Ralph Compton - Blood on the Gallows

The wind was blowing strong and McBride had jammed his plug hat all the way down to his ears for fear of losing it. Rain hammered on their shoulders and rattled over the surrounding junipers and piñons as they swung north in the direction of Julieta’s cabin.

McBride led the way around the screening trees to the front of the cabin. The door was banging open and shut in the wind, and a window had been broken, its white lace curtain fluttering like a stricken dove.

As McBride climbed from the saddle, Remorse pulled his rifle and headed for the rear of the cabin. His Colt in his hand, McBride stepped through the open door. The baby’s cradle was tipped on its side and a white shawl that had been tossed on the floor looked like spilled milk. The child was gone.

McBride strode quickly to the bedroom. Everything was in place, the bed neatly made up, but there was no sign of Julieta.

Remorse was standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the cradle, when McBride stepped beside him. ‘‘Jared Josephine got here before us,’’ the reverend said.

‘‘Yeah, but just before us.’’ McBride kneeled and his fingers probed the pine floor. He picked up a piece of mud and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘‘Still wet,’’ he said to Remorse. ‘‘The boots that left this mud and took Julieta and the baby are still close by.’’

He rose to his feet. ‘‘We’d have seen anyone riding toward us, so they must be holed up behind the cabin somewhere.’’

Remorse nodded and walked to the back door. Immediately a bullet shattered the glass and sent him ducking for safety behind the sturdy log wall.

‘‘He’s up on the slope,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘We must have surprised him.’’

McBride opened his mouth to speak, but his words were lost as a hail of bullets crashed through the cabin door, breaking glass and splintering furniture into matchwood.

‘‘What in hell and damnation has he got up there?’’ Remorse yelled. He was not by nature a profane man and his choice of language betrayed his agitation.

‘‘He’s got Julieta’s thirty-shot Volcanic rifle,’’ McBride said. ‘‘And I fancy she kept plenty of shells for it.’’

Remorse cursed under his breath, and McBride said, ‘‘Saul, try to keep him busy with your rifle. I’m going out the front and I’ll see if I can swing around behind him.’’

The reverend nodded, but as McBride crouched low to leave, he said, ‘‘John, we don’t know who’s up there, but I think he’s good. You’re not, so be careful.’’

Despite the danger he was in, McBride smiled. Remorse had a way of bolstering a man’s confidence.

The rain was heavier. It had defeated the wind and was coming straight down in torrents. McBride paused beside his horse, tempted to take his rifle. But he was no great shakes with a Winchester. If the bushwhacker was keeping Julieta close to him, which seemed likely, he couldn’t risk a long-range shot. In this rain, he was just as likely to hit the girl as he was the gunman.

It would have to be up close and personal and there was nothing else for it; he’d need to get his work in with the Colt.

McBride swung wide of the cabin, holding to any cover he could find. The rain helped, drawing a shifting screen between him and the rifleman on the slope. He ducked under a juniper and immediately a shower of raindrops shook loose and rolled down the back of his neck. He could never understand why it was that only the coldest drops did that.

The cabin was about a hundred yards away to his left. Between McBride and the base of the mountain bulking gray against the sky lay a wide stretch of brush-covered ground that rose steeply into the ridges and arroyos of the foothills. As far as McBride could tell, there were trails higher on the mountain slope, doubles and switchbacks that had been made by either Apaches or game, or both. The trails wound through thick stands of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, then, higher, lost themselves in the aspens.

McBride waited by the juniper, his breath, abbreviated by fear, coming in fast little gasps. Could he cross that open brush flat without catching a bullet?

Suddenly Remorse’s rifle opened up, two spaced shots, as though he’d drawn bead on a target. A pause, then an answering shot from the slope. Another pause, then a second shot.

There! McBride saw it—a puff of smoke from just below the aspen line, drifting out of the pines. He knew what he had to do, where he had to go. He looked out at the flat and swallowed hard. No, no matter how he cut it, there was no other way. He’d have to put himself through it.

A run across the flat, then a climb up the slope and into the aspens. Once in the cover of the trees he could work his way behind the rifleman and . . . well, after that he’d have to wait and see what happened.

McBride was a tall, muscular man and usually he moved gracefully enough, but he had a city copper’s big feet. He might make so much noise moving around in the aspens he’d get shot before he even got halfway.

No matter. He had it to do. His hand moved to the Colt under his slicker. Then he hit the flat at a plunging run.

His elastic-sided boots splashing through mud, McBride charged across the level ground, dodging his way through the brush. He heard the angry statements of dueling rifles, but no bullets came in his direction. Remorse had cut loose at exactly the right moment!

He ran into an arroyo but was stopped by an impenetrable wall of prickly pear and cholla. He climbed out, vicious little clumps of fishhook cactus tearing at his hands, and slid into another. This time the way was clear and he followed the upward slope of the arroyo until it met the base of the mountain. He began to climb the lower slope of the peak, hiding among cedars when he could, pausing often to check his surroundings. The incline was growing steeper, and the aspens looked impossibly distant. Now and then he heard the report of a rifle, the echo racketing around the rocky mountainside.

McBride climbed higher, the pelting rain making the going treacherous. Once he had to negotiate a deep draw carved out of the slope, a crashing cascade of water running along its bottom. By the time he scrambled across, his elbows and knees were scraped and bruised and he was even more thoroughly soaked.

After moving through a mixed band of cedars and piñons, he reached the pines and had to scramble higher on all fours, fighting for breath in the rapidly thinning air. When he stopped to rest, as he did more and more often, the only sound was the rustle of the rain in the trees and the moan of the wind in his ears. McBride was wet, muddy, scraped by rocks and gashed by cactus and he knew his strength was failing.

His eyes lifted to the aspens, their yellow leaves fluttering as though urging him closer. Beyond the pines the muddy slant leveled out considerably. The approach to the aspen line was a grassy hanging meadow littered with rocks that varied in size from pebbles to monstrous boulders as big as barns.

Not far, McBride told himself, only a few hundred yards of ground to cover, even though some of it was standing on end. He could make it.

He clambered through the pines and onto the grass. He lay on his back for several minutes, catching his breath, letting the rain fall cool on his face. Then he rose and stumbled upward, keeping to the cover of the rocks where he could.

Half a mile below him, Remorse was still trading shots with the rifleman and it seemed that neither man had yet scored a hit.

Slipping, falling, taking shelter behind boulders, McBride took almost thirty minutes to reach the aspens. He stood within the trees, his head back, gulping down air, grateful that, for the time being at least, he was partially shielded from the rain.