McAllister 5 Page 5

  ‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.

  He had sliced the last of the bacon into the pan. It made small sizzling music.

  ‘Doesn’t the bacon make a beautiful sound?’

  ‘Pure poetry,’ he agreed.

  ‘If you trusted me you would not have replied with another question.’

  ‘Then you have some kind of an answer.’

  ‘You don’t care whether I believe you trust me or not.’

  ‘That statement’s loaded. The fact is that it doesn’t matter whether I trust you or not.’

  ‘But you are still not answering the question.’

  ‘All right—when you get to my age you learn to neither trust nor distrust folks. That’s growing up.’

  She looked at him earnestly, closely inspecting the saturnine Indian features. ‘I trust you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s nice. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Turn the bacon. I like it underdone.’

  He obeyed. ‘Use your head,’ he told her. ‘For a good few weeks now I’ve been working at staying alive. The man I’m up against is good. The best. Everything has to be treated as a threat if I’m to stay alive. If you don’t see that, we’re both wasting our breath.’

  ‘What threat could I be, for God’s sake?’ She laughed rather scornfully. ‘A girl. I don’t even have any kind of a weapon.’

  He smiled. ‘There was a little old widow down in Tucson once. Didn’t have enough puff to blow a candle out. She nearly killed me with a griddle. I didn’t know she was the loving mother of a three-time killer.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ she said, ‘of men being scared of women, but this is ridiculous.’

  ‘Nothing’s ridiculous when you’re trying to stay alive. Believe me.’

  ‘Then why allow me to tag along?’

  ‘Never could resist a lovely woman.’

  She snorted. ‘You’ve been a perfect gentleman.’

  ‘That sounds like an insult.’

  ‘The bacon’s done,’ she said. ‘Quick before it’s ruined.’ He started flicking slices of bacon from the pan. ‘No, it’s not meant to be an insult. It’s my opinion that you really are a gentleman.’

  He set the coffee pot on the hot stones. ‘You’re original, that’s for sure. Nobody ever said that before.’

  ‘Now you’re lying. You’re the kind of man women say nice things to.’

  McAllister blushed.

  ‘Eat your goddam chow,’ he said in English. ‘I never heard a woman talk so much damned foolishness in all my born days.’

  She laughed. It was a nice sound and he liked it. It had been a long time since a woman had laughed with him like that. They smiled at each other and once more McAllister considered, taking one thing with another, he had never been happier in his life.

  Seven

  Later when he woke in the night he found his senses totally alert, the hair on the nape of his neck standing, like that of an alarmed dog. Somewhere on the mountain side a lone wolf sang its sad song to the moon and amongst the timber closer at hand a pack of coyotes ran, heralded by their shrill chorus.

  Near him the girl was sitting up. Her face was shaded from the moon and he could not see her features.

  ‘My great grandmother,’ she said, ‘was an Indian and there are times when I feel that I am all Indian. As I do now. I have a feeling of foreboding, McAllister, and I’m scared. Do you understand?’

  He sat up. ‘Sure, I understand. I know the feeling.’

  ‘As if there’s nothing to be gained by fighting against what is threatening me. I suppose that’s being a fatalist.’

  He said: ‘Would an arm around you help?’

  She giggled. ‘Any excuse is better than none.’

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘It is not up to me,’ she replied. ‘If I allow that arm around me, you will at once think that this is a fine sort of woman, lately widowed and mourning, and now only too willing to come into the arms of a man she scarcely knows.’

  ‘Is that what I’d think?’

  She ignored the question. ‘I’m lately widowed, McAllister, but I’m not mourning. Or had you noticed that?’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘Lemuel Sullivan was an animal and I hated him. I’d be a hypocrite to pretend different. His death released me.’

  ‘Now I have to ask the question of why you married him. Did you marry him?’

  ‘A justice of the peace in Tucson did it, gringo-style. Not a real marriage at all. I did not like it. But it was escape from my father who was even more of an animal than Lemuel. My life has been cursed with such men. All life is a curse in Mexico for a woman with any character at all. I was a great disappointment to my father who wanted a sweet little nonentity for a daughter. I broke my mother’s heart. I have not been a great success, McAllister.’

  He said: ‘You’re a success with me, Ana, if that’s any kind of help.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘You showed me that right off and it’s the best thing that could have happened. You have a healing presence, do you know that? Now, come and put that arm around me. We can make our own judgments about ourselves away out here in the wilds with only the coyotes and wolves to bear witness.’

  ‘And one killer,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Hence the foreboding.’

  He moved over beside her and put an arm around her. She put her forehead against his cheek and he found that she smelled, as he knew she would, of sun and warm flesh. It was like an intoxicant. Her lips were generous and were those of a woman who wanted affection as well as passion. It was a combination that appealed strongly to him.

  Eight

  During the night, the wolf came down from the hills with a few of his fellows. An elk crashed through the thickets near their camp and startled the girl. McAllister told her that the wolves were in pursuit of it. Were they in a large pack? the girl asked. No, McAllister told her, wolves seldom ran in packs. There would be a family of the animals. They made their kill at a good distance and the sounds died away. In the dawn, the girl said that she had not slept after hearing the wolves, but had lain awake, listening. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes large in their shadows.

  McAllister confessed that he too had lain awake, thinking. Maybe her talk of foreboding had influenced him. He had always been a man with a lively imagination. Putting himself in the hunted man’s boots, he had become convinced that the man had turned back and was in the basin now, turning the hunters into the hunted.

  ‘So do we go ahead?’ the girl asked.

  ‘No, we stay in the basin. But we’ll move north, deeper into timber.’

  She nodded. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Quietly,’ he cautioned.

  That was what they did. The girl went ahead with the horses for about a mile and stopped, waiting for McAllister. He concealed their fire, laid a false trail into the east and back towards the main trail. Then returned without leaving tracks and wiped out his and the girl’s tracks going north. To do this, he changed his boots for his Cheyenne moccasins. He came to the girl so silently that she was startled.

  ‘My God,’ she exclaimed, ‘Can this man we’re following move as quietly as that?’

  He smiled. ‘I hope not.’ Now he led the way up on to a shelf of high ground where they could see over the main part of the great bowl without anyone being able to get above them. Though, and McAllister emphasized this to the girl, that did not prevent an attack from the rear.

  His advantage, he told himself, was now that he had two pairs of eyes—though he had to admit that his reliance on the girl’s faculties might prove a weakness. In this game, it was not so much what you were capable of seeing, as what you could interpret.

  He had no difficulty in finding good grass for the horses. There was a stretch of meadow-like land immediately below their hiding place which could be watched over at all times. For themselves, he found them a fortress of rock which was devoid of all cover around it. Anybody coming at them would have to cross
at least a hundred paces of open country. Beyond that were thickets which gave way to more thickets surrounding great trees.

  They had not been in this place for more than ten minutes when McAllister said to the girl: ‘Look out over the basin and tell me what you see.’

  ‘Are you testing me?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s important for you to pass the test. Our lives may depend on it.’

  She looked out across the basin. ‘Maybe I’m imagining it, there’s so much blue haze about, but I think I can see a little smoke there.’ She pointed.

  ‘Good. That’s what I hoped you’d see. It’s smoke all right.’

  ‘But it won’t be from a fire belonging to our man.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. He wouldn’t be fool enough, unless he’s done it for a purpose, which is not beyond him. He’s most likely on the move by now. It’s likely to belong to somebody who thinks he has nothing to fear.’

  He glanced at the girl and saw that she crouched among the rocks with a look of frozen horror. She caught his glance. ‘I’m not too sure I like this, McAllister. Somewhere out there is a man who will kill us both if he gets the chance.’

  ‘I can’t say “don’t worry”,’ he said. ‘Worry’s what’ll keep us both alive so long as we don’t let the worry spook us.’ She gave him a wan smile.

  ‘I should have done as you said, McAllister. I know now that I am a burden to you.’

  ‘You weren’t a burden to me last night,’ he said. ‘A man never had a nicer debt to pay.’

  ‘You’re a smoothy,’ she accused.

  He changed the subject abruptly. ‘Can you see any way a man could creep up to this place without us seeing him?’

  She looked around puzzled. ‘No I can’t.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of it the other way around. I wondered how we could creep away from here without somebody out there spotting us. Watch me, now, I’m going to try something.’

  He peeled off his coat and lay down, facing up the slope of the bench and the ten foot-high rocks which stood at the rear of their little fortress. Under her curious gaze, he wormed his way to these rocks and almost at once had crawled from sight. She realized with surprise that two rocks of boulder size stood one behind the other and overlapping so that a gap remained between them. McAllister had crawled through this gap. She called his name, but there was no reply.

  She craned her head into the gap and found herself looking down into a deep patch of darkness. She rose and walked back to look over the basin again. There came over a curious and disturbing feeling that McAllister was no longer near her and that she was alone here in the immensity of this great bowl in the mountains with some ominous presence she could not put name or shape to.

  It was unreasonable, she told herself, to feel so frightened.

  If there was danger, McAllister would not have left her. Just the same, she said his name for comfort—‘McAllister’.

  Time passed. She wished she had some sort of weapon. Anything with which to defend herself. Slowly, her fright became her fear. She found that she was cold in the heat of the sun.

  How long had McAllister been gone? Ten minutes? Twenty? Who can measure time when one is afraid?

  She thought she saw a slight movement below, down towards the edge of the shelf. She dropped down behind the rocks, her fear soaring dizzily to panic.

  There was a man down there.

  She raised her head cautiously to peek out at him, trying not to show herself, but knowing that he had already seen her. Her hand felt for a rock and gripped one tightly. She wondered if he held a gun and would fire at her immediately the crown of her head appeared above the rock.

  She saw that he was still there, screened from the basin itself by a fringe of bushes. He had his hand up.

  My God, she thought, he’s waving.

  Who was he waving to? Was there someone above her to whom he was signaling.

  It’s McAllister.

  She was so relieved, she thought she would faint. Then she hated him for scaring her. But he had said that he’d test her. How had he managed to get from the rocks … She rose and showed herself above the rocks, waving back to him. At once, he seemed to drop from sight.

  Then the waiting started again and she found herself watching the gap in the rocks, fascinated, and just as scared as she had been before, the same feeling of foreboding gripping her.

  Then she remembered how McAllister had told her that they must both be watchful and she forced herself to turn and watch the basin again. The smoke still stirred faintly above the blue haze of timber to the north-east. Time was once more an element to disturb and threaten her. She would glance around uneasily at the gap in the rocks as if even the presence of McAllister would startle her, then force her eyes once more to their duty watch of the basin.

  ‘Ana.’

  She turned in alarm, even though he had used her name. McAllister was there, knowing already of her fear. ‘My God, I’m sorry, girl. I scared you.’

  ‘I’m a fool,’ she said. ‘There was no reason. But you going so quickly ... I had a feeling that something dangerous was near.’ She knew that she was near to hysteria, and she did not want him to see her weakness. McAllister she felt instinctively would have no sympathy for that kind of thing. And she did not want to be a burden. She wanted to show him that it had been right for her to come along with him.

  He came and put an arm around her.

  ‘You’re not a fool,’ he told her. ‘You have every reason to feel scared. Stay that way. But don’t let it hogtie you. You see what I did there? You wouldn’t believe it. There was me thinking of our man getting in here to us when I should have been thinking of us getting out of here without being seen. If we can do that, we’ve stolen a march on him. There’s a cut in the slope, like a small gully. I don’t know if it’s man-made or natural, but it runs in a curve along the slope and is hidden by the grass. I got to it straight from between those two rocks. You come out over there in the middle of that thicket. You can crawl to the bottom of the slope to where you saw me without being seen from above or below. If we play our cards right, we can nail him.’

  They sat down side by side, looking out over the country and she said: ‘But this isn’t what you really want, is it? This isn’t your style. Not to stay cooped up here. You’d rather be out there stalking him. I’m holding you back.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Put that idea right out of your head. There being two of us is what will catch him.’

  Suddenly, the arm he had around her exerted a little pressure of warning.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked quickly and saw that he was gazing down below the bench.

  ‘There’s a rider coming.’

  She drew in a sharp breath. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘He’s too far off for me to see.’

  Nine

  The fact that hit McAllister right between the eyes was that the approaching horseman knew exactly where they were. From the moment they first sighted him the horse was pointed straight at them, deviating only when a thicket or rock was in his way. He disappeared for a few minutes under the lip of the bench, but duly appeared again on the rim and came straight on for them.

  ‘It’s not him,’ Ana said. By that she meant that he wasn’t McAllister’s quarry. She was half relaxed and half puzzled.

  ‘Keep your eyes skinned,’ McAllister said. ‘He’s in this some place.’

  Now he reached for his rifle and levered a round into the breech. When the horse and rider were half way between the edge of the bench and their fortress, McAllister aimed the weapon at the rider and called: ‘That’ll be far enough.’

  Without any show of surprise or alarm, the man reined in. He was a man in his middle years and looked to be of a mild disposition, though now he was obviously laboring under some strain. His eyes showed that even at that distance. He had a weathered, leathern quality that belongs to a man who spends his life in the open. His rig was center-fire and had seen much wear. His h
orse was a sound but not spectacular gelding of middle years like its rider. Again like its rider, it knew its place and its work.

  The man called: ‘You McAllister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘No. Except for my knife.’

  ‘All right, come ahead, but keep your hands in sight.’

  The man dallied the lines around the saddlehorn, lifted his hands to shoulder height and urged the horse up the slight gradient. The bay tossed its head and walked sedately ahead.

  As he came closer, the man revealed himself to be strongly made and greatly stressed. His tongue licked his dry lips; his eyes had a deep fear in them. McAllister reckoned that the man was not scared one jot of him, McAllister.

  When the man was within a dozen paces of the rocks, McAllister told him to halt and get down. The man unwound the lines from the saddlehorn, dropped one so that it touched the ground and re-dallied the other. Then he walked slowly and as if very weary to the rocks. Once inside the little fortress, he looked at the girl with some surprise.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know there was a lady with you.’

  ‘Why should you?’ said McAllister. He drew his Remington and handed the rifle to the girl, signing for her to stand well back. He said to the man: ‘Take the weight off your feet. Sit on the ground.’