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Creed's Law
By Kerry Newcomb St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1988 James Reno
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7868-2
CHAPTER 1
The bullet whipped past Billy's ear and fanned his cheek. A cat couldn't have reacted any faster. His right foot slid out of the stirrup before Rosie could shy. His right had jerked the Winchester '73 from its saddle holster. Billy dropped the reins and launched himself to the left in a fluid movement that pushed his horse to the right and sent the animal galloping down the trail.
A half-second later, a second slug tore through the empty space six inches above the saddle. A third bullet richocheted off a moss-covered boulder. The shrill scream of the deformed slug stopped abruptly when it slammed into a tree. There was no fourth because there was no target. Only the empty, soggy landscape somewhere on the northern slope of Hurricane Ridge.
The world was green and brown, moss and mud. Billy shook his head, spit out a mouthful of dirt, and wiped his sleeve across his nose and mouth. The firing had stopped. An uneasy stillness lay over the sun-drenched land. Steam rose from the earth, making judging distances all the more uncertain. Billy's senses gradually returned to normal. His heartbeat and breathing slowed. He became aware of a sharp pain in his side where, he guessed, he'd landed on his rifle butt. The only sound was the drip-drip-drip of water trickling off the overhanging boulder that shielded him from his attacker. The droplets landed in the rapidly filling shallow hole he'd dug with his face. It was one hell of a way to dismount.
"If there's no time to think, act," Big John Anthem had preached. "There's a time to consider the possibles and a time to haul leather and let the devil take the hindmost."
The lesson had been drilled in since he was a child, and Billy had taken heed. He'd seen his father act with all the temper and patience of a hunter. And remembered, too, the moments when Big John rode wild-eyed, guns blazing into the situation. Now, his mind racing, Billy assessed the situation. A dozen or so yards down the gently sloping valley they'd been descending, Rosie grazed contentedly on a patch of grass.
Unlike the hills around Luminaria or the mountains of Mexico, where the echoes from a gunshot often disguised its source, the green forests of Washington Territory soaked up echoes. From the undistorted sound, the shots had come from his left-rear quarter, from somewhere on the steep slope that bound the narrow valley. The slope, more like a cliff, was high enough that the shots couldn't have come from its top; the angle was wrong. So the would-be assailant had to be below the rim. All Billy had to do was work his way to the top of the ridge and take the offensive.
Strange, the way a man's mind works in the brief lull, the one or two seconds in which he collects himself before taking action. As if he'd had an hour to study them, Billy noted the clear blue sky and the bright sun, the first he'd seen in a month. On either side, the astonishingly varied greens of the forest dazzled him. To his right, an ancient cedar felled by lightning or a slide lay rotting and covered with a bright, bottle-green moss punctuated by equally bright yellow-and-black fungus that looked like tiny hooded caps. And right in front of his nose, he saw what looked like the face of a bear outlined in the moss that grew on the boulder. But then, he'd always been the reflective son, the watcher. Brother Cole and Rachel, too, were always on the prod, ready to erupt in a dozen different directions.
Now it's my time to cut loose, Billy thought, and he sighed inwardly. He hated to leave the shadow of the boulder that had saved his life — but he crouched, gave himself a mental kick in the seat of the pants, and dived for the uncertain safety of the fallen cedar.
A shot snapped over his head, another thudded into the cedar. Billy cradled the Winchester in the crooks of his arms and dragged himself by his elbows to the end of the trunk.
"You ain't gonna make it, you back shooting bastard!"
The voice rang out loud and clear, deep and strong, like a weathered bell. Billy froze momentarily and searched for the direction.
"But come on and try. I'll take you any day. Back-shot or not, I'm still more'n a match for you and your kind." The voice drifted downslope, runted by the moisture in the air.
Back-shot?
"What the hell have I ridden into?" Billy muttered. He had entered the little valley no more than five minutes earlier, and the way the mountains and trees and soggy ground soaked up sound, a pair of armies could have waged a battle a mile away and he'd have been none the wiser. He must have missed the opening round in this confrontation.
Someone had back-shot someone else. The wounded man had lived and was now convinced he'd drawn a bead on his assailant. Now Billy would have to find this wounded rifleman and read him from the book.
A good ten yards of open space faced him. The rifle above sounded like another Winchester. So his attacker probably had plenty of lead to spare. Might as well make him use some. Billy jumped out as if to run, then dived back. Sure enough another shot, and a telltale puff of smoke. Immediately, Billy snapped off a round and was up and running, far ahead of the single shot that followed.
"Gotcha!" He grinned, landing on his feet in a narrow gully worn into the face of the steep slope by years of torrential winter rains. "And now, my friend, let's see just who you are."
The climb was steep, but easy for one who'd grown up in the dry Southwest, where every twig cracked and every pebble rolled and rattled and gave a man away.
From rock to root, now crawling and now running crouched over in order not to expose himself, Billy scrambled to the top of what he'd thought was a ridge but was in reality a wide terrace cut in the face of the mountain. And along that lay a logging road.
A road meant people, so Billy took his time. Flat on his belly, his head barely sticking above the flat ground, he inspected the open area and found nothing more menacing than a huge gray jack mule standing about fifty yards to his left. At last, keeping an eye peeled, he ventured out and, at a crouched run, headed for the mule.
The animal gave him a baleful glance and went about its business of demolishing a clump of grass. Sure enough, a few yards farther on, Billy found a groove in the mud and a broken sapling where a man had gone over the edge.
Going down wasn't as easy as going up had been. The ground was slippery, the angle more like a cliff than a slope. Billy moved silently from tree to tree, digging in his heels to avoid dislodging any rocks or starting even the semblance of a slide. He worked his way downhill, and at last spotted a pair of boots. Slowing, then, he took his time picking the quietest path to a huge boulder, and then, after checking his back-trail one last time, he stepped out with rifle at the ready.
The man was lying on his stomach twenty feet away on a ledge no bigger than a bunkhouse table. His left shoulder, evident even under the heavy wool fabric of his coat, was humped awkwardly and his left arm lay straight along his body. His right arm held a rifle propped on a broken branch and still aiming downhill. His right leg was bent at a grotesque angle. He was bareheaded, his hat lying some yards upslope, and his shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair was matted with mud and pine needles. His black wool clothes were soaked and stained with mud.
Billy studied the man and after a moment's scrutiny realized that what he'd taken for a tear in the coat was a bullet hole, and that the color around it was the dull, ugly red of blood mixed with mud.
Billy shouldered his rifle and sighted on the rifleman below. He thumbed back the hammer on his rifle. The audible click, though muted, was as effective as a shout. The rifleman in front of Billy jerked as if shot, and tensed, waiting for the shock of a slug tearing into his back.
"If you're thinking that I could possibly miss," Billy said laconically, "think again, friend."
"What do I have to lose?" the man asked, his voice hoarse and bitter. "You back-shot me once and I don't doubt you'd slither like a snake to do it again. Least I can do is take you with me, you son of a bitch, so make —"
The older man might have been fast, at another time, but not under those conditions. His head rose and he tried to roll onto his back, but a dull popping sound in his shoulder brought him up short before he could move more than a few inches. Without a shot fired, he groaned once as his rifle dropped out of his hand. He collapsed in a dead faint.
Billy sighed, shook his head in wonder at the courage, and foolhardiness, of the man. "Well, you got my vote, mister," he softly said, and eased down to the fallen man. Wary of a trick, Billy drew his Colt .45, cocked it, then set aside his Winchester and kicked his assailant's rifle out of reach.
"You playin' possum, friend?" he asked, nudging the man's ribs near the bloodstained bullet hole with his toe.
Not a wiggle, not a move. He was out like a candle in a sandstorm. Reassured, Billy eased the hammer off cock, holstered his pistol, and set to work. Whoever the man was, he'd come prepared. Billy removed a revolver like his own from the man's holster. One boot held an over-and-under .25 derringer, the other a sheathed double-bladed throwing knife.
"Okay, pardner," he said at last, taking the unconscious man by the shoulder and belt. "Over we go, and let's see what a feller with so much salt looks like."
He was forty, maybe fifty. His mud-streaked face tended to roundness, but the strength and determination and grit written in its lines dispelled any notion of softness, even in his unconscious state. He wore a thick mustache that sloped down almost to his chin and was, unlike his hair, almost totally gray. His shoulders and chest were burly and broad in the extreme, and sloped to slim hips and spindly legs, as if he'd been cast together from two different molds.
Billy stepped back from the man and softly whistled. "What the hell," he growled, more perplexed than ever before.
The man's coat had fallen open to reveal a gray flannel shirt and, pinned to the pocket, a five-pointed star, mud-streaked but gleaming in the sun. Anthem read the engraving aloud.
"Town Marshal, Calamity Bay." Billy Anthem's would-be killer was a man of the law.
CHAPTER 2
Human target one minute, a makeshift doctor the next, Billy knelt and inspected the unconscious form of the lawman. He then manhandled his coat off and opened his shirt. As he'd thought, the bullet wound wasn't bad. The slug had struck a rib, flattened, and cut a six-inch-long, jagged tear as it exited. The rib was no doubt broken and painful as sin, but the wound would heal with little more than an ugly scar to show for it.
The marshal's leg forgotten for the moment, Billy concentrated on the grotesquely distorted right shoulder. He had seen but one dislocated shoulder in his life, and that when he was fifteen.
The mottled gray-and-black Indian pony had looked docile enough when they'd taken him on a trade from a band of wandering, down-on-their-luck Comanche, but that sleepy look had disappeared the instant Pete Lucas, one of the Luminaria hands, had climbed on him. After one second in the saddle and a few in the air, Pete had landed on his elbow. Everyone around the corral heard the pop as his shoulder went out. And the sight was one that Billy hadn't forgotten. Neither had he forgotten the way Chapo Almendáriz, the Luminaria segundo, had fixed Pete's shoulder.
Billy had to work fast, before the lawman regained consciousness and tensed his muscles, which would make the job well nigh impossible. Quickly, Billy sat at his patient's side, grabbed the man's wrist, and stuck a booted foot in his armpit. Sweating, hoping he was doing it right and not causing more damage, Anthem levered the upper arm out and away from the shoulder, pulled straight down, then let the muscles and tendons pull the ball in toward the body. To his relief, he was rewarded by the faint snick of the ball slipping into the socket.
"I'll be damned." Billy chuckled, pleased with himself. "Might just as well set the leg while he's still out."
Legs were easy for anyone who'd grown up on a working ranch, where breaks were common. With a practiced hand, Billy pulled off the man's boot and slit his trouser leg up to the knee. The break wasn't bad: no bone showed through the skin and the leg was only slightly bent. Wood was plentiful, and it was but a matter of a couple of minutes to fashion four splints. Using his knife, he cut strips from the man's shirt and already torn trousers, pulled the leg straight, and lashed the splints to it.
And then, what? As Billy squatted at the lawman's side and considered his next move, the man stirred. Quickly, before he could hurt his shoulder, Billy held his patient's upper arm and wrist. "You awake?" Anthem asked.
The man's eyes fluttered and he concentrated on focusing on Billy. "I guess," he groaned, "I hurt too damn much to be dead. Who the hell are you?"
"The man you tried to kill. What kind of law you got around here? I thought a man was supposed to be wanted for something before he was eligible for shooting."
"Don't look to me like you're dead," the marshal dryly observed.
"No thanks to you. You got a name, Marshall?"
"Rhodes. Go by Hank. You?"
"Billy Anthem. Looks like I rode all the way from Texas just to be at your service, fool that I am."
Rhodes chuckled, winced, and turned white with the pain in his side. "I do appreciate it, Billy Anthem from Texas," he said weakly. "As long as you ain't the one who back-shot me in the first place."
"You'd be dead if I was, and that's a fact. I sure as hell wouldn't have taken the trouble to doctor you."
"Can't argue with you there. Just one question, though." He glanced down to where Billy was holding his arm and wrist. "You sweet on me or something?"
Billy reddened, almost let go, but didn't. "Just making sure you didn't wave it around when you came to," he explained. "I popped that shoulder back in, and the last thing you need is to move it before it has a chance to heal."
Rhodes groaned in disgust, lay his head down, and closed his eyes to gather himself against the pain.
"You all right?" Billy asked, letting go the arm.
"Shit, no, I ain't all right. It don't rain without pouring."
"So I've noticed," Billy said with a chuckle. "In more ways than one. At least you picked a good day for bad luck."
Rhodes looked up at the young man whom he'd mistaken for his assassin, and liked what he saw. In his middle twenties, perhaps, Anthem was lean and hard-looking as a plank. His dark blond hair was shaggy and his clothes looked lived-in, as if he'd been on the trail for some time. His eyes were brown and open, without rancor, the eyes of a peaceable man, and yet, somehow, not a man who would be dominated or ridden over. An inch of light-brown beard, darker than the rest of his hair, covered the lower half of his face, but couldn't disguise the sharp, square lines of his jaw. "Or a bad day for good luck," the lawman said. "You easy could have rode off, and the hell with me. There's those who would've."
"Well, I'll tell you straight," Billy said with a grin. "I figure that any man who can hold on to a rifle as you did after being back-shot and tumbling down two hundred feet of cliff and in the process dislocating a shoulder and breaking a leg is probably worth taking a minute or two on. The only problem is, what the hell we gonna do with you now?"
It was a good question. Up or down, they'd have to find a way to move to a spot where they could start a fire and boil some water to clean Rhodes' wound and cook some food to put in their bellies. Either way, Billy thought dolefully as he looked first up and then over the edge of the small terrace and down the almost impossible slope, was going to be a chore.
"Rope me down, I'd guess," Hank said, struggling to sit up. "If we can figure out just where the hell to tie on to me."
Billy considered the possibilities. "That your mule up there?"
"You mean it hung around?" Rhodes asked, surprised. "I'll be damned. Would have figured it'd be halfway home by now."
"If you got a rope on it, we could haul you up, maybe."
"Oh, I got a rope, all right."
"Well, then —"
"But it ain't no two hundred foot long."
In the end, it took them almost three hours. Billy climbed up, caught, and hobbled Absalom, the mule, then slithered back down with Rhodes' saddlebag, bedroll, and rope. He dulled both edges of the lawman's hideaway knife in the process of cutting Rhodes' blanket into strips that they used to bandage his wound and immobilize his shoulder.
Getting the marshal down would have been funny if the trip hadn't been so painful. The line in his left hand, with Billy Anthem half-holding and half-carrying him, Rhodes worked his way twenty feet at a time from tree to tree, down over three hundred feet of wet rocks, sharp ledges, slippery pine needles, fallen trees, and every other obstacle a determined forest and mountain could throw in his path. By the time they reached the valley, Rhodes was white and trembling with pain and shock, and both men were soaked to the skin, covered with mud, and dead-tired.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Creed's Law by Kerry Newcomb. Copyright © 1988 James Reno. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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