The shootist played a hunch.
‘Let’s see him alive, Thursby.’
‘How does he know your name, Floyd?’
‘Shut up, Strauss, you damned fool!’
In the darkness Crow smiled. ‘Two,’ he said, softly, to himself. Unless they’d left any more to guard the boy, but that wasn’t likely. They’d all want to be together to make sure there were no backstairs deals being set up.
‘So, you know my name, Crow?’
‘Sure, Floyd. Folks told me a lot about you back in Hobson’s Hole. What a big man you were, fighting little boys. And you, Strauss.’
‘Nothin’ about me is what you know, Crow!’ came the second voice. ‘Me and Floyd been trailin’ you for two days and you never seen either of us.’
Definitely two of them. Meant the boy was tied somewhere. Or laid out cold.
Or dead.
‘What do we do, Crow?’ asked Okie.
‘Can’t you go and kill them?’ suggested Edgar, from the left.
Crow said nothing. Content to wait and listen. In the hope that Thursby and Strauss might show a little more of their hand.
‘You want a deal or not, Crow?’
‘Not down to me. I’m just the hired hand. You kill the boy. I don’t give a damn one way or the other.’
‘You’re a cold son of a bitch! What about you, Mr. Eastern merchant Okie?’
‘I’ll do a deal of some kind. Not the map, though. Let Artie go and I’ll give you five hundred dollars.’
‘Haw, haw, haw.’ The laughter was deliberately mocking. ‘You figure we want pennies when we can have the damned bank? Come up here with the map, right now, Mr. Okie. Or we kill the boy.’
‘Tell them at dawn, when we can all see what’s going on,’ said Crow, urgently. ‘Tell them.’
‘They might kill the boy.’
‘Sure they might. Might have done already. Best chance he’s got … and the rest of us ... is for you to do like I say.’
‘Don’t, Dicky. Give them that map.’
‘If you do that, Okie, I’ll gun you down before you take three steps towards them. It’s my neck on that same block as yourn. Tell them what I said to.’
‘You got the count of ten to …’
‘Dawn.’
‘What?’ shouted Thursby.
‘We’ll do the deal at dawn.’
‘God damn it! Why the Hell you want to say that for?’ complained the hidden voice.
‘You heard the man, Floyd.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Crow!’
‘What we goin’ to do, Floyd?’ called Strauss.
‘How do I know, Sam?’
‘We’ll give you the map at dawn, when we can see each other good and clear.’
There was muttering from the darkness. The evening had finally eased out of the way and made room for night to settle itself across the land, pitching shadows of total blackness all around them.
‘All right, Crow. We agree. Half hour after first light, and we do the deal. You’d better not try and make fools of us.’
‘Guess God did that first, Floyd,’ shouted the shootist, his words receiving two snapped shots that hissed and whined into the darkness.
After that there was silence.
They ate a miserable meal, with Amaryllis constantly getting up and walking around the camp like a raven with a broken wing. Despite repeated requests from her husband to keep quiet she moaned on that they should have parted with the map if it had meant the saving of Artie’s life.
Finally Crow spoke to her. ‘I don’t like sayin’ this, seein’ as I might be wrong. But my guess is that they’ve already killed the boy. It’s a bluff from them. They’d have found some way of stalling while one of them gunned the rest of us down. In the morning we’ll have the edge on them.’
She started to sob, while Richard Okie looked across at Crow, his chubby face a white blob in the pale moonlight. ‘So what can we do?’
‘Kill them.’
‘When?’
The shootist sat still for a moment. ‘I figure the two of them’ll be workin’ out a plan. Take us by stealth before dawn. I want you three to stay here and just keep a normal conversation goin’. Not all laughing and yelling. Just quiet talk.’
‘What about?’ asked Edgar Okie.
‘Damn it, son, I don’t know. Tell about all the meals you ever had in your life. That should take up a few hours of the night.’
‘What’ll you do?’
‘Earn my dollars and save my life. If’n I don’t get back here within … within two hours from now, then I’d think about cocking them pretty pistols of yours. You’ll need them.’
Okie opened his mouth to reply, but Crow had gone, leaving the Winchester rifle behind him. One moment he had been there, the touch of light at his throat from the yellow Cavalry bandana, and the next moment the space was empty. There had been no sound at all. The Easterner shivered at the sudden chill, frightened at the skills of the man that he’d hired.
‘We should begin talking like he said, should we not my dearest?’ asked his wife.
‘Yes. We should. I’ll tell you how I got started in business and you can ask me a question now and then. That’s a good thing to pass the time.’
‘Yes, Dicky,’ replied Amy Okie, her voice resigned.
One of the few things that is known about the past of the solitary man called Crow is that he certainly spent some part of his early life among Indians. Unusually with white men he had a smattering of several tongues, as well as considerable speed and fluency in the sign language of the plains people. During that time, however long that might have been, he also learned many of the Indian skills of hunting and survival.
Samuel Strauss and Floyd Thursby had spent most of their lives set in the middle of a wilderness. But they were both babes compared to Crow. They were so busy planning their strike in the morning that it never occurred to them for a fleeting moment that they might be in danger of a pre-emptive attack. They had even lit a small fire and were sitting either side of it when Crow snaked over the nearest wall of cool rock, creeping to within thirty paces of the men.
At least one doubt was resolved. The kidnapped Arthur Okie was still alive. Sitting propped up against a large boulder, his hands tied behind him. Feet free. At first Crow thought that the boy was asleep, then the flames of the fire came fitfully to flickering life and he saw the red glow reflected off the partly-open eyes. But Artie was sufficiently far to one side of the open space not to be in any danger from stray bullets.
Strauss was revealed as a large man, with thinning hair, pasted to his scalp by some kind of grease. He wore a dropping moustache, like those sported by some Mexican desperadoes. Floyd Thursby was a gray, colorless man, of average height and build. The sort of man who looked like he could walk into a crowd and totally disappear within five seconds. He was wearing an old Army Colt at his belt and Strauss had a Peacemaker at his right hip. Neither of them looked the kind of person to involve himself in robbery or murder and Crow wondered how it was the word “gold” had such a powerful effect on some people, seeming to literally turn them mad.
‘Goin’ for a leak, Floyd,’ said the heavily-set Strauss, levering himself to his feet with much panting and sighing, lumbering across towards the low wall of rocks where Crow was hiding.
‘We’d best figure out when to move,’ called Thursby.
‘Then get that map and be off into the hills after that lovely gold before their bodies are even stiffening.’
Crow heard Floyd Thursby’s contented laugh of happy anticipation.
But he was more concerned with the close proximity of Strauss, looming vast against the night sky, unbuttoning his breeches less than three paces away, directing a steaming jet of urine among the rocks. Crouched low, the shootist knew that he couldn’t be seen, and he reached around to his left hip and eased the honed-down saber from its sheath, gripping it tightly in his hand. Angling the tip upwards, ready for a driving thrust.
‘Fig
ure we can keep the woman a whiles? Heard tell she was quite some good looker.’
Thursby was raking at the ashes of the fire, throwing on a few more pieces of dry wood, making the flames leap and dance, illuminating his anonymous face with the gentle clerk’s eyes.
‘Don’t see why not. Be better than my wife, the barren, cold-loined bitch. If’n this works well, Sam, we can both make long tracks. Huh?’
There was no answer.
‘You finished? You don’t have the gut-runs, do you, Sam? Sam?’
The silence of the night drew close about Floyd Thursby, and he shivered involuntarily, tugging his jacket round his thin shoulders. He looked across at the young boy, bound against the opposite side of the small clearing. Arthur Okie’s eyes stared back impassively at him, unblinking.
‘Sam? Sam Strauss?’ He tried a laugh that died in his throat. ‘You joshin’ me there, Sam? I see you! Come on, now.’
‘He’s not coming, Floyd,’ said a midnight voice from the blackness of the shadows. A soft voice, that seemed to almost caress him and fold him into its gentleness.
‘Who …?’ he croaked. ‘Crow? Is that you? Damn it, Crow!’
‘Strauss is dead, Floyd. Took that long journey all alone and so quick I doubt he even knowed he was gone. You can ask him in a while.’
Thursby fumbled for his Army Colt, thumbing the hammer back, and pointing the barrel towards where the voice had sounded. ‘I didn’t hear no noise.’
‘Nor did Sam.’ This time Crow’s voice came from a different direction, slightly to the side, nearer to the boy.
‘You knifed him.’
‘Yes. I knifed him, Floyd.’
It had been so easy. Strauss had taken a step back and looked up at the night sky, watching the bright jewels of the stars. He’d always fancied himself as something of a romantic and he wondered what it could be like to be out there among such brilliant pin-points of silver.
Crow flowed up at him from the ground, like a shadow growing flesh, the saber hitting the tall man under the angle of the jaw, penetrating through the bone with a faint crunching sound, then between his teeth, pinning his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Filling his throat with salt blood. The blade was two and a half feet in length and over half of that rammed home, the tip of the point finally coming to a grinding halt as it struck the inside of the top of Strauss’s skull, having ripped clean through his brain and the centre of his head.
Blood poured down over the gleaming metal, soaking Crow’s hand and sleeve, choking the kidnapper. His body slumped immediately, and it was only Crow’s great strength that held the corpse erect for a few moments while life departed, then slowly lowering it to the earth, withdrawing the saber, wiping it clean on the man’s jacket.
‘You want a deal, Crow?’ asked Thursby.
‘No. I already got one.’
‘Deals can be broken.’
‘Sure can. Not this one. Not less’n I have a better reason than you to break it.’
Floyd snapped off two shots roughly where he guessed Crow might be standing, but both of them missed the shootist by at least six feet, cracking off rocks and humming to disappear in the blackness.
‘Not close at all, Floyd,’ he mocked, shifting back again towards where Strauss’s corpse lay.
‘Jesus Christ!’ squealed Thursby, firing off two more shots into the night, then winning a bitter struggle to regain control of himself, sitting in the firelight, realizing that Crow could have shot him from cover without any difficulty at all.
‘Two left, Floyd.’
‘I’ll put them in the boy,’ he yelled. ‘You can’t stop me.’
Despite all the shooting and shouting, Arthur Concord Okie sat, unmoving, watching the battle played out around him. Crow, in the shadows, was impressed at the boy’s self-control, even though there was something uncanny about it. If it hadn’t been for the open eyes he might have suspected that he was already dead.
The Colt wavered in the direction of the bound teenager, the hammer back, Thursby’s finger white on the trigger. Crow watched him, regretting that he’d indulged himself enough to talk from the blackness. By slightly under-rating the gray little man he’d put the boy’s life in jeopardy. It would have been so much easier and safer to have shot Floyd from the safety of the night.
‘Well, Crow?’ called Thursby, voice cracking with the tension of the moment.
The stand-off annoyed Crow, and when he became angry it generally resulted in fast action. He drew his own Peacemaker and steadied his right hand on top of a large boulder. Drawing a bead on Thursby. It wasn’t going to be enough just to shoot him dead. His finger would still tighten on the trigger and Okie would die.
‘I’m warnin’ you, Crow! If’n you don’t … Aaarrrgh!’
It was a fine shot in uncertain light, the forty-five slug hitting Floyd plumb through the right wrist, smashing the tendons and muscles and bones, making the fingers open, the Army Colt rattling to the rocks.
The second bullet hit him through the shoulder as he tried to roll to safety, kicking him over on his side. Crow fired a third time, this time striking the store-keeper in the thigh, lead lodging in the big quadriceps muscle.
Thursby had started to scream with the shattering impact of the first bullet, and each successive shot brought a new level of noise from him, the scream rising up the scale of agony until it threatened to become inaudible.
‘Damn it!’ muttered Crow as the fourth bullet also failed to strike a mortal spot, burying itself under the floating ribs on the right side of Thursby’s body.
Blood was spraying from his wounds as he rolled and dived around, trying to get out of the way of the remorseless torrent of lead. A fifth bullet hit him in the centre of the chest, knocking him flat on his back, coughing, his one good hand pressed against the gaping hole, as if he was trying to check the flow of crimson.
‘Please, Crow,’ he moaned, the screaming suddenly stilled. Please.’ Trying to sit up.
At last giving the shootist the simple target he’d been trying for, using the last bullet in his pistol to kill Floyd Thursby, hitting him cleanly through the side of the head, above the right ear, the forty-five punching out a great slice of bone as it exited. The body toppled on its side with the force of the bullet, lying still close by the feet of Arthur Okie.
‘Come on, boy,’ said Crow, moving from the darkness into the circle of light. ‘Time to go home.’
But Arthur Okie had already gone home a couple of hours earlier when Samuel Strauss grabbed him from behind, a huge fist clamping over his thin lips, and Floyd Thursby had carefully driven a long-bladed knife in between the ribs on the left side of the body, killing him effortlessly.
Ready to try and trick the map out of the boy’s father the men had used a short length of baling wire around the back of Arthur’s head, jamming it up under the eyelids to give a specious illusion of life that had fooled Crow at a distance at night.
Amaryllis cried a lot for her poor dead son, but Richard Okie seemed a whole lot more relieved that his map was safe.
So they went on.
After burying the body of the boy.
Chapter Seven
The first warning signs came on the third day after the death of Arthur Okie.
They had pressed on into the lower slopes of the Sierras, pushing the mules as fast as they could. On the second day one of their burros went lame and Crow slit its throat, cutting off meat from its legs and ribs to dry and take with them. It was during the following morning that they suffered the first flurry of snow.
The peaks all around them were dappled with white, but Crow had not looked to experience it at such a comparatively low level. It was whipped about them by a gust of cold wind from the north and west, driving the hail and snow into their faces, making the animals pull against it.
'This is bad, Crow!' called Okie, riding second behind the shootist.
'Yeah. But it's nothin' to what we might be seem higher.’
‘It's cold, Pa,
’ whined Edgar.
'Hush up, son,’ said Amy, pulling a scarf about her neck, to try and stop the chill from penetrating.
It only lasted about ten minutes, leaving flurries of melting snow in the hollows of the boulders, blown into small drifts against the sides of the bigger rocks. Crow heeled his stallion further on, looking back across the plains behind them. Standing in the stirrups as he stared out, making sure that they weren't being pursued.
'See anything, Mr. Crow?' asked Amaryllis Okie, stopping by his side, looking up at him from the shadows of her cloak.
'No.’
'Do you think we are now safe?'
'Maybe from whites.'
'Indians?'
'Could be.' He nodded. 'Could just be.’
'And the weather?' she blinked as snow drove again in a vicious whirl of wind.
'It's damned early for this. Could just be a day of it, riding a high norther. Could be the sign of some-thin' more.'
'What if it's more, Crow?' asked her husband, reining in his mule in time to hear the end of their conversation.
'Then we get out or we do some heavy praying,' he replied.
After five days they were high. High enough for Edgar to start complaining about nose-bleeds, crimson seeming to gush from his fat nose every hour or so, staining his coat, trickling off his chin, leaving a faint pattern behind them in the snow until the wind covered it up.
The weather was worsening fast. Normally Crow would have figured on another three weeks of reasonable scouting for the mine, but now he was beginning to think in hours rather than days. Both Richard and Amaryllis were bearing up under the strain of the travelling better than Crow had expected. But the boy was suffering. They were at around five thousand feet and the cold, thinner air seemed to bring Edgar down. He moaned ceaselessly of aching head and sore eyes. And struggled for breath, wheezing like a man of eighty, and he had lost his appetite.
‘I believe poor dear Edgar’s running a fever, Mr. Crow,’ said Mrs. Okie as they stopped for a brief mid-day halt. Biting off chunks of jerked meat and sipping at the cold water. Edgar had flopped straight off his mule and was lying in the lee of a rock, his hands pressed to his ears, crying, his chin and jaw smeared with gobbets of fresh blood.
Bodyguard Page 5
