Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

 

Abe was on the move. The deflating raft at his heels sounded like a posse of angered cottonmouths. Bullets whipped into the mud around him, the noise of the rifles from the flank of the hill behind them almost drowned out by the thunderous roaring of the river.

 

"Make for the bridge!" Trader shouted, his long legs taking him ahead of Abe, who didn't actually need the suggestion of heading upstream toward their only chance of safety.

 

The two men that they'd killed had obviously been part of a larger group. Hunters, perhaps, or trappers.

 

And their companions had returned.

 

The bridge was covered in a glistening patina of bright red rust, the strongest color in the dark, damp gorge. It was suspended across the torrent on slack cables, weakened by age. The center of the bridge drooped so low that it was only a foot or less above the frothing surface of the river.

 

Trader had the wicker basket of stolen food slung over his left arm, and gripped the Armalite in his right. Both men knew that there was no point in trying to stand and fight. The little cabin would keep them safe for a short while, but it would inexorably prove to be a death trap, with nowhere to run, leaving them helpless, like a pair of bottled spiders. To try to return fire against their unknown assailants would be plain triple stupe. They had no cover, and the men with the long blasters would have the advantage of numbers and height and plenty of places for them to hide among the rocks and stunted trees.

 

A bullet gouged a furrow in the sodden turf a few inches to the right of Abe's feet. From the size of the hole it looked like a large-caliber musket ball.

 

"Cover me while I cross, Abe!" Trader flung the words over his shoulder.

 

Another round whined past the little gunner's ear, almost trimming the end of his straggling mustache, smashing into the basket carried by Trader.

 

The container exploded in a mess of burst eggs and mildewed potatoes that spilled all over Trader's pants and boots, leaving him, for a moment, holding the curved, splintered handle and nothing else.

 

"Fuck it!"

 

There was shouting behind them, angry, ragged sounds that bounced back off the cliffs opposite. The spray from the falls was so dense that it drifted like fog, making it almost impossible to see anything clearly on the other side of the river. But Abe was sure he'd spotted a path of sorts.

 

He hoped there was a path over the swaying, ramshackle bridge, just ahead of them.

 

"Let 'em have it!" Trader shouted. "I'll cover you from the far side."

 

Abe found, to his surprise, that he was still holding his .357 Colt Python, the stainless-steel metal gleaming with tiny drops of water.

 

Fighting to control his breathing, he dropped to his knees, looking, for the first time, behind him. For a few lung-bursting moments he couldn't see any sign of the enemy that was shooting down at them. Then there was a muzzle-flash and a burst of white powder smoke. And another. And a third.

 

Trader was on the bridge, the wire stays singing and groaning at his weight.

 

Abe gripped the butt of the big Magnum in his right hand, steadying his aim with his left, pointing up into the swirling clouds. He fired one round, brought the four-inch barrel back onto the target, waited a moment, then shot again.

 

He risked another glance behind him, seeing that Trader's gaunt figure was almost across, his pants wet above the knees where the bridge sagged at its center.

 

A bullet struck the earth right in front of Abe, showering him with mud and tiny, sharp splinters of stone, making him gasp with shock and wince at the sudden stinging pain.

 

"Shit a fuckin' brick!" He fired the last rounds from the Colt, spraying the cliffs opposite without even bothering to aim.

 

He bolstered the warm gun and started to scramble back toward the bridge, jinking from side to side, boots slipping in the cropped, sodden turf, aware that the attackers would eventually get the range right.

 

To Abe's great relief he heard the flat crack of Trader's rifle.

 

It was almost impossible to be sure, above the leaden roar of the river, but he thought he heard a high-pitched scream from across the valley.

 

Abe's main preoccupation was with readying himself to tackle the rusted bridge.

 

For a moment he hesitated.

 

"Move, you shit-for-brains little fucker!"

 

The familiar rasping bark of Trader's voice, from behind the ruins of a small stone hut on the far side, prompted him to start moving.

 

Immediately he felt sick, the bitterness of yellow bite rising into his throat, into his mouth. Abe spit out, blinking to try to clear his vision. He didn't think he'd ever been so frightened in his entire life.

 

He gripped the two narrow ropes of plaited wire on either side, realizing that the actual walkway of the bridge was a number of rotted planks, set crosswise, and that more than half of them had vanished, leaving gaps of varying width where the river frothed and raged just below.

 

A bullet pinged off the cable, scant inches from his left hand, sending up a shower of red dust. His weight was making the bridge buck and sway, the middle section already dipping below the surface of the icy water.

 

Through the paralyzing terror, the knowledge came faintly to Abe that he was going to die. If he moved forward, then the whole structure would collapse and tumble him into the nameless river. And if he stayed where he was, then he would inevitably be shot, his body falling into the rapids.

 

He saw another burst of fire from the Armalite and a frantic wave of the hand from Trader.

 

Abe knew that his old leader was quite capable of shooting him if he didn't do like he'd been told, and it was that chilling certainty, more than any other gut-rending fear, that made him begin the crossing.

 

The swaying redoubled, until he feared the bridge was going to swing completely upside down. Gray stone, white water and pewter sky all rolled and merged. But he gritted his teeth and battled onward, a careful step at a time, his knuckles white with the strain.

 

A freezing sensation around the ankles made Abe yelp in fear, until he realized be was nearing the center, where the water boiled over the missing slats. If the enemy were still shooting at him, then he was no longer aware of it.

 

Did he hear the cry of "Blood for blood" that had been haunting them since the killing in the hamlet in the hills? Was it still the posse?

 

Time had ceased to exist for Abe.

 

He remembered that one of the slats had parted like a whisper and he'd dropped through the gap, one hand slipping, skin tearing from his fingers, blood dripping, watery, down his wrist. He hauled himself up by the other hand, soaked above the waist, trembling with shock.

 

He reached the middle, where the tug of the river was like a fierce embrace, trying to suck him down into the gray-green pools. It reached to his groin, chilling Abe to the heart, while he hauled himself along the cutting wires, feeling for a footing below him.

 

He glimpsed Trader, crouched behind the tumbled walls of the hut, keeping up covering fire, pinning down their attackers if any of them showed themselves.

 

Abe didn't even realize that he was crying, and the soaking from the tumbling meltwater concealed the fact that he'd pissed himself.

 

Then he was across.

 

 

 

"RECKON THEY'LL TAKE their time coming down after us," Trader said.

 

Abe was flat on his back, cold and wet, fumbling with his clawed and frozen fingers as he tried to reload the Colt Python, dropping shells in the dirt.

 

"Can't we wreck the bridge?"

 

"No."

 

"Why?"

 

"Checked it as I came over."

 

"And?"

 

Trader straightened and the Armalite snapped again. "Missed the son of a bitch! This fucking spray makes it bastard difficult to shoot well."

 

"The bridge?" Abe prompted.

 

"What the Oh, yeah. Middle part's rotted to shitland and back again. But the main stays are better than they look. If we had some plas-ex, we could blow it."

 

"We could wait here, Trader."

 

"Why?" The lined face turned toward him, genuine puzzlement in the deep-set eyes.

 

"Hold the ridge. Chill them when they come down after us. What do you reckon?"

 

Trader shook his bead. "Short-term thinking, partner. Man who looks five minutes ahead gets wasted by the man who looks an hour ahead."

 

"Seems a good idea." The ex-gunner was aggrieved by the dismissal of his plan, though he was real pleased with the unexpected "partner" from Trader.

 

"We're shitting in their backyard, Ryan. I mean, Abe. They know this place and we don't. Could be a back-double around the top of that canyon. Bring some of them down on top of us while the rest hold us here."

 

"So?" The reloading of the big .357 blaster was finally completed.

 

"I'll be hung, quartered and dried for the crows! I swear I never met anyone with so many fuck-stupe questions as you, Abe. We go up, of course."

 

The moment of delight in the "partner" hadn't lasted very long for Abe.

 

 

 

THE WEATHER GREW WORSE, with the sky darkening as though it were about to unleash a storm of biblical proportions. The wind rose, lashing the foaming water to a greater turmoil, while clouds of misty spray rose to fill the gorge.

 

As soon as Abe had recovered his breath and his nerve from the crossing of the bridge, Trader urged him to his feet and began to lead the way up the narrow rain-furrowed path that clung to the face of the cliff.

 

There was still an occasional shot fired in their general direction, but none of the bullets came within fifty yards of them.

 

"Wasting lead," Trader grunted, not bothering to return the futile fire.

 

"You said they'd stop chasing us," Abe panted as they paused for a few moments at one of the break-backed turns in the steep trail.

 

"Thought they would. These could be compadres of the couple by the hut."

 

"Then again, they could be that bastard posse on our asses from back yonder."

 

Trader didn't bother to reply, striding onward and upward with the vigor of a man a third of his age.

 

Gradually the ceaseless roaring from the turbulent stretch of the falls began to fade away beneath them.

 

Abe felt the muscles at the back of his calves beginning to tweak with the remorseless pace that Trader was setting and he leaned forward, pushing with his hands on his thighs to try to help himself over the worst parts.

 

His heart pounded and the breath rasped in his chest. Abe licked his lips, tasting salt and cold iron. A tight band was squeezing around his temples, and he felt a sudden urge to stop and throw up.

 

The track was so old and faint that earth slips had washed it away in several places, necessitating a muddy and slippery clamber up over a dangerous detour across bare dirt and rock.

 

Finally the shooting had stopped.

 

The track wound away from the river, cutting toward the east, up a side canyon.

 

"Once we get over the ridge we'll have an ace on the line to get away," Trader said.

 

"Long as they haven't second-guessed us," Abe panted, but he wasn't sure that Trader had heard him. Truth was, he hoped that the man hadn't.

 

 

 

IT WAS RAINING, a steady downpour, lancing vertically from the dark clouds, seeking out every gap in their clothes. Abe had it running down his nose and inside his collar, both at the back and the front. There didn't seem an inch of his body that wasn't sopping wet. It had also become colder.

 

Trader was moving ahead, the gap between the two of them widening. Every time there was a sharp bend in the trail, the older man vanished for almost half a minute.

 

Abe had heard about the cold sickness. Something that insinuated itself into the marrow of your bones and froze your blood and dulled your mind. He knew that one of the first signs of that was fatigue. A terrible weariness that dragged at your feet and made every step seem like ten.

 

"Trader." The word carried away on the rising wind. "Hey, Trader!"

 

But the gray man didn't hesitate or check for a moment, striding on, around the next turn in the track.

 

"Get a fire going," Abe said. "What I need most. Dry myself and get warm. Be fine then. Fucking fine with a good blaze to heat me up."

 

A small carved sign, under an overhang, protected from the elements, read Quarter Mile To Hotel.

 

"Sounds good," Abe said.

 

Around the next bend, Trader was so far ahead of him that he wasn't even in sight.

 

For the first time, dimly against the skyline, Abe thought he could make out the tumbled ruins of a building, presumably the hotel that the sign referred to.

 

He slogged on, face down against the driving rain, stumbling in the deep ruts that crisscrossed the trail, hoping that Trader would be in sight when he reached the top.

 

But he wasn't.

 

Abe was greeted instead by a small group of bedraggled men with muskets. "Blood for blood, you bastard," one of them said. "You're a fucking dead man."