Avoiding smooth patches that might conceal death pits beneath them, he scrambled over rough and broken lava, slipping once and skinning his knees. When he was around the end of the basin, he slowed down. His slicker was close to the color of the basaltic rock, and he moved now with great care.
A shot came from nowhere and something struck his shin a wicked blow. His leg buckled and he went down. But when he pulled up his pant leg he saw only a great, rapidly growing swelling, split along the top. He had been struck by a fragment of rock knocked loose by the bullet.
He hunched behind a hummock of lava until the numbness went out of his leg, but when he started to move, it was with a limp. He had a badly bruised shin-bone, nearly as painful if not as incapacitating as a break.
There would be no letup now. He was in a fight to the death, and with an opponent superior to him in bushwhacking skill, and he must never remain for long in one place. Whatever else he was, Buckdun was a master hand at his business.
Flint moved now, half running, half crawling, utilizing every bit of cover. Once a shot clipped a bush near his head, another time a bullet burned the back of his calf as he jerked it from sight.
He saw nothing at which to shoot Apparently Buckdun was working with some scheme in mind. Suddenly, Flint looked around, and his quick glance took the wind out of him. For an instant he felt as if he had been hit in the belly by a stiff punch. Behind him was a wall of rock all of thirty feet high. Here the lava had come up, poured over and flowed away, leaving the cliff a sheer face that blocked all passage.
He had been cleverly herded like a sheep into a cul-de-sac from which there seemed no escape. To go back the way he had come he must first advance, going directly toward Buckdun’s gun. And that was exactly what Buckdun would expect him to do. louis
He was under cover. For the moment he was invisible to the hunter, and he glanced quickly around. There was a dip in the rock, a gully worn by water pouring down over the lava toward the depression at the foot of the wall. Ducking into it, he ran bent over, straight to the wall.
To the right there was a blank wall, then one of those pits. He went that way, but there was a sheer drop, the edge running back under his feet. In the bottom was the jagged rock that had once been the roof of the pit. Among the rocks grew a few pines, some of them seventy feet, but their tops still below the rim.
Turning, he went back in the opposite direction. He had but a few minutes, and there was no cover here, nor any concealment.
He paused, knowing that a little thought was better than a lot of running. He could wait, but he could be butchered from cover if he waited, without ever seeing a target for return fire.
He went on to the left, and there the wall took a sharp bend, falling back several feet before continuing on. Nowhere was there a break, nor was there any cover.
And then he saw his chance.
Here, where the rock wall jogged, there was a chimney. It was a crack in the wall that widened toward the top. Here at the bottom it was about level with his head, but only a few inches wide. Toward the top it became at least four feet wide.
Yet, if he was in that crack when Buckdun came upon him, he would have no chance. He would be caught there, trapped like a rabbit in a snare, to be shot at will.
And he did not even know if he could get into the crack and reach the top. He might fall. He had heard of rock climbers doing such things, but had never attemped it himself. But it was his only chance, and he was going to try.
The corner of the wall was out of sight of Buckdun until he came far toward this side, and he would have to hope that Buckdun did not make it until he had reached the top … if he could do it at all.
He looked up at the V-shaped crack. There was no place to get a proper handhold. The sharp V left no room for the fingers of even one hand.
Somewhere behind him a foot scraped on stone. He took one quick glance up, slung his rifle, and jumped upward.
Chapter 19
With his left fist lifted high, Flint jumped and thrust the closed fist into the crack. The fist jammed there and he muscled himself up until he could get a hold on the side of the crack with his right hand. Releasing his fist, he took an opposite hold with it and worked his way higher until he could get a foot in the crack.
When the crack was wide enough he put his back against one side, his knee against the other, and worked his way up until he could get both knees against the side of the rock chimney. He struggled upward, opposing his back to his knees until he could grasp the edge with his left hand.
Below he heard the rattle of rocks, displaced by his exertions, and then the scrape of a moccasin or boot.
Gasping for breath, he kept himself braced. He must swing his right arm, grasp the edge, then pull himself over. If Buckdun showed while he was hanging there, he would be killed.
He had no time to waste. He swung his right arm across and up, and at the same time relaxed his pressure against the two sides of the crack. For an instant he hung there; then, with a tremendous heave, he pulled himself up and swung his leg over the rim.
He caught a glimpse of a dark figure below, felt the rain beating on his face, then rolled up and away, even as a bullet nicked the rim where he had been a moment before.
He lay flat on the wet rock, his lungs pumping at the air. Then slowly he pushed back a little farther and took the rifle from its sling. Only then did he look around.
The terrain here was like that below: higher, and with a wide view of broken lava and pock-marking pits. He got up and looked off in the distance. The hideout was not visible from here. He could see green where the basin pasture was, and far off to the south and west, an even larger area of green, enclosed by lava, undoubtedly the Hole-in-the-Wall.
He walked away from the rim, stepping carefully because of the knife-edged corrugations of the lava flow.
Buckdun crouched in the partial shelter of an overhang and cursed the driving rain. It destroyed visibility, made hunting a hazard. And it was a cold rain.
He made a small fire, considered what had happened so far, and felt a mounting depression. Nothing had been going right. With grudging admiration he reflected that he had never been sent after a man like this before. Who would think that a man could scale that cliff without wings? Yet Flint had done it.
He made himself a cup of tea. Flint was not going anywhere. Ordinarily Buckdun would have been afraid the man he hunted would get clean away, but Flint meant to see it through. Chewing on a piece of jerky, Buckdun sipped his tea, and stared gloomily at the gray, rain-screened world.
His shoulder was stiff and sore from the arrow wound, his pants were torn, and he was wet. There were a dozen cuts and abrasions on his hide from contact with the lava. Lightning flashed in the distance and he listened to the thunder roll its drums up a canyon, somewhere. He sipped his tea. Time to be getting on with it. He had a man to kill.
The bullet smashed the cup from his fingers and smacked viciously into the stunted pine under which he was sitting.
Buckdun rolled back quickly, his finger stinging from the violence that had smashed the cup from his hand. He reached out and grasped his rifle, snaking it to him. The bullet had surprised and shocked him deeply … he had been sure Flint would either remain atop the cliff or would take much more time in getting around it.
He started to rise, and three more bullets beat a rapid tattoo of searching fire. The first smashed into his small fire, scattering the sticks and sprinkling his sleeve with embers, the second drilled into the solid blackness of the tree, which might at a distance have seemed to be his body, and the third cut across his knuckles.