Devil's Manhunt (Stories from the Golden Age) (10 page)

For an hour or more he felt his way along the canyon rim, trying to find a way down. It was dangerous work in the darkness. He finally stopped and rested. It was then he saw the pinpoint of light through trees.

Hope came up to him. He had money. He could perhaps buy a horse and a gun and a canteen and food. Perhaps he had a chance now. He went eagerly toward the light.

It was a hut, closed about by rocks and pines, situated on a tiny creek. Zeke moved more rapidly toward it. He came to the door and raised his fist to knock.

An instant before his knuckles struck he heard, “To hell with Harmon, I say. It’s an easy ride to New Mexico!” It was the voice of Big George and Big George was drunk.

“I don’t like to chance it,” said Oofty. “He’s half bloodhound. You see him the night he killed Sammy Walker? By God, his eyes! He’s death-hungry, I tell you. He’d rather hunt down a man for the kill than eat. I swear he would. I ain’t runnin’ out without makin’ sure he gets at least some of his share.”

“You’re a fool!” roared Big George.

“Hell, that ain’t no secret,” said Mike. “I ain’t afraid of Harmon. Pass me the bottle. He’s a hog, wantin’ half. Who’s afraid of Harmon?”

“I am,” said Bill. “He’s kill-crazy. You think it’s just the good idea of it that made him figure out a man to hunt. He loves it. The idea is loony. I said many a time if the hoss stumbled, there’d be a man tied up and pinned down. Harmon likes to hunt. I’m fer splittin’ like he wants and gettin’ more.”

“No more in this country,” said Big George. “I’m through with it. Too condemned dangerous. We don’t need Harmon. We got thirty thousand dollars last night. Fifteen won’t split far. I ain’t afraid of Harmon. Drink up.”

“I’m scared,” said Eddy. “It’s like Oofty says. We got Pete’s share now. Let’s be square with Harmon. Harmon’s squirrely in the skull about huntin’ men. That ain’t no lie about why he thunk up this false trail. He told me once, ‘Eddy, you ever git hungry?’ And I said, ‘Hell, yes.’ ‘You know how it kind of gnaws you?’ he says. ‘Sure,’ I says, with no idea what he was talkin’ about. ‘That’s the way it is with me sometimes,’ he says. ‘Eat,’ I says, bein’ practical. ‘I ain’t talkin’ about food, Eddy,’ he says. Harmon made us turn that young puncher loose just so he could have the fun of killin’ him. Wasn’t no
other
sense to it.”

“Well, let him have that for his pay,” said Big George.

“That’s all right for you that can throw lead like you—You hear something?” Oofty got up.

Zeke had made no sound. But one of the staked horses had overturned a wash pan some gold miner had left in the creek.

Big George came outside with his gun cocked, swiftly sidestepped from the light of the door and stood still, listening. The horse overturned the pan again and Big George uncocked his gun and went in.

“Give me a drink,” he said, kicking the door shut.

Stepping out from the shadow of the wall, Zeke began to breathe again. He moved to get around back of the building and stumbled on some riding equipment. The noise passed without notice from within and Zeke was about to move on when his shin struck the stock of a rifle still in its
boot
. It was a Winchester.

Some of Zeke’s strength came back. He drew the rifle forth and fingered it for its load. The magazine was full and ten extra cartridges were in loops on the side of the boot.

He did not know immediately what he would do with it. Coldblooded murder was not in his line. And yet . . .

They continued their drinking in the hut and began to wrangle once more about the split. Big George was so heated that he offered to pay Oofty and Eddy their shares but they would not be a party to defection. It would cause disaster to fall on them too certainly. Big George then offered them the larger part of the cut and they, drunker, became abusive.

Zeke did not know who struck the first blow. There was a crash and the light went out and then a man came stumbling outside swearing while furniture broke within. A moment later Zeke had made up his mind. He stepped to the door and fired blindly into the tumult. There was a scream. Zeke threw himself along the base of the house.

Three more shots sounded and Big George, raving and cursing, came outside, shooting at anything which moved.

Two shots came from the door and Big George dropped to one knee and shot at the flame. Oofty folded up and began to cough, dry and hard. Somebody was running away in the darkness and Big George lurched after him.

“Come back with that pouch!” shouted Big George.

A shot came back at him and Big George returned it and kept on going. The sound of a scuffle came from the direction of the river and grew distant. And then there was a scream, a long, dwindling yell which was to haunt Zeke through his days.

Somebody came back from the direction of the river. It was not Big George.

“Oofty!” he called. It was Eddy. Oofty was coughing, dry and hard.

“He went over the edge with it!” said Eddy in a scared voice. “I was goin’ to take it back to Harmon and he went over the edge with it. It’s gone in the canyon. We got to ride and fast. Harmon won’t never believe us!”

Oofty kept coughing, growing weaker.

A footstep sounded inside the door. “You condemned dog,” said Bill in a cold, emotionless voice. “You’ve done for us all!” And he fired straight into Eddy’s chest.

Bill walked out to the horses and began to saddle one. He came back and got a pair of canteens, the gunnysack which contained their food and an extra rifle. He mounted up and quirted away from there.

Oofty was not coughing.

Zeke lay there for a long time, listening for Eddy or Mike to move. The half-light before dawn came and fell on the dew-wet face of Eddy, staring sightlessly upwards.

Zeke found Mike inside, not very pretty. Zeke took the remaining supplies outside and put them in a saddlebag. He filled up the canteens at a spring.

After he had saddled, despite his haste to get away, he went to the edge of the canyon rim and looked down at the water. It was a straight drop but it ended in a beach. The body of Big George was lying there small and crumpled two hundred feet down.

Zeke found toeholds the cabin’s builder had cut in the cliff and went down along the side of the silvery rivulet which dropped in small falls from the spring above. He looked up and down the beach and behind rocks. If the pouch had been there he would have seen it. It was not.

He stood for a little while looking at the river. It was deep and angry and red and went into a gorge just below which made it steeply waved and boiling. The pouch, he knew, would never be found.

He did not know how tired he was until he tried to climb the cliff once more. It took him a long time to reach the top and when he got there he lay face downward in the wet grass. How many hours had it been since he slept?

He was to know many more.

He was in the act of mounting when the bullet took him in the leg. He whirled to see Les Harmon, a hundred yards down the rim, coming fast, hungry eyes above a lathered horse.

Zeke made it up. He jabbed spur and his horse leaped eastward and away from Harmon. Zeke plied quirt and rode low. Bullets smacked into trees and showered him with needles as he raced.

His horse was fresh. He had water. Harmon would have to stop and change mounts. Zeke rode.

T
hat had been nine months ago, nine months of jumping at sharp sounds in the night, of waking up to hear Oofty coughing dry and hard again, seeing Harmon’s eyes.

And there was Harmon’s horse before the Golden Horn while Harmon was inside. And between the sight and Zeke drifted the haze of remembrance. Zeke put down the gun rag. He was beginning to shake. He knew what the kill-hungry eyes looked like.

Les Harmon stood for a moment at the Golden Horn’s swinging doors and a sleepy Mexican pointed out the hardware store. Les Harmon nodded briefly and came down the steps to walk through the white, dry dust. He was slow, casual, certain, tasting the flavor of it.

Zeke opened the breech of the
buffalo gun
and started to put in a shell. It was the wrong caliber. He fumbled for the box and tore it getting a .50 cartridge out. He thrust it into the foul breech of the weapon and had just closed it when Harmon was standing in the door, gun in his hand, star on his chest.

“Hello, Tomlin!”

The hot afternoon was cold. The buffalo gun lay unraised on the counter. Zeke tried to speak, cleared his throat and tried again.

“What do you want?”

Harmon juggled the gun in his hand and spun it, bringing it up center on Zeke’s chest. His eyes were cold, cold and gray white. They looked hungry.

“I think you got some information for me, Tomlin.”

“I . . . I haven’t got anything from you. For you.”

“Now, it’s funny, but I think you have. Tomlin, there’s thirty thousand dollars that you know about.”

“It went over the rim with Big George.”

Harmon looked his contempt. He gazed around the shop. “Nobody here, that’s convenient.”

Zeke tried to think.

“Now I wouldn’t try anything foolish,” said Harmon. “I can shoot before you can begin to move that gun. What did you do with the thirty thousand, Tomlin?”

Zeke licked dry lips. Harmon’s eyes were like a snake’s, hypnotic. They were hungry. “You ever find the last man of that gang?”

“Never looked,” said Harmon.

“How . . . how’d you find me?”

“Drummer. Said somebody way down here was askin’ for me. Described you. That simple. But it took a long time, Tomlin. A long time. I got tired waitin’. Awful tired, Tomlin. Where’s the money?”

“It went over the rim with Big George!”

“Now Tomlin, you’re bein’ foolish, boy. You’re a stranger in this town. Mex said so. You don’t mix much—a little poker. You’re a stranger. They don’t know nothin’ about you. Me, I’m sheriff. You resisted arrest, that’s all. Formalities ain’t too strict. It’s been a long hunt, Tomlin. An awful long hunt.”

Zeke knew he was right. But he stopped shaking. This was it. If he shot it out here, even then they’d kill him for murdering a lawman. They’d call it that. But this was it. The whole haze of memory and the throbbing of his leg took him and passed over him and he was cold but calm.

“Big George went into the river with it, Harmon. You ride out of here.”

Harmon’s expression didn’t change. He took a step nearer.

Suddenly Zeke ducked and swung the gun. A lamp to the right of his head spattered in silver fragments. The store was full of sound. The unshouldered buffalo gun sprang out of Zeke’s grasp and split its butt on the wall.

There was silence in the room. One of Zeke’s fingers was bleeding where the recoil of the .50 caliber had torn it. He fumbled for a second cartridge in the box and through the glass of the case saw Harmon’s boot.

There was not much left of the lawman’s chest. His left breast was a hole where a mushroom slug as big as a thumb had gone.

Les Harmon was dead.

Zeke stood up. They would hang him now. Hang him sure. Hang him because he was a stranger to them.

The proprietor came dazedly in from the rooms in the rear where he had been taking his siesta. The front doors burst inwards and Tom Brennerman was there, star big and bright.

They would take him away now, thought Zeke.

Tom Brennerman looked at Harmon and rolled the face over with the toe of his boot. He looked for a little while and then turned to thrust back interested citizenry.

“You all right, Zeke?” said Tom Brennerman.

Zeke looked amazedly at the marshal.

“You sure drilled him clean, Zeke,” said McTavish who owned the store. “And you give him the first shot!”

“You all right, Zeke?” demanded the marshal again.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right,” said Zeke.

“You better go lie down, you’re that white,” said Brennerman. “Make him lie down and give him a drink, McTavish. Them buffaler guns kick a man somethin’ fierce.”

“You come on and lie down and have a drink,” said McTavish.

Somebody in the street said, “Zeke all right?”

A curious voice piped up from the door, “Who was it shot at Zeke?”

Brennerman glanced at the body which two men were gathering up. He shrugged. Bending over, he looked through the dead man’s pockets. There was nothing to identify him.

“Dunno,” said Brennerman. “Anybody can wear a star. That don’t necessarily make him a sheriff. Nothin’ here to say who he is. Looks like we’ll never know. Just some stranger in town, lookin’ for trouble.”

Zeke permitted himself to be led into the back room. McTavish made him comfortable on a bed and beamed at him.

“That . . . that dead man,” began Zeke, “is a lawman . . .”

“Och! Zeke boy, we have had others try to pull that trick on us before. They come in here with a badge and try to settle old feuds in the name of the law of some faraway town. We’re not so innocent. You heard what Brennerman said, didn’t you? ‘Just a stranger in town.’ We know you; we don’t know him.”