by Tony Roberts
“Yup,” Joe grunted. It sounded as if that was the limit of his vocabulary.
“So, go to the station in Cheyenne and get a ticket to the end of the line at Omaha. She can’t have gone too far without being noticed. Bring her back and you’ll get a suitable reward. Got it?”
“Seems I have a job on my hands. Any chance of an advance?”
Slim scowled. “Look, mister, you got no choice. Either agree or I’ll have you shot as you’ll be of no use to me. Got it?”
“Putting it like that, well you have a point.”
“You bet. Now go with Joe, and don’t think of trying anything smart with him; he’d chew you up and spit you out without thinking about it.”
They left the shack and walked across the waste ground towards the river. To the right the parade ground stood and the road wound its way out of this and over the river on a three-span wooden bridge. That was their route to Cheyenne, but they had no means by which to get there. Oddly, they were hailed and Joe went up to the man who had called out and after a short discussion, two horses and saddles were brought out of a nearby stables and handed to the two men.
It was easy to ride to Cheyenne, and Joe grunted that when they got there they would give the horses to the stables and then go get tickets for the train. The journey to the town of Cheyenne was uneventful and they found the stables and handed the horses over. Clearly Slim had some agreement going with the owners.
There was a wide street and they crossed it, Joe dumping a small bag of coins in Casey’s hand as they did so. On the other side of the street stood a small railway station, of one platform and a ticket office. There was one line and it stretched off into the distance in both directions.
Casey got two tickets to Omaha and were told the train would be along in an hour. He tried to engage Joe in conversation but the hulk of a man was either deaf, dumb or just too stupid to understand. In some ways he reminded the scarred mercenary of Big Jim, the bodyguard he’d encountered in the Caribbean back in the days of Blackbeard. Similarly big and apparently slow-witted, he hadn’t actually been that dense, but affected it so as to fool people. Casey wondered if Joe was another such man.
Once they boarded the train, Casey sat next to Joe in the middle carriage. He was neatly corralled, being made to sit by the window. Joe clearly had his instructions. The journey would take most of the day and the next. Some time he had to rid himself of this man.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The night had been uncomfortable. Crammed against the window he had slept fitfully while Joe snored in his ear. The one time Casey had needed to get up Joe had been instantly awake and had followed him to the john. Fucking hell, Casey thought acidly to himself, does he want to sit with me? He’d needed the stretch as much as to relieve himself, and felt better when he got back to his open cell by the window.
A hasty cup of coffee followed by another trip to the conveniences. Casey had noted the single window in the small room and now opened it. He looked out and winced at the onrushing countryside that flew past. The wind watered his eyes but he looked up and around. The roof was accessible thanks to a metal flange at the edge, designed to channel rainwater off the roof. That was his route up onto the top.
He turned, sat on the sill, and reached up. Grasping the metal edge, he pulled himself out of the toilet. Grunting and breathing in deeply, he got up, his feet on the sill giving him extra leverage.
Now he was on the roof and crouched. The wind blew through his hair and the rolling countryside met his gaze in every direction. Lucky it wasn’t winter. He wondered how long it would be before Joe realized something was wrong.
Not long. He heard a curse below him. Peering over the edge he saw Joe staring up at him. “You sonofabitch,” he growled, then vanished.
Casey got to the center of the roof, balancing himself. The train was rumbling gently around a long curve to the left, wooded slopes on either side. The smoke from the locomotive obscured his vision for a few seconds every other minute, and he worried which direction Joe would come at him from. He kept on turning his head to look at either end of the carriage. Joe would use the ladders to get up
Another puff of smoke. Joe emerged from it from the forward end. He had a pistol in his hand but the rocking motion of the carriage and the need to keep balance meant that unless he was about ten feet away, it was useless. Even then it would require Casey to remain still or Joe got lucky.
The roof of the carriage was punctuated with square ventilators. Casey used one to keep balance and edged back from the advancing man. “Get back down, now!” Joe snarled.
“Come and make me, you ape,” Casey snapped.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“Try it, ugly bastard!”
Joe’s mouth tightened. What he didn’t see was a plume of smoke billowing towards him and Casey tensed. Now! The smoke covered them both and Casey moved left and crouched lower, moving around the ventilator, one hand keeping hold of it. He came out of the smoke at Joe, his left fist blurring up under the gun hand and striking him hard. The pistol flew up and span off into the countryside.
Joe swung his left but Casey deflected it. They both felt the train shift to the right and had to get purchase as their balance shifted. Casey sent a right at Joe and connected, but the giant absorbed it with a grunt of pain, then slammed a counter into Casey’s ribs.
Jesus! That hurt...
Casey sank to his knees and Joe was onto him in an instant, one leg raised to smash into the Eternal Mercenary’s face. Casey wasn’t going to let that happen though, and his hand came up and took hold of the big man’s ankle, jerking it forward hard. Joe crashed onto the roof, ass-first, swearing loudly.
Now they locked in a deadly embrace on the roof, lying side by side. Joe slowly pushed at Casey, forcing him to the edge of the roof. Flailing in desperation, Casey’s foot found the flange and he jammed it in hard, getting some purchase. Now he rammed his knee up hard and caught the big man in the crotch.
Joe gasped and momentarily relaxed his hold. Casey had hoped for that and brought his right hand up and clamped it around Joe’s throat and began squeezing. Joe grunted and flailed at Casey but the grip wasn’t going to be broken. He had developed it on the slave galleys of Rome and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let go of this any time soon.
The big man realized this was serious and now attempted to rip the hand away, but Casey was lying on his right arm and the left wasn’t strong enough to do the job. “You’re going to get off early, you shithead,” Casey breathed into Joe’s face.
The giant’s face went redder and redder and his thrashings got weaker and weaker. The trapped man made some peculiar noises before his eyes glazed over and his grip went slack. With a convulsive heave, Casey sent the man over his body and off the train’s edge.
He lay there, breathing hard for a moment or two, trying to stop the trembling in his arms, before getting up wearily and making his way slowly to the end of the carriage. He decided to step over onto the next one and walk along to the end of the next. The struggle on the roof would have been heard by the occupants so he didn’t want to return to explain it and to possibly answer difficult questions about big bodies flying off roofs.
He sat for a while outside in between the two carriages before he was able to walk into one without looking as if he were sixty years of age. Sometimes he felt it. Gods, he was tired, so tired, and so badly wanted to go to sleep forever and never wake again. But, he was cursed and so he would have to live this unending life until the Second Coming, whenever the hell that was.
He sat alone close to the end with his head in his hands, wondering what he could do next. Two things; one, try and find Lisa. It was a hard task, given she had gone about six months before, according to Slim. The other thing was to go to Bismarck, wherever that was, and track down Stoneleigh and kill that bastard. He had a vague memory of what he looked like but nothing really clear. A name and a vague recollection. He had been looking to join the army there. He�
�d seek the army in Bismarck and join up. Should be easy. That was his world. Once he worked out who Stoneleigh was, if he was still there, then he’d find an opportunity to finish the bastard off.
Omaha came and everyone got off. The train conductor was asking everyone about what they had seen and clearly someone had alerted him to the fight. Nobody had seen anything, though, thankfully. The conductor asked him, too, but Casey shook his head dumbly.
Omaha was a growing town and built of wooden houses, churches, warehouses and stores. A few enquiries and he was directed to a hotel with an enormous frontage and sign stating it was the ‘best hotel east of the Rockies and west of the Missouri’. Casey smiled sardonically. He’d get a job and ask around if anyone had seen the girl.
For three weeks he got nowhere, except in getting a job as a packer of wood in a warehouse that the proprietor, a tired individual who had injured an arm the winter just gone, was thankful for. There was a lot of work to do, for the railroad running west was bringing in plenty of building material, wood mostly, and building was going on at a phenomenal rate. Supplies of lumber were also coming in on the Missouri river.
When he’d finished his day’s work he often sat in a saloon across the road and spoke to the barman and other patrons before making his way to his small rented room down the road. It was on one of these evenings that he finally learned about Lisa, although not in a conventional way.
One of the alleyways he passed had three men waiting at the entrance and as Casey passed there came the unmistakable click of a colt being cocked. He looked at the three and saw the muzzle pointing at him. “You come here or we kill you now.”
Casey had little choice; even at twelve feet or so he doubted they would miss. He was manhandled into the alleyway quickly and pushed against one of the wooden walls and searched. No gun made them look at one another in surprise. Their features were hidden with the darkness, but the one in the middle was squat and seemed to have a broken nose. “Okay bud,” this one spoke. “You’ve been asking about a girl.”
“Who hasn’t?” Casey tried the light touch.
“Stop being a smart-ass. We know who you’ve been asking about. That stops now or we get angry. Got it?”
“Why the heavy stuff? All you got to do is to ask nicely.”
“Look, bud, we don’t want no wise-guy coming into town and making trouble. So back off and shut your mouth, or else.”
Casey eyed all three. The other two were merely hired muscle and not there to think. The squat man in the center thought he had command of the situation, something Casey changed in a blink of an eye. His knowledge of the Way of the Open Hand, taught to him centuries ago by that Chinese sage, came in good use at that moment. A knuckle to the squat man’s right eye and sudden spin to his left, right foot swinging up hard under the first hireling’s jaw saw to him.
Even as the muscleman was falling backwards, Casey was turning, his right foot coming down and he lifted his left hand. The third man was raising his pistol but he was too slow. The confines of the space meant that Casey had the closeness to hit and hit hard and fast. Two punches to the ribs, one over the heart, and the third man was sinking to the floor.
The squat man was clutching his face, crying out in pain, so Casey grabbed him by the lapel and belt, spun him round, and rammed his head into the planking wall opposite. The man crashed to the ground inertly.
Casey examined the three men. One was still moving, groaning, so he stamped on his head to shut him up. Next, take the best pistol and belt, and spare ammunition. Now he was armed. Next, step out and wait. He crossed the road and concealed himself in the shadows on the far side. A few people passed, as did wagons, but it was getting close to midnight and folks were mostly home now.
Not long afterwards three very groggy men emerged from the alleyway. They had a discussion and the squat man waved in the direction towards the river. They stumbled off, still arguing, and Casey found it easy to follow them. He kept a discreet distance, always staying in shadows, keeping to sidewalks, while the three, who could easily have been mistaken for being inebriated, made their unsteady way along the hardened mud street.
They stopped outside a modest looking house close to the river, down on the flat land, and Casey could smell the river. He leaned hard against a house’s porch and watched as the three went in and the door closed.
He waited for a few minutes then pushed himself off the wall and sauntered past, his head down, eyes roving over the building. Two floors, veranda, balcony, three windows at the top, two at the bottom. He needed to look at the rear, so climbed a rickety fence and made his way slowly through some refuse and broken fencing, stones and discarded machinery to the back. There was a wall of planks and wiring and it would creak like a gibbet if moved, so that was no way in, yet against it at the end was a hut, stood outside the perimeter. Maybe he could climb the hut and jump over the fence to the yard beyond?
Best to get going as soon as possible. Didn’t want whoever was in the house getting organized. The sooner he’d found Lisa the better. Whether she was happy there or not he had to know; he needed to pass on her parents’ message. He’d promised. A promise was a promise. He liked to think he could keep his word; at least whatever he was, if he could do that he could feel better about himself. Besides, he liked her. The thought of her being held against her will made him feel mad.
He was up on the hut before he could have second thoughts, and then he jumped into the yard. It was pretty well enclosed, and at the back of the house the door looked barred. The windows too seemed to have bars or wooden slats across them, so it looked like a prison more than a house. From the front it looked respectable.
He was beginning to have bad feelings about the place. He made his way swiftly through the yard, littered with weeds and rotten water butts, to the wooden wall at the rear of the house. He tested the door. Locked. Looking up there was a balcony, within reach, so he raised his arms, grasped the bottom of the balcony and pulled himself up, grunting with the effort.
His legs flailed for a moment but then he was up. The door that led onto the balcony was of wood and glass, and had wooden slats nailed on the outside. Clearly to keep someone in. He peered through the gap in the slats. It was dark inside but he thought he could see beds with people lying on them.
He had little choice but to press on. The slats weren’t too hard to pull off and he ripped three away from the door and threw them into the yard. Now he had enough space to smash the glass in so he did, using the butt of his Colt.
The handle on the inside was easy to twist and he was inside, trying to make out what was going on. A chorus of sleepy voices greeted him, all female. Those that could speak coherently were asking what was going on. Casey’s attention was on the door in the opposite wall. A light was framing it and a voice was beyond, demanding to know what the hell was going on.
Casey had his Colt ready. “Get down, all of you!” he snapped to the women who were getting out of bed. They all threw themselves down immediately. Used to following a man’s command. That told him a lot.
The door crashed open and light flooded in. A man stood with a shotgun cradled in his hands. Casey blew him away without even having to aim properly, and stepped forward, accompanied by screams of fear from the women.
The passageway outside led to a flight of stairs to the right and another door to the left. He heard running feet from the right so swung that way. Two men were coming up the stairs, pistols in hands. Casey’s first shot took the front man through the shoulder, the next smashed the second man through the air, his ribs crushed, to land in an untidy heap at the bottom.
The door behind him opened and Casey dived, rolling on the floor. A shot blasted through the wall by his head. He aimed hurriedly at the figure of a man stood five feet away and shot him through the stomach. The man screamed horribly and crashed back into the room he’d come from.
Shouts, screams, feet running. The smell of cordite was heavy. He got to his feet and ran to the stairs and went
down fast, gun pointing into the room. The two men he’d shot weren’t going anywhere. One was dead, the other lying head down, groaning softly, clutching his shattered shoulder.
Blood was everywhere. He avoided the worst of it and crouched by the dead man at the bottom of the stairs. One man came from a door to the rear and fired. It narrowly missed Casey who calmly aimed and then cut him down, blowing a hole through his chest. He went to the door and peered in. Two men were there, including the squat man, both were bloodied and had been receiving first aid.
They raised their hands as Casey advanced at them. “Okay you two beauties,” Casey said, “any reason why I shouldn’t kill you now?”
“We’re unarmed,” Squat said.
“So? I’d stamp a scorpion to death without thinking. Vermin like you deserve the same fate. Lisa. Where is she?”
“Upstairs. She’s been with us five months. I didn’t hurt her, honestly! It was Blake, the boss!”
“And where’s Blake?”
“You gunned him down there,” Squat pointed to the man whose chest was caved in, lying spread-eagled across the floor. “Ran this place. Hired us to keep the girls here. Clients paid well for the girls.”
“Yeah. Imprisoning them against their wills. Wonder how many folks miss their little girls, not knowing if they’re alive or dead. You disgust me, all of you.”
“We were only doing our job, we got paid to do it!”
“And I guess there were no other jobs possible for you and you? Like you were forced at gunpoint to do this?” Casey got angrier and angrier. “You think that excuses the choices you made? Pick up a gun.”