Death Hunt

by Gerry Conway

Originally published in DC Special #6 The Wild Frontier in 1969.

McGraw pulled himself to his feet, stared down at the patch of muddy water lying under the burning Arizona sun. A Gila monster crawled out of the pool, stretched itself, baking in the heat. McGraw muttered to himself, walked slowly back to where his horse pawed the sand. 

"Sorry, Queen, but it ain't no good," he patted the horse's sweating flank, “That one's sure death, too...lessen you want to die, we can't drink that slop." 

He took the reins, shaded his eyes as he peered off toward the horizon. The dusty trail of hoof prints stretched across the burning plain, melted into heat waves that painted the sky a misty red. McGraw mopped his face with the purple bandanna he wore around his neck and climbed wearily up on Queen's back. The saddle was hot fire beneath him, and he shifted his weight, trying to find a more comfortable position. There was none. 

"Well, Queen," he said, sighing deeply, "Looks like the trail goes on. Hill didn't stop here-we ain't likely to find him poisoned to death somewhere up yonder. C'mon, girl, let's get a move on. Night won't be for another few hours, anyway..." 

He clucked, spurred the horse forward into a slow trot that faded into a slow walk. McGraw pulled his hat down over his brow, straining to get maximum shade from the crimson sore of a sun that festered in the sky overhead. His hands were crisp, parched with the lack of water. The hard lines of his face were tanned, cracked. He rode towards the thin blue line of the hill country in the distance. 

Hours passed, but he was close to Hill, and the hours seemed to drag on into eternity. Hill, the man who shot down McGraw's brother in cold blood that sweltering day in Dodge. Hill, the man McGraw had chased across half the country when the law refused to follow him further. Hill, the man McGraw was determined to kill. 

How long had it been, McGraw thought, since that day when Bobby'd gone to town for a load of chicken feed? How long? Six years? Was that all? Six years and the memory of finding Bobby dead hadn't faded from McGraw's mind. 

The boy was only twenty, McGraw thought, twenty years old, and he didn't even know how to shoot straight. Hill just gunned him down, right there with the whole town watching, the judge, the school teacher, the priest ... the whole town watched him shoot Bobby, and nobody'd done anything. Nobody! The law called it self-defense. Self-defense, when a man like Hill killed a mere slip of a boy? 

McGraw hadn't waited for the law to change it's mind. He'd started that night, leaving Bobby to Ma and Jesse to bury. Left his brother, to find his brother's killer. 

And the search had gone on for six years. Six years, and across four states. Down through Tennessee, up into Texas, across Utah... six years, and now McGraw was almost there. Now McGraw was going to find the man that had murdered his brother, murdered his brother, right there, with the whole town watching. Right there, in cold blood. 

He reached the hill at nightfall, swung down off Queen and followed the sound of running water to a small stream that tinkled down out of the mountains, wound its way across rocks and tree roots to fall in a small, silvery cascade into a pond. He knelt by the water, cupping his hand to bring it up to his mouth, and then he fell forward, splashing the water over his head, washing the sand and days of riding from his face, his hair. He gulped the water down as Queen bent down next to him, drinking as thirstily as McGraw had. 

McGraw straightened, stared up into the night caressed hills of stone and rock. Somewhere up there, a man slept, a man named Hill. The man McGraw had come to kill. He patted Queen's mane, pulled her head out of the water. 

"Easy, girl, easy," he said, soothingly, "can't drink too much too fast after all that heat. Make you sick." He looked up at the mountains again, felt a tingling inside him, like a knotted fist in his stomach. Somewhere up there...Hill. 

He pulled the saddle down off Queen's back, threw it against a gnarled tree-stump that's charred edge told of a bolt of lightning that struck years before. He pulled out a blanket from the saddlebags, laid down, leaning his head against the hard leather of his saddle. He found a battered harmonica in his vest pocket, put it to his lips, and began to play a slow, tired tune. The music drifted up into the night, up into the hills. Somewhere up there, McGraw thought, a man sits, and he hears me playing, and he knows that I'm down here, waiting, just waiting for the moment when I'm going to kill him... 

He no longer thought about Bobby. The quest had driven the pain from his mind long ago. Now it was a duty, the thing he had to do, not because of hate, but because a boy lay dead in Dodge, and a man had to pay. An eye for an eye. No hate, just that. An eye for an eye. 

The taste for revenge can die in six years, be replaced with a cold hate, McGraw thought. He knew he must kill Hill, but he no longer really knew why. 

The shot echoed out through the rocks, crashed with a splintering CRACK! into the tree-stump behind McGraw's head. McGraw dove forward rolled into a space between two trees. He pulled out his six-shooter, cursing the carelessness that had made him leave his rifle by the saddle. He stared up into the darkness that hung over the mountain, listened for any sound that would pinpoint the man who'd fired the shot. 

There was laughter up over to his left. McGraw looked up, saw a shadowy form sitting atop a dark grey boulder. “Heehahharhaha," the voice echoed down. "War'd you go, McGraw? Hungh? Whar'd ya go? Afraid of a little rifle-fire? Hahahaharhahewhaw!" 

McGraw pulled back into the shadows, looked around behind him. There was a crevice in the rock that tore up through the hillside to a position overlooking Hill's spot. McGraw backed up towards the torn earth, listening to the insane cackling of the killer above. 

"Wha's a matter, McGraw? Cat got your tongue? Harharhaahaaa—think you could chase me all these years without my a knowin' it? Think maybe I'm stupid? Hungh? Hahahaha!" 

Keep talking, McGraw thought. just keep talking, Hill. He wiggled up the incline, listened as another shot echoed down the hillside. 

"Whar'd ya go, McGraw? Whar you hiding, hugnh. boy?" Hill gurgled with laughter, snickered, "Wha's the matter, boy? Afeared of a little lightning?" Another shot. McGraw was next to Hill, almost to the spot overlooking the murderer. 

"Whas wrong, boy?" Another shot. 

McGraw pulled himself up, lined along his sights and fired. The rifle flew from Hill's hands, as he whirled about, fear shining in his eyes. 

"My God, my God, McGraw!" Hill began to babble as he pushed himself back against the rocks, staring up at McGraw who slowly stood up, a dark shadow against the night. "Don' shoot, hugnh? Don' shoot, please? Oh, god—McGraw..." 

McGraw stared down at the ragged, grizzled figure, the drooling, decaying mouth, the dirt grimed around the man's eyes, and was sickened. Sickened not so much at Hill's degenerated appearance, but at the thought that was running through his mind. 

McGraw actually liked the idea of shooting Hill. In cold blood. Just like that. Only this time, the townspeople wouldn't be watching, this time, nobody'd know...that he was as bad as Hill. 

McGraw slowly lowered his gun as Hill kept babbling to himself. It was no use, McGraw realized. He couldn't do it. After six years, he'd realized that he couldn't kill another man, as Hill had done. 

He stepped slowly down, turned away from the human wreck that was Hill. An hour later, he rode from the hills, back across the plain towards the Dodge he'd left six years before. 

It just wasn't in him. Not in cold blood. He would have been as bad as Hill. Worse, because he'd have done it in the name of Justice. 

He reached Dodge a week later, hung up his guns for good. They found Hill a month later, and he was dead. No bullets, nothing. He'd just died, and that was the end. 

McGraw felt better about it, that way. Much better. 

END