by Clyde Barker
Not for the first time, Rick O’Shea was struck by the coolness of the young woman in the face of danger.
‘Let’s see what comes, then,’ he replied. ‘I only wanted you to know that I’ll do whatever’s needed to get your little sister home. I won’t abandon you.’
‘I already knew that,’ replied Jemima.
O’Shea ran over in his mind the probable course of events. There could be no doubt that Jackson would team up with Yanez when he crossed the Rio and landed in Archangel. What then? Would the sheriff try to guy up his pursuit as some kind of lawful enterprise? Might he even deputize Yanez’s band of cut-throats and make out that they were a legitimate posse? That would perhaps solve everybody’s problems. Yanez would be able to kill O’Shea and then Jackson and the others would murder the Covenay sisters, pretending that they had got caught in the crossfire.
He, Rick O’Shea, would be denounced as the man who had stolen away the child in the first place and then those bastards would even be able to collect on the reward being offered and divide it up between themselves. Following which, Seth Jackson would be re-elected sheriff of the county once more.
Well, they wouldn’t get away with it; not while Rick O’Shea had breath in his body they wouldn’t.
Jemima Covenay interrupted O’Shea’s reverie with a question.
‘We heading for the Gap? That’s the only way through the Reds, ain’t it? Leastways, it’s how I got to Archangel.’
‘Well, it is and it isn’t,’ replied O’Shea thoughtfully. ‘Truth to tell, I’m not overly keen on us riding along on flat land such as this and just waiting for anybody to come after us; you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Of course I do,’ said the young woman, casting an anxious glance at her sister in order to reassure herself that the child wasn’t getting alarmed by all this talk of people pursuing them. ‘What then d’ye suggest? We’re altogether in your hands, for I don’t know this part of the county at all.’
‘I heard tell that there’s a path leading up and over the Reds, a mule trail or something of the kind.’
‘A mule trail? Why would you need such a thing? That gap’s been there time out of mind, from what I gather.’
‘There’s been silver-mining up in the Reds. Lead as well. There’s an ore that the English call ‘galena’, which is lead mixed with silver. Grey, shiny stuff. Anyways, I heard that there’s old mine workings up there. Maybe anybody riding the same path as us would miss us if they didn’t know which road we’d taken.’
The mountains loomed up in the distance. O’Shea wondered whether they would be able to reach them before those seeking his blood caught up with them and killed them all.
‘We need to ride hard for the Reds,’ he said. ‘Young Emily, can you gallop that horse, do you think?’
‘ ’Course I can gallop,’ she cried indignantly. ‘Tell him how well I can gallop, ’Mima.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to cause offence,’ said O’Shea hastily. ‘Let’s make for those mountains then.’
It was a fine calculation to make: forcing as hard a pace as possible but without exhausting their beasts or, worse still, laming one of the mounts. Still, the three of them made it to the foothills at the base of the Reds by noon and there was still no sign of anybody coming after them.
It was a matter then of finding the path which supposedly led up into the mountains. This proved surprisingly easy and Rick O’Shea was feeling right pleased with himself as they made their way up the serpentine track that wound its way up the rocky slopes towards the ridge, which was about three thousand feet above them. That was, until events took an unexpected turn, causing both Jemima Covenay and Rick O’Shea to wonder whether maybe the child they had rescued wasn’t perhaps destined to die prematurely anyway, despite their efforts.
This is what happened.
The three of them were proceeding in single file as their horses plodded along the stony trail. Emily had begged to lead the way and neither O’Shea nor Jemima could see any reason to deny the child her wish. To their left were slopes which led down to the gap, where the railroad lines gleamed in the midday sun; to the right was the vast mass of the mountains across which they hoped to make their way. Suddenly, unexpectedly Emily reined in.
‘Look, ’Mima,’ she cried in an excited voice, ‘there’s a locomotive coming along.’
So abruptly had Emily Covenay halted that the other two riders almost collided into each other. At that same moment a shot rang out, causing Emily’s horse to rear up and send her crashing to the ground. There she lay, apparently lifeless.
Chapter 7
Where shooting was concerned Rick O’Shea had an uncanny ability to calculate, just from the sound, where the firing was from and at what distance. He also had a shrewd idea, from hearing a single shot, whether the weapon being discharged was a pistol, rifle or scattergun.
In this instance he judged that somebody had fired with a carbine at distance of, perhaps, a hundred yards to their left, which was to say: in the direction of Grey John Gap. Before the echo had died down O’Shea was off his horse and had dragged Jemima Covenay from hers. The young woman struggled to get up from the ground.
‘I got to get to Emily, she said. ‘There’s blood on her head.’
‘It won’t help her none if you get killed,’ said O’Shea harshly. ‘Lie still here, by these rocks. Whoever fired at us is lower down. We can’t be seen from down there. We must a’ been silhouetted up against the sky, which is what gave him his target.’
His cool and collected manner worked to some purpose, for Jemima Covenany stopped fighting him and said quietly:
‘I’m going to wriggle across to my sister. I’ll keep low.’
While the young woman crawled over on her belly to see to the injured child, Rick O’Shea cursed himself for a damned fool who had brought these poor sisters into deadly hazard. He really should have known better and, without even thinking the matter through consciously, he knew now just exactly what had occurred.
So busy had O’Shea been with setting a watch to make sure that they weren’t being followed by Yanez and his gang that he had hardly given a thought to the one or two riders he could see ahead of him. He had been so damned certain-sure that Seth Jackson would be making common cause with Yanez that he hadn’t paused for a moment to consider that the sheriff might have his own motives for silencing O’Shea and doing away with Emily and her sister.
It wasn’t a matter of missing out on a reward or failing to be voted in as sheriff in a few weeks. If O’Shea told all he knew, then Jackson would stand an excellent chance of being lynched by the men of San Angelo.
All this went through O’Shea’s mind before Jemima Covenay had reached her sister. When she got to Emily she found that the blood was just from a slight cut on her head, where she had fallen from her horse and banged her forehead against a rock. The little girl had been stunned, but was now coming round and beginning to sob.
‘Jemima,’ O’Shea said, ‘is that musket of yours primed and charged?’
‘Yes,’ she answered distractedly, ‘but it’s on my horse yonder.’
When he looked up it was to discover that Jemima’s horse had trotted on ahead and was now in a position where anybody approaching it would be in plain view from the slope below. He’d have to make do with the pistol, which was a nuisance. He risked a quick glance over the rocks that were sheltering them from view and nearly had his head shot off as a result. Sheriff Jackson was positioned less than a hundred yards away, with his rifle resting on a boulder, the better to judge his aim.
The only good thing about their current situation was the reflection that had they simply ridden through the Gap they’d all be dead by now. It was plain as a pikestaff that Jackson had counted on their riding hard through Grey John Gap in their haste to get back to San Angelo. He’d found a nice vantage point overlooking the Gap and all he had needed to do was wait until they passed below and then pick them off one by one; including, thought O’Shea in
mounting fury, a little girl who wasn’t in full possession of her wits. It was the most devilish scheme he’d ever heard tell of in the whole course of his life.
There was nothing for it but that he would have to act immediately, thought O’Shea to himself. At any moment Yanez might come riding out from Archangel and then it would be all up with them. He had to deal with Jackson without any delay. He called over to the elder sister.
‘Come over here, Jemima. Leave your sister for a moment and attend to me. It’s life and death for us all.’
After murmuring some reassuring words to Emily the older girl scurried across to where Rick O’Shea lay prone.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.
‘What I’m going to do is run down that slope and kill the man down there. While I’m doing that you must run to your horse and fetch out that rifle of yours. I’ll keep that devil too busy to trouble you while you do it. Then, if anything happens to me, you must be sure that you’re ready to kill him before he knows what’s what.’
‘It’s certain death for you to go after him that way. Is there nothing else?’
‘I’m no keener on dying than you, Jemima, but ’less you got another plan, I reckon as we’ll go with mine.’ There was the ghost of smile round his lips as he said this; suddenly the girl leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Good luck,’ she said, her voice choked.
‘Just be ready to move as soon as I jump up,’ said O’Shea.
Then, because he had already wasted enough time explaining his intentions, and with Yanez perhaps already on the road from Archangel, Rick O’Shea drew the gun from its holster, leaned over the rocks and snapped off a single shot at Seth Jackson. Then he leaped up and ran at full speed towards the startled sheriff.
There was not, despite the apparent recklessness of his action, any intention on Rick O’Shea’s part to throw away his life. He knew that firing at a stationary target is a very different thing indeed from shooting at somebody moving rapidly and erratically, so as he ran he jinked from side to side, making it impossible for the man on the slope below to guess where he would be in the next second. He also fired twice as he was running, not because he thought he could hit Jackson with his pistol while running in this way, but simply to spoil the other fellow’s aim and prevent him from settling down to take careful aim.
Several shots came close and O’Shea wondered if he would be able to get the sheriff to expend enough ammunition to make it necessary for him to reload. He must have fired four times now. O’Shea sent another wild shot in Jackson’s direction, just as the other man fired.
At that moment he twisted his ankle as he stumbled on a loose rock. O’Shea found himself tumbling forward, landing behind a boulder. There came another shot. It hit the boulder behind which O’Shea was sheltering and sent chips of rock flying off. Then there was silence and he wondered if Jackson might think that he had taken him down. In the heat of battle a man flying forward in the way that he had done might have looked like a direct hit.
He looked up to the trail where he had left the Covenay sisters and was pleased to observe that only the horses were visible. It was to be doubted that Jackson would think it worth expending any ammunition on their mounts, which gave O’Shea reason to hope that they might yet make it back to San Angelo.
Then there came a puff of smoke from up on the trail and, a fraction of a second later, the boom of Jemima Covenay’s rifle. This was followed by a perfect fusillade of shots from Jackson, which ended abruptly. It was now or never. O’Shea rose to his feet, cocking the pistol with his thumb as he did so. Twenty yards away Sheriff Jackson was fumbling frantically with the carbine in his hands.
‘Over here, Jackson,’ O’Shea called out.
Seth Jackson looked up fearfully. Before he had a chance to duck or take any other evasive action O’Shea drew down on him and fired twice. Both balls struck the sheriff in his chest. Taking no chances, O’Shea sprinted to where Jackson stood looking down stupidly at the two holes that indicated his worthless life had run its course and was fast drawing to a close. Rick O’Shea grabbed the rifle from Jackson’s hands and gave him a kick, sending him to the ground. From overhead came Jemima Covenay’s voice, calling:
‘Are you all right? I thought he’d taken you.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ O’Shea shouted back cheerfully. ‘God takes care of fools sometimes. I’m fine. How’s that sister of yours?’
‘Shaken up and bruised, but she’ll do.’
It took only a couple of minutes to loot Sheriff Jackson’s corpse – and pretty lean pickings there were to be had, too. The only items of any value or use were the dead man’s rifle, a Winchester ’73, and his pistol. There were plenty of shining brass shells for both weapons but only five dollars in cash money. The sheriff’s crooked life did not seem to have made him all that wealthy.
Once O’Shea had regained the trail he cast an anxious glance back in the direction of Archangel. He saw, to his relief but not inconsiderable surprise, that there was no sign yet of any body of riders heading north.
‘We might make it yet. We might just,’ he muttered to himself.
Emily’s good spirits did not seem noticeably dented by her having been shot at, fallen from her horse and stunned, followed in quick order by being caught up in a gun battle. As they remounted a broad grin split the child’s face.
‘Gosh!’ she said. ‘That was an awful noise all them guns made. I put my hands right over my ears, didn’t I, ’Mima?’
‘You did just fine, darling.’
‘I’ll sure be glad to get home. Won’t Pa be surprised when he hears the larks we’ve been up to? You bet he’ll laugh his head off.’
Jemima Covenay’s eyes met O’Shea’s and, hearing this innocent expectation from the excited child, they both smiled.
‘I’m not sure that he’ll laugh all that much, Miss Emily,’ O’Shea said, ‘but let’s get you home anyways.’
‘I’m sorry I missed my shot,’ said Jemima a little abruptly. ‘I guess I’m not used to shooting at targets that are firing back.’
‘It takes a bit of getting used to, I’ll allow,’ replied O’Shea. ‘But it was having him distracted by your firing on him that gave me my chance.’
‘Why did you shout out to him and alert him to your whereabouts afore you shot him?’
Rick O’Shea looked a little embarrassed at the question and rubbed his chin before answering.
‘Why, the truth of the matter,’ he said at last, ‘is that if anybody was going to get killed I’d sooner it was me than you, I suppose. Had he drilled me, then it might o’ given you the time to reload and finish him off.’
This was something of a conversation stopper, so the three of them mounted up and set off without speaking again.
Fortunately the winding track soon led them into the space between two of the peaks and out of view both of the plain that lay between the Reds and Archangel, and of Grey John Gap. If Yanez was coming after them there was every chance that he’d ride straight through the Gap and so miss them entirely.
The worst that could be said of that journey across the Reds was that it was tedious. There was little to be seen other than bare rock, scrappy brown grass and the occasional clump of bristlecone pines. Their path led them to some abandoned mine workings, which occupied much of a little plateau and prompted O’Shea to suggest that they could do worse than spend the night there. As he reasoned the case out to the elder sister:
‘We’re not going to hit San Angelo today and I don’t altogether feel easy about sleeping out in the open.’
It was plain that young Emily didn’t take to this scheme, having had more than enough adventures by this time and wanting only to be tucked up safe and sound in her soft bed at home, but her sister could see the sense in what O’Shea was saying and sided with him on the point.
‘We won’t have to sleep in that dark cave, will we?’ the little girl asked nervously. ‘I’m scared of it. Anything could live the
re.’
‘Don’t you worry none,’ O’Shea told her. ‘We’ll just sleep out under the stars. You never done that before? It’s rare fun, I tell you. Be something else for you to tell your father about when you get home.’
At this the child brightened up and was soon chattering away to her sister about how much she would have to tell their pa when their adventure was over.
‘Mind, I shouldn’t wonder if he don’t take his buggy-whip to me when we do get home,’ Jemima remarked to O’Shea. ‘I came down here without asking so much as a by-your-leave.’
‘I’ll talk to him, set things out straight. Had you not come I doubt I’d have managed this. It’s took all that the two of us could manage to get this far.’
It might have been thought that following her kidnap, rescue, fall from the horse and having been in close proximity to a duel in which one man was killed, Emily Covenay had used up all her chances lately, but she was to face another mortal hazard before the little party set off the next day.
There was little enough to eat and drink; only the meagre provisions that remained in Jemima Covenay’s pack, and by common consent they allotted the lion’s share to Emily. She was ravenously hungry after all the riding that day. While stuffing bits of dry bread and more-or-less stale cheese into her mouth she talked about the day’s events.
‘I never rode so long in one day. I’m awful tired now, though. Can we sleep soon, ’Mima? You think we might be home tomorrow? I hope so. It’s been fun, but I miss Pa.’
She turned to address O’Shea directly. ‘I was sorry you tied up that old lady, you know,’ she remarked. ‘You think somebody would have come by and untied her by now? She was all right. A bit of a crosspatch, but kind of sweet too, if you know what I mean.’
‘Emily, darling,’ said her sister, ‘don’t speak while you’re eating. It’s not at all ladylike.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t think that manners mattered out here. What do you think?’ She turned again to O’Shea.
