Carmody 5 Page 8

  A narrow canyon started some distance down. Instead of going into it, Carmody and the girl moved along the rim. Limber pine grew thick along the rim and it took some scrambling to get through it. The canyon below grew deeper, twisted once, then came to a dead end, the walls slanting up smooth and high.

  Turning away from the rim, they made their way along a rocky slope dotted with gambel oak. About forty-five minutes had passed since they left the hideout. Carmody shaded his eyes against the sun and looked back. From where he was he could still see the long slope where the girl had fallen. Garrison would have to come that way. There was no other way out of the hideout. There was nobody on the slope. He told the girl to keep moving.

  The girl was tougher than he thought, but it would take a while to break her in. When they had put an hour between themselves and the hideout, Carmody shoved her down behind a fallen tree and told her to rest.

  He unscrewed the canteen and told her to drink. She wanted to drink, but shook her head. Carmody showed her the flat of his hand. “Do what I say,” he warned her. “That way you’ll still be pretty when this is over.”

  Katherine Yates drank from the canteen, then tried to spill it out. Carmody grabbed for the canteen, and while he was doing it she tried to take his belt gun. He hit her hard across the arm with the barrel of the rifle. She yelled. The water was spilling out of the canteen. Carmody went after that first. The girl was up on her feet, yelling and waving. Carmody corked the canteen and hit her across the back of the thigh with the rifle. The leg buckled and she fell. Carmody didn’t try to catch her.

  She got up, hopping on the injured leg, cursing him. “Goddamn you to hell! “ she said. “You just wait till Frank...”

  “Get going,” Carmody said, slinging the saddle bags on to her shoulder, pushing her ahead of him with the rifle. “Next time you yell I’ll gag you. And I’ll keep you gagged all the way back to Denver.”

  The girl pretended to be hurt worse than she was. “Maybe you’d walk better if I did the other leg,” Carmody said.

  That was all it took to get her walking right. There was still no sign of Garrison, no sound either. Katherine Yates turned around to look back. For the first time there was doubt in her eyes.

  Carmody grinned at her. “They’ll be along,” he said.

  The girl said over her shoulder, “Let me go, Carmody. No matter how much my father is paying you I’ll see you get more. I swear it. Just let me go.”

  “Keep moving,” Carmody said. “Keep moving and stop talking.”

  She tried again. “I can get the money,” she said. “Goddamn it, you can trust me.”

  Carmody would just as soon trust Frank Garrison. He told her so, to make it plain how things were. “Unless you got ten thousand right there in your pocket—keep moving.”

  Katherine Yates was used to having her own way with men. She called Carmody a sneak-faced son of a bitch. Carmody decided this would be a valuable experience for her.

  Far back three shots spaced apart echoed and rolled in the clear mountain silence. That would be the sign for the extra men guarding the canyon trail to come running. Carmody knew Garrison had already started after them. Delaying the signal shots was to make him think he had gained more time than he had.

  It took a while to skirt a small lake. Past the lake there was a downward slope. The run-off from the lake spilled down there, and the grass was wet and slippery. It was quiet except for their boots squelching in the mud. Carmody looked up at the sun. About two o’clock now. The girl was beginning to tire. It showed in the way she lifted her feet. That was something she’d have to learn, to use her feet right, to make no unnecessary movements, to save her mouth for breathing, to keep moving.

  Through a shallow canyon, they came out on the other side, and started along a hogback ridge. The ridge was sharp and bare, without trees. Carmody warned the girl to stay low when they went over it. They crossed the hogback and went down into a stand of mountain maple.

  The grass under the trees was yellow and dead after the winter snow. The wind had dried it out. Carmody told the girl to eat some jerked beef, to drink some water. This time she did what she was told.

  While she tore at the dried meat with her teeth, she massaged her aching thigh. She stopped when she saw Carmody looking at her.

  “How’s the leg?” he asked.

  Katherine Yates called him a dirty name.

  Chapter Ten

  It was about five o’clock and they were resting again in a scatter of rocks below the top of a high ridge that ran and dipped for miles. It wasn’t easy to say how far they’d come. The way the country twisted and rolled, it could be as much as eight miles, as little as five.

  Looking back, Carmody saw it. A small, bright flash of sun on metal. He watched for it again, but there was nothing more. They were coming all right, making good time not more than three miles behind.

  Prodding the girl to her feet with the rifle, Carmody started her along the side of the ridge. The east side of the ridge was in shadow, with the glare of the setting sun on the other side. Garrison and the others were coming fast, but Carmody didn’t think they would catch up before the sun went down. They might not want to catch up, with Carmody in front of them, with the sun in their eyes.

  Carmody had hunted enough men himself to know what it was like. The man being hunted always had some advantage in the beginning. Then, as fatigue set in and the hunters became more confident, the advantage disappeared.

  The girl stumbled and fell. Carmody was driving her hard; there was no other way. He couldn’t go easy on her and still expect to collect the ten thousand dollars. Instead of getting up, she lay there on the rocky slope. Carmody gave her a minute before he dragged her to her feet again. “Move on,” he said.

  It was still two hours before dark and they had to keep moving. They could hole up somewhere before dark. If they did that, most likely they’d find Garrison waiting at first light. When the ridge began to turn back east, Carmody pushed the girl up and over the top. The other side was washed in bright yellow light. The girl began to stumble, blinded by the sun. Carmody grabbed her by the collar of the coat and kept her on her feet until they made their way to the bottom.

  There was a shallow stream between the ridge they’d crossed and the next one. Dwarf laurel was heavy on both sides. The sun still had a ways to slide, but already a cold wind was knifing down from the peaks above the timberline. The girl fell as Carmody turned her loose. But there was still a lot of fight left in her. Cursing him for a no-good bastard, she crawled to the edge of the stream and drank from it.

  Carmody watched while she washed the dirt and sweat off her face and dried it on the sleeve of her coat. He spilled out what was left in the canteen and refilled it. After he drank he told her to move on.

  The girl spun around, revived by anger. “You move on! You go to hell. I’ve had enough of you.”

  “Tired, are you, honey?” Carmody asked. “Want to lie down and rest and wait for Frank? Maybe a nice, cold bath would make you feel better?”

  She tried to get out of the way, but Carmody moved too fast. They struggled on the edge of the stream. With his hands digging into her upper arms, he held her out over the water.

  “All right, for Christ’s sake,” she said.

  Carmody held her where she was. “You sure?” he asked. “I’d like you to be sure.”

  When he thought she was sure, he let her go. Without having to be told, she picked up the saddle bags, and they moved down the stream to where there were rocks and it was easy to cross without getting more than their feet wet.

  They crossed the next ridge. After they crossed it Carmody lay on his belly on the far side. He looked back, scanning the countryside. There was nothing, no movement, no sound. They were moving cagey, wherever they were.

  Past that ridge there was a wide stretch of rocks and gravel. It slanted upward and ended in a jumble of huge rocks. The rocks were split in the middle to form a sort of cave, hedged in by dwarf juni
per. Once in cover of those rocks there would be a clear view down the long slope. It was as good a place as any, Carmody decided. The sun was just about gone.

  The girl complained as he pushed and dragged her up the slope. They had to get up there fast. “Don’t fade on me now, honey,” Carmody said, feeling some of the strain himself. “In a minute you can rest all you want.”

  Stumbling, their boots gashed by the old glacial stones, they made it into the wide crack in the rocks. The light was thick by the time they got there. Overhead, the rocks hung out. The ground was dry and sandy. Carmody told the girl to unroll the blankets and get the whisky.

  Katherine Yates uncorked a bottle and drank from it. She passed it to Carmody, almost politely. Crawling out to the edge of the split in the rocks, he parted the junipers with his rifle barrel and looked down the rocky slope toward that last ridge.

  The girl had wrapped herself in the blankets. When he looked around at her she was asleep. He lay there, rifle ready, facing down the slope. A night bird came out and started making noise. Carmody waited.

  It was dark and an hour later when he heard them. The sounds were a good distance off, and faint. The best he could figure, they were climbing up the far side of the last ridge. The sounds grew stronger as they came over the sharp edge at a crouching run. It was too far away and too dark to make out any one of them. Carmody counted six shapes. That would be Garrison, O’Bryan, the Hatten boys, the new man, and one of the lookouts from the canyon.

  Carmody heard them spreading out along the near side of the ridge. One of them started out on the rocky slope. Carmody heard Garrison telling him to get the hell back. After a while they moved off down the slope. That didn’t make Carmody feel any safer. Garrison was full of tricks. It was going to be a long night.

  The moon came up, lighting the long slope with a cold glare. Nothing on the slope was big enough for a man to hide behind. If they came up that way he could just lay back and pick them off. Carmody never thought for a moment it would be that easy.

  Lying there, he grinned when he saw a match flare far down the ridge where they’d gone. Dry wood caught fire. It was too far away to see more than the blaze of the burning wood. Even if he got closer, he didn’t think he’d see anybody walking in front of the light. It was one of the oldest tricks, to light a fire and make camp., and then to lie back in the darkness until somebody showed up. It was an old trick, but sometimes even an old trick worked, provided a man was desperate enough to be careless.

  The fire burned down quickly and nobody piled on any fresh wood. Carmody watched the fire burn down to embers, then to nothing. Even if they had piled wood on it till daybreak he wouldn’t have stirred from where he was. Maybe he’d backtrack on Garrison before this was over; this wasn’t the time or the place. Besides, he still had a small edge. He wondered just how long Garrison would hold back because of the stick of dynamite in his pocket. When Garrison finally got killing mad he would shoot at everything that moved. The Yates girl could be worth a million dollars and it wouldn’t matter a damn to Garrison once the grin on his face became fixed and crazy.

  Carmody wanted to sleep, but he knew he could do without it the first night, the second too, maybe even the third, if he had to. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that third night. A long time before, with a posse chasing him, he had gone without sleep for four nights. Toward the end of the fourth night he had started hearing sounds and shooting at men that weren’t there.

  The moon clouded over and it started to rain.

  Carmody moved back from the mouth of the hiding place, closer to the girl. Even if they started up the slope in the rain he would still hear them. Only heroes in dime novels could walk over rocks in boots without being heard.

  The girl was sleeping soundly, dog tired, flat on her back. Draping a blanket over his head, Carmody lit a cigar. The rain stopped and it was quiet except for water dripping in the junipers. Carmody stayed where he was, the blanket pulled around his shoulders, smoking the cigar and putting away small mouthfuls of whisky.

  A chickadee was twittering in the laurels when he poked the girl in the ribs and told her to wake up. The chickadees always started up first, before the darkness turned to thick grey light. The moon was fading; he could barely see Katherine Yates.

  It took her a while to wake up. Carmody had to poke her again. The blankets were pulled over her head, to shut out the cold, maybe the reality of what was happening. Her head emerged from the blanket eyes blinking, irritable as hell.

  “Rise,” Carmody said. “You don’t have to shine.”

  “What the hell’s wrong now?” she complained. The early morning cold sent a shudder through her body.

  Carmody handed her the bottle. There was still a lot of whisky left. “Drink twice, then give it back,” he said. “We’re moving out.”

  “Oh shit,” she said, and Carmody knew how she felt. Once again he figured the trip was going to do her a lot of good.

  She tried to take more than the two swallows Carmody had ordered. He took the bottle away from her. Then he slapped her, not hard, just to remind her who was calling the shots. The girl called him something worse than a son of a bitch.

  “We’re getting to be like an old married couple,” Carmody said, grinning with his teeth. The rest of his face was too stiff to grin. “Having words first thing in the morning.”

  It would have been quicker to tie the blanket roll himself. To remind the girl again, he made her do it. She didn’t do it right and he made her do it again. The little time that was lost might gain time later, once she got the idea and accepted it.

  “We go out the back way,” Carmody told her.

  In back the split in the rocks narrowed sharply. When they squeezed through it, the girl first, Carmody twisted off the lariat wrapped around his middle. It was a high bluff and it started right behind the rocks, and went straight down. No matter how short he tied it, there would be a long drop at the end.

  The soil was sandy and the junipers didn’t look too well anchored. It would have to do. Carmody hated to leave that rope behind. If the bluff wasn’t so high he could tie it in a flip-hitch, then jerk it loose when they got down. That would take too much rope; they didn’t have enough as it was. There wasn’t even enough rope to tie knots so the girl could get down easier.

  “Spit on your hands,” he told the girl. “Don’t let yourself slide or it’ll cut right through your hands. Make a bend in the rope, then let yourself down about a foot. Then make another bend and do the same. Make the bends with your good hand, drop down with the weaker hand. Try to make the last bend as close to the bottom as you can get. There’s a long drop after that. Don’t try to keep your legs stiff when you hit. Let your legs double up and throw yourself forward, hands out, at the same time. That way you won’t get a knee in the mouth. Understand?”

  Carmody threw down the blanket roll and hoped the whisky bottle wouldn’t break. The roll hit the sandy bottom of the bluff and bounced away. There was no sound of breaking glass. There was no need to worry about the saddle bags.

  “Move,” Carmody said.

  The girl was scared of high places or else she was faking it. The rope hung over the edge, with the wind moving it once it was clear of the rock. The girl looked down, closed her eyes, then opened them, and looked at Carmody. The darkness had turned to grey; Carmody saw the sweat on her forehead. Whisky or fear could do that.

  “I can’t make it,” she said, shivering with some-thing.

  They had wasted enough time. “Sure you can,’’ Carmody said. He had stuck the Winchester through his belt. He drew the .44 and cocked it. He wasn’t fooling one bit.

  “Start climbing,” he said.

  “You’d kill me?” she asked.

  Carmody would, and he explained it to her. He explained that he couldn’t lower her down on the rope; the rope wasn’t long enough. Sooner or later— probably sooner—Garrison and his boys would figure out the way they’d gone. There wasn’t any more time to waste on talking, o
n anything. If he had to leave her she might just as well be dead.

  “I said spit on your hands,” he said. “Then make a bend in the rope.”

  There was genuine fear in her eyes as she went over the edge. Carmody cursed at her until she made a bend in the rope, like she was told. “Easy,” he told her. “Hold the bend till you let yourself down. Then make it quick. Make a bend with your good hand before you start to slide.”

  He talked her down the side of the bluff. There was a small cry of pain as she let the left hand slide through the rope and carry more weight than it should. Once she got down, Carmody knew he would have to get down fast himself. If she didn’t break a leg with that last drop she might start to run. The bottom of the bluff was choked with clumps of ash and dotted with boulders—a lot of places she could hide before he found her.

  Once she got the hang of it, she did it pretty well. Now she was close to the end of the rope. “Don’t let the sand down there fool you,” Carmody said from the top. “There’s rock under that sand. Let your legs fold the way I said. You got it? Now let go.”

  The girl hit the bottom, yelled with pain, fell forward on her face in the sand. Wrapping the rope around his right hand, Carmody swung himself over the edge, and started down. Quickly, hand over hand, he reached the end of the rope, and dropped.

  He landed close to the girl. She was crying. It was too bad about the rope and there was no time to comfort her, even if he wanted to. He picked up the saddle bags and bumped her ahead with the blanket roll. “Move! Move! Move!” he said. When she fell again he kicked her, not a mean kick, just a move-on kick.

  Moving that way, the girl crying, Carmody pushing her, they crossed the bottom of the bluff. The girl tried to throw herself into the shelter of the nearest clump of ash. Carmody moved her out of there, pushing her with the bulk of the saddle bags and the blanket roll. When they were far enough across the clear space that stretched away from the bottom of the bluff, he tripped her.

  Still panicked, she twisted around to face him. Before she could say anything, he hit her. Not enough to knock her out—to stun her. It was a shame to treat a good looking, red-headed woman that way. Carmody pulled the neckerchief from around his neck and gagged her with it. There was only one way to tie a gag, and that was tight.