Soon there would be two of them.
Cable could see the rider now-it would have to be Vern on Wynn’s horse-already on this side of the river and coming across the meadow.
Below, closer to him, was Austin Dodd.
Cable waited until Austin came through the yellow mesquite patches at the edge of the pinon pines. As the man reached the trees, Cable began to fall back. He moved carefully up the slope, glancing behind him, not wanting to stumble and lose time, and not wanting to lose sight of Austin. He caught glimpses of the man moving cautiously up through the trees.
The slope was not steep here and the pinon seemed almost uniformly spaced, resembling an abandoned, wild-growing orchard. It was not a place to stand with one shot in his revolver and fight a man who had two Colt guns and all the time in the world.
Cable moved back until he reached the end of the trees. And now he stopped to study the open slope behind him. It was spotted with patches of brittlebush and cliffrose, but nothing to use for cover; not the entire, gravelly, nearly one hundred feet of it that slanted steeply to the sky.
Perhaps he could make it; but not straight up. It was too steep. He would have to angle across the slope and Austin would have time to shoot at him. But it was worth trying and it would be better than staying here. He would have to forget about Austin-and about Vern, almost across the meadow now-and concentrate on reaching the crest, not letting anything stop him.
He was in the open then, running diagonally across the rise, his boots digging hard into the crusted, crumbling sand. Almost at once he felt the knotted pain in his thighs, but he kept going, not looking back and trying not to picture Austin Dodd closing in on him; or Vern, at the foot of the slope now and taking out his rifle.
Cable cut through a patch of brittlebush, getting a better foothold then and running hard, but he came suddenly onto a spine of smooth rock-it humped no more than two feet above the ground-and here he slipped to his hands and knees. He tried to get up and stumbled again, then rolled over the side of the smooth rock surface before lunging to his feet. He was climbing again, less than twenty feet from the top when Austin’s voice reached him.
“Cable!”
He stopped, catching his breath and letting it out slowly before coming around. He knew he would never make the crest. He was sure of it then, seeing Austin already well out of the pinon, to his left below him and less than sixty feet away. Austin’s Colts were holstered, but his hands hung close to them. He came on slowly, his face calm and his eyes not straying from Cable.
“Pull anytime now,” Austin said. He advanced up the slope, not looking at the ground but feeling his way along with each careful step.
“You want to. But you got only one shot.” He was reaching the brittlebush now. “Count the other man’s shots. That’s something I learned a long time ago. Then when I saw your extra loads still out there with the horse I said to myself, ‘I wouldn’t want to be that boy. He don’t have one chance between hell and breakfast.’ ”
Cable said nothing. He stood facing Austin Dodd, watching him move into the small field of orange-colored brittlebush. There Austin stopped.
“So when you pull,” Austin said, “you have to make it good the one time.” He seemed almost to be smiling. “That could tighten a man’s nerves some.”
Austin was ready, standing on his own ground. And to beat him with one shot, Cable knew, he would have to be more than fast. He would have to be dead-center accurate.
But he wouldn’t have time to aim, time to be sure.
Unless Austin hesitated. Or was thrown off guard.
Cable’s gaze dropped from the brittlebush to the smooth spine of rock where he had slipped. If he could draw Austin to that point. If he could jiggle him, startle him. If he could throw Austin off balance only for a moment, time enough to draw and aim and make one shot count. If he could do all that-
And Vern was into the pinon now.
No-one thing at a time.
Slowly then, Cable began to back away.
Austin shook his head. “You wouldn’t come near making it.”
Cable was still edging back, covering six, eight, almost ten feet before Austin started toward him again. Cable stopped. He watched Austin come out of the brittlebush, watched him reach the spine of rock and grope with one foot before stepping onto the smooth, rounded surface.
As Austin’s foot inched forward again, Cable went to the side, dropping to one knee and bringing up the Walker in one abrupt motion.
Austin was with him, his right-hand Colt out and swinging on Cable; but the movement shifted his weight. His boots slipped on the smooth rock and even as he fired and fired again he was falling back, his free hand outstretched and clawing for balance.
Beyond the barrel of the Walker, Austin seemed momentarily suspended, his back arched and his gun hand high in the air. Cable’s front sight held on his chest and in that moment, when he was sure and there was no doubt about it, Cable squeezed the trigger.
He was sliding down the gravel as Austin fell back into the brittlebush, reaching him then, knowing he was dead and concentrating on prying the revolver from the man’s fingers. Cable took both of Austin’s revolvers, both Colt Army .44s. He waited a moment, but there was no sign of Vern. He rose half crouched, expecting to hear Vern’s shot, expecting to feel it, then ran for the pinon pines.
He went down beneath a tree, feeling the sand and grass patches warm and the thick branches close above him, and now he listened.
Vern would be close. In the time, he could have come all the way up through the trees. Perhaps not; but at any rate Vern would have seen him running across the open. Probably he was just not in position for a shot. But now Vern knew where he was; that much was certain.
So move, Cable thought.
He pushed up to one knee and waited, listening, then was running again, keeping low and dodging through the brushlike trees. Almost immediately a rifle report whined through the grove. Cable dropped, clawing then, changing his direction and moving down the slope. The firing began again, this time with the sound of a revolver somewhere between fifty and a hundred feet away from him. Cable kept going and the .44 sound hammered after him, five times, until he dropped into a shallow gully.
Cable rolled to his stomach, holstered one of the Colts, and at once began crawling up the narrow wash, up toward the open slope. He moved quickly, using his knees and forearms, until he was almost to the edge of the trees, roughly thirty feet above the spot where he had entered the gully. He stopped then to listen.
There was no sound. Beyond the brush and rock shadows close in front of him, the slope glared with sunlight. He turned, looking back the way he had come, then removed his hat and rolled on his side, resting the Colt on his thigh so that it pointed down the length of the gully.
Minutes passed in dead silence. Then there was a sound; but not close or in the pines. It was the sound of horse’s hoofs, distant, still far out on the meadow.
More of them, Cable thought.
He would have to take Vern quickly, before they came. He would have to keep it even if he expected to come through this.
And if you knew where Vern was maybe you could.
But he didn’t. Vern could be close. Vern could even know he was lying here, and if he ran for the slope, Vern could very possibly drop him. Or even if he moved or stood up.
And if times if equals if, and there’s no getting out of this. No running. Only waiting and letting it happen. Even Forrest waited sometimes. He waited for them to make mistakes. But he would be waiting this time-God, yes, he would be waiting-whether they made mistakes or not.
