Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (14 page)

 
          
Then
he landed on his feet in the road, an abrupt shock to his soles. He was just
opposite the big barred gate of the palisade. The yard of the tavern within
seemed full of men with guns. His father was there, rushing and forcing his
broad body by main strength between two of the poles. Seth Ramsey also came at
a run, and climbed over the gate like a monkey. He and Hugh Jarrett ran as
though pursuing fugitive game.

 
          
Even
as Mark turned to join in the charge, he wondered where to go. He saw no
enemies,
he heard no shots from them. Hugh Jarrett stopped
his run. “Zounds, we’ve driven them off!” he roared.

 
          
It
seemed true. Mark raced to join his father. From the tail of his eye he saw
others at the door of the tavern, Mace Hollon and Esau and two others he did
not recognize. Hugh Jarrett had stopped next to a tulip tree, and he looked up
and cried out happily as he saw Mark hurrying toward him.

 
          
“Heaven
be praised, my son, you’re safe,” he gasped out. “How have things gone at the
mill?” “We drove them off, and none of us were harmed,” Mark made haste to
reply.
“And here?”

 
          
“Simon
Durwell came galloping in on
Bolly
,” said Hugh
Jarrett. Mark took time to see that his father’s massive brow was bound with a
strip of linen, and that a spot of blood showed on the cloth.

 
          
“Sir,
you’re wounded,” Mark said.

 
          
“Nay, ’tis naught.
A bullet only ploughed my scalp there at
the side. Your Uncle Mace took an arrow in his shoulder, but he, too, is not
greatly hurt. We were able to get into the tavern, all of us. And I think we
did sore damage to those Indians. I’d have been happy could I have known you
were safe.” Celia also came across the road to them. She still carried her
rifle. Several settlers ran past into the woods, shouting, and a gun went off.

 
          
“Those
red renegades have lost their fight,”

           
Mark’s father exulted. “Was it you,
Mark, who opened on them from the top of the ridge yonder? Seth Ramsey said
that he heard one of them cry out about an attack of evil spirits.”

 
          
Then
Schneider came along the road. With his left hand he gripped the scalp lock of
a cowering Indian, and his other hand flourished his pistol. Schneider urged
the captive toward Mark and the others.

 
          
“Don’t
try to run, Injun,” Schneider said.

 
          
“No
run,” the fellow said weakly.
“Good Indian —no fight.”
He spread his hands to show they were empty of weapons.

 
          
Mark
snatched a knife from the Indian’s belt. “Hold him close, Schneider,” Mark
warned. “Is this the one you took up there on the slope? He seems to speak some
English. Maybe he can tell us what happed to Moxley.”

 
          
“Moxley,”
repeated the Indian, half dreamily. He blinked his eyes, and Mark judged that
Schneider had clubbed him soundly with the pistol, to subdue him.

 
          
“Moxley,”
said the Indian again, “told us lies. Said we could get good things—scalps—”

 
          
“I
fired at Moxley,” said Mark. “I hope I drilled him.”

 
          
“No,
you didn’t!” howled a voice from the slope.

 
          
Moxley
stood there, a score of yards above them.

           
He stood tall, lean,
gray
-shirted. His red hair fluttered in the breeze. His
rifle was at his shoulder.

 
          
“One
more shot, curse your souls every one!” Moxley shouted at them, and fired.

 
          
Mark
heard Celia catch her breath, he saw her stagger. Mark’s father caught her in
his arms to keep her from falling.

 
          
Moxley
spun around and fled up slope again among the trees. Mark bounded across the
road to climb after him.

 
          
A
Reckoning

 
          
So
FURIOUSLY
and swiftly did Mark burst
into a run that his charge carried him half a dozen steps up the slant of the
lower slope, and he held his rifle high, in a burning hope that he could come
into fair sight and range of Moxley. As he mounted upward, something came
flying down toward him—Moxley’s
gun, hurled at him with
deadly force, like
a javelin. Mark had just time to throw himself flat
among broken rocks and ferns, and the gun went flying above him. It struck
below with a clank.

 
          
“ ’Twas
you I meant to shoot, Mark Jarrett!” Moxley yelled
down from between two trees, some yards above.

 
          
Mark
slid on the abrupt pitch of the face of the slanting ridge, and thought he
would drop back to the road. He clung to a bunch of leaves with his free hand,
so tightly that they crushed in his grip. He got his feet under him, hoisted
himself erect, and charged upward again with surging efforts of his leg
muscles. He did not care that Moxley might have an advantage on that upper
reach of the slope. He only wanted to come within sight of his enemy, to lay
violent hands upon him.

 
          
But
Moxley was not where he had stood to throw that gun at Mark. It was easy to
follow his retreat, for he had crushed leaves, had broken twigs. It was not a
straight trail upward, but off on an angle across the ascent. Mark scaled the
rocks and roots, his left hand clutching the rifle by its balance. It was
loaded. He burned to fire it off once more, point blank at Moxley.

 
          
Voices
chattered excitedly below. Maybe some of his friends would be coming to help
him. But he did not wait for help. Just then, he wanted no help. He seemed to
have but one aim in life, and that aim was to catch and settle with Moxley for
all time, personally and alone.

 
          
Moxley
kept out of sight, among the trees that thronged the slope, rank after rank,
like a green army drawn up in close order. The trail he left slanted
across,
and it led toward that highest lump of crag on the
ridge, the big rock shaped like the paw of a bear. Mark’s breath came in great
labored gasps. But he did not falter in his pursuit. Once he mustered that
struggling breath to give a shout, to call on Moxley to turn and face and fight
him. Then he told himself to save all his wind. He would need it.

 
          
It
seemed like a climb of hours, though it could not have lasted more than fifteen
or twenty straining minutes, before he came out upon a shelflike jut of rock.
From there he could see the Bear Paw. If the slope of the ridge itself was as
steep as the pitch of a great roof, that upper rock was like a chimney, and its
side was as abrupt as a chute. Clumps of stubborn bush clung to its knobby
lumps of rock, and among them he saw an active, gray-shirted form, climbing
upward with grasping drags of its hands, spurning digs of its moccasined feet.
Up came Mark’s rifle. Its muzzle swayed—he was wearier than he had taken
thought to realize. But he tried to set the sights, and pressed the trigger.

 
          
But
there was a futile click. His pan had been improperly
primed,
the charge had not taken fire. Moxley kept climbing. Mark groaned in utter
disappointment, and seized his powder horn to prime the pan anew. He must be
sure with it now.

 
          
Bear
Paw arose perhaps forty feet among the backbone of the ridge, and Moxley was
hoisting himself to its rounded summit. For a moment, Moxley showed a plain
outline against the blue September sky, next to a gnarled twist of a spruce
tree growing there at the edge. Mark aimed, trying to catch that clear target
made by his enemy. But before he could catch Moxley in his sights, Moxley
dropped out of sight at the top of the rock. Mark groaned again, loudly and
angrily.

 
          
At
least, Moxley had no rifle. He had flung his weapon at Mark. Boldly Mark pushed
into the open, toward that last ascent.

 
          
“Ha,
boy, never attempt it,” Moxley’s harsh, warning voice drifted down to him.
“From up here I’ve a fair shot at you, and I’d roundly relish the chance to
finish you off forever.”

 
          
Mark
paused, looking up. “You lie, Moxley,” he snapped. “You are ever a liar. You
flung away your rifle, trying to hit me with it down below.”

 
          
“I
did not fling away my pistols. I have two of them, charged and ready. Nay, I
should have held my peace and let you come up into close range of them. I was
wrong to warn you.”

 
          
Mark
slid back into the cover of the trees, almost at the foot of Bear Paw.

 
          
“I
do not believe your pistols,” he said.

 
          
“Yet
come on up if you’re so mush-headed a fool and hero,” Moxley invited him. “This
time I’ll make sure of shooting you. How I missed you down there at the road, I
know not.”

 
          
“Your
bullet struck Celia Vesper, you skulking coward,” Mark said angrily.

 
          
“Oh,
indeed, and did I wound that poor goldenhaired orphan girl? Believe
me,
I’m heartily sorry for my carelessness.”

 
          
Moxley
did not sound sorry, and Mark felt new anger.

 
          
“I
swear to you, Moxley, every drop of her blood you spilled you shall buy with a
quart of your own!” Mark cried out bitterly, and Moxley actually laughed from
above.

 
          
“What
tempers we are in, youngster. Nay, I have changed my mind. If to hurt her in
any way was to hurt you, then I’m glad. Hurting you, Mark Jarrett, is the chief
joy I have left in life.”

 
          
Mark
crouched low and crept to the base of another, thicker tree. Around its right
side he aimed his rifle, up toward the crown of the rock.

 
          
“You’re
trapped up there,” he said, more calmly. “Let that thought give you joy. You’re
like a ’possum on a branch, with hungry dogs below you.” “And now you name
yourself a dog,” was Mox- ley’s scoffing reply. “And well you do so, for a dog you
are, and a yapping, yellow cur to boot. Howl up at me, dog, and see if it
frightens me enough to make me lose my hold here and fall down to you.”

 
          
Of
the two of them, Moxley seemed far the more contained, far more assured. Mark
fought down an impulse to shout angry challenges and accusations.

 
          
“I
hear you, ’possum, treed up there on high,” he decided to say. “Call me dog, if
you will, but I have you cornered. Others will come. We’ll wait until you
hunger and thirst, and at last come down to the fate you deserve.”

 
          
“The
fate I deserve?” Moxley repeated the words drawlingly.

           
“You’re a red-handed outlaw and a
traitor,” said Mark. “You’ve fetched murdering Indian thieves to raid peaceful
settlers. Your life is forfeit, and every honest man will rejoice when you’re
rightly punished. Even if it should take us days—”

 
          
“Oh,
come,” Moxley broke in, banteringly. “It won’t be days, my poor dull lad. Not
even hours. See, Mark, it wants but half an hour until the sun goes down.”

 
          
That
was true. The sun had fallen away toward the western mountain tops, and the
shadows in which Mark held his shelter had grown long and gloomy.

 
          
“Surely
you know this lump of rock where I hold my fastness,” Moxley elaborated, in
mock-helpful tones. “I know it, too, for often and often I climbed to it in the
days before you and your people came to settle here. Only at this place where
we talk back and forth can a man mount up with any success, and I say that you
have my leave to mount, against what I might care to do with my pistols. But at
other places all the way round, though nobody can well climb up, ’twould be an
easy feat for me to climb down.”

 
          
“And
you don’t dare climb down,” said Mark.

 
          
“In
a short while, when night falls, I’ll take my chance. And I’ll get away, you
young fool. After that, never a day will dawn but you’ll wonder if you’ll live
to see the night. Never a step you’ll take but you’ll fear I lurk on your path
in hiding, to shoot you down.”

 
          
But
if he had meant that to dismay Mark, it did not do so. Mark himself was
surprised that he was not dismayed. He felt, instead, a swelling of strength
and determination.

 
          
“You
think you have good cause to hate me,” Mark suggested.

 
          
“Do
I not have good cause? Twice I tried my best to take for my own this land where
you and your people choose to squat. I’d have made it a town, you young dolt, a
town to be called with my name; a town to be rich and important in the land.
But you would not let me do that. You drove me out. And so I came back with my
Indian braves—”

 
          
“Indian
braves!” Mark repeated scornfully. “Say rather, your Indian poltroons, every
one of them hated and scorned and driven forth by his tribe. Aye, outlawed even
by savages, fit company for a greater savage than any of them.”

 
          
“I
promised them plunder,” said Moxley.
“Food, guns, the spoil
of your homes.
For me, I wanted only
revenge,
I
wanted only to be even with you.”

 
          
“We’ve
beaten and driven away your savages, and you’re trapped,” Mark mocked him. The
fierceness grew in Mark as he thought of Celia and her wound from Moxley’s
bullet.

           
“I was after revenge,” Moxley said
again, “and revenge I shall have.”

 
          
“Others
are climbing to join me here,” Mark said confidently. “You’re hemmed in on your
rock. Why don’t you try to climb down the other side, Moxley?”

 
          
Laughter
again at that, from up there against the sky that grew a deeper, softer blue
with the approach of evening.

 
          
“Maybe
I will,” said Moxley. “Maybe I’ll be climbing down even now, while you roost
there waiting for your friends, and think you have me safe.”

 
          
And
he said no more.

 
          
At
once Mark stole through the trees that bunched around and against Bear Paw. He
gained the far side, and gazed at how it fell there, forty feet almost
perpendicularly steep. Yet, as Moxley had said, an active climber could cling
to veins and cracks and knobs in the rocky face, to lower
himself
foot by foot. He tried to see the top, but could not. He raised his voice in a
shout.

 
          
“Ha, Moxley!
Start down as you promised. We await you here.”

 
          
“Mark
Jarrett’s braying voice,” Moxley called back from his unseen position up above.
“How many others are with you, Mark? Let me hear their voices, too.”

           
“Nay, try to come down, and count
them for yourself,” Mark challenged. “We are drawing a tight net around you. By
light or by darkness, we’ll gather you in whenever you pluck up enough of your
courage to try to come down.”

 
          
“I
think you lie to me,” said Moxley. “I think you’re alone down there, young
woods-runner.”

 
          
“You
may think that, but you do not know,” said Mark. “Climb down, I say, and find
out for sure.”

 
          
But
the sunlight grew soft, took on a touch of redness, in preparation for its
evening departure. Mark stole away among trees, keeping them ever between him
and the summit of the rock, lest Moxley spy him and fire. He made a complete
circuit of Bear Paw. Back he came to where he had been before, and from there
he scowled up the slant to where the gnarled fir tree clung.