The Stranglers, page 12
part #4 of Page Murdock Series
The staircase slanted from the front of the house to the back, with a balcony leading to two doors eight feet apart, the construction describing a large numeral seven on the wall. When we reached the balcony I signaled with my gun to the first door, behind which, according to Flynn, slept the stranger who was on the run from something. The kid nodded and stationed himself there holding his Colt. When things start happening it pays to have someone standing on those loose ends.
I flattened out against the wall between the doors and reached over to tap the Indian's with the barrel of the Deane-Adams.
The silence afterward stretched so long I was about to tap again when a voice called from inside.
"What do you want?"
It was the Indian, all right. I felt him clear down to my boots. I made my voice as harmless as his was thorny with suspicion. "Message." Well, it had worked on other occasions.
More silence. Then a rustling, as of weight coming off a corn shuck mattress, followed by the pad of bare feet on the other side of the door. Metal scraped metal and the door opened inward the width of a plain face with sagging cheeks and deep lines in the forehead, surrounded by wild tendrils of hair dyed bright red. The Indian's whore was wearing a man's faded flannel shirt clutched together at her neck and nothing else. I got my shoulder into the space while she was still looking and we went in together. She shrieked and I spun her around and got my left arm across her throat just as the Indian, standing stark naked next to the bed, curled a hand behind his head and flung the knife he kept in a sheath tied to a leather thong around his neck. The knife made a nasty noise in the air, ending in a nastier thump. The woman shuddered and then got too heavy to hold. I let her fall and squeezed off three rounds. The room throbbed and filled with smoke. Red blossoms opened on the Indian's chest, neck, and forehead. He went to his knees and then to his face and never said anything.
Just like that.
My ears hummed as if they'd been boxed. I looked down at the woman at my feet. She had slumped down and rolled half onto her back, the shirt opening to expose her poor naked body with all its sags and pouches and the obscene yellow-bone handle protruding between her breasts. While I was looking she breathed once, a long, shuddering intake. Then she stopped.
Someone was calling my name from a long way off. I shook myself and turned. The kid was standing where I'd left him, pointing his gun at a thickset man with sleep-tangled hair and gray chin stubble standing in the other doorway in stained red flannels with his hands in the air. Both of them were looking in the direction from which the shout had come.
"Murdock! Byrd's loose!"
It was Flynn calling. I saw a movement beyond the balcony, heard running footsteps, and saw the flapping open door of the outhouse, and then I knew where Harvey Byrd had been all the time we were thinking he was in his room waiting for Flynn to get the drop on him.
"I see him!"
The kid was pointing with his free hand, but the corner of the house blocked my view. I covered the man in the doorway and told the kid to shoot Byrd. He moved his gun that way and hesitated.
"Shoot!" I barked. "He's running for help."
The kid raised his gun and fired twice. I joined him on his end of the balcony in time to see a flash of white shirt vanish behind the corner of the building. Flynn's Colt opened up at the back, the shots sounding hurried. Then a space, and then a dog started barking. A door slammed somewhere and somewhere else someone shouted.
The man in red flannels grabbed for my gun. I backhanded the barrel across his face and he made a guttural noise and dribbled down the doorframe. I turned on the kid. "You hit anything at all?"
"I don't know. Maybe." He was trying to reload, but his hands were shaking so badly he kept missing the holes in the cylinder.
"What were you shooting at?"
"His legs."
"Christ, his legs."
More doors slammed. Dogs were barking all over the place now. I shoved the kid toward the stairs. The fresh cartridges squirted out of his hands and rattled to the balcony floor.
"Come on, come on. We're in rebel territory."
We scrambled down the stairs and around the corner, where Flynn was struggling to get a leg over his gray amid the other horses squealing and plunging in the corral. A hideously fat woman stood in the back doorway with matted gray hair to her shoulders and a man's worn robe not quite reaching around her bloated nakedness, her mouth scooping a black hole in her face, out of which a voice like a sustained blast on a steam whistle was calling for someone named Floss to hurry up with that goddamn shotgun.
"Couldn't get a clear shot at Byrd for the horses," Flynn wheezed, uncoiling his reins from the horn. "He ran around the west side of the house."
"Hell with him." I slipped the sorrel's tether and lunged into the saddle. The kid was horsed already and leaned down to free his bay from the fence. There was a deep roar and suddenly his hat was snatched from his head as if by a gust of wind. Fat Aunt Aurola had her shotgun finally. She swung the second barrel on me and I aimed the Deane-Adams and shattered the doorframe next to her head. She howled and clapped a hand over her right eye, a splinter in it. Flynn took advantage of a clear space in the panicking horseflesh in the corral and raked his mount's ribs with his spurs and the gray screamed and bolted and sailed over the four-rail fence with an inch to spare. I gave him the lead and we galloped north. We were going to find out about his pass.
I glanced at the kid and saw blood streaking the side of his face. "Bad?" I asked.
"Caught a pellet or two in the forehead. The old lady's pattern had holes in it you could stick your hand through."
"Thought she had better sense'n to aim at something as thick as that," Flynn called back over his shoulder. His tone had a shallowness to it I didn't like.
The narrow cleft was granite on both sides, with pines growing halfway down the cliffs from clumps of grass and dirt on ledges where they had fallen from higher up and clung desperately. It was dark and chill there, as it would be every hour of the day except noon, when the sun shone briefly to the bottom. There were broad blasting scars in the walls, as Flynn had said; our horses skidded and stumbled on the loose rubble under their hoofs. We had to slow to a walk to avoid a spill. Not far behind us, quick hoof-beats bounded back and forth between the cliffs.
I steered with my knees and shook spent shells out of my revolver, replacing them with cartridges from my belt. The kid kept looking back. "They'll have to slow down like us when they hit this part," I told him.
Flynn said, "If they stick as far as the Sag I'll pay you both a dollar. The Indian wouldn't of had a lot of that kind of friend."
"All he needed was one," I said. "Byrd."
"He won't be much for riding. He was favoring one leg running. It must of been him you hit when Creel and them jumped you and Miller and Rudabaugh."
Cocker Flynn's casual pose got to me sometimes. I said, "It didn't stop him from sneaking past you to the outhouse."
"He must of gone out the front and went around."
He paused for breath between words. "You all right?" I asked.
"Peachy," he said, and saying it, slid sideways out of his saddle.
I kicked the sorrel forward and caught him. My hand came away bloody from his side. I looked at the kid. "Ride."
He had drawn rein when Flynn started to fall. He looked at me dumbly. I had my gun in my free hand and I leveled the barrel across his horse's rump and pressed the trigger. The muzzle flame singed its coat. It reared and whinnied and pawed the air and took off bucking. The kid almost lost his seat as he rocked past. He sawed at the reins, but I sent another bullet whistling over the bay's head and it whinnied again and broke into a clean run, its shoes striking sparks off the treacherous loose rocks that paved the pass.
"You go too, Murdock."
The older lawman's voice was weak and muffled by my body. The effort of holding him up and keeping both horses under control put needles in my lower back.
"I like it here," I said. "I ain't being no hero. I'm dead." "We'll climb up to one of those ledges. We can hold them off from there until the kid gets back with help." "I'm dead," he repeated. And he was.
SEVENTEEN
I lowered him to the ground, hanging on to his collar, and when he was down I stepped out of leather and opened his coat. The side of his shirt and one pants leg were slick with blood. His stitches had to have been open for hours and he hadn't mentioned it. He had been too damn stubborn to admit his wounds would put him in the way. Cocker Flynn. Maybe not the first man to die of muleheadedness, but likely the best.
"First time you ever let me down, Flynn." Scraping noises and curses down the pass put an end to the eulogy. In another few seconds they'd see me. I'd used up all my running and climbing time arguing with a dead man, and I had no cover. I looked at the sorrel and Flynn's gray. Well, that was why a wise man never named his horse. I shot mine behind the right ear and while it was still falling did the same for the other. The sorrel dropped fast, grunting. The gray threw up its broken head, knelt, and rolled over on top of its dead master with a shuddering sigh.
While the pass was still ringing with the reports I scrambled behind the new breastwork and got uncomfortable on my belly with my Winchester and Flynn's Spencer, rescued from their saddle scabbards. I laid out two sacks of rifle ammunition from the saddlebags and thumbed new cartridges into the Deane-Adams to replace the one I'd wasted getting the kid's horse moving. Then I returned the revolver to leather and cranked a shell into the Winchester's chamber and waited for bear.
Minutes marched past wearing heavy boots. In my mind's eye I saw the men down the pass seek their own cover from the sudden shots and then wait while the last echo faded before moving forward afoot. Oblique sunlight coming from the east capped the opposite side of the pass in warm yellow, but the shadows at the bottom were still as deep and clammy cold as a mine shaft and I wore out my eyes looking for movement among the weird shapes of moss-grown rocks and tree falls from above. Even then I missed them when they came. One second I was looking at a deserted stretch and the next it was crawling with men in bulky jackets and hats with curled brims, holding out their rifles for balance as they climbed over the rubble.
I steadied the Winchester's barrel across the dead sorrel's rib cage and emptied the magazine, levering new rounds up the pipe as fast as I fired. Lead spanged and squealed off stone and sprayed granite dust and the men hurled themselves sideways and down and some of them returned fire as they backed crouching into the shadows. A bullet smacked the carcass I was hunkered behind.
I stopped shooting and dragged up the Spencer and leaned it against the carcass while I reloaded the Winchester. Afterward I took advantage of the continued lull to lay out my canteen and some strips of dried beef wrapped in an oilskin I'd been carrying in one pocket. It was going to be a long day.
Coming on noon the sun was high enough to bleach out the shadows. I saw a glint of metal among the boulders and upended roots slanting down from my position and then a buff-colored Stetson above that and drew a bead between the hat and the metal and fired and the hat went off at an angle, but beyond that I couldn't tell how good I'd made it because someone twelve feet to the right let go with a Springfield and I had to duck as the bullet screamed past my head. If you'd served with the army you never forgot that deep bellowing report. Throughout the noon hour I swapped shots with the Springfield and some lighter carbines farther down, the volleys short and brittle with pauses in between. Then the shadows crawled back in and things got quiet. I laid the Deane-Adams on top of the sorrel, which was starting to attract flies, and reloaded both rifles. I ate some meat and drank some water.
I was reaching for the revolver again when it went ping and leaped out of reach. The crack of the rifle was anticlimactic. The bullet had come from behind and to my right. I was stretched out on one hip and I hooked up the Spencer and twisted my torso that way.
"The buzzards'll pick your bones if you do."
The closeness of the voice arrested me. I looked up at the man crouched on a ledge thirty feet above with a Henry rifle against his right cheek. He was a lean specimen in a blue flannel shirt going gunmetal-colored in the sun and corduroy pants worn smooth at the knees and high black boots under a skin of dust. His flat-brimmed hat was tilted down to keep the sun out of his eyes and he had a ragged blond moustache tobacco-stained at the ends. I lowered the Spencer. He gestured with the barrel of the Henry and I lifted my hands.
"You get him, Blood?" called a harsh voice from down the pass.
"I got him. Come ahead."
Men rose from among the rocks and started forward with their carbines and rifles clapped to their hips, the muzzles leveled my way. I counted five out of the corner of my eye, but I was concentrating on the man with the Henry. A big black-bearded man wearing a gray Stetson and a denim jacket too short to cover a roll of red shirt spilling over his gun belt stooped with a grunt to pick up my revolver. He pointed it at me while a companion in an army coat bare of insignia stepped around the sorrel's carcass and collected the Spencer and Winchester. He had a repeating rifle of his own under one arm.
"Look to the other," said Black Beard.
Army Coat nudged Flynn's body with the muzzle of the Spencer. "Stiff as a stick."
"Come down, Blood."
Blood tossed the Henry to one of the others and climbed down from the ledge. Actually, it was a little later that I found out that was his name. The man with the black beard spoke with an accent and the way he pronounced it, it came out Blut. At the bottom the sharpshooter retrieved the repeater. The man he'd thrown it to carried a Springfield carbine. So far as I could see, no one in the group wore a belt gun, which wasn't unusual in that country.
"Who are you?" Black Beard asked me.
"Lillie Langtry."
The man in the army coat swung the butt of his own repeater and the left side of my head exploded. I came down on one shoulder and got a hand under me and started to rise. The rifle's single dead eye regarded me.
"Let him up," said Black Beard.
I got to my feet, swaying a little. My left ear rang.
"Search him."
Army Coat leaned all three long guns against the base of the cliff and knocked up my elbows and patted me down. His face was young and clean-shaven and might have been nice to look at before a horse or something just as heavy had stepped on his nose. He found the deputy's star Flynn had given me in my breast pocket and showed it to Black Beard.
"Well," said the latter, not unpleased. "It appears we have us some law here. You killed a good man today, Mr. Law. Clarence down there ate that bullet you sent him but it didn't agree with him."
"Two men," one of the others corrected sullenly. "You forgot the Indian."
I glanced at the speaker. Middle height, fair, long burn-sides, jaw slightly out of skew. But for that, Harvey Byrd was a close match with his cousin in the Helena jail. He had on a hat with a tall crown and the brim curling in on itself and a white shirt and striped pants and stood cradling a battered Winchester with most of his weight on his right leg.
"I said a good man. But Teamstrike takes care of its own." Black Beard was still looking at me. "I asked you before what your name was. You don't have to give it to me if you think it's worth dying for where you stand."
I gave it to him. Something came into his neutral-colored eyes, but aside from that he made no sign of recognition. "Let's get this done," he said to the others.
"Town?" asked Army Coat.
"The Sag, where someone will find him. Folks have to know who owns Montana."
Byrd said, "What about the other one? There was three in town."
"Forget him. Where will he go? We have that toy sheriff in Great Falls buffaloed and he'll not find help between there and Helena. If that bastard judge is fool enough to send more men we'll do them too. Then maybe he'll know to stick to his town like we had to to ours for so long."
He spat the words bastit jutch into my face. He was as German as they come.
"Looky here." Byrd, who had been going through the dead sorrel's saddlebags, held up my manacles. The key was in the lock.
"See if they fit Murdock," Black Beard said.
"Front or back?"
"Front. He has to ride."
Byrd laid down his Winchester and wrenched my arms into position and made the cuffs bite. He put the key in his breast pocket with exaggerated care and cracked me across the face with the back of his hand. I staggered back a step and kicked him in the groin.
He bent double, coughing and retching. His face was the shade of cave mold. Army Coat and the man called Blood stepped in and grabbed my arms.
"Hold on to him," croaked Byrd. His color was returning in fever patches. He scooped up his carbine and swung it by the barrel.
Black Beard hit him hard with his thick shoulder, tearing loose what wind remained in Byrd's lungs with a loud woof. Byrd stumbled backward over Cocker Flynn's body and went down. The Winchester clattered on the rocks.
"It's better when they're alive," Black Beard told him. He was breathing heavily from the effort of moving so much bulk so feist.
The man with the Springfield had gone down the pass and now he came back up leading seven horses. He was my age, tall and bony, and wore gold-rimmed spectacles with strips of cloth tied around the earpieces to keep them from digging into flesh. The two men holding me shoved me up to a middle-sized dun that presumably had belonged to dead Clarence. I stirruped and grasped the saddle horn in my manacled hands and got aboard.
The last man in the party had almond-shaped eyes tilted like a Mongol's and half-inch triangles of black moustache at the corners of his mouth. He kicked one of Flynn's stiff legs. "What about Clarence and this one?"
"You and Shiloh drag them out of the way and get some rocks on top of them," said Black Beard, straddling a big black that grunted when he let his weight down on it. "Get a rope on the horses and do the same. We don't want buzzards marking the spot. Catch up with us when you're finished. Harvey and Specs will ride with me. You too, Blood. Mount up."
