Relentless

The man sat up slowly and sneered. “Not fucking likely.”

“Baraclough then.”

“You know everything. You tell me.”

“Come on. Up.” He gave Baraclough a hand.

9

He collected Burt and prodded the two of them down the hill and let his call sing out so that Stevens wouldn’t take a shot at them.

Stevens answered in a weak voice hoarsened by pain and Watchman hurried in alarm.

He found Stevens seeping blood into the snow from a hole in his hip. Stevens tried to grin but agony pulled his mouth awry. “Jesus. You took two of them alive.”

“Roll over and pull your pants down.”

“Now you’re a God damn sex fiend.”

The horse stood ground-hitched in the trees and Watchman went to the saddlebags to get the first-aid kit. When he taped thick gauze bandages on the two holes in Stevens’ hip he said, “Feel like any bones are broken?”

“I can’t feel much of anything down there.”

“That’s shock. It’ll start to hurt after a while.”

“Thanks heaps, kemo sabe.”

Watchman was keeping one eye on the two prisoners. Baraclough sat droop-lidded, ready to pass out, but Burt’s eyes were bright with venom.

Stevens said, “Sam, you take some pretty dumb chances. I suppose you learned that trick of riding the off-side of the horse from your old grandpappy Crazy Horse.”

“Matter of fact I saw John Wayne do it in a movie once.”

“One of those movies where the cavalry wipes out all the Inyuns, I’ll bet.” Stevens pulled his pants up and suppressed a groan. “I take it these two beauties are Baraclough and the Sergeant. Where’s Hargit?”

“Gone.”

“With the money?”

“I heard more than one horse moving.”

“That makes him pretty rich all by himself.”

Eddie Burt tried to say something through his gag.

Stevens zipped up his fly. “Those bastards shoot pretty damn good at night.”

Watchman took the first-aid kit over to Baraclough. Little pulsating jets of blood spurted out of his shoulder; when Watchman cut the coat away the broken bone ends showed white. Baraclough, half-conscious, stared down at the wound with bleak bitterness. Watchman said, “It’s vein blood, not artery.”

“Now that’s sensational.” Baraclough’s eyes lifted to his face. “You’re a God damned Indian, aren’t you. If the Major’d known that …”

“If the Major’d known that, what?”

“Nobody ever took us apart before. But he’ll be back for us. He knows how good you are now and he’ll take you next time. He’s a better Indian than you are.” Baraclough smiled with his teeth.

It reminded Watchman of something Keith Walker had said. A better Indian than you are.

“He’ll be back,” Baraclough said again.

“Don’t count on it.” Watchman dressed the wound as well as he could. While he was pasting the bandage over the sulfa powder Baraclough passed out.

He got Buck Stevens’ handcuffs and trussed Baraclough’s good hand to Eddie Burt’s wrist. When he walked back to Stevens he said, “You’re going to have to stay awake awhile, white man.”

“Going somewhere?”

“Vickers.”

“Oh yeah. Where’d he go?”

“I told him to stay put till we came after him.”

“Okay. I’ll watch them. They don’t look too dangerous right now. How the hell did you do it, Sam?”

“Nothing to it. Genius. A teaspoon after meals and at bedtime.”

“Conceited bastard.”

“Buck.”

“What?”

“Keep your eyes open and use your ears hard. Hargit may come back.”

Stevens’ face changed quickly. “Yeah. Hand me my rifle.”

10

Not knowing where Hargit was made it difficult: he didn’t want to sing out for Vickers and give himself away in the bargain. But if Vickers caught him creeping up Vickers would just as likely shoot him before making sure of his identity.

The thing to do was to make Vickers show himself first. He went up along the aspens on foot and kept close to the tree trunks, resenting the time this was taking; he didn’t like leaving Stevens back there alone with Hargit loose in the woods.

If Vickers had done as he’d been told he would be somewhere around here. Watchman stopped and groped in the ground-snow for a rock. When he found one big enough he gave it a heave. It made a bit of a racket crashing through the twigs and when it landed in the stream it crashed through a film of ice.

If Vickers was here it would draw his attention. But there was no sign of movement.

Twenty paces further he repeated the performance with another rock but it didn’t pull Vickers out of hiding. Watchman took a chance: he whispered Vickers’ name, loudly enough to carry a good distance.

No answer. He scowled at the creek. The grenade had made a mess of Hanratty’s body. Moonlight made a silver shine on the snow-blanketed shale slide. It was very cold now; ice was forming quickly on the surface of the creek. Probably going down below zero. He wasn’t sure of the altitude here but it was at least seven thousand feet. The top layer of ground snow was freezing hard; his feet cracked through it when he moved.

He tried to put himself in Vickers’ boots but it was hard to do, hard to figure how the man would think. Time was going by too fast and it would take too long to find Vickers’ tracks and follow them. He didn’t want to leave Buck alone that long. He stopped to concentrate his thinking.

Vickers wasn’t here; so he’d gone somewhere. Where would he go? Then Watchman had it. He turned around and went back downstream through the aspens, angling to the right away from the stream, toward the little hill where they’d left Vickers’ horse. That was where Vickers would go because that was where the walkie-talkie was.

11

The tracks showed that Vickers had stood around for a while, probably trying to get through to somebody on the walkie-talkie, and then had led the horse up toward the top of the hill, maybe hoping to get out of the dead spot and pick up a signal.

He found Vickers at the top with his ear against the walkie-talkie. Vickers had his rifle and looked quite alert; Watchman put himself against a tree and spoke his name.

Vickers came wheeling around with the rifle and Watchman said, “Take it easy. I’m coming in.”

“All right. What’s happened?”

“We took two of them. Hargit’s gone with the money.”

“Two of them, hey? Not bad, Trooper.”

“You raise anybody?”

“I just heard Cu

“You’re learning. Come on.”

Vickers was pleased to see the two prisoners. Watchman had a look at Buck Stevens and when Stevens gri

“Then you want us to go after him.”

“Not us. Buck can’t stay awake all night on guard with a hole in him. You’ll have to do that—and keep alert because Hargit may come back. I doubt it, but it could happen.”

“One against one? So far he’s slipped you every time.”

There was no point answering that. Vickers turned to stare past him at the prisoners. Baraclough had come to; he was looking on with a kind of self-disgusted bemusement Burt’s eyes glittered with steady anger. Without Hargit and the money the two of them weren’t much of a consolation prize: that was probably what Vickers was thinking when he turned back to Watchman. “We’ve played it your way so far and you’ve done a good job. All right, try it. In the meantime I think I can get through on the walkie-talkie. I’ll get helicopters up here first thing in the morning to pick up your partner and these two and the corpse up the stream there, and we’ll try to get another chopper up to the top to collect Mrs. Lansford and Walker. I’ll try to cordon the foothills north of here as well as I can, so that if Hargit gets down that far he may be driven back into your arms.”