Gun For Hire Page 7

  Clay smiled, though his brow was furrowed in worry. He hated to think of the girl alone out there. Especially with men like Perez and Leffler riding around the valley.

  "Shake it up," Garrison ordered. The men got in the stage. One Clay knew as Joe Van Hoke. The other was his grizzled miner friend he'd met in Barstow, Jenks. He seemed to be preoccupied, not as friendly as usual. Looked as though he'd struck it fair, though; Clay hoped so, for his sake.

  "Ready, Pops?" Clay asked, riding up alongside the driver.

  "Ready as the devil. The horses are chompin' at their bits."

  "Okay, Garrison?" Clay asked.

  Garrison looked over his stage. He didn't look at Clay. "All right. Lead 'em out, Brand."

  "Ho!" Brand shouted and the stage creaked into movement. Pops Spinard gave a yell and rattled the reins across the four horses' backs. A few people watched as a couple gave out with mild cheers. The temperature was in the 40s and dropping fast. There was no wind.

  Clay rode ahead of the stage, his eyes looking ahead at the road and to the tall pines on either side. The valley was quiet and he knew it was getting colder. If they could make it over the top of the grade and get down to Cactus Flats they could outrun the storm. Snows could make them turn back at any time before Bairdsville. If they got caught anywhere between, they could lose the road, be trapped. Clay set a pace that he hoped would keep them from either alternative if the snows began to fall.

  He had ridden late the night before, trying to follow the tracks of the third man. Whoever he was, Clay gave him credit. He was smart. He had ridden to the rendezvous with Leffler and Perez a roundabout way, over rocks and up the stream. It had taken him a long time to follow the elusive trail. It had petered out in the rocks above the Wilson mill, where it was mingled with boot tracks and other horses' and mule prints. By that time it was below freezing and his horse was tired and hungry. So was he. He had given up and now regretted that he hadn't followed Jingo and Nat into Union Flats.

  There was nothing to do about it now, but he was frankly puzzled. Those two had laid low for three weeks or so and then had suddenly come through Belleville in the open. Who had they been riding to meet? Clay had no idea, but whoever it was, sure didn't want to be found out.

  The coach followed him at a good clip. They passed the road that led to Union Flats, dipped down after a ways, then began the torturous climb on the twisted road they called Gold Fever Trail. This led to the Lucky Baldwin then dropped down and went through Doble and on to Bairdsville by Baldwin Lake.

  The coach slowed on the steep grade. Snow flakes began to fall, slowly at first, then more rapidly as the temperature dropped to freezing and below. Clay stopped his horse and turned around. He rode up to Pops. "We're getting it now," Clay said, as large snowflakes swirled around him. He drew up in his thick sheepskin coat that came to his waist, leaving his pistol exposed for easy drawing.

  Pops stopped the team. "Can we make it, Clay?" Pops asked, his mouth full of tobacco. Some of it was freezing to his beard.

  "Could be we're just in a cloud, the beginning of it. It might clear by the time we hit the Lucky Baldwin."

  "Might at that," Pops agreed. "We're totin' a heavy load, sure enough." He spat darkly into the rushing snow. The sky seemed to be down to their heads.

  "Get 'em cracking, then. I'll stay close."

  "Haw!" yelled Pops. The passengers who had peered out during the conversation quickly pulled their heads back in and pulled the curtains closed to keep out the snow.

  More and more snow began to fall. Clay felt as though he were in a tunnel. Faster and faster, the flakes fell. The snow began to stick to the rutted road. Behind him, Pops was floundering through it, his team straining at their harnesses, their shod feet slipping on the freezing ground. Their nostrils jetted columns of steam into the crisp air.

  The wind rose up then, gusts of it channeling straight into Clay's face and back of him, into the horses' and Pops' eyes. Scoops of snow whistled down on them as they rode the torturous trail, blinded by sudden stinging flurries.

  Clay let the team move up on him, hoping Pops could still see him in the blizzard. He himself had to peer down to his left where the slope dropped off sheer to make sure they were keeping on the road. Doubts flailed his mind. They were in a tough situation, yet there was not room enough here to turn around. They had to make it to the top or they wouldn't make it at all.

  The whiteness blinded Clay. There was no longer any definition of objects, of the road. Occasionally a tree's brown trunk showed itself in the blurred corner of his eye. They were in the middle of a low cloud and snow clung to their eyelashes. Pops' beard was white and frozen, his face floured as though he'd fallen into a bin. Clay's hat became caked and heavy. Snow clung to his bandana, melted and ran down his neck where it didn't freeze.

  The wind keened around him as he fought against it, his horse struggling vainly on the steep slope. They dropped off into another bend, the going easier for a few moments, then the road angled left again, steeper than before.

  Clay turned at the beginning of the next grade. He could no longer see the team behind him. He could hear them, or thought he could, panting for breath, clawing the deep snow that was piling up in drifts from the wind. He waited until he saw the lead horses plowing after him, their faces powdered, eyelashes drooping with gelid flakes of the heavy wet snow. There was a momentary lull in the storm. Clay urged his mount higher up the steep sloping road.

  The shapes loomed out of the snowstorm, sudden and deadly. He didn't expect them and he was caught off guard. He wheeled his horse, but too late. A slug caught him high on the shoulder. The muffled report from the rifle came from a long way away, as though in a dream.

  His horse was turned as the bullet ripped through his flesh. More shapes behind the stage. Flashes of fire, reports that sounded as though they were covered by pillows. Orange flame peppered the white screen he saw in his turning. Smoke billowed into the regenerated storm. His horse reared and he tried to control it, while dizziness tore at his eyes any brain.

  Something behind the coach. Another shape, dark and indefinable. Men screaming in the whiteness. Clay clawed for his pistol, trying to scrape the cobwebs of snow from his mind. Someone yelled and he felt something strike him just behind his right ear. In a daze, he felt himself go over the edge of the road, tumbling a thousand miles into a white hell that had no end while behind him the reports of firearms popped like Chinese fireworks.

  Everything became disconnected in an instant. The pain behind his ear grew into a vision of a rifle butt swinging high in the air, dark against the blinding white. His eyes filled with blood as he tumbled down, down, down into the steep canyon of white dreams, his body flying through the air, off his horse, the crashing of the animal's body no longer heard, no longer cared about in the unreal world of snow and endless space coming from somewhere behind him and rushing up now in front of him like some dark cloud opening and closing, opening and closing. . . .

  * * *

  "There's a dead man fer ya," said a man named Jess Purdy.

  "It hit him a good lick," said Nat Leffler. "Bullet in him anyways. Clean in his chest or shoulder. Good thing that wind let up for a minute."

  "I'll believe it when I see him laid out in a pine box," Jingo snapped. "Now, let's get to it."

  Pops Spinard lay slumped on the seat, the reins still in his hands. His eyes were filling up with snow, wide open, frosty as a lake frozen with air in its surface waters. The hole in his forehead was dark with blood the color of the tobacco on his teeth and lips.

  Jingo smashed Pops' head with his pistol butt, knocking Spinard into a clump on the boards.

  "Get him off of there, Jess," he ordered. "Anybody alive, Nat?"

  Nat was at the coach, opening the door. The stage was riddled with bullets.

  "This one is," Nat said. He jerked Andy O'Keefe from the cabin.

  "Clay?" Andy asked, in a daze. "Clay?"

  Jingo looked at the man Nat had dragged
from the stage.

  "Okay, Nat, Jess, get it moving before we're snowed in here. I'll bring up the other wagon."

  "Want me to finish this one, Jingo?" Nat asked, his pistol aimed at Andy's head.

  "No, I'll take care of him. Any friend of Clay Brand's is a friend of mine, right?"

  "Right," Nat leered.

  Jess Purdy tied his horse to the back of the stage while Nat searched and shoved the bodies of Jenkins and Van Hoke out of the way, near the spot Clay had gone over. Nat took the sacks of gold from the interior of the stage and put them in his saddle bags. He and Purdy drove the stage ahead through the storm, yelling and whipping the horses before them.

  Andy O'Keefe was in shock. Jingo dismounted and grabbed the man by the coat and drew him up from his knees. "You are the friend of Brand?" he asked, knowing who the man was before he asked.

  Andy nodded, his eyes bleary from the driving snow and the shock to his heart.

  "He is dead," said Jingo.

  "No, no, he's not," murmured O'Keefe.

  Jingo cracked the Irishman across the face with his pistol. Andy moaned and fell back, a three-inch river of blood welling in his cheek and nose. Jingo, his face a darkened mask of hatred, worked his spurs over Andy O'Keefe's face. His rowels, long and sharp-pointed, gouged deep holes, bubbling up blood that froze as it thinned.

  Andy tried to raise his hands. They were kicked away. In a blind rage, Jingo kept kicking and gouging, his spurs digging into flesh, ripping holes in Andy's neck, his chest and stomach.

  "Kathleen," Andy sobbed. Then, "Clay . . . Clay. . . ."

  Jingo cocked his pistol and placed it next to Andy's temple. He pulled the trigger. Andy fell away as a hole appeared in his left temple, tore through his head and ripped away skull and skin on the other side. His hands constricted and he seemed to shrivel up as the spasms of death wracked his body.

  Jingo kicked him to one side and then went to the wagon, leading his horse. He tied the animal up to the rear and cracked the two horses pulling the load of rock into motion. The wagon rolled up the twisting snowblown slope, following in the ruts left by the stage.

  The storm was less fierce over the shutdown Baldwin mine. The coach rolled in white silence, invisible, down past Doble and to Baldwin Lake. Jingo and his wagon caught up with Jess Purdy and Nat Leffler at the junction.

  "Run it in," Jingo ordered. "I'll meet you across the lake in a while." He raced his two-horse team up toward the Cushenbery Grade, while the others took the right fork toward the north end of Baldwin Lake. Jingo was satisfied. Everything had worked according to plan. At the top of the grade, he pulled the team off to the right. The snow was blowing across the top like sand, just as sharp and stinging, but twice as cold. He unhitched the horses and led them back to the fork between Doble and Bairdsville. He met Nat and Jess where they had come back from driving the stage into Baldwin Lake.

  "That snow'll take care of the tracks," Nat said.

  "Yes," said Jingo. "They won't find that coach until summer. Did you run it deep?"

  "Deep," said Jess. "She sunk fast."

  Jingo laughed as the snow kicked up a whirlwind around him. "Let them figure this one out," he said. Jess and Nat laughed with him.

  "Come on, boys," Jingo yelled as the storm increased its fury, "let's hole up in Starvation Flats until the storm blows over."

  Behind them, the wind and the snow began to cover all that had happened. The snow kept on through the night, blanketing the men who were killed and the trail of the coach and the wagon, of three men who had ridden away toward Bear Valley and Starvation Flats.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Clay awoke in pitch darkness. The snow was falling silent and heavy, softening the night to an eerie silence. His shoulder hurt and his head spun with lights and pain. He blinked his eyes, and struggled to sit up. He felt his body, wincing when his hand touched his shoulder. Carefully, his fingers probed the wound. From all he could tell, the bullet had passed through the top part of his shoulder, missing the bone, leaving a furrow that was coagulated with a thick poultice of blood. He was grateful for that. He might have bled to death otherwise. The snow held him prisoner in a place that was strange to him. He tried to remember what had happened. He looked for light and knew he was in a kind of shelter, a cave, perhaps. He seemed to be in a cocoon of snow. Above him, he saw a deadfall. This was a huge pine uprooted by a lightning bolt or erosion, falling over a shallow arroyo or ditch. This was his shelter. The branches of the pine formed a wall where the snow had clung. Somehow, he had tumbled into this natural cavern, had been protected from the heavy snows as they built onto the branches and the tree trunk.

  His pistol was still in his holster. His powder horn intact. His possibles bag had remained slung to his shoulder. His gloves were still on. He took them off and searched through his possibles bag for flint and striker. When he had found them, he dug underneath where his body had lain and found dry pine needles, dead plants to use for kindling. He drew his knife and cut at the branches in his snow cave. He whittled these into thin shavings. He found charred linen for tinder in his bag and brought this out. Next, he knocked a hole in his roof where the smoke could go. His shoulder pained him, so he moved slow. He didn't want to work up a sweat, either. A man could freeze to death in the cold if he perspired in such weather.

  His shoulder burned as though a hot poker had been laid into the flesh. He knew he had to dress the wound as soon as he got a fire going. The wind had died and when he looked out the snow was falling in steady flakes. From the short circle of his vision he knew that the snow was drifted deep. He had no idea where he was, but he remembered falling. Falling to where? Down, somewhere. He would unravel these thoughts later. Right now, it was important to build a fire, to take stock, weigh his chances of getting out, back on the road, assess what had happened in the clear light of day.

  All of his thoughts were cobwebs in his brain, grasping to the sides of reality, wisps of silken material that clung then blew away, only to form somewhere else. He rubbed his face with his hands and shook his head. He must concentrate on one thing at a time. Already his fingers were beginning to turn numb from the digging.

  He bent over his striker, holding it near the charred linen. He struck the flint down its face. Sparks flew into the linen. He grabbed the linen and blew on the spark. It widened in the cloth. He set it down in a pile of fine shavings. He blew harder. The shavings caught. He added larger and larger shavings to the cone he was building. As the tongues of flame licked higher, he put heavier wood on until he had a blaze big enough to make him move away from it.

  As the fire lit his cocoon of snow, he saw that his shelter was long and deep. He cut more wood from the fallen tree and stacked it on the far side of his fire, using two sharpened sticks of wood shoved into the snow and earth to hold the self-feeding arrangement of stacked branches.

  The warmth felt good. He munched on some beef jerky while he took assessment of his situation. He ached all over, but the stiffness seemed to be going away as he warmed in the blaze of the fire. He took some leaves and dirt from where the fire had thawed the ground and pressed these into his shoulder wound. Wincing at first, he continued to pack the furrow until it began to stop its throbbing. He hadn't lost much blood; the cold had coagulated it soon after he had fallen under the dead tree.

  He waited for dawn, adding to his fire until the coals were deep. The smoke rose through a hole in the snow above it. He tried to recall what had happened. The men riding up, the shooting, the rifle butt cracking into his head, his horse plunging over the side of the road and down into a white canyon. After that, he remembered nothing.

  Were the men able to fight off the attackers? What about Pops and Andy? Jenks and Van Hoke? They might have been able to hold out. Pops was a good shot, and he had that new scattergun Garrison had bought him. Andy probably wasn't armed. Pops also had that old Paterson revolver. It opened a big hole in a man at close range. He didn't know if Jenks and Van Hoke were armed. Knives, maybe. Mo
st men not used to a gun seldom carried pistols. They were too heavy, too uncomfortable.

  And the gold? What about that? That's what they were after. He was sure one of the men had been Nat Leffler. Which meant Jingo Perez had been in on it. There was another man, wasn't there? Maybe. The cobwebs kept blowing away, not settling in coherent shapes.

  The dawn came slowly; a shift of light in the deep canyon, a gradual grayness opening up the small world of his shelter. The snow kept falling and he knew if he were going to get out of the canyon he had to move then. He hated to leave the warmth of the fire, the shelter. Men had died for doing less. He wasn't panicky, though. He knew if he could climb to the road, he could find his way back to Belleville. Staying here, if the men on the stage had indeed been overpowered and robbed, only gave the thieves more time to escape with their booty.

  He threw snow on the fire, extinguishing it. His gloves on, he crawled from under the huge tree out into a dawning world of swirling snowflakes. He looked around him, adjusting his eyes to the shifting light.

  He had fallen a long way from the road. He got his bearing and started to climb through heavy snow drifts. A short way up, he saw his horse. He puffed to the animal's dark bulk. Its neck was broken and it was dead, frozen solid.

  He was glad to find the Hawken still in its scabbard. It was capped and loaded. He grabbed the bedroll and the saddlebags. He might need them later if the storm worsened. He also took the bridle, in case he found the spare horse which had been tied to the rear of the coach. The bridle and reins could also be used to string between two trees. He could throw a blanket over the support to make a tent shelter if he had to.

  It took him almost two hours to make the road. His buckskins kept him dry, but they were heavy with the melted snow from his exertions. He rested a few moments, knowing that a man tired in such a situation invited an early death. He forced himself to stay awake, slapping his cheeks, moving his legs to keep the blood circulating. He got up and began looking for the site of the ambush. He had come up on an angle, for easier climbing, ending up somewhere slightly ahead of where he had been clubbed behind the ear. He got his bearings and moved back toward Belleville.