Relentless

7

The man was trying to work his rifle bolt but Watchman was too close. He dropped on the man and when the rifle went off its muzzle was up in the air somewhere, harmless.

The man had the body of a heavy-duty shock absorber and Watchman felt the muscles twist and tense under him when he rolled for purchase: the man was flexing his arm like an expert who’d had plenty of practice on bricks and two-inch pine boards and Watchman had no liking for that kind of contest. When the man stabbed at his eyes with spread rigid fingers Watchman whammed his fist against the man’s plunging wrist to deflect it and let himself fall across the man with his forearm against the man’s Adam’s apple; he jammed two fingers into the man’s mouth and clenched them down against the mandibular nerve under the tongue. His father had taught him that: it was an unbearably painful grip, it paralyzed the mouth and jaw so that the man couldn’t bite his fingers, it made the man go limp with agony. On the reservation his father had subdued belligerent drunks effortlessly with it. Watchman lifted the service revolver in his free hand and showed it to the man and held it against the man’s throat while he took his fingers out of the man’s mouth and got his handcuffs.

It had taken only a few seconds. The horse was drifting on past him, screening him from the two men higher on the hill. He cuffed the man’s hands together behind the back and gagged the man with his own scarf. The horse was still moving and someone a few yards uphill in the snow said, “Sergeant?”

“Yessir,” Watchman whispered. His prisoner was Burt, then. He put Burt’s hunting cap on his own head and pushed Burt into a drift of snow that had piled up against a tree trunk. When he came up on his knees he had Burt’s rifle.

The racket of shooting had died away. The horse was going back into the woods at a frightened trot. When Watchman looked uphill he saw one man moving across his line of vision, threading the trees; he couldn’t spot the second man. He flattened himself in the snow and brought the rifle up and when the man in the trees stopped to search the forest Watchman had a perfect target, range not more than thirty yards. He worked the action to load the breech and heard a voice somewhere above him to the left: “Steve? Where do you think you’re going?”

It turned the man’s head and that was when Watchman shot him. He aimed for the right shoulder and the spinning 180-grain plug of lead snapped the man’s body around under its impact.

Watchman skittered to one side up against a tree but no one answered his fire. The tall man was sagging, cursing in an abrasive voice, and then the other one was going fast through the trees, running in deadly silence: Watchman had a glimpse and then the man was gone, absorbed into the night.