by Carl Dane
I thought that was a strange way to put things and not quite sure what it meant but Harbold was breathing down my neck – literally, he was an inch in back of me and I could feel his breath – and was clearly anxious to get things in motion.
“Sorry, Sir, but the Major wants this to go off without a hitch. They want to make the trade before sunset and they say they’ll kill the girl if you’re late.”
We had time to ride there twice and back, but Harbold always anticipates the worst and that is a valuable trait in a soldier or lawman, so I signed for the Greenbacks and packed them in a saddle bag.
“I know they say the delivery has to be made by one man alone,” Harbold said, “but you could be riding into a deathtrap when you get to that mountain. I can cover you and stay out of sight.”
“I appreciate that, but I already planned on having Carmody watch my back. You’ve got a government job and a nice uniform and a hell of a nice horse, and I don’t want you endanger all that if this goes down the shithole because I didn’t follow instructions.”
“I can live without the job and the uniform. But the horse is another story. Thank you, Sir. For the record, the offer still stands.”
“Carmody knows the terrain and kind of blends in. The brass buttons on your fancy uniform might reflect in the sunshine. But what I’d like you to do, if you can, is stay here and mind the fort until I get back. You never know what will happen if there are no lawmen in town.”
“Glad to, Sir. Your lady friend invited me to stop by later to see her place and have a drink on the house.”
I guess you never know what will happen if there is a lawman in town, either. But I was due at Table Top Mountain and had to head out.
Chapter 13
Carmody carried the money in his saddlebags. A thousand greenbacks is bulky.
It was actually nine-hundred-ninety-nine Greenbacks and ten dollars in coins. My coins. I’d pocketed one of the Greenbacks, and, not wanting to be accused of being an embezzler, made good on the remainder.
I wanted it as evidence. As evidence of what, I wasn’t sure. My gut told me to pocket it, and my gut is usually more reliable than my brain, so I complied.
I didn’t carry anything other than a rifle and a sidearm, had no bags on my horse, and wore a tight shirt. I wanted whomever I was meeting to know I didn’t have the money on me.
When we met up, they would just have to live with the fact that a third party was dropping the money. We’d work those details out. These were, after all, people who had casually shot three men because their existence was, for the moment, an inconvenience. If I showed up at Table Top dragging bags of money I would be dead as soon as I got within rifle range.
A lot of this would be a seat-of-the-pants maneuver. Assuming I could work out the swap, how I’d survive and get away with a breathing Lydia Davis was something I’d have to improvise.
My options were limited. The notes and directions delivered by the banker were clear: If I came with a posse she’d be dead. If I told the Texas Rangers or an army platoon she’d be dead as soon as they learned I’d issued the alert. The kidnappers told the banker they had ways of knowing such things, and I was in no position to doubt their word. They’d somehow known about the judge’s daughter being on the stage, after all, and known that Judge Gates Davis was a man of considerable means.
They’d also known the stage schedule and had exactingly planned the itinerary of the man they’d left alive.
I don’t know how they knew all those things. I wished I did.
Chapter 14
I took the main trail to Table Top. I’d never seen the mountain, but Carmody had, and he sketched out a map for me.
The trail paralleled a stream, Carmody said, and then coiled around the base of the small mountain, in actuality more of a big hill. It drew its name from the fact that the top was flat and bald, about an eighth of a mile in diameter, and sat atop a long and gentle upward slope that surrounded it. Table Top was a logical place for a swap of cash for a hostage: Both parties would have to approach each other in the open, and while it wasn’t out of the question that a rifleman could find cover to hide behind and hit a rider, Table Top was a wide circle with an open view, and the flat terrain provided maneuverability for a horseman, so if the first shot missed, the second would be much more difficult.
There was only one perch that overlooked Table Top, and that was a rocky peak more than a quarter mile away, well out of rifle range. The summit was about 20 feet higher than Table Top, but inaccessible, as Carmody put it, “to normal people.”
Carmody took a higher and much more difficult trail, where there was what you’d call a trail. He had almost complete cover, but the trek wasn’t easy. I never could have navigated it, but Carmody can read terrain like you or I read a newspaper. For tracking work, Carmody favors what he calls mountain saddle horses, small chocolate-color breeds that are not particularly fast but are calm and sure-footed and could handle areas as impassible to most horses as they are to us normal people.
The plan was that I’d diagonally climb the north side of Table Top. Carmody would ride as high has he could up the craggy peak and climb the rest of the way on foot. He’d monitor for snipers with his sharp eyes and spyglass and, if the kidnappers really showed up with the girl, drop the money somewhere on the south slope and mark the spot with a branch stuck upright in the dirt so I could find it.
Not a foolproof plan, to be sure, but better odds than if I went by myself with a sack of money and a target on my back.
I lost sight of Carmody about a half-hour into the ride. We would reach Table Top in about 90 minutes, he estimated. There would be no easy way for us to communicate except by firing off a gun in the event of an emergency. One shot meant he would come to me. Two shots meant I’d try to find him if I could.
He also had a small mirror. If the sun came through the clouds he’d use the reflection to signal his presence on the peak.
Again, not a bad plan.
But of course it all fell apart five minutes later when a bullet creased my skull.
Chapter 15
I was aware of my hat flying off before I felt the sting of the bullet.
It was the second time in a month someone had shot my hat off without doing serious rearrangement on my skull. Someone who’s not been shot at would think it highly improbable, but I’d seen hats shot off countless times in battle and I was more than a little angry about this one. It was a Stetson model called Boss of the Plains, with a wide round brim, good for keeping the rain out of my eyes, and a sweatband. Elmira gave it to me, and spent a lot of money on it, and I liked it.
Then, as more bullets tore through the leaves, it occurred to me that I had to come to my senses, quit mourning my hat, wipe the blood trickle away from my right eye, and charge toward the sound of the gunfire.
There’s only one response to an ambush: You ride or run toward it and shoot like hell while you’re in motion. If you run for cover you are playing the ambusher’s game, because they would not have tried for the kill had you been near a real sanctuary. If you freeze in place…well, you might as well just shoot yourself and get it over with.
I believed the shots came from behind a cluster of rocks on a ridge above me. I spurred the horse up the slope and felt badly about digging the sharp metal into his flanks, but I’d give him an extra bag of oats later, if there was a later.
My horse is called a Steeldust in that part of Texas because some of its ancestors had a grayish, metallic sheen. Mine didn’t, but like all its breed it was still big and exceptionally fast regardless of the fact that the color isn’t uniform anymore. Carmody, a connoisseur of horseflesh, had a Steeldust in his stable but had added the small mountain saddle horse to his collection two months ago after a good run at the Faro tables.
The man was a consistently successful gambler. I hoped his luck would hold out today. Mine too.
I and the Steeldust charged.
It’s a theory of mine that accomplishments stem
from a love of what you do, and the Steeldust was just overjoyed to run flat out, hooves pounding the turf so rapidly you couldn’t even detect the rhythmic gap in the pattern when all four feet were off the ground.
Together, we created a cacophony of destruction. I opened up with my seven-shot repeating rifle. It’s not easy to shoot a rifle from the hip, and ratcheting it one-handed takes practice, but I’d practiced plenty and could squeeze off a shot every three seconds.
I’d fired three rounds by the time I was within a hundred feet of them, and I saw the first ambusher as he poked his head up and slid his rifle over the top of the rock. He was trying to get the gun to his shoulder and stay low, but in order to look at me, he had to give me a chance to look at him.
I read panic in his expression.
I also think I read his mind. When you plinked at suckers, he was thinking, they were supposed to squeal and run and offer their backs as a nice, broad target.
They weren’t supposed to charge their snarling quarter-horse at you and lay down a barrage of big-bore rifle fire.
This was running through his mind as he brought his rifle to his shoulder a split-second before my shot exploded his head, with shards of pristinely white bone flipping through the sunshine amid a billowy spray of pink and red and gray.
Then there were two shots from my right, their left. It was Carmody. I could tell by the boom of that buffalo gun he favored.
I don’t know if he’d interpreted the first shot as my signal for help or if he could tell it wasn’t the sound of my round, but in any event, he responded like a one-man cavalry and knew exactly what to do.
He’d flanked them.
Nothing scares ambushers more than being flanked, and a second after they’d figured out what was happening they were riding out. They were galloping away before Carmody’s shot finished echoing.
Chapter 16
We chased them for a couple miles before we had to give up.
The ambushers had fast horses. Mine was faster, but the ambushers knew the trails and had the advantage of actually being able to see where they were going. My head was bleeding faster than I could wipe the blood out of my eyes, and without the sweatband of my Boss of the Plains hat, there was nothing to impede the trickle.
Carmody’s little mountain horse was not much bigger than a pony, and even though Carmody is lean, he’s tall and big-boned. I would guess he weighs at least 220 pounds. Even though his mount was unsurpassed at rock climbing, it wasn’t meant for long stretches with a heavy rider and it began to blow.
We pulled up and saw them enter the mouth of a what looked like a box canyon. Actually, only Carmody saw them. His eyes are better than mine, but mine are pretty good when they’re not covered with a film of blood.
“Shit,” I said, wiping my eyes on a sleeve that had become slicked with scarlet and just made the whole mess wetter. I tried my shirt tail and that worked better.
If Carmody were indeed half mountain goat, as rumor had it, some other segment of his genetics might be some species of hunting dog because he is impossible to distract when on point, even when his partner is bleeding out three feet away.
“Are you gonna die like right now?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the mouth of the canyon.
“No, but thanks for asking.”
“Then give me your horse.”
And with that he was gone.
Chapter 17
Head wounds can leak an astonishing amount of blood. The skin is stretched tight and full of veins, I’ve been told, and when it’s cut it splits wide and just spews.
I’d been something of a bleeder when I was fighting. My eyebrows were cut from time to time, usually from headbutts. I never scarred much, though. Some men would thicken up in the eyes and ears and get that forbidding prizefighter look. I was never too worried about the tough-looking ones with the scar tissue, though, because it wasn’t so much a badge of toughness as a tell-tale that they got hit in the face a lot.
Because I’d promised Carmody I wouldn’t die today, I figured I’d better try to stop bleeding, and soon. I found a stream and let Carmody’s horse drink and washed the wound out best I could. The water was moving too fast to provide a clear reflection, but I could half-see and half-feel that the bullet had opened a three-inch gash above my right eye and near my hairline.
I found some white yarrow and crumpled it up. I was never quite sure if it were the flowers or the leaves that were supposed to stanch the flow of blood, so I made a soupy poultice of both and pressed it into the wound.
If the pain of the poultice equated to effectiveness I figured I’d stop bleeding soon, and I did.
I took out my knife and cut off the left sleeve of my shirt and tied it over the poultice and around my head. I pulled it as tight as I could, knotted it, and at some point passed out.
Chapter 18
When I woke up it was dark, but Carmody had a campfire going.
“Damnedest thing I ever did see,” he said, as though we had just taken a break in the conversation a minute ago.
I propped myself up on an elbow. I was a little light-headed and faintly nauseated, perhaps from the cloying smell of the dried blood that had caked my clothes. But other than that, I didn’t feel too badly.
“What?”
He was turning some meat on a stick over the fire.
“First you got to eat and drink. I filled your canteen; the water in the stream is good. And here’s some food.”
It took me a second to focus but soon the shape of the meat on the stick suddenly cohered in my mind. I recognized the contour of the haunches, the taper of the body. I could feel the cold horror creep into my bones.
“I’m not eating a fucking squirrel.”
“It’s a fox squirrel,” Carmody said, as if the distinction would somehow make a difference.
“Big and meaty,” he said. “Native to this area. And I do admit these babies is a mite more tender than the ones back home.”
I couldn’t tell if the dizziness that overtook me was from loss of blood, the after-effects of the blow to my head from the bullet that had creased my skull, or from watching Carmody bite into what I believe was the thing’s horrid little butt.
“We have to get back.” I needed to change the subject.
“Traveling at night is tough enough when you’re not all passy-out. You need to eat, or you could go paws up again.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll die before I eat that thing. I’d shoot myself. I’d shoot you if you wave that under my nose again. I packed some jerky in the saddlebags. From a cow. Not a rat with a fluffy tail.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, mumbling as he walked over to his horse. I could only make out a reference to the fact that I didn’t appreciate nothing and some random observations on my ancestry.
It occurred to me that he might have a point about resting for the night. I’d only been conscious for about five minutes and already I was seeing twinkling star-showers whether my eyes were open or shut. But Elmira would be worried, and I hated to make her wait until tomorrow afternoon to learn I was all right.
It would be a good idea to get back as early as possible.
And Harbold, who I was counting on to keep the peace and put down any insurrection inspired by one or both of my prisoners, might have to return to Austin if he were wired in the morning.
That made it important to get back.
And Harbold said he was going to hang out with Elmira.
That made it imperative.
So, I heaved myself to my feet, asked Carmody about what had happened to the ambushers, saw a brilliant star-show, and woke up the next morning.
I didn’t remember falling down.
Chapter 19
Carmody began his story as soon as we mounted up the next morning.
I was feeling better but was chilled because my clothes were still wet. I’d fallen into the campfire and Carmody had doused me with stream water after pulling me out. There were some burned patches o
n my shirt and my side stung a little, but I was otherwise in better shape than the local fox squirrels.
“Goddamndest suicide attempt I ever did see,” Carmody said as we set out.
“Things always look better in the morning,” I said. “Anyway, I’m starting to get my wits back.”
I couldn’t quite hear his reply, but it sounded something like such as they is. I let it pass.
“Anyway,” I said, “what happened?”
“You got shot in the head, blew off somebody else’s head, and tried to dive into the campfire.”
“I know that. I mean after you followed the others who ambushed us.”
“And you lost your hat. Kept me awake you delirious and all whining about your fucking hat.”
“Aside from that. What happened?”
“And I don’t think Harbold is going to move in on Elmira. You outrank him, and he knows you can beat the shit out of him. Man respects you a lot. I can tell.”
“Damn it, Tom.”
“Sorry. I’m tiptoeing around telling you what I saw because you probably’s going to think I’m making it up.”
He had my attention.
“First,” he said, poking that finger in the air, “I assume you’ve come to the same conclusion as me about who the actual target is here.”
I hadn’t thought about it. I actually hadn’t thought about much of anything since getting my hair parted; I’d acted entirely on instinct except for a few moments last night, but my reasoning had been derailed by passing out after I saw Carmody eat squirrel-butt.
But now everything was clear.
“We weren’t even halfway there,” I said. “And it was obvious I didn’t have the money on me. There was never any drop-off planned. Nobody cared about the money. And somebody knew I’d be coming from Shadow Valley. It was an ambush.”