McAllister Justice (6 page)

“Did you ever see him before?”

“No never.”

Back at the office, they found a half-sober doctor, a cursing stage-driver, a white-faced Jenny Mann. The curious filled the doorway and were edging into the office. McAllister drove them out and dropped the bat on the door. He then bawled the doctor out till he sobered somewhat through anger and consented to remove the lead from Parson's ribs with a pocket knife heated in the flame of a coal-oil lamp. The wound was washed out with whiskey and the bottle was emptied all around except by Miss Mann who claimed tartly that she had taken the pledge and it would do no harm if
one
of them stayed sober.

Somebody hammered on the door. McAllister opened it and found it was the boy who had brought the doctor. He wanted payment. McAllister paid him, shoved out the curious who pressed in again. He barred the door after he had sent the doctor to look at the man dying in the saloon. After that, they fixed the driver up in the rear room with the now wakeful Diblon and McAllister took Sime aside for a quiet word.

“We could do with another hand, but we don't have him. I'm taking the stage in to Deadwood. You stay. You have to be in two places to once. Keep an eye on Joe and watch the road out of town. I want to know if anybody rides out in a hurry.”

Sime protested vigorously. “Are you crazy? Who do you have to ride the stage with you?”

“Nobody. Do you think I haven't handled one of those things before?”

“Sure, but not on your lonesome with a half-dozen road-agents breathing down your neck.”

“There won't be no road-agents.”

“Want to bet?”

“Yeah.”

“Ten to one.”

“Done. Jenny Mann stays with the wounded; the door is barred when you go out. Soon as you think you've watched the road long enough, you come back here and you don't stir. Hear?”

“Sure, but I still think you're crazy.”

Sime let McAllister out of the office and dropped the bar behind him. The marshal tramped across the street to the saloon and found the passenger still surprisingly alive. The doctor, now reinforced by several more whiskeys, declared it wasn't possible for man to still be alive because there was a bullet some place in his head. The passenger, talking a little hazily, informed McAllister that he was Will C. Cobb, correspondent for the Chicago newspaper, the
American Herald.
He gave a description of his fellow passenger that fitted the one given by the stage-line agent. He had also caught a glimpse of one of the hold-up men. He had worn a bandanna over the lower part of his face, but Cobb had seen that he had red hair and wore a black hat with a wide brim and high crown. His saddle had been single, center-fire rigged and his horse had been a sorrel of good quality. Not a Western horse. McAllister thanked him and had the promise of the saloon-keeper that he would put him up in a back room and care for him. McAllister liked the look of this saloon-keeper, a tight-lipped Vermont man named John Stoke.

“This man is a star witness,” McAllister told him. “Could be someone might prefer him dead.”

“He won't last another day,” the New Englander declared. “But if he dies in my place, it won't be from another bullet.”

McAllister shook hands with him and went to the stage office where he found fresh leaders in the traces of the stage and an anxious agent fluttering around like a distraught bird, declaring that it was madness to take the stage out with all that gold on board. He prayed that Mr. Boothby would not hold him responsible for it. He nearly fainted when he learned that McAllister proposed to take the stage through alone. It so alarmed him that he overcame his fear and declared that he
would ride shot-gun. McAllister took a good look at the little man and wondered how much sand he would have when it came to trouble.

“Ever handle a gun?” he asked.

Dolan bridled. “I'll have you know, sir, that I was Mr. Boothby's investigator for ten years.”

“Trouble shooter?” McAllister queried incredulously.

“Call it that.”

“Find yourself a gun, partner.”

Dolan's hand fluttered briefly under his coat and produced a pocket Colt with such dexterity that McAllister could scarcely believe his eyes. The little agent informed him that, now he was a married man, he chose a safer pursuit than breaking up hold-up gangs, but a year at a desk had proved irksome. “Some action,” he piped valiantly, “will be like a tonic to me.”

McAllister told him to find himself a shot-gun and a pocketful of shells and to get aboard.

“No,” Dolan told him. “We'll have to play it smarter than that. I'll go back into my office, out the rear and cut through the backlots to beyond the town limits and you can pick me up there.”

Idlers were pressing in now, curious about the stage and arguing the possibility of it being held up a second time in one day. Dolan shook hands sadly with McAllister and retired to his office, shaking his head and saying he couldn't bear to watch a man ride off to certain death. The crowd was inclined to agree with him and shouted encouragement to McAllister as he climbed aboard and took up the lines.

From the height of the driving-seat, he looked down on the upturned faces, taking his time over starting in order to give Dolan time to reach the edge of town. He saw two red-headed men, one wearing a gray hat and another without one. Taking up the whip, he gave it a preparatory swing, wondering how long it was since he had handled a team this size. Must have been in his early twenties down in Jackson County, Texas. The fresh leaders were dancing and getting themselves in a lather.
They looked like a couple of half-broken mustangs and he guessed he was going to have his hands full.

Somebody shouted for him to get going, he was taking up valuable drinking time. That got a laugh.

He kicked the brake off, cracked the whip loud as a pistol-shot around the leaders' ears and yelled: “Haaa-aaaa!” The team jumped in their collars, found they couldn't move the heavy stage in the mud, slipping and stumbling and he had to literally hold them on their feet. He yelled and let them hear the whip again. They leaned into the leathers straining. The coach started to move and an ironic cheer went up from the crowd.

The stage rolled, lurched sideways in the mud, sank on the off-side, then righted itself. A third whip-crack and the team hit the traces as one and he was on his way, heading for the curve in Main at speed, sawing the lines to turn a reluctant team that seemed to want to get up on the sidewalk. He ran them to the edge of town and started looking out for Dolan.

He still had not caught sight of the little man when the stage rumbled over the timber bridge and started the slow climb into the timber that overlooked the town. The grade took some of the kinks out of the team, but it was hard work to make them pull as one. By the time he reached the top and heard the wind through the trees, he had developed a deep respect for Woolly Parsons who had handled this bunch.

Then he saw Dolan sitting on a log by the side of the trail. The little man jumped up and signalled to him to keep moving. McAllister put the horses into a trot and Dolan got aboard on the run, piling inside and yelling to McAllister to use the whip. McAllister did so, the team fought for purchase on the now drier ground and the vehicle rocketed down a slight grade toward a bend between towering rocks.

The country changed abruptly as they left the timber, hit the turn and thundered through the rocks. It started to rain heavily and through the downpour McAllister saw away to his left the barren brown face of the badlands, eroded and anguished. To his right was a rough, rolling expanse of poor grassland, broken
here and there with outcrops of rock and sandstone, gullies and occasional lonely buttes looking lost and incongruous. Ahead, the road showed empty for as far as the eye could see through the wet murk.

McAllister checked that the butt of the Le Matt still protruded from his belt. Men on fast horses could have ridden across country from town to find cover ahead of the stage. Back there talking to Sime he had been confident that he would get the stage through with no trouble, but now in the weird atmosphere of this lonesome high prairie, premonition nudged him. The old animal instinct of danger that he had learned never to ignore. One comfort was that the team seemed to settle down now and were behaving more reasonably. The nearside wheeler took nips at his partner now and then, but he learned fast after McAllister flicked him in the face with the whip a few times. The big man settled down to keeping them going, using horse language well-larded with succulent profanity.

After ten minutes, the rain slackened to a steady drizzle and visibility increased a little. They reached a creek with a ford and slowed to cross. The little man inside the stage yelled for him to keep the horses moving and McAllister roared back that if Dolan could do any better, he'd best come and goddam well do it. They exchanged a few hot words and the horses came dripping from the water in poor order and fighting among themselves. In spite of McAllister's efforts, the leaders slackened off and the offside animal stepped over a trace and the real fight broke out. With the stage half in and half out of the creek, McAllister kicked the brake on and climbed down.

Dolan yelled: “Don't stop here.”

McAllister bawled for him to get out and walk if he didn't care for the locality, got up with the leaders and tangled badly with them, but finally succeeded in getting the offside leader free of the trace.

When he returned to the stage, Dolan's frightened face appeared at the window.

“This is just the spot for a hold-up.”

“Ain't it?” McAllister said cheerfully. He climbed aboard, kicked off the brake and they heaved themselves out of the creek and rolled on. There didn't seem to be any sign of life around. The team got them up the bank from the creek and hit comparatively flat going again, pulling with a will now and settling down to a good hammering trot. That was the pace that McAllister wanted if the beasts were going to have enough reserve for a dash if any road-agents appeared.

A couple of miles beyond the creek, the rain came down in earnest again and McAllister wished to high heaven he'd brought an oilskin along. He was soaked to the skin by now and feeling more wretched by the mile.

Ahead, dimly, he made out a red stone butte that seemed to rear up immediately above the road to the left. To the right, the country suddenly broke and became a crazy tangle of brush, rock and gullies. Soon they hit a newly-formed stream that was coming from the butte and doing its best to wash the road away. The stage lurched insanely as it bumped from hard to soft patches and it was all McAllister could do to stay in his seat. The team lost cohesion, the stage almost came to a halt and started to slide to the right. Brush scraped its sides. Dolan yelled in alarm, shrill as a woman and McAllister plied the whip, yelling like a Comanche in at the kill. The team pulled themselves together and jumped as one, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes wildly, the stage nearly righted itself as the animals fought desperately for a footing on the treacherous surface.

Dolan was shouting: “Don't stop. For the love of God don't stop.”

Something crashed through the brush to the right.

McAllister glanced in that direction and saw a mounted man ploughing through the mud within a dozen yards of the stage.

There was only time to see the cloth covering the lower part of the man's face. The whip was in McAllister's right hand, the lines in his left. He did the only thing he could do. As the rider lunged closer, McAllister gave him the whip full in his face.

The man jerked back in the saddle, raised his hand to show that it held a gun and his faint yell came through the teeming rain. McAllister laid the whip on the horses, bawling hoarsely at them and saw several figures on the road ahead of him, crouched up in the saddle against the rain. A gun-barrel glittered dully. He heard a distant shout. He couldn't make out the words, but he knew that he was being ordered to stop. He continued to ply the whip and yell at the team.

They responded, hitting their collars in a titanic sixfold effort, wrenching the heavy stage forward and taking it, as McAllister swung them recklessly, straight at the horsemen ahead.

One of the riders spurred his horse off the road in a panic, seeing the charging team coming down straight on top of him. His horse slipped in the mud; horse and rider went down.

A gun banged dully in the wetness and a bullet sang forlornly past McAllister's left ear. He jammed the whip away and reached inside his coat for the Le Matt, never stopping his shouting at the team. The fallen man scrambled to his feet and tried to get clear of them, but the near-side leader caught him with a shoulder and knocked him off his feet again. Another rider jumped his horse for the stage and fired two shots at McAllister. One tore his hat from his head, the other passed harmlessly behind him. For a fraction of a second, McAllister glared into the wide eyes of the man below him before he fired the Le Matt almost point-blank.

The bandanna became red shreds, the face a horror. The man was lifted violently from the saddle and flung away like trash. The horse reared and went over backwards.

Then, as McAllister got to work with the nine brass cartridges and the top barrel, guns seemed to be going off all around him. Inside the stage, the little stage-line agent was banging away; the horsemen scattered out to left and right, the stage lurched between them and the team kept running. Riders wrenched their horses around, pounding after the stage, McAllister reckoned there was a round half-dozen of them left. It he got himself out of this one, it meant he had more luck than
any man deserved. He prayed some smart man didn't down one of the team.

A rider drew alongside of him on the right. McAllister turned his gun on him, but before he could fire, the man shot the nearest wheeler and the animal went down. The stage staggered a few yards and came to a halt. McAllister fired and the horseman swung away, hugging his saddlehorn and dropping his gun.