Novel 1966 - The Broken Gun (v5.0) (11 page)

Without shifting position, I glanced around at him. He held a shotgun, and it was aimed at me. I smiled at him and said, “Seward, you’ve seen too many movies. In the movies they always drop their guns, don’t they? That’s because the people who write the script were never really in a spot like this. I am not going to drop this gun, and even if you shoot me I’ll kill Doris. I’ll shoot at least three times, Seward. Two of them for Doris, one for you.”

“Drop it!” Seward said sharply, but somehow there was less assurance in his voice.

“Want to get shot in the face, Doris? He’s banking on that shotgun, and it’s as dangerous to you as to me. I don’t know how much training he’s had at this, but I had a lot of it in Korea and Vietnam. I may get it, but I’ll take both of you with me.”

Once I’d lost that gun and the one in my waist-band, I would have lost any chance I had for survival. No matter what Seward might do—and he struck me as wanting the profit without the risk—Doris wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. I was banking on Seward chickening out…I didn’t think he had it in him to risk a shoot-out.

“Anyway,” I added, “I’ve called the law. You’ll have them all over the place, asking everybody questions…all sorts of questions.”

“The call didn’t get through,” Doris said. She began edging around the table to try to get closer to Seward, but I motioned her back. Suddenly, there was a roar of a motor close by, and I realized I had been hearing it for several minutes; now a car came charging into the yard.

“It’s the police,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.

Seward lowered the shotgun and turned his head toward the window. That was all I needed. As his head turned and the shotgun muzzle lowered, I was moving. On my second step my shoulder hit him and knocked him off balance back to the wall. He lost his grip on the shotgun and it fell, and I went out of the door where I’d come in, catching up the rifle as I left.

I was on the opposite side of the house from the arriving car. The corral was out there, bathed in light. Somebody inside the house was yelling, and suddenly the car roared into action and backed up, throwing light past the corner of the house. I heard it lunge forward and sweep around, and I knew that in a moment I would be caught in the full glare of the headlights.

Dropping to a knee close to the terrace wall, I emptied Doris’ pistol into the glare of light. The glass of the headlight tinkled, and beyond the light someone screamed.

Then the light had me and I was running. But I ran toward them, not away, feeling that the quickest way into the concealment of darkness was behind the car.

As I ran I fired the rifle, levered a bullet into the chamber, and fired again. Then I was past the jeep. Somebody grabbed at me and I caught him in the face with a butt-stroke from the rifle, and then I ran on, straight into the darkness.

Behind me I heard the jeep smash into the wall, heard the tires scream on gravel as it turned; but the place was tight and the jeep had to be backed and turned again before the light could be thrown toward me. They were one moment too late, for by that time I was in the brush beyond the corral.

There I lay still, gasping for breath and listening to the confusion at the house. A babble of voices someone swearing, and the strident, angry voice of Doris. She was shouting hoarsely, but under the sound of her voice I could hear Benton Seward, protesting…arguing.

Just then there was a rifle shot. It was fired from high up, behind me and on my left, from somewhere up on the ridge. The bullet smashed into the jeep.

A scream sounded and I could hear them all running for cover. Doris shouted,
“That’s not him! That’s not him, I tell you! It couldn’t be!”

A second shot came, and then a third…Suddenly the jeep exploded in a burst of flame, and the flame ran along the ground, following the line of spilled gasoline.

Lying still, I waited. That must be Pio, somewhere up in the rocks. Pio would be wanting to immobilize them, to tie them down.

Waiting no longer, I turned, and ducking from bush to bush, I started up the steep ridge. I wanted to find Belle, to reach her and get out of here together, away from the Wells ranch and all it meant.

I crouched for a moment on the hillside and watched the burning jeep. The dark figures around it had disappeared. Floyd Reese hadn’t been down there, nor Colin. Mark Wilson had been—Mark Wilson, the stocky, powerfully built man who had followed me in the city.…How long ago had that been?

Then I went on climbing the slope in the darkness, and for the first time I realized how tired I was. Whatever else happened, I must find some place and sleep.…And I’d had nothing to eat—somehow, somewhere, I must get food.

Suddenly I remembered the sign left beside the trail. Hadn’t that sign indicated that there would be a camp? And hadn’t it meant that I was to come when I could? It surely could not be far, perhaps no more than two or three miles away.

There was no way of knowing whether the operator had believed me or Doris…Doris might be known to her, for operators usually knew the people on rural lines; if so, it would be Doris she would believe. If she heard the shot she might report it to the authorities, but there was no certainty of that.

In the meantime, I needed rest and food, and needed to find Belle. Rest and food I might find wherever Pio was.

His leaving the sign for me was typical of him. It was at once a reminder of the old days, and of the old way of designating a company or battalion area. He probably discounted the chance of Colin or Reese knowing what it indicated, but more than likely he didn’t care. If I knew Pio, he would be holed up in some place that could only be approached across an open area that offered a good field of fire…or one that offered opportunity for ambush.

When I reached the summit of the ridge I was all in, and sat down. It was cold, and a wind was blowing. Far below I could see the lights of the ranch house. Off to the north I could see specks of light that must be the Wells ranch.

It was almost daybreak, and far away in the east beyond the Tonto country the sky was growing lighter. Finding a crevice in the rocks on the summit, I crawled in, and huddled there out of the wind, I slept.

When I woke it was broad daylight. A glance at my watch…it was just past seven.

For a minute or two I lay still and listened. At first there was no sound but the wind. Then I sensed a vague whispering, rustling sound. I lifted my head cautiously.

A covey of blue quail were not ten feet away from me. I held still, and they moved off slowly. If aware of my presence, they were not disturbed by it.

Easing out of the crack in the rock, I lay on my stomach, looking down at the ranch. In the yard were the charred remains of the jeep, but there was no person in sight. After a few minutes a man came out of the bunkhouse, stretched, and walked away toward the corral. He stopped once, studying the ground…looking at tracks, no doubt.

After giving careful study to the slope of the mountain to see if anyone moved there, I turned around and looked over my present position. The mountain that fell away so steeply on the side overlooking the ranch, on the other side fell gradually into a valley where cattle grazed. At the bottom I could see a trail…evidently the one from Belle Dawson’s ranch to the Wells place.

Pio Alvarez had been on this summit last night, of that I felt sure. That he was still here was doubtful: Knowing Pio, I knew he would never trust himself to only one hideout. He would have several, and would move around from one to the other, probably never sleeping in the same place two nights in succession.

Moving back from the crest, I stood up and started down the other side of the mountain, angling northwest toward the place where Pio had left his sign.

Soon I was among the trees, for the top of Cedar Mountain was well covered, the cedars giving way here and there to tall pines. In places the trees were scattered, in others they were quite thick. Deer trails were here, and because of the carpet of needles, it was easier walking. I moved warily. Several times I saw tracks, apparently fresh.

“Hiya, keed!”

The greeting stopped me in my tracks. Though I was glad to hear that voice, I was not too pleased at being taken unawares.

Pio Alvarez had always been more Apache than Mexican, and he showed it now in the ease with which he came down through the trees. He was a stocky, powerful man with a tough, reckless grin. I had always been a little wary of him in the old days, for as close as we had been, I knew him for a dangerous man with volatile, uncertain moods. How he felt toward me I had never really known, but there was one thing I did know: With any lesser man I’d never have made it back to our lines in Korea.

“You have troubles, hey?” He squatted on his heels and dug out the makings, offering them to me.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Ah? This I remember. I don’t have to share tobac’ with you.” He looked up at me out of flat black eyes. “You get away now, hey? You go?”

“They’ve got Belle Dawson. They’ll kill her, Pio.”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “They have to keel her. The rancho belong to her.” Then he added, “They keel her sister.”

“They said it was an accident.”

He grinned wickedly. “Plenty accident happen. Plenty. She keel him, too.”

“She did?”

“Sure. I see it. Two, three days they scout around to decide where the car go—Aukie, Colin, an’ Jimbo. I see them—I watch. One day Aukie comes in the car with her. I see door on his side swing open. He say somet’ing to her, start to jump. She grab him and hang on. She good one. Plenty good. She die, he die.”

“You saw it?”

“Sí.”

“You didn’t report it?”

He looked at me as if I were a fool. “The Law look for me. Colin Wells is after me for rustle steers. I report
him
?”

He smoked in silence. He had a Winchester, and he wore a belt gun. His hat was old and battered and he had on a scratched and cracked leather jacket, with worn Levi’s.

“I’ve got to get Belle Dawson away. I’ll let the law do the rest.”

“They are the law,” Pio said contemptuously. “They make the law.”

“I don’t think so, Pio. And that officer who is investigating Manuel’s death—Tom Riley—I think he’s on the level.”

“Sure, I know Riley.”

He stood up suddenly and said, “Let’s go.” He started off through the trees at a swinging stride. He was shorter than I was, but he had always been one hell of a walker.

We were half an hour reaching Pio’s nearest hideout. It was a good one, on top of the ridge, with no approach that could not be covered by a good rifleman. Moreover, there were several escape routes, for the hideout itself was a nest of boulders, moss-covered for the most part, in a cluster of stunted pines and cedars.

The escape routes were winding passages, almost like tunnels, among the boulders. There was a dripping spring—“About a gallon an hour,” Pio commented. Two of the boulders were canted enough to offer a fair shelter for not more than two men; down among the rocks at a lower level there was another hollow, a sort of cave formed by boulders that would have sheltered twenty.

“My grandfather told me of this place,” Pio said. “The Apaches used it.”

In the cave, which was perhaps thirty feet across, there was an opening at the top that was a dozen feet wide and was partly shielded by a gnarled cedar’s limbs and leaning trunk. The walls in some parts of the cave were black with ancient cooking fires, and in some places there was some almost illegible Indian writing.

“Is this on the Wells ranch?”

“No…they don’t even know. That Floyd, he won’t go anywhere he can’t ride a horse. Jimbo’s a lazy one. I t’ink nobody comes here but me. The Old Ones, they know. Maybe somebody at Fort Apache knows.

“That Jimbo…he don’t even walk. Colin, he used to walk when he was a boy—no more. None of them come up to the ridges.”

He grinned slyly. “They not Indian like me. Indian walk on the mountains.”

Chapter 9

P
IO STARTED A fire, then went down into a small dark cave and cut two steaks from a side of beef that hung there. He grinned slyly as he emerged. “Wells beef. You want?”

Without waiting for a reply he squatted by the fire and prepared to broil the beef. “You never have to worry about meat. Wells beef is good beef.”

Seated beside the fire, I found myself dozing, resting at last. For the first time I realized how exhausted I was. There, under the warm sun and near the fire, my eyes closed. The heat soaked into my weary muscles until slowly the tension was gone.

“You int’rested in them Toomeys?”

My eyes opened. The steaks were done. “What do you know about them?” I asked.

“They come up the country with a herd of cows. My grandfather saw them come when he was a little boy. He was lyin’ up on the mountain to watch. He figured he’d never seen so many cows in the world. They kept comin’ and comin’ like it was forever, and the cowhands let them spread out along the river where the grass was good. Then the hands rode up to the wagon and got down from their saddles—like they’d come home. There was good grass along the Verde that year. Local rains, falling at the right time.

“Up where Grandfather was lyin’ with two other boys they could smell the meat. They saw John Toomey turn his head and look up toward where they lay. They figured if he had seen them he was a canny one, but they lay quiet, curious like squirrels.

“John Toomey he stepped into the saddle and rode his horse over to the foot of the slope. They didn’t know whether to run or stay.

“John Toomey he called up to them to come down, and he put presents out there on the ground, a row of five or six things, and then he rode off a ways an’ waited.

“They came down, all right. They came slow like deer or antelope, sizin’ up something they didn’t understand. They found a sack of tobacco on the ground and a small packet of salt, and a jackknife…they’d never seen a fold-up knife before.

“He called out to them and told them to come back and bring their fathers—told them to say John Toomey wanted to smoke with them.”

That, I remembered, had been in the journal. The Toomeys knew they could never live in that country without the friendship of the Indians; and besides, they had an idea in their heads, a good idea.