Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

I picked up the other shotgun and kept him going at a fast clip down the trail, harrying him unmercifully. By the time we reached the others he was very much out of breath, which was just the way I wanted him. Banks had recovered. He looked up, saw Novak and opened his mouth to yell. Then he saw me and had a shotgun pointing at him and shut his mouth with a snap. The guy with the broken leg was still unconscious.

I said, ‘Dump Scottie over the edge.’

Novak turned and gave me a glare but did as I said. He wasn’t too careful about it and Scottie would have a right to complain, but I supposed I’d be blamed for everything. I said, ‘Now you go over — and do it real slow.’

He lowered himself over the edge and I told him to walk away and keep turned round with his back to me. It was awkward lowering myself but I managed it. Novak tried something, though; as he heard the thump of my heels he whirled round but subsided when he saw I still had him covered.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now take off Scottie’s belt and tie him — heels to ankles, hog fashion. But, first, take off your own belt and drop it.’

He unbuckled his belt and withdrew it from the loops of his pants and for a moment I thought he was going to throw it at me, but a steadying of the shotgun on his belly made him think otherwise. ‘Now drop your pants.’

He swore violently but again did as I said. A guy with his pants around his ankles is in no shape to start a roughhouse; it’s a very hampering position to be in, as a lot of guys have found out when surprised with other men’s wives. But I will say that Novak was a game one — he tried.

He had just finished tying Scottie when he threw himself at my legs in an attempt to bring me down. He ought to have known better because I was trying to get into position to thump him from behind. His jaw ran into the butt of the shotgun just as it was descending on him and that put him out.

I examined Scottie’s bonds and, sure enough, Novak had tried to pull a fast one there, too. I made sure of him, then fastened up Novak hurriedly. There wasn’t a deal of time left and the helicopter would be coming back any moment. I took a shotgun and splintered the butt against a rock and then filled my pocket with shotgun shells for the other gun. On impulse I searched Novak’s pockets and found a blackjack — a small, handy, leather-bound club, lead-weighted and with a wrist loop. I smiled. If I was going to go on skull-bashing I might as well do it with the proper implement.

I put it in my pocket, confiscated a pair of binoculars Scottie carried and grabbed the shotgun. In the distance I could hear the helicopter returning, later than I thought it would.

On impulse I pulled out a scrap of paper and scribbled a message which I left in Novak’s open mouth. It read: IF ANYONE WANTS THE SAME JUST KEEP ON FOLLOWING ME — BOYD.

Then I took off for the high ground.

No one followed me. I got a reasonably safe distance away, then lay in some bushes and watched the discovery through the glasses. It was too far to hear what was being said, but by the action I could guess at it. The helicopter landed out of sight and presently another four men came up the trail and stumbled across my little quartet. There was a great deal of arm-waving and one guy ran back to stop the helicopter taking off.

Novak was roused and sat up holding his jaw. He didn’t seem to be able to speak very well. He spat out the paper in his mouth and someone picked it up and read it. He passed it round the group and I saw one man look over his shoulder nervously; they had made a count of the guns and knew I was now armed.

After a lot of jabber they made a rough stretcher and carried the guy with the broken leg back to the clearing. No one came back, and I didn’t blame them. I had disposed of four men in under the half-hour and that must have been unnerving for the others; they didn’t relish plunging into the forest with the chance of receiving the same treatment — or worse.

Not that I was in danger of blowing myself up like a bullfrog about what I had done. It had been a combination of skill and luck and was probably unrepeatable. I don’t go for this bunk about ‘His arm was strong because his cause was just.’ In my experience the bad guys of this world usually have the strongest arms — look at Hitler, for instance. But Napoleon did say that the moral is to the physical as three is to one, and he was talking out of hard experience. If you can take the other guys by surprise, get them off balance and split them up, then you can get away with an awful lot.

I put away the glasses and looked at the shotgun, then broke it open to see what would have happened to Novak’s belly if I’d pulled the trigger. My blood ran cold when I withdrew the cartridges — these were worse than buckshot. A heavy buckshot load in a 12-gauge carries nine pellets which don’t spread too much at short range, but these cartridges held rifled slugs — one to a cartridge.

Some hunting authorities don’t allow deer-hunting with rifles, especially in the States, so the arms manufacturers came up with this solution for the shotgunner. You take a slug of soft lead nearly three-quarters of an inch in diameter to fit a 12-gauge barrel and grooved to give it spin in the smooth bore. The damn’ thing weighs an ounce and enough powder is packed behind it to give it a muzzle velocity of 1600 feet per second. When a thing like that hits flesh it blows a hole out the other side big enough to put both your fists into. If I had twitched the trigger down at the marsh Novak’s belly would have been spattered all over the Kinoxi Valley. No wonder he had dropped his rifle.

I looked at the slug cartridge with distaste and hunted through my booty until I found some small buckshot to reload the shotgun. Fired at not too close a range that would discourage a man without killing him, which was what I wanted. No matter what the other guys did, I had no intention of looking at a noose in a rope one dark morning.

I looked out at the empty landscape, then withdrew to head up valley.

For two days I dodged about the North Kinoxi Valley. Howard Matterson must have talked to his boys, putting some stuffing back into them, because they came looking for me again, but never, I noticed, in teams of less than six. I played tag with them for those two days, always edging over to the east when I could. They never caught sight of me, not even once, because while one man can move quietly, six men moving in a bunch make more than six times the racket. And they took care to move in a bunch. Novak must have told them exactly what happened and they were warned about splitting up.

I made half a dozen deadfalls during those two days but only one was sprung. Still, that resulted in a broken arm for someone, who was taken out by helicopter. Once I heard a barrage of shots from a little ravine I had just left and wondered what was happening. If you get a lot of men wandering about the woods armed with guns some fool is going to pull the trigger at the wrong time, but that’s no excuse for the rest of them loosing off. I discovered afterwards that someone had to be taken out with a gunshot wound — someone had shot at him in error, he had shot back and the rest of the boys had let fly. Too bad for him.

The looted food supply was running out and I had to replenish. It was dangerous to go back to the logging camp — Matterson would have it sealed off tight — so I was heading east to Clare’s cabin. I knew I could stock up there and I hoped to find Clare. I had to get news to Gibbons about what Howard was doing; he wouldn’t look kindly on a manhunt in his territory and he’d move in fast. In any case, I wanted to find out what had happened to Clare.

Twice I made a break to the east, only to find a gang of Matterson’s loggers in the way so that I had to fade back and try to circle them. The third time I was lucky and when I got to the cabin I was very tired but not too tired to approach with extreme caution. I had not had much sleep in the last forty-eight hours, mostly restricting myself to catnapping an hour at a time. That’s when the loner comes off worst: he’s always under pressure while the other guys can take it easy.