Dead Man Walking

by Derek Rutherford

  ‘You think he’s circled back round?’ Whit said.

  ‘Yep. See that creek – see where Winters is right now?’

  They both looked over to the line of the stream. Winters was low in the gully and would have been easily missed if one hadn’t been looking for him.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Follow it up to the fence. He’ll fit under it, though he might get his knees wet. Then up the hill right to the tree line. That’s where Jackson will be.’

  ‘We going to go up there now?’

  ‘No rush. Winters is struggling already. We’ve plenty of time.’

  ‘Time for a cigarette?’

  ‘Plenty,’ Ellington said. ‘Let’s enjoy the show.’

  They were gaining on him.

  His horse had put her foot in a hole less than two miles away from the lumber yard and, although she was still making a good pace, she wasn’t happy. When he looked back over his shoulder he was delighted to see the vast plume of white smoke rising up into the blue sky, and he was pleased – in a nervous way – to see the small shapes of two riders coming hell for leather after him. But he needed to get further away.

  He pressed his heels into the horse’s flanks and spoke reassuringly to her. She accelerated, but within minutes she was slowing again.

  So he turned off the open trail and rode into the scrubland, where the rocks were higher, and where trees gave him cover. But there weren’t enough trees for him to get lost in. The best he could hope for was to find a place where he could make a stand. There were only two chasers. Discover the right place and he ought to be able to draw them in, get them close enough, and . . . He thought again of the man breaking Rosalie’s fingers.

  Draw them in.

  Get them close enough.

  Yes, that was what he wanted.

  It didn’t really matter how much further he led them away from the camp. They wouldn’t be going back anyway.

  When Jim Jackson had set fire to the log piles and had set off southwards, Adams had said Jackson was no doubt going to circle back round to the high ground. ‘We’ll just keep following him,’ Adams said.

  But then Jackson had accelerated and had kept going south, further away from the camp.

  George Dubois said, ‘It doesn’t look like he’s circling around to me.’

  Adams said. ‘He’s realized he’s being followed.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We keep going. We’ve got him. This fire. The time he’s been spent up here. It’s enough.’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘Enough to warrant whatever we do to him.’

  She was limping now. With every step she took he could sense pain spiking up through her leg and into her shoulder. She was brave and loyal and still she pressed on, galloping as hard as she could. But he knew it was only a matter of time.

  They rode into a wide ravine where rocks rose up steeply on either side. It wasn’t ideal but it was the best he’d seen so far. He rode deeper into the ravine, slowing to a walk and then stopped altogether where two or three large boulders might offer him cover. Behind the boulders he could climb upwards and out of the ravine altogether if needs be.

  He looked back to the entrance of the ravine. There was no sign yet of the two men following him but he knew they must be close.

  He urged his horse forwards about twenty yards and left her standing free outside a second likely-looking hiding place, a natural cave, albeit too low to be perfect. It might confuse them and give him an edge.

  Then he ran back to the three rocks that gave him better cover, pulling the Colt free of his holster as he went.

  It was only when he was hidden behind one of the boulders, peering down the ravine, his face obscured by thick grass that had somehow found a way to grow in the cracks in the rock, that he wondered if he was capable of doing what he was planning.

  The way it would work: the two men would ride into the gully and he would shoot them. But he’d never shot anyone in his life, not like that. Not from a hiding place. It would be akin to shooting a man in the back. It would be murder.

  He couldn’t see the smoke plume from where he stood, but he knew it was still there, hanging in the air, still expanding as the piles of logs burned. And what of Rosalie? Had she made it? Was she up there in the tree line waiting for Leon? And Leon? For all Jim Jackson knew Leon had been sent out on the work-party this very morning. Even if he had attempted to escape, could a man as weak and sick as Leon looked even crawl twenty yards let alone the few hundred he’d need to clear the fence and get all the way up to the tree line?

  No, it was all crazy, too fanciful, too impossible. Jim realized now that what he should have done was to have ridden in there the first or second day when there was just one guard, maybe two, and shot them. Then he could have simply hauled Leon up on the back of the horse and be gone.

  But he hadn’t done that because it would have involved shooting innocent men.

  Yet now he was going to have to do that anyway.

  ‘Except they ain’t innocent,’ he said aloud through gritted teeth, his jawbone hardly moving. He thought of what they had done to Rosalie. One of them anyway. Although, who was to say it was that man that was coming after him?

  It was all too confusing. He breathed out and realized that he was thirsty. His hands were wet, and there was sweat on his forehead and neck, and his shirt was damp across his back. His whole body burned and the rock he was pressed up against had the morning’s heat in it. The rock smelled dry and dusty, and now Jim’s throat hurt and he had no spit when he swallowed. He peered around the other side of the rock and there was his grey, still standing in the middle of the trail, head down now as she ate some grass that she’d found, and he could see his waterskin on the back of the saddle.

  It was too late.

  He heard voices and when he looked back in the other direction they were here, pulling their horses up to a halt as they saw his grey.

  The one in front raised his hand. He had a black beard. The man behind him drew a rifle from a scabbard on his saddle.

  They sat there, horses unmoving, and scanned the trail ahead of them. Jim Jackson could see they were talking to one another but their voices never carried to him. They were too far away for a pistol shot even if he was prepared to kill a man from a hidden position.

  Now the two men climbed off their horses and stood between the horses.

  They walked forwards about ten yards, keeping all that horseflesh between themselves and the sides of the ravine.

  They stopped.

  Jim Jackson could only see their heads. The one with the beard was shaking his head. Now the other man handed Beardy his rifle.

  Beardy raised the rifle.

  Jim pressed himself hard up against the boulder. They can’t have seen me, he thought. He was surely too well hidden.

  He heard the rifle shot and he heard his horse cry out in pain. He looked and his horse was on her side, her head held upwards as she strained and struggled to understand what had just knocked her to the ground. She tried to stand, but her legs were confused. She managed to get halfway up, but then collapsed again, her chest heaving. He could hear her breathing and see the fear in her eyes as she looked back towards him. His left hand was balled into a tight fist and his right was trembling where he held the Colt. He breathed as rapidly as his horse, his body full of anger and sorrow and fear. The horse lay her head on the ground as the effort of fighting the pain became too much. He forced himself to control his own breathing, tried to focus on the moment, but he found himself thinking back to a few minutes earlier when she had been valiantly battling against her own pain to keep carrying him at the speed he wanted her. She’d always been like that. She had a personality of her own, could be obstinate sometimes and would often ignore him when other horses were around – like back in the stables in Austin, or even in the livestock carriage on that train that had brought him to Texas all those days ago – but she had always done her best for him with a dedic
ation that he’d never found in any other horse. These last few days she had covered so many miles and had never once complained. She was looking in his direction and it was a few moments before he realized she was no longer breathing, her eyes wide and white, but very still.

  He turned back to the two men.

  There was now just one man hiding between the horses – Beardy. The second man was scrabbling up the rocks on the opposite side of the gully. He had the rifle back from Beardy now, and was keeping low, working from one boulder to another, looking nervously around, but getting higher and higher all the time.

  Meanwhile, a step at a time, Beardy worked his way deeper into the small canyon.

  Leon Winters crawled beneath the camp fence.

  The wire fence was laid straight across the top of the creek from one bank to another, when whoever had constructed it should really have brought the fence down the banks and cross the creek at water level. The way it was, anyone could crawl beneath it.

  But, Leon figured, why would anyone even try it?

  That’s why whoever had put the fence up hadn’t been very diligent. Under normal circumstances anyone crawling this far would have been spotted way back. Certainly anyone strong enough to make it this far would normally have been out on the cutting gang and when they were back in camp the guards would have been more numerous and more observant.

  But with the fire raging across camp and only the sick men still inside, the circumstances were perfect.

  Except that his strength was failing him. His hands were bleeding where he had pressed down on numerous flints and stones, and the water, what little there was, had soaked through his trousers. Every time he placed his bony knees on the ground he grimaced. His shoulders ached, the midday heat was making him sweat and he had no drinking water. Now he could feel the world starting to spin and he had to lower his head and pause for breath. He conjured up all the terrors of the last dozen years, all the injustices, all the humiliations and the agonies. He thought of Jim Jackson out there, setting all of this up just for him, for Leon. And somehow all of this gave him enough strength to make it another yard. Then one more. But up ahead the slope steepened. The tree line was impossibly far away. And thus the pattern started again, finding inner strength, making one more yard.

  Again and again and again.

  ‘I bet he stinks,’ Webster Ellington said. ‘The way he dropped down beneath the outhouse and now he’s crawled all that way in the hot sun.’

  Whit Gordon said, ‘We going to ride up there now?’

  ‘Yes. I guess it’s time. We take it easy though. Slow and quiet. Jim Jackson’s the one we want. Jackson is up there waiting for him. Soon as the two of them are together we grab them.’

  The bullet smashed into the rock behind Jim Jackson’s head, showering him with stone splinters. He pressed himself hard up against the boulder that shielded him and he heard the man high on the rocks opposite shout ‘There he is! Watch for my shot.’

  A second bullet ploughed into the stone behind him.

  ‘I see him,’ Beardy said.

  Jim Jackson raised his Colt and held it at face level. He took a deep breath, released the air slowly, and then quickly, without aiming, leaned out low and fired a shot towards Beardy.

  The man ducked behind his horse.

  ‘You should come out,’ Beardy called. ‘At least that way you get to stay alive.’

  ‘You shot my horse,’ Jim shouted back.

  ‘Where you’re going, you won’t need a horse.’

  ‘You shot my horse,’ Jim said, quieter this time, as if it was all the reason he needed for anything that might follow.

  Across the trail he heard a scrabbling movement. He risked a quick glance. The man over there was up on the top of the wall of rocks and he was working his way further along the ravine. Soon Jim wouldn’t be able to peer around that side of his boulder for risk of being shot.

  It wasn’t meant to be this way. He’d had visions of out-running them, leading them far enough away that he could lose them and then circle back. Or had he been secretly hoping for a confrontation? Either way, he hadn’t thought it through. He was trapped and, although he’d back himself to kill two men in a straight shootout, he knew it wasn’t going to turn out that way. They were going to outflank him and kill him where he stood or force him out into the open and surrender.

  ‘Throw your gun out, Jackson,’ Beardy called.

  They know who I am, he thought. It killed any lingering doubt that Beardy was the same man who had broken Rosalie’s fingers. He felt something inside glowing with anger and purpose, a determination that whatever happened here he would somehow exact revenge for both Rosalie and his horse.

  ‘You broke a woman’s fingers,’ he said.

  The other thing he had to do was to keep them here for as long as he could. The more time they were here the better chances Rosalie and Leon had. But that fellow opposite was still working his way down the canyon. It would only be minutes before Jim’s position was compromised.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Beardy said, and Jim Jackson cursed himself. Had he just revealed that Rosalie was in town? But at least the man hadn’t denied it. And he was closer now. His voice was quieter.

  Jim risked another quick look.

  If the man was twenty yards nearer – and he was still moving, crouching down behind the horse, urging her forwards – then Jim may very well have a shot. He could step out, aim, and fire. It would be one shot. The fellow upon the rocks opposite would get him for sure.

  One shot. Revenge.

  Just a few more seconds.

  But he’d misjudged.

  He heard the gunshot at exactly the same time as he felt the punch in his lower right calf. His leg buckled beneath him and he fell against the rock, almost dropping his Colt. He looked down and saw the tear in his trousers, the blood on the stone behind him.

  ‘I got him!’ the man yelled. ‘Legged him.’

  Jim Jackson used his left leg to lever himself fully behind the boulder just as the man opposite fired again. This bullet splintered the rock where his wounded leg had been a second earlier.

  Then came the pain.

  Just a small wave to start with, as if the ocean tide had just turned and the water was rolling gently over the sand. But then arrived a larger, stronger wave, then another, and suddenly it was as if his leg had been immersed in a boiling raging sea.

  He pressed himself hard up against the boulder, riding the waves of pain, gritting his teeth, trying to slow his breathing. He was aware that the man opposite was still moving, still looking for a line of sight, and that the man down there, Beardy, who had shot his horse and tortured his woman . . . his woman . . . was edging closer too. He could feel blood filling his boot. His vision wavered. His throat was too dry. He squeezed his eyes closed and reopened them. He ought to tie something around his leg or press something against the wound to stop the flow, otherwise he would bleed to death, but he had no room to manoeuvre.

  ‘Throw your gun out,’ Beardy said, his voice quiet but strong. ‘You got two minutes. George over there’s got you clean in his sights now.’

  He’d never considered Rosalie his woman before. The thought had come to him in these desperate moments, these last moments. They had shot his horse and tortured his woman.

  ‘Minute and a half,’ Beardy said. ‘You’ll go to prison but at least you’ll be alive.’

  Jim Jackson’s chest heaved. He thought of Leon somewhere back up the camp. He thought of Rosalie. Would the two of them make it back to the farm he had told her about, a deserted place he had found a few days earlier? Would they be able to outrun a posse or hide for long enough? And then what about the thing that this had all been for? Neither of them knew about the fellow McRae had told him about back in New Mexico. It felt like a lifetime ago. What had been the fellow’s name? Jack Anderson in Leyton, Texas. Jim’s vision wavered again and in the wavering he pictured Rosalie across the table from him in Austin saying ‘John Allan. Allan
with an A. No records of him.’ He thought of John Allan now. A thin scarred man. Rarely smiled. It suddenly seemed so important that Rosalie and Leon knew about Leyton, Texas. That was what this had all been about. Well, not only that. It had been about freeing Leon from the same hell that Jim himself had been through, but on the back of that it was about understanding who had framed them and put them there.

  ‘One minute,’ Beardy said, his voice quiet but hard. ‘Prison or death. The choice is yours.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Leon Winters looked at the pretty woman standing next to two horses and said, ‘Who are you?’

  His bones ached. His muscles were beyond pain. He was soaked with sweat and creek water and from blood where the sharp stones and flints had cut his hands and his legs and his arms on those occasions when he had slipped or when his hands had simply given way. He was struggling for breath and his vision was blurred – he didn’t know if it was tears, blood, exhaustion or any combination of these.

  He knelt on the ground, feeling the softness of grass and dead leaves, smelling the freshness of trees and he looked up at the two horses and at the woman.

  She was beautiful, slim and young, smiling at him with pretty eyes and red lips, and he thought that he’d never seen a woman look so good. Truth was, there had been many times over the last few years when he thought he’d never see a woman again, let alone one so angelic.

  ‘I’m not dead, am I?’ he said, only half in jest.

  ‘I’m Rosalie.’

  It was just like Jim to send a woman for him.

  ‘Where’s Jim?’

  ‘He’s busy elsewhere.’

  ‘The fire.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The way the high sun was catching her face she looked pale. There was a worried line to her mouth, too.

  ‘Can you stand?’

  Even as she was asking the question she was crouching down, holding his hand, hers soft and warm, and helping him up. He grimaced in pain.