Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 

"I'd be the first to admit to being surprised by this, Abe."

 

The high-pitched cry came from somewhere behind them, threatening blood for blood, echoing off the peaks until it sounded like a hundred men were all shouting at once, encircling the two fugitives.

 

Abe started to wonder whether he was becoming seriously sick. The rot-gut liquor burned a hole through his intestines. Twice in the past hour or so they'd been forced to stop while he hastily dropped his pants by the side of the trail, feeling his stomach contract with the gripping pains.

 

Now he couldn't decide whether he was feeling too hot or too cold.

 

And all the Trader could say was that he was fucking surprised that the posse from the nameless shit-hole of a ville hadn't given up the chase after the brutal murder of one of their number. Well over half of the day had gone, and if anything, the sound of the tracking hounds was closer.

 

They had gone up another steep track, after the river crossing. Despite the patches of sunshine between the trees, Abe's clothes didn't seem to have dried properly and still felt damp and clammy.

 

The longer the day wore on and the nearer the vigilantes came to them, the worse Trader's temper became.

 

Now he was gnawing at one of their last strips of jerky, the Armalite lying across his lap. Abe was stretched out on the dry turf, massaging his belly, trying to get some relief from the raking claws that were working his guts.

 

"How long to dark, Trader?"

 

"Your eyes failed, Abe?"

 

"No. But the sun's gone behind some cloud. I figure it must be" he thought about it, "I figure that dusk'll be in about another three hours."

 

Trader didn't even reply.

 

"We got any water left?" Abe asked.

 

"Yeah. But you don't get any. Looks like we'll be going down again after we top this ridge. Could be more streams or rivers down yonder. Drink then."

 

It was a river. A big river.

 

 

 

ALL OF THE PINE TREES vanished once they were over the far side of the hill, replaced by shrunken bushes and outcrops of bare, ferrous rock.

 

The sides of the gorge were the steepest that they'd come across since fleeing the squalid settlement. The path almost disappeared, with tumbled boulders and shale blocking it in several places.

 

There were blotches of sickly green lichen dappling the stones and the long-dead trunks of trees, blighted about a century earlier. Abe wished that they'd had rad counters like Ryan Cawdor and J. B. Dix carried, so that they could watch out that they didn't get trapped in any potential hot spots.

 

"You sure we can get out of here, Trader?"

 

"Why?"

 

"Steep."

 

"And?"

 

"River looks much wider."

 

"So what?"

 

Abe was concentrating on trying to hear what Trader was saying, so he slipped and nearly went cascading down to the bottom of the path.

 

"So, I don't see any sign of a trail going up the other side of the canyon."

 

"Bound to be a way out."

 

"Hut of some sort down there." Abe pointed to the roof of a small building that had just come into view, a little way above the cresting white water. On the ground alongside the cabin was a large rubberized, inflatable raft.

 

"Take that boat and run the rapids," Trader said, having to raise his voice to a full shout now that they were close to the noise of the river.

 

"Great," Abe muttered. Swimming had never been one of his favorite activities, and the thought of going down the dark-shadowed gorge wasn't that appealing.

 

It also worried him, as it had earlier, that they wouldn't hear above the rumbling of the frothing water the dogs, or the men, trailing them. They could be coldcocked and not even know itnot until they found themselves on their backs, looking up at the sky through fading eyes.

 

 

 

AS THEY EMERGED from the bottom of the path, about fifty yards from the hut, Abe wondered if it had started to rain. But he realized that there was just a fine drizzle, spraying from the river as it pounded over the boulders.

 

Trader paused a moment, glancing behind them at the flank of the ravine, checking for any sign of pursuit. "Seems good to me," he said. "Let's go boating, Ches. I mean, Abe."

 

"Smoke from the chimney of the hut."

 

"Yeah. I see it. Get your blaster out. We'll try words first. Then bullets if we need them."

 

Abe eased the Colt Python in its holster, sighing at the prospect of more chilling. During the time that he'd traveled with Ryan and the others, there'd been plenty of death. But it had somehow seemed unavoidable.

 

Whereas with Trader, it was always first choice.

 

Trader grabbed at Abe and pressed his mouth to his ear. "Play the cards lucky, and we can get that raft into the river and be away 'fore anyone sees us."

 

At that moment the door swung open and a man stepped out, holding a long-barreled musket, staring straight at them. They were less than thirty yards away from him.

 

"Single shot," Trader said. "Means he can only chill one of us. The other'll get him."

 

Abe had spotted the torn curtain across the square window of the hut twitch as though someone were peering out. "Think there's at least one more inside," he said.

 

"Damn!"

 

The man with the musket had a long beard, flecked with white. His blue shirt had been crudely patched around the collar and cuffs with some flowered pink material.

 

"Help you, outlanders?" The muzzle of the musket was steady in their direction. The little window creaked partly open, and the barrel of another blaster poked through, instantly confirming Abe's suspicion.

 

"Hire your boat to go downriver a spell?" Trader shouted, the Armalite swinging loose in his right hand, pointedly not threatening anyone.

 

"Nope. Not for hire."

 

The voice was hard and inflexible, not the kind of voice that you wanted to waste time arguing with. Trader reached that conclusion immediately.

 

"I'll take out the one hiding in the building, behind the curtain," he whispered to Abe, at his shoulder. "You get the one with the musket."

 

"He could waste one of us first."

 

"You chicken-shit little bastard. I'm opening fire on the count of three, and if you don't back me then we both likely get chilled."

 

"What you whispering about, mister?" Suspicion grew with each word.

 

"One," Trader said.

 

"Shit," Abe whispered, wishing that his hand wasn't so wet and slippery.

 

"Means trouble, Carl!" the man yelled to whoever lurked inside the cabin.

 

"Two and three," Trader spit.

 

Abe had been right to worry. As he snatched the Colt Python from the damp leather of the holster, it slipped through his fingers, clattering on the stones by his feet. He started to stoop to grab at it, wincing at the uncertainty of a ball through his skull. Trader had begun shooting, and Abe heard the tinkling of broken glass and a yelp of pain.

 

As his hand finally found the reassuring weight of the Magnum, he glanced up, seeing the man with the musket seemed frozen, shocked into indecision, torn between the eruption of lead from the Armalite, and the sight of the small man with the limp mustache dropping a big handblaster in the dirt.

 

Before he could make up his mind, and before Abe could squeeze the trigger, Trader drilled him twice through the middle of his chest.

 

"'He who hesitates is lost,'" Abe said, quoting something he'd once heard Doc Tanner say.

 

"Hey, I like that." Trader grinned. "Wish I'd said that, Abe. I do."

 

"You probably will, Trader," Abe replied, covering his own panic attack with a broad smile. "Shouldn't we see to whoever's inside the cabin?"

 

"Got him. No way he can take three rounds from this" he patted the Armalite, "and carry on living."

 

The man with the musket lay still on his back, arms spread, eyes wide open, a dark stain at the crotch of his pants leaking into the dirt.

 

Trader stalked past him and into the hut. Abe looked behind them, wondering if he'd spotted a flicker of movement high on the ridge.

 

"Yeah. Smacked him through the mouth and throat," Trader shouted. "There's some food in here, Abe. Come and stock up and then we'll raft off."

 

"Could be after us," the little gunner called, bolstering his unfired piece.

 

"Not yet. We'll be twenty miles downstream before those dipshit hicks get here."

 

Abe looked again, but the sun was well behind the top of the cliffs and it was impossible to make out any details in the splashes of black shadows.

 

He wandered over to look at the raft, his heart sinking at the thought of riding it along the murderous river. Downstream the walls of the gorge were glistening with silvery spray. It was impossible to see whether the run was navigable at all. Even the short stretch that Abe could see was a frothing maelstrom of saw-toothed boulders.

 

Trader emerged from the door of the cabin, holding a wicker basket. "Got some eggs, bread and potatoes," he called. "Last us a couple of days."

 

Abe was hardly listening, as he looked farther up the ravine. A frail, rusting bridge crossed over the river a little way upstream, and he could just make out what might have been another path climbing up the opposite wall of rock. He shook his head, unable to decide which was the most frightening. Certainly the raft offered the best hope of escape. Once aboard it, if they didn't drown in the first hundred yards, there was no possible way the posse could catch up with them.

 

But the vital word was "hope."

 

And that hope seemed to have shrunk from small to invisible, just in those racing minutes that Abe looked at the river.

 

"How about crossing and going up the other side, Trader?" he shouted.

 

"Why?"

 

"Safer."

 

"No way, Abe. Once rode one of these white-water beauties, when I was sixteen or so. Colorado River. And I fought the Snake and licked it, a few years later. I'm looking forward to going on this one."

 

Abe looked disconsolately down at the swollen, green rubber raft, seeing the flimsy paddles, feeling a sense of deep hopelessness.

 

He heard a loud hissing, as the material punctured and ripped.

 

Then the sound of the rifles.