Destined to Die

by George G. Gilman

  All guns were back in their boots and holsters now.

  The woman was placated and two of the men who had been in the Gershels’ group went up on to the stoop of the house. For a moment or so they were beyond Barnaby Gold’s range of vision. Then they backed into sight again. In stooped attitudes, each one holding the ankle of a bullet-riddled, blood-trailing corpse.

  ‘Pa, it ain’t him!’ Jesse Gershel shrieked.

  The sniper was face-down when he was dragged to the Gershels. Hatless. Enough of his hair and clothing not splashed by blood to show that both were the wrong colour.

  ‘That’s what I was tryin’ to tell you!’ the woman screamed, wrenching free of the man who helped her to her feet. ‘You trigger-happy, crazy fools! He come here to tell you! The man you want got loose from Martha! Killed JL Larkin! Maybe even killed Martha and the girl as well!’

  ‘Frig it, we seen the horse and figured you was runnin’ scared from that guy, Gertrude!’ one of the sniper’s killers yelled.

  ‘You fools never do think anythin’ right!’ the woman countered. ‘Get back on your horses and ride for the Gershel place! See if Martha and the Engel girl have come to harm!’

  By the time the men streamed through the natural arch and galloped their mounts south down the trail, Barnaby Gold and his gelding were concealed in the wooded gully.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE woman had been shaken and then hard-slapped out of her hysteria by the man who went to her. Then there had been some more heated exchanges. But low voiced, so that the black-clad man at the top of the slope could not hear what was being said. Part of the talk had seemed to be about whether or not somebody should stay with the woman. But nobody did. A blanket was brought from the house to drape the blood-run corpse where it lay. Then, as Barnaby Gold led his gelding deep into the gully, all the men rode up toward the arch.

  Men spanning an age group from twenty to fifty. Most attired in bib aprons over sweat-stained shirts. Homesteaders, all of them. Not expert horsemen and doubtless unused to firing their weapons in rage. Grim-faced and angry. Some looking a little sick at having been involved in the gunning down of the man in front of the Wolfe house. Will and Jesse Gershel almost haggard with anxiety about the fate of a wife and mother.

  Ordinary, hard-working men visited by trouble that was snowballing as decent and honest as most probably, just as John Lloyd Larkin had claimed. Almost in the same breath as he had said he was not prepared to tell the truth unless he was asked.

  Then, when they had ridden out of sight beyond the high ground, Barnaby Gold led his horse out of the gully and mounted him: started to ride down the slope away from the arch. A man like few others. Disliking crowds wanting no part of anything at which he did not excel Totally single-minded in achieving his aims, to the paradoxical extent of allowing himself to be far side-tracked if anything threatened to keep him from his purpose.

  He rode toward the house with the sawn-off Murcott unhooked from the rigging ring. The safety catch off and the twin barrels resting across the saddle horn. His approach was heard, but he was not seen until he rode around the corner of the house and along the front.

  When the door banged open and the woman who had been hysterical a minute or so earlier stood on the threshold. A tall, thin, gaunt-faced woman of fifty or so. With thinning grey hair, a sallow complexion and a soured mouth-line. Wearing a shapeless grey dress of denim that hung straight from her narrow shoulders to her laced black shoes.

  She was holding a heavy, long-barrel Le Mat revolver with a hanging ring in the base of the butt, visible beneath the heels of the two hands in which she gripped it. She tracked his slow progress with the seven inch barrel and then held a rock-steady aim on him when he turned the horse to face her and reined him in.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Wolfe.’ He accompanied the greeting with the personable smile.

  It did nothing to shift the grimness from her eyes and the set of her mouth.

  ‘You’re him, ain’t you?’

  ‘You make that him sound as if it’s in capital letters. As though you were speaking of God.’

  ‘It’s the Devil prefers black. And from what I’ve heard you’ve done, you could be him. Let that shotgun go,’

  ‘No lady.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, lady. Not until you put away that revolver. I don’t want to kill anybody, and I don’t think you do, either.’

  ‘I could plug you where you sit on that horse, young feller!’

  ‘If you’re that good with a gun that big, do it, Mrs Wolfe. But if you miss, I’ll guarantee I’ll have to shovel you into your own grave.’

  The woman gasped, stared fixedly into the unblinking green eyes of the man astride the horse: knew it was no idle threat. Then admitted her lack of confidence by allowing the barrel of the Le Mat to sag toward the stoop boarding.

  ‘What do you want here?’

  He hooked the shotgun on the rigging ring and swung down from the saddle. Without shifting his gaze from her and with his left hand in the holed pocket of his frock coat.

  ‘Check on the deceased.’

  She leaned against the doorframe and now held the revolver one-handed. ‘They thought he was you.’

  ‘What I thought, Mrs Wolfe.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  He nodded. And turned his back on her to go to where the dead man lay beneath the blanket.

  ‘They saw that black horse of his there and they come runnin’. I come outta the house to tell them it wasn’t your horse. But they said they didn’t hear me, what with the noise of the water. He must’ve figured that and he come out to show himself. But they said they was so scared of what might’ve happened and so mad at you, they just started to fire.’

  Gertrude Wolfe gasped again. And let the revolver clatter to the stoop to put both hands up to her face. Then turned to rush into the house.

  Barnaby Gold could hear the wet sounds of her vomiting as, after he had pulled off the blanket, he rolled the corpse on to his back. The exit holes in his back showed he had been hit by two rifle bullets. But the entry wounds at the front were masked by the pepper shot that had ripped through his pants and shirt to tear the flesh from the bones at throat, chest, belly and thighs. His face was not hit - merely splashed with now-congealed blood.

  If he had carried anything in his shirt pockets, it had been shredded. One side pocket of his pants was empty. In the other was a comb and thirty-five cents. In his only hip pocket, a five dollar bill and a piece of paper folded into quarter-size.

  Gold remained in a crouch beside the body as he unfolded the paper: saw it was a telegraph form with a message scrawled in pencil. But before he could read it he heard a tread on the stoop. Saw Mrs Wolfe was on the threshold again, so draped the shot-shattered body and stood up.

  The woman’s face had a freshly-washed look. She asked dully: ‘You robbin’ him?’

  ‘No, lady,’

  The telegraph message read: CLINTON DAVIS RIVERSIDE HOTEL BACALL ARIZ LIKELY GOLD STRIKE NEAR YOU SOON STOP ARKIN MISSED GETTING RICH CHANNON EL PASO TEXAS.

  He refolded the paper and held it up before putting it into a pocket of his frock coat. Said: ‘Just a fair exchange, Mrs Wolfe. I gave him a message. Now I’ve got his.’

  ‘He asked about you. Before he come back here to the place.’

  Barnaby Gold had gone to his horse. Now slid from the centre of the bedroll, lashed on behind the saddle, three lengths of a pole. One with a triangular shovel piece on an end.

  ‘Anywhere around here you don’t want him buried, lady?’

  There were short lengths of threaded metal protruding from the ends of two of the poles. He began to screw these into the appropriate receiving holes to form a long-handled shovel.

  ‘Dear God in Heaven, he said you used to be an undertaker,’ the woman gasped.

  ‘Nowadays just bury my own dead. Over on the river bank be okay? You’re not likely to plough the ground there.’

  She made no response and he
went to the spot indicated: began to dig into the moist, easy-to-work earth.

  ‘Your dead?’

  This after more than a minute. During which time she came down off the stoop and across to where he was digging.

  ‘It might help your menfolk to know he would have died anyway, Mrs Wolfe. Him or me. If I’d known who he was at Larkin’s place, I’d have killed him then.’

  There was a pause between each sentence in which he shovelled earth from the hole to a heap. He could sense her looking at him intently. Eventually, she said: ‘I didn’t like him when he first showed up here. Scared me as much as you did. His comin’ like you, while my Festus was off the place.’

  The erstwhile undertaker practising his former trade said nothing.

  ‘Asked if a man named Barnaby Gold had been along the river. When I told him I’d never heard of you, he described you perfect. Said how you used to be a mortician and still looked like one.’

  The grave was being dug quickly, Gold aware that Festus Wolfe might have second thoughts about leaving his wife after Larkin’s body was found, come riding back under the arch and down the slope.

  ‘Course, I knew he was talkin’ about the very same man Will Gershel said he and Jesse had caught. But even if I hadn’t liked the looked of this here feller, I wouldn’t have said nothin’ about that. Us mountain folk handle our own trouble. So he rode on south without learnin’ nothin’ from me. And I was like on hot coals waitin’ for the men to get back. Tell them about him.’

  Gold interrupted his chore, but only to run a coat sleeve across his sweat-beaded face: gave no sign that he was even listening to what the woman was saying.

  ‘But he shows up again first. Without them guns he had before. Says as how he run into you while you was quarrellin’ with JL Larkin. How it ended with you shootin’ poor old JL who never harmed a fly. Would have shot him, too, he said. Except you wanted him to give a message to the menfolk. Tell them that if any of them stood in your way from leavin’ this piece of territory, they’d get the same as JL.’

  ‘Appreciate you telling me all that, lady.’

  ‘Guess it’s the truth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘JL ain’t dead?’ There was hope in her tone.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Accident?’

  ‘Clinton Davis was aiming to kill me, but his bullet hit the logger instead.’

  ‘You say! Who’s left alive to back your word?’ she was immediately afraid at having hurled the challenge. But Gold did not even look up at her. And she moderated her tone to ask: ‘Did you have to ... to ... hurt Martha and the Engel girl when you escaped?’

  ‘The girl less than she deserved, the woman not at all.’

  ‘We can give thanks to God for that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She began to cast anxious glances up toward the arch of rock.

  ‘I wish you would leave that and go away, young feller.’

  Two more shovelsful of dirt were moved from the hole to the heap.

  ‘My Festus and maybe some others could be back any time.’

  ‘Reason I’m working so fast, lady.’

  ‘There’ll be shootin’ if that happens. And it ain’t you I’m worried about. Not after you killed poor Mary-Ann and Virgil just hours since them and me and Festus was laughin’ and jokin’ in the house here.’

  Gold was just three and a half feet down and had come up against solid rock. He climbed out of the grave and saw that Gertrude Wolfe was looking at him quizzically.

  ‘There are two people who can tell I didn’t, lady,’ he supplied. ‘But they’ve already told it another way.’

  Gertrude Wolfe watched as he went to the body, carefully wrapped it in the blanket, hefted it up over his shoulder and brought it back to the graveside. Then he stepped down into the hole and lowered the corpse gently to the earth, face-up inside the makeshift shroud. While she witnessed this, then studied him as he shovelled the dirt back into the grave, there was a pensive expression on her thin, work-wearied face.

  Asked: ‘When you’re through with that, you’re goin’ to high-tail it away from this stretch of river, young feller?’

  ‘I never high-tail it anywhere, lady.’

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘So did Mr. Larkin.’

  ‘I can believe it wasn’t you killed him. That feller you’re puttin’ in the ground, God rest his soul, I knew he was no good. Didn’t know how to talk civil to a lady.’

  The body was hidden by dirt now. Gold did not sweat so freely at this easier chore of filling in the grave.

  ‘He had something on his mind.’

  ‘Killin’ you.’ She paused to invite a comment, but none was forthcoming. ‘The whys and wherefores of that ain’t got nothin’ to do with me and I don’t wanna know them.’

  It was a lie. Gertrude Wolfe was deeply intrigued by this black-clad, slow-to-talk and totally unruffled young man, calmly burying a stranger on this peaceful riverside which was liable at any moment to explode with renewed violence. Intrigued by him and . . . something else. A mixture of things. Horrified and yet attracted. Admiring his firmness of resolve and at the same time repelled by his callous lack of emotion. She wanted him to be done and be gone; yet felt a strong desire to know why he was as he was. When she could maybe help him to be different. Such a fine looking young man with that blond hair and green eyes. His body so lithe and strong.

  The life-wearied and time-lined woman made a sound deep in her throat. Of self-anger. Then felt her sallow complexion become flushed when Barnaby Gold finished his chore and turned toward her, as if she feared he had glimpsed in her expression some clue to her disgusting train of thought.

  ‘Festus and me go to bed early,’ she blurted out quickly. ‘Sleep deep with clear consciences. We wouldn’t hear no one ridin’ down the trail in the dead of night. Unless he was makin’ a real racket.’

  Gold was unscrewing the three pieces of the shovel.

  ‘Appreciate the thought, Mrs Wolfe.’

  He started toward his horse to stow the dismantled tool in his bedroll.

  ‘That Joanne Engels a high and mighty miss for her age. Don’t like it that we won’t allow marriage before a person is sixteen. Mary-Ann was only talkin’ about her last night. About how she was sorry she ever let her know that she was only eleven when she got wed to Virgil back east. Said, too, how she didn’t like for the girl to be walkin’ out with that no-good Jesse Gershel.’

  Barnaby Gold had returned to the edge of the river. To hunker down, wash the dirt from his hands and the sweat from his face.

  ‘But you people didn’t leave all the mountain ways behind, lady,’ he said as he came erect, wiped his hands dry on his coat and took out a cheroot.

  ‘We take care of our own, sure enough. Deal with our own troubles. But we ain’t never had none as big as this before.’

  He struck a match on the stock of the Murcott and lit the cheroot before he swung up into the saddle. Saw something akin to sorrow in the dark eyes of the woman. Maybe apology, maybe pity. But in response to his implacable gaze, her feeling turned to anger.

  ‘But you got no call to look so high and mighty about it! Seems to me I never did come across anyone before so set on doin’ things his own way! Least we got rules we abide by because they was made for the good of all of us.’

  ‘Sure, Mrs Wolfe. Where there are people, you have to have rules. I’m just one person. Bye-bye.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  FESTUS Wolfe had brought seven other men down the trail on the Arizona side of the river, but during the remainder of the afternoon, Barnaby Gold rode by only five homesteads. Frame houses and outbuildings amid carefully tended fields of crops.

  A dog barked in one of the barns as he approached and went on by. In the house on another property he heard a baby crying. Once, as he rounded an outcrop of rock, he caught sight of a slim woman with auburn hair. She dashed from the
house, snatched up a boy of about four playing with a toy handcart and rushed back inside with him. The slamming of the door curtailed the child’s tearful protests.

  He rode across the front of each river-facing house with the Murcott resting on the saddle horn. Knowing he was being watched from behind windows that glinted in the sunlight. Aware of the possibility that perhaps not every man had responded to Will Gershel’s call. Or that a woman, more familiar with guns than Gertrude Wolfe, might be driven to blasting at him by some vivid mental image of wholesale slaughter: conjured up by his appearance on the trail.

  But his passing was merely noted. Surreptitiously and fearfully. And he was followed only by the anxious gazes of the watchers for as long as he remained in their sight. Also, there was no sign of the men who had ridden so hard toward the Gershel homestead in the wake of the bloody killing of Clinton Davis.

  Which would have struck most men as odd. But Barnaby Gold gave it no thought. An aroma of cooking food had been mixed in with the smell of woodsmoke curling from the chimney of the last homestead he passed, and thus, after a long period of feeling nothing except for weariness, he began to consider his hunger and how to satisfy it. Decided that the town of Bacall, which could not now be far up the trail, was likely to offer more appetising fare than he carried in his saddlebags. And he smoked another cheroot to help stave off the demands of his stomach for hot food.

  The sun sank to a crimson death beyond the ridges of the Chemehuevi Mountains across the river and, when the short-lived dusk had run its course, he saw lights ahead of him. More glints of yellow through blackness than a mere homestead would merit. A mile away from him and more than two hundred feet above. The river curved to the left but the trail continued due north, rising in a series of short grades with lengths of flat between.

  The street began at the end of an avenue of pinions, was even more clearly defined by a lettered board, two wagon widths long and supported on twenty foot high poles to either side. Moonlight illuminated the legend: BACALL WELCOMES ALL.

  There was just the one street, rising and curving gently toward the left. The best part of half a mile in length. A hundred feet wide beyond the town marker portal. The buildings to either side isolated on their own broad lots. Most of frame construction. A few of stone and, here and there, one which mixed the two materials.