by Tony Roberts
“The what?”
“Duggan’s place. It’s up here somewhere, so don’t play cute with me. I know you two are working for him or his family, so you know exactly who and what I’m talking about. Where is it from here? The sooner you tell me the sooner we can say goodbye to one another.”
“You’ll not get anything out of us, damn your black heart,” one of the deputies snapped. “Duggan is an upstanding law-abiding member of society and the likes of you are not welcome here.”
Casey snorted with amusement. “He’s only law-abiding because his family have paid enough to the law enforcers to make it so. If ordinary folk did what he has done then they’d be outlawed. Amazing what money can do, isn’t it? I’m outside the law and so I’m not bound by its corrupted rules. Duggan’s not bought immunity from the likes of me. I’m going to kill him and there’s nothing you or anyone else working for him can do about it. So, we carry on tomorrow with you equally uncomfortable. We’ll blunder about looking for it until we do, and it’ll take you longer to be freed because you won’t tell us.”
“What if we want a leak or something?” one complained.
Casey shrugged. “Not my problem. You sit in it. Tell us where we have to go then it’ll be different.”
“You can’t do that!” the two bound men protested. “It ain’t dignified!”
Casey shrugged. He walked off, turning a deaf ear to their bitching. He’d witnessed, experienced and had heard of far worse treatment than that in his time. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about their comforts. They were still alive, whereas he knew of many in his position who would have shot them dead without so much as a jot of regret. Sometimes it came back to bite him in the ass but that was his choice.
Cooper waved his fork at the two men. “They not happy about something?”
Casey told him. Cooper grunted. “Perhaps they’ll be inclined to tell us then.”
The night was fully upon them and in the distance they could hear wolves howling and crying out. The fire Cooper had lit kept him and Casey warm and comfortable. The two deputies, bound some way off and tied to a tree stump, were less so. “What about us being fed?”
“Get lost,” Casey said. “I expect us to find the house in a couple of days, even without any help from you two, and when we do find it we’ll let you go with food and a supply of water then. Until then all you’re getting is water. So shut up or I’ll gag you.”
“You do that and we won’t be able to tell you where the house is.”
“You ain’t done that yet so I can’t see any difference.”
The deputies swore and struggled, but the bindings were too well tied to allow them to make any bid for freedom. Finally, as midnight approached, one of them uttered a vile invective. “Look, buddy, I gotta have a leak. I can’t sit here and go in my pants! Let me loose and I promise I’ll tell you.”
Casey got up, a canteen of water in his hand. He came to stand over the man and looked down at him. “Tell me first where it is.”
“After I’ve had a leak.”
Casey shrugged. “Then you stay there.” He slowly tipped the canteen and a stream of water dribbled to the ground. The deputy grimaced and looked away, squirming.
“You bastard!” he finally growled. “Down that trail there,” he nodded at a route that went downhill to the right. “Half a day’s ride and you’ll see it on a bluff overlooking the Bozeman. Nobody can see you approach till you’re a couple of hundred yards away. A fall of boulders blocks your approach.”
“Thank you,” Casey said. He put the canteen down and produced a knife, slicing through the ropes. “Go relieve yourselves. You can try to run but you won’t get too far tonight. Best to try in the morning.”
The two men got up and vanished rapidly into the dark. Cooper grunted as Casey came back to him. “You think that a wise move? They may sneak up on us when we sleep.”
“Nope,” Casey said. “I’ll take first watch. You take second. They’ll not risk taking us on since they have no weapons. I’ll keep an eye out just in case. You get some shut-eye.”
Casey sat away from the fire and listened. He did expect the deputies to try something, but had told Cooper differently hoping his voice carried to the two men. If they did try anything then he’d be ready for them.
It was an hour later he heard something. A dislodged stone behind him. He smiled to himself and cocked an ear. No doubt they would come at him from two directions. He made sure his pistol was not cocked, and put it in his palm. He made out he was nodding off but his eyes were constantly moving from side to side. He caught a motion and slightly turned his head. Sure enough a dark shape was slowly moving towards him, almost behind him.
Another shape was moving off to the right and ahead. A pincer movement. The two were definitely not going to let the two who they saw as outlaws go free, especially as they had the horses. Casey had guessed they would do this. There came a sudden movement behind and he leaped forward off his seat and span. The deputy who had come up behind had been carrying a heavy stick, almost a shortened branch. He narrowly missed Casey’s head with a vicious downward swipe, the weapon smashing into the improvised seat he’d been using. If he had been there no doubt he would now be lying with his head crushed. It had been a killing blow.
Casey stepped forward and clubbed the man across the head with the butt of his Colt. The deputy struck the ground heavily and remained still. The other one came forward, a weapon of some kind in his hand, but it was too dark for Casey to make out exactly what. His pistol was now in his fist and cocked. “One more step and you die,” Casey warned him. “Drop it.”
The deputy cursed and threw a hand-sized rock to the ground. Casey got him to stand with his hands up and he was marched at pistol point to his previous holding place and retied to his unconscious companion. “Now that’s nice and comfortable,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll leave you two here, then once we’ve done our bit we’ll return and let you go. Get settled; it’s going to be a long wait for you.”
He woke Cooper at the allocated time, explaining the excitement that had been slept through. Cooper was chagrined to have missed it, but Casey reminded him there would be plenty of action the coming day.
At daybreak they washed, ate, and waved the two furious deputies a farewell and rode off down the route that had been pointed out to them. Sure enough, about thirty minutes later the house came into view, built on the hillside. Casey led Cooper along a sunken trail that had scrub and ridges concealing them from the house, then up to a point just below the large veranda.
They dismounted and left their horses to graze. Both took pistols and spare ammunition. They crept up a crumbling, dry stony gully to the top and peered over the edge. The house was a hundred yards away, surrounded by a plank fence. It was of one floor but wide and sprawling. Two men could be seen on the veranda, in rough wooden chairs, rifles on their laps.
Another two could be seen patrolling the outside, pausing occasionally to look along the Bozeman Trail that ran below it about five hundred yards away. That was four. Clint and his two sidekicks would be inside. It would be a tricky one this, but they had come so far to do a job and now wasn’t the time to have second thoughts.
“Let’s take out the two walking around,” Casey said. “Once we do that the two on the porch should be easy to take out. It’s the three inside that’ll be tough but it’ll be three against two.” Cooper scuttled away to the left, intent on dealing with the one furthest away. Casey remained in the gully, watching the other patrolman.
The man came walking closer, a bored expression on his face. Clearly this kind of job wasn’t to his liking, but he had to do it. After all, he was being paid by old man Duggan to look after his son, and he’d do it to the best of his ability. He thought he heard the blowing of a horse from nearby and, intrigued, he made his way along a rocky path to where a small jumble of large rocks stood, close to the edge of a drop.
He leaned over the edge and felt nothing more as a blinding flash and sharp
pain sent him into unconsciousness. Casey lowered his victim to the ground, and now gripped his Colt in his right hand and crept closer to the veranda. The two men there were seemingly off-duty, and they were relaxing, swapping stories and a bottle of what looked to Casey like whiskey. He glanced to his left and tried to locate Cooper. He was somewhere out in the rocky background but not in Casey’s line of vision.
Just then there was the report of a pistol and the two men on the veranda jumped up, grabbing their rifles. Casey sucked in his breath and crouched lower, using a slab of rock to hide him from the two men.
The two came forward, looking to a point off to Casey’s left. Somewhere out there Cooper or the man he’d been hunting had fired, and now these two were going to investigate. They were going to pass right in front of Casey, and the scarred man had to make a quick decision; either leave Cooper to it or take on these two and risk being hit himself.
The time to decide was now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Casey stepped out from behind the rock and cocked his pistol. Both that and the movement attracted the two men’s attention, fifteen feet away. They were turning when Casey opened fire. The first bullet missed both men, passing in between them. The second, fired a second later, took the leading man through the chest, lifting him up off his feet. The third shot passed over the second man’s head as he ducked and rolled for cover, cursing.
He fired once, the bullet smashing into the rock behind Casey who now crouched and shot the rifleman through the head, blowing his skull apart. Turning away from the gruesome sight, he ran for the front of the house. The house had one approach road, a rutted track that weaved and wound its way down the slope to the Bozeman Trail which stood about a hundred feet below them.
Off to either side were drops, hemmed in by rocks and fissures. The house could only be approached from two directions which was why it had been put there. Taking the three steps in one bound, the Eternal Mercenary reached the door, reloading.
The door was unlocked and, clicking his reloaded Colt’s cylinder back into the body and cocking it again, he pushed the door open and crouched down, using the door frame as cover. Cooper was nowhere in sight, but neither was the man he had been hunting. A shot shattered the frame next to his head. He ducked, then peered back into the gloomy interior. A large room stood before him and doors led off left and right. A large table stood in the middle of the room. Past the table was the open passageway that led to the rear of the house.
A man was visible just to the left of the table, aiming again at Casey. The immortal warrior ducked back just as another bullet tore past him. Luckily he did, for another man was making his way towards the veranda, his pistol pointing at Casey. He was looking for an easy shot, hoping his intended target wouldn’t hear his approach. This must have been the one Cooper had been after. It wasn’t looking good for Cooper.
Casey swung his pistol and blasted off a shot. It ripped through the man’s right shoulder, spinning him around, his gun flying off through the air. As the man crashed to the ground he fell across one of the downed riflemen. He groggily reached for one of the rifles lying on the ground. Casey drew a careful aim at him and as he turned, using one arm, Casey’s next shot took him through the rib cage, sending him flying backwards. A cloud of dust rose from the impact.
Turning back, Casey was in time to see the man inside rushing at him. Two shots exploded from his pistol, one screaming into the air beyond the doorway, the other striking the doorframe and splintering it. Casey, in a much calmer and more stable posture, blew him away with a shot to the chest.
He didn’t know which one of the three this was, and no doubt would find out soon. The silence that followed was louder than he could imagine. His ears were ringing from the repeated reports, but he knew that would soon subside. The smell of the discharged shots was heavy in the air. Two more to get. He rushed in, scuttling across the floor and took cover behind the table.
He guessed the two others were deeper in the house, waiting for him. He would be exposed to any shot if he went the wrong way. How to flush them out? Fire? Maybe. He also wanted to see if Cooper needed help; he may be bleeding to death out there.
Using the table as a shield, he moved around to the right and watched every doorway carefully. Any movement would be danger. Nothing. He crept forward, grimacing as a floorboard creaked. Damn it! His skin prickled. Menace was pushing down on his senses. Although he was immortal, he felt pain like anyone else and his body had to go through a very agonizing process of healing itself every time he was injured. A wound from a soft-nosed pistol bullet would be massive and his body would take a long time to heal itself from that. The pain would be almost unbearable. So he tried not to get shot.
He pushed the first door open slowly and stepped back hastily. Nothing. A quick look. Nobody. He moved on to the next door and repeated the action. Nothing again. where the hell were these two bastards?
The rear of the house was next. He went down a narrow passageway. Here was the kitchen and working part of the house. He slowly moved through the dining room with its large table and chair set, then past the cooker and sink. A door yawned open at the rear and he cursed. They had fled.
He looked around the edge. Two men were running off into the distance. Casey took off after them, feet pounding. The hills rose ahead, and it looked impossible to get up the jagged, rocky face that greeted his eyes. The two men separated, realizing they were being pursued. Casey ran after the guy to the left, for no other reason than he made the decision on a split-second basis.
He closed the distance and the man ducked behind a boulder that had dropped off the cliff in times past. He used it as both cover and a stable platform to aim at the approaching man. The Eternal Mercenary weaved from side to side, hoping to put him off. The first shot narrowly passed by his head. Casey shot back, not expecting to hit him, but as a means to put him off his aim.
He went right, then left, and now the boulder was getting in the way of the man’s line of vision, so he would have to move out of cover to get a clear shot. Casey ran to the left, now out of sight of the man and began a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Who would move in the right direction and get the first shot off?
He doubled back, to the right. It helped his aim, too, for going anti-clockwise meant his pistol led, being right-handed. It was like the old days during the age of castles. He recalled the spiral staircases in the towers always went up clockwise, so to put any attacker at a disadvantage, and to favor the defenders, assuming of course, everyone was right-handed. In those days, anyone left-handed was regarded as being touched by Satan. His Latin tongue of his youth had given birth to two words describing left or right handedness. Dextrous and sinister.
He guessed his enemy would also follow the same direction, being a more natural way to do it. Casey decided to be unorthodox. He spotted a crack along the edge of the boulder and hooked his left hand up and grabbed it, pulling himself up, his boot finding a projecting lump of rock as purchase. He got on top of the eight-foot high rock and was now above his quarry, who was still looking for him anxiously.
“Hey, asshole,” Casey said, his pistol aimed right at his head.
The man swung his head up and was bringing his gun up to shoot when Casey gunned him down. He rolled across the ground and came to rest against more rocks and stones.
A bullet took him through the shoulder, sending him flying off the rock to land awkwardly with his arms and legs splayed. He got to his hands and knees, pain shooting through him, and desperately tried to move. The man who had shot him wasn’t that far away.
He lurched left, then right. His Colt had gone through the air somewhere. The man he’d killed was before him, and his pistol lay close to a ravine beyond, so he staggered in that direction. Another shot passed close by. “Stop movin’ you sonofabitch!” the man snarled, blasting another shot that sent up a cloud of dust at Casey’s feet.
The pistol was close now, but the loss of blood was making him dizzy. His left arm was useless
. He bent to pick up the gun.
“This is fer killin’ Mr. Duggan!” his opponent said, and as Casey was swinging round, he took a bullet through the chest.
Flying.
Vision swimming.
Impact.
Blackness.
___
How long he had laid in the darkness of the crevasse he didn’t know, but some time he opened his eyes to see a faint crack of light high above him, way above, with rough rocky walls climbing up towards it. He couldn’t move. His limbs were too heavy and he was too injured. He knew he was still injured for the overwhelming pain he felt consumed his consciousness, and he slipped away again.
He came to once more, still in pain, but not so badly. His eyes couldn’t make out anything. It was dark. Night had come to the hills. He moved his arms slowly. They were still heavy but at least he could now move them. His legs, too. He went to prop himself up and his left arm passed into thin air. He overbalanced and plunged down again, to smash head first on something and again it all went dark.
His head ached. He was wet. He was in water. It must be the bottom of the ravine. He groaned and tried to get up but he was trapped. His legs were caught in something, but he couldn’t see what. It was cold water, very cold, and flowing reasonably fast. The water flowed over his face and he choked. He tried to get his head higher but it was hopeless. More water covered his face and panic engulfed him. He tried to fight free but it was go good. His lungs filled with water and he slipped into unconsciousness once more.
There was a surreal moment when he came around again. There was ice coating him, and the water flowed beneath him. I am Prometheus he thought to himself. Prometheus, the Titan who gave mankind the secret of fire, who was punished by the gods to suffer death each day by having his liver eaten by an eagle while chained to a rock, only for it to be regenerated each evening because he was an immortal.