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firing fast into the lot of them with no aim, and I was moving so as to give
them no target, but I scored, too.
I'd shot at Rafin and missed him, the bullet taking the man who stood behind
and to his right, and Rafin dived into the brush with lead spattering all
around him. As soon as Colby Rafin got turned around he'd have us dead to
rights, so we scrambled out of there and into the brush.
We moved in further, then lay still, listening.
For a time we heard no sound. Then behind us we heard a groan, and somebody
called for Rafin, but he wasn't getting any answer.
We moved on, angling up the hill toward the edge of the pass. Then a burst of
firing sounded below us where we'd left the rest of our party, and we stopped
to look back down the hill. We could see nothing from where we were, but the
firing continued. It made a body want to turn and go back, but what we had to
do was what we'd started to do.
They hit us just as we started to go on. During those distracting moments,
few as they were, they had somehow moved down on us, and they weren't asking
questions. They just opened fire.
A bullet caught me on the leg and it buckled, probably saving my life, for
there was a whipping of bullets all around me, and another one turned me
sideways. I felt myself falling and tucked my shoulder under so I could roll
with it, and I went over twice on the slope before I stopped.
What had happened to Galloway, I didn't know. I did know that I'd been hit
hard, and more than once, and unless I moved from where I was I'd be dead
within minutes. Somehow I'd clung to my rifle - I'd needed to hang onto
something. Now I began to inch my way along the steepening face before me.
Instinctively, for I surely can't claim to much thinking just then, hurting
the way I was, I worked back toward those hunting me. They would be off to my
right, I was sure, and would think I'd try to get away, which was the smart
and sensible thing. But I wanted to stay within shooting distance at any cost,
and my best chances of getting away free would be to work right close to them.
But then I almost passed out. For a moment there consciousness faded, and
when I snapped out of it I knew I couldn't risk that again. I had to find a
place to hole up.
Crawling on, I'd gone no more than a dozen feet before I saw what I wanted,
maybe sixty feet further along. It was at a steep place on the mountainside
where a boulder had jarred loose and tumbled off down the slope into the pass
below, leaving a great empty socket overgrown by brush that had once hung over
the boulder. If I could only get into that hollow ...
Hours later I awakened, shaking with chill. I was curled up in that hollow
and I still had my rifle. I had no memory of getting there, no idea how long
it had taken me. It was nighttime now, and I was cold and hungry, and hurt.
There was room to sit up. Easing myself around, I touched my leg gingerly,
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feeling for the wound. One bullet had gone through my leg about five or six
inches above the knee and had come out on the other side.
In here I had a hole about six feet either way, and though it was raining
outside it was snug and dry here. The branches in front hung almost to the
ground and, breaking off some of those on the underside, I wove them into a
tighter screen. There was some bark and dry wood around the base of the tree
back of the hole, but I didn't want to chance a fire.
Try as I might, there was just no way I could get comfortable. Hour after
hour I lay there, huddled in the cold and the damp, trying to see my way out
of this trouble. Come daylight, those Fetchen boys would be hunting my hide,
and unless the rain washed out the mess of tracks I must have laid down by
crawling and losing blood, they'd have me for sure.
The night and the rain are often friendly things to fugitives, but it gave me
small comfort to sit there with my teeth rattling like ghost bones in a
hardwood cupboard, and a gnawing pain in my thigh and another in my side.
After a time I dug out a mite more of dirt with my hands, made a hollow for
my hipbone, and snuggled down on my unwounded side. I must have slept then,
and when I woke up it was still dark but there was no rain - only a few drops
falling from leaves. I felt that I was living on short time.
But the thing that worried me most was Galloway.
Had they killed him right off? That I couldn't believe. But where could he
have gotten to?
Right then I taken out my six-shooter and checked every load. I did the same
with my Winchester, and added a few rounds to bring her up to capacity. If the
Fetchen boys found me they were going to lose scalps rooting me out of here.
Then I sat back to wait. I would have liked a cup of coffee ... four or five
cups, for I'm a coffee-drinking man. But all I could do was wait and think.
That Judith girl, now. She was a mighty pretty thing, come to think of it.
How could I have been so dumb as not to see it ... Mighty contrary and ornery,
though. And those freckles ... She was pert, too pert ...
Other thoughts were in my mind, too. How long could those boys hold out down
below - Moss, Cap, and the others?
I had to hand it to Black Fetchen. He was a general. We seemed to be winning
a round or two, but all the while he was baiting trap for us.
I wished I knew what had happened to Galloway. He might be dead, or he might
be lying up somewhere, worse off than me. Far down the slope I heard a long
"halloo" - no voice I knew. All right, let them come.
I twitched around and studied my layout by the coming daylight. They couldn't
get at me from behind, and nobody was coming up that slope in front of me.
What they had to do was come right along the same way I had. Taking sight down
the trail, I figured I had it covered for fifty yards; then there was a bend
which allowed them cover. I had the side of the canyon for a hundred yards
further along.
It started to rain again, a cold drizzle that drew a sheet of steel mesh
across the morning. The grass and the trees were greener than I had ever seen
them, the trunks of the trees like columns of iron. For a long time I saw no
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movement. When I did see it down the trail I saw it half asleep, but I was
startled into wakefulness. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]