Free the Quick and the Dead (1983) by Louis L'amour Page A

when he started out again.
    Somewhere along the way he became delirious. The loss of blood had weakened him, and he must have had a mounting fever. Perhaps it was only exhaustion, but all that followed was a hazy time of stumbling, staggering, moving--of falling, lying in the wet grass, rising and driving on. He went through trees and brush, tumbled into another gully and got himself out by crawling.
    The moss came loose from the wound so he used grass.
    He remembered lying on the grass and feeling hot sun on his back. Then he remembered trying to get up and hands taking hold of him. Somebody tried to take his rifle away and he clung to it. They tried to remove his gun belt and he struck the hands away and went to his knees, and then for a long time he remembered nothing at all.
    It was a sensation of smothering and of wracking movement that awakened him. Suddenly he was awake, lucid, listening. He was moving, his body lay on an incline and he was wrapped in something coarse and smelly. His fingers touched his gunbelt. He still had it. A slight movement of his head and his cheek touched the cold of his rifle barrel.
    He was lying on a travois wrapped in the folds of the buffalo-hide teepee. He was with the Indians then, and he was being moved. For some reason they were keeping him hidden.
    Suddenly the horse that was pulling him stopped with a jerk, twisted a little, then was still. There was a confused sound of movement, the galloping of horses. Then a hoarse voice ... Ike Mantle's voice. "You Injuns seen a wounded white man? We're huntin' him!"
    "No see."
    "You better not be lyin' to me, you Injun son-of-a--!"
    "Ike! Shut up, damn you! That big buck yonder's got his rifle right across his saddle at you!Lay off !"
    "Why? There's only six of them and they--"
    "Eight," the Huron said calmly. "There are two others somewhere."
    There was a moment of silence. "We're huntin' a bad white man," Doc Shabbitt said, "you Injuns find him, kill him or bring him to us, you savvy?"
    Nobody said anything.
    "I'd like to shake 'em down," Ike said angrily. "What's in all those bundles? What's on the travois?"
    "Their lodges, Ike," Purdy said, "just the duffle they have to live with. Hell, if you want that gent so bad, let's hunt him. No use to start a war with these Injuns. We might whop 'em but we'd lose two or three and one of them might be you or me."
    Red Hyle swung his horse away. "Let's ride!" he said roughly. "We don't care about him, anyway. Let's find that woman."
    "All you think about's that woman," Booster said.
    Vallian heard the sudden creak of a saddle, the movement of a turning horse. "What I think about's my own damn business. You want to make something of it?"
    "Aw, Red! I was only makin' a joke! Forget it."
    "What I want to know," Dobbs said suddenly, "is what's become of Boston? It ain't likehim to ride off with no reason."
    "He prob'ly thought he could find that gent," Booster said. "He saddled up early an' lit out. Said he had him a hunch.
    "Somebody shot ... just before daybreak it was. Somebody fired a shot off to the north."
    "I heard no shot," Shabbitt said irritably. "If there was one it might have been them Injuns."
    Con Vallian held himself very still, listening as the sound of the voices dwindled away with the sound of the horses' hoofs.
    Boston Pangman gone and a shot fired ... he scowled, puzzling over a vague recollection of something ... he drew his pistol, barely able to get it from the holster within the confines of the buffalo hide teepee. He swung out the cylinder. Two chambers were empty ... and he always reloaded.
    He succeeded in getting the pistol back into its holster and slowly relaxed. They were moving again, moving on.
    That night they unrolled him from his hide cocoon and bedded him down under some brush near their camp. There they brought him some broth made of venison, and one of the Indian women examined his wound and bathed it in some solution. The warm water felt soothing, and he could feel the