That gave me precious little time to cover those five running steps after he passed by.
I didn’t like my chances. Not with my leg as it was. The lashing of that bullwhip had not helped my healing bullet wound. Neither had a lack of sleep and a long ride here from Denver on a hired horse, I’d allowed myself only three hours of rest after stepping from Clara’s carriage at dawn. If that weren’t enough, my slicker was little protection against the drizzle, not when rain water pooled beneath me where I lay waiting. The wet and cold had already numbed me so badly I wondered if I could push myself onto my feet without stumbling.
My consolation was that I could count on Girard to pass below me and walk all the way up to the shack, if only because I’d taken three horses in with me. One I’d ridden, the two others I’d taken behind me for window dressing. If Girard had any eye for tracks, and was looking for evidence that nothing unusual waited him, the three sets of tracks would lull him into believing three men had gone to the shack. Me, and the two he hired to take me.
If, as I expected, he first hailed the empty shack from the road below me, I believed the nearby horses would encourage him to continue to the shack. I’d tied the horses to a post near the shack, and that would be exactly what he’d expect to see when he rounded the corner.
It helped too, as I endured the discomfort, that I fully expected Girard to arrive here, and before nightfall. After all, I had Red’s word and his partner’s on both — with confidence that they were plenty motivated to tell the truth from where each had been helpless in a coffin with hands and feet bound.
Getting them into that motivating situation — while worth it — had taken effort. Clara’s driver had first held a gun over them to let me bind their hands and feet and gag their mouths. He’d helped me roll them into a dark alley where I stood guard for an hour until he returned with the coffins on a wagon. In the early quiet hours of the morning, we had lifted them into their wooden prisons, shut the coffins, loaded each onto the wagon, and ridden with Clara through the empty streets to the plains outside of Denver. There, beneath the light of moon and stars, we’d moved the coffins several hundred yards apart. I opened the lid to Red’s coffin and informed him that unless what he told me matched his partner’s words, he would be buried alive. I’d said the same a few minutes later to Red’s partner. It came as no surprise to me that, ungagged, neither had disagreed with the other’s version on the instructions to finding this mining shack.
They’d had a vested interest too in telling me as much as possible about Girard’s arrival time, for Clara’s driver had taken me and the coffins back to Denver, where we stored them in a back room at Clara’s restaurant. The coffin lids had been shut long before then, so that neither had any idea of his location, and each believed that unless I returned, he would not be released.
Yes, I’d done as much as I could to ready myself for this ambush.
That should have eased my mind as I waited, but it did not. I still had no idea why Girard — if indeed it were him — wanted me captured. I had no idea how he was connected — if indeed it were him — to deaths in Laramie. And I had little idea of what I would do once I had him at gunpoint — if indeed I would be lucky enough and fast enough to get him there.
I settled in for a cold, aching wait.
************
My bladder betrayed me.
Not my leg as I had feared with the cold stiffening me more and more with the passing minutes. But my bladder.
I gritted my teeth until well past the point of urgent pain and I debated the best method of answering the one dilemma I could control as little as the weather. Relieving myself in the shallow trench, while safe in terms of ambush position, was unthinkable. I was already miserable and shivering. I refused to allow myself to soak myself further.
Yet where was the nearest and most effective cover? Should I face the road? Or away?
Finally, I decided to move up the hill a half-dozen steps. At most, I’d be in the open a minute — although with the need I felt, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my estimate was several minutes short — and I told myself that the odds against David Girad appearing during that one minute were ridiculously small.
Naturally, that’s how David Girard found me — shivering and shaking, weight on my good leg, standing behind a tree as I tended to nature’s business.
If I hadn’t expected my bladder to betray me, I expected even less that a dog would contribute.
David Girard in his rain slicker rounded the bend on foot, leading his horse by the reins with one hand, an extended revolver in the other. An ugly hound beside him caught my scent and barked a low warning.
Girard’s reactions were no less superb than the cultured appearance he’d presented at the bank. His hand was up instantly in my direction, revolver steady as his words.
“Get your hands up where I can see them,” he commanded.
There was fifteen, maybe twenty steps at most between us, on an angle so straight that, even in the mist between us, his gun barrel was a deadly eye of black that didn’t blink or waver. All that kept me from obeying him was stubborn dignity — once I got my hands up, there was no telling when he’d let me drop them again to adjust myself or my clothing.
So I continued what I had started, telling myself that if he wanted me dead, he would have had Red and his partner gun me down earlier in Denver.
His gun exploded, a sound that covered most the heavy chunk of lead against tree as the bullet shredded bark above my head. That did test my willpower and desire for dignity.
“Girard, I can’t shoot even if I wanted,” I said with some disgust, most of it directed at myself for the stupidity of this predicament. “My holster’s covered by this slicker and my rifle is leaning against another tree.”
His answer was another explosion, echo muted by the fog and drizzle. Another instant slash of white on the bark of the tree. Crows somewhere nearby began to caw alarm.
“Raise your hands,” he said, no anger in his voice.
To me, the second miss was more proof he didn’t want me dead. I began to button my pants.
The third bullet was lower down, a zing that brushed my cheek with a puff of air.
I raised my hands.
**********************
“Tie the other leg.”
I’d already tied my right ankle to a post of the bunk bed, and knew how much it hurt to lean forward to reach for the left ankle. But I didn’t have a choice.
Girard stood in the doorway of the shack — hound behind trying to nose Girard’s knees aside to watch me too — and gave himself enough room to fire several bullets should I make an ill-considered rush toward him.
Girard watched with no expression as I used the second piece of rope he had tossed at me. When I finished, he smiled. He could afford to. My Colt and Winchester were back on the hillside where he’d forced me to walk down with my fingers interlocked on my head.
“Why am I not surprised you’re here alone?” He said. His continuing smile held much less charm than the one I’d seen at the bank. “From the beginning, you’ve been on my trail like a starved dog after partridge.”
“What say we trade answers,” I said. I was sitting upright again on the edge of the bunk. My hands were still free, but with my ankles secured to bedposts, I was so helpless that my hands would help me little. “You tell me why you’ve gone to all this trouble.”
“Trouble? What I had in mind was more like pleasure.” His face showed it. Skin tightened around his cheekbones. The concentration of a boy pulling wings from a fly. “See here, Marshal, I want everything you know. And I needed a place this remote. Folks won’t hear you scream.”
He fired a shot into the dirt between my legs. “I killed a man once — took twenty bullets to do it. Had to throw water on him three times, though, to bring him around for the next bullet.”
He stepped away from the doorway, leaving me a view of the trees and fog and drizzle. Before I could contemplate much his intention
s, he reappeared, holding a battered canteen which I presumed he taken from his horse.
“But I believe a man should be inventive,” he continued as if he had not departed. “And I’ve never burned anyone to death.”
Staying out of my reach, he sloshed the contents of the canteen against the walls of the shack. The acrid smell of kerosene filled my nostrils. He threw the empty canteen at my head and laughed as it bounced off my blocking hands.
Girard departed again and returned to empty another canteen of the oily liquid against the inside of the shack walls.
When finished, he leaned back against the doorframe and studied my face.
“So talk to me. Tell me what you know.”
Despite my predicament, I snorted. Nothing about this or the murders made sense.
“How much do you know?” His voice held less cheer. Maybe it frustrated him that I wasn’t cowering or begging.
“How much does anyone know?” I said, thinking with fondess of Doc.
Girard shook his head. The glee came back into his face as he dug a match from his vest pocket. He held it high, admired it, made sure I could admire it, flicked it against his thumb, admired the flame, made sure I could admire the flame, then tossed the match.
It fell in the dirt, just short of a splash of kerosene.
“I’ll repeat myself,” he said. “How much do you know?”
“About you?” I said. Probably more quickly than I wanted. The kerosene smell was strong, and even with the drizzle on the outside, the interior of this shack would go like whittled kindling. “Obviously I know very little. Why else would I have come out here hoping to waylay you?”
He gazed upward as he thought about that, then grudgingly nodded. More thought. A foxy look crossed his face. “My wife tell you anything?”
“Never met her,” I said. “I had no reason to visit the mansion. And don’t you think you’d have heard from the servants if I’d called on her?”
He grinned a triumph I did not understand.
He dug another match loose.
“I am going to kill you,” he said — in conversational tones that chilled me. This was not a sane man. “And as you might guess, in a way that’ll make you wish I’d shot you dead at the Bar X Bar. Barnes, at least, never knew what hit him.”
He lit the match. “Shame of it is, I almost owe you thanks. Whatever you did to those boys saved me having to kill them too. And that might have been complicated.”
Girard stared at the flame of the match.
“Indulge me,” I said. “What’s this about? Is it Dehlia? You and her robbing banks? What?”
He blew out the flame. Hatred crossed his features. “In my dreams, she’d be here tied with you,” he said. “Screaming in the same flames that will turn you into a puddle of sizzling fat.”
“You killed Nichols and Calhoun?” I asked.
“Marshal, don’t waste your breath. I already learned what I needed. Now I get to stand outside and listen to you die.”
His skin tightened across his cheekbones as that leer of pleasure took him again. “When I was a boy,” he said, “I had this neighbor, who tanned me good after he caught me stealing eggs from his henhouse. I waited some, then one day, I stole his favorite hound. Put him in a crate, and done just what I’m doing here. Soaked the wood with kerosene. Touched a match to it. How that dog did howl. Surprised me too that dog could draw breath as long as it did.”
Girard took a third match from his pocket. “See, I got to watch you first two times I lit a match. It’s going through your head, is he going to light this fire? I enjoyed that.”
He flicked the match with the edge of his thumbnail and it popped into flame. “I’ll enjoy more watching this shack burn, hearing you scream.”
He threw the match at the nearest patch of kerosene-soaked wood. “Course,” he said, “Maybe you’ll pull loose and make a run for it. I’d like that too, shooting you down.”
The match bounced off the wood and its flame died in the dirt.
“What a shame,” Girard taunted me. “I’ll have to try again.”
He did.
And the next match caught.
Chapter 35
At first smokeless and silent, the flames formed a dancing necklace of blue and yellow as they raced along the surface of the kerosene-soaked wood.
I clawed at the cords around my ankles.
Under Girard’s supervision, I’d been forced to pull the knots tight, but much of my effort had been show. The knots would give to my fumbling fingers — indeed I could feel a grudging twist and slip already — but I doubted I had the minutes it would take.
Leaning forward as I was, I felt no heat for the first frantic seconds. Then it was like the sun warming my back, and I glanced up to see that the flames had begun to eat into the wood with a deadly hiss. Already, gray smoke stung my eyes.
As I watched, the flames crawled high and fast, deadly writhing snakes. Knowing that any frenzied struggle would only tighten the knots, I fought against the urge to pull, strain, yank at the cords that bound my ankles to the bunk.
I fumbled at the knots.
My fear became the drenching sweat of panic and effort as the flames began to roar and my mind screamed panic at the disorienting and unfamiliar sensations of heat and sound, and at the prospect of death beyond the most horrible imaginings.
One cord broke loose. I gasped relief, an action that sucked the thickening smoke into my lungs and I sputtered for air.
The smoke was dimming my vision, even as the flames began to leap for the roof. With no hole in the shack to pull the smoke free, clouds of sparks and ash and smoke broiled and edged closer and closer to the ground.
I could not resist the panic more, and I yanked at the other cord.
Nothing.
My next glance at the flames showed only the smoke, now a swirling blanket that mixed ash with the tears burning in my eyes.
I finally realized I had to drop. Find air.
I fell onto the dirt of the shack, and paid the price with a twisting of my bound leg that seemed to shear my leg with agony. A flaming chunk of wood crashed beside my head, threw sparks into my face and spurred me to a frantic kicking. I screamed against the pain of my caught leg, and that pain ended as abruptly as it had hit. I’d broken the bunk’s frame and pulled loose. My leg was free.
All I could think was to bolt. To push to my feet and crash through the flames of the nearest wall into the drizzle of cold mountain air I had been cursing such a short time before. Yet Girard waited me, ready to shoot me as a fleeing dog, ready to laugh that cold delight at the sight of my body jerking to the dance of his bullets.
As I lifted my head, it put my eyes back into the settling, choking smoke and I was forced to drop to draw another breath. I remained with my face in the dirt.
The heat pressed on me.
My shirt seemed to be melting into my back, the rivets of my jeans searing like branding irons. I knew then I’d rather die by bullet, go down in raging futility than allow myself to meekly accept this hell.
Another chunk of torched wood slammed downward, this once bouncing off my shoulder. I rolled in desperation at the burst of flame on my shirt and crunched into something solid.
The stove.
Time had shortened for me, and I measured it gasp by shallow gasp. The heat and noise and pain and fear had crazed me; my first thought was that I’d found a shield. I’d grab the stove, wrap my arms around it, smash through the wall, and charge Girard so fiercely that I’d be on him before he could fire around the heavy iron.
At that moment, in the blind unreasonable waves of terror that swayed me, I believed I could do it, too — lift and carry a cast iron potbelly stove.
I buried my face, sucked in air, then rose to a squatting postion that put my head into the smoke again. I closed my eyes against the grit and ash and reached downward in a squatting position, gripping the bottom edge of the stove between its short, curving legs.
With a roar, I pu
shed up with my legs, ignored the punishment of ripping thigh muscles and the iron edges that cut into my fingers and heaved with every ounce of effort I posssessed.
Incredibly, the stove toppled.
Even as it was falling, though, I knew I was about to die. The stove was so heavy that the effort had spent me, and as sanity returned, I realized that not even two desperate men could right the stove, let alone pick it up and run with it.
I ducked down from the smoke to sob for more air, and lost my balance, falling forward onto my knees.
As I landed, the ground gave way with a splintering that I felt, rather than heard. And the ground beneath me disappeared. My head crashed into something hard, sending me into a darkness that overwhelmed me with the cool relief of total silence.
***************
Water woke me. Cold dripping water that seeped into my clothes and made me aware that my knees were pressed against my chest, that a great weight bowed my shoulders.
I blinked. Saw nothing. Just ink blackness that led me to doubt whether I’d even opened my eyes.
Water ran down my face. I licked, tasting gritty ash. I tried to wipe it clear, but could not move my right hand. Neither my left.
But I was alive.
I knew that because of the aches and pains and chill of soaked clothing.
I struggled to move and felt the weight on my shoulders shift. Then it slid, scraping hard down my back, leaving a warmth of pain and a thud of wood against wood as it landed somewhere behind me.
Nothing more but blackness, the steady drip of water, and the numbness of a body that would not move. My eyes became heavy again and the numbness left me as I fell back into the void of unknowing.
Silver Moon Page 21
