by Abe Dancer
The weight in his pocket attracted his attention so he drew out the short length of metal. He threw it from hand to hand then placed it on the desk and nodded to himself, accepting that here at least was proof of Billy’s innocence, if not of someone else’s guilt.
That meant there were still things he could do, if he dared.
He considered the bottle, knowing that the madness of defying Nixon and investigating and perhaps even proving he was a murderer was more frightening than handing himself over to the welcoming smoothness of the whiskey. He picked up the bottle, held it in his grasp for the first time for two years, then reached for the glass with the other hand.
Neither hand was shaking as they always had done when he drank.
‘I’m doing a mighty fine job,’ he said to himself, recalling Isaiah’s words. ‘I must be if one man thinks I am.’
And that decided it.
He hurled the glass at the wall, watching it smash into fragments, then hurled the bottle after it.
Whiskey fumes filled the office, tickling his nostrils while the noise made Billy rush to the bars. Price breathed in the pungent fumes, then turned to him.
‘You know something, Billy?’ he said. ‘That whiskey just don’t smell right.’
CHAPTER 11
‘You dry yet?’ Barney asked, feeling the discarded clothes he’d draped over a branch.
‘Dry enough,’ Jim said. He broke off from his task of steadily reassembling his dried gun to pat his own pile of clothes, then his vest front. ‘What about you?’
‘I am, but it’s these bills I’m worried about.’
Jim almost offered a sarcastic reply, but Barney’s money had got them most of the way to White Ridge in good time. So he contented himself with smiling as Barney padded around in his underclothes, carrying out the tricky task of drying out wads of wet bills before the fire in a way that ensured they didn’t burst into flame.
So far he’d lost only a few strays that had peeled away and wafted off into the flames, but the experience had helped Barney work out a safe method. Now he’d weighted each wad down with a stone and placed it near to the fire. Every few minutes he monitored each wad in rotation, to ensure that none of them was getting scorched.
They were some distance downriver from the scene of their frenzied plummeting from the high trail. How far they’d floated they weren’t sure, as they’d spent most of their journey trying to stay above water and reach the side. When they’d eventually dragged themselves on to dry land, darkness had descended and they’d had no choice but to make a fire or freeze.
They’d counted themselves lucky in surviving the plunge into the water and even luckier that they’d reached land at a point where the ridge to their side formed a ravine so precipitous that approaching them would be difficult.
‘Let’s hope you can find a way to use that money tomorrow,’ Jim said. He hefted his gun, considering it now cleaned after the soaking they’d had and placed it on the neat pile of his dried jacket and shirt.
‘I will. It’s what I’m best at. You just concentrate on what you’re best at.’ Barney reflected on their situation. ‘And you did well back there. From what Billy had said about you, I didn’t take you to be someone who could shoot and fight like that.’
‘You did well too,’ Jim said in all honesty.
He had expected Barney to take the first opportunity to escape that came along, and the confusion back in the wagon and in the water had offered several chances. But Barney had stayed with him and they’d even helped each other several times.
‘Obliged,’ Barney said. ‘But now that we know the kind of opposition we’re facing you have to be open with me. Can you seriously take on all of Nixon’s men?’
‘I can. Trust me.’
‘I’m trying to, but I don’t know you.’
Jim patted the gun, then stood and paced closer to the fire to warm his hands.
‘All you need to know is I’m the kind of man who can get you to White Ridge, keep you alive, and take on Nixon.’
‘And Jim McGuire, quiet man, and guardian of a wrongly convicted prisoner can do that, can he?’
Barney was fishing for details about his life and Jim couldn’t blame him. When the few people who had done that before had become too personal he had always veered the conversation away from the uncomfortable subject of his past. But Barney was clearly concerned about putting his life in his hands. As he needed to keep his attention on the dangers they would face and not on keeping Barney an effective prisoner, he decided to talk to someone about his situation for the first time.
‘I used to be a manhunter,’ he said, looking into the flames, ‘perhaps the finest. I hung up my gun though and settled down in White Ridge. I vowed that I’d never pick up that gun again, but needing to get Billy freed from jail has made me break that vow. And as getting you to White Ridge will help Billy, know this: I will get you there.’
Barney nodded. ‘What made you hang up your gun?’
‘You don’t want to know that.’
Barney considered this before he replied:
‘Then don’t tell me, but the problem I have is I’m torn between whether you or my own wits represent my best chance of surviving.’ Barney pointed at Jim, then at the drying money before he tapped his forehead. ‘Knowing who you are and what happened to you might clarify my thinking.’
Jim considered Barney’s request, recalling that earlier this evening in the water Barney had appeared more accepting of his need to return to White Ridge. He gave a non-committed shrug and moved forward to poke the flames with a stick.
The sudden burst of heat made Barney bleat and drag several wads of bills back a few paces. Jim laughed at his dismay, helping to allay his concern about talking, and the friendly laugh Barney returned convinced him that in this case it would do them both good to talk.
‘I ain’t never told anyone this,’ he said, ‘so know that I’m trusting you plenty by talking.’
‘I may like to talk, but anything you say won’t get repeated.’
‘Glad to hear it. That’ll just stop me having to kill you.’ Jim smiled until Barney returned a smile then looked at the fire. ‘I’d hunted so many men I couldn’t remember all their names no more, but I knew one thing. I’d never failed and I had me the best reputation a man could want. The people who hired Jim McGuire … Luther Mallory … had even stopped asking to see a body. They knew that if they gave me the money, the job would be done.’
‘And was it?’
‘Every time, without fail and without any questions asked, and that was the problem. I’d started out as a bounty hunter with some morals as to the kind of missions I took on, but somewhere along the line I stopped asking questions. So when one day a businessman who’d lost five thousand dollars at the poker-table paid me to kill the man who beat him, I didn’t ask for more than a name.’
‘When you found him did he take you on and best you?’ Barney asked, guessing where this story was leading.
‘Nope. I wish he had. It wasn’t too hard to find him. A man with a sudden windfall is easy to find.’ Jim looked up and winked.
‘I know,’ Barney murmured with a rueful rub of his chin.
Jim began pacing around now that the tale had reached the part he always tried to avoid thinking about.
‘My quarry was travelling with a partner and they’d laid down a trail anyone could have followed. When I caught up with them I targeted the partner. I got talking to him in a saloon and offered him a meal to share when he left town. He agreed and so, a few miles out of town, we sat around a camp-fire, just like we’re doing now.’
Barney cringed back with mock fear, then stood up, his downcast and troubled eyes showing his reaction hadn’t been entirely false.
‘You do know that this tale is supposed to comfort me?’ he said after stretching his legs.
‘I do, but there’s no comfort here. We talked until my target arrived and he was just what I had expected. He was an ordinary man who’d got
lucky while looking for work. Whenever he could he sent money to his family and he’d always dreamed of having enough money to let him go home and repay their faith in him. He even thought I was down on my luck and offered me money to help me out. He was a decent man.’
‘So what happened?’ Barney asked after Jim had paused for several seconds.
‘I shot him. Then I shot his partner.’
Barney recoiled, then spent the next few minutes pottering around unnecessarily checking on the state of his drying bills.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said at last.
‘I know, but I had a job to do and I always finished what I’d started. The partner I killed outright, as I always did, but not the target. Perhaps my conscience veered my aim. I only wounded him.’
‘He lived?’ Barney looked up with hope in his eyes that this story would have a happy ending. Jim extinguished that hope with a cold glare.
‘I stood over him, gun aimed down at his head and with death staring him in the face there was only one thing he wanted to say. Tell my family I’m dead, he said. They deserve to know why the letters have stopped. I nodded. Then I killed him.’
‘You have changed since then, haven’t you?’ Barney asked with an audible gulp before he started nervously pacing back and forth.
Jim matched his pacing on the other side of the fire.
‘That’s the point of my story. I realized then that I’d become a monster. So I collected up his money, raided his saddlebags, and buried him and his partner. Then I set out to write that letter, but I couldn’t find the words. I told myself that if I ever hoped to wipe away the memory of what I’d done I’d have to find his family and tell them the truth to their faces, which is what I did.’
‘Did they accept it?’
‘Nope. His wife had died. He didn’t know that, the letters were all one way, but his son was still alive….’
‘Ah,’ Barney said and stopped walking. ‘I see now. Billy Jameson?’
‘Yup. I couldn’t tell Billy I’d killed his father, but he filled in the details for himself. He thought I was his father’s partner … Jim McGuire. I didn’t dissuade him. I gave him the windfall his father had died for but he didn’t want money. He wanted a link with his father. So I tried to make things right, tried to take the place of the man I’d killed. And because Jim had been planning to come to White Ridge to settle down and enjoy his share of the windfall, I came here. The rest you know.’
‘Obliged for the truth,’ Barney said, his voice gruff with emotion. ‘I understand now why helping Billy is so important to you and perhaps why I can trust you to keep me alive.’
‘Trust, after hearing that?’
‘Yeah. It was an honest tale and it’d take something terrible like that to change a man like you.’ Barney raised his eyebrows. ‘Provided that completing the mission is something that hasn’t changed?’
‘It hasn’t.’
‘Then I put myself in your hands.’ Barney came round the fire and held out a hand. ‘Get me to White Ridge and I’ll speak up against Mayor Nixon and do the best I can for Billy.’
‘Obliged to you for accepting my word,’ Jim said, taking the hand.
‘Obliged to you for trusting me enough to talk.’
Jim patted Barney’s shoulder then returned to where he’d been sitting. He got as far as crouching down beside his dried clothes and moving to put them on….
His gun was no longer sitting on his clothes.
He flinched back then swirled round to see the gun was in Barney’s hand.
‘You double-crossing varmint,’ Jim snapped, advancing a pace on Barney.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ Barney ordered, shuffling the gun back into his hand as he aimed it at Jim.
‘You lied to me. Got me to reveal all that just so you could get me off guard.’
Barney shrugged and gave Jim a shame-faced look.
‘Look at it this way, you let your guard down for someone like me, which means you’ve softened and you’re not the best man to keep me alive.’
Jim scowled. ‘I still am that man, despite showing compassion for a liar like you.’
‘I didn’t lie. I always said if a chance came my way I’d take it.’ Barney backed away a pace. ‘And I ain’t lying when I say this: nobody will ever know your secret. And I really do hope things work out well for Billy.’
‘I’m all cut up by that speech.’ Jim advanced a long pace on Barney and spread his hands out. ‘So you’re going to have to shoot me if you don’t want to go back to White Ridge.’
‘No further,’ Barney demanded, stepping back to the edge of the fire, then jerking to the side as the flames licked at his boots.
Jim took another long pace. ‘You ain’t a killer. You’ve never needed a gun with that mouth of yours. You won’t shoot me.’
‘I will!’ Barney shouted, taking another pace backwards, but he accidentally kicked a wad of bills sending them flying. Half of the bills headed into the flames, the others fluttered away.
Barney watched in horror as hundreds of dollars flared up before his eyes, the distraction giving Jim enough time to throw himself forward. He hit Barney full in the chest with his right arm thrust upwards to push him backwards and his left arm held sideways to veer the gun hand away from him.
Barney didn’t fire, either through being distracted or justifying Jim’s gamble that he didn’t want to shoot him. Jim ran him backwards for four paces until Barney’s legs folded beneath him, sending them both tumbling. The gun skittered away from both of their grasps.
Jim landed on Barney’s chest and moved to hold him down, but Barney kicked upwards. He managed to loop his feet around Jim’s legs, then pushed hard enough to send Jim rolling towards the fire.
Jim rolled once, then slammed an elbow to the ground to stop his motion, but his elbow jarred against a stone, sending a numbing jolt of pain down his arm. The brief agony eroded the last ounce of good will he had about Barney’s reasonableness in not shooting.
He got to his feet, his left arm hanging slackly and paced up to Barney, who must have seen the anger in his eyes, for when he stood he raised his hands in a warding-off gesture.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘we should talk about this.’
‘You’re a man who talks with his mouth.’ Jim glanced at his hand. ‘I’m a man who talks with his fist.’
He swung back his fist and put all his pent-up annoyance behind a swinging uppercut to Barney’s jaw that sent him spinning away. Barney rolled twice before he came to a halt in a crumpled heap.
Jim flexed his fist, then his numbed arm, feeling more relaxed when he found that his arm was working again.
Barney lay for several moments fingering his jaw. Then, slowly, he got to his knees. He looked up at Jim and red-eyed anger had replaced his previously docile demeanour. Admittedly some of the redness came from the firelight, but Jim straightened, then beckoned him on.
Barney uttered a roar of bravado that echoed in the ravine above, then came to his feet, kicking off with such force he launched himself off the ground. With his arms thrust forward and straight he hammered into Jim. The two men went down.
Then, with their arms interlocked, they fought. Kicks, gouges, and short-arm punches were traded back and forth as each man fought for supremacy.
They rolled over and over each other, neither man giving thought to anything other than pummelling the other into the dirt. Barney gave as good as he received and, by the time the red mist had faded from the minds of both, lips were bloody and ribs were bruised, but still they fought on.
How long it could have gone on Jim no longer cared, but he had also lost all sense of where they were when suddenly heat seared along his back. For a frantic moment he wondered what had happened. Then he realized they’d rolled into the fire.
Barney was lying on top of him and he too felt the lick of flame. With a pained roar he kicked himself away, the motion pushing Jim back into the fire. Jim fought to move himself without putting h
is hands to the ground, but Barney swung back, grabbed his vest front, then yanked him away from the flames.
Then they both rolled around in the dirt, batting out the flames. Jim was the first to extinguish the embers on his underclothes, so he looked out for Barney, seeing him trying to tear off his burning vest.
Jim bounded over to him, slapped a hand on his back, then rapidly slapped at the flames, batting the burning embers to the ground and stamping on them. Then he turned Barney round, checking him over while Barney did the same to him.
When they were sure they weren’t about to burst into flames they considered each other. Barney was bloodied, dirty and red of face, and his vest now consisted of two thin strips of cloth dangling from his shoulders.
Jim laughed and, presumably because he presented the same kind of pitiful sight, Barney laughed too.
‘Enough?’ Jim asked.
‘Enough,’ Barney agreed.
‘And enough of you trying to talk your way out of going to White Ridge?’
‘I’ll always do that, but not with you no more.’
‘Then if you stick with that promise, a couple of burnt vests and a few bruises was worth it.’
‘Not forgetting the thousands of dollars that went up in flames while we were fighting.’ Barney pointed, drawing Jim’s attention to the wrecked fire and, more important, the paper money that was now fuelling that fire.
Jim watched the money crisp, curl then burn.
‘You’ll talk your way into more money one day and besides, it was better to watch it burn than let Nixon get his hands on it.’
Barney chuckled, then roared with laughter. Jim joined in the laughter as they both tried to let good humour remove the memory of the last few minutes. When their laughter had died down the two men moved to seat themselves, a few chuckles still escaping their lips.
But then a new, echoing laugh sounded.
Jim froze, unsure for a moment what he’d heard, but the laughter sounded again and he swirled round to look away from the fire.
