Suddenly he stopped his crawling, holding the shotgun hard in his two big hands. “Wait a minute!” Wes Long-street called.
The hills fell silent. Even the tall pines seemed to hesitate for a moment in their eternal swaying to listen. “There she is!” Wes shouted.
Dunc came suddenly to his feet, clawing his way up the slick side of the gully. The blunt, hard punch of a rifle jarred the stillness, and now Wes and Cal went crashing through the brush, converging toward a single point.
Dunc glimpsed Leah Stringer's faded short dress flashing among the trees. He yelled to her, but she was too intent on her flight to hear the warning. Swearing again, Dunc fought his way back to the gully, slipping and sliding as he struggled to get downstream fast enough to cut her off. Once more he glimpsed the fleeing girl and yelled again.
This time she saw him. She paused for a moment, her eyes wide and senseless with fear. “Down here!” Dunc yelled. “Get in the gully!”
Poised on tiptoe, breathless and frightened, she reminded Dunc of a young doe, or some white exotic bird about to take flight.
“It's me!” Dunc yelled again. “Get down in the gully!”
She must have acted on animal instinct, for there was no recognition in her eyes. She wheeled, turned toward the wash, and fell gasping with her face pressed to the wet, sticky clay. Dunc took her arm and tried to bring her to her feet, but she turned on him snarling, baring her teeth like a cornered timber wolf. Hell's fire! Dunc thought savagely as she clawed him. He heard Wes and Cal crashing down on them, only a few yards from the gully, and then he did something that no Lester had ever done before. He struck a woman.
With studied, controlled violence, he lifted the girl with his left hand. He dropped the shotgun for a moment against the bank of the gully and struck her quickly, feeling the tingle in his hard knuckles as his fist cracked sharply against her chin. He let her drop face down in the mud and did not think about her again for several minutes.
Calmly now, he recovered the shotgun and wiped the side plate on his trousers as Cal and Wes broke into the clear by the gully, Cal in front but limping badly on his wounded leg. He did not shout to them, for he knew that this was no time for talking. Methodically he lifted the shotgun and fired quickly from the shoulder at Cal Brunner.
With strange unconcern, Dunc watched Cal crumple against the thin air as though he had run into a stone wall. His arms flew out as the heavy buckshot tore into him.
Wes Longstreet was a dangerous hothead, but he was no fool. He jumped sideways with the instinct of a wild dog, fell in the heavy brush, and clawed his way back toward the trees. After a moment he yelled, “Goddamn you, Dunc Lester, you killed Cal!”
Dunc reloaded the shotgun and waited to see if Wes was going to force the play.
“Ike'll get you for this!” Wes cried wildly.
“I reckon,” Dunc said mildly, “I'm in no more trouble than I was before.” He spoke more to himself than to the man in the brush.
Wes fired once, twice, three times with his pistol, and Dunc lowered his head and let the bullets scream harmlessly over the gully. Carefully he lifted the shotgun again and fired into the brush. Wes swore and beat a hasty retreat into the woods.
Dunc stood still for a moment, thinking. He and the girl had to get out of here, and they had only one horse to do it with. There wasn't much chance of getting one of the horses that Wes and Cal had come on unless he could kill Wes first, and that was not likely. Wes Longstreet would stay where he was and come after them later, when he got his nerve worked up again.
Then Dunc began thinking in another direction. If they had to use just one horse, then it would be a lot better if Wes had no horse at all! Without looking at the girl, he hurried upstream again, stopping every few paces to listen.
Soon he heard the horses that Wes and Cal had set free to graze. There was little chance of getting to them, because he would have to cross a clearing and give Wes a „ clear shot with his rifle. But there was something else he could do.
Dunc drew his pistol and methodically emptied it at the horses, and the animals stood erect, quivering nervously, as the bullets whined like bees about them. Then Dunc raised his shotgun and fired. The horses bolted as the heavy slugs ripped through the brush, and Dunc smiled faintly as he watched them racing toward the higher peaks. That should keep Wes Longstreet grounded for a while.
Now he went back to the girl and saw that she had recovered from the blow. He thought for a moment that she was going to run from him. When he got close enough, he grabbed her.
When she began to fight him, Dunc took her by the shoulders and shook her angrily. “Ma'am,” he said tightly, “if you're just bound and determined to get yourself killed, it's all right with me. Now, do you want to go with me or do you want to wait here for Wes Longstreet to come after you? Wes ain't as good a shot as Ike Brunner, but then, maybe he'll have a better target.”
The fight seemed to go out of her. She dropped her head, leaning against the bank of the gully, and great hopeless tears welled up at the corners of her eyes and flowed down her muddy face.
It made Dunc uncomfortable to see her crying like that not making a sound, as though she were the last person left in the world. To give himself something to do, he loaded the shotgun again and blasted once more at the brush where Wes Longstreet had been, but he was sure that Wes was no longer there. At last he turned back to Leah Stringer. “I guess it's Cal Brunner,” he said heavily. “You hate me for killin' him, even though he was tryin' to kill you.”
She made no sound at all.
“Well,” he said with as much gentleness as he could summon, “I guess we might as well get out of here.” He put one arm around her, clumsily, and fed her like a small child to the far end of the wash.
The two of them camped that night in a wild-plum thicket, a full day's ride to the west. They were in the foothills now, far below and to the west of Ulster's Cave, about half a day's ride to Reunion. This was a mild country of gentle slopes and rounded peaks, of broad meadows and green valleys and not so much timber. Low-country
