He squatted with one leg bent to run. His eyes still weren't focusing properly. He could hear Sweeney and the rest of them calling out to the rawhider: “He's right over here, man.”
“Shut up Sweeney,” the rawhider yelled from out in the woods. “I know where the hell he's at.”
“That you Billy? Listen come untie us, we'll hep you hunt.”
“Just shut up your mouth a minute,” Billy called angrily.
Boag got down on his belly and crawled.
He moved six inches at a time. He knew where Billy was but he couldn't get much closer than this without exposing himself; the only chance was to bring Billy to him. He crawled in a fairly wide circle around the clearing where Sweeney and the rest of them were sweating in their wire manacles; he hitched himself around to where he'd tied up a few of their saddle horses that he'd caught when he was chasing after the pack animals. He stood up then and looked around, rubbed his eyes and looked again; nothing to see, not yet anyway. They couldn't see him from the clearing or they'd have been yelling the news to Billy.
Boag removed the bridle from one of the horses and used it like a whip; he bellowed at the top of his lungs as if he were riding the horse:
“Hyaah, hyaah! Giddap!”
The horse ran away with a racket and while distance was absorbing the sound Boag eased closer to the clearing and flattened up behind a tree where he could watch.
“Hey Billy I think he give it up. Get your ass on over here and turn us loose.”
But Billy didn't come right in; he didn't accept it that easily. Boag heard him moving, though. After a bit he decided Billy was making a circle around the clearing to make sure it was all right before he walked into the open.
Boag was waiting for him when Billy came in sight. Boag's gun was cocked and so was Billy's but the difference was that Boag's was aimed at a target and Billy had to swing his around through a short arc, and it gave Boag enough of an advantage in time: Boag's slug rocked Billy's head back and Boag could see by the way he fell that Billy was dead.
Boag slid down with his back against the tree until he was sitting on the ground. He couldn't stand the pain in his legs any longer; he sat there and wept silently.
Presently he became aware that Sweeney and the rest of them were yelling.
“Hey Billy, what the hell's happening? Where you at?”
“Hey come cut us loose God damn it.”
“What the hell you doing back there, shooting at shadows?”
“He's lit out, Billy. Come turn us loose you son of a bitch!”
Boag gathered his feet under him and limped into the clearing. He stared at them out of the depths of his red eyes and after they all quit caterwauling he said, “You might as well shut up now,” and he forced himself to hobble back toward the road.
6
He stood in the road looking up toward Mr. Pickett's mountain. He felt like shaking his fist.
Nobody was coming down the road from the mountain yet. But they must have heard the shooting up there; they'd think about it, they'd worry about it. They'd put it together with the fact that none of their gold had showed up yet. They'd have to keep picking at it until they found out, and the only way to find out was to come out of the fortress.
They were taking their time because they had no way of knowing it wasn't a whole goddamn army down here ambushing their gold riders. They'd be talking it over up there, Gutierrez and Ben Stryker and Mr. Pickett; they'd be up on the parapet right now with field glasses trying to see something down here. Maybe they were looking at Boag right now. It was too far for them to see who he was or even what color he was, even with field glasses; but they'd see a man standing out in the road looking up at them and they might think he was a bandit or a rebel soldier who had a vast army back in the trees.
It would deter them from coming right down after him. They'd want to stay put behind their parapet where no army could get at them; all they had to do was keep their guns on the road cut and they could slice a whole army to pieces a handful at a time as it advanced through that narrow gorge. Rifles up on the parapet would cut down every man.
Boag wished he knew how many guns Mr. Picket had up there.
His legs were trembling under him and the pains lanced into him every half second. Something had busted loose inside his hip. He couldn't walk ten feet without almost collapsing.
Spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away in great rage and stumbled off the road into the woods to get a horse. He spent a good five minutes hoisting himself into the saddle but once he got aboard he knew it would be all right. It hurt like hell but he wasn't going to fall off.
It took nearly an hour to round up the two pack horses. He tethered them with the other three. Counting the gold he'd taken out of Jackson's cache back in Tres Osos he had close to two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Mr. Pickett's bullion and that was the lion's share of it; there might be another pack horse or two still coming in today but Boag had enough. He dismantled the tripwires across the road and threw the torn blankets away in the woods. He saved the wire.
He spent the afternoon moving everything to his Gatling gun site. He lashed the prisoners' guns to trees, pointed down into the gully, and wired their triggers to his gun position; it made for a couple dozen guns, all cocked and ready to be fired from his command circle. He tied the five pack horses together on a picket line and fixed the ends of it to trees with bow knots because he might have to move out very fast and he wanted to be able to take them along with him.
One at a time he cut the prisoners loose of their moorings. He stood them up, not unwiring their hands, and tied them all together on a short-hobbled picket wire, and moved them slowly up to the cutbank gully where he was going to fight his little war. He separated them and wired each of them to a different tree, and sat down to eat.
He sat there until midnight because his legs weren't going to move him anywhere. He cleaned the .40-90 rifle again and found he wasn't having much success convincing himself the game was still worth the risk. He'd had good luck a couple of times today, without which he'd have been dead, and it was all the luck he was likely to get. He had half the money in the world; he'd taken it away from Mr. Pickett. What more was there to fight about?
Sweeney kept ragging him in a twanging voice and finally Boag got mad enough to gather his wobbly legs under him and go over and clout Sweeney across the head. After that they all kept their wretched thoughts to themselves and Boag sat down to do some more thinking.
The thing was, it hadn't done Mr. Pickett the kind of harm he was going to feel. He'd lost a pile of gold but he still had some of the bullion and he had all that money he'd taken off Don Pablo. If the point of all this was to bring Mr. Pickett down, Boag hadn't accomplished it yet.
And that
was
the point of it. He no longer knew why, but it was.
You got past the point where you needed reasons. All Boag could remember now was that back in the beginning there had been a reason for it. It had been a good enough reason then, whatever it was. Probably it was still a good enough reason but he didn't have the strength to seek it out in the recesses of his head.
A lot of times you made a snap decision and then had to live by it for the rest of your life. Back on the Colorado River a lot of miles ago Boag had made a decision and on account of it he had almost got killed God knew how many times, and when you had risked that much for something you didn't quit even if you could no longer remember what the risks were in aid of.
So there was only one thing to do and there wasn't any point arguing with himself about it. The war was started and it had to be fought through to its finish.
He needed rest. He needed a month flat on his back. But right now he was beyond it. Time to rest now would be time to fall apart. He had to keep moving. He limped to his horse and checked the hand bombs and checked his rifle and his matches and his revolvers, and he climbed up into the saddle as if it was a high mountain and rode out toward the wagon road.
7
He got halfway out to the road and realized he'd made a stupid mistake. It changed his course; he rode back to the Gatling gun and made gags out of blanket strips and wads and forced the prisoners' mouths open and inserted the gags and tied them around behind their heads. He told each one of them the same thing:
“Don't fight this gag too hard. You make yourself sick, you could strangle to death on your own vomit. Hear?”
Then he left them. It was harder getting on the horse this time. He almost didn't make it.
He stayed just inside the trees and went up alongside the road to the edge of the timber. From here it was just about a mile to the top of the mountain. Most of it was across a steady, open slope and then there was the high cliff that was sliced in half by the road cut.
There still wasn't any way to approach unseen. But this time Boag wanted them to see him.
He had one gold ingot on the saddle. He had a dime novel he'd taken off Sweeney. He had a bullet. He had some coiled pieces of wire. These were all he was going to need tonight but he had festooned himself with weapons just in case.
He ripped the back jacket off the dime novel because the inside of it had no printing on it. He used a bullet for a pencil and wrote out a short message in heavy lettering. He couldn't spell worth a damn but Mr. Pickett would be able to read it all right.
He wired the note on top of the gold bar.
Then he put his horse out of the trees and rode straight up the wagon road toward Mr. Pickett's mountain.
He had to assume they were watching; they'd be fools not to.
They were watching him ride forward and wondering who he was, whose side he was on; they wouldn't shoot at him and even if they did it was a hell of a shot to make because he only went as far as the foot of the road cut. He looked up at the high cliffs on either side of the cut and he couldn't see anybody silhouetted up there but that didn't mean anything; they'd be there all right. The sky was matted with clouds anyhow, he wasn't too likely to see them unless they moved; they'd blend with the rocks.
He tossed the gold brick right out in the middle of the road. He turned his back to the mountain and rode back toward the forest, but he didn't go the whole way. About two thirds across that distance he stopped and turned the horse around to face Mr. Pickett's mountain.
It was well beyond rifle range of the mountain; well beyond rifle range of the foot of the cut where he'd dropped the ingot.
He made his seat as easy as he could on the saddle, and he sat there the rest of the night waiting.
8
It was daylightâa grey mottled skyâbefore they sent a man down into the notch to find out about the gold brick. Boag watched the rider approach it cautiously. They hadn't been sure it wasn't some kind of bomb; that was why they'd waited for daybreak to have a look at it.
The rider dismounted and picked up the brick and got back on his horse and rode up the cut. Boag watched him disappear over the top of it.
He sat there patiently, knowing they were watching him from the mountaintop. They'd be thinking about it. Mr. Pickett would read the note two or three times and try to make out what it meant.
MR. JED PICKETT
I GAT YOR GOLD, HEAR IS PROOF.
YO COME DOWN AND WE TAWK ABOT IT.
I AM WAITING WAR YO CAN SEE ME.
âBOAG, FRMRLY SGT USA.
They would be thinking about that and trying to estimate how big an army Boag had with him back there in the woods, and they would be trying to work out ways to get their gold back.
They had the same limitation Boag had. He couldn't get into their fortress without being seen, but they couldn't get out of it without Boag seeing them. They had to come straight down the road cut.
Boat waited them out. He had no place to go. He ate dry beef and took a swallow from his canteen.
He saw some of them moving around on the parapet; he could almost see the gun muzzles stir. He counted five moving figures.
He dismounted and lay down flat to ease his cramped legs; he kept the reins in one hand. He crushed his hat into a pillow so that he could keep his head propped up far enough to watch Mr. Pickett's mountain.
One big worry he had was the sky. It was really clouding up for rain.
He saw them come down from the parapet on horseback. While they were still in the shadows of the rock gorge he rolled over onto his knees and gave his attention to the problem of getting onto the horse. He punched his hat out and put it on, and put the reins in his teeth and lifted his left leg with both hands to get his boot into the stirrup. Then he let his foot hang there in the stirrup while he wrapped both big fists around the saddle horn and hauled himself up by the strength of his arms. He let his right leg flop over the saddle and while he felt for the stirrup with his toe he kept his eyes on the mountain and counted the riders who were emerging from the bottom of the cut half a mile away from him.
Sixteen, seventeen.â¦
Twenty-three of them in the end. He had no trouble recognizing Ben Stryker's big frame swaying on the saddle of the leading horse.
It was about twice as many as he'd expected but he didn't trouble himself about it. The shape Boag was in, all it would take would be one or two of them, if they escaped the trap.
When he set it up he'd been convinced it could work. But now suddenly he was picturing all the things that could go wrong with it. He knew there was no way to win, not against twenty-three of them.
And Mr. Pickett wasn't even with them; he'd stayed up there in his fortress.
Boag gathered the reins in his left hand.
I
could grab those gold horses and make a run,
he thought, but he had less than a half-mile lead now and they'd ride him down in ten minutes.
It was no time to change his mind. He had no choice.