by Jean Chapman
He drew in one more deep breath as he heard the crunch of heavy men’s footsteps behind him – and turned to meet Charlie and Lucas.
Lucas was to drive and as they set off he said, ‘We must get this right the first time. Don’t think there’ll be any second chances.’
Little more was said until they parked on the highway side of a huge fishing lake. Quickly they rehearsed the plan they had decided. Charlie was to stay with the car, Lucas and Cannon would make their way to the place where they had been told Jonathan was.
‘There’s no guarantee how long this is going to take,’ Lucas added.
‘I’ll wait,’ Charlie said dogmatically. ‘I’ll wait.’
Guns and holsters concealed under khaki-coloured shirts, small rucksack on their backs, the two nodded meaningfully to Charlie and set off. Once more Lucas leading.
He took them through woodlands and they came out on the highway well past the entrance to the Valdes ranch. They climbed a fence, were on enemy territory now and kept to the cover of trees, circling out well beyond the main ranch house, but then they hit a stretch of open pasture, before there was more tree cover behind the second house.
‘We’ve seen no sign of life, so the best thing we can do is just walk across as if we work here,’ Cannon whispered, remembering the most successful shop raid he had ever known was when two men put on shop-overalls and carried goods out of the shop via the front door. Witnesses thought it was an early delivery. ‘Relax your shoulders, think you are going to the bunk house for breakfast.’
Lucas gave a low grunt of ironic amusement, but relaxed a little as they set off at a steady pace, neither hurrying, nor looking around. It seemed like a hundred kilometres before they were in the next belt of trees, but they were uncomfortably near the second house.
A dog barked once – listening, disturbed in its outdoor pen – and a young child began to cry. Lights went on at the far end of the house.
Cannon drew in a breath through his teeth, people were stirring much too early, at the very least he had hoped for another hour. Lucas hesitated for a moment before he led them on. If “x” had marked a building, Cannon thought they should surely be able to see it.
A few more steps and through a gap, the black bulk of an extensive barn loomed. The trees ended some twenty metres short. Cannon walked on without pause, but when he was nearer he saw there was a large wooden bar right across huge double doors, and there was the unmistakable warm dungy-hay smell of horses. He did not want to risk opening these doors, which probably could not be done quietly, and also could spark a surge of horses wanting to be outdoors – even another trampling incident!
Lucas touched his arm and indicated the grass worn away to a path along one side of the building. They went that way and came to a normal sized door. They paused, and as they did so, from inside came a distinct sound – like a chain being dragged across metal. Cannon lifted the latch, pushed the door open slowly, standing for a moment and letting his eyes get used to the gloom.
Once inside and the door closed behind them, Lucas produced his small covered lantern. To their right was a row of very large metal bins, in front high stacks of bales of hay and beyond that, straw. They were in a feed and bedding storage area, and to their left behind a partitioned section, a horse snorted.
‘Mares and foals,’ Lucas whispered.
‘Who’s there?’
The man’s voice was dry, gruff, and accompanied by another drag of chain over metal.
‘Jonathan?’ Cannon queried in an urgent whisper; outside he could hear the dog barking again.
‘Who’s that?’
‘John Cannon and a friend. Where are you?’
‘Oh, thank God,’ the husky voice broke. ‘I’m … I’m … chained up … in a kind of bin.’
‘Keep talking to us, we’ll find you.’
Right at the back of the storage area there was a row of larger metal bunkers next to the wall.
‘I can see your light!’ the whispered exclamation came from one of these bins.
With careful, quiet urgency, the two of them hurried forward, began lifting the heavy metal lids, peering inside. In the fourth of nine, they found Babs’s son and both recoiled a little from the smell. Jonathan Beale had been confined there for some time.
Lucas raised the lantern, two long weighty chains with shackles for ankles and wrists had been looped through each other and around the boy’s body. His face was gaunt, old, he was covered in filthy dust, his trousers were soiled and there was a collection of foil trays and an empty water bottle in one corner.
‘We’ll get you out,’ he whispered as he reached down and held the prisoner’s hand, while wondering how they could deal with such chains.
‘I thought it was Mr Cannon … but …’ Jonathan gave a weak laugh.
He felt rather than saw Lucas shake his head, and outside the dog barked with more certainty, and was shouted at, to be quiet.
‘Man comes in the morning,’ Jonathan whispered.
‘Does he undo…?’ Cannon touched the chains.
‘Sometimes,’ Jonathan whispered, ‘to eat …’
‘OK,’ Cannon said briefly, recollecting that the last time he had seen this young man was when they had planned to eat together, when he had proudly introduced his mother, been elegant in country casuals. ‘We’ll …’
‘Take him,’ Lucas stated.
They all heard the door latch lifted. Lucas switched off his light as Cannon gestured for him to go to one end of the bunkers, while he crouched at the other.
They heard the crunch of footsteps and as the man emerged from behind the bales, Cannon could make out that he was of medium height and build, dark hair, dark clothing. There was light enough to see he strode up to the bins with a certain exaggerated, swaggering arrogance. It was a walk Cannon had seen so often in those intending mischief, the boosting up of confidence before they performed some act of violent aggression.
The light glinted on something he carried in his right hand – a metal food tray, a drink for the prisoner?
‘Your troubles are over, Englishman,’ he said as he neared where Jonathan lay, and at that moment Cannon realized what he carried was a knife.
‘All over,’ he said with a laugh that was as high and excited as a hound in full cry. ‘They’ve decided. Just don’t bleed all over the bloody place. “Bloody place”, good joke that, hey!’
‘Help!’ Jonathan shouted. ‘Help!’
‘Help, is it?’ Now the man’s amusement was greater. ‘You tried shouting for days, on and off. We’d all been told not to listen. You’re just a bloody nuisance.’
He was standing over the bin now, laughing at his own humour and well psyched up, seconds away from murdering Jonathan Beale.
‘Lucas, now!’ Cannon hissed.
Cannon sprang as he spoke, but in four great strides Lucas reached him first.
‘He has a knife,’ Cannon warned as he reached them, grabbing at the wrist with one hand. Lucas had a hand over the man’s mouth and his other arm up his back. Cannon twisted the wrist as hard as he could, the knife rattled to the floor.
‘Got him?’ Cannon asked.
‘Got him,’ Lucas confirmed.
‘Going through his pockets for the key,’ Cannon hissed. ‘Ah,’ he breathed a moment later, and swallowed thankfully as the key slipped into the chain-padlock and turned. He began to unwind the chains.
‘This is not going to be quick,’ he told Lucas, ‘hold him tight.’
‘He’s going nowhere,’ Lucas said grimly, applying more pressure as the man’s struggles increased.
Cannon guessed that if his prisoner escaped, this man would certainly not, that retribution would most likely be swift and as final as the one he had come to deal Jonathan.
It was not just extracting Jonathan from the chains, it was helping him to stand, and as he did so, Valdes’s man began kicking wildly. In the struggle, his foot hit a bucket which went clattering across the barn.
‘What�
�s the noise?’ another voice asked from the doorway. ‘What’re doing?’ And he grumbled on in a stream of half heard profanities.
Cannon put his shoulder under Jonathan’s arm and hoisted him bodily out, propped him, half sitting, half standing, against the bin. Desperation gave the man Lucas was holding more strength, and it was all he could do to hold him and keep him quiet.
Cannon made for the door, came on the man suddenly from behind the fodder bales.
‘What!’ the second man exclaimed, then, ‘Who?’ and he threw a blow at Cannon, who twisted his head sharply sideways. The fist touched his jaw and with a swish of some force, passed over his shoulder. Cannon’s response landed fairly and squarely on the jaw. The man fell, hit his head on the wooden doorframe and lay still. Cannon bent over him and the light was strong enough now for him to recognized the man Paul had drawn, and Geoff had shown on the A4 enlargement. The man with the topknot. The drug man, the ‘pig of a man’ who enjoyed violence to man or beast. Spracks’s man.
Lucas had dragged the first man nearer and seeing the unconscious man, whispered, ‘We’ve got rope, help me tie and gag this one, then we’ll deal with him. We’ll put him in a bin. In fact,’ he said with quiet intent, and twisting the first man’s arm higher up his back, ‘they can have a bin each.’
Jonathan lay slumped against the bins all the time they worked, never looked up, and neither were sure whether he was conscious or not. When the two newly filled bins were closed, they turned back to Jonathan.
‘Come on, laddie,’ Cannon said, as he took over the lantern and haversack. ‘We’re taking you back to your mother.’
‘Long way,’ he muttered, but seemed unable to lift his head, certainly not to stand, walk, run if necessary. Without hesitation, Lucas picked him up, holding him over one shoulder, more in the way one might wind a baby, than a fireman’s lift – and they made for the door as fast as they could negotiate the bins and bales.
It was clear they could not return the way they had come, work on these ranches started early. They certainly had to avoid the homes and bungalows they had seen dotted all around this area on the map. They must make a wider detour before the grooms, the workforce, the families, were all up and about but at that moment there was a sudden restless commotion and neighing from the mares in the biggest section of the barn. Were they already too late?
Then they heard the men coming, heard a few harsh monosyllabic remarks, an ironic laugh. Next, the bar was lifted away from the double doors and both were pulled wide open. The barn was flooded with light.
Several men came in carrying brushes, rakes, head-collars, filled hay-nets, but they were looking towards the expectant horses as Lucas and Cannon slipped out of the small door.
They scurried away along the side of the barn, every second expecting to be seen, for hue and cry to be raised – and then what? They would hardly survive a shoot-out. Cannon imagined it would be the end of all their stories, the play would be over, curtains…
Once past the shelter of the barn wall, there was a fenced paddock immediately before them and one of those narrow fenced walks between that and woodland. There was little alternative. They took the path, and as they did so, Cannon glimpsed a far off stetson – men were already out in the paddocks. They had to go to ground, take stock, re-plan their moves.
He wondered how long Charlie would stay put, and whether Tom Beale had taken another vehicle and was even now waiting with the dog in that far off parking place. In his mind the two vehicles became like outposts, forts, unattainable safe places.
Once in the woodland Lucas stopped, needing to ease his burden from one shoulder to the other. Jonathan made a noise between grunt and groan as he was transferred. They were going uphill now with Lucas in the lead. The sun was fully over the horizon behind them, and as its light fell on Jonathan’s face, his pallor was shocking and the uncontrolled lolling of his head frightening.
Cannon knew the way they were going would bring them nearer and nearer to the mountains he had glimpsed – further from Valdes’s men perhaps, but also further away from their own people, from help.
Even as he stumbled over the more numerous rocks and the luxuriant growth of plants between, he came to realize that Lucas was moving ever upwards with more assurance, as if he had suddenly noticed not only where he was, but had a new goal in mind – though it seemed it was not exactly close by.
Lucas walked on resolutely for the best part of another half hour before he stopped, and turned to Cannon.
‘I’ve been here before,’ he said as the two of them carefully lowered Jonathan to the ground, and as they did so, both could see he was lapsing in and out of consciousness.
‘If I’m right, there could be a place where we could rest and …’ He looked down, shook his head. ‘He needs to stretch out, rest comfortably.’
‘So what do you remember?’
‘If I am right, we should soon find land, a little cup of land, that was for a time tended as a garden. My father brought me here as a boy before Valdes guarded the place like a fortress. We used to come to see an old boy who lived off the land, think he made his own moonshine – though Pa always brought him a bottle of bourbon. I remember he was hale, hearty, laughed a lot, had terrible, broken, bad teeth – and I remember his home. If I could find that …’
‘Go and look,’ Cannon said, ‘I’ll wait here with Jonathan, see if I can get him to have a drink.’
He sat next to Jonathan, cradled his head in his lap as Lucas climbed on through the trees which were much sparser at this altitude.
At first he just moistened the young man’s lips, then managed to pour a few drops into his mouth. Jonathan’s mouth remained open and he seemed to look up at the greenery, the sunshine through the branches, the sky above, then at Cannon. He gave a beatific smile before closing his eyes. He looked as if he had glimpsed heaven, and for a moment Cannon thought he had died.
CHAPTER 22
‘It is a mini paradise,’ Cannon was saying less than an hour later.
Lucas had come back, his face alight with success, and once more with Jonathan over his shoulder, he led the way up the rocky bed of a small stream. ‘The easiest way up, I remember doing this with my pa, and it’ll put any dogs off the scent.’
Cannon hoped it didn’t come to being hunted by dogs, but made sure his boots were in the water as they scrambled upwards.
The top of the stream became a kind of gentle waterfall over a lip of rock. Once they topped this, Cannon saw that it drained gently down from a small lake in the middle of this green lush basin of land.
Lucas was soon pointing out how, even after all the intervening years, it was still possible to see that this land had been tended by human hand. He identified how wild looking growths were in fact fruits and vegetables, which had been set in plots and rows, and how some were still bearing tiny fruits and vegetables.
‘There’s food here if you know what you’re looking for,’ he said, then flicking at a yellow berry on a dead looking stem, added, ‘as well as knowing the ones you definitely mustn’t eat.’
Then he pointed to the far side of the water. A shack, Cannon thought at first, but as they walked nearer he saw it was a log cabin, just like those in old Westerns films he’d seen as a lad. The whole place began to feel more like a film set, than reality, to him. Lucas, in contrast, strode purposefully up to the door and with free shoulder and foot, had the door open.
They disturbed forty years of untouched dust and gentle decay. Standing in the doorway they saw a single chair, a bench seat, a table, a side workbench, on which stood a metal oval bowl, like a small bath with handles, and a pitcher. There were racks and shelves and wall hooks, on one the skeletal head of a buffalo hung askew.
‘What happened to him?’ Cannon asked.
‘He just said he would go to the hills when his time came,’ Lucas said, shaking his head, ‘and I guess that’s what he did.’
There was no comfortable place to lie Jonathan down and as Lucas sti
ll stood holding him, Cannon suggested they might be able to pull some of the abundant dry grasses and stems from round the cabin, put a jacket over them and make something like a comfortable bed.
‘Make a backwoodsman of you yet,’ Lucas said as they finally transferred Jonathan from an outside grassy slope to his inside bed. Cannon remembered Babs saying she had laid him in a manger of hay when he was a baby. Here he was, lain in dried grasses again, groaning as Lucas gently straightened his limbs.
‘Those chains, every time he moved,’ Cannon said and both silently mourned and seethed over the welts and bruises, the raw wrists and ankles.
‘I’ve got painkillers,’ Lucas said, picking up the rucksack, ‘if I crush a couple in water …’ He paused as both knelt by the bed, resting, both glad to be still for a moment. ‘I’d like to clean him up. Strange to think the last time I did anything like this was when I helped his aunt Jane when she was first trampled. She was a mass of injuries …’
So we go on, Cannon thought, and if we ever stop caring, stop trying, the world we want is lost. We mustn’t, he vowed, before he got up from his knees and picked up the metal bowl and pitcher.
‘I’ll take these to the lake, give ’em a good wash, and I’ll refill the water bottles.’
‘I’ll look at what food we have, and what there might be around about,’ Lucas said. ‘We should rest and eat something.’
Cannon walked slowly back towards the lake, bottles draped over his shoulder, bowl and pitcher in his arms. He looked all around, from what he could see the only way out was the way they had come – unless there was a helicopter on call. It was also clear that even if recovery started at once, Jonathan Beale was not going to be well enough to walk for some time.
He found a bank where he could kneel and wash the old man’s bowl and pitcher and thought of Hoskins – he’d survive here, that was for sure; for one thing, there were rabbits, Cannon had seen those, and the unwanted thought came that perhaps rabbits had large families because there were so many predators.
