the Man Called Noon (1970) (14 page)

He lifted a hand to open the door when it opened in his face, suddenly and without warning. His gun slid into his hand without conscious thought, and his finger was tightening on the trigger when he caught himself. It was Fan... Fan Davidge was here.

She stepped back quickly, and he went out into the cabin, gun in hand. She was alone, or seemed to be, and she was frightened.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"I don't know ... something. Ben Janish retained last night, angry and swearing. Something had gone wrong and he was furious, so I got up and dressed in the dark."

"Did he come to the house?"

"I don't know. I thought he would, and so did Hen. Hen came and tapped at my window, and told me I had to get away. He had your horse and he told me to let the horse take me, that the horse would go where you had gorie."

"What about Arch Billing?"

"I don't know. I did as Hen told me. I was afraid Arch would try to defend me, and they would kill him. There were others there who came back with Janish. I think there were several, and one of them was a girl."

"Peg Cullane?"

"What has she to do with all this? What is happening?" '

He went to the window and looked toward the trail. She would not have covered her tracks, she could not have, and how long would it take to find them? He went to the shelf and filled his pockets with .44's, then went back to the window and kept his eyes on the trail.

"They are money-hungry," he told Fan, "all of them. Peg Cullane most of all."

"But what is there? Pa left nothing except the ranch."

"There is more, and they know it. Peg Cullane learned - I don't know how - that your pa had some money hidden. Janish knows, too. I don't know if the rest of them do or not."

"What about you?"

"Tom Davidge trusted me. I don't know why."

"And you know where the money is?"

"I've told you. I remember almost nothing, but nobody would believe that I don't remember. I am beginning to remember some things, and maybe I will recall more."

Her eyes searched his. "I don't care about the money," she said finally, "but I do love the ranch. I want that."

"You'll have it."

"How can you be sure?"

"It is my business, or so I have been told. I shall have to play by instinct, and I hope it works."

Silent then, they watched the trail. There was little they could do. He felt closed in, trapped, and he did not like the feeling. The money might be here, but he did not like waiting inside.

He cared nothing for the money, either. He was a man lost, and he wished to find himself. That he was Jonas Mandrin seemed certain, but who was Jonas Mandrin? With his loss of identity he had lost the troubles of that identity, and also the hatred of crime that had led him to kill.

The amnesia might be an attempt of his mind to escape all that, and he saw little reason to go back now and try to recover the past, but he did wish to know what he was. What he needed now was a chance to begin again.

As they waited he told her a little of what he had learned about Jonas Mandrin, and how he believed he had become Ruble Noon.

Bitter with anger over the murder of his wife, he had drifted. When attacked he had struck back hard, and when the rancher had recruited him to make war against rustlers he had accepted at once, for they represented the evil that had robbed him of his wife and his happiness.

Suddenly he felt angry with himself. "I am a fool to wait here, to be pinned down," he said. He took a rifle and a shotgun from the rack and loaded them. "You keep these," he told her. "If they start to break in, go through the closet the way I did. They'll find it, but it will take time. Save the shotgun for then."

He pulled off his boots and put on a pair of moccasins from the closet; then, taking his rifle, he turned to go out.

She stopped him. "Jonas - or whatever your name is - be careful."

He put his hand on her arm. "Fan . . . you know about me. Don't have any illusions."

"My father fought rustlers, outlaws, and bad Indians when he came west," she said. "If only the evil men are willing to use force, what will happen to the good men? Some of these bad men understand nothing but violence. It seems to me that there is a time to use a gun, and there is a time to put it down."

"You think I could put the guns away?"

"Why not? You were a newspaperman, then a businessman. You can put down your gun and take up your pen. It is as simple as that."

He went down the trail with the long striding walk of a woodsman, but when he was among the trees he waited and listened. Mountain air is clear, and sound carries. Now he was at the top of a steep bluff up which they must come, but at first he heard nothing.

He could glimpse the ranch, but he saw no movement there, nor were there any horses in the corral. That meant that all of the riders were out.

He moved among the trees, ears tuned for the tiniest sound. He was feeling better now. His headache was gone, his senses were alert. He liked the clear, cold air, and he felt keenly the excitement of the hunt. For he was both the hunter and the hunted.

He skirted a clump of aspen, moved through its outer edge, heard a hoof strike stone, and held himself still. The sound came from somewhere down the mountain.

Near the trail he squatted on his heels and studied the ground over which he must travel, looking to left and right where he might retreat. The rock on the far side of the valley stood up like a great stone loaf, with only one long diagonal crack seaming the surface. They were coming.

He arose soundlessly and moved ghostlike among the trees, where there were occasional boulders and rock slabs. Close to the trail, he listened for the creak of a saddle, the grunt of a climbing horse, the rattle of gear.

Only the aspen leaves whispered in the wind until ... something else.

He turned swiftly, drawing as he turned. It was Dave Cherry, and he had come up, Indianlike, through the trees. He was smiling as he aimed his rifle.

The gun bucked in Ruble Noon's fist, and he saw Dave Cherry's face stiffen with shock. Ruble Noon fired again, and saw the gunman's shirt marked where the bullet struck.

Cherry backed up a step and sat down hard, a look of stunned surprise on his face, and then his rifle went off, the bullet digging dirt at his feet.

The echoes richocheted among the rocks, died away, and left only silence.

In the silence Ruble Noon thumbed two cartridges into his gun.

He waited for a slow count of twenty, listening. Then he moved, swiftly and silently, shifting position along the mountainside, choosing a place of concealment where there seemed to be none.

There was no sound. The sudden burst of gun shots had silenced the forest. Even the aspen leaves seemed to cease then- trembling. Sunlight falling through the leaves dappled the earth.

He felt good. He was ready. He could feel it in his muscles and in his even, easy breathing. He liked the feel of the rifle, and he knew he was facing the fight of his life.

How many men were there? Ben Janish, of course, and probably half a dozen others. Dave Cherry had been one of their best, and he was out of it now, but they did not know that yet, though they might guess. He had seen many good fights among top-notch marksmen where nobody scored any hits, for a marksman was often adept at choosing cover, at moving. Even to a skilled rifleman, light, shadow, and movement can be deceptive.

He took his tune, waiting, thinking it out. Cherry must have left the trail and come along the mountain on foot to try to outflank him. The others were no doubt still on the trail, and there were not many places they could leave it except on foot.

He studied the slope, his eye out for places for cover, with alternates in the event he was fired upon.

Ben Janish was in no hurry. He had heard the shots up on the slope, and he waited a few minutes, standing beside his horse. Then he walked off the trail and squatted on his heels behind a tilted rock slab, close to Kissling. "Dave's bought it," he said. "Ruble Noon's killed him."

Kissling looked up. "What makes you so sure?"

"Dave would have yelled if he could. He'd have called us up there."

"Maybe he's still on the hunt."

"Him? Dave never wasted a shot in his life that I know of. Sure, we all do, soon or late, but Dave ... he's a careful man with a gun. He never shoots unless he's got his man dead to rights. I'm sure he's dead."

John Lang poked at the earth with a stick, offering no comment. Charlie shifted his feet and started to speak, then thought better of it. That there Ruble Noon, he reflected, must be the real old bull of the woods, because killing Dave Cherry was no easy trick. "We going to set here?" Kissling asked. "We're goin' to wait," Ben Janish said. "If you want to go up there, you go ahead. I'll put a marker on your grave."

After a long silence, he said, "We're going to let him sweat. If he can wait, so can we."

"What about the judge? What's he hornin' in on this for?" Kissling asked.

Ben Janish glanced at him. "He's all right. It's good to have a judge on our side. We may need him."

Kissling was not satisfied, but he could sense the irritation in Janish and kept his silence. There seemed more to this than he had thought.

Judge Niland had ridden into the ranch shortly after daybreak and had had a long talk with Janish, with nobody else sitting in. After that, he had gone up to the house and was still there, probably talking to Fan Davidge. Kissling had the feeling something was going on that he had no part in, and he didn't like it.

He got to his feet abruptly and moved off among the trees. Somewhere on the slope above them the man known as Ruble Noon waited, holding them all here by the threat of his presence. Kissling looked up through the trees. Noon angered him, and why Ben Janish should decide to wait he could not guess. Was the great Ben Janish afraid. Ruble Noon was only one man. He could not watch everywhere.

"I'm going up," he said suddenly.

"Go ahead." Janish did not even look up.

Kissling hesitated. When he had spoken he had not really expected to go; he had half expected Janish to tell him to shut up and forget it. Now his bluff had been called and he stood there irresolute. He could go back and sit down and nobody would be apt to say anything, but he would know their contempt. On such small things are the lives of men decided.

Angrily, he stepped out and started up the slope. Away from the path the slope was steep and grassy, or sometimes rocky. Much of it was covered by trees where he could move from one to the next, scrambling, holding on with one hand, pulling himself up. When he had gone a little way he stopped and listened, sweat pouring down his face.

What the hell? Now that he was away from them, why go up there at all? This was no fight he wanted. He did not like Ruble Noon, and Noon was a threat to them, but it was a big country and he need never come back this way again.

Even as he thought this he knew he was not going to do it. He found a steep path through the trees and climbed up. Ben Janish wasn't the only man who could use a gun. He would show them a thing or two. He had watched Ben Janish, and he knew that he himself was just as fast. What he was not allowing for was sureness of hand and accuracy in shooting. He knew he could be just as fast in drawing against Janish, but what he did not know, and was never to know, was that had they been in a gun battle Janish would have beaten him fifty times out of fifty.

He knew little about Ruble Noon except that he had heard he was a gunfighter, a killer of men. He thought of him in the same terms as he thought of himself, or Dave Cherry or John Long. He knew nothing of Ruble Noon's past. He did not know that in another life he had been a hunter, a skilled stalker of wild game, a man as at home in the forest as a leopard, and as deadly.

He moved up the slope now, his eyes searching the trees and brush, but his were eyes trained for open country, for riding after cattle, or for using guns in towns or in ranch yards.

He believed that he was moving silently. He paused from time to time, unaware of the rifle muzzle that tracked him along the slope and up through the trees. He had seen nothing, and believed he was unseen. Suddenly he emerged in a small sun-filled clearing where no shadows fell, and as he stepped out from the trees he reached up to pull his hatbrim down. When he took his hand away, Ruble Noon was standing where a moment before there had been no one, and he was holding a rifle in his hands.

"I don't want to kill you," Ruble Noon said conversationally, almost as though they were sitting over their beers in a saloon. "I wish you would turn around and go back."

"I can't do that," Kissling said, and he was surprised at his own words. "I told them I was coming after you." And then he added, "I made my brags."

"Tell them you couldn't find me. I have nothing against you, Kissling. You moved against me down there, but I did not come looking for you. I don't want you."

An hour before, even a few minutes before, Kissling would have said such conversation was impossible, yet here he was, talking with Ruble Noon without animosity.