The sun slid into
a slot in the granite pinnacle on the west side of the stronghold, throwing long fingers of shadow across the two men struggling to drag the bodies of the Indian woman and the Mountie corporal onto the buffalo robe. When they stooped to lift one side of the robe, Lorenzo Bliss stirred himself for the first time in an hour.
“Hang on.” Throwing his splinted left arm straight out for balance, he put his right hand on the ground and pushed himself to his knees and then his feet. He found his bowie knife where it had fallen and knelt over the bodies. After a minute he wiped the knife on the robe, sheathed it, and rose, holding a long iron-gray banner in his right hand. I looked down, saw the raw red patch on the front of Wolf Shirt's skull, and directed my gaze to the scuffed toe of my left boot until my stomach walloped to a halt.
“I always wanted a chiefs scalp.” He held the thing by one end and snapped it several times like a whip to shake off the loose gore. “You know how to tan one of these things, Charlie?”
“Cherokee don't take scalps.” Whitelaw buckled on Barrymore's belt.
“I reckon if I soak it in brine and dry it in the sun, it'll keep. I'll get it wove into a belt or something later.” He pulled off the kerchief he had tied around his neck and tried wrapping the bloody end in it one-handed, but he was clumsy. Whitelaw took the scalp from him, wound it a few times around one hand, then took the kerchief and tied it into a neat bundle and stuck it into the side pocket of Bliss's canvas coat. “Don't forget and leave it in there if you don't want to stink like a goat.”
“Or an injun.” Bliss grinned.
“Better an injun than a greaser mick bastard.”
They were friends again now.
Bliss sent Yeller to collect the hip guns he'd taken off us. When he returned carrying one in each hand with two more stuck in his belt, Bliss relieved him of my Deane-Adams and came over to where I was sitting on the ground. He cocked the revolver, stuck the barrel under my chin, and lifted it. I saw my reflection in his black eyes.
“What do they call you in Montana?” he asked.
“Murdock.”
“Hell, I never heard of you.” He raked the sight across the underside of my chin, took the pistol off cock, and shoved the barrel under his belt. “You want it, take it,” he said.
I yanked it out and thrust it into his groin in the same motion. I felt his reaction right through it. He'd expected me to think about it first.
Something hard and cold touched my left temple, still tender from the blow earlier: the muzzle of Roy's Springfield.
“You shoot, you die,” he said.
I spun the Deane-Adams, offering the handle to Bliss. I managed
to loosen my grip before he could tear my hand with the sight the way he had my chin.
“Lolo, if you was any dumber you couldn't bore an asshole in a wood duck,” Whitelaw said. “He ain't one of them tin panners on the Saskatchewan.”
“Blast him, Roy,” Bliss said.
“Back off, Roy. Them Mounties will think we're shooting our prisoners.”
Roy backed off.
Bliss leaned his face close to mine. Beads of sweat showed in the delicate cleft in his upper lip. “When I get you down on the ground, I'll gut you like a frog.”
I said nothing. He walked away.
“You should have pulled the trigger.” The sergeant's voice was a hissing snarl.
Vivian said, “If he had, you'd be sitting with his brains in your lap.”
I didn't take part in the discussion. Roy's carbine wasn't the reason I hadn't fired. I never drew a weapon just to make a point. In the natural order of things I'd have emptied the chamber under the hammer as soon as I felt resistance on the other end, before the old man had a chance to throw down on me. If it had been Whitelaw instead of Bliss, or any of the others, I wouldn't have hesitated. One of the things I'd learned from war is that wounding a man causes more trouble for the enemy than killing him outright; if they cared about their own, an injured man took two more out of combat to carry him to safety, and a delay of a few minutes can make the difference in the way a battle comes out. Bliss's arm was already crippled. That meant he'd need help getting down off the rock and making his escape with the others. Dead, he'd be left where he fell to feed whatever did the work
of buzzards in Canada, and the rest would be free to flee at their own pace.
Of course, I was counting plenty on Vivian's Mounties being in a position to take advantage of the slowdownâand on Whitelaw and the rest of the gang thinking enough of Lolo to mess with the burden.
In a little while the sun had gathered up the last of its heat and stolen below the edge of the rock. The last yellow flames of the campfire were licking at the crumbs of unburned wood that remained and warmed little but themselves. The first steel clamp of Arctic cold closed around my ears and neck. I turned up the bearskin's collar and buttoned it to my throat. It chafed the flesh beneath my chin where Bliss had raked it with the Deane-Adams' front site.
The chill made Bliss's arm throb. He paced about to increase his circulation, working the fingers that stuck out as red as radishes between the splints and calling Whitelaw in English and Spanish a whore's son for ever suggesting they leave the Nations for this frozen shitpile in the middle of no place. The fact that Bliss's own mother was a whore didn't seem to enter into the logic of the moment. The Cherokee paid him no attention. He was busy drilling the others on what he expected of them when he gave the order to pull out. Corporal Barrymore's uniform had begun to have its effect upon his tone and bearingâand on the way Laban and Redfoot and Roy and Yeller and the rest nodded assent. In all that murdering crew there was not one word said in interruption. Brass and bright colors were much easier to make sport of at a distance than close up and when your immediate future depended upon who was wearing it. Beneath that lay the understanding that Whitelaw and Bliss had taken them this far, with hundreds of peace officers in two countries wearing out horseflesh and telegraph wires to capture them
and stretch their necks. These men would have laughed to read the superhuman stuff that was written about the pair in the eastern dreadfuls, but they would not have discounted it as impossible.
It was nearly dark now in that high hollow circle of weathered and broken stones, but there was still plenty of light on the flat. We were waiting for the darkness to reach the ground. A lantern was lit so Roy could keep an eye on us prisoners, but the wick was turned low to preserve the gang's night vision. The coal-oil fumes mingled with the lingering sulphur stink of spent powder and the stench of butchering, and might have made me retch if I had anything in my stomach. I realized then how many hours had passed since I'd eaten. My stomach rumbled.
The top layer of purple turned dirty-brown over the western territories, then disappeared beneath the black. There was no moon, but the snow provided its own illumination, with the lake a tattered black oval in the white. A pie-faced youth the others called Stote, with a downy froth of whiskers and nails gnawed down to bleeding stumps, produced a grubby almanack, moved his lips over it in the light from the lantern, and announced they had an hour before the rise of the quarter moon. Whitelaw's instructions kicked in then. Vivian, the sergeant, and I were told to stand up and herded through the cleft to the ledge where Bliss and Whitelaw had first thrown down on us. There, armed with the lantern and his Springfield, Roy held us at bay while the two Negroes went over the edge and Yeller tied a rope from his kit around Bliss's chest under his arms. Then Stote and a man with yellow-brown eyes like a wolfs helped Bliss over the edge and lowered him, grunting advice and curses, to where Laban and Redfoot waited to receive him where the descent relaxed into a gentle grade. The process must have been agonizing for Bliss, but he bore it in silence, probably with teeth clenched; any complaint
would have carried down to the lake and given the Mounties too much time to think. I caught a glimpse of him on the way down, dangling with his splinted arm stuck out to the side like a damaged wing, and remembered the too many men I had seen hanged. And I wondered if he was in too much pain to ask himself if this was what he had to look forward to.
When he was safely down and untied, Stote and the wolf-eyed man made the end of the rope fast to a rock for the rest to clamber down. Yeller, who had rescued Wolf Shirt's longbow from the buffalo robe, passed it down for Bliss to use as an alpenstock to steady himself during the walk down, then used the rope to lower himself hand over hand. The others, all except Roy and Whitelaw, followed him; then Whitelaw fixed the Henry over his shoulder by its sling and made the descent somewhat clumsily; a century of the white man's brand of civilization had leeched away most of the survival skills of his Cherokee ancestors.
Then it was our turn. Roy stood back with his carbine while the sergeant climbed down and then Vivian. The bearskin dragged heavily when I was hanging by just my hands, and I wished I'd thought to toss it down ahead of me; but then I found a foothold on the cliff and the rest wasn't much more difficult than climbing down a ladder. I jumped the last three feet and grabbed the twisted trunk of a small jackpine to find my balance on the slope.
Roy had no sling on his carbine and so passed it down by its barrel for Yeller to take hold of the stock. I saw then where someone had carved a series of shallow nicks in the walnut near the buttplate. Just five notches seemed low, given the gang's run; but then he might have lost interest since he'd cut the last one.
He was older than any of the others and probably had rheumatism, which the cold would only have aggravated. It took him
the best part of five minutes just to climb over the edge, where he rested with one knee braced against it before trusting his weight to the rope. Silhouetted against the slightly lighter sky, he appeared to be shaking. Whitelaw had to bark his name before he decided to push off and hang by his hands, and then his grip wasn't up to it. He made a croaking little gasp and dropped ten feet. One leg turned under when he hit. I heard the bone snap clean as the rest of him flopped into a heap at Whitelaw's feet.
“My leg's busted! Oh, Mother of God!” His voice cracked.
“Try getting up,” Whitelaw said. “Maybe you just banged it good.”
Laban stuck out his hand. Roy grasped it and tried to stand. He howled and fell back. Yeller, who had carried the lantern down, held it while the big man leaned over Roy. Laban straightened. “Bone's sticking right out through his pants.”
“Jesus God!” Roy groaned. “Oh, Jesus.”
Yeller said, “We can't carry him.”
“He knows where we're headed,” Whitelaw said. “No shots.”
Yeller handed the lantern to Laban and got out his skinning knife. Roy was hurting too much to see what was coming until just before Yeller cut his throat. His cry ended in a gurgle.
“Old Roy.” Stote stroked his nascent beard. “I'll miss his lies about riding with Frank and Jesse.”
Bliss said, “Don't you boys go getting no ideas about me. I can move just as fast with both arms busted.”
“Hell, Lolo.” Yeller wiped off his knife on Roy's shirt and returned it to its sheath. “You ride with
both
arms stuck out like that, you'll just take off and fly like a big old kite.”
“Just don't you boys go getting no ideas about me.”
Whitelaw picked up Roy's Springfield from where Yeller had left it leaning against a rock and handed it to the wolf-eyed man.
“Keep an eye on Murdock and the redbirds. Hands high, the three of you.” He gave Stote the Henry and lifted his own hands. He was playing the part of a prisoner; the only difference was he had one of the confiscated side arms in his belt holster with the flap undone.
With Whitelaw leading we picked our way down the rockfall. It was treacherous going in the dark without the use of our hands. The sergeant, walking in front of me and behind Vivian, put his foot wrong once and would have fallen against the inspector and knocked him down if I hadn't caught him by the shoulders. For my trouble I got a poke in the kidneys from the carbine in the hands of the wolf-eyed man, who thought I'd tried to make a break.
The closer we got to the ground, the better we could see. The surface of the snow gathered the high dim dusting of starlight and threw it back magnified, like the crystal in a chandelier, slicing the shadows off crisp at the edges and washing everything else in icy white. Even distant details seemed more sharply defined than in daytime, as if I were looking at them through a pinhole in a sheet of foolscap. When we got to within a hundred yards of where the horses were tethered, stamping and shaking their manes for warmth in the silvery smoke of their spent breath, I could make out the snake-shaped blaze on the mustang's forehead. The chestnut coats of the animals belonging to the North-West Mounted gleamed like silk hats.
The mustang spotted us first. Hungry and cold, it raised its head and cut loose with a shrill, querulous neigh.
That was when the night blew apart with orange and blue muzzle-flashes and the
tchocketa-tchocketa-tchock
of the Gatling coughing up its lungful of lead.