Halliday 8, page 4
“What is it?” Halliday asked. “Is your uncle okay?”
He saw her push her hair back, the action making her blouse tighten over her breasts.
“Yes, he’s sleeping. He’ll sleep till morning.”
The words hung in the air between them, and Halliday wondered if he should read the meaning he wanted into them.
Hope looked beyond him into the gloom, and said, quietly, “Despite what he said, Mr. Halliday, I don’t believe Latimer or his men will come tonight. Not after what happened in town today. They’ll surely know we’ll be ready for them.”
“They won’t know I’ll be with you though,” Halliday reminded her. “So maybe they won’t care if you’re ready or not.”
Hope swung down from the horse and Halliday moved forward to take the horse’s reins. She was here and that meant something to him. He decided to let her make the first move—if such a move was to come.
After he ground hitched her horse beside his own, he came back to the boulder to find her leaning against it, the moonlight reflecting on her lovely face. The soft light made her even more beautiful than he remembered, more desirable than ever.
“It’s lovely up here,” Hope said, looking at him with a tiny smile on her lips. “It’s so quiet and peaceful, yet so lonely.”
“Do you get lonely, ma’am?” Halliday asked.
“Often. I have only my uncle for company. Although I love him dearly and would never leave him, there’s always something ... well, lacking.”
“Lacking?” Halliday pressed.
“Yes. I don’t really know how to explain it. I haven’t been to many places nor have I met many people. I hardly know what life is all about, except what I’ve heard from some of my uncle’s friends.” She smiled shyly and looked down at her hands. “But I don’t believe everything they tell me. Surely some of it is exaggerated?”
“Maybe if you told me what you mean, I could put my slant on it,” Halliday said, watching the color rise in her cheeks and her body quiver with emotions she professed to know little about.
Then she was looking straight at him. There was confusion in her eyes, yet her hot gaze made such a demand on him that he couldn’t ignore it. He rested his hand on her shoulder and fingered her hair lightly about her neck. The long, black hair was like silk, and from her smooth skin came the scent of pine and the river and the clear sky and all the things he liked most in life.
He felt her body stiffen under his touch. When he took his hand away, waiting for her to make the next move, she leaned against the boulder again, moonlight gleaming on her moist lips as they parted. Slowly, she came toward him. When their bodies touched, she went rigid again. Halliday still held back.
Then she looked up at him, her lips close to his now. Halliday put his hand on the back of her neck and drew her lips toward his. For a moment her kiss was unresponsive, then she stepped close so that her breasts pressed hard against his chest. He felt her breathing become more rapid and then suddenly she pushed him away and turned her back to him.
Halliday regarded her calmly. There was deep-rooted fear within her, he knew, but he wondered whether it was fear for what might happen between them, or fear for Latimer’s gunnies.
“I’m so afraid,” she whispered, turning back to face him.
“Maybe it’s just the night,” he said. “It is quiet up here.”
“No, it’s not that.” Tears welled in her eyes. Her face was still flushed and she kept looking at him, her body trembling. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve never felt like this before.”
“Why did you come up here, Hope? Do you need a little excitement in your life?”
Hope straightened, her eyes suddenly going cold. “You know that’s not it. I came up here ... because ... because ...”
Her voice trailed off and she turned her back on him again.
Halliday let her lean against the boulder for some time before he took hold of her shoulders and turned her around. His hand brushed her breast as he reached for her chin. She sucked in a deep breath. He tilted her head back and she let him kiss her again, but then she struggled to move away. Suddenly, she jerked her head to the side and said;
“No! Please, no!”
Halliday looked straight into her eyes. He saw desire, want and need—but also fear. He let go of her.
She stood there, white-faced, shaken, unmoving. There was puzzlement in her eyes as she kept shaking her head. But she made no attempt to run to his horse.
“You’d better go back to your uncle,” Halliday said. “If he wakes he’ll be worried about you.”
Hope nodded. When she finally did make a move, it was slowly, hesitantly, and she kept looking at him with no fear now but with a kind of wonder. Halliday turned his back on her and listened to her quick footsteps fade. He heard the creak of saddle leather and then the slap of reins down the horse’s shoulders. He watched her go and felt the tension leave his body.
What did she hope to discover up here?
He was a man who so far had never forced himself on any woman. But he knew it might happen to her one day—it had to, for she was beautiful and lonely. Maybe some coarse-mouthed lowlife in some isolated hellhole would give her the love and tenderness she would remember for the rest of her life ...
Forcing all thoughts of her from his mind, Halliday settled down again.
How long had she been up here? Five minutes ... ten at the most? Time enough to leave him with visions flashing through his mind which he didn’t really need at a time like this.
He took the stopper from his canteen and took a drink. The water was cool. He tipped some of it over his head and let it run down his face.
Then he thought again of Sonora ...
It was just before dawn, and a deep, somber hush hung over the pass. Buck Halliday opened his eyes and his first thought was about Hope Clayton. It angered him. He rose, stretched his limbs and for nothing better to do, he swung into the saddle and rode down the pass.
The country ahead of him was flat, wide and empty. All about were the sounds of a new day stirring. He brought his mind back to what he had taken on, or rather, what he had decided not to take on. To hell with Hope and her conflicting emotions. He’d be better off on his own, heading where he liked.
He rode back through the pass and entered the valley. It had lost none of the previous night’s charm. The timber was tall on the slopes, good for constructing whatever a man needed to put his roots down here. The grass was tall and as green as he had ever seen it.
Moving down the clearing, he noticed a thin wisp of smoke coming from the stone chimney. It looked like Hope was already up and about. Halliday hitched his horse, washed up in the trough beside the house, then he checked the water from the pump and found it good to the taste. He filled his canteen, hooked it back on the saddle horn and headed for the door.
The door was open, but he knocked anyway. When he got no answer, he called out Hope’s name. When there was still no answer, he poked his head around the door and saw that the cabin was empty. The fire in the stove had almost burned itself out, and there was no sign that anybody had been preparing breakfast. Halliday walked inside, an uncomfortable feeling stirring inside him. That same feeling had been with him through the night, but he hadn’t been able to come to grips with it. He moved about the room and stopped when he noticed that the old man’s bunk had been stripped. Looking closely now at the things in the room, he saw that many of the little knick-knacks that had given the house its homely feeling were missing. The pile of ashes in the stove grating told him that the fire had been built to last.
Smothering a curse, Halliday hurried outside. He checked around the house and saw that the rig and the horse were gone. He stood there a moment, face set deep in thought.
Always a light sleeper, he couldn’t understand how he had failed to hear the grind of wheels during the night or early this morning. Yet the rig was gone and he hadn’t heard a sound. Surely, he thought, the old man had not gone to the trouble of padding the wheels and greasing the axles. But then, how else could they have left without him hearing them?
Suddenly, Halliday froze. He remembered Hope’s visit in its entirety now, her uncertainty and worry, the way she’d allowed herself a certain amount of intimacy.
Halliday knew the answer as soon as the question formed in his head.
He walked back to the sorrel and was swinging into the saddle when he saw riders bearing down on him from the pass. Six-guns thundered and bullets began to fill the air about his ears.
Halliday jumped from the saddle, swung the sorrel behind him and drew his gun. The riders came down in a wide-spaced line. He knew he had to select his target carefully and make every bullet count.
Time had never been less on his side. He aimed, his gun bucked, and one rider rose in the saddle, swayed for a moment and then toppled to the ground and lay still.
Halliday swung his gun to cover the next target, but a bullet burned a crease along his forearm, making blood spurt. Cursing, he backed away, firing at will now, spacing his shots. His horse was tugging at its reins, so he finally grabbed it on a close rein and forced it into the cabin. Closing the door, he let the reins go, then broke a window with the butt of his gun.
Outside, six riders had formed a bunch and were hastily discussing their next move. Halliday recognized Zac Whelan and Rees Mann. The tall gunfighter looked as cool as he had in town and about as interested in this gunfight as he had been in the ruckus in the street. He stayed well out of range and was clearly giving the orders. When the five spread, Halliday held his fire. The advantage at this point was with him, so he bided his time as his horse stomped about behind him.
Then two riders came into six-gun range.
Halliday fired four rounds and both riders went down. The others veered away, then galloped back to Rees Mann.
“Three down,” Halliday said to nobody in particular as he quickly reloaded, and was amused by the way Mann remonstrated with the men. Then he suddenly shouldered his horse through the others and slapped it into a run. He came straight at the cabin, lying low along the neck of the horse.
Halliday waited as the gunfighter approached, and did some more wondering. It now appeared to him as if the sneaky old-timer had sent Hope to him to keep him occupied, while he got the rig ready to be driven to a place where it wouldn’t be detected.
With her job complete, Hope had then returned to the cabin. He had no doubt that she had left with the old man. They had made a fire big enough to last through the night, knowing he would not leave his post. They had also known that Latimer and his bunch would arrive that morning.
They had left him to fight their battle for them while they had driven the rig into the safety of the desert.
If he ever got his hands on that old jasper, he’d ...
Halliday took a firm hold on his gun butt as Mann’s bullets thudded into the cabin’s walls. The gunfighter had run out of patience. Halliday considered this was all to his benefit. He ducked under the window sill and when the pounding of hoofs began to die away, he straightened.
Mann was about fifty feet away and was wheeling his horse around. They caught sight of each other through the gray light of dawn and both fired at precisely the same time.
Halliday felt a sharp sting of pain on the side of his head, but that was all and he knew it was just a graze. His own bullet nicked Mann’s wrist, causing him to grip his gun in his left hand. When Mann fired again and his bullets whistled through the window, Halliday had a better idea of the gunfighter’s ability.
He hammered out more shots as the other three, led by Zac Whelan, came charging at the cabin again. For the next few minutes, it seemed to Halliday that the cabin couldn’t possibly withstand the relentless pounding of lead. The walls shook and dust sifted down from the rafters, threatening to choke him. He backed away from the window and then noticed another door leading into what could only be the back yard. He opened the door and saw fruit trees that had been planted in two neat rows.
With the cabin still shaking from the incessant pounding of bullets, Halliday led the horse through the doorway and swung into the saddle. If this was to be showdown day, he wanted his life to end outdoors. But as he turned the sorrel around, looking for a safe way up the slope, he noticed a wall of brush directly in front of him that didn’t look as if nature had put it there. The sides and top were too even and its color clashed with the rest of the greenery in the yard.
He walked the horse toward the brush, and standing in the stirrups, looked over it to see a thin trail leading between the shoulders of two small hills. Halliday breathed a sigh of relief and sent the horse smashing through the brush. Beyond, he noticed the wheel tracks of the rig. He settled the horse into an even lope and put the cabin and the Latimer bunch behind him.
He had just reached the top of a slope and saw the long sun-scorched stretch of desert ahead of him when the pounding of hoof beats told him that Mann, Whelan and the other two had discovered his means of escape.
Halliday looked about him, trapped on this high ground.
But Dick Clayton and his niece had come this way, so there had to be a way out. However, now wasn’t the time to be looking for it. He worked his horse behind a boulder and from there went into a hollow. The branch of a tree felled by lightning hung as cover across the hollow’s opening. Halliday sat saddle, knees locked about the horse’s ribs to keep it steady. His gun fully loaded again, he was ready to make a stand.
Rees Mann came into view first, his jaw set tight. Halliday saw that he had bandaged his wrist with his bandana, which was scarlet with blood. It gave Halliday a measure of satisfaction to know that he had inflicted pain on the supposedly indestructible gunfighter. Next came Zac Whelan, his nervous eyes darting this way and that. Then came the other two, big men, their faces masks of dust from hard riding, and their clothes brush-torn. Their guns wavered in their hands, showing Halliday they were as nervous as Whelan.
Halliday remained still, the leaves of the tree branch making a speckled camouflage across his body.
Mann’s gaze flicked his way, probed the rim of the hollow and then moved on. The gunfighter worked his horse about and was speaking when Whelan suddenly pointed to a gap in the brush on the far side. Mann rode toward the gap. From the saddle he kicked a dry heap of brush aside and nodded. But he held his horse there as if unwilling to lead the way. He waved Whelan ahead of him, and when the big ramrod had gone through the narrow opening, the other two gun hands followed. Mann still hesitated, his bleak eyes peering intently around.
“Halliday, if you’re here, if you can hear me, then hear me good. Get out of this territory. I’ll only tell you once.”
With that, Mann went from sight.
Halliday didn’t move for a full five minutes. He sat there, completely motionless, letting flies annoy his face and neck. When the silence remained unbroken, he came out of the saddle, hitched his horse and walked out of the hollow.
The sun shone hot now. He waved away the worrisome flies and crossed to where Mann and his cronies had gone from sight. He saw wheel tracks that the hoofs of their horses had not obliterated. Then further on, he saw the hoofmarks working along a path that was rutted by the tracks of a rig.
Uncle Dick’s a smart old jasper, Halliday thought, as he returned to his sorrel. After checking his arm and finding the wound had stopped bleeding, he went into the saddle and looked thoughtfully about him.
Old Dick and his niece had fooled him well and truly. They had left him to face Latimer’s bunch while they had fled. That in itself was enough to make him want to trail the pair and have it out with them. Added to that, he wanted the five hundred dollars the old-timer had promised him.
Seeing that the rig’s wheel marks headed north, which was the way Ted Lomar had told Halliday to go, he saw no reason why he shouldn’t take the lawman’s advice.
Chapter Four – Latimer’s Land
It was quiet in the early afternoon, and so hot that Buck Halliday had dismounted and was moving on foot, giving his sorrel a much-needed breather. The crossing of the desert had all but exhausted his water supply, so now he was looking to replenish.
He had often been in country similar to this, so he carefully checked every line of the terrain, looking for a telltale sign of a rock cluster or anything that might lead him to the head of a spring. He made wide two-mile circles in the rocky country beyond the desert and it was sundown before he stopped for a rest, his search having proved fruitless.
His lips dry and cracked, he rested with his back against a deadfall and again thought about his future. Hope Clayton’s taunting behavior still irked him, but he decided that searching for her might well prove to be of no real value. And if Rees Mann and Zac Whelan caught up with the rig, then Dick Clayton would surely rue this day.
Then Hope would have to fend for herself with something more powerful than a whip ...
The air cooled as evening set in. With it came the stirring sounds of night animals foraging about for food. Halliday removed his boots, checked the tie-rein on his sorrel and made his way up a rocky slope. He sat in the dark, motionless, waiting, willing to wait out the night while his throat burned dry and craved for water.
Finally, he heard the rustle of some animal moving through the brush below him. Halliday waited until the sound died, then he worked his way on his belly onto a narrow trail. It took him twenty minutes to follow the trail down to a hollow where a jackrabbit sat on its haunches, its mouth working rapidly as it drank. Halliday waited for it to have its fill before he hurried forward and dropped onto his stomach.
He drank slowly, then, taking the canteen from his shoulder, he filled it, rose and with no reason for stealth any longer, strode back up the slope to his waiting sorrel. He watered the horse from his hat, tied the canteen to the saddle pommel and then stretched out and slept.
