Free Radigan (1958) by Louis L'amour Page B

stood up, the darkness of his body merging with the darkness under the wide eaves of the house. The man came up, running quietly, and failed to see Radigan until too late. The gun barrel swept down in an arc and caught the man behind the ear. He slumped, tried to straighten, and Radigan hit him again. He went down then, and lay still. Using some rawhide piggin strings, carried by every cowhand for the purpose of tying a calf's hoofs together after it had been roped and thrown, Radigan tied the man up nicely, and then gagged him with a chunk of old sacking.
    The man on the ground groaned, and tried to move. "You take it easy," Radigan advised in a whisper. "It won't do you any good to wear yourself out. You lie still and maybe I won't slug you again."
    A slow hour passed and nothing happened. Then a second man started from the barn, and Radigan saw him coming. He came with a rush, and evidently the prisoner heard him for he grunted loudly and tried to call out. The oncoming man slid to a halt and his gun came up. Radigan dropped to one knee and when the man fired, he replied instantly, and just as quickly, hit the ground and rolled. Over his head bullets thudded and smacked into the house and the bench at the door.
    "You try that again," Radigan said to the prisoner, "and you'll get yourself killed by your own outfit."
    An hour went slowly by, and Radigan crawled to the door and scratched his signal to come in.
    Gretchen was beside him instantly. "Tom, Tom, are you hurt?"
    "Just hungry."
    "You got one," Child said. "I saw him get it." "And a prisoner."
    Radigan sat at the table and drank coffee in the dark. There was food on the table, and when he had eaten he carried a cup of coffee to the window and drank it while eating a doughnut. "All right," he said finally. "It's time."
    The stars were out when they reached the horses. It took them only a minute or two to saddle up. Child strapped on the packs and they led the horses off the slope into the trees. In the next few minutes they would know if they were going to make it without being discovered.
    The trail led close along the mesa and with Child in the lead and Radigan as rear guard, they worked their way along under the trees and away from the house. When they had gone a quarter of a mile they got into their saddles and rode away.
    Nobody talked, nor felt like talking. Behind them was the warm comfort of the ranch house and before them lay the forest, the night and the cold. No telling how long it would be before any of them slept under a roof again-if they ever did.
    They rode west ... and there was no trail. They rode west into the somber darkness of' the forest, and only occasionally could they see the stars. It was cold . . . a wind from off the high peaks whispered the pines, moved restlessly, making violins of the pine needles, moaning low among the rocks and across the waste spaces above the timberline.
    Tom Radigan moved into the lead, for only he knew where they now went, and in the darkness where there was no trail, and where all landmarks had mysteriously disappeared into a common darkness, he led on, knowing his way along the slope of the mountain and finding the openings among the trees as if guided by some mysterious thread.
    From behind there came no sound as the besiegers waited for daylight. Two men had advanced to attack, and two men had disappeared, one surely dead and the other vanished.
    In silence they would be watching the dark house, worried, uncertain, angry.
    How long would it be before they knew the house to be empty? Hours, perhaps. And every minute a minute of advan tage. In these hills Tom Radigan knew it would take a lot of searching to find him-or an accident. It was like him that he did not discount the possibility of accident.
    They might have held out at the house, yet if' their horses were discovered there would be no escape at all, and it was always better to be mobile than to be pinned down by the enemy. Yet he did not retreat to escape,