The Law of the Trigger

Chapter Fourteen

The first bullet from the hilltop smashed abruptly at Ike Brunner's feet, showering powdered sandstone in his face. Quickly he clawed his way up to a stone overhang and lay panting. Gabe Tanis scrambled up and dropped beside him.

“I told you it wasn't goin' to be easy.”

“Shut up!” Ike snarled. He had split the party into three groups, and two thirds of the gang was out of sight on the far sides of the slope. Ike moved to the end of the overhang, lifted his Winchester, and fired three quick shots toward the jagged ridge. Maybe it won't be easy, he thought, but they'll do as I say. They know I'll kill the man who tries to back down!

There were three more men near the base of the hill, and the carbine barked twice as they started up. Ike listened to the sporadic firing on the other side and smiled. Lester and the marshal were going to have trouble splitting themselves three ways for defense. Over to the right he heard a sudden burst of fire.

“They must have spotted Jeffers' bunch,” Ike said. “Follow me!”

They fought for footing, clawed their way past a thicket of blackjack, and now the carbine and revolver fire shifted away from Jeffers and turned on Ike and his group. A lead slug screamed and spat into the thicket and started a small landslide as the five men huddled behind a massive boulder.

Ike laughed and lay on his Winchester. Suddenly there was another outburst of firing on their left. “What did I tell you?” Ike yelled at Gabe Tanis. “They'll go crazy tryin' to be everywhere at once!”

Ike crouched behind the boulder, then darted into the open, clawing at roots and loose rocks, pulling himself upward. The others came behind him, all making for the second big shelf, about forty yards away.

But something went wrong with Ike's plan. A steady, withering barrage of carbine fire caught the group in the open, midway between the boulder and the shelf of sandstone. Buckshot from Dunc Lester's shotgun tore into blackjack trunks, ripped off branches, and scattered rocks. A slug tugged at Ike Brunner's sleeve and went screaming toward the valley. Someone cried out, but Ike did not look back until he reached the protection of the shelf.

Dragging huge gulps of air into his lungs, Gabe Tanis fell beside Ike, who was cursing savagely.

“Goddamn it, I told you, Ike—”

But Ike wheeled on him and Gabe fell back before his rage. “I heard what you told me! I don't want to hear it again!”

Gabe Tanis' anger leaked out of him like air escaping from a punctured balloon. Ike stood in an animal-like crouch, holding his Winchester like a club, and Gabe threw up his arm as though to ward off a blow.

Perhaps the blow would have come. Perhaps, in his rage, Ike would have killed him if the second outcry of pain hadn't come between him and his anger. Ike suddenly straightened and said, “Who got hurt?”

“I don't know,” Gabe said nervously.

Ike shot him a withering glance and then crawled back to the lip of the shelf. He swore again, savagely, when he saw what those last forty yards had cost him. Herb Fowler, a leather-tough old-timer, crouched in the blackjack thicket some twenty yards away, clutching at his chest with both hands. As Ike watched, the old man let go and began to fall by slow degrees until at last he lay on his back, arms outstretched, motionless.

Ike wheeled, turning his anger on the hilltop. Not that he gave a damn about Fowler, but his death made the gang one man weaker than it had been before. That marshal! Ike thought darkly. That goddamn marshal! And for the first time the gang leader began to take a personal interest in Owen Toller.

Five men had started up that slope and only two had reached the shelf. Ike raked the base of the hill with angry eyes, but the two remaining men were not to be seen.

“What happened to Ross Kale and Sam Russell?” he demanded of Gabe Tanis. Then, without waiting for an answer, Ike leaped up and plunged down the slope again. He hit the ground with his chest and rolled end over end, clutching at his Winchester, as a shotgun blast tore away his footing. He did not know that he was hurt until he stopped rolling, and then he saw the bright crimson spreading over his trousers a few inches above his right knee. He crawled into the thicket.

Quickly he ripped his shirt sleeve with his teeth, tore it off at the shoulder, and bound his thigh. “Ross!” he yelled. “Sam! Where are you?”

There was no answer. The carbine spoke again from the hilltop and the slug ripped savagely through the brush. Goddamn it, why didn't the bunch on the other side of the hill start moving? He would kill them, every one of them, with his two bare hands, if they backed out on him now!

By sheer power of will Ike Brunner made himself calm down and think of the problem at hand. If Ross and Sam were dead... But he would not cross that bridge before he reached it. He called out again, and again his only answer came from the marshal's carbine.

He couldn't push his luck much further. He had to get out of this thicket. He calculated the distance from the thicket to the boulder and prayed that the boys on the other side would start moving soon. Then his hard face split with a satisfied grin. Far to his right a cluster of rifle shots mushroomed in the afternoon. Wade Jeffers had got them moving.

He waited until he was sure that Dunc and the marshal had moved over to resist the new advance, then lifted himself in the brush and limped toward the boulder. He was right back where he had started from, with the protecting shelf still forty yards away. But behind the boulder he found his missing men.

Ross Kale was a youngster in his late teens, a tough, straw-haired kid who had joined the gang after the raid at Bellefront. Sam Russell was a gangly, chinless farmer in his late thirties. At first Ike thought they were both dead. They crouched behind the boulder, their arms over their heads.

For a moment Ike did nothing. A red haze of rage clouded his vision.

He stepped up to Russell and kicked him savagely with his good leg, and the farmer fell back on his side, his eyes and mouth flying open as his breath left him. “Get up, goddamn you!” Ike said harshly. He hobbled over to Ross Kale and with a short, vicious swing of the Winchester clubbed the side of the kid's face with the walnut stock.

Ike turned to Russell. “I said get up!” he snarled.

But the gangly farmer was paralyzed with fear. He worked his loose mouth but only gibberish came out. “I can't! I just can't, Ike! Herb Fowler, he was standin' right beside me! We'll all be killed!”

Without another word Ike leveled his Winchester at the farmer's head and pulled the trigger. Russell was instantly dead, with most of his skull shot away, but he flopped and quivered for several seconds, and Ike watched without a flicker of emotion. At last he turned on Ross Kale.

“How about you, kid? You want to stay behind this boulder with Sam?”

The boy swallowed hard, his eyes popping. “Ike, for God's sake!”

“You want to go to the top of the hill with the rest of us?”

“Yes! Yes, anything you say!”

“Then get on your feet and act like a man!”

The numbness in Ike's leg was beginning to fade, and the pain put a new sharp edge to his anger. He grabbed the boy, jerked him to his feet, and shoved him into the open. “Up there where Gabe Tanis is! And don't stop.”

Ross Kale didn't stop. Ahead of Brunner, with Ike's Winchester at his back, the kid clawed blindly up the rocky grade to the shelf. Gabe Tanis was waiting near the ledge to pull them up.

“Where's Sam Russell?”

“Dead,” Ike said bluntly, “along with Herb Fowler.”

If Gabe had heard the shot from Ike's rifle, he did not mention it. “I think somebody got the Reunion marshal,” he said. “I haven't heard anything from the carbine since you reached the boulder.”

“I guess it's time we headed for the top, then. I've got some business to finish with Dunc Lester.” He glanced behind him and saw that the sun was sinking behind the western hills. “We'll have to finish it before sundown. I don't want him to get away in the dark.”

On the other side of the hill a revolver sounded three times, punctuated at the end by a shotgun blast. Ike jerked his head at Ross Kale. “You first, kid.”

The boy's face was pale, his mouth a thin white line, but he did not hesitate. He slipped around the end of the shelf and started toward the crest of the hill when a sudden carbine blast knocked him off his feet. He came falling down in a shower of loose rocks, blood spurting from his left shoulder.

“I thought you said that marshal was dead!” Ike snarled.

Gabe Tanis shrugged, wiping his tobacco-stained mouth. “I said I thought he was shot. A man can be shot and still pull the trigger on a carbine.”

They retreated again behind their protective roof of stone, and Ross Kale began to whimper when he saw the stream of blood flowing down his arm. “Shut up!” Ike said. “Or maybe you want me to shut you up for good!”

The boy ground his teeth and was suddenly silent. Gabe Tanis gazed thoughtfully at Ike, then at the boy, and finally went down on one knee and fashioned a clumsy bandage about Kale's shoulder. “Maybe,” Gabe said quietly, “it would be better if we did wait till dark.” Ike looked at the sun again and judged that darkness was less than an hour away. That's what they were fighting for, the two men up there on the hilltop. They were waiting for darkness and hoping that they could slip away in the night.

There were a lot of things to consider before charging that rocky ridge again. One man had already lost his guts, and it stood to reason that there would be others. Still, the odds were heavily in favor of Ike and the gang, and he did not intend to leave this job unfinished. Maybe, he thought, the marshal was hurt bad; maybe he would die. It was pleasant to think about, but nothing to be relied on.

Now Ike began to get a new idea. Suddenly he moved to the edge of the shelf and shouted:

“You up there on top! The marshal from Reunion! Can you hear me?”

Gabe Tanis blinked in surprise, but Ike gazed eagerly toward the sandstone cap and waited. At last a voice came down to them.

“I hear you, Brunner.”

It was a weak voice, and this pleased Ike. He called, “We know you're shot, Marshal. I don't know how bad off you are, but you don't sound so good to me. I'd guess you might be needin' a doctor.”

No answer came from the hilltop.

“I've got a proposition for you, Marshal,” Ike called again. “You want to hear it?”

There was a short silence. Then, “All right. I'll listen.”

Ike grinned. He knew that they were playing for time, but this didn't worry him now. “Here's my proposition, Marshal. You're free to come down any time you feel like it. I'll give my men orders not to fire.”

“Thanks just the same, but I think I'd be safer where I am.”

“With a bullet hole in you? You need a doctor, Marshal. You come down by yourself and I'll have two of my boys help you get back to Reunion. Nobody but us will ever know.”

There was a long pause. All the hills seemed to listen. Then, “I'm afraid I can't take your word, Brunner. I'd be walking into a trap and you know it.”

Ike smiled, feeling himself on firmer ground. “I've got nothin' against you, Marshal. You're just another law dog tryin' to do a job, as far as I'm concerned. But you don't have a chance in the world of breaking up my gang, so why be a fool and get yourself killed for nothin'?”

“Like you said, Brunner, I'm trying to do a job.” Ike's face was a mask, showing nothing. His voice was almost amiable. “Get this through your head, Marshal: I don't care a damn about you, but I aim to settle a debt with Dunc Lester. If you want to stand in my way, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.”

“That's right, Ike. Nobody but myself.” Ike shifted his weight again, leaning heavily against the stone. The pain in his thigh spread slowly upward toward the hip. He had one more idea to try, and if that didn't work... Well, the sun was getting low.

“Marshal,” he called again, “I want you to think about your wife and kids. You've got a family, haven't you? Think about them, Marshal, for just five minutes. And if you still insist on getting yourself killed...”

He let the words hang significantly. Gabe Tanis said, “How do you know he's got a family?”

“He didn't deny it, did he? He's got a family, all right, and he'll do some thinkin'.”

“But will he come down?”

Ike eased himself to the ground, sitting with his wounded leg extended. “I don't know,” he said thoughtfully. “If he's smart he'll come down.”

“And if he does?”

Ike grinned and patted his Winchester. The minutes dragged by. No sound came from the hilltop, and Ike Brunner's hopes began to grow. This marshal was no ordinary low-country politician deputy; he had guts and plenty of hill sense, and he was dangerous. But every man had his weakness, and Ike had guessed that the marshal's weakness was his family. “No sign of him yet,” Gabe Tanis said. Ike gazed at the long hill shadows. “Give him a little more time.”

So they sat in uneasy silence for several more minutes, and still no sound came down from above. Painfully Ike shoved himself to his feet, knowing that they could wait no longer. “All right, Marshal,” he called casually. “Your time is out. You come now or you don't come down at all.”

Every man on the hill seemed to hold his breath, waiting for Owen Toller's answer. Then, when the answer came at last, it was not the voice of Owen Toller, but Dunc Lester's.

“The marshal's staying', Ike!”

The gang leader frowned. “Let him talk for himself.”

“I'm talkin' for him,” Dunc called harshly. “And I say he's stayin'!”

Ike's frown deepened, then suddenly it disappeared and he smiled savagely. “Gabe, could you spot Dunc's position?”

Gabe Tanis cocked his head as if he were still listening to Dunc Lester's words. “I can't be sure, but he sounded like he was right behind the top shelf.”

Ike nodded. “That's what I figured, too. He's up there by himself, Gabe. The marshal's dead, or too weak to talk—it doesn't make any difference which.”

This possibility had occurred to Tanis, but he was a careful, suspicious man. “Maybe you're right. Or maybe he's just playin' possum.”

Ike Brunner laughed. “He's not playin' possum, Gabe. He's dead!” He checked his Winchester, moved to the end of the shelf, and fired three times toward the hilltop.

The gang leader's confidence seemed to affect very man on that rocky slope. They had listened to the exchange and had drawn their own conclusions. The marshal was dead. At the signal they leaped to their feet and began clawing their way toward that jagged cap of sandstone.

Ike Brunner forgot the pain in his leg. Drunk with the anticipation of victory, he fought his way from thicket to thicket, grabbing at roots and stones, his eyes always on that cap of rock. He grinned fiercely when Dunc Lester's pistol began its meaningless pattern of firing, first from one position and then from another. This, Ike Brunner knew, was the sound of panic. This was the lone coon nipping futilely at the pack of hounds.

Ike himself was the first to reach the top. And that was as it should have been. On his hands and knees, dragging hisWinchester, he saw Dunc Lester on the other side of the hill. On one knee, Dunc had his back turned to Ike, firing with his pistol at the men advancing from the west. Deliberately Ike kept his every movement slow and precise, savoring every minute detail of the moment. He lifted his rifle and, smiling, brought it to bear on the boy's straight, broad back. He had eyes only for Dunc Lester, the killer of his brother, and he did not see the marshal until Owen Toller spoke.

“Ike!”

And then it was too late.

The gang leader wheeled on his good leg, realizing that he had guessed wrong and that Gabe Tanis had guessed right. The marshal had played possum.

In that one split second Ike Brunner understood the situation as it actually was. He was alone and no one could help him. In that small fragment of time Ike saw the marshal standing there, his face pale and drawn, leaning against a massive boulder. He saw Owen Toller's shirt plastered with his own blood against his side, and he saw the deadly beauty of blue steel and polished walnut that the marshal had drawn from his holster and now held at his side. In that smallest part of a second Ike was aware of all these things and many more.

Toller said quietly, “Drop your rifle, Ike.”

The gang leader's position was awkward. He rested heavily on his good leg and his Winchester was pointed down at the ground. To kill this marshal he would have to shift his weight quickly to his bad leg, lifting the rifle's muzzle at the same time, and fire from the hip.

I can do it, he thought. I can swing the Winchester faster than he can lift the revolver. But he hesitated. He didn't like what he saw in the marshal's face.

Toller said, “Drop it, Ike. I'll not let you kill me the way you killed Mort Stringer. Or the freight agent and his wife.”

Ike darted a quick glance at the rocky ridge and saw that Gabe Tanis had reached the top behind Toller. Relief washed over him and he wanted to laugh. Gabe would kill the marshal, and Dunc Lester would be left for himself. Everything was working out perfectly!

But Gabe made no move to shoot. He merely stood there, waiting, a slow understanding appearing in his eyes. And at that moment Ike knew that he could expect no help from Tanis. He had heard what the marshal had said about Mort Stringer.

In sudden rage Ike wheeled to throw all his weight on his bad leg. In the back of his mind he could hear his men clawing their way to the hilltop, but none of them could help him now. At the start of the turn he felt his wounded leg begin to buckle. His shot went wide.

Nothing changed in Owen Toller's eyes as he lifted the heavy revolver and fired.

A sheet of numbness covered Ike as the impact of the bullet drove him to the ground. All thoughts, all hate, all anger left him. He fell into darkness.

Gabe Tanis stood like a gaunt, ragged statue and knew that the gang leader was dead before he hit the ground. All the fight seemed to go out of him. A bleakness, too profound for sorrow, took hold of him. He had lost his stomach for killing; so many of his people were already dead. What the marshal had said about Mort Stringer kept ringing in his ears. He felt as though the ground had been cut from under him and he had no place on which to stand.

“Drop your rifle, Gabe,” the marshal said, almost gently.

Gabe did not drop his rifle, but he did turn and called out in a hoarse, raw voice, “Hold it up, boys! Ike's been killed!”

Dunc Lester came running toward the marshal, but Toller motioned him back. A shocked silence fell around the hilltop. The king was dead.

Gabe Tanis rubbed his face as though he were coming out of a drugged sleep. He looked at Ike Brunner's lifeless body, then at Owen and Dunc.

Owen said, “I'll have to take you back to Reunion, Gabe.”

Tanis shook his head sullenly. “I never killed anybody.”

“Goddamn it, Gabe!” Dunc Lester shouted. “You've been tryin' plenty hard to kill me and the marshal!”

Almost carelessly, Tanis cradled his rifle in the crook of his arm. “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Ike wanted it that way, and maybe we listened too close to what he said.” He turned his head and spat with the wind. “Boys,” he said loudly, “I guess it would be best if you all went back to your homes.”

Dunc Lester's eyes flashed angrily. “Marshal, you're not goin' to let them get away, are you?”

Owen smiled. He must have known that they were helpless to stop them.

Gabe Tanis wiped his mouth thoughtfully as he turned to go. “Dunc,” he said, the words coming with great effort, “I never felt right about burnin' your folks out like we did.”

Dunc glared with bitter eyes. At last Gabe turned, called again to the men, and began the slow descent to the bottom of the hill.

So this is the way it ends, Owen thought. His head was amazingly light; his side burned as though he had been branded with a running iron.

“Marshal,” Dunc Lester said, “are you all right?”

Owen nodded. “It's just a flesh wound.” He scanned the world around him in the light of a dying sun. “Son,” he said, “I think we have witnessed the end of an era. Ike Brunner, in his way, served a purpose here. I think he taught the people something.”

Dunc scowled, neither knowing nor caring what Owen was talking about. “What if they come back?” he asked. “We're not in much condition to fight them off again.”

“They won't come back.” He glanced at the sprawled body before him. “I believe that the days of brazen lawlessness are through. I believe these hills will see no more of gangs like Ike Brunner's.” He did not know how he knew this, but he knew. Perhaps it had been something he had seen in Gabe Tanis' eyes. There had been a great weariness there, and some of the bitterness had burned itself out.

Uneasy and restless, Dunc had walked to the far side of the stone cap and stood staring down at the gathering darkness.

“Marshal, come here!”

Owen turned suddenly and almost fell. He braced himself against the boulder for a moment, giving his head time to clear. “What is it, Dunc?”

“Horses, Marshal! Two of them!”

Owen walked with elaborate steadiness to where Dunc was standing, and near the base of the hill he saw the two horses. They were hobbled and grazing quietly in a sparse stand of blackjack.

Dunc could not believe the obvious. “It's a trick, Marshal!”

Owen took a long time answering, but at last he shook his head and said, “No, I don't think so.”

“You don't know this gang like I do!” Dunc insisted. “This is just the kind of thing they would try, leavin' those two horses down there to draw us off the hill. They're down there in some gully right now, I'll bet, waitin' for us!”

This was a possibility that Owen was forced to consider but he could not believe it. He walked heavily to the boulder and picked up Arch Deland's carbine. I won't believe it! he thought. I prefer to believe that Gabe Tanis left those horses for us, and that's what I'll believe.

“Where're you headed, Marshal?” Dunc called out in alarm.

“Down to see about those horses.”

“But I tell you it's a trick!”

Owen smiled. “We'll soon know.” He eased himself over the ledge, carefully favoring his wounded side. Dunc called out again, then cursed savagely and started down the hill beside him.

“Marshal, this is the craziest thing I ever heard of!”

And perhaps it is, Owen thought. But a time comes when a man must trust the instincts of others or the world becomes unbearable. He could not explain this to Dunc. If he had been asked to put his thoughts into words, he could not have done it. He only knew that he had done the job he had come to do, the job for which he had trained all his adult life; and he knew that now was the time to learn whether all his efforts and ideals had taught him anything about the millions of humans like himself who populated the earth. He had to know if Arch Deland had died for nothing.

When at last they reached the bottom of the hill, Owen walked directly to the horses, and no sound at all was made in the surrounding woods. No rifle fire, no voices raised in hate or anger. All was quiet.

Dunc Lester said, “Well, I'll be damned!”