Десмонд Бэгли - Running Blind

Even a 9 mm bullet from a Luger will penetrate nine inches of pine board from very close range, and that’s a peewee bullet compared to the.44 fired by the Western Colt. A few well placed shots would whittle away the shack from around our hero.

I looked at the house and wondered how those flimsy walls would stand up against the awesome power of Fleet’s rifle. The soft-nosed bullets mightn’t do much — they would tend to splash on impact; but the jacketed bullets should have a hell of a lot of penetrative power. It was time to find out, but first I had to locate that rifleman.

I withdrew my head and looked at Elin. She seemed better now that she had her breathing under control. ‘How are you feeling now?’

‘My God!’ she said. ‘How do you think I feel?’

I grinned at her with some relief. That spurt of temper showed she had improved. ‘Everything will get better from now on.’

‘They can hardly get worse.’

‘Thanks for what you did in there,’ I said. ‘It was very brave.’ Considering the attitude she had previously shown towards killing it was much more than that.

She shivered. ‘It was horrible!’ she said in a low voice. ‘I shall see it as long as I live.’

‘You won’t,’ I said with certainty. ‘The mind has a knack of forgetting things like that. That’s why wars are so long and frequent. But just so you don’t have to do it again, you can do something for me.’

‘If I can.’

I pointed to a lump of lava above her head. ‘Can you push that over the edge when I tell you to? But don’t expose yourself or you’ll get a bullet.’

She looked up at the lava fragment. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Don’t do it until I say.’ I pushed the rifle ahead of me and looked at the house. Still nothing moved and I wondered what Slade was up to. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Shove it over.’

There was a clatter as the rock moved and rolled down the slope of the lava flow. A rifle spoke and a bullet sang overhead and then another, better aimed, struck rock splinters a little to the left. Whoever was shooting knew his work, but I had him spotted. He was in an upstairs room and, by the shadowy movement I had seen, he was kneeling at the window with his head barely showing.

I took aim, not at the window but at the wall below it and a little to the left. I squeezed the trigger and, through the scope, saw the wood of the wall planking splinter under the impact. There was a faint cry and a shift of light at the window, and then I saw the man in full sight standing with his hands to his chest. He staggered backwards and vanished.

I had been right — Fleet’s rifle would shoot through walls.

I shifted sights to the downstairs rooms and methodically put a bullet into the wall alongside every window on the ground floor, just where it would be natural for a man to wait in cover. Every time I squeezed the trigger the torn sinews in my hand shrieked in protest and I relieved my feelings by bellowing at the top of my voice.

I felt Elin tug at my trouser leg. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said worriedly.

‘Don’t hinder the man on the job,’ I said, and dropped back. I took out the empty magazine. ‘Fill that up — it’s difficult for me.’ These periods with an empty gun worried me and I wished Fleet had had a spare clip. To be jumped on by somebody now would be slightly disastrous.

I saw that Elin was coping with reloading the clip with the right bullets and took a look at the house again. Someone was wailing over there and there were confused shouts. I had no doubt that the house was now filled with a considerable amount of consternation; the idea that a bullet can rip through a wall and hit the man behind it is highly unsettling for the man behind the wall.

‘Here,’ said Elin, and passed me the full clip of five rounds. I slotted it into the gun and poked it forward again just in time to see a man break from the front door and take cover behind the Chevrolet. I could see his feet through the telescopic sight. The door nearer to me was swung wide open and, with a mental apology to Lee Nordlinger, I put a bullet through the car and through the metal of the opposite door. The feet moved and the man came into view and I saw it was Ilyich. His hand was at his neck and blood spurted from between his fingers. He tottered a few more steps then dropped, rolled over and lay still.

It was becoming very difficult for me to work the bolt action with my ruined hand. I said to Elin, ‘Can you crawl over here beside me?’ She came up on my right side, and I said, ‘Lift up that lever, pull it back, and ram it forward again. But keep your head down while you’re doing it.’

She operated the bolt while I held the rifle firm with my left hand, and she cried out as the empty brass case jumped out into her face unexpectedly. In this dot-and-carry-one manner I put another three rounds into selected points of the house where I thought they would do most damage. When Elin put the last round into the breech I took out the magazine and told her to fill it again.

I felt happier with that one round in the breech as an insurance against emergency, and I settled down to observe the house and to compile an interim report. I had killed three men for certain, wounded another — the rifleman upstairs — and possibly yet another, judging from the moaning still coming from the house. That was five — six if Kennikin was included. I doubted if there were many more, but that didn’t mean that more weren’t on their way — someone could have used a telephone.

I wondered if it was Slade who was doing the wailing. I knew his voice but it was difficult to tell from that inarticulate and unstructured sound. I glanced down at Elin. ‘Hurry up!’ I said.

She was fiddling desperately. ‘One of them is stuck.’

‘Do your best.’ Again I peered around the rock in front of me and my eye was caught by a movement beyond the house. Someone was doing what they all ought to have done at the start of this action — getting away from the back of the house. It was only because of the sheer unexpectedness of the gun power I wielded that they hadn’t done it before — and it was dangerous because I could be outflanked.

I racked up the telescopic sight to a greater magnification and looked at the distant figure. It was Slade and he was apparently unhurt except for his bandaged hand. He was leaping like a bloody chamois from hummock to hummock at a breakneck speed, his coat tails flying in the breeze and his arms outstretched to preserve his balance. By the convenient range-finder system built into the sight I estimated that he was a little under three hundred yards away and moving farther every second.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly to steady myself and then took aim carefully. I was in considerable pain and had difficulty in controlling the wavering sight. Three times I almost squeezed off the shot and three times I relaxed the pressure on the trigger because the sight had drifted off target.

My father bought me my first rifle when I was twelve and, wisely, he chose a .22 single-shot. When a boy hunts rabbits and hares and knows that he has only one shot at his disposal then he also knows that the first and only shot must count, and no finer training in good shooting habits is possible. Now, again, I had only one shot available and I was back to my boyhood again, but it was no rabbit I was shooting — more like a tiger.

It was difficult to concentrate and I felt dizzy and a wash of greyness passed momentarily in front of my eyes. I blinked and it cleared away and Slade stood out preternaturally clearly in the glass. He had begun to move away at an angle and I led him in the sight and let him run into the aiming point. There was a roaring of blood in my ears and the dizziness came again.