Finally, letting go with a shot, I slid back out of sight and got to my feet.
My horse cropped grass near some rocks, well under the shade. Shifting my rifle to my left hand, I slid down the rocks, mopping my face with my right. Then I stopped, my hand belt high.
Backed up against a rock near my horse was a man whom I knew at once, although I had never seen him. It was Rollie Finder. “You gave them boys hell.”
“They asked for it.”
As I spoke he smiled slowly and dropped his hand for his gun.
His easy smile and casual voice were nicely calculated to throw me off guard, but my left hand held the barrel of my rifle a few inches forward of the trigger guard, the butt in front of me.
As his hand dropped I tilted the gun hard and the stock struck my hip as my hand slapped the trigger guard.
Rollie was fast and his gun came up smoking. His slug struck me a split second after my finger squeezed off its shot. It felt as if I had been kicked in the side and I took a staggering step back, a rolling rock under my foot throwing me out of line of his second shot.
Then I fired again. I’d worked the lever unconsciously, and my aim was true.
Rollie fell back against the rocks. He was still smiling that casual smile. Only now it seemed frozen into his features. He started to bring his gun up and I heard the report. But I was firing … I shot three times as fast as I could work the lever.
Weaving on my feet, I stared down at his body. Great holes had been torn into him by the .44 slugs.
I scrambled back to my former position, and was only just in time. The men below, alerted by my shots, had made a break to get away. My head was spinning and my eyes refused to focus. If they started after me now, I was through.
The ground seemed to dip under me, but I raised my rifle and got off a shot, then another. One man went down and the others scrambled for cover.
My legs went out from under me and I sat down hard. My breath coming in ragged gasps, I ripped my shirt and plugged my wounds. I had to get away now. But even if the way were open, I could never climb to the cliff house.
Rifle dragging, I crawled and slid back to the buckskin. Twice I almost fainted from weakness. Pain gripped at my vitals, squeezing and knotting them. Then I got hold of the saddlehorn and pulled myself into the saddle. When I finally got my rifle into its scabbard I took some piggin strings and tied my hands to the saddlehom, then across my thighs to hold me on.
The buckskin was already walking, as if sensing the need to be away. I pointed him into the wilderness of canyons.
“Go, boy. Keep goin’.”
Sometime after that I fainted. … Twice during the long hours that followed I awakened to find the horse still walking westward. Each time I muttered to him, and he walked on into the darkness, finding his own way.
They would be coming after me. This remained in my mind. Wracked with pain, I had only the driving urge to get away. I pushed on, deeper and deeper into that lonely, trackless land made even stranger by the darkness.
Day was near when at last my eyes opened again. When I lifted my head the effort made it swim dizzily, but I stared around, seeing nothing familiar.
Buck had stopped beside a small spring in a canyon. There was plenty of grass, a few trees, and not far away the ruin of a rock house On the sand near the spring were the tracks of a mountain lion and of deer, but no sign of men, horses, or cattle. The canyon here was fifty yards wide, with walls that towered hundreds of feet into the sky.
Fumbling at the strings with swollen fingers, I untied my hands, then the strings that bound my thighs. Sliding to the ground, I fell. Buck snorted and stepped away, then returned to sniff curiously at me. He drew back from the smell of stale clothes and dried blood, and I lay staring up at him, a crumpled human thing, my body raw with pain and faint with weakness.
“It’s all right, Buck.” I whispered the words. “All right.”
I lay very still, staring at the sky, watching the changing light. I wanted only to lie there, to make no effort … to die.
To die?
No…
There had been a promise made. A promise to Moira, and a promise to a tired old man who had been killed.
Yet if I would live I must move. For they would not let me go now. They would hunt me down. Jim Finder would want to kill the man who had shot his brother, and there was Bodie Miller, from Maclaren’s.
Now … I must act now … fix my wounds, drink, find a place to hide, a place for a last stand. And it had to be close, for I could not go far.
Nothing within me told me I could do it. My body was weak, and I seemed to have no will, but somehow, someway, I was going to try.
Rolling over, I got my hands under me. Then I started to crawl…
SEVEN
Pulling myself to the edge of the waterhole, I drank deep of the clear, cold water. The coolness seemed to creep all through the tissues of my body and I lay there, breathing heavily.
A sea of dull pain seemed to wash over me, yet I forced myself to think, to fight back the pain. I must bathe my wounds. That meant hot water, and hot water meant a fire.
Yet there was such weakness in me that I could scarcely close my hand. I had lost much blood, I had not eaten, and I had ridden far with the strength draining from my body.
With contempt I stared at my helpless hands, hating them for their weakness. And then I began to fight for strength in those fingers, willing them to be strong. My left hand reached out and pulled a stick to me. Then another. Some scraped-up leaves, some fragments of dried manzanita … soon I would have a fire.
I was a creature fighting for survival, fighting the oldest battle known to man. Through waves of recurring delirium and weakness, I dragged myself to an aspen, where I peeled bark to make a pot in which to heat water.
Patiently, my eyes blinking heavily, my fingers puzzling out the form, I shaped the bark into a crude pot, and into it I poured water.
Almost crying with weakness, I got a fire started and watched the flames take hold. Then I put the bark vessel on top of two rocks and the flames rose around it. As long as the flames stayed below the water level the bark would not burn, for the water inside would absorb the heat. Trying to push more sticks into the fire, I blacked out again.
When next my eyes opened the water was boiling. Pulling myself up to a sitting position, I unbuckled my gun belt and let the guns fall to the ground beside me. Then carefully I opened my shirt and, soaking a piece of the cloth in the hot water, began to bathe my wounds.
The hot water felt good as I gingerly worked the cloth plugs free, but the sight of the wound in my side was frightening. It was red and inflamed, but the bullet had gone clear through and as near as I see, had touched nothing vital.
A second slug had gone through the fleshy part of my thigh, and after bathing that wound also, I lay still for a long time, regaining strength and soaking up the heat.
Near by was a patch of prickly pear. Crawling to it, I cut off a few big leaves and roasted them to get off the spines. Then I bound the pulp over the wounds. It was a method Indians used to fight inflammation, and I knew of no other than Indian remedies that would do me here.
It was a slow thing, this working to patch my wounds, and I realized there was little time left to me. My enemies would be working out my trail, and I had no idea how far my horse had come in the darkness, nor over what sort of ground. My trail might be plain as day, or it might be confusing.
There was a clump of amolillo near by and I dug up some roots, scraping them into boiling water. They foamed up when stirred and I drank some of the foamy liquid. Indians claimed bullet wounds healed better after a man drank amolillo water.