He was playing a game where life was the blue chip. A step into the open meant to chuck that blue chip on the table. And he had but one. His eyes returned to the trees.
He thrust his right hand into the front of his coat to warm his fingers against his body. Stiff fingers might fumble or drop a gun. Then his eyes saw what his brain knew was there: a spot of darkness in the tops of the trees.
A small thing, a simple thing, yet the price of a man’s life. A place in the branches where there was no snow.
Somebody had to be under that spot with a going fire.
Rising heat waves had melted the snow above it.
It was all of thirty yards away, but knowing now where he must look, King Mabry found it.
Drifted snow over a pile of debris. Not so large or imposing as his own shelter, but enough to conceal a man who lay in warmth while he waited with a rifle for Mabry to emerge and die.
Mabry possessed one advantage. His pursuer could not be aware that his presence was known. From behind the windbreak Mabry studied the situation with infinite care.
The unknown watcher lay close to the ground, which decreased his field of vision. Without rising from his hiding place that man could see nothing lower than three feet above the ground, and the snow was that deep in the creek bottom.
Dropping to his knees, Mabry dug out snow, working with care to disturb no snow where it might be seen by the watcher. He worked slowly. In that temperature perspiration could easily be fatal, for when one stopped working the moisture would freeze into a thin film of ice inside one’s clothing, and death would follow quickly.
There was a huge log, a great snow-covered tree that lay on an angle, its far end almost flanking the hiding place of the watcher. Mabry dug his way to that deadfall, then crawled along the ground behind it. When he reached the upthrust roots at its base, he stood up. Concealed by the wall of tangled roots and frozen earth embedded around them, he could see behind the shelter, yet at first he saw nothing. A snowflake touched his cheek with a damp, cold finger.
Mabry brushed his coat. W*inpicked up a flurry of snow, swept it along, then allowed it to settle down. The wind was not blowing so hard now.
A branch cracked in the cold. There was no other sound but the wind.
Smoke rose from his own fire, and a thin tendril of smoke that died quickly from the watcher’s shelter.
Mabry kept his right hand under his coat and close to his gun. He was forty yards away. Slow anger was building in him. He did not like to be hunted.
Whoever the watcher was, he planned murder.
Mabry’s face, darkened by many suns and winds, seemed now to be drawn in hard planes. It was a still face, remote, lonely. It was the face of a hunter.
He did not want to kill, yet he did not want to die. And this man had chosen the field, selected his victim. Yet he did not know the manner of man he hunted. He looked for a fat cat, he found a tiger. Wind flurried. Behind the shelter there was an indefinite movement. He felt the cold, knew he could not long remain away from his fire. Yet this was the time for decision.
He was born to the gun. He had lived by the gun.
Perhaps someday he would die by the gun. He had not chosen the way, but it was his way and he lived among men who often understood no other.
Mabry could be patient now. He knew what lay ahead, knew what he could do. He had been hunted before, by Kiowas, Comanches, Sioux, and Apaches. He had also been hunted by his own kind.
He took his hand from his coat and rolled a smoke.
He put it in his lips and lit up. He squinted his eyes against the first exhalation and looked past the blown smoke at the shelter. He warmed away the momentary chill that had come to his hand.
There was no target, nothing. The man there was warm.
He was cold. There was no sense in waiting longer.
A heavy branch of evergreen hung over the other man’s shelter, thick with a weight of snow, a bit away from the circle of warmth from the fire… but near enough.
Mabry drew his gun, tested the balance in his palm, judged the distance, and fired Cut by the bullet, the branch broke and the snow fell, partly outside the shelter, partly inside.
And probably on the man’s fire. The sound of the shot racketed down the ravine, and silence followed.
Mabry’s feet were icy. The chill was beginning to penetrate. He thrust his gun back inside his coat and watched a little smoke rise, thick smoke. The hidden man had lost his fire.
The slide of snow from the branch had done what Mabry hoped it would, and now the watcher must lie there in the cold to await death by freezing, or he must come out.
Yet Mabry himself was cold, and the hidden man had shelter from the wind. A slight movement within the shelter alerted him, but nobody appeared. The watcher’s shelter was only a place where a man could keep from the wind. There was no room for fuel, scarcely space for a man and a fire. Wind whined among the trees. Branches creaked in the cold.
Snow flurried, whipped across the point, then died out. The wind was going down, the storm was over. Yet Mabry did not intend to be followed when he moved on again. He moved quickly to another hiding place behind a tree. He was not twenty yards from the man’s hideout now and he could see the darkness of the hole into which the man had crawled. This man had waited in ambush to kill him. He had followed him for two days or more.
“Come out.” Mabry did not speak loudly, for in the still air the smallest sound could be heard. “Come out with your hands up, or come shootin :” Silence.
And then he came with a lunge, throwing himself from the shelter, rifle in hand. He had heard Mabry’s voice, so he knew where to look, yet the instant it took to separate his target from the trunks of the trees was fatal. Yet at the last moment, Mabry shot high. His bullet smashed the man on the shoulder, turning him half around. The rifle dropped and the ‘wounded man grasped at the wound, going to his knees in the snow. Then he fell, grabbing for the rifle.
King Mabry balanced his gun in his palm and walked nearer, ready to fire. He was cursing himself for a fool for not shootink to kill, yet in the instant he glimpsed the man’s face, he knew this was no gunman. And why add even a coyote to his list of killings?
Get me killed someday, he told himself cynically. The wounded man had fallen against the front of his shelter, which was only a hollow under the roots of a blow-down. There was blood on the snow, and blood on the man’s shoulder and chest.
He stared up at Mabry, hating him. He was a sallowfaced man with lean cheeks and a hawk’s hard face and a scar over one eye. Now it was a frightened face, but not one Mabry had ever seen before. “You.
.. you goin” to stand there?” “Why not?” Mabry asked coldly. “I wasn’t huntin’ Y.” “I hope you die! I hope you die hard!” “I will,” Mabry said. “I’ve been expecting it for years. Who put you on me?” “Why tell you?” the man sneered.
“You can tell me,” Mabry said without emotion, “or you can die there in the snow.” Grudgingly the wounded man said, “It was Hunter.
If you didn’t take the job, you were to die.” Mabry understood the truth of that. Ever since he arrived in Deadwood and understood why he had been hired, he should have expected this. They could not afford to have him talk.
No man lost blood in such cold and lasted long without care. If he left this man, he would die.
Dropping to his knee, he reached for the shoulder. The fellow grabbed at Mabry’s gun and Mabry hit him with his fist. Then he bound up the wound with makeshifts and then gathered up the guns and walked back to his own shelter. He had planned to stay another night, but there was evidence that the storm was breaking, and regardless of that, he could not keep the man here or leave him to die.
He rolled his bed and saddled up, then drank the rest of the coffee. Mounting, he rode back to where the man lay. The fellow was conscious, but he looked bad.