Nelson Nye - Rafe

IX

The man out front must have been plumb asleep. Rafe, hunting Bathsheba, got clean around the house and halfway to the shed before he got loose enough of the spell she'd put on him to remember Spangler's gunnies. With a startled yelp he plunged against the door, only to find it re-enforced with a padlock!

Rafe didn't waste any time shouting curses. He dragged out his pistol and banged the butt against the thing, again and again until the lock flopped open.

Bathsheba, pawing, bobbed her head and whinnied. Rafe found the blanket and got his saddle on her. The bridle and bit he had missed before were hung with his spurs from a peg on the wall and, though he shivered with impatience, he got them too, dug his boot in the stirrup and went on up.

The mare danced with excitement as he kneed her around. Rafe, truth to tell, was pretty excited himself, expecting, any moment to hear the yells go up. Quick as he got her facing the door he brought the reins down hard. She went through like a thrown rock, grunting and squealing, breaking wind at every jump.

He heard the first shot whimper cousin , slicing the air about an inch from his jaw. But he held his fire, scrinching flat out along the mare's extended neck, not daring now to swerve her; and this way, her shod hoofs pounding up a storm, they sailed into the open, straight as an arrow for the front of Pike's house.

That whippoorwill back in the rocks was really talking but Rafe, though he had his Colt in his hand, was a deal more worried about the one out front who'd be having a broadside target soon as they cleared this end of the house.

And now they were doing it. Now Rafe could see the front porch, and beyond it the dust churning struggle of two limb-tangled shapes furiously locked in grim combat. Bunny's red hair was flying around every whichway, and even as Rafe looked Spangler's man flung her off and snapped up his rifle. Rafe squeezed the trigger, missed, and squeezed off another. The rifleman, clutching his belly, teetered back on both boot heels and went down like a sack.

Now Rafe was into the brush, tearing noisily through it, covering his head against the slap of the branches; not aiming this time to go into the town, not a thought in his head at the moment but escape. The surviving Spangler hand was bound to take after him, and all Rafe had for defense was his six-shooter, not very substantial deterrent against hardcase armed with a rifle. Rafe was counting heavy on the mare's long rest to open up a lead to where he'd have some chance of losing the feller.

Then a fresh thought hit him. Maybe that bird from the rocks wasn't following. He must know this country a heap better than Rafe, could probably guess within a matter of yards where his quarry would emerge and even now be racing to get there ahead of him.

Rafe pulled up to listen. Beyond the restless stomp and panting of the mare he couldn't hear much of anything. He'd been intending, soon as he got clear of this growth, to get into the hills and maybe hole up until he could get some line on how things were shaping. This still looked a pretty solid idea, but he wouldn't get far charging into no rifle. Town, for the moment, might prove healthiest after all.

He reined the mare left and, holding her to a walk, tried to sift a few facts from the tangle of his confusion. It was not too surprising his thoughts went to the girl. From what little he actually knew, or had observed, there was very little evidence to nourish the suspicions he'd embraced that Bunny and her father were purely out to do him dirt. And yet, that business back at the house lacked considerable of offering any real proof they weren't. Her struggle with that rifle packer could have had some entirely different significance, nothing to do with him at all. At very best, he decided, the most you could get out of it was that she hadn't wanted Rafe killed.

It would pay a man to be almighty cautious in assessing any actions of a girl bold as Bunny. Rafe wasn't too depressed about the gun-waver he had shot. He would like to have done as much for that other one.

He replaced the spent loads and observed that his cover was about to play out. Through the branches ahead he could see the town's buildings. Considering the risks of showing himself, he was forced to the rather reluctant conclusion that the safest place for Rafe Bender right now in Dry Bottom would be Alph Chilton's bank.

He could see its brick shape a couple of hundred yards off, and pulled up again in the last of the brush for a prolonged, intent and pretty scowling appraisal. The backs of buildings seldom offer, with their rubbish of rusting tins, broken crates and flapping paper, a particularly inspiring sight, but Rafe guessed he should be thankful to be looking at their behinds. There were worse things a man could stare at. Back lots, anyway, didn't get much traffic. With reasonable luck a man ought to be able to get from here to there in one piece, if he was careful.

It bothered him, though, not to see any sign of that feller from the rocks, the shot guy's pard. If the bleach-eyed son had took out to nail him, it was natural to think that when Rafe hadn't shown where he had been looked for, the feller would have come on into town to do his hunting. Rafe would have done it.

Behind his screen of branches Rafe swung down to rest and stretch the kinks from his legs while he waited to see if Spangler's gunhawk would show. After about ten minutes of standing around, the skewbald mare began to paw with impatience, bumping Rafe's shoulder with vigorous pokes of her head. "Dang it, quit!" Rafe growled, batting her away with his hat.

He got out the makings, rolled up a smoke and, with his eyes going narrow, suddenly pitched it away. He dropped the reins to the ground; then, thinking better of this, tied them to a sapling stout enough to keep her anchored, it being in his mind Spangler's gunnie may have gone back to pick up his tracks.

It was a sensible assumption and Rafe, proceeding to act on it, again drew his pistol, creeping back along his trail with all the stealth of a crouching puma. He knew, by grannies, he had better be careful, or be ready, like fiddlers, to wind up in hell. In country like this there wasn't much leg room betwixt the quick and them that hadn't been quite quick enough.

And so it was that, presently, Rafe's aching vigilance fastened onto an impression of approaching movement. It wasn't scarcely more than a hunch when he got into it, not much easier to be gauged than the footfalls of a gopher, the merest whisperings of sound. But it snapped up his hackles.

With his eyes stabbing about he scanned the surroundings and his chances. Impatiently shaking his head he moved on, hunting terrain better suited to his needs, knowing from experience with Stuart during the war that a fracas fought on ground of one's choosing was a squabble more likely to fetch a man out on top.

Rafe had had more than his fill of killing, but even a kid in three-cornered pants would have savvy enough to know this whippoorwill had to be stopped. There was no two ways around that!

He came over a rise and found what he wanted, a tiny twenty-foot clearing with a rock to one side of it big enough to easily hide a waiting man. The sounds were plain enough now, snap and crackle of branches, a shod hoof scraping stone. Rafe, eyes slitted, pistol tight in his fist—the one Pike had fixed for him, backed into the clearing, hurried over to the rock, moving clear on around it and, careful now to conceal his flight, circled back to the rise and dropped, breathing hard, behind it.

That right hand wasn't right even yet. It still had twinges and there was times when the muscles didn't work like they had ought to but he had proved back at Pike's it was good enough to shoot with. Not that he was anxious to do any shooting; this close to town he hated even to think of it. But if he had learned one thing on that trip to the Benders he had learned how much help he could count on from them.