McAllister Makes War (20 page)

* * *

The following day was one of inaction and anti-climax, yet at the same time, because of both, it was a day of tension. Jim Carson steadily maintained that McAllister was mistaken and that Drummond was an innocent citizen. Pat was made of simpler stuff. McAllister was anxious and McAllister wasn't a man to be that way about nothing, therefore it added that there must be something to be anxious about. Maybe Drummond was innocent, but you couldn't be too sure when it came to staying alive, so he reckoned that, like McAllister, he would regard the man as guilty until he was proven innocent. So when McAllister patrolled through the town, Pat drifted along somewhere in the rear. Neither made comment on the fact.

McAllister reckoned he was safe enough during daylight hours. The danger would come when he patrolled the town after dark.

“For the love of God, boyo,” Pat said, “leave the night patrol to me. Nobody wants me dead. Stay in the office and keep Jim company.”

McAllister snarled: “I ain't skulking in the office for nobody.” Which seemed to settle it. Pat grumbled and reconciled himself to getting little sleep. McAllister prowled around town trying to think of a way to provoke Drummond into showing his hand, preferably in public. Once he met the man on the street outside
the Golden Fleece. He greeted the man with cheerful insolence, but Drummond ignored him. At another time, he came face to face with Emily Penshurst and her father. He touched his hat politely and offered her a small bow. The banker nodded in a not too friendly manner. The girl bowed her head and flashed him a warm smile.

As they passed out of earshot, Penshurst said: “That man makes me uneasy. I shall be glad when Carson is fit again and he can move on.”

“Maybe he'll stay, father,” she said.

“Not him,” he told her, “he's not the staying kind.”

His daughter was silent till they reached the store and she left him. He passed on to the bank, thinking that Emily had an exceptionally fine color this morning and her eyes were unusually bright.

McAllister leaned up against a sidewalk upright and thought about last night. Pity he wasn't a settling man. Emily Penshurst would be a mighty fine woman to settle with. He sighed and went on his way.

The day dragged on. He ate his mid-day meal with Pat in the eating-place, took Jim Carson's meal to him and then slept the afternoon through while Pat kept an eye on the town. He awoke at five in the evening, washed up and had a shave at the pump to the rear of the office, sat talking with Jim Carson for a while and then strolled through the town. A small bunch of trail-drivers came rocketing in from the grazing grounds, he greeted them and reminded them to park their guns. They all knew him and were civil enough. He paid the red-light district a visit, had a beer with a leading madam, then walked back to Garrett. Here he met Emily again. She blushed at the sight of him and he was glad that she was alone.

“Emily,” he said, “I've been thinkin' about last night-”

She looked at his feet and said: “Don't dare remind me of it, sir.” There was no reproach but only warmth in her voice.

“I've been remindin' me of it all day, I reckon. I'll be rememberin' it till I'm an old man.”

“You and your Texas soft tongue.”

“It's God's truth.”

“Rem,” she said, “father said you'll be moving on when Mr. Carson's well again. Is that so?”

“I never tried to fool you, girl.”

“I know. You're honest at least.”

“Least!” he snorted. “Bein' honest ain't least. It's the most
Say, Emily, could we walk this evening. I ain't never seen you in the moonlight.”

She laughed.

“Can you guarantee a moon?”

“It'll be there.”

“Then I can't refuse.”

“Good. When and where?”

“Out back of my place at nine?”

“Sure. Pat can have the town for a while.”

She gave him a smile and went on her way. Her thoughts were confused. She no longer knew where she stood with Will Drummond and she was almost sure that McAllister was right and Drummond had been mixed up in the killings. She realised that she had nothing to go on and that it was McAllister's strength of character that had convinced her. Now she didn't seem to care. For the first time in her life only today seemed to matter. Why did that man McAllister so easily convince her that being herself was right? Maybe she would regret this bitterly later. But somehow she was sure that she would not. McAllister could ride away tomorrow and she would remember him only in a warm and even grateful way. There was nothing mean and small about the man, he didn't pretend to be something he was not. He admitted to being what he was. He didn't want to settle, so he would not. If she had refused him, he would have walked away with regret but without malice.

She found herself singing as she went into the house.

McAllister was humming to himself as he went into the office. Pat smoked his pipe behind the desk. Carson was cutting his nails with his pocket knife.

Carson snarled: “All right for you to look so damned happy. You ain't chained to this Goddam bed.”

McAllister played a game of checkers with him and that seemed to cheer him a bit. Then McAllister carefully dismantled and cleaned his gun, washed his hands, combed his hair and said: “Pat, keep an eye on the town for a while, will you?”

The Irishman said: “Sure. Holy saints, if I didn't know better, I'd say you was after courtin' a wee girl.”

“Would you now,” said McAllister, slipped into his coat and went out onto the street. Dusk was dropping softly over the town. He walked a block, halted at the mouth of the alleyway there, spent five minutes watching the street, then slipped into the alley. Reaching the end, he turned half-left and crossed an empty lot. He walked until he had the Penshurst place on his
left and some trees on his right, then swung into the trees. It was almost pitch dark under there. He waited patiently for thirty minutes, not seeing any movement to rouse his suspicion, till the kitchen door of the house opened and the figure of the girl was briefly silhouetted against the light. He went forward to meet her and a moment later she was in his arms. They kissed, then went arm in arm through the trees.

“This,” she said, “is as crazy as can be, but I'm happy. Are you happy, Rem?”

He said: “I feel so durned good I could sing and dance.” He put his arm around her and she slipped her own around his waist.

Slowly, they went through the timber toward the creek. She thought:
If only I weren't a woman and I could ride away with this man.
Go and see far places, get out of the rut of being a woman in a man's world. Yet that was plain foolishness, because she had never been more glad that she was a woman.

They stopped near the creek, he took off his coat and they lay down on it together, talking softly, foolishly and greatly to their pleasure. They stayed there for an hour and during all that time Emily never wondered once how she, a lady, came to be lying on the ground by a creek with a man as rough as this. If she had thought of such a thing a short time before she would have been deeply shocked. After an hour, she sat up, arranged her hair and said, smilingly: “You do muss a woman so, sir.”

He kissed her and she put her arms around his neck.

“Enough of that,” he said. “I have to get you home. Where're you supposed to be at, by the way?”

“At a girl friend's.”

He strapped on his gun and stood. She rose and took his hand. Suddenly, he stiffened. Startled, she looked around. He was staring toward the timber, but she could neither hear nor see a thing.

He moved with such sudden violence that she screamed. She was knocked from her feet as the shot came. She fell on the ground screaming. McAllister drew his gun fast and fired two shots into the trees. He ran several paces to the left and flung himself down. A shadow flitted in the trees; he fired another shot. Twigs crackled under fleeing feet. He fired again, but knew that he had lost his man. Ejecting spent shells and thumbing in fresh, he rose to his feet.

“Rem.”

In a second he was down on one knee at her side.

God, she'd been hit.

Panic swooped through him.

He could see the dark stain on her dress, high up above the heart. The left shoulder. Holstering his gun, he hastily ripped some cloth from the tail of his shirt, rolled it into a tight wad and pressed it down on the wound after he had ripped her dress clear of it.

“Hold that tight against the wound,” he ordered her curtly. Her great eyes watched him. He ripped the bandanna from around his neck and tied it around her shoulder. It tended to pull the wadding away from the wound, so he took a length of peggin string that he was never without from his pocket and lashed it around the upper part of her body, pulling the wadding back into place.

“You're goin' to be all right, honey,” he said. “No call to be scared now.”

“I'm not scared, but I think I'm going to faint.”

“Go right ahead. When you wake up the doc'll be looking after you.”

He kissed her on the forehead, draped the coat around her and lifted her from the ground. He went along the creekside trail, not risking going into the trees for the short-cut in case the gunman should still be there waiting for them. It took him a good ten minutes to reach Main and he sweated all the way terrified that the girl would die. This was all his damn-fool fault. He was spotted at once and soon he had a crowd around him. Pat came out of the office. A kid was sent scurrying for the doctor. By the time McAllister reached Garrett there must have been more than a hundred people around him. A man being shot wouldn't arouse comment, but a girl like Emily Penshurst getting hit was sure news. Questions were fired at him, but he turned them away. When they knocked at the Penshurst door, the banker answered and he went to pieces at once. McAllister told Pat to clear the crowd away and carried Emily upstairs. He found her room, laid her on the bed and lighted the lamp. She opened her eyes and smiled.

He sat on the bed and held her hand.

Penshurst came in and fluttered around, saying that he loved his daughter and please God don't let her die. Emily told him that she had no intention of dying. McAllister suggested Penshurst go and get himself and McAllister a drink. The man weaved off, but he was back in a moment with the doctor.

The young man's face was grave as he bent over Emily and
took the dressing off her. He gave the wound a careful inspection and asked McAllister: “Any exit hole in the back?”

“No, the lead's still in there.”

The girl looked at McAllister and her eyes pled with him.

The doctor said: “Boiling water.”

McAllister went downstairs and found water on the stove. He poured this into a clean bowl and took it upstairs. The doctor poured some carbolic into the water and started cleaning the wound. McAllister had seen some pretty gruesome sights in his life and thought that nothing could affect him, but the sight of the doctor probing the livid wound in the soft white flesh of the girl upset him. Penshurst hurried from the room. McAllister could have used a drink, but he stayed where he was holding the girl's hand. It seemed an eternity before the doctor held up the forceps and showed him the piece of lead.

“Thank God for that,” McAllister said.

The doctor dressed the wound with clean wad and bandage.

“Keep her warm and watch for a temperature,” the doctor told him. “She'll pull through. She's young and she's strong. I'll look in again at daybreak.”

McAllister said: “I have my job, doc-can you send a woman?”

“Sure, I'll get one along right now.” The doctor went. Penshurst wandered in with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. “How is she?” he asked.

“I'm all right, papa,” the girl told him. “The doctor says I'm going to be all right.”

McAllister took the whiskey from him and drank from the bottle. That made him feel a little better. Penshurst wandered away again. The last half-hour seemed to have aged him ten years.

McAllister sat with the girl until the woman arrived, somebody Emily knew. He patted the white hand that lay on the coverlet and said: “I have a little business to attend to. I'll be right back.”

“Be careful.”

He grinned reassurance and went downstairs.

Outside, the cool air hit him. Until now he hadn't realised how hot it had been in the house. He thought about what he would do next. His first idea was to get Pat with his shotgun, but he ruled that out. This was personal as well as official. He had to do this himself without help.

So where did he start?

Drummond's place. He'd search the whole town if necessary.

He wondered what frame of mind the man would be in now. Either he could be planning to bluff it out or he could be panicking and ready to run. McAllister thought he was ready to run. In Drummond's boots, he knew
he
would have been.

He started down Garrett.

* * *

Will Drummond was confused. For once that brain of his was refusing to remain cool. Ever since he had seen McAllister with the girl he had lost his sense. For the first time in his adult life he had acted on impulse. One man's life had stood between himself and safety and now he had given himself away and that man was hunting him. He had followed McAllister and the girl because he was jealous when he should have been following them because the man had to be killed. The only weapon he had taken with him was a hand-gun when he should have taken a rifle. The light had been bad, the range too long. He cursed himself savagely.

Now what?

What must he do?

He seemed to have lost all sense of direction. He was here in his house, sitting and beating his forehead with his clenched fist. He had failed utterly. He had shot the girl instead of the man. The whole town could be hunting him if Emily was dead. His world was collapsing about him. This could mean utter ruin.