McAllister Rides (19 page)

He started sweating.

“I'd admire, ma'am, if'n you'd move to the other side of the fire. Grant'll be back any minute and he could see you here.”

“I don't care what Grant sees. Can't you see that for one moment I want a strong arm around me so I feel safe.” She turned her head up to him and whispered: “Can't you see that?”

He looked down at her. Her eyes were warm and liquid in the firelight. He was certain sure he had never had a more beautiful woman in his arms.

Her lips were slightly parted.

He felt some of the resolution run out of him.

Where was the harm? She wouldn't talk, he wouldn't talk and Grant was out of sight. Mr. Bourn was a day's ride away.

He lowered his head and his mouth rested on hers.

He was prepared for pleasure, he was ready to find that the lips of this woman were like no others that he had tasted before, but he wasn't prepared for what happened to him when he kissed Mrs. Bourn.

It was as though something had exploded within him, as if all his will had been thrown out into the dark night beyond. It was as though he had never touched a woman before in his life. He took his mouth from hers finally and found that he was shaking. He gave an inarticulate groan that was all-revealing, plunged his mouth down onto hers and took her in
his arms. She rose to meet him, clinging to him with all her strength and before either of them knew what was happening, they were on the ground together, cleaving together, mouth to mouth and thigh to thigh, straining to get closer.

Time stopped.

A distant lobo howled and was unheard.

Footsteps sounded. McAllister heard those all right. He released Mrs. Bourn and sat up. He was breathless.

“Grant's coming,” he said.

She rose unhurriedly, walked back to her place and began unconcernedly to tidy her hair.

She smiled across at him in the firelight.

“You'll never be quite the same again, will you, Mr. McAllister?” she said.

He smiled back at her, withholding nothing.

“No, ma'am,” he admitted, “I won't. That's the truth.”

She cocked her head on one side and for a moment he forgot the rags she was dressed in and thought she was the most elegant woman he had clapped eyes on.

“It shows one thing,” she said.

“What's that?”

“You're less fastidious than Mr. Bourn.”

“How come?”

“You deigned to touch the woman the Comanches touched.”

He flushed scarlet.

“No, honey,” he said. “Don't ever even think that.”

A sudden happiness showed in her eyes.

“If I know Bourn,” she said, “he put a condition on that hundred dollars.”

“Condition?”

“Yes. He told you that if the Comanches had touched me the deal was off.”

He didn't miss the bitterness in her voice.

He told the truth.

“He said that. But he doesn't ever have to know.”

Her voice hardened. “For my sake or for the sake of the five hundred dollars?”

He didn't know what to say to that.

“You can say what you like,” he said. “You can call me all the names you like, but I never went back on the brand I
rode for. Maybe I blotted a brand now and then, maybe I forgot to brand a calf with the right brand, but I was loyal. Bourn hired me to bring you back and I've done that.”

“He hasn't paid you yet.”

He hesitated. She had a point there. But Bourn had advanced him money. If he didn't take Mrs. Bourn to her husband, he would have to find that money.

“No,” he said slowly, “he hasn't paid me yet.”

Grant walked into the firelight.

“It's a fine night,” he said. “Wa-al, Rem, who's goin' to take first watch?”

“I will.”

McAllister wanted to sit out there alone in the moonlight and think.

“I won't argue. I found a good spot up yonder. Care for me to show you?”

McAllister understood that Grant wanted to speak to him alone. He stood up, said goodnight civilly to Mrs. Bourn and received a cold reply, before he followed the ranger along the hollow. They climbed slowly together to the rim. Grant halted and said: “This is as good a place as any.”

McAllister asked: “What's on your mind?”

“I been thinkin'. An' I made up my mind.”

“Shoot.”

“I ain't a man to hone in on another man's business,” Grant told him. “Never was my way. But a woman's business – why that's a different matter.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if'n you take her back to that husband of hers, I'll take a chance on you bein' faster'n me with a gun.”

McAllister thought about that for a moment

Finally, he said: “You're crazy.” He couldn't think of anything else to say. He liked and admired Grant and wished he were more like him himself. But he couldn't say that

“So I'm crazy,” Grant said. “But that's the way it is.”

He said goodnight and walked away down into the hollow. McAllister listened to his retreating footsteps, thought about Mrs. Bourn, regretted deeply that Grant had interrupted them earlier and said: “Ain't life hell?”

It was night.

Ike Goldheimer was counting the day's takings and his wife was pouring coffee in the big room of the store. This was the time of day Ike liked, he could feel the money he had earned in his hands and the terrible heat of the day had gone. Several men watched him, sipping drinks that Ike had served them earlier. There was a boss from a trail herd going north, a drover or two, an Osage Indian dozing in a dark corner, a Mexican trader playing cards with three travelers and there sitting upright in a hard chair the big man of the country, Mr. Tobias Bourn.

Faintly, from the bedding grounds came the lowing of tired cattle.

Bourn was saying: “I was a fool, Ike. I admit it. It was throwing money away. But I had to take a chance.”

Ike finished counting a pile of silver dollars and looked up at him heavily.

“You vosn't throwing money avay, mister. Unt you vosn't taking no chance. McAllister said he vould bring beck your vife and bring beck your vife he vill. I know dat poy.”

“No,” said Bourn. “It was easy money for him from a soft old man.” One of the cowhands who knew him snorted softly. “He lit out for the Border or for Montana or some such place, laughing.”

Ike said: “If he don't gom beck, he's dead. You don't know dat poy.”

The sound of horses walking came to their ears through the open doorway. They all lifted their heads and listened.

“Ike,” said his wife, “that could be Rem now.”

“It could be a hundred different men, vife,” Ike told her tolerantly.

The hoofbeats stopped and there was a long pause while the animals were tied at the hitching rail outside. Bootheels
sounded. One man walking tiredly, stiff from the saddle. A big man appeared in the doorway, stooping under the low lintel. He straightened and they saw that it was McAllister.

Mrs. Ike sprang up.

“Vy, Rem,” she cried.

“Howdy, Mrs. Ike. Howdy, Ike,” McAllister said. “My, I'm purely starving. Do you have a steak around or something.”

Mrs. Ike put her hands together in a sort of ecstasy, “Always he is hongry,” she cried.

Bourn heaved himself to his feet. McAllister turned and stared at him as if his sight was impaired by the brightness of the lamplight.

“My wife,” Bourn said.

McAllister stared at him for a moment.

“No trace, Mr. Bourn,” he said huskily. “I went clean into Comanche country, but I didn't find hide nor hair of her.”

The man seemed to have been struck a heavy blow. He looked unbelieving at McAllister for a moment and those watching thought he would come right out of character and burst into tears. But he didn't. He said: “You owe me fifty dollars.”

McAllister smiled as if in relief.

“All along the trail,” he said, “I've been betting myself you'd say that and I reckon I won.”

Bourn looked brusque.

“I'll take it now.”

McAllister laughed.

“You can take a horse to water,” he said.

Bourn shouted: “McAllister, you took fifty dollars of mine and I demand that you return it There's no real law in this country, but I have enough men –”

“Here,” Ike shouted, snatching up a fistful of money with unaccustomed recklessness, “here's your domned monies.”

Bourn took it with both hands. He smiled a wintry smile and said: “I never thought Ike could part so easily with money.” He thrust the coins into his pockets, rammed his hat down firmly on his head and stalked out.

Ike clapped his hands to his head.

“Haf I lost my sanity?” he cried. “Mein Gott, am I crazy?”

“No, hosbond,” Mrs. Ike said, “you did the decent thing,
I think. Now, come, Rem my son, wash up. You have come a long way and you are tired. I have a fine steak for you mit fry potatoes. Some tomatoes. Some epple-pie. You look thin and ve must do something about dat.”

A wide smile of pure pleasure spread across McAllister's face.

“Go ahead, ma'am,” he said, “don't let me stop you.”

“But let me stop you,” Ike cried. “Are you tryink to benk-rupt me, voman? Already this no-good owes me fifty dollars.”

“And what you staked me for,” McAllister reminded him.

Tears burst into Ike's small eyes.

“I vos forgettink. Gott in Himmel, I shall be ruint.”

“I'll put the horses up,” McAllister said and sauntered to the door with a new jauntiness.

Outside, he picked up the
canelo's
line and led the horse and the mule down toward the corral. Grant and Mrs. Bourn had taken the other two animals. As he walked, he thought about her. He had lied to a man, stared him right in the eyes and lied to him, but now he had faced Bourn, he was glad he had done it. He had never been gladder over an action in all his life. In fact that one lie gave him an extraordinary glow of satisfaction. By God, he felt downright virtuous. He remembered his farewell to Mrs. Bourn with Grant, having told his goodbyes, a couple of hundred yards down the trail. He reckoned he never would forget that woman, though a hundred others came along. She'd be in San Antone right now with her brother. Grant would make sure she arrived there safely.

He was seeing and hearing nothing as he neared the corral, nothing but the woman in his mind.

The
canelo
whickered. To the other horses in the corral as McAlister thought.

They reached the corral gate and McAllister started to take down the poles.

“McAllister.”

He knew the voice and he was able to put a name to it. Morny Richards. But the full import of it didn't get through to his brain.

Then he heard the sound of a gun coming to full cock.

Only then did realisation explode in his brain, only then did the bone-deep tiredness leave him.

He folded quickly like a jack-knife, braced his leg muscles under him and dove flat under the
canelo's
belly. The horse shied and whirled as he dropped the line. The mule reared and turned away with kicking hoofs. McAllister rolled and kept on rolling as the shots came. He heard them whack into the poles of the corral, felt a splinter of wood sting his face and then he was tight up against an upright.

“Is he hit?” A voice asked. That was Rick, the kid.

Morny's reply came.

“He's gotta be. I give him three.”

Seth sang out.

“Take it easy. The bastard's an Injun.”

There was silence as they waited cautiously. All three of them were there. They had been waiting for him. They knew him and they were certain of his coming. They were men who paid their debts and tonight they would pay one to their pride for they had little else.
Horsethieves' pride,
McAllister thought.

Carefully, he slid his hand down until it rested on the cedarwood butt of the old Remington. His fingers slipped the keepsafe thong free, his thumb rested on the hammer. They had him nicely here, but at least one of them would go with him

Did ever a man have luck like mine?
he thought.
I pass up five hundred dollars like it was nothing. I'm in debt, now I'm jumped by these three sidewinders. My daddy should of drowned me like a kitten.

Cautiously, he raised his head and looked around, expecting a shot at the movement but none came. He could see a wagon some thirty paces away and knew that one man could be concealed behind that. A little way to the right was a shed of Ike's at the end of the main building. Another could be there. He looked in the opposite direction and all he could see in the way of cover was the corner of the corral. A likely place for a bushwhacker.

So if he could get inside the corral it was likely that only one man would have a fairly clear view of him in the moonlight and that was the man at the corner. So get inside the corral and settle his hash.

He raised himself to his knees and started to work his way over the lower pole of the corral fence. A gun roared from
not far away, a slug slammed into the pole he was going over and hastened his departure admirably. He flung himself flat into the dust of the corral, tore the Remington from leather and spun around, shooting at the corner of the corral.

A man screamed: “Gawdamighty, he's killed me.”

That was Seth.

McAllister was on his feet, legging it as fast as he could go for that corner.

He was no more than halfway when a gun sounded from there, something struck him in the side, tore him from his feet and dumped him on the ground.

A voice inside his head screamed –

I'm hit.

Had Seth suckered him or was the man really badly hit. The guns were still sounding and it seemed that all around him flying lead was pounding dust into his lungs. He coughed a couple of times on it and fired again at the corner thankful that he still had his gun in his hand. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He cursed in sudden fear as he realised that in the next second he could be dead.