McAllister (4 page)

Franchon sucked his breath sharply through his teeth in a despair of rage.

“I'll kill you for this. Give me my gun and give me an even draw with you.”

“Don't make me laugh.”

Mcallister turned the smaller man around and pushed him away from him—“Keep out of my sight and don't let me hear another peep out of you. All right, you men, the ball's over.”

The men scattered, talking among themselves. At McAllister's elbow, von Tannenberg said: “You have made a bad enemy there.”

“Sure,” the big man said with apparent carelessness. “I have 'em all over.”

He turned and tramped back toward the corral.

Mcallister Slept lightly and with the Remington near his right hand. He lay on a blanket underneath one of the wagons in the corral and let the horses and mules around him act as his watch-dogs. The Navajo's pinto would sound off an alarm as good as a hound-dog any day. But he didn't leave the safety of the night entirely to the pony and the sentries posted. Every hour he crawled out from cover and went around the house as light on his feet as a cat to assure himself that all was well. That old instinct of his was working overtime and he knew it well enough to listen always to its warnings.

Towards dawn he awoke with a start.

He lay still and listened, wondering what had woken him. The stock were moving slightly, but there was no alarm among them. He searched back into the shallow memory of his disturbed sleep.

The sound that had alarmed him had been faint. He listened again and could hear nothing.

Slowly into his consciousness came that faint sound. He listened and he studied it in his mind and could not put a name to it. As he pulled off his boots, he mentally studied the layout of the place and the positions of the sentries. The sound did not come from the gate which looked onto the yard—there was one of his own men there. George Rawlins and George wouldn't be caught napping. No, this came from the far side of the corral.

Suddenly a new sound came to his ears and this time he recognised it at once. Water falling on the adobe walls of the corral. That puzzled him. He eased off the second boot and picked up the Remington.

Then he got it.

An old Apache trick.

First soak adobe wall in water, then cut through it with a rawhide thong. That was the first sound he had heard. Some smart Indian was over yonder cutting a new gateway in the corral. Come dawn, one of them would be inside, mounted on one of the saddle horses ready to drive them out.

That meant there was most likely one in here with him.

Cold water touched his spine and that clay was in his stomach again.

What about the soldier who had been on guard in here?

He eased himself out from under the wagon. It was pitch dark; no moon, no stars. The animals were no more than uncertain dark shapes in deeper darkness. An Indian might be standing within smelling distance of him. On tip-toe, he started toward the nearest wall, longing for the feel of it at his back. He reached the wall after what seemed a hundred years and he leaned against it with a sigh of relief.

But wait.

He had overlooked something. To use a rawhide rope as a saw meant two men—one on either side of the wall. And that meant there were probably two Apache inside. He started along the wall, aiming for the faint sound ahead of him.

He stopped abruptly and his heart seemed to leap into his mouth as the pinto whistled its alarm. The sweat broke out on McAllister. If that roused José, the Navajo might come on the run and upset the whole bag of tricks. As the stock stirred uneasily, he increased his speed of movement under cover of their noise. He got too near a mule and the animal lashed out at him with a wicked hind foot. He returned the compliment by kicking the animal away from him. It jumped forward and, by the sound of things, cannoned into another animal. There came a scream of rage and a fight broke out. Mcallister went forward on the run, shoved a horse clear of him and charged headlong into a man.

The Indian smell filled his nostrils, he heard a guttural grunt of surprise and alarm and involuntarily stepped back from the danger. As soon as he hit the wall and felt the powerful hand on him, he knew his mistake. He sensed rather than saw the gut-ripping action of the knife, struck downwards with the Remington and felt the barrel jar on a wrist. His hand slipped when he tried to grab the fellow and the Indian shouted a hoarse warning to the buck on the other side of the wall, but never finished it, because the long
barrel of the gun struck him full on the top of his skull with all McAllister's strength behind it.

The man's hand lost its grip on his shirt and, when Mcallister made a second make-sure aim at where he thought the man was, he was gone. Mcallister stepped forward and stumbled helplessly over the inert body.

That saved his life.

As he fell to his knees, a gun went off above his head and seemed to split the whole night asunder with its thunder.

Dazed and confused, Mcallister thrust out his left hand to find support against the wall, only to find that the wall was not there. He was right by the gap that the Indians had cut!

Instinct had taken complete command now. There was no time for thought. Turning, he lunged with the Remington through the gap, cocking and firing as fast as he knew.

A gun went off a few feet away and he felt the hot blast of the charge against his cheek. With his last two shots, he fired at the gun-flame and charged toward it. Again he tripped over a man and hit the ground heavily. As he got hurriedly to his feet, he heard the whole house come alive, men bawling in alarm, some fool firing off a gun at nothing.

A horse came through the gap in the wall on the run, he glimpsed a dark form crouched over its neck and clicked his gun harmlessly at it.

Cursing, he roared for somebody to bring a light.

By the time it was brought dawn's first cold gray fingers were in the sky. He found that he had killed the man on the outside of the wall and knocked the one on the inside senseless.

Von Tannenberg, he was glad to see, was as cool as he could desire. He told him the little he knew of what had happened. The Prussian rapped out his orders.

“Corporal, call the roll. Have this wall fixed. I want every approach to the house and corral covered by guns.”

Mcallister gave his own orders and the place bustled with activity. Somebody got a rope and the unconscious Apache was lashed so tight he could barely move his eyelashes. Whereas the man who had been killed had been past his prime, this one was young, probably not more than eighteen. He was thrown into the main room of the house and a soldier put to guard him. He did not speak even when threatened luridly in English by Corporal Young or in Spanish by
McAllister. When they finally brought in José to try him in his smattering of several Apache dialects, the young buck merely spat in his face. After that José had to be manhandled out of the building to stop him from killing the prisoner. The fact that the horse that had been stolen by the third Apache had been the pinto added to his contemptuous treatment from the prisoner sent him into a fury and he stood in the middle of the yard filling the air with Navajo and Spanish curses. Mcallister shouted for him to go and find something to do and behave himself, but he was too far gone in anger to listen to his employer. So Mcallister let him yell it out of his system for a half-hour, then sent him looking for sign and to make sure how many Indians there had been.

Von Tannenberg could not decide what he should do next. And he would not know until they were certain how many Indians had been involved. He told Mcallister that he saw no sense in marching out of here, getting ambushed and losing his precious stores and gold. Mcallister couldn't agree more.

Something happened that made up their minds for them.

Corporal Young came from his rounds on the run and he looked both mad and worried.

“Sir—we lost two men.”

Von Tannenberg and Mcallister swung on him.

The officer said: “Two men! What do you mean?”

“We found Dolan dead in the wash on the other side of the corral, sir. The Indians must have cut his throat and dragged him there on account of the dead body spooking the horses.”

“What happened to the other man?”

“I don't know, sir.”

Von Tannenberg became very much the Prussian officer as he rapped out: “What do you mean, you don't know? Is he dead?”

“No, sir. He's just gone, sir.”

“Who is he?”

“Sutter, sir.”

Sutter was a quiet Swiss boy of about twenty who had drawn little attention to himself. A bad horseman, Mcallister remembered. He'd had whispy fair hair and no need to shave.

The lieutenant thought for a moment.

“Very well, corporal. Bring the dead man into the corral
and bury him near the rancher. We'll say some words over them soon. Let the horses be walked over the grave, so we leave no trace for the Apache.”

The N.C.O. saluted and performed a fair about face. Mcallister noted that he was considerably shaken, but not scared by what had happened.

The big man laughed without humor and said: “This don't look so good a-tall, mister.”

Von Tannenberg smiled.

“I've seen worse. How good is that Navajo of yours?”

“Pretty good. When he's found something, I'll go out and make a check.”

The officer raised his fair eyebrows.

“You are a tracker?”

Mcallister nodded—

“I was suckled on a cactus and I teethed on a Navajo moccasin.”

When they had planted Nolan, they gathered the free men together and brought the woman from the house while von Tannenberg said some words from the good Book over the two dead whitemen. He had a deal of trouble with them because he had to translate in his mind from the German before he could say them aloud in English. Under any other circumstances they could have sounded comical. But now they didn't. The woman didn't weep this time, but prayed with a pale set face. When it was done, she walked back into the house without a word to anyone.

José came in and reported to Mcallister that he had found the foot-marks of three men, had tracked them and found where they had left their horses. The animals had been shod with steel.

McAllister, the Navajo and von Tannenberg squatted in the dust of the yard and considered that.

“It looks as if they belong to a bigger party. Gato's men lifted the horses from Fort Craddock. Is your man sure that they were Indians and not whitemen?”

Mcallister knew the answer, but out of politeness put the question to José in Spanish. Yes, they had been Apache all right. They were the men Mcallister had met in the corral. He had no doubt in his mind.

“What we want to know,” Mcallister said, “is how many
Indians are there and do they mean to hang around this neck of the woods?”

“They tried for these horses,” von Tannenberg said.

“So that looks as if they still want saddle-stock. And that means they'll hang around. What is easier for 'em than a nice slow wagon-train?” He stood up. “I'll go take a look around.”

George Rawlins came up.

“That Franchon's missing,” he said.

Mcallister and the officer looked at each other. Mcallister laughed—

“Looks like the Apache could save me a chore there.” But he didn't like the sound of that and he thought about it as he made his way into the corral to catch up a horse.

He got his saddle out of a wagon, bridled and saddled a lean bay, and yelled for somebody to fetch his rifle. George brought the old Henry rifle and shot it into the saddle-boot. José caught up a mule and got on its naked back and they trotted out of the yard. As he went, Mcallister glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman on the stoop, staring after him. The sight touched a chord of softness in him and he hastily dismissed it. He couldn't afford softness; he'd given that up long ago when he'd buried his wife after she had been cut down by a stray bullet from the gun of a cowhand on the spree six years back.

He and the Navajo picked up the tracks five minutes ride from the house and found little trouble in following them. After a while, they saw that the retreating Indian mounted on the pinto had swung north and left the trail of the three incoming ponies. He had taken the three riderless animals with him, driving them loose ahead of him.

“Bueno”
José grunted. “He goes slowly.”

“He can't afford to lose those horses.”

They lifted the horses to a canter and felt the heat of the day hit them. Within fifteen minutes, the country dipped and broke and Mcallister saw that a hundred yards ahead of them visibility would be cut down to a few yards in places. This he didn't like. They both halted and the horses blew.

José said: “I think now we go with great care.”

“Or,” Mcallister amended, “we go back.”

The Navajo nodded eager agreement.

“José,” Mcallister said, “I have a hunch we're still up
against just one Indian. You think if you was to get up on that high ground there, you could cover me?”

“Seguramente.”

“Good. Get going then.”

José turned his mule and kicked it into action, sending it bounding up the steep broken grade and staying on its bare back like a limpet. Mcallister dismounted, caught the line in his left hand and started forward, making as little noise as he could on the sandstone under his feet. The marks of the four horses were plain in front of him for about two hundred yards, then they stopped abruptly. Mcallister looked up at José and signalled to him that the sign had petered out. He pushed on, thinking that the Apache must indeed have been in a desperate hurry to have left a plain trail for so long.

Unless there was a catch in it and he was leading Mcallister into a trap. Could be.

He pulled the Remington from his belt and kept his thumb on the hammer. He had an idea that when he had to shoot, he'd have to make it as quick as he had ever done in all his life.