by E. R. Slade
Jeremy fingered his pistol, still cocked and aimed at Blue. Blue turned implacable cold eyes on him. Though Jeremy was the one holding the gun he felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly it was easy to believe that Blue had killed men in fair-draw fights.
“You don’t take us to the gold, you’ll get to learn how to dance,” Jeremy said, but Blue just stared at him, until Jeremy finally had to look away.
“You’d better take us seriously,” Leanda warned Blue. “Jeremy’s from Texas. He’s killed half a dozen men. He doesn’t bother much about your precious honor, either. You don’t want to fool with him. I’ve seen you and I’ve seen him, and believe me, he’s faster. That’s why he’s here and why I promised him a share.”
Blue was still looking at Jeremy, a faint smile beginning to play around his mouth. “That so,” he said. “Far as I’m concerned, Texans is Texans and I can shoot four or five at a time, if I have to.”
“Not without a gun,” Leanda pointed out.
“If you want to shoot an unarmed man, then go ahead,” Blue said to Jeremy.
“I don’t have all night,” Jeremy said, trying hard to make it menacing, but the humor in Blue’s eyes seemed to mock every word.
“Well?” said Blue, at length, when Jeremy had done nothing.
Jeremy, looking over the sights at Blue’s chest, was getting hotter and hotter up his neck and around his ears. He could feel Leanda’s eyes on him as well as Blue’s and it only made things worse. He didn’t know what more to do.
“Shoot him, Jeremy,” Leanda said, and the coldness in her tone startled him. She sounded as though she meant it. “Go on, do it. We know the gold’s around here somewhere. If he won’t cooperate we’ll just deal him out. All the more for us.”
Blue’s face went pale. “Oh, don’t talk that way,” he said. “You know you don’t really mean that.” To Jeremy he said, “She doesn’t, really she doesn’t. She’s just mad.”
“I’m mad all right,” Leanda said. “I’m mad I ever let myself think I cared anything about you. Do it, Jeremy. Quickly. Get it over with.”
Jeremy was sweating profusely by this time. He hadn’t come here to kill anybody, just get the gold. And the more Leanda talked the less he liked her. He wanted time to think things out for himself, privately.
He lowered the gun. His hand shook—he couldn’t help it.
“Jeremy!” said Leanda.
“I’m thinkin’, why don’t we just tie him up?” Jeremy said. “What’s the point of leaving a murder behind for somebody to be after us about?”
“I’m telling you to kill him, Jeremy. That’s what I’m paying you for. Just do it. Now.”
Blue was getting sort of gray colored. He was moaning, “Oh, don’t say such things, Leanda, just don’t say such things,” over and over, turning his head from side to side, blinking his eyes closed for long moments at a time. He seemed hardly aware of Jeremy.
Jeremy stood up, finding his legs were weak. He braced against the table. “I got nothing to do with murder,” he said, and put his pistol away. “I’ll be outside,” he added, and made shakily for the door.
Chapter Nineteen
“Jeremy!” said Leanda, sounding almost panicky. But Jeremy gained the door and went out.
The relief of breathing cool night air, feeling it dry his sweat and take away the strain, was even greater than he had imagined it would be. He crossed the clearing and automatically went to check on the horses in the little meadow several hundred yards downhill from the cabin. They were all there, grazing peacefully. Still feeling shaky, Jeremy leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched them, trying to sort out his thoughts.
Should he just leave? He thought of Tyler and Hart lying dead, back shot, and he pulled out the locket, peered at it by starlight. Until now the question of whether Leanda had killed them hadn’t seemed very pressing.
He should leave. And try to find an honest lawman.
But he remained propped against the tree, jaw beginning to jut. He’d put up with a good deal to come this far, and Tyler and Hart had figured in some of the worst moments. What did he really owe them? In fact, did he owe anything to anybody connected with this business?
He didn’t.
So why should he leave behind his share of the gold?
There had been no shots from the cabin, and both Cork and Leanda wore gun belts. If she had really wanted to kill Blue she could have by now. It was just a lover’s quarrel, that was all and ...
He heard a strange, wild, cackling sort of noise and turned his head to listen. It was a sound to make the flesh crawl. He put his hand on his pistol for reassurance, though the sound was some distance off to the north along the mountainside.
Then he realized it was Cork laughing, and he relaxed a bit. The laughing went on and on—what was the matter with the old buzzard?
Jeremy finally went to see, something about that laughter drawing him like a magnet, filling his mind with half-formed thoughts.
The first thing he ran across was a second meadow with six mules grazing, their harnesses hanging on a series of sawed off tree limbs. Jeremy paused, the sight of all that mule power clarifying the half-formed thoughts into a notion that Cork’s cackling meant he’d found something. Jeremy hurried on.
A few minutes later he found Cork sitting on the ground with his back to the stout, wide-tired, rear wheel of a small but heavily built wagon, swigging freely from a bottle he’d mysteriously managed to come by. When he saw Jeremy he jerked his thumb over his shoulder and grinned.
A heavy tarp was tied down over the load in the wagon, and Jeremy pressed open a peephole, could see nothing in the dark. He reached in: crates. When he tried to joggle one it wouldn’t budge, as though it were bolted down.
Something came over Jeremy then which he was ever afterward ashamed of. He could think only of the gold, the mules, and of his opportunity. Here it was, just waiting for him to drive it away! His mind began to work too fast.
Cork was looking at him keenly, eyes glimmering in the starlight. He was still laughing, but silently now.
“Where’s Leanda and Blue?” Jeremy asked.
“Cabin,” said Cork. “Arguin’.”
“I didn’t think any shots had been fired. I don’t see no reason to be shooting anybody, do you? We got the gold. We ought to just hitch up those mules and drive away.”
Cork hee-heed and took another swig. “Sounds like a good plan to me,” he said wetly. “You hitch ’em up and I’ll go git Leanda.”
Jeremy didn’t really want to have to deal with Leanda anymore. Wheels in Jeremy’s mind seemed to turn with lightning speed and a facility unmatched previously—except the few times he’d had too much to drink.
“Why don’t you give me a hand with the harnesses first,” he said to Cork. “I never rigged six at once before, let alone in the dark.” Which happened to be a lie, though it slipped out easily and naturally. He’d worked for a mining company not three months ago where rigging and driving six or eight mules had been his job.
Cork put back another slug of his whiskey, wiped his arm across his mouth and staggered to his feet. “I’ve rigged all kinda teams in my time,” he said. “Nothin’ to it.”
He tried to walk along with Jeremy toward the meadow full of mules, but seemed to be making hard work of it.
“Say,” he said, stopping braced against a tree. “You kin harness ’em just as well as I can. You bring ’em along here and then I’ll rig ’em. My ol’ legs is gittin’ kinda unstiddy.”
“All right,” Jeremy said, impatient to get moving. The fact that whiskey of the most overpowering kind did not usually bother Cork’s ability to navigate did not sink in at this point. Jeremy hurried and harnessed all the mules, hung the lines over the hames of the lead animal, and led them through the woods to the wagon.
Cork was nowhere to be found. He’d been silent since Jeremy had left him leaning against the tree. Jeremy spent only a minute or two looking for him, called to him only
once or twice in a not-very-loud voice, and when these efforts turned up no evidence of Cork, Jeremy went right to work hooking up the mules to the wagon. Since he’d had plenty of practice and had always had a way with all kinds of stock anyhow, it didn’t take very long. He climbed onto the wagon seat and picked up the reins.
If Cork had gone to get Leanda they should have easily been here by now.
“They can catch up if they want to,” Jeremy said aloud, meaning it was all right with him if they didn’t. “Get up,” he said to the mules.
A minute later the wagon was jolting down the ruts of the trail. It was clearly heavy, creaking ominously at every strain, but the mules didn’t seem to be having much trouble. Of course, it was downhill.
Jeremy had not really considered the possibility that he might run into anybody—until now. Sitting on a load of gold made him jumpy. Suppose Watson was on their trail? Suppose he’d found these ruts? And was riding toward him right now, maybe just around the next turn? In the woods and the dark it was hard to see much beyond the lead pair of mules.
Jeremy took the reins all in one hand, pulled out his pistol thinking it might be handier lying on the seat beside him. But the jouncing and swaying of the wagon put the pistol in constant motion and threatened to jounce it right off the seat entirely, so he put it back in the holster.
Away off ahead somewhere he saw a flicker of light. His heart jammed up his throat like it was trying to jump right out of him and run away. He pulled up, listened.
The wind was the wrong way for him—the right way for whoever was down there.
He climbed shakily off the wagon seat, gun in hand, and went as quietly as he could down to the fire. There were a number of men beyond it in a group. Two of them were Courtland and Stevens. Jeremy recognized the Mexicans, the gunslinger, and several others. They were gathered around something on the ground. He heard low voices, then a muffled, strangled noise, saw movement through the legs of the men. Jeremy got a glimpse of the face. Even with the gag on the face was recognizable: Watson.
Trying not to even breathe, Jeremy backed away. Then when he thought it safe, he ran for the wagon, climbed up, sat there shaky and undecided.
What he should do was turn around—if he could find a place—and hope to get back to the cabin undetected, warn the others of the danger. That was what he should do. Not having any idea Courtland was this close they’d be sitting ducks. And without the gold to give up for their lives they might well be tortured to death.
Jeremy turned to look back at the canvas cover over the crates. Under there was the gold he’d been after ever since he left Texas. He’d been beaten up, threatened, tricked, jailed, threatened some more, come near being tortured, and finally been ordered to shoot an unarmed man point blank.
Did anybody else give him consideration? No. Why should he give them any? Why shouldn’t he do what anybody else would and just take the stuff? Or at least try. Getting past that passel of gunmen alive could take some doing. On the other hand, he might not get turned around undetected anyway. It was dark, after all, and he’d be a small, moving target.
The urge Jeremy felt was to call to the team, lay into them with the whip, and go blazing down the trail. But he heard a muffled scream from below and sat irresolute.
A twig snapped, followed by the clicking of a cocking weapon. Jeremy could see nothing. He was reaching for his pistol when whoever it was fired. Jeremy fired back blindly. The mules starting, he dropped the pistol into the boot and grabbed the reins. They were only a little spooked and Jeremy could have stopped them, but he could see no use in that, so gave them the leather, and they began to run, the wagon lurching all over the rough track. The hill became a little steeper, and Jeremy tried to brake the wagon to keep it off the heels of the wheel team; the brake seemed to be broken. The mules were soon aware the wagon was chasing them, and they stretched out in a dead run to try to stay ahead of it. Jeremy could sense that the wheel team was spooked.
He had not gotten quite abreast of the fire when the shooting started in earnest. Hot singing lead spattered into the leaves overhead, chunked into the oak of the wagon, whistled close to his ears. Jeremy groped for the pistol loose in the boot, finally found it. Against the fire he saw shapes moving, running, gun barrels. The blackness elsewhere was lit up with muzzle flashes like big fireflies.
Jeremy looped the reins over the post at the corner of the boot and against all good sense stood up. He was mad.
“Try some o’ this,” he yelled, and the Colt Peacemaker jumped in his hand. The wagon swayed under him and he couldn’t see anything much to shoot at, but neither could they, fortunately. Bullets whizzed back and forth without doing much damage.
Then Jeremy’s pistol was empty and he sat down to reload, hands shaking with rage. He wasn’t even sure what he was mad at, exactly, but he was ready to shoot every man jack of them and take this load of gold to Texas.
The campfire dropped behind; the shooting died out. Jeremy finished reloading, and then took the reins. The track was through solid timber and the mules had to stay full out to keep ahead of the wagon.
Shortly the shooting began again; horsemen were catching up. Jeremy turned and shot at them randomly, apparently had one lucky shot because a horse went down and one or more of the others pitched into a heap on the ground as a result. But the rest came on shooting hot and heavy, drawing closer. Jeremy had an empty pistol very quickly and turned to take the reins again.
The trail got steeper. He could see nothing much beyond the lead team, so had to trust them to follow the track. But with it getting steeper the wheel team kept clipping their heels on the evener. Jeremy began to worry about what might happen if one of them went down.
The hail of bullets from behind was getting thicker. A slug tore a hole in the seat back just under his left elbow.
Something about the darkness ahead changed. It seemed purer, cleaner, fresher—and smoother.
There was nothing at all below.
Chapter Twenty
Jeremy woke cold. When he tried to move, all his muscles ached. Struggling to sit up, he realized he was wet—and then he remembered.
Remembered how hard the water had been when he hit it, as though it were solid rock instead of liquid. Yet the next moment he’d been deep under, still going down and down, the thrashing of the mules a roar in his ears. He never hit bottom before finally starting to go back up toward the surface. It seemed forever, and he had to take a breath, did so involuntarily and was panicked by the water coming in. He choked, sputtered, was sure he was done for, but then broke the surface, coughed up water, got another mouthful when a wavelet covered his face, spit it out, gasped for breath, felt something churning next to him, got a glimpse of the wild eye of one of the mules.
He grabbed the mule’s mane and hung on, trying to keep his legs out of the way of the flailing forefeet. The mule attempted to shake him off, but Jeremy couldn’t swim, so he hung on with everything he had, still coughing, gasping, desperate to get the water out of his lungs.
Reliving the feel of that water in his windpipe and down his throat, Jeremy retched until he was shaking and weak. If it hadn’t been for the mule he’d have died. His fists tightened involuntarily as he recalled the way the coarse mane had torn through his hands when the animal lunged up out of the water onto the shore.
He peered out through the aspens at the early morning sun on the face of the cliff, the dark blue of the water ruffled by a light wind. All was peaceful now. But out there he had come within a hair’s breadth of his life.
He thought again of the mule, feeling like crying, and looked around for it, saw only woods. He shifted so he could prop himself against a tree and tried to marshal his thoughts. He failed and tears rolled down.
After several minutes he came out of it, and as he wiped at his wet face with his cold wet sleeve he felt that now all he wanted was to do the right thing. He could see clearly what a fool he’d been and how lucky he was to have survived the fall and he heartil
y wanted to turn over a new leaf and change his ways and never take such foolish chances again.
He got shakily to his feet and tried to track the mule, but lost the trail on some rocks and had to give it up. Feeling steadier now, he climbed to the top of the cliff, wondering what had become of Courtland and his men, found their tracks went back up the trail. He also discovered something else: The trail made a right angle turn at the cliff top, and somebody had dropped a large tree right across it. The mules had had no place else to go but over the edge. Looked like Courtland had set a trap.
But it didn’t make much sense. Why would Courtland want to dump the wagon in the lake where he’d likely lose it and most of the mules and make himself a lot of work getting the gold off the bottom? It wasn’t as though he lacked the firepower to take possession of the wagon once he found it.
Jeremy couldn’t think of any answer to this question, but he didn’t spend too much time trying. He was in too much of a sweat to talk to Blue. Wanted to tell him where the gold was and offer to help him figure out a way to recover it and take it to charity.
The odd thing was that Courtland didn’t have his men busy trying to get the gold out of the lake. Or was he more interested in Leanda than the gold? Were they all camped at the cabin right now?
Thinking of that and of its implications, Jeremy put his hand to his holster automatically—and came to a dead stop with a sickening feeling: no gun. Just the empty holster. At the bottom of the lake, of course. The way he’d hit the water it was a wonder the holster was still with him.
Being alone in the mountains without any weapon at all was dangerous. And at the moment he was afoot, too.
“This ain’t good,” he muttered, and hurried up the trail at almost a run.
From time to time he paused to listen, but heard no voices, no horses, nothing but the breeze beginning to blow lightly overhead. The tracks of Courtland’s horses went on before him up the trail, turned into the place they’d camped. Watson’s body lay bloodily next to the charred embers of a burned-out fire. Jeremy looked quickly away but the image remained. Stevens had gotten his revenge and then some.
