Gunsmoke for McAllister (6 page)

McAllister cursed foully and efficiently. That should bring the whole nest of villains down on him.

He moved fast.

Picking up the fallen Remington, he thrust it into the holster at his hip. Next he whipped the sweat rag off the head of the unconscious man and quickly bound his hands. That done, he tore off the belt and fastened his ankles. Then he ripped the shirt and stuffed a large quantity of it into the man's mouth. He dragged him into the rocks and ran to the canelo. Vaulting into the saddle, he spurred the animal away to the south. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that so far nobody was in sight.

* * *

He spent the remainder of the day hiding his tracks and looking for a place to hide the canelo. This he found some five miles from the basin; a good spot with grass and water for the animal. He hobbled it, consumed some canned tomatoes from Sam's store and set off into the night, after he had cached his gear, chewing jerky.

Unerringly, his instinct for the lay of the land led him to the basin, coming into it from the east. Around midnight he came over the rimrock and looked down, saw the lights of the cabins and slowly started to work his way down. It wasn't easy to do so without sound in the almost pitch dark, but he didn't make too much noise and pretty soon stood on the floor of the basin. He lay on the ground and listened for some time now. There were a number of sounds to interpret and it took him some time to get them clear in his head.

First, he could hear a murmur of voices ahead of him in the main cabin, the one with the chimney, from which he had seen the sheriff and the girl come. From the other, over to his right, came the soft notes of a guitar.

Beyond these sounds, he could hear a faint and distant chinking sound. It was as though it were muffled. At first this puzzled him, but after a while he realised that it came from the bowels of the earth. He was listening to men working underground.

He wormed his way to the left and saw a faint light, which he knew came from the mine shaft which ran horizontally like a tunnel into the side of the basin down which he had just climbed. Another sound now came and he lay still, watching and listening.

A trolley was being run out of the tunnel. On it was a lamp and its faint light cast the figures of the men pushing the tip-truck in heavy shadow. McAllister could hear the clank of their chains and it seemed to him that he was watching not real men, but the ghosts of men. However, the man who now strode out of the tunnel was
real enough. As the men brought the trolley to a halt and stood for a moment recovering themselves from their efforts, this fellow, rifle in hand, came among them, shouting for them to get back and get on with their work. Stooped and tired, they slowly obeyed him. He cursed them, struck one man with his fist and knocked him down. One of the other men turned and shouted at him and he stood there bellowing and threatening them. The man who had fallen picked himself up and went slowly into the shaft. The guard followed them, still shouting.

McAllister was sure that Sam had not been among that party. If he could, he must get into the tunnel and see who was working there. Slowly, he wormed his way forward, stopping every now and then to look and listen. At long last, he came to the mouth of the tunnel. Once more he heard the sound of steel wheels on rails and the party of men came into sight, laboriously pushing the tip-truck, being shouted on by the guard. McAllister crouched back against the mouth of the tunnel and waited until the truck had been rolled almost to the crushing mill where it was halted. He waited again as the guard drove his charges back to their work.

McAllister worked his way into the mouth of the tunnel and saw the light disappear around a bend. He knew that what he was doing was dangerous. Only too easily he could be caught in there. He started to work his way forward, feeling along the side of the tunnel with a hand, treading carefully, stopping to listen. After a very short while, he heard the sound of men working ahead of him and, coming around a bend, he saw lights ahead. Some thirty yards away the tunnel opened out to about four or five times the width of the tunnel and this he knew must be the work-face. Here were more men, all stripped to the waist, covered in sweat and grime, wielding picks and shovels, hacking ore out of the face and shovelling it into waiting trucks. He found a niche in the wall of the tunnel and pressed himself back in there as he watched the bizarre scene.

Here, he saw, were several armed guards, all of them except one keeping well back from the toiling men. One by one, he inspected the slaves – for that was what they were–but he could not see Sam. Of course, the light was bad and he could have been mistaken. Then he spotted a man about whom there was something vaguely familiar. A rake-thin, stoop-shouldered man, long fair hair plastered over his forehead with sweat, moving with all the slow heaviness of a sleep-walker. He was occupied with shovelling the ore from the floor of the place into a waiting truck and stopped to
rest frequently on his shovel. McAllister stared hard at him, unable to accept the fact that this travesty of a man could be his friend Sam Spur, but, as the man moved to one side into the light of a nearby lamp, McAllister saw that it was indeed Sam.

It came as a deep shock to McAllister who recollected so vividly the liveliness of his friend, a man who had moved with a spring in his step, a man always ready with a joke and a laugh.

Rage came coldly and enduringly to McAllister. He knew that he was going to get Sam out of there.

But how? he asked himself.

Sam was chained hand and foot. It wouldn't do any good to play the hero and move in there with a gun in his hand and just prise Sam out of there. He had to get Sam out of those irons.

The sheriff.

He was the man. He would have a key to the irons. He would find the sheriff and put a gun on him, put some real fear into him and demand the release of Sam. The attempt would be fraught with danger, but it was something that would have to be done. No sooner did McAllister make the decision than he started working his way back down the tunnel to the basin, hurrying to get his gun on the man that had brought Sam to this, wanting to put some real fear into him, to make him pay.

He reached the mouth of the tunnel and drew his gun.

The fact that niggled in his mind was that the halfbreed had jumped him back in the rocks earlier. The shot fired must have warned the men in the basin of trouble and they must have searched and found the man by now. If that was so, they must have been warned of McAllister's presence.

He advanced slowly out of the tunnel.

The lights still showed in the cabins. The machine houses stood bulky and dark. From across the basin came the sound of the guitar. A raucous burst of laughter came from the cabin nearer at hand.

That was his goal.

Hugging the side of the basin, he worked his way forward. The whole place seemed still now.

When he had worked his way slowly around to the rear of the cabin, he left the wall of the basin and walked carefully and silently toward the building. To one side of it was a window covered in oiled cloth. He went close to this and found in it a slight tear. Applying his eye to this, he looked inside.

The laughing man was the sheriff. With him was the girl he had
seen in the cage, the girl who had held him so tenderly after Carlos had hit him with the club, the girl who had called him
pobrecito
. He couldn't believe this was the same woman. She looked as if she was enjoying herself now. So did the man.

The sheriff was sitting at a table drinking and the woman sat on the table top near him, laughing. She had obviously been roughed up – her hair was dishevelled and her white blouse had been torn in one place to reveal a full and lightly tanned breast. It seemed they had eyes for nothing but themselves. As McAllister watched, the sheriff drank deep, put down his glass and caught the girl by a wrist, pulling her toward him. An arm slipped around her waist and he drew her down to his lap, his mouth searching for hers. She was willing. She planted her full mouth on his and put her arms around his neck. The man seemed to become agitated. He rose from the chair with the girl in his arms and walked toward a bunk on the far side of the room. She screamed and kicked, but it was plain that she had no real objection. The man dropped her onto the bunk and started to pull the wide skirt from her waist. She laughed up at him, her eyes bright.

McAllister left the window and walked around to the front of the house.

After he had taken a careful look around, he put his hand on the latch and walked in.

At the sound of his entry, the sheriff whirled from the bed, the surprise on his face turning to rage when he recognized McAllister. Then as McAllister watched him, the rage turned to fear.

The girl lay on the bunk, staring over the side at him, her beautiful legs bare. She was scared and she showed it.

McAllister said: ‘We won't waste time. I want Sam Spur an' I want him now. You'll bring your keys and we'll get him loose.'

The sheriff straightened up.

‘You're crazy,' he said. ‘You don't stand a chance.'

McAllister said: ‘It's you who don't stand a chance. You look at me wrong an' I kill you.'

The sheriff said: ‘I – I don't have the keys.'

The girl climbed over the edge of the bunk and pulled her skirt on. McAllister thought it was a pity that a girl like that could go for an animal like the sheriff.

‘Mister,' McAllister said, ‘you find the keys quick or I'll bend the barrel of this gun over your head an' find 'em myself.'

‘Use your sense, man,' the sheriff said. ‘I have armed men all around this place. You're a fugitive from justice. Give yourself up.'

McAllister laughed unpleasantly.

‘An' what're you?' he demanded. ‘What kind of a place is this with men chained like slaves?'

‘They're all convicted men.'

‘You're a liar.' The sheriff blinked at this and started to sweat. ‘I wasn't convicted an' I'd be here myself now if I didn't break out.'

‘I don't have any keys,' the man said. ‘You can do what you like, but I still don't have the keys.'

‘Who does have 'em?'

‘Rich.' The man's eyes darted. McAllister knew it was a lie. He went up to the sheriff and hit him hard in the face with his clenched fist. The man back-pedalled across the room, hit the wall and fell to the floor. The girl screamed. McAllister turned on her and told her to keep quiet.

The sheriff looked like a man who hadn't been hit in a long time like that. His pride was as hurt as his body.

McAllister said: ‘Get up so I can knock you down again.'

With her hands to her face, the girl said through her fingers: ‘Tell him or he will kill you.'

The sheriff got to his feet, feeling his face tenderly with the tips of his fingers.

His words sounded mushed as he spoke through bruised lips.

‘I'll kill you for this.'

‘The keys.'

The man went to a bureau against the rear wall of the cabin and opened a drawer. He brought out a bundle of jangling keys and threw them to McAllister who caught them in his left hand.

‘Now,' he said, ‘the three of us'll walk to the tunnel and get Sam.'

The sheriff said: ‘He isn't in the tunnel.'

McAllister told him: ‘I know he is, I just saw him.'

The man gave up then and walked to the door. McAllister said: ‘Remember, it's dark outside. I'm goin' to shoot at the slightest thing.'

The girl hurried to the sheriff and caught him by the arm. The man seemed scarcely to notice her. He moved through the doorway into darkness. McAllister followed.

He heard the faintest whisper of sound to one side and started to turn.

Something as hard and fast as the hoof of a mule caught him
on the side of the head. He stumbled back against the wall of the cabin, lost his grip of the Remington and heard the gun strike the ground.

He made a weak attempt to fight off unconsciousness, striving with all his will to stay on his feet and strike back at the man who had struck him, but there was no strength in him. His legs seemed to flow away from under him like water. The ground came up and hit him hard.

He heard a man ask: ‘Did you kill him?' and thought it was the sheriff.

A man's voice said: ‘Naw.'

This time the girl didn't fall on her knees beside him and say
pobrecito
. Somebody caught him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him into the cabin. Lamplight struck under his eyelids and he winced. Now he seemed to float away.

He could have been out an hour or a minute; he had no idea. When he opened his eyes, there were several men around him. The girl was leaning against the bunk watching him out of her dark eyes.

The man nearest to him was the sheriff. Carlos was there and so was Rich. There were a couple of other men McAllister didn't know. They were all armed and they all looked as if they didn't care for him much.

‘He's awake,' a man said.

The sheriff turned and his pale eyes fell on McAllister.

‘Throw some water on him and get him on his feet.'

Somebody brought a pitcher of water and emptied it over his face. McAllister spluttered a little and climbed slowly to his feet. He didn't feel at all good. Then he didn't expect to.

The sheriff said: ‘Hold him,' and two men came up on either side of McAllister and took ahold of his arms. Something died inside McAllister – he knew what was coming. He looked past the
sheriff and saw the girl's face. She was worried for him. Which was significant.

The sheriff said: ‘I'm goin' to give you what you gave me, ten times over. I'm going to do it whenever I feel like it all the time you're here. I'm goin' to make you wish you'd never been born. Nobody ever hit me an' got away with it.'

He doubled his right fist and drew it back for the first blow.

Rich said: ‘You're goin' to hurt your hand somethin' awful, boss.'