman, it was a matter of life or death.

He did not now think of Barker, long absent from his thoughts. He no longer thought of the Indians who would soon be seeking out their trail.

He thought only of the three women, who must have shelter, and especially of the sick woman, who must have care, rest, and good food.

Behind him they were coming on, trusting in him. To Janice he was a brute, a savage. It was in her eyes whenever she looked at him. He had saved them, yes. But only by killing and destruction, and she believed him capable of nothing else.

And was he?

Gloomily he stared at the dying embers. There was no time to think of that now. The sick woman could go little farther.

This was new country to him, but like all mountain men and plainsmen, he looked carefully at a country when he rode across it. Riding out that day with Healy, he had noticed a brush-choked ravine.

He walked back to meet them, explaining the situation without holding back anything. “We won't go near the place,” he added. “There's a ravine cuts back to the north.”

Indians might steal horses by night, but they had little liking for night fighting. But that was not true of Barker, if he had not himself been slain.

The ravine seemed filled with brush, but there was a game trail along one edge. Mabry led the way, and after a few hundred yards the brush thinned out and there were more trees, poplars with more and more evergreens and occasional clumps of aspens. Suddenly he saw what he wanted, a thick grove of young aspens, most of them no more than an inch thick.

Cutting boughs from a pine that stood near the aspens, he made a quick bed on the snow. Atop it he placed a buffalo robe and blankets. Then gently he lifted Maggie from the horse and placed her on the bed.

Then he went into the grove. With the ax brought from the wagons he cut off a dozen or more trees right at ground level. When he had cleared a space some ten feet in diameter he jumped and caught a young tree as high as he could reach. Then, pulling on its branches, he bent the top over. While Dodie held it in place, he bent down another from the opposite side and lashed them together with a piggin string from his saddle. He did the same thing with two other trees at right angles to the first two. Then he pulled down others and tied them all at the center until he had a domelike frame, rooted in the ground.

Janice came to watch, and seeing him weaving evergreen boughs into the framework, she pitched in to help. There were a number of two-year-old pines on the slope of the hill behind the aspens. With Dodie, Janice, and Healy helping, the hut was soon covered and tight. He left a space near the top of the dome for the escape of smoke.

Inside they made beds of evergreen boughs, taking care to strip none of the trees, but to take only a few boughs from each. When the bed inside was ready, Mabry picked Maggie from the ground and carried her inside. Then he made a windscreen for the horses by weaving boughs into the thick brush.

When a fire was going, he circled the outside, looking for any sign of light. Nothing was visible. By using dry wood, smoke could almost be eliminated, and by day it would be somewhat scattered and broken by the branches of the trees overhead.

The wind was rising and there was a smell of snow in the air. And snow at this time would be a godsend, wiping out their trail and covering the shelter with a thick, warm blanket.

J
ANICE SAT BY the fire, staring into the red coals. When she saw Mabry step back inside the shelter, she asked, “What will we do?”

“Wait. All we can do.”

The firelight flickered against the dark, weaving strange patterns on the walls of their shelter. Maggie stirred restlessly in her sleep, muttering a little. Fragments of lines spoken long ago, the name of a man whispered lonesomely, longingly.

“Will they come back?”

“They'll come. They know we're only a few.”

Janice sat silent, unable to forget how he had fought with that Indian. He had been welcome, he had saved her from horror and misery, and yet there had been something shocking and terrible in the way he fought. He seemed to go berserk in battle; he forgot his wounds and everything but killing. At first he had been cool and methodical. She had glimpsed him on the ridge, firing from his knee, and then during the fight his face had been strained, brutal, utterly fierce. What could make a man like that?

He moved suddenly, putting some small sticks on the fire, and then firelight flickered on his moving rifle barrel, there was an instant of cold air, and he was outside in the snow again.

Had he heard something? Or was he just being careful? She glanced across the fire at Healy. He was lying down, his blankets around him. She felt a sudden desire to reach out and touch him. He was so lost here.…Yet he had gone into that fight with no thought of himself, and he had managed to protect them and stay alive.

She wrapped herself in some blankets and was almost asleep when Mabry returned. There was no sound, but the blanket curtain at the doorway moved and then he was inside, huddled over the fire.

Janice believed she was the only one awake, but Dodie's hand reached out and moved the coffeepot toward him. Janice felt a little twinge of irritation, and burrowed deeper into her bed. Yet neither of them spoke.

Outside the wind was rising,and she saw snowflakes melting from his sleeve when he poured coffee. Inside the shelter the acrid bite of the smoke made her eyes smart, but it was warm here, and she slept.…

She awakened suddenly in the first cold light of breaking day. Only a spot of gray showed where the smoke hole was. Mabry was on his knees by the fire, coaxing it to flame. Then he reached outside and scooped fresh, clean snow into the kettle, and put it on a rock close to the fire.

She lay still in the vague light, watching him. She was remembering what Dodie had said, that she loved this man. How silly!

She could never love such a man. He was cruel and a brute. Take the way he spoke of Maggie yesterday. Of course, they probably did have to move, but still…

His face was like well-tanned leather in the firelight. He wore a blue wool shirt tucked into his pants, and now he was pulling a fringed buckskin hunting shirt over it.

He got up in one lithe, easy movement. She thought she had never seen a man whose muscular co-ordination was so flawless. He went out the door, and when he was gone she got out from her own bed and went to Maggie.

And then she saw that Maggie was covered with Mabry's buffalo coat. Sometime during the night he must have got up and spread the coat over her. His own coat.

Janice went to the packs and began getting out food for a meal. His action puzzled her, making no part of the man she was creating in her mind.

When he had been gone almost an hour he returned suddenly with two good-sized rabbits and some slender branches. He split the branches with his knife and took out the pith. “Add it to the soup,” he whispered.

She looked at it doubtfully, then put it into the pot.

“You stay out here,” he said, “you'll eat everything. And be glad to get it.” He added sticks to the fire, then looked at her quizzically. “Panther meat—now, that's best of all.”

“Cat?” She looked to see if he was serious. “Surely you wouldn't—”

“Sure I would. And I have. Mountain men prefer it to venison or bear meat.”

Dodie turned over and sat up, blinking like a sleepy child. “It's warmer.”

“Colder,” Mabry said, “only we're snowed in. Heavy fall last night, and if anybody can see this place at all, it'll look like an igloo.”

Maggie opened her eyes and looked around. For the first time in many hours she seemed perfectly rational. “Where are we?” she whispered.

“It's all right, ma'am,” King Mabry said. “Just rest easy.”

She looked up at the shelter of boughs. The air in the place was heavy with the smell of wood smoke and cooking, but fresher than it had ever been in the van.

“You're a good man,” Maggie said. “A good man.”

Obviously embarrassed, Mabry turned and began feeding sticks into the fire.

After they had eaten, Mabry lay down, pulled his blankets over him, and slept. He breathed heavily and for the first time seemed to relax completely.

Janice stared down at him, torn by a strange mixture of feelings. There was something…yet…

“Like I told you,” Dodie said, “you're in love with him.”

Chapter 14

J
ANICE LOOKED QUICKLY to see if Mabry had heard, but he was asleep, breathing easily. She was confused, and nothing seemed right to her, but nothing that happened here could happen in the well-ordered world she had left behind.

“I couldn't love him. He's killed men.”

Dodie was fixing her hair. She glanced obliquely at Janice. “Suppose Wycoff had tried to get into the van. Suppose you had shot him. Then you'd have killed a man, too.”

“But that's different!”

“Is it?”

Dodie worked with her hair in silence, then studied herself in the tiny glass she held. “Where do you think that gun came from?”

“The gun?”

“The one I had. I got it from my father. It was taken from his body after he was killed in Colorado.”

“I should think you'd hate guns!”

“Out here a gun is a tool. Men use them when they have to. I know what King Mabry is like because my father was like that.” Dodie touched her hair lightly here and there. “Where there's no law, all the strength can't be left in the hands of the lawless, so good men use guns, too.”

Maggie had been listening. “That's uncommonly good sense. Hate to think where we'd all be if it wasn't for him.”

Janice turned to her, surprised. “We didn't think you knew!”

“I heard it all. He's a man, that one. I just wish I was young again.”

And then for a long time nothing was said and there was only the crackle of the fire. Janice opened the curtain to create a draft that would draw more smoke out at the top.

Cold branches rubbed their fingers together, and in his sleep King Mabry muttered, then lay quiet.

Once, sitting over the fire, Janice heard Healy singing softly…a singing Irishman with a heart too big for him.

Occasionally a drop of water fell from the dome as snow melted on the underside of the thick blanket now covering them. It was warm and comfortable within the shelter.

K
ING MABRY AWAKENED to silence. He lay still, thinking it out. Janice put wood on the fire, but Dodie was sleeping. Janice sat by the fire, lost in thought. Making no sound, he watched her for a time, then looked up at the roof.

They had to get out of here. Yet travel, even without a sick woman, would be tough in this weather. Their best bet was to wait out the storm. They were somewhere on the Red Fork of the Powder, that much he knew. The Middle Fork must be south of them.

This was new country for him, but the trapper from whom he bought the black horse had talked a lot about the country, and Mabry was a good listener. There were no maps, and men learned about a country from others who had been there, and men became skillful at description and at recognizing landmarks.

Once they were started, their best bet was to get into the valley of the Big Horn and follow it north into Montana. There would be water and fuel along the river, and they could keep to the hills by day, coming down to get water at night. They had at least a fifty-fifty chance of getting into Montana, and, if their luck held, to some settlement.

Aside from the ever present danger from Indians, there was Barker. Barker might take what money he had and light out. Yet he must have known about the gold Healy was carrying, and he knew he dared never appear in any Montana camp once this story got out.

Yet Barker was a tough man, not at all the sort to give up easily. Art Boyle would be dangerous only as long as he was with Barker, or if you turned your back on him.

Mabry swung his feet from under the blankets. Then he picked up his fur cap and put it on. He looked at Janice, his brow furrowing.

“Got to leave you for a while. I should be back in a couple of hours, but if I'm not, stay close to this shelter until the storm's over. Always keep a good landmark in sight, and remember the fewer tracks you make, the smaller the chance you'll be found.”

He pointed down the ravine. “After I caught those rabbits I set the snares again. There should be a couple more soon. The first one is down the draw about fifty yards under some low brush near a cedar. There's another about the same distance farther along.

“You won't have to hunt wood. Not more than twenty yards down the draw there's a pile of drift around an old deadfall.”

“You sound…How long will you be gone?”

“Couple of hours, like I said. That's if everything goes well. I might have bad luck and run into some Sioux.” He began to clean his rifle. “If the weather breaks good and I'm not back, start out. But you best just wait and let Maggie get well. Or better. That way”—he gestured toward the brush—“is safe. Nobody can get to you without plenty of noise. You'll have to watch the slope past the cottonwoods, and I'd suggest you put some brush among the aspens, if you have to stay. When you go out, go through the grove, and don't use the same way twice.

“You've guns enough and ammunition enough, so just sit tight.”

“Why are you going, then?”

“Food. I got to rustle some grub. There's five here, and we have to eat. I've got to go some ways off because I don't want to shoot close by. Of course, I might find some sage hens. A man can kill them with a stick in this snow.”

Outside, he led the black horse through the grove and mounted. Then, brushing the edge of the undergrowth to conceal his tracks wherever possible, he went up the draw.

For two hours he rode, scouting the country. Where the wagons had been there were now only ashes. That had to be Barker's work. He found no Indian sign, evidence in itself that they were too smart to travel in bad weather. He found a trail where several buffaloes had drifted along beside a frozen stream, and then he found fresh deer tracks and places where the animals had pawed through the snow to get at the grass underneath.

He killed a sage hen, riding it down in the snow and killing it with a blow from his rifle. That night he camped some five miles from the shelter where the girls and Healy waited. At daybreak, after eating most of the sage hen, he started out again.

Just before noon, in a deep hollow in the hills, he killed a buck. He was riding upwind through the soft snow when he saw movement. He drew rein and waited, his Winchester lifted. The buck came out of the trees and stopped, his head half turned. Mabry dropped him in his tracks with a neck shot.

He made quick work of cutting up his kill. It was a cold job at best, and he was glad to be back in the saddle and moving. Returning, he used every means he could to confuse his trail. It was spitting snow again, so there was hope that his tracks would soon be covered.

Coming up the draw and holding close to the edge of the brush, he saw movement ahead of him.

He lifted his rifle, then caught a glint of sunlight on auburn hair and lowered the rifle. He walked his horse closer and stopped. It was Dodie, and she was taking a rabbit from a snare. Expertly she killed the rabbit with a blow behind the neck.

“You do that like you know how.”

She straightened up and smiled at him. “I do. I used to trap them when I was ten years old. I was a tomboy, I'm afraid.”

He looked at her and swung down from his horse. “No need to be afraid now. You're no tomboy.”

“No…I'm not.”

He kicked his feet against the ground to warm them. “Everything all right?”

“Yes. Tom was going to do this, but he's been getting wood.” She paused. “I see you got a deer.”

“Few miles back.” He was making talk, not knowing exactly why, except that it was easy to talk to this girl. It was never easy to talk to Janice. Somehow the words just would not come. “It's good country here. I'd like to come back sometime. Lots of game, and this buffalo grass is good fodder all year round.”

“Why don't you?” Dodie had come closer to him. She shivered a little. “It's beautiful, really beautiful.”

“Lonely country. No neighbors around.”

“Who needs neighbors? It's good country for you, King. By the time you had neighbors, people would have forgotten.”

She reached up, putting the rabbit behind the saddle with the venison. Then she turned and faced him, her back to the horse, leaning back a little, but very close.

“If a woman really wanted a man she would go to any country with him.”

Mabry looked at her and smiled a little. “What do you know about wanting a man?”

“Enough. How much does a girl have to know?”

She looked up at him, eyes teasing and impudent. Deliberately she reached up to brush snow from his shoulder, and then she was in his arms. Afterward he never knew whether he had done it or if she had. She came against him quickly, taking his coat lapels in her hands, her face lifted to his. With a sudden gust of passion he caught her to him, his lips crushing the softness of hers, her body molding itself against his, even through the thickness of their clothing.

One hand slipped around his neck and caught fiercely at the hair on the back of his head. Breathlessly they clung to each other; then Mabry broke loose. He drew back, staring at her and brushing his lips with the back of his hand.

“That's no good,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Coolly she lifted a hand and brushed her hair back in place. Her breasts lifted with her breathing. “Sorry? Why?”

“You're just a kid.”

She laughed at him. “Did I feel like a kid? All right, I'm young. But how old does a girl have to be? How old was your mother when you were born?”

“Sixteen. Seventeen, maybe.”

“I'll be eighteen in August.” She turned away from him. “All right, go to Janice, then. She's older than I am. But she's not for you.”

“She's a fine girl.”

“Sure she is. One of the best. She'll make a good wife, but not for you.”

Abruptly he turned away. He was a fool to start anything with this kid. Yet the feel of her in his arms was a disturbing memory.

“We'd better get back.”

“All right…sure.”

There was no more talking. Dodie Saxon strolled along through the snow, completely unconcerned. Yet Mabry was worried. She should be careful. No telling what could happen to a kid like that. There was fire in her. Plenty of it.

Outside the shelter she reached up to take the venison down, and as she turned away, carrying one haunch of it, she reached up with her bent forefinger and pushed it under his chin. “You big stiff,” she said, and laughed at him.

He stared after her, half angry, half amused.

Tom Healy came out of the shelter. He whistled softly at the sight of the fresh meat.

“See any Sioux?”

“No. They're smarter than a white man. In bad weather they stay under cover.”

“Don't blame 'em.”

“Got a glimpse of the vans.” He was tying the venison and rabbits to one end of a rope. “Burned down to the wheels.”

He tossed the rope over a high branch and hauled the meat up into the tree, but well out from the trunk.

“How's Maggie?” he asked.

“Better,” Healy said. “Ate a little solid food today, and she's breathing easier. Maybe it's the fresher air. Maybe it's the food. Anyway, she's better.”

“Knew a trapper once, took sick 'way out in the brush all by himself. He just drank water and laid around eating berries and roots. Got well, too.”

“She's a long way from well.”

“We'll sit tight a couple of days, anyway.”

Dodie looked out. “There's coffee on. I thought you'd want some.”

He crawled into the shelter and accepted the cup Dodie handed him. Healy said something to Janice and she laughed. Healy's hand was on her arm. King Mabry looked at them over his cup, his face unreadable. Dodie glanced at him, then said, low-voiced, “Don't let it bother you. They've worked together a long time.”

Mabry was startled. “Is it that plain?”

“Yes…and she feels the same way.”

“You're wrong.”

“No. I can see it. Only she won't admit it, even to herself. She won't admit she could be in love with a gun fighter.”

“Don't blame her. It would be a dog's life, for a woman.”

Dodie made no reply to that, only adding, “She's Eastern. She doesn't understand. Not even after what happened.”

“What about you? You seem to.”

“I do.”

It made sense, of course. And he was a fool even to give it a thought. Yet he was human. He wanted a home. He wanted to be loved and to love. Only there was no place for it in his life, not unless he could let it all be forgotten with the passing years. A few would try, and fewer would succeed. Yet it did happen.

What could he offer? He was a saddle bum, and every job offered would have to be examined like this last one, where what they were hiring was the gun, not the man. He would always have to guard against that.

D
ODIE SAT ACROSS the fire from him, doubling her long legs under her. Looking at him brought a quiver of excitement to her. He was strong…very strong. Not alone with the muscular strength that came from hard work and harder living on the edge of the wilderness, but with a toughness of fiber that was like finely tempered steel and could give, but never break.

Janice was a fool. Tom Healy was all right. He was an easy-smiling Irishman, lovable and tough in his own way, in his own world. He was a man who could make any woman content…unless there was something that leaned to that hard strength and inner toughness, that needed it in a man.

Tom Healy was wonderful, but he was a tamed man. King Mabry was broncho stuff. He would never be tamed. Quiet, yes. Easygoing in his way, yes. But inwardly there was always that toughness of purpose, that leashed fury that could break loose as it had in the fight with Griffin at Hat Creek, and with the Indian. He had that indomitable something more important than mere prettiness or niceness.

Dodie picked up the gun that lay on the blanket beside her and handed it to Mabry. It was her father's gun. The one he had carried through all his Western years.