by John McNally
CHAPTER 10
As Carter arrived back at Sailors Diggings, the sky was still light but the dark filled the valley floor, the settlement laid under a bowl of shadow. The glow from the lamps in the buildings spilled out in a shower of light across the low ground. The settlement was not much more than a large dirt crossroads. Torn shreds of cloud swirled over the treetops as he looked down to the livery on the edge of town. The back doors stood open and the brassy light from inside silhouetted a small figure raking out the stables. Carter closed in and saw it was a young boy clearing the yard. The boy looked up but carried on working while Carter sat on his horse and watched. He leaned forward and bent over the saddle horn.
‘Howdy,’ Carter said. The boy wiped an arm across his forehead and nodded. ‘I’m new in these parts, I work a claim in Patrick Creek California if you know it.’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ said the boy.
Carter dismounted and walked over, held out his hand and said, ‘I’m Eddie Carter.’
‘I’m Floyd Kindersley.’ The boy smiled and shook his hand.
‘You own this livery, Floyd?’ said Carter, grinning.
‘No, sir, my grandpa does but I work here right enough. Fine horse you got there, a Morgan like that can run all day if he’s grain fed.’
‘You sure know your horses, Floyd. Can you give him some grain while me and you talk? Here’s a dollar, you keep that for yourself, you hear me on that?’
Carter needed information and thought that Floyd would be able to tell him what had happened at the stables during the day. He sat on an upturned barrel, picked a piece of straw out of a bale, stuck it in his mouth and watched Floyd see to his horse. He brought out a bucket and set it in front of the Morgan.
‘There ain’t too much in there, we’ll let him help himself,’ said Floyd and he started to brush the horse down; the horse’s sleek black coat shone in the lamplight.
‘Floyd, I’m looking for a feller, he’s a mean one, big with a scarred face and a black beard. Have you seen him today?’
‘Have I,’ said Floyd with feeling. ‘He was in here not an hour ago, he’s as ugly as a mud fence. Hit me for nothing. You going to kill him I hope.’
‘Tell me what happened.’ Carter needed to get moving but thought it better to sit a while, no point pushing him, he’d learn more if he let the youngster have his say.
‘Well, he was in here this afternoon. I heard him telling those others that his horse was lame but he was lying like a rug, the horse was right as rain. I cleaned the stall out and I’m telling you that horse was fine. Anyhow he left the horse here and lit out this afternoon, took one of our mules. He left two grain sacks under the straw in the stall corner, I tried to move them but they was so heavy. I just let them be and cleaned around as best I could. Well, he came back tonight, like I said, and give me a whaling, said I’d been looking to steal from him. I told him straight I hadn’t touched his dadburned sacks. He grumbled and cussed but loaded another mule he’d hired from us this morning and rode out. He went on the horse, he said was lame when it wasn’t. Don’t that beat all?’
Carter leaned forward and put his hands on his knees.
‘You know what, Floyd, I reckon that feller’s cleverer than he looks. Him and his gang shot up your town today and stole a pile of gold. Before they ran off, he hid the gold in your livery and came back tonight to collect it. I bet he double crossed the rest of the gang, they all thought they was toting the gold when they rode out just like everyone else did. The rest of them’s dead now anyway so he’s got the gold to himself.’
‘You mean those bags he hid in the stall were full of gold?’ Floyd said and whistled.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Carter. ‘I hear they killed more than seventeen people and stole over $75,000 worth of gold today. Men like that deserve to die so that the rest of us can get on with our lives.’ He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and when he opened them again he said, ‘They killed my partner this morning.’
He grunted as he stood and pushed his hand against his wound. ‘Shot me in the back. Look, I’d best get moving, Floyd. I’m not a man who looks for trouble but I fight when I have to fight and kill when I have to kill. I killed two men today and like as killed a third. I hope to kill another one yet. I’m going to find the man with the scarred face and make him pay. After that I hope to get a little peace, I reckon by then I won’t owe nobody nothing.’
Floyd led his horse over and said in wonder, ‘Seventy-five thousand dollars.’
Carter raised a finger.
‘Seventeen dead, son, that’s what we should remember first.’
They both turned when they heard the scrape of boots on the livery floor and a man in his fifties stood silhouetted in the doorway. He shone with sweat, he wiped his face with an old shirt. He had a long narrow face with a high forehead and thinning dark hair. He wore strap overalls but no shirt because of the heat from the blacksmith forge, his muscles on his arms looked stretched and stringy with age. The sweat clung to his body like a coat of cream. He nodded towards Carter.
‘Evening. I’m Floyd’s grandpa, Bill Kindersley, but everyone calls me Grandpa. I heard what you said. I got back in not long ago, I’ve been helping folk bury their dead. It’s hard to believe they could have done what they did. Did you say some of the killers are dead?’
‘They are that, I shot two of them myself. The riders from here killed another and strung a fourth up.’
Grandpa Kindersley lit up a pipe, holding a match to the bowl until the smoke wreathed his head. He coughed and his lungs crackled with phlegm. He walked across to his grandson Floyd and put an arm around his shoulders and said to Carter, ‘You be right careful, mister, he’ll kill you and think nothing of it, we’ve seen what him and his kind can do. They bring a bit of darkness with them wherever they go.’
Carter had nothing to say, it did not matter what anyone said to him; he intended to go after Mooney even if he had to ride into Hell.
He mounted up, stretched forward and patted the horse’s strong neck, pushed his hat up on his brow with his fingers and said, ‘Which way did he go, Floyd?’
Floyd pointed.
‘East. The horse and mule need at least five gallons of water a day each so he’ll have to get to the east fork of the Illinois River by morning. Then he’ll have to stay with the river until he gets to Takilma. Leastways that’s what I done told him when he left.’
‘Floyd, I bet you’re the smartest huckleberry in this here territory. Have you told anyone else what you know?’
Floyd studied Carter and liked him, his calmness was part of it but there was something else, he just knew when he set his mind to anything he’d get it done.
‘No, sir, I’ve only told you, he threatened to come back and get me proper if I said anything so I kept quiet. But I’ve told you because I reckon if you’re on his tail then he ain’t coming back.’
CHAPTER 11
Carter headed east. His shadow stretched before him, his silhouette haloed with the sun’s last red light. He rode on through the dusk as single stars appeared and glittered in a grey sky. Carter felt angry and impatient but he went at the same steady canter, always on the lookout, checking his back trail and his eyes sweeping the land. The night closed in and took the colour out of everything, matching his dark mood. The scent of the trees strengthened with the darkness.
Later he passed into a trough of land, the sides thick with trees that thinned as the trail climbed to the ridge, from there the land opened up and fell away in a wide sweep. The trail sloped downwards, steeply at first but flattened out into a jumble of rocks scattered with red cedar trees and clumps of spruce.
His horse raised his head and snorted. Carter wondered if he had smelt water so he reined him in and stood still, staring into the night, listening. He opened his mouth to hear better and as he breathed in, he caught the faint aroma of coffee boiling and pork frying.
The smell took him back to a memory from four years ago that he recalled
as clearly as yesterday. It had been early morning, he paddled his canoe up a small creek to take in some traps, rounded a bend and through the mist he saw over thirty Tolowa Indians lining both banks. They dragged him out of the water and took him out onto the prairie. An old warrior told him that they would give him a head start then try and run him down before he got to the Wenaha River. If they caught him they would kill him. Cactus and bunch grass covered the plain that stretched away in front of them as featureless as a rolling ocean.
Carter ran for his life straight across the open prairie, he heard the warriors’ whoop and knew the chase was on. He reckoned he ran over three miles before he dared to glance back and to his surprise, he saw that he ran well ahead of them, with the exception of one young brave who raced along with a spear not more than a hundred yards behind him. Carter hurried on, he adjusted his pace to a steady lope that eased his ragged breathing and the fire in his lungs. He ran to within a mile of the river before he heard footsteps closing in. He took a quick look over his shoulder and saw the young Tolowa just behind him, a flume of dust showed that the others were still some way back.
Carter stopped suddenly and turned. He caught the youngster by surprise, and he stumbled and tried to throw his spear but Carter lunged at him, clipped him with a punch on the side of the jaw that rattled his head and he went down and out like a light. He looked so young that Carter could not kill him, instead he broke the spear across his knee, laid the two halves across the youngster’s chest and ran on with the other Indians howling and shouting behind him. He made it to the shelter of a heavy thicket of bigleaf maple along the edge of the river. The water ran high on the green sloping banks, he plunged in and the strong current swept him away and left the Indians watching in disbelief. He dragged himself out ten miles lower down, alone in the wilderness without a weapon or horse. It took him two days to walk to the nearest trading post, he arrived sunburned and starving. As he staggered in, the aroma of coffee and frying bacon rushed up to meet him, the smell seemed to grab his face, squeeze his nose and throat and he almost cried out with joy.
So he knew coffee and pork when he smelt it, no matter how faint the scent of it.
Right, he thought, it might not be Mooney but I’ll go in expecting him. The breeze is coming up the trail so he’s down in those trees, at least that’s where I’d camp, the trees and rocks will hide the light from the fire. Mind you, I wouldn’t risk a fire or cooking but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t.
Carter led his horse off the trail, hobbled him and moved down the hill. He stood straining his eyes trying to see through the dark shadows cast by a thick screen of trees, but whatever secrets they hid they kept to themselves. He edged through the timber, his carbine in his hand. Walking with care he moved with the breeze, like the wind breathing through the undergrowth. He saw the fire like an orange hole burned in the darkness. Then he saw Mooney next to it, he felt sure it was him even in the poor light. He sat by a deep fire pit and as Carter watched, he tossed a rotted hunk of ponderosa on the fire. He leaned back from the flames and heat as a shower of sparks blew upwards. The firelight lit the side of Mooney’s face, streaked his skin red and made his eye a dark hollow. The glow of the fire threw tall shadows on the rocks next to him.
Carter brought his rifle to his shoulder, he curled his finger round the trigger and willed himself to pull it but could not find it himself to shoot a man in the back, even someone like Mooney, even while his anger screamed at him to do it. Instead he said, ‘I’ll kill you if you move, put your hands high and do it now or I’ll pull the trigger.’
He pulled the hammer back. Mooney raised his hands and rested them on his hat. He turned slightly towards the sound of the voice but all he could see was deep black shadow as the man moved towards him. The moonlight silvered the barrel of his rifle and his dark figure emerged, walking with a calm confidence. He finally appeared out of the inky shadows into the light of the fire and Mooney looked into his burning eyes.
Carter said, ‘Use your fingertips and toss both guns away from you, left hand first, stay sitting while you do it.’ The guns landed with dusty thuds.
Mooney said, ‘Right, mister, I done what you asked, now how about telling me what the hell is going on and hurry up about it, my food’s getting cold.’
‘Remember me?’ said Carter. Mooney looked hard at Carter but swung his head back towards the fire.
‘Nope,’ he said.
‘You just don’t care, do you? You don’t give two nothings about shooting anyone.’
Mooney glanced back over his shoulder.
‘Killing’s what I do.’
‘You hit my claim this morning, don’t you remember killing a man and shooting another in the back?’
‘You don’t say. You must be the one I shot in the back then,’ said Mooney.
Carter felt furious, he watched Mooney’s face for some emotion but he might as well have been looking at a boulder.
Mooney said, ‘Stop fooling around, will you? If you was going to shoot me you’d have done it by now.’
His words hurt like shards of glass in Carter’s mind because he knew they were true. He rushed forward and rammed his rifle butt as hard as he could into Mooney’s thick neck and Mooney slumped sideways. Carter stumbled, spots swam before his eyes and his head felt as light as a balloon. The floor rushed towards him and he blacked out as exhaustion, hunger and blood loss from the wound in his back drained the strength out of him.
When Carter woke up and opened his eyes, he could smell dirt and wood smoke, the only sound the crackle of the fire next to him. He sat up, Mooney still lay unconscious by his side. Carter lurched to his feet and checked the hammer lock on his rifle was not clogged, then he set it down and poured a coffee from the pot on the fire embers. He found the plate with Mooney’s food on it, the fat congealed in a thick layer and the cold bacon stuck to the plate. He picked a hunk of bread up off the ground and brushed the dirt off on his shirt. He pulled the bacon out with his fingers and ate it quickly then he scooped the cold fat up with the dry bread and crammed it in his mouth, wiped his fingers down his shirt and swilled the food down with the hot black coffee. As he drank a second coffee, he watched the sky lighten with the blue glow of the early dawn as the last stars shimmered and faded above him. Mooney stirred, rolled on his back and grunted as he sat up.
‘Nobody move,’ said a voice. Five men walked in holding rifles at their hips, one of them whistled and two horsemen cantered their horses in.
‘You boys been sleeping like you ain’t got a care in the world, we got here just before first light and watched you,’ said one of the men.
The two horsemen were Horace Crick, the owner of the assay office and the red-headed man who worked for him, Melvin Priddy. Carter recognized one of the riflemen on foot as the big vigilante Don Plunkett who helped hang Cooper the day before.
Melvin Priddy dismounted, walked across to Mooney, stood in front of him with his hands on his hips and said, ‘You’re Dave Mooney.’
‘And you’re as ugly as a burnt boot,’ said Mooney.
Priddy turned to one of the men and said, ‘Is this the man you saw at the bottom of the hill at O’Brien, him that said he’d shot one of the outlaws and left you to deliver the body?’
‘That’s him all right. He tried to hide the scar but you don’t see a face like that and forget it.’
Mooney smiled.
Horace Crick dug his heels into his horse’s stomach and walked it across the clearing. His pot belly rolled with the horse’s movements, he looked like a sack of potatoes. He came out from the settlement when the vigilantes brought the bodies in and told him they could not find the gold. His florid face looked fit to burst.
‘My name is Horace Crick, you stole my gold.’
Carter was not the only one to take an instant dislike to Crick. Everyone sensed there was something about him that was hard to like but it was difficult to say what it was. Folk did not think about it, they just understood that they could
not stand him. Crick accepted their hostility, he put it down to jealousy – he was rich and they were not. He always reckoned there was more to life than being happy anyway.
Crick said, ‘I want my gold back, I don’t like it when folk steal from me.’
‘I didn’t ask you to like it,’ said Mooney. His eyes looked savage and aggressive but held no fear.
Crick kept his gaze fixed on Mooney’s face, scratched his moustache and said,
‘We’ve been looking for you. The other men in your gang are dead, I expect you know that. We searched the hill where we killed them but couldn’t find the gold. My guess is that you ran off with it or hid it somewhere along the way. We rode all night looking for you.’ Crick looked at Eddie Carter like he was something off the bottom of a hog trough and said to him, ‘We didn’t realize there were two of you, I guess that would explain why we couldn’t find the gold. I figure that you had it all along.’
Carter looked at him and raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
‘Now hold on a minute, mister, I ain’t with him. I’m Eddie Carter. Fact is it was me that caught him. I’ve been chasing him since yesterday when they killed my partner down in Patrick Creek and he shot me in the back.’
Melvin Priddy snorted and stepped forward.
‘That don’t seem likely, it looked to us like you were set here eating and drinking coffee like old friends. You cain’t expect us to swallow that story. You’re in it with him, that’s obvious. Maybe you are from Patrick Creek but that sure would explain a lot. See, that’s the trouble with you California boys, you think we’re all born stupid up here in Oregon.’
Carter frowned, shook his head and said, ‘I was born in Wheatland, Yamhill County, Oregon, about 250 miles north of here.’
‘Yes, I bet you was. California folk are all liars as well, we all know that for a goddamn fact.’
Carter pulled up his shirt and showed them the blood stained bandage around his waist.
