McAllister by Matt Chisholm Read Free Book Online Page A

higher. He dragged that game leg of his another dozen yards and raised himself up on his arms to take a peek below.
    The booming crash of the rifle came this time at the same instant as the lead.
    Mcallister reared up on both feet, the injured leg buckled under him and he went down the grade in an untidy tumbling roll. The Henry rifle was thrown to one side and fell with a clatter.
    A man’s voice roared out—
    â€œI got him. Got him with one. Come on up, you fellers, he’s daid as last week’s mutton.”
    The marksman appeared on the rocks about thirty feet above McAllister’s still form. A young man leaping with sinewy agility from boulder to boulder, carrying a small Spencer carbine. And laughing. Proud of his work.
    From below came an older and wiser voice—
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œSure I’m sure.”
    â€œBe surer than that. Put a bullet through his head before you get up with him. I know that polecat.”
    The man above came in closer, shouting: “I got him plumb center.”
    The man below started to climb. He was thickset and bearded and the exercise was winding him badly. Another man appeared further along the ridge. The heat had got him and he drooped. His white shirt clung to his narrow back and the big .44 Colt’s gun seemed too heavy for his slender hand.
    Mcallister had to act as though he no longer possessed the faculty of sight. His ears were now his guides and they had to be good ones or he was a dead man.
    The man who had last shot at him and who was approaching from above was the nearest and therefore the most dangerous. He carried a rifle and he might or might not have taken warning from the man below. Mcallister might or might not be near to having his brains blown out as he lay there.
    The man below him was next in proximity. Say fifty feetaway. A difficult but not impossible pistol shot. But Mcallister would be hurried and in danger so the chances were he’d miss with the first.
    The third man he would take as he came.
    The odds didn’t look so good. But there wasn’t time to think of that. Only of staying alive.
    The man above him had halted.
    Mcallister heard the sound of the rifle being levered. He had to act now.
    Hand and body moved as though worked by the same puppet string. He rolled onto his face and heaved the Remington from his belt in one move. In spite of the fact that the foresight caught in his belt, he got that gun out fast. Cocked and fired in one movement as he lined the long barrel up with the figure poised for its shot above him.
    He missed, but his shot wasn’t wasted. The rifleman loosed off a shot, but he was badly rattled by McAllister’s sudden move and missed also. The heavy ball drove dust into McAllister’s face as he rapidly cocked and triggered off his second shot. As the .44 slug went home and the man was driven backwards off his feet, he heard a shout and the report of a gun below.
    He was rolling onto his back now and snapping off a shot down slope, trying not to fear the other’s lead and hurry, but missing just the same. A rising shot, also let off hurriedly by the man below, hit a rock below Mcallister and wasped its way into the sky. Mcallister cocked for another shot and the man ran for cover. The shot hit him as he made his final jump and hastened him on his way. He disappeared from sight, but his hitting the rock could be heard away off. He crashed on down the hillside.
    His nerves now strung tight and ready to make him shoot at shadows, Mcallister raised up on his left hand to line his gun up with the young man in the white shirt only to find him going rapidly out of sight. It was a pleasant sound to hear him beating away through the rocks noisily to safety.
    A second later José’s massive old Dragoon gun boomed and was answered frantically by a lighter gun which Mcallister guessed was white shirt’s Colt.
    Mcallister sat up and bawled loudly for the Navajo to come and get