Moontrap - Don Berry Page 25

  Meek shrugged. "Put a hole in his gut the size of a punkin' an' took off."

  Meek turned and started toward the door.

  "Wait a minute," Monday said. "How come you're so damn sure it was Webb? There's other people hated that bastard."

  Meek turned at the doorway and looked silently at Monday for a moment. "You find me another man in a thousand miles o' here that'd take the scalp."

  Monday looked down at the table again. "Get y'r gear an' come on."

  3

  Thurston was waiting for them in the dusk when the two horses pulled up before Meek's house. The small man's smooth face was hard and expressionless as he watched Meek and Monday dismount.

  He stared coldly at Monday as he approached. Without taking his eyes away from the big man, Thurston said to Meek, "Why isn't this man handcuffed?"

  "Handcuffed?" Monday said, looking up. "What the hell for?"

  "Forgot t' tell y', Jaybird," Meek said disgustedly. "Y're under arrest. Court issued a warrant for y' this morning." He pushed past Thurston without looking at him and went in the house. Monday heard Virginia's quiet voice say "I did not let him in." He could not make out Meek's answer. Thurston stared at him for another long moment before he spoke.

  "You had better come inside, Monday" He turned abruptly and followed Meek into the house.

  Monday stood dazedly for a moment. He glanced at his horse, decided against it, and slowly followed the other two men. Inside, Virginia was just closing the door to the back room. A sudden image flashed across his mind at the sight of the door; a dark head almost lost in the whiteness of the sheets, the distant lassitude in her eyes, the softness of her hand on the blanket .... He closed his eyes for a moment, shocked physically by the suddenness of memory and pain. His fist clenched spasmodically.

  When he opened his eyes Meek was coming back from the cupboard with a bottle and two tin cups. He clanked the cups down on the table and poured them half full, pushing one toward Monday.

  Meek sat down heavily on the bench. He sighed once and lifted the cup, making no motion toward Thurston and saying nothing.

  "And now illegal liquor," Thurston said contemptuously.

  "Looks that way," Meek acknowledged dryly.

  "Really, Marshal——" Thurston began.

  "This is my house," Meek said flatly.

  "What the hell am I under arrest for?" Monday said finally.

  "That should be obvious," Thurston said. "As an accessory to the murder of the Reverend Andrews."

  "Can they do that?" Monday said to Meek.

  "Done it, " Meek said.

  "The arrangements for the interment have been made," Thurston said.

  "Glad t' hear it."

  "And the posse has been organized. The men will gather here at six o'clock tomorrow morning. You will swear them in, Meek."

  For the first time Meek looked up at Thurston. With his eyes fixed on him, Meek took another deliberate sip from the cup. He smacked his lips and Thurston turned away with an expression of faint revulsion. Meek looked back at the fire.

  "You're quite the organizer," he said.

  "Someone has to do it," Thurston said sharply.

  "Seems like posse-organizin' is the marshal's job," Meek said.

  The room was cold and barren with hostility. Thurston finally snorted.

  "You take too much on yourself, Governor, " Meek said.

  "Don't call me Governor," Thurston snapped.

  "Slip o' the tongue," Meek said. "I forgot you ain't made it yet."

  Thurston leaned forward, one hand braced against the table. "Meek, I'm not here to trade insults."

  Monday finally looked up from the cup into which he had been staring during the exchange between the other two men. "Just what the hell are you here for?" he said quietly.

  "To find out once and for all where you two stand."

  Meek laughed shortly.

  "Amuse yourself," Thurston said. "The posse will be here in the morning."

  "Never needed a posse in my life," Meek said. "If I go after Webb I c'n do it alone."

  Thurston laughed and took his hand away from the table. "Meek, you are utterly mad, do you understand that? Do you think you could be permitted to go after that killer alone? A personal friend?"

  Meek reached back and got the bottle again, refilled his cup. "Meek's got friends," he said, watching the stream of liquid. "Marshal's got no friends."

  Thurston shrugged. "A pretty theory."

  "Thurston," Meek said slowly, "I hate your guts."

  Thurston pursed his lips. "Pity," he said. He finally turned to Monday. "And you, my friend, are going with the posse."

  Monday looked up at him incredulously. "Oh, no," he said. "I'm under arrest, remember?"

  Thurston was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, "Within ten days someone is going to hang for this murder. I don't care who it is. Do you understand me? This is your last chance in Oregon, Monday. And yours, Meek," he added. "That posse will set off in the morning and the two of you will be with it. It takes a beast to track a beast."

  He turned suddenly from the table and walked out.

  After the door had slammed behind him, neither of the others said anything for a long while. Finally Meek let his breath out explosively and slammed his cup down on the table. "Well," he said, "at least all the cards're face up now."

  "Wagh! they are. Like the old woman said t' the cow with one foot in the milk pail, 'Get in 'r get out.' "

  "Y'know what my problem is, Jaybird? I'm a honest man."

  "Last chance in Oregon," Monday murmured contemptuously.

  "Oh, I expect if it come t' that he c'd run us out slick enough. Run me out, anyways, an' hang you."

  "Hell, he can't hang me. Not for somethin' Webb done."

  Meek shook his head. "Jaybird, far's he's concerned we're all of us just as guilty as the old coon. An' this town is just about hot enough he could arrange it."

  Monday looked down at his cup again.

  "Well, I don't expect the hoss'll get caught less'n he wants to," Meek said.

  Monday looked up suddenly. "Maybe he wants it," he said slowly.

  Meek shrugged. "That's his own doin's, then."

  "I don't know what t' do," Monday said helplessly. His shoulders ached and his head had begun to blur again from the liquor.

  "If'n I was you," Meek said, "I b'lieve I'd take out when the marshal went t' sleep."

  "Hard on the marshal."

  Meek jerked his head impatiently. "That'n I c'n get by. Me, I'd head f'r the hills, like Rainy."

  "He lit out?"

  "He knew about it, I expect. Said he thought he'd wander off an' see his Conspiration a while."

  Monday rested his forehead on his hand. "Well, that's just it, Meek. That's just exactly it. Rainy's got his Conspiration. Me, I got nothin'."

  "Best think on it anyways."

  "I thought about it. I thought about takin' out. But I got no place t' go." He looked up again helplessly, spreading his hands. "I just got no damn place in the world t' go."

  ***

  He sat up late and, as the whisky ran out, began to sober. He lost the sense of confusion that had blanketed him, and his mind seemed to whet itself on the rough stone of fatigue and purgation. He felt empty still, but his mind cleared, and out of exhaustion he began to see things clearly, as they were, without the masking aureole of emotion.

  More than the murder was involved. more than Webb, more than some abstract principle that might be called either justice or vengeance. justice, he thought, was not in the game or someone would have to pay for the death of Mary. The only question was—who? Andrews had paid for it, in equal coin, but it was a gesture of vengeance that had not touched the guilty. Thurston? Oregon City? Or himself. A way of life; could you convict a way of life for murder? Perhaps that, eventually, was the question that lay silently at the root.

  He also became convinced that Meek was wrong. Thurston could not arrange the hanging of a man who had done no
thing. Law was still administered by men like judge Pratt, and the temper of the people would not move that one. But it was also clear that the murder had been a windfall for Thurston, giving him a tangible focus for the hatred, a lever to work against the indolence of the sheep.

  One thing was strange; in thinking of Thurston he was never able to isolate the image of the dapper, hard little man. In Monday's mind there was always a shadowy crowd behind him, a constant faint murmur of assent.

  In the lassitude of his drained emotions, Monday did not hate Thurston. He could never remember hating anyone, it was a feeling that seemed to be beyond his range. Thurston acted out of pressure, the pressure of the eternal shadowy crowd behind him. Like a rock dislodged by an avalanche he was, at root, incapable of controlling his own direction. Perhaps the rock, too, had illusions of leading the thunderous slide, but in the end all power came from the mass behind, and in time that mass would overtake and swallow the insignificant individual, and another take his place. In the end there were not leaders and followers, but only the relentless and inevitable rush of the mass, carrying everything before it.

  He half laughed at his own image in the darkness of the cabin. It was just as well not to be in the way. But what did you do when you looked up and found you were in the way? Saw the wave of stone descending.

  While Thurston could not hang him, there was no question that, with the power of the avalanche behind him, the little man could run Monday out of the Oregon Country. Could run them all, and the more he thought of that the more he thought it was what Thurston had in mind. With the murder of Andrews as his lever, Thurston could make life in the settlement intolerable for all the mountain men. All the ex-mountain men, Monday thought. We're nothin' now, neither one thing nor the other.

  And in the end he came back to the same realization; there was no place to go. They were the pariahs, the ones that didn't fit. They smelled of wolf, and in any settlement it would be the same. Suspicion, hatred, sidelong glances in the streets. Like the Indians. Andrews had said it, something like. It wasn't the Indian's hatchet that was dangerous, but the simple fact that he existed.

  Monday sighed, feeling the ache in his shoulders and the small of his back intensely. He got up from the table and grabbed the blanket Meek had left out for him. He took off his moccasins and stacked them for a pillow. Lifting his legs stiffly, he tucked the edges of the blanket under, one after the other, and let his head rest on the soft leather, looking up at the ceiling. He felt numb and without will.

  He closed his eyes and played an old game with himself. He imagined that his feet faced the other direction and the fire was to his right, instead of the left. He tried to sense the presence of the table on the left side, he visualized the door as being at his head. After a moment he felt it that way, and opened his eyes suddenly. There was a shock, as the physical reality abruptly contradicted the image he had firmly in his mind.

  There was an odd contrast between Thurston's usual cajoling reasonableness and the blunt hostility of the evening. And Monday wondered if it might not have been deliberate, an attempt to make them angry. If he and Meek did refuse the hunt for Webb, so much the better for Thurston. It would show the shadowy crowd they approved of murder, and were thus guilty themselves. And that would be the end. Another year for them, perhaps, but finally the rolling avalanche would swallow them up, as in time it would swallow Thurston himself, crushing them all beneath the mindless, thundering weight.

  He rolled to one shoulder, moving his legs to untwist the blanket. He watched the dying fire for a while, then closed his eyes again and shifted his head into the hollow of the moccasin pillow.

  A man was nothing but crazy to run uphill against a rock slide. But there was a chance to survive if he went along with it. The only chance he had. Go along or go under.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1

  The old man rode steadily through the night, twisting up through the hills that ranged along the west bank of the Willamette. As the sky behind him lightened with the coming dawn he was emerging on the broad flat called Twality Plains. It would be nearly a full day's ride across, and he was tired. At dawn he stopped for a few minutes to stretch himself and sit with his back against a tree while the horse grazed. They had a long way go.

  "Wagh!" he muttered. "This nigger's gettin' too old f'r this kind o' doin's."

  There had been a time, and it did not seem long ago, when forced marches through the night were nothing to him. A bad cast of the dice and he might sit the saddle for forty-eight hours or more, running from the Bloods, chasing the Crows. It didn't matter in the long run, a few hours' sleep after, and he was fit again. It was all different now, but he had not really learned to pace himself. He still demanded as much as ever of the bony old cadaver in which he lived, and was always surprised when it gave signs of objecting.

  "Hya!" he called. Obediently the horse came over and waited while the old man mounted.

  "Move," he said, nudging with his heels.

  The sun was warm on his back as the morning grew, and he let it soak into him gratefully. The horse plodded steadily along and the old man half drowsed in the saddle. From under the brim of the loose felt hat he watched the country go by, green-black of the ever-present firs, the greenish gold of ripening wheat in the fields he passed. There was a lot of settling on these plains, he thought.

  Several times he passed within shouting distance of cabins, but he did not stop. Ahead of him there was only an endless gentle rolling of the land, soft hills all crested with a fur of evergreens. The silence was good. The sun warmed him and warmed the land, a golden flood that rolled gently with the hills, filling the earth and sky with light.

  "Pretty country, right enough," he said admiringly, looking around. A little soft, a little bit too rich, but pretty for all of that. No country for him, but he could see how a man might learn to love it.

  Toward midday he stopped again. He gently guided his animal into a clump of fir, far enough in that he could not be seen from the trail. He did not expect anyone, but the middle of the day made him a little nervous. He figured he would have a good twenty-four hours before they took after him in earnest. He picketed the horse and stretched himself beneath the heavy web of branches to sleep for an hour or so. Above him there was a light breeze. threading softly through the limbs, disturbing them just enough to make a steady rustling that was strangely comforting. The sun came through in tiny spots, but the canopy of fir was too dense to let much in. He slept in the shelter of a green grotto, with the ground beneath him soft from the packed and matted needles.

  He wakened quickly when it was time. He looked around him at the mass of brush, and he might have been anywhere. The world ended in undergrowth a few feet from where he lay. He sat up, blinking. He was still tired, but the nap would carry him through to the end of the day all right. He intended to have a full night's sleep tonight, and tomorrow morning it would all be new.

  He leaned back against the tree under which he had slept, wriggling, scratching his back comfortably, grateful for the simple physical sensation. He sighed and sat still for a moment, his bony wrists hanging over his knees, his head bent, letting himself wake up fully.

  He untied the fresh scalp that hung from his belt and put it beside him on the ground. He pressed and smoothed it with his hands, trying to flatten it out, but it had begun to stiffen as it dried, and remained half folded. He looked down at it, the dark brown hair that seemed both unnaturally short and the wrong color. It wasn't like a scalp a man might be proud of, he thought. The long, sleek black hair, the hair of a fighting man who kept it long just to challenge you to take it. It wasn't really a scalp at all, just the hair of a dunghead white man. It didn't mean anything; wasn't worth a dance. And in any event, there was nobody left to dance for his victory.

  "Wagh!"

  Absently he fingered the two long locks that hung beneath his hat, braiding one of them and shaking it out. Twenty-four hours, maybe more. They wouldn't find the body until mor
ning. And then they'd do a vast lot of running around before they finally buckled down to do anything about it. He chuckled a little, thinking of the confusion. When he wanted to go, he got up and went. Didn't have to tell nobody, make a pack of damn fool arrangements.

  Just go, when he got it into his head to go. That was the way he liked it. He mounted again and started off. He left the scalp of Andrews lying on the ground to rot as the year turned round. It had disappointed him, and he didn't have to do with things that disappointed him.

  ***

  The sun was ahead of him now, as he rode into the afternoon. The brilliance and heat made the earth itself seem luminous and, despite the shade of his hat, he had to squint to see. Light rose up from the ground in waves that shifted before him, distorting the solid reality of the hills and forests into shivering planes of distance.

  By the middle of the afternoon he was within sight of the first peaks of the Coast Range rising abruptly from the gently rolling country of the plains. In the waves of heat that stood between him and the mountains was an impression of flowing water, as though he looked at the distant peaks through some soft and golden sea.

  In his mind he checked off another point with the sensation of satisfaction. Now he had seen it, the Coast Range. As he had seen the Bighorns and the Medicine Bow and the Wind Rivers and the Tetons and the Blues and the Cascades. As he had seen a hundred ranges that had no name, but were clear and sharp in his mind.

  As mountains went, the peaks of the Coast Range did not amount to much. Not really mountains at all, just bigger hills, he thought. Still, he had set his mind to see them, and he had seen them.

  Sometimes at night, just before he went to sleep, he liked to go over in his mind the mountains he had seen, numbering them off, bringing them again before his eyes with the perfect accuracy of his imagination, caressing the granite cliffs that dropped a thousand feet, glissading over the long basalt slopes, counting the folded layers of red and gold and a thousand colors without name as he had seen in the canyon of the Green River. He counted his mountain ranges as a miser counts his money, each piece carefully examined and dropped