Part 19 (2/2)

The gunner said, ”Drag him out or blow him out. I don't care which.”

Malachai cringed and cried, ”Please, boss!” The fear in his voice was real.

The man with the bat put his hand on the door handle. At the instant he turned it, Malachai uncoiled, hurling himself through the door and on him, pistol clubbed.

The gunner took two quick steps and the Thompson jerked and spoke. The gunner's thick middle was in Randy's sights and he squeezed the trigger, and again, and again before the Thompson's muzzle came down and the gunner folded and began to fall. When he was on his face he still twitched and held the gun and tried to swing it up and Randy shot at him again, carefully, through the head.

He had not even heard the shotguns but when Randy crawled over into the front seat and got out, looking for another target, the battle was over. Close behind the truck two figures lay, their arms and legs twisted in death's awkward signature. The Admiral stood over the man who had held the bat, his shotgun a foot from his head. Malachai was curled up as if in sleep, his head against the left front tire. It had lasted not more than seven seconds.

Malachai choked and groaned and Randy dropped to his knees beside him and straightened him and lifted his head. Malachai choked again and Randy turned Malachai's head so the blood could run out of his mouth and not down his windpipe. He tore open Malachai's s.h.i.+rt. There was a hole large as a dime just under the solar plexus. In this round well, dark blood rose and ebbed rhythmically, a small, ominous tide.

The Admiral said, ”Shall I get rid of this sc.u.m?”

Randy said, ”Just a minute.” He picked up the bat and forced himself to think ahead. First, Malachai. Get Malachai home in a hurry so Dan could do something if there was anything to be done. Dan didn't have his tools, or much eyesight. He might make do with one eye if he had the tools these men had stolen. Randy ran to the Model-A. It was empty. The doctor's bag wasn't there.

He walked back to the truck where Sam Hazzard stood over their captive. One side of the man's face was sc.r.a.ped raw. Malachai's plunge had carried the long-jawed, twisted-mouth face along the bridge planking. ”Where's the doctor's bag?”

The man said nothing. Randy saw his right hand moving. He still had a holstered weapon. Randy tapped him on the nose with the bat. ”Keep your hand still.” The Admiral leaned over, unbuckled the holster, and took the weapon. A .38 police special. ”Talk,” Randy said.

The man said, ”I don't know nuthin'.”

Randy tapped his face with the bat, harder. The man screamed. Randy said, ”Where's the black bag?”

The man said, ”She took it. Rumdum took it.” ”Where is she?”

”I don't know. She goofed off with somebody last night maybe it was this morning-I don't know-goofed off with some b.a.s.t.a.r.d with a bottle.”

Randy called, ”Bill! Where's Bill?”

Bill McGovern was on the other side of the truck. He said, ”I'm here, Randy.”

”Bill, go look in that car and see if you can find Dan's bag. And be sure those two back there are good and dead.”

Malachai choked again. Randy tried to ease him over on his side but he began to bleed more from the stomach wound so he had to let him be.

Sam Hazzard said, ”I don't think this one's doing us any good. He's just holding us up. I think we should convoke a military tribunal right now and pa.s.s sentence. I vote he be executed.”

”So do I,” Randy said, ”but I want him to hang. If he makes any trouble let him have it, Sam, but I'd like to have him alive.” Bill came back with a cardboard carton. ”Nothing in that car, except this. A little food in here. A few cans of sardines and corned beef hash and a box of matches. A couple of boxes of ammunition. That's all. Not a sign of Dan's bag. And the sedan is finished. It was in our line of fire and it looks like a sieve with all that buckshot through it. There's gasoline all over the road.” Randy started the Model-A and looked at the fuel gauge. It showed almost empty. He backed it away from the bridge entrance, put the key in his pocket, and left it. He said, ”We'll lift Malachai into the truck and get going. First, I'll collect their weapons and ammo.” He was thinking ahead. There would be other highwaymen and this was armament for his company. ”What about these?” Bill asked, pointing his shotgun at the bodies.

”Leave them.” He looked up. The buzzards already attended. ”I'll come back tomorrow or we'll send somebody. Whatever they leave-” he watched the black birds wheeling and swooping-”we'll give to the river.”

One of the highwaymen trailing them had been Leroy Settle, the drugstore cowboy. When Randy examined his two guns he was surprised to find that they were only .22 caliber, lightweight replicas, except in bore, of the big frontier .45's. His companion's pistol apparently had gone into the river, for it wasn't on the bridge although he had a pocketful of ammunition.

Then Randy leaned over the leader. He saw that his shots had all been good, the three in the belly making a neat pattern, diagonal ticktacktoe. When he picked up the Thompson the dead man's arm astonis.h.i.+ngly rose with it, clinging as if his fingers were glued to the stock. Randy jerked it free and saw that it was glue, of a sort. The man's hands were smeared with honey.

It was after dark when Randy wheeled up to the front steps of the house. As he cut the engine he heard Graf barking. All the downstairs windows showed light. Lib burst out of the door and ran down the steps, saw him at the wheel, and was there with her arms and lips when he got out.

Preacher Henry appeared, and Two-Tone, Florence Wechek and Alice Cooksey, Hannah and Missouri, the children. Dan Gunn came out, robe flapping, carrying a lantern. They had all been waiting.

The Admiral and Bill were in back with the prisoner and Malachai. Bill stepped out, holding a pistol, and then the man with the bat, called Casey, prodded by Sam Hazzard's shotgun. Sam climbed down and that left Malachai. Malachai had been unconscious after the first mile. Until they reached Fort Repose, the road had been very bad.

Randy said, ”Killed three, grabbed this one. They got Malachai through the middle. Look at him, Dan. Is he still with us, Sam>”

The Admiral said, ”He was a minute ago. Barely.” Randy said, ”Ben Franklin, get some clothesline.”

”We going to hang him right now?” Ben asked, not casually but still as if he expected it.

”No. We'll tie him.”

Dan crawled into the truck. He held up the lantern, shook his head in exasperation, and then tore the patch away from his right eye. The eye was still swollen but not entirely shut and any a.s.sistance to his left eye was helpful. He crawled out and said, ”He's in shock and shouldn't be moved and ought to have a transfusion. But we have to move him if I'm to do anything at all. On what?”

There was a discarded door in the toolhouse. They moved him on that.

They laid Malachai on the billiard table in the gameroom and then ma.s.sed lamps and candles so that Dan would have light.

Dan said, ”I have to go into him. Ma.s.sive internal hemorrhage. I've got to tie it off or there's no chance at all. How? With what?” He leaped on the edge of the table, swaying not in fatigue or weakness but in agony of frustration. He cried, ”Oh, G.o.d!” Dan stopped swaying. ”A knife, Randy?”

”My hunting knife, the one I shave with? It's sharp as a razor, almost.”

”No, Too big, too thick. How about steak knives?” ”Sure, steak knives.”

The short-bladed steak knives even looked like lancets. The Judge and Randy's mother had bought the set in Denmark on their summer in Europe in 'fifty-four. They were the finest and sharpest steak knives Randy had ever used. He found them in the silver chest and called, ”How many?”

”T'wo will do.”

From the dining room Helen called, ”I've put on water to boil-a big pot.” The dinner fire had been going and Helen had piled on fat wood so it roared and Dan would soon have the means of sterilizing his instruments.

Randy put them into the pot to boil. After that, at Dan's direction he put in his fine-nosed fis.h.i.+ng pliers. Florence Wechek ran across the road for darning needles. Lib found metal hair clips that would clamp an artery. Randy's six-pound nylon line off the spinning reel would have to do for sutures. There was enough soap to cleanse Dan's hands.

Dan went into the dining room, fretting, waiting for the pot and his instruments to boil. It was hopeless, he knew. In spite of everything they might do sepsis was almost inevitable, but now it was the shock and the hemorrhage he couldn't lick. He wondered whether it would be possible to rig up a saline solution transfusion. They had the ingredients, salt and water and fire; and somewhere, certainly, rubber tubing. He would not give up Malachai. He wanted to save Malachai, capable, quiet, and strong, more than he had ever wanted to save anybody in his years as a physician. So many people died for nothing. Malachai was dying for something.

In the gameroom Helen was at work, quick and competent. She had found their last bottle of Scotch, except what might remain in Randy's decanter upstairs, and was cleansing the wound with it. Randy and Lib stood beside her. The pool of blood in the round hole ebbed and did not rise again.

The water was boiling in the big iron pot when Randy walked into the dining room and touched Dan's shoulder. ”I'm sorry,” he said. ”I'm afraid it's all over.”

In a dark corner of the room where she thought she would be out of the way and not a bother, Hannah Henry had been sitting in an old scarred maple rocker. The rocker began to move in slow cadence, and she moaned in this cadence for the dead, arms folded over her empty b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if holding a baby except that where the baby had been there was nothing.

Dan Gunn went into the gameroom and saw that Randy was correct, that Malachai was gone. His shoulders felt heavy. He was aware that his head throbbed and eyes burned. There was nothing more to do except empty the makes.h.i.+ft sterilizer with its ridiculous makes.h.i.+ft tools. He did this in the kitchen sink. Yet when he saw the knives and the pliers and the hair clips steaming he realized they were not really so ridiculous. If he was very careful and skillful, he could make do with such tools. They had not and probably could not have saved Malachai. They might save someone else. A century ago the tools had been no better and the knowledge infinitely less. Out of death, life; an immutable truth. Helen was at his side. He said, ”Thanks, Helen, for the try. You're the best unregistered nurse in the world.”

”I'm sorry it was for nothing.”

”Maybe it wasn't for nothing. I'll just keep these and try to add to them. I wonder if we could find a small bag somewhere? Any little traveling bag would do.”

”I have one. A train case.”

”We'll start here, then, and build another kit.” His eyes hurt.

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