He came on another step, seemed then to stagger, and he started to fall even as the sound of a shot went booming down the canyon, losing itself in the rain.
The man went down to the ground, his rifle still gripped in his hand, and he lay there sprawled out not sixty yards away from me. I could see the bright stain of blood on his skull and on the trail beside him.
Who had fired?
Waiting for a minute, I saw no one, but suddenly I knew I could not stay where I was. I had taken time to plug and bind my wounds as best I could, but I desperately needed help. So, using my rifle for a crutch, I crawled from my shelter and hobbled into the cold rain.
For a few moments I would be invisible to whoever was up there. With care I worked around and started to go on up the narrow trail. I could not see anybody, but visibility was bad; I knew that shot could not have come from far off.
The trail became steeper. Hobbling along, I almost fell, then I pulled up under some trees.
'Flagan?' came the voice.
It was Judith.
She was standing half behind the black trunk of a spruce, partly shielded by its limbs. She wore a man's hat and a poncho. Her cheeks glistened in the rain and her eyes seemed unnaturally large. She must have been out on the mountain all night long, but I never saw anybody look so good.
'Be careful,' she warned. 'They are all around us.'
'Have you seen Galloway?' I asked.
'No.'
I moved up toward her, but stopped to lean against a tree. 'I've been bit, a couple of times,' I said. 'How is it above us?'
'They are all along the ridge. I don't know how I managed to slip through,' she said.
Looking up toward the ridge through the branches, I could see nothing but the trees, the rain, and the low ram clouds.
'I've got a place,' she said. 'We'd better get to it.'
She led the way, and before she'd taken half a dozen steps I could see she knew what she was about, holding to cover and low ground, taking no chance of being seen. It was obvious she had used the route before, and that worried me. With a canny enemy against you, it never pays to go over the same ground twice. Somebody is likely to be waiting for you.
'How do you happen to be over here?' I asked her.
'Nobody came back, and we were worried. Finally I couldn't stand it any longer, so I slipped away and came in this direction.'
The place she had found wasn't much more than a shelter from the rain. A lightning-struck tree had fallen almost to the ground before being caught between two others. Wedged there, it formed a shelter that she had improved by breaking off small branches on the underside and weaving them into the top.
The steep bank behind and the trees kept it dry, and she could enter it without being seen. The trees lower down the slope screened it in front, and we felt we could even have a small fire without it being seen or the smoke attracting attention.
'Flagan?' She was on the ground beside the fire, waiting for coffee water to boil.
'Yes?'
'Let's just ride away from here. I don't want to fight any more. I don't want trouble.'
'Your pa's down there.' I gestured toward the base of the mountain, almost within view from here. 'He's almighty tired, but when I left them they were holed up in a good spot'
'I want to see him, but I'm scared for you. Black will never rest until he's killed you, Flagan. You and Galloway.'
'We don't kill easy.'
When the coffee was ready, we drank some, and nothing ever tasted so good. But I was worried. The Fetchens were close around somewhere on this mountain, and I knew I wasn't going to get another chance. The next time we met, it had to be all or nothing. Hurt as I was, I knew I couldn't last very long.
Putting down my coffee cup, I checked my guns. Just then somewhere up the slope a branch cracked, and we both heard it.
Taking up my cup again in my left hand and keeping my six-gun in my right, hand, I looked over at her.
'You get down behind that mess of branches. This here is going to be a showdown.'
'You scared, Flagan?'
'I guess I am. I'm not as sharp as I should be, this here wound and all.' I finished my coffee. 'That tasted good.'
With my rifle I pushed myself up, holstered my gun, and wiped off the action of my rifle, flicking the water away. Standing on a small mound of dirt pushed up by the roots of the fallen tree, I looked down the slope.
They were coming all right. I counted five of them. And there were others up the slope, too, closing in. There must have been fourteen or fifteen in all.
'This here's going to be quite a fight,' I said. 'You got a pistol besides that rifle?'
She tossed it to me and I caught it left-handed and put it back of my belt.
'What are you going to do?'
'Wait until they get closer. They want a showdown, they'll have it. When they get up close I'm going to step out and go to shooting.'
There wasn't anything else to do. I wasn't able to go any further, and I wasn't of a mind to. Right here we would settle it, Black and me and the rest of them.
Right here, on this wet ground we were going to fight ... and some of us would die.
Chapter 16
At a time like that you don't count the odds, and I had the odds against me, no matter what. It wasn't as if I had a choice. This was one time when there was no place to run. It was root hog or die, and maybe both.
But seeing them coming at me, I didn't feel like dying, and I wasn't even feeling that the odds were too great. I'd come to a place and a time where it no longer mattered, and I was only thinking about how many I could take, just how I ought to move, and which targets I should choose first.
My eyes searched for Black. He was the one I most wanted to get into my sights. And in the back of my mind I was thinking: Where was Galloway?
Judith waited there behind me, and I could feel her eyes upon me. 'Flagan?' she said.
'Yes?'
'Flagan, I love you.'
Turning my head, I looked at her. 'I love you, too,' I said. 'Only we haven't much time ... When this fuss begins, Judith, you stay out of it, d' you hear? I can make my fight better if I know you're out of harm's way.'
'All right.' She said it meekly enough, and I believed her.
They came on, carrying their rifles up, ready to throw down on anything that moved.
It gave me time to pick my targets - to figure my first shot, and to see just how much I'd have to move my rifle for a second. The way I figured, I had two shots before they could get me in their sights, and if I fired those two and then threw myself down I could move along the ground and get at least one more before they located me. What followed would depend on how they came up shooting, and whether they took shelter or came on.
There was no way of telling whether they had located us yet or not, only they knew we were somewhere along that slope. At first I'd been ready to step out and go to shooting as soon as they got within easy range, but then I began to figure if there wasn't some way to make the situation work for me. So much of any fight depends on the terrain and how a body uses it
They were coming up from below and coming down from above, and we had the canyon behind us and no way out that we could see. But there was a dip of low ground running diagonally down the mountainside. It was shallow, and partly cloaked with brush, but it was deep enough so a crouching man might slip along it unseen.
If I did step out and go to shooting, I could start downhill, fire my shots, then drop into that hollow and go
