The Law of the Trigger

He borrowed Dunc Lester's knife and found two spruce saplings, long and reasonably straight, for stretcher poles. He worked steadily, cutting and trimming and notching until his work-toughened palms were raw.

Chapter Twelve

The night was endless. Minutes were hours and hours centuries as Owen and Dunc Lester struggled blindly down that tortuous grade to the south. It seemed to Owen that his arms were slowly stretching to incredible length from the pull of the stretcher, but they did not dare to stop, except for brief intervals, even though their muscles quivered and their chests were filled with fire.

At every step Owen expected to hear Brunner's horsemen charging down on top of them, but the night remained mysteriously silent, disturbed only by their stumbling and tortured breathing. At seemingly regular intervals, Owen, who carried the forepart of the stretcher, blundered into tall boulders, or stumbled in thickets and over rocks, and once he fell sprawling into a dry wash and Arch Deland rolled limply from the stretcher. At some point in that endless night the deputy had passed into unconsciousness.

At last it seemed that they had become lost in space and time, and had somehow blundered onto a devil's treadmill that had no beginning and no hope of an end. Reason had lost its power and only instinct was left to them; the instinct of the hunted. For a long time Owen worried at the riddle of the silent hills. Where were Brunner and the gang? Certainly someone had heard the firing and known that something was wrong. Owen had prepared himself for the dangerous game of run and hide and run again, trusting to the night for protection. But the gang did not come.

In some perverse way this worried him more than an attack would have done. Ike was not deliberately letting them escape—of that he was certain.

Eventually, as the eastern hills became capped with the first light of dawn, they were forced to stop for several minutes of rest. They sprawled on the cool ground beneath a dark umbrella of pine and dragged huge quantities of air into their lungs. Finally Owen shoved himself to his knees, and only then did he notice that his palms were bloody hooks still shaped to fit the stretcher poles. Deland's old face sagged in uneasy rest. His forehead was hot; his lips were cracked and dry. The deputy did not move when Owen spoke to him. “How is he?” Dunc asked. “Feverish. But his heart seems strong.” Dunc looked at his own bloody hands for a moment, then sat up and studied the grayish hills. “We slipped off the trace,” he said. “We'll have to bear more to the west.” But that wasn't the thing that bothered him. He got to his feet and walked unsteadily to a small rise and again studied those dark-green mounds that seemed to grow slowly out of the darkness. “I wish I knew what Ike was up to,” he said. He waved his arm in a wide arc from east to west. “They're out there somewhere.”

Owen frowned. “You don't see anything, do you?”

“I don't have to.” Then he added, “My ma came from Indian stock,” as if to explain how he knew.

And Owen could not dispute it, for he had had the same feeling for hours.

“You know what I think. Marshal?” Dunc asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer. “I think the gang must have found Wes Longstreet's party and Ike's developed a sudden respect for lowland shootin'. Maybe that's why they're hangin' back, maybe they're playin' for time.”

Owen did not wholly agree, but this did not lessen his respect for Dunc's judgment of hillpeople. He asked, “What else do you think, Dunc?”

“Well, it's just guessin', of course, but I figure maybe Ike's beginnin' to have trouble holdin' the gang together. We counted eighteen men yesterday, and he used to have thirty or more. Now with Longstreet and Fulsom and Clinkscale dead, he's left with fifteen. Ike's no coward, but he's smart, and he won't risk losing any more men if he thinks he can take us without a fight.”

Owen thought about this, thinking the boy might be right. The gang's morale was going to take a drop when they found those three bodies, but he still didn't know how Brunner meant to take them without a fight.

At last they took up the stretcher and resumed their stumbling march to the south. Owen's only thought was for Arch Deland; not until he got the wounded deputy to safety could he turn his mind to Ike Brunner.

If Dunc Lester had thoughts of his own, he did not voice them. For good or bad, he had thrown in with the marshal, and this seemed no time to split their meager forces.

Near noon both men fell in exhaustion. “We'll never make it,” Dunc Lester said hoarsely.

“How far is it?”

“A mile. Maybe two. I don't think I can lift that stretcher again.”

“We'll make it,” Owen rasped.

They lay quiet, soothed by the sound of running water. Finally they staggered to the bank of a narrow stream and drank their fill of cold, iron-tasting water. Owen filled his hat and took it back to the stretcher, where he dribbled a few drops between the deputy's cracked lips and bathed his hot face.

Dunc Lester watched dispassionately. He had liked Arch Deland, but the old man was as good as dead. It seemed a criminal waste of time and effort to use yourself up on a dead man.

But Owen closed his eyes and senses to the things that Dunc Lester saw and knew. The skin of Deland's face had gone yellow, as dry as parchment. The eyes were glazed, the breathing shallow, the heart fluttery.

Owen would not see these things. Arch, he told himself,had escaped death a thousand times, and he would escape it this time. He would not consider the enormous odds against them; he had to believe that Deland would pull through once they got him to a place where he could be cared for. And that was what he believed.

Owen took hold of his end of the stretcher. “You ready, son?”

Dunc shook his head, not in a negative response, but in bewilderment at the marshal's unreasoning singleness of purpose. And yet it was that very thing about the marshal that made Dunc believe that there was a bare chance that they might come out of this alive. He abandoned the hope of bringing in Ike Brunner. All he wanted now was escape, and he knew that he must depend on Owen Toller's strength for that. Slowly he bent down, took the bloody stretcher poles in his raw hands, and lifted.

It was midafternoon when they finally sighted the Cooper cabin. They eased the stretcher to the ground and Dunc said, “Maybe I'd better go on ahead and see how things stand.”