The rider to his right was going at a dead run on a course straight across Boag’s line of vision. That meant he was moving fast and Boag gave himself a long lead before he fired. It was three hundred yards or better and he was bleakly unsurprised when the bullet did nothing visible. He used the last shot and that one missed too, and then he slid down flat on the ground and wondered as he thumbed cartridges out of his pocket if he had time to reload the long gun.
When Boag looked up, the Mexican on his right was within forty yards of the trees behind him. It left Boag no time at all. He leveled the rifle, only four cartridges loaded so far, and jacked it and aimed with painful slow care and squeezed it.
A little too much of a lead but it creased the horse on the forehead; at least that was the effect Boag observed. The horse’s head snapped to one side under the impact and the Mexican made the mistake of trying to get the horse under control when he should have jumped clear. It gave Boag time to sight on a fairly motionless target and in two shots he had the Mexican.
Back to one bullet left. He swiveled toward Gutierrez and the other Mexican and reached for cartridges.
There wasn’t anything in sight but a riderless horse wandering away.
He knew what it meant. The Mexican had dismounted somewhere near Gutierrez and they were both out there in the grass, worming their way toward Boag.
He didn’t know how bad he’d hit Gutierrez. He knew he hadn’t hit the other one at all. And he knew one other thing: he was at the end of his capacities and he had no strength for a drawn-out stalking game. They would shoot him to pieces before he had time to react.
Boag didn’t care about them now. He wanted to get out.
He had one of the hand bombs left but it might have got too wet last night to work. He might as well try it. He opened his packet and struck a match, got the fuse sputtering and hurled the thing as far as he could into the grass on a line with Gutierrez’s horse. It didn’t go more than sixty feet. All he hoped for was that it would make noise and encourage them to hesitate.
But it didn’t go off, so that was that.
He took the rifle and eeled into the grass. It would be sensible to crawl back into the woods. That was what a smart man would do. That was what Gutierrez and the other one would expect him to do.
So it was what Boag didn’t do.
He headed up through the grass parallel to the road. Heading straight up toward the foot of the mountain.
Because that was where Mr. Pickett had fallen and Mr. Pickett’s horse was still standing there waiting for his rider to get back up and ride him.
The wind rubbed itself against the damp grasses. Boag’s legs were all gone now and he was hitching himself along on his elbows with the rifle across the crooks of his arms. He’d left his sombrero behind and the sun beat against the back of his head. That was all right because he was wet and chilled clear through and the warmth was comforting.
He doubted there was any flesh left on his elbows. He lifted his head and saw the horse wasn’t far away now. Another fifty feet to cross.
He found Mr. Pickett almost by accident; he parted the grasses and there was Mr. Pickett lying on his side looking right at him.
There’ was a heavy smear of blood glistening on Mr. Pickett’s shirt. His face bulged, thick with blood and anger; the pulse throbbed at his throat and he worked his lips around a word:
“Boag.”
“You keep quiet now, Mr. Pickett. This bullet comes out your back it’ll make a hole as big as a coconut.”
Mr. Pickett just stared at him.
Boag thought of a lot of things he ought to say to Mr. Pickett. All the agony that had led up to this. But there wasn’t anything left to say, the guns had said it all. Boag brought himself around until he was lying parallel to Mr. Pickett and then he used his arm to sit up. He looked out across the waving grass. Nothing stirred except the grass itself. They were still there but he had the feeling they were nowhere near him.
He lowered himself onto his side and rolled his knees under him. When he sat up again he was kneeling. Mr. Pickett just watched, neither moving nor speaking.
Boag balanced himself on one knee and hauled his left leg up, knee against chest, placing the left foot flat on the ground. All his nerves twanged with taut pains. He braced his left palm against the upraised knee and pushed himself upright, dragging the right leg up under him until he was standing there precariously, bent double, one hand on his knee and the other on his rifle.
When he began to walk it was like the movement of a puppet. His legs jerked around loosely under him. He had to get balanced on one foot and then drag the other one forward a few inches, rearrange his weight onto it and repeat the process.
He made his way around Mr. Pickett and Mr. Pickett’s head turned to watch him. Mr. Pickett seemed to have lost his guns. His holsters were empty; there was no rifle in sight.
His eyes were fixed on Boag with single-minded concentration; they never even blinked.
Boag reached the horse. It shied away from him and he shuffled toward it again and hooked up the trailing reins in his left hand. He turned to look at Mr. Pickett.
“If I leave you to heal, you’ll come after me, won’t you?”
Mr. Pickett made no response of any kind.
Boag said, “I ought to shoot you now.”
But he slid the rifle down into Mr. Pickett’s saddle boot. It was not impossible getting himself aboard the horse because he used his arms to pull himself up, but swinging his right leg over was the hard part. He had to pull the leg over with his right hand. It took him a while to get his toes into the stirrups.
Mr. Pickett had laid his head back and was lying that way, looking up at Boag with the back of his head on the ground. Boag said, “You come after me I’ll have to kill you next time.”
He eased the horse closer. “You hear me, Pickett? I got your gold but don’t you try to do to me what I done to you. You ain’t as good a fighting man as me.”
Pickett’s raw eyes just stared.
Boag leaned down a little. “You hear me Jed Pickett? I’m a better man than you are. You hear?”
It was not clear whether Pickett heard or not. Somewhere in those few moments he was dying. When Boag moved out on the horse the dead man’s head did not turn to follow him; the eyes kept staring at the sky where Boag had been.
Somewhere out there in the grass or the trees Gutierrez and that Mexican were still moving around but Boag was all finished here. He made a long ride along the base of the mountain and entered the trees a mile east of the road. He would go by the gully and see about the Gatling gun. If it wasn’t occupied by Ben Stryker’s people he’d retrieve it for Captain McQuade but he wasn’t going to fight for it; he’d only told Captain McQuade he’d return it if it was possible, and fighting was no longer possible today.
Miguel and the señora stood in the doorway and watched the coach come across the hills. It was a handsome brougham drawn by matched teams of greys and it stopped sedately in front of the villa. A liveried coachman climbed down from the driving seat.
Don Pablo came softly out into the sunshine and Dorotea touched his sleeve. The coachman opened the ornate door of the brougham and Dorotea lifted her chin.
Boag stepped to the ground, putting his weight on a gold-headed cane. He had a cigar in his mouth and a tailored grey suit on his back.