The Law of the Trigger

Chapter Five

Dunc Lester was not as pleased with himself as he might have been. Oh, they had got off with a lot of plunder in the Bellefront raid; he'd had Gabe Tanis take his share back to his folks. But he couldn't get over the idea that the price had been too high.

The raid was more than a week old and most of the boys had scattered all over the hills. The wild, ragged peaks that surrounded Ulster's Cave were bleak and silent, and Dunc wished that he could have gone back with the others. This time of year his pa needed him to help work the fields, but here he was stuck in this wilderness, because this was the way Ike Brunner wanted it.

Sometimes he got sick of letting Ike boss him around, but he guessed this fact hadn't really occurred to him until after Bellefront. This was the first time one of the gang had been killed in one of these forays. For Dunc, it had been sort of a lark until now. But not any more. Not after he'd seen a load of buckshot almost take Dove Wakeley's head off his shoulders.

Dunc's stomach shrank toward his throat when he thought about it. Dove Wakeley, a simple, good-natured galoot. Dunc had been right beside him when that warehouse guard opened up on them with a twelve-gauge shotgun. There had been a dull thump, like an October pumpkin splitting on a sharp rock. Dove had run maybe a dozen steps, screaming, with no face at all and not much of anything above the shoulders. Dunc Lester would be just as happy if he never saw another sight like that.

Now, sitting on the ridge near the first outpost, Dunc leaned on his shotgun and wondered what Dove's woman would do now that Dove was dead. How long was that Bellefront plunder going to last without a husband?

Dunc got tired sitting in one place, and he got up to stretch his legs, walking around in a tight little circle. He looked down at the wooded crags below and shook his head. That dude sheriff in Reunion could scour this country till doomsday and never find the Brunner hideout. Just the same, Ike said the gang was to lay low a while after Bellefront. Except for eight or ten men to guard the cave, everybody was to go home and tend his fields as if nothing had happened.

That's where you had to admit that Ike was smart, whether you liked him or not. He knew when to stop.

But Cal—now there was a different story. Cal was a wild one, Dunc thought. Cal didn't take to these hills the way his brother did; he liked to be among people, especially women.

Dunc shook his head in wonder. If the younger brother ever took hold of this outfit, it wouldn't last a week. And Dunc was getting to the point where he didn't care much, one way or the other. He was thinking that the next time Ike sent out the call, he might get himself laid up with the fever. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor was all right, but there were limits.

He stood for a while, looking down on that dark sea of pine. He glanced at the sun and judged that he still had four hours of watch before Wes Longstreet would relieve him and he could go back to the cave. He began to get impatient and irritable. It seemed a sin and a crime that a man should do nothing in the spring of the year but sit on a hilltop holding a shotgun.

At last he tramped over to the far end of the ridge, and in the distance he could see a thin ribbon of wood smoke rising up from Mort Stringer's chimney. Preacher Stringer, some called him. They said that Mort had been the head of a Baptist mission for the Cherokees once. They also said that Mort had given up preaching to the Indians because he figured the whites needed it more, and maybe he had something there. What Cherokees Dunc had seen were as smart as any white man you'd likely run up against. One of them had figured out an alphabet and started a whole new language, so the story went, and Dunc guessed it was true.

So Mort figured the Cherokees were capable of looking after their own salvation, and he had moved up here to this cabin, where the hills were the wildest, where the woods were the darkest and the crudest, and started up to save the hillfolks. Him and his daughter.

Leah, the girl's name was, but Dunc had never seen her, not being much of a Bible-pounder himself.

Dunc gazed down at that lonely little clearing surrounded by darkness, the bleak little cabin with a mud chimney, and thought to himself that it was a mighty poor place to bring up a girl. Mort's woman had died a few months back, and they said the girl took it hard, not having any womenfolks at all to talk to. Now if I was Mort, Dunc thought idly, I'd stop bothering so much about these hill-folks and get that girl down among some women.

At last he turned and tramped back to his position, sat on a rock, and set himself to wait out the hours for Wes Longstreet.

Almost an hour had passed when Dunc spotted the gray stallion picking its way daintily through the rocks at the bottom of the long slope. He came instantly alert, his shotgun at the ready. Then he thought, Why the hell didn't I bring a rifle? A shotgun's no good at this range!

But then the rider cupped his hands to his mouth and the mournful bark of the coyote hung on the still air. Dunc returned the call and thought, That's Cal Brunner. What does he think he's doin' this far from the cave?

He watched with vague interest as the big gray picked its way to the far side of the slope and disappeared among the trees. Dunc shrugged. Well, he guessed Cal Brunner could do as he pleased... so long as Ike didn't have any objections.

He sat on the rock again and waited, idle thoughts drifting in and out of his mind. He was bored.

Perhaps another hour had passed when the muffled sound of a rifle mushroomed gently in the still of the afternoon. Instantly Dunc was on his feet again, running in the direction of the sound. Then he thought, That shot was too far away. I can't do any good without a horse. He turned and ran back to where his little bay grazed in the sparse grass among the rocks.

He had to take a tortuous, twisting trail down the west side of the hill; plunging headlong down that incline would have been suicide. The shot probably meant nothing, he told himself. Probably it was Cal shooting game. Dunc swore as the little bay stumbled over the rocky trail. Goddamn it, why hadn't Cal warned the outpost if he was going hunting?

When he reached the shelf at, the bottom of the trail, he brought the bay up for a moment, scowling. Here, he thought, was just about where he had seen Cal. Dunc called out the barking signal. The hills were silent.

Dunc kneed the bay to the south, toward a heavy stand of trees, and called out again. There was no answer. He considered the possibility mat a posse might have penetrated this deep into the hills and Cal had run into it, but he dismissed that idea immediately. No posse could have got past the forward outposts without raising a commotion.

Dunc worried this in his mind for a moment. Maybe it was another kind of trouble; maybe Cal had had an accident of some kind. This idea worried him more than the possibility of a posse. Ike would sure be hell to live with if anything happened to that hotheaded brother of his.

After another short pause to orient himself, Dunc put the bay into the woods, beating a slow arc around the base of the hill, keeping in mind the direction from which the shot had come. He was about to call out again when he heard the scamper and clash of steel-shod hoofs on the rocks behind him, and through the woods Dunc glimpsed Ike Brunner's paint mare crashing through the trees toward the sound, and the gang leader's face was twisted and red with rage.

Instinctively Dunc held back, glad that Ike hadn't seen him. When the elder Brunner got that kind of look on his face, he was nobody to fool with. Maybe Ike has taken this as a personal thing, Dunc thought carefully. Maybe I'd better let him take care of it to suit himself.

As Dunc gentled the bay, he could still hear Ike's paint snorting and blowing, pushing through that stand of heavy timber as though it were so much underbrush. There's something queer about this, Dunc thought slowly. Where did Ike come from, anyway? He must have been up there on the hill at the time of the shot, and he sure didn't waste any time getting down there. And from the way he's riding, he must know exactly where he's heading.

Pondering on this, Dunc shook his head. If this was a personal matter, he wanted no part of it. But if it concerned the gang...

He decided that he had better take the chance and move along a little farther. Putting the bay over to the left, he picked up Ike's trail and followed it. It was a steady, treacherous downgrade now, and only after several minutes of riding did Dunc realize that Ike's trail was leading him straight for Mort Stringer's cabin.

Wait a minute, he thought. If Ike and Cal have a fuss with Stringer, that's none of my business.

Dunc was beginning to guess what the trouble might be. He knew Cal, and he had heard that Leah Stringer was a long way from being ugly. Dunc Lester, he told himself, the smartest thing you can do is turn right around and head back for the ridge.

But he didn't turn around. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it, and the more he hoped that he had figured it out all wrong. Getting Mort Stringer turned against them would be the worst thing that could happen. That old man could rile up the hills all the way to the Verdigris, if he ever got his dander up at them.

Cautiously Dunc urged his bay forward. Almost immediately he stopped, hearing Preacher Stringer's shrill, high-pitched voice ringing through the trees. Dunc tied the bay to a young sapling and cocked his head curiously. He was still too far away to tell what Stringer was worked up about, but he was sure preaching hell-fire to somebody!

Well, since I've come this far... Dunc reasoned. He pulled his shotgun from the saddle boot and moved forward on foot, alert as a mother doe, silent as an Indian.

He reached a small rise at the edge of the Stringer clearing. Lying on his belly behind some brush, he could see four of them, Mort and the girl, Ike and Cal. Cal was stretched out on his back, his good-looking face ugly with pain, and Ike was slashing at his brother's trousers with a pocketknife.

“That old bastard!” Cal whined. “He shot me! You hear me, Ike? He shot me!”

“Shut up,” Ike snarled coldly. “You're lucky I don't finish the job for him!”

Violently Ike ripped the leg from Cal's trousers, slashed it with his knife, forming a compress with one half of the rough material and a bandage with the other. He worked angrily and silently at bandaging his brother's leg, completely ignoring Mort Stringer's shouting. The girl, on her hands and knees a little behind her father, did not utter a sound. Dunc judged that she had been knocked to the ground, probably by Mort himself, for she shook her head dumbly and made no effort to get tip.

“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword!” Mort Stringer ranted. Jabbing a bony finger at Ike as though it were a pistol, he screamed, “You're wastin' your time, Ike Brunner, for the wages of sin is death! Thus spoke the Lord, and you cannot thwart the will of the Lord! The black shadow of the Angel of Death falls over both of you! The curse of God is upon the name of Brunner and upon its followers!”

Ike glanced up in cold rage but did not speak. Dunc Lester, from his place in the underbrush, was slightly stunned by the steady flow of insane doggerel that came from Mort Stringer's mouth. Maybe Mort had been alone in these hills too long. Maybe the shock of losing his woman had done this to him; Dunc didn't know. But he knew that Preacher Stringer was not the same man that he had seen before on rare occasions. This man was not right in his head; his eyes were glassy and vacant, his voice was too shrill.

It gave Dunc a spooky feeling just looking at him, a dirty, gangly skeleton of a man whose baggy overalls seemed to hang on the sharp bones as a hat hangs on a peg. In one clawlike hand he held a long-barreled rifle, but his eyes said that he was not aware of having it.

Dunc looked at the girl again and felt a pity for her that he had never before experienced. It sure couldn't have been much fun for her, he thought, living here in these hills with that crazy old man. Of course, he had no way of knowing just what she and Cal Brunner had been up to, but whatever it was, he guessed that he couldn't blame her much.

“The Lord's judgment be upon you!” Mort cried, suddenly brandishing the rifle over his head. Ike continued to bandage his brother's leg and did not look up. “The Lord's will be done!” Mort shouted. “To you who have brought sin and corruption upon my own flesh and blood!” He stared glassily at the rifle and then at Cal Brunner, but the connection seemed to escape him for the moment.

“Oh, don't think I don't know what's been goin' on in these hills!” he shouted. “Don't think I haven't seen your evil comings and goings. Oh, I'm aware of your sins, Ike Brunner, but the day of Armageddon has arrived!”

And at that Ike Brunner turned slowly on one knee, drew his pistol, and shot Mort Stringer in the chest. Once, twice, the big Colt's bellowed in the clearing, and the preacher fluttered for a moment like some disjointed puppet and then fell to the ground as soundlessly as an October leaf. It happened so fast that Dunc was momentarily stunned. Ike's iciness, the offhand manner in which the man could commit murder, left Dunc unable to utter a sound.

He had never seen anything like this before. Oh, in the heat of rage or passion he had seen plenty of violence, and even killing, but he had not known that one man was capable of killing another as casually as brushing away a troublesome fly.

Cal Brunner, on the instant of the first explosion, came up on one elbow, groaning. “The old bastard!” he cried bitterly. “He deserved it!”

Ike blew thoughtfully into his smoking pistol and said nothing. The girl stared wide-eyed in panic at the crumpled body of her father.

“Get me out of here,” Cal grated. “I've had enough of this. I've had enough ofher!”

Ike did not once look at the dead man. Now he studied the girl coldly. Cal saw the calculating look in his brother's slitted eyes and said uneasily, “Ike, what are you thinkin'?”

“None of your business.”

“Listen to me, Ike. You were right. I should have let her alone. But damn it, she seemed willin' enough. Everything would have been all right if the old man hadn't—”

“Shut up,” Ike said harshly, still studying the girl. Cal swallowed hard. Now his own panic was almost as obvious as the girl's.

“Ike, for the love of God!”

The girl leaped up like a startled deer. Ike grinned quietly as she fled toward the sheltering trees.

Up on the rise, Dunc relaxed the hard grip on his shotgun and breathed a long sigh of relief. Ike will have to let her go, he thought. Not evenhe would shoot a girl down in cold blood.

And then, even before the thought had become full grown, Ike Brunner fired once from the hip, and again from a studied aim, and the girl tripped, as though she had stumbled over a stone, and fell face down in a spongy bed of pine needles.

Cal Brunner hid his face in his hands. Then he lay back and covered his eyes with his forearm, as though shutting out the sight would shut out reality.

“Ike, you didn't have to kill her!” he said hoarsely.

“That's where you're wrong,” his brother said mildly, and he began to reload. “I told you to stay away from her, but you wouldn't listen.”

“But you didn't have to kill her!”

Ike came erect, suddenly angry. “Stop your whinin'!”

Dunc thought he was going to be sick. He lay face down in the weeds, hugging the shotgun hard in his arms. For one wild instant he had Ike Brunner dead in his sights, his finger hard on the trigger, and then he thought hopelessly, What's the use? Killing him won't bring Mort and the girl back. It will only put my folks in bad with the gang.

Now Ike was speaking again, calmly. “There was no other way to handle it. You let the old fool catch you foolin' with the girl. He'd have set out to put the whole hill country against us if I'd let him go.”

“But the girl! Did you have to kill her too?”

“What do you think she would have done if I hadn't?” Ike asked coldly. “She would have had the word all over the hills that I'd killed the preacher. How do you think that would have been? How many boys do you think would answer the call if they knew I was a preacher killer?”

Cal groaned, more concerned with his own hurt than with what Ike was saying. But Ike went on patiently, as though he were drilling a backward child in a ridiculously simple lesson. “Listen to me, Cal. It's not my fault that you wouldn't listen to me. I did what I had to do. We've got too good a thing here to let it be ruined by a crazy old preacher or a slut of a girl! We're rich, Cal, and we're goin' to get a lot richer. I'm just beginnin' to whip this gang into shape. Before I'm through with it I'll make the Doolin and Dalton raids look like quiltin' bees!”

Suddenly he laughed, and it was as chilling a sound as Dunc Lester had ever heard. “These stupid farmers will do anythin' I say, Cal. They'll make us rich and be happy doin' it. Now get up. We've got to get back to the cave.”

Dunc lay like a sheep wolf in the brush as Ike lifted Cal in his arms and helped his brother across the clearing to the horses. Cal groaned and whined and fat tears of pain flowed down his smooth cheeks as Ike helped him up to the saddle.

“We'll take it easy. It won't take long to get back to the cave.”

“That old bastard! I think the bullet broke my leg.”

“It's just a flesh wound,” Ike said, holding him in the saddle. Ike swung up on his own rugged little paint. “Another thing,” he said thoughtfully. “The boys back at the cave will want to know what happened, and you'll tell them it was an accident.”

Holding to the saddle horn, Cal glanced angrily back at the dead preacher. “You'll have to do somethin' about the bodies.”

“I'll take care of that after I get you to the cave.”

Behind the flimsy fortress of weeds and underbrush, Dunc lay as still as the dead preacher in the clearing. This thing had happened too fast for him. His brain grappled with what he had seen and heard, but the subtler details of Ike Brunner's violence escaped him.

Stupid farmers. What had Ike meant by that? And what had he meant by saying the gang was going to make them rich? They shared and shared alike, didn't they? How could Ike and Cal get richer than anybody else?

For a moment this worried Dunc more than the two bodies in the clearing. He lay there listening to two horses plodding slowly back toward the higher peaks, turning this new thing ponderously in his mind. Stupid farmers. The way Ike had said it angered him. But what had he meant?

At last Dunc could no longer hear the horses. He glanced at the sun and reckoned he had about an hour before Wes Longstreet would come to relieve him on the ridge, and there'd be hell to pay if he wasn't there. Then he turned his attention to the clearing and felt a vague sickness churning inside him. He didn't like anything about this. Killing a preacher was bad enough, but killing a woman—that was about the worst kind of luck there was. Damn it, he thought heavily, I sure do wish Ike hadn't done that!

After a while he got to his feet and walked reluctantly down to the clearing. Gently Dunc rocked Mort's body with the toe of his shoe. The preacher was as limp as a rag doll. Well, Dunc thought stoically, maybe he's better off like this, for all we know.

What he wanted to do was find his horse and get back to the ridge and try to convince himself that none of this had happened.

It didn't pay to get in bad with Ike Brunner. Once you got in the gang there was no getting out of it—unless it was Dove Wakeley's way. Although there was a cool breeze there in the clearing, Dunc felt uncomfortable and sweaty as he turned his gaze toward the trees where the Stringer girl was lying: Damn that Cal, anyway! There were plenty of girls in the hills; why did he have to pick on this one?

Time was running out and he ought to be getting back to the ridge, but Dunc found his reluctant feet moving him toward the edge of the clearing. A kind of morbid curiosity took hold of him and he could not make himself leave until he had made certain that the girl was dead.

When he was close enough to see her clearly, he thought, Well, she's dead, all right. She lay partly on her side, her face pressed to the soft, clean carpet of pine needles. Something within Dunc's conscience cried out in protest as he looked at the fair, regular features of the girl's face, her partly opened lips, her long-lashed lids barely closed over her eyes, as though she were asleep. The curve of hips, the swell of firm, youthful breasts were all too apparent beneath the flimsy material of her shirt dress. Dunc felt himself sweating again, and his thoughts of Ike Brunner were bitter and angry.

At last Dunc dropped his head and fixed his gaze on the pink heels of the girl's bare feet. He had the desperate feeling that something should be said, that some gesture other than violence should be made, but he could think of noticing. His hard young face was bleak and bewildered as he sought for impossible answers and reasons, and at last he spoke harshly, in a voice no louder than a whisper. “Goddamn it, anyway!” Then he turned to walk away.

The girl moaned.

Dunc Lester whirled, staring at the girl with enlarged eyes. The girl moved her arm and tried to draw up one leg. Slowly she opened her eyes and gazed glassily at Dunc. “Help me,” she said. The sound was so weak that it was hardly a sound at all. “Help me,” she said again, this time more strongly. She tried to lift herself on her elbow but fell back coughing.

Dunc knelt beside the girl and stretched her out in order to make her as comfortable as possible. Gently he probed the bloodstained dress below her left breast, and she whimpered weakly.

“Ma'am,” Dunc said in wonder, “I sure had you pegged as a goner. Maybe you're not, though. We'll see.”

He took out his pocketknife and slashed at the dress. The hole, he saw, was neat, although there was plenty of blood. His immediate problem was what to do about that wound, and he pondered this in his mind. At last he took off his leather belt and sawed it between the girl's clenched teeth. “You can bite on this,” he said. “I think I can get this bullet out without much trouble.”

At the entrance of the knife point into the wound the girl fainted, which was just as well. Dunc worked fast, probing with knife and fingers. He found the bullet just under the rib cage and drew it out.

Bright blood flowed from the wound and Dunc worried about how to stop that. He could see her face getting paler and paler. If the shock of getting shot doesn't kill her, he thought, surely she'll bleed to death if I don't do something fast! He cut the sleeve off his shirt, folded it in a square pad, and placed it over the wound. Then he took his belt from the girl's mouth and buckled it around her, holding the pad in place. He wished that he had some whisky or applejack to pour over the wound, but he had nothing.

Well, he thought, with the tools I've got to work with, I guess that's about the best I can do.

He hunkered down on the soft bed of pine needles, watching the girl's still face and wiping his bloody hands on his trousers. The longer he looked at her, the less blame he could place on Cal Brunner for wanting her. She had not the crude square build of so many of the hill girls. This one was lean and light, supple and strong. There was a feeling of grace and soft texture about her, and the longer Dunc watched her, the more he liked the thing he saw.

He found himself reaching out timidly to touch her dark hair, then felt foolish and uncomfortable and wiped his hands again on his trouser legs. What the hell am I goin' to do with her? he wondered.

He glanced once more at the sun, all too sharply aware of the passage of time. He ought to be on the ridge right this minute. What if one of the gang came past and found the outpost deserted?

The girl whimpered, moved restlessly, but did not open her eyes.

Dunc was suddenly impatient and angry. Hell's fire! He thought. I wish I'd never left the ridge in the first place!

But he had left the ridge. He had seen Ike shoot Mort Stringer and the girl. And he had heard some things that still stirred uneasily in his mind. If Ike had killed the girl, things would have been comparatively simple. Dunc could then have returned to his outpost position and pretended to the others that nothing had happened.

Now everything was confused in his mind. The girl was still alive and he had patched her up. And if Ike came back and found him here, there'd be hell to pay till Christmas!

Hell! Dunc thought. I don't know what to do. She'll die for sure if I walk off and leave her. If Ike doesn't come back and kill her first.

He waited there as long as he dared, wondering and pondering and raking his mind for the right thing to do. Ike oughtn't to have shot her, he decided finally. He just oughtn't to have shot a woman that way!

The nearest doctor was in Reunion, nearly forty miles away and most of it straight down. Likely the girl would be dead by the time he could get her there, should he decide to try such a fool stunt. What was even more likely, Ike Brunner would catch them and kill both of them before they'd gone a mile.

But these were only two of many considerations to be worked out in Dunc Lester's mind. Ike wanted this girl dead—and if he went against Ike's wishes, that was going to turn the gang against Dunc's family.

This was an important consideration. There weren't many hill families that didn't have some kind of tie-up with the Brunners, directly or indirectly, through brothers or cousins or uncles who were members of the gang. Turn against the gang, and the Lester family would have all the hills against them.

And of course, there was always the probability that the lowland law would be waiting to grab him the minute he came out of the timber—providing Ike let him get that far.

Dunc considered all these angles and liked none of them. But the longer he waited and the longer he looked at the girl, the more sure he was that he would try to save her.

Perversely, when the decision came, it angered him. I must be crazy as a coot! he thought savagely.

And while he thought it he was hacking at two tough saplings with his pocketknife. He found the work too slow with a knife, so he went to Mort's cabin and found an ax and while he was at it, a blanket, and came back to the edge of the clearing and went to work in earnest.