At last he selected what he judged to be the three best routes and settled down to wait for Gabe's party to cross the valley. A kind of icy calm had settled within him as he calculated what it would cost to scale that hill. Three men, maybe. Four, if this happened to be their unlucky day. There was one thing that Ike had learned—a man had to pay for what he got in this world.
Now he heard the pound of hoofs behind him, and reined the paint around to face Gabe Tanis and the rest of the gang.
“We heard shootin',” Gabe said, wiping his sweaty face. Ike grinned. “You'll hear more. Dunc and the marshal pulled out of the cabin and made it up there.” He pointed to the hill.
Gabe's eyebrows lifted, then he spat a stream of tobacco juice with the wind. “It'll be nearly hell,” he said soberly, “goin' up after them.”
Ike laughed abruptly. “You're not goin' yellow, are you, Gabe? Fifteen against two; what kind of odds do you want?”
Gabe regarded the hill for one long moment, then shrugged. “All right, Ike. Whatever you say.”
Chapter Fourteen
The first bullet from the hilltop smashed abruptly at Ike Brunner's feet, showering powdered sandstone in his face. Quickly he clawed his way up to a stone overhang and lay panting. Gabe Tanis scrambled up and dropped beside him.
“I told you it wasn't goin' to be easy.”
“Shut up!” Ike snarled. He had split the party into three groups, and two thirds of the gang was out of sight on the far sides of the slope. Ike moved to the end of the overhang, lifted his Winchester, and fired three quick shots toward the jagged ridge. Maybe it won't be easy, he thought, but they'll do as I say. They know I'll kill the man who tries to back down!
There were three more men near the base of the hill, and the carbine barked twice as they started up. Ike listened to the sporadic firing on the other side and smiled. Lester and the marshal were going to have trouble splitting themselves three ways for defense. Over to the right he heard a sudden burst of fire.
“They must have spotted Jeffers' bunch,” Ike said. “Follow me!”
They fought for footing, clawed their way past a thicket of blackjack, and now the carbine and revolver fire shifted away from Jeffers and turned on Ike and his group. A lead slug screamed and spat into the thicket and started a small landslide as the five men huddled behind a massive boulder.
Ike laughed and lay on his Winchester. Suddenly there was another outburst of firing on their left. “What did I tell you?” Ike yelled at Gabe Tanis. “They'll go crazy tryin' to be everywhere at once!”
Ike crouched behind the boulder, then darted into the open, clawing at roots and loose rocks, pulling himself upward. The others came behind him, all making for the second big shelf, about forty yards away.
But something went wrong with Ike's plan. A steady, withering barrage of carbine fire caught the group in the open, midway between the boulder and the shelf of sandstone. Buckshot from Dunc Lester's shotgun tore into blackjack trunks, ripped off branches, and scattered rocks. A slug tugged at Ike Brunner's sleeve and went screaming toward the valley. Someone cried out, but Ike did not look back until he reached the protection of the shelf.
Dragging huge gulps of air into his lungs, Gabe Tanis fell beside Ike, who was cursing savagely.
“Goddamn it, I told you, Ike—”
But Ike wheeled on him and Gabe fell back before his rage. “I heard what you told me! I don't want to hear it again!”
Gabe Tanis' anger leaked out of him like air escaping from a punctured balloon. Ike stood in an animal-like crouch, holding his Winchester like a club, and Gabe threw up his arm as though to ward off a blow.
Perhaps the blow would have come. Perhaps, in his rage, Ike would have killed him if the second outcry of pain hadn't come between him and his anger. Ike suddenly straightened and said, “Who got hurt?”
“I don't know,” Gabe said nervously.
Ike shot him a withering glance and then crawled back to the lip of the shelf. He swore again, savagely, when he saw what those last forty yards had cost him. Herb Fowler, a leather-tough old-timer, crouched in the blackjack thicket some twenty yards away, clutching at his chest with both hands. As Ike watched, the old man let go and began to fall by slow degrees until at last he lay on his back, arms outstretched, motionless.
Ike wheeled, turning his anger on the hilltop. Not that he gave a damn about Fowler, but his death made the gang one man weaker than it had been before. That marshal! Ike thought darkly. That goddamn marshal! And for the first time the gang leader began to take a personal interest in Owen Toller.
Five men had started up that slope and only two had reached the shelf. Ike raked the base of the hill with angry eyes, but the two remaining men were not to be seen.
“What happened to Ross Kale and Sam Russell?” he demanded of Gabe Tanis. Then, without waiting for an answer, Ike leaped up and plunged down the slope again. He hit the ground with his chest and rolled end over end, clutching at his Winchester, as a shotgun blast tore away his footing. He did not know that he was hurt until he stopped rolling, and then he saw the bright crimson spreading over his trousers a few inches above his right knee. He crawled into the thicket.
Quickly he ripped his shirt sleeve with his teeth, tore it off at the shoulder, and bound his thigh. “Ross!” he yelled. “Sam! Where are you?”
There was no answer. The carbine spoke again from the hilltop and the slug ripped savagely through the brush. Goddamn it, why didn't the bunch on the other side of the hill start moving? He would kill them, every one of them, with his two bare hands, if they backed out on him now!
By sheer power of will Ike Brunner made himself calm down and think of the problem at hand. If Ross and Sam were dead... But he would not cross that bridge before he reached it. He called out again, and again his only answer came from the marshal's carbine.
He couldn't push his luck much further. He had to get out of this thicket. He calculated the distance from the thicket to the boulder and prayed that the boys on the other side would start moving soon. Then his hard face split with a satisfied grin. Far to his right a cluster of rifle shots mushroomed in the afternoon. Wade Jeffers had got them moving.
He waited until he was sure that Dunc and the marshal had moved over to resist the new advance, then lifted himself in the brush and limped toward the boulder. He was right back where he had started from, with the protecting shelf still forty yards away. But behind the boulder he found his missing men.
Ross Kale was a youngster in his late teens, a tough, straw-haired kid who had joined the gang after the raid at Bellefront. Sam Russell was a gangly, chinless farmer in his late thirties. At first Ike thought they were both dead. They crouched behind the boulder, their arms over their heads.
For a moment Ike did nothing. A red haze of rage clouded his vision.
He stepped up to Russell and kicked him savagely with his good leg, and the farmer fell back on his side, his eyes and mouth flying open as his breath left him. “Get up, goddamn you!” Ike said harshly. He hobbled over to Ross Kale and with a short, vicious swing of the Winchester clubbed the side of the kid's face with the walnut stock.