Radigan (1958) (15 page)

Only the fire was sinking and Radigan had dropped to a squatting position to add fuel, and the bullet cut the air right over his head.

Yet as he spun and fired, Radigan threw himself forward and grabbing the gun that Gretchen thrust at him he rolled completely over and fired.

And missed.

It was point-blank range but he was moving and made the same mistake Coker had made by firing too quickly. But his second shot was faster, and it ripped upward into Coker's throat, ranging upward and outward to emerge just above the gunman's ear.

Coker had been so sure-and he was eager to make Gretchen suffer for his swollen and burned lips-he had turned and fired and then he was dying on his feet with blood gushing from his mouth and a puzzled expression as if he could not comprehend what had happened.

He had automatically fired a second time and the bullet had smashed into the fire, scattering sparks, but then the gun slid from his fingers and he tried to speak, staring at Radigan with dawning horror in his eyes, realizing in that last awful moment that he was dying.

His knees sagged then and he fell face forward with his feet in the snow at the entrance and his head toward the fire, and Radigan turned with his gun ready and saw Gorman stretched out on the floor with blood trickling from a split scalp where Child had clubbed him with a chuck of firewood.

Gretchen was a sickly pale, and she turned quickly from the dead man at the cave mouth and said, "We'll need a hot meal." She paused then and seemed to stiffen herself.

"I've got to"

Radigan caught her as she started to faint and she clung to him an instant, fighting it off. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'll be all right. "

Child had picked up a Winchester. "D' you suppose Wall heard those shots?"

"He heard them. But he won't be back."

Child walked to the opening and caught Coker by the foot, dragging him out into the snow where he lay face down. Then he walked back and began methodically to sort the gear in the cave and pack for a leave-taking.

Radigan indicated Gorman. "Leave him some grub. We'll soon be at the cache, and he's done us no harm."

Radigan went to Coker's body and pulled off the cartridge belt and shucked the shells from the loops. The gun Gretchen had tossed him had been his own, and now he retrieved his belt and holstered the gun after reloading. He found his Winchester, checked the barrel and the loads, and then took his bowie knife and went to the trees to cut some branches.

He cut four of them, then went to another tree for two more. Each of these was about seven feet long and slender, whiplike. Over the fire he warmed them after stripping away the shorter branches that held the needles. When he had warmed them carefully he took one and working with it carefully he bent the whiplike end around and lashed it to its own base in a rough oval.

With strips of rawhide he made a web back and forth across the oval, and John Child began working on a second shoe. When Gretchen had their food ready, they ate in silence, then returned to their work. It was at this point that Gorman came to.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the hanging roof, then sat up abruptly, catching his head in both hands from a sudden throb of pain. Stupidly, he looked around.

His eyes found the body of Coker, then looked quickly around for Wall, who had left when he was half-asleep. Finally they came to rest on Radigan.

"You start anything and you join your friend out there. Sit tight and we'll leave you grub enough to last a couple of days. There's fuel enough for weeks, and if you leave here, you're crazy."

Gorman nodded to indicate Coker. "I had no use for the man."

"All right." Radigan was brusque. "You stay out of this and we've no quarrel with you, get into it and you can follow Coker."

Gorman made no reply, but lay down and turned his face to the wall.

It was afternoon before they got away. Radigan took the lead and headed south at a good clip. All he asked the snowshoes was that they see them through to the food cache on the mesa near the ranch.

He set an easy pace. There are things a man learns about the cold, and the first is never to work up a sweat, for when a sweating man slows down or stops the sweat freezes inside his clothing, forming a thin coating of ice near the skin. After that, unless one finds shelter quickly, it is only a matter of time.

He had also learned not to dress too heavily, but to wear the garments loose so they form a cushion of warm air next to the body. The Eskimos knew these things long ago, and so did the northern Indians, and a man can live long in any kind of country if he will use his common sense and learn what he can.

It was very cold but the air was clear. They were above eight thousand feet, and at this low temperature and in the clear air sounds could be heard for miles. But Radigan knew the time had now come to push the fight if ever they were to push it.

The cold was their greatest asset for they understood cold and he doubted if any of the Foley-Thorpe outfit did.

Somewhere below them and to the east Ross Wall would be working his way through the deep snow to the ranch, and by this time he would begin to realize some of the things Radigan had told him. That light horse would not be able to carry a heavy man far in this deep snow, and Wall would be lucky if he was not afoot by another hour, or even by now.

In good weather he could have covered that eight to ten miles in a couple of hours, but now he would have to seek out places where the earth had blown clear of snow, and he might be miles out of his way. If he made it by dark he would be lucky. Radigan said as much.

"If he makes it at all, he'll be lucky," Child said grimly. They walked on. The going was slow, but after their muscles warmed up they moved more easily, and Radigan paused often to conserve their strength. He knew the country well and kept to high ridges where the travel was easier, always pointing toward the mesa back of the ranch.

The wind picked up and blew cold, whining among the tall pines like lost banshees, or moaning low among the icy brush and around the strange rock formations. The sky became a flat gray, unbroken expanse that told them nothing, and they came down off the ridge into the lower country, into the thick forest, and the wind began to blow harder.

How far had they come? Five, six miles? The days were short and darkness was not far off, and they had been traveling at least three hours.

"We're in for trouble, Torn." John Child was breaking trail and he had stopped abruptly and turned. "She's picking up to blow. "

"No use to wear ourselves out," Radigan said. "We'll find a place to dig in."

They started on.

The wind was raw against their faces which grew stiff from cold, so numb it was difficult to speak, and the wind prevented hearing.

Suddenly John Child turned into the woods again and he stopped at the base of a huge deadfall. Here some great wind or other cause had uprooted a giant spruce and thrown it down with a mass of earth clinging to the root pattern. The roots and earth stood up in a solid wall seven or eight feet in diameter.

Without words, Radigan and Child moved into the forest and were busy with their knives, building a lean-to with the open face toward the root mass. The lean-to was covered with a thick thatching of spruce boughs, and inside a bed was made thick with other boughs. On the snow close to the root mass Radigan laid several heavy chunks of wood side by side on the snow to make a bed for the fire, then built a fire whose heat could be reflected by the root mass into the lean-to.

"Couldn't we have gone on?" Gretchen asked. "I mean, it's only a few miles farther."

"We'd still be sleeping in the cold, and by then we'd be more tired. When you travel in the cold, never exhaust your self Only exhausted people need freeze, believe me.

If all travelers in the snow and cold would think of that, few of them would freeze.

Just find some shelter or build some and curl up and sleep it out."

"But if you sleep, won't you freeze?"

"Not unless you're already exhausted. If all the heat inside your body is gone, used up in struggling, then you'll freeze, so just stop in plenty of time. I've slept out many a time when it was forty, fifty below."

The shelter was in a little hollow, and the still-falling snow added to the warmth by covering the spruce boughs with a thick cushion of snow. Wind whipped around the corner of the shelter into the space, so they built an added windbreak of spruce boughs.

They huddled over the fire and drank scalding coffee and chewed on jerked meat. Nobody felt like talking. Outside their shelter the wind whipped snow into the air and by the time they had finished their coffee it was blowing a gale. They had gone into camp none too soon.

Angelina Foley stood by the window of Radigan's ranch house and looked down the trail.

She was frightened, and she was cold. But the cold was inside, not outside, for the room was warm and comfortable. The cold inside was the cold of fear, and of a kind of hatred such as she had never dreamed possible of herself.

Harvey Thorpe was at the table behind her, and across from him was Ross Wall. The big foreman had come in only minutes ago, and was sagging over the table, his face drawn with exhaustion. He had been lost most of the night, and his horse was dead-it had collapsed from exhaustion after bucking the deep snow for hours-and it was pure luck that Wall had found a cluster of trees and brush that offered partial shelter where he could build a fire. He had come into the ranch, staggering and falling.

How he had lived through the blizzard of the night before he would never know, nor how he had gotten here. Fortunately, he could have been scarcely two miles from the ranch when he found his shelter, but he must have traveled twice the distance from the cave to the ranch to get here.

"He's dead then." Gelina heard the satisfaction in Harvey's voice and for some reason it angered her.

She turned on them. "I'll believe him dead when I see him dead."

"Don't be foolish." Harvey looked up at her, his pale blue eyes almost white in the reflection from the window. "Coker wanted to kill him, and he had his chance."

He got to his feet and crossed to the window. "All you have to do, Ross, is ranch-run the cattle and do the best you can. You'll have four men."

He looked up. "And the rest?"

"I'll take care of them. You don't see anything. You don't know anything.

Ross turned the idea over in his mind, studying it reluctantly. He needed no blueprints, and he should have guessed, knowing Thorpe as he did, and the crew he had around him.

"It's the wrong time," he said patiently. "It won't work, Harvey. "

Thorpe smiled. He was feeling expansive. He tucked his thumbs in his vest pockets.

"Ross, you've no imagination. This is one of the most remote ranches in the country, but a ranch where dozens of trails come down from the north, old Indian trails, no longer traveled, trails that can take a man quickly to Denver, Leadville, or a dozen other places.

"I tell you it's perfect! A quick move into one of those towns, or to a mining camp where they're shipping gold, then back here by a roundabout route, using the trails we know. I knew when I saw it this was the place, a legitimate ranch with no close neighbors, easy access to the places where gold is, and easy escape."

"It won't work," Ross insisted. "If what Miss Foley says is true, there's liable to be an investigation, anyway."

Thorpe shrugged. "Believe me, it's a fait accompli now, and nobody will be anxious to cause trouble for us. Radigan will have disappeared, and we are quiet, honest ranchers who pay our bills and preserve the peace. We'll keep ourselves clean around here, you see, and nobody will ever be the wiser." "No."

They both turned at the sound of Angelina's voice, and Thorpe started to speak, but she interrupted.

"No, Harvey, we won't do it."

"You want to go to work in a saloon?" he asked mildly. "Or start a restaurant? That's all that's left."

She was silent.
During the days of snow the herd had scattered and drifted, and without doubt many of them were dead, just as Radigan had warned her-he had been so right, and she hated him for it.

She hated him and now she hated Harvey, for now she saw how she had been duped, not that she hadn't agreed to much that had been done, including the theft of cattle and the arrangements for the killing of the supposed squatter on the ranch they believed belonged to them, but it was obvious now that from the first Harvey had had his own plans and had acquiesced in hers only to forward his own, and he had maneuvered her into a position from which no escape seemed possible.

More than once she had suspected Harvey Thorpe's activities during those absent years, and now she was sure.
But had she a choice? And after all, might it not work?

It was true there was money in the mining camps of Colorado and Nevada, and it was true this was a relatively foolproof hideaway. Anybody approaching could be seen for some distance before arriving at the ranch. Yes, it might work.

And mining the stages and the gold shipments was quicker, easier, and scarcely more risky than ranching.

Radigan was dead. She had hated and feared him but he was dead, and now she felt a curious emptiness, a sense of loss.