by Scott Connor
Nathan stood up then placed a hand on Frank’s shoulder and squeezed.
‘Don’t let Decker defeat you. He reckoned he’d broken our spirits, but he’s wrong. You’ve got some friends here who want to help. It’s got to be worth getting out of here and trying to save your land. What do you say?’
‘I told you to leave me alone,’ Frank said, speaking slowly with authority. He stood up and slapped a firm hand against Nathan’s chest pushing him back a pace. ‘Do it.’
‘I can’t,’ Nathan grunted, his anger rising now that he was again facing the obstinacy he’d encountered at the Bar T. ‘We’ve put ourselves through hell to save you.’
‘Nobody asked you for your help.’
‘They didn’t,’ Nathan snapped, waving his hands above his head as his heart pounded. ‘But now we’re here, you’re sure as hell going to come with us and try to save your land like Kenton Taylor would have done.’
Frank turned his back on him. Nathan glared at Frank’s back.
His heart raced as an irrational desire to hit this man consumed him. Despite the need for quiet, he advanced on Frank, but Frank turned and it was he who threw the first punch.
Nathan darted away from the fist, stumbling back into the wall, but Frank leapt at him and pinned him to the wall then slammed a low blow into his belly. Frank kept him pinned with an arm held across his throat as he glared into his eyes, the combination of Frank’s ripe smell and his own constricted windpipe making Nathan splutter for breath.
‘Leave me,’ Frank grunted, backing up his demand with another thrust of his arm that momentarily lifted Nathan off the floor.
Then he grabbed Nathan’s shoulder and hurled him towards the corner.
Nathan stumbled several paces before tumbling to his knees. He stared at the floor, hearing the blood pounding in his ears as his anger brimmed over.
Fuelled on by his frustration he leapt to his feet, swirled round, and advanced on Frank with his fists raised. He ducked Frank’s first punch, took the second on the chin, still advancing, then slapped both hands together and with a swinging uppercut hammered Frank away.
Frank clattered into the wall but rebounded and walked into a low kick that bent him double. With Frank spluttering in pain and temporarily unable to defend himself, Nathan grabbed an arm and swirled round, swinging him into the wall.
Frank hit the wall head first and collapsed.
Nathan stood over him, breathing deeply and demanding that he get up, but Frank didn’t move, lying hunched over with his face pressed to the floor. Moment by moment, Nathan’s deep breathing calmed him and he became aware of Jeff demanding that he tell him what was happening and to be quiet.
Now feeling ashamed of his actions, he toed Frank’s chest, but only succeeding in tipping him over to lie on his back, his blank eyes staring upwards. Then he slipped round the corner and faced Jeff, who was glaring at him through the grille.
‘What in tarnation are you doing?’ he demanded.
‘I’ve already done it,’ Nathan said with a rueful sigh. ‘I’ve just knocked out the man we’ve come to rescue.’
Chapter Fourteen
With Jeff holding the comatose Frank’s legs and walking backwards and with Nathan holding his shoulders and whispering directions, they maneuvered Frank out of the tower and to the steps.
They debated their next move and decided that with Frank unconscious, they wouldn’t be able to get him down from the wall safely, but then Jeff beckoned for Nathan to be quiet.
Nathan listened and heard people coming up the steps, their footfalls stomping closer. He judged they were half-way up the first flight of steps and two men were speaking – Decker and Quincy.
‘We don’t have to talk up here,’ Decker said.
‘I thought it best to deal in private,’ Quincy said.
As these men were unlikely to go up to the tower, they paced down several steps but still kept themselves out of their view on the way to the office.
‘All this fort is mine, not just my office.’
Up the steps, Nathan and Jeff both smiled. Despite Quincy’s statement that he wouldn’t help them, he was again risking more than he needed to by getting Decker out of their way.
Nathan was just turning his mind to how they would get past the guards when Quincy spoke again, this time with a raised voice.
‘I know, but the sunlight is harsh and you can’t pick out all the details. You’ll find . . .’ A thud sounded. ‘You two, be careful with those saddles. They’re valuable.’
Grunted complaints sounded, accompanied by a scrape and this time a demand from Decker to be careful.
Nathan had to bite his bottom lip to avoid laughing with relief. Quincy had somehow talked the guards into carrying saddles up to the office and was even letting them know what he was doing.
Nathan listened to the group clump up the steps. Then the group headed to the mayor’s office.
Nathan reckoned the guards would only be in the office for a matter of seconds so they risked that none of the group would turn round as they walked down the steps.
Their surreptitious actions of the last few days had strengthened their resolve, so neither man checked whether the group saw them. They reached the floor and continued down the steps.
Then they hurried across the plaza and down the tunnel. When they reached the doorway to the parade-ground, they paused. Nathan hadn’t heard the guards following yet.
He glanced through the doorway and confirmed nobody was near the tower. Then, with Jeff, he hurried around the wagon.
They swung Frank’s unconscious body on to the back. Then they rolled into the wagon and buried him under several saddles.
Just as they were preparing to slip themselves down beside Frank, Jeff flinched.
‘What’s wrong?’ Nathan asked.
Jeff plowed down into the saddles. Nathan followed him and when they reached the base of the wagon, he crawled closer.
‘I might be seeing things,’ Jeff said, then pointed, ‘but I reckon someone was looking at us from the jailhouse.’
‘Are you—?’
‘Now what’s going on here?’ Sheriff Buckthorn demanded from outside the wagon.
Nathan winced. With a quick whispered debate, they decided to stay still and hope that at this late hour in the day Buckthorn would be inebriated and so not search with care.
Footsteps approached the wagon, then stopped on the opposite side to where they were hiding. The saddles shook and a slap suggested Buckthorn had moved one of them.
He grumbled to himself then slapped another saddle aside, this time towards the back of the wagon. Then he carried on walking around the back.
They pressed themselves flat to the base of the wagon, hoping the saddles above them would keep them hidden.
Buckthorn slapped a saddle above Nathan, driving his face down into the wagon, but he gritted his teeth and welcomed hearing him pace by. Buckthorn patted one more saddle. Then footsteps pattered away.
Nathan couldn’t see what he was doing, but heard muttering and imagined that Buckthorn was staring at the wagon as he tried to work out whether his suspicious sighting was real or not.
‘Oh, to hell with it!’ Buckthorn muttered finally.
A scrape sounded as he turned on his heel then a crunch that Nathan took for him kicking a wheel as he walked past the back of the wagon. Then he headed for the tunnel and the sanctuary of his jailhouse.
But other footsteps approached from down the tunnel.
‘What are you doing, Buckthorn?’ Decker demanded.
‘Just helping out,’ Buckthorn said.
‘The day you help out is the day I buy you enough whiskey for you to drink yourself to death.’
A peel of laughter ripped out, with several people joining in, suggesting the guards had returned with Decker.
‘Then maybe you’ll have to buy me that whiskey today,’ Buckthorn said with a surprising amount of pride in his voice. ‘I’ve just seen two men carrying another man
and that man looked dead to me.’
‘Where?’ Decker said, his voice now coming from beyond the tunnel and close to the wagon.
‘I’m not that sure, but they headed past that wagon. Actually, I thought they might have got on it, but . . . Oh, I don’t know.’
Decker snorted a derisory laugh, the sound coming from beside the wagon.
Nathan willed them to finish this discussion and move away, but the saddles around him shifted position and he felt a tap on the ankle. He risked moving his head to see Jeff through the mass of leather, but Jeff mouthed that he hadn’t moved.
Then he realized what had happened. Frank was coming awake and stirring.
‘You don’t know what you see no more,’ Decker said.
‘I saw Kenton Taylor when he escaped, didn’t I?’
‘Only after you’d let those idiots free him.’
‘Yes!’ Buckthorn cried out. ‘I knew I recognized them. The men I saw carrying this here other man were the men who broke Kenton out of jail.’
‘Where did they go?’ Decker roared. A slap sounded, followed by scraping footsteps, suggesting Decker had grabbed then shaken Buckthorn.
‘I told you. I saw . . . Or at least I think I saw . . .’
To Nathan’s side, Frank murmured to himself and to silence him, Nathan slipped a hand through the mess of saddles and placed it over Frank’s mouth.
Decker snorted his breath, the sound coming from behind the wagon.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Decker said, his voice using a soothing but perhaps mocking tone. ‘If you can remember where you saw those men, I’ll get you as much whiskey as you could ever want.’
Two steady footsteps sounded, then two quicker and heavier ones, giving Nathan the impression Decker and Buckthorn had shuffled round to face each other.
‘Can I leave now, because—?’ Quincy started to ask before Decker cut him off.
‘Nobody goes nowhere,’ Decker said, ‘until my trusty sheriff shows me where he saw those two idiots.’
Long moments passed without anyone speaking, during which time Nathan was sure they must be able to hear his thudding heart, and now Frank was twitching his arms as he came to. He even wriggled enough to move the saddles.
‘I guess they were in the wagon,’ Buckthorn murmured.
‘ In the wagon?’
Frank sighed and rolled over, his movement rocking several saddles aside.
‘There!’ Buckthorn shouted. ‘Like I said. They’re in the wagon.’
Neither Nathan nor Jeff wasted another moment after that revelation. Together they surged upwards, hurling saddles away as they found their feet.
Jeff was nearest to the seat and in a lithe movement he leapt onto it, grabbed the reins and shook them, hurtling the wagon off.
Nathan vaulted into the seat to join him as he pulled hard to the side, skidding the wagon round in a short circle to head it towards the gates. They trundled past the tower doorway with the group outside the door still not having reacted.
Buckthorn was grinning and getting in Decker’s way as he crowed at his unexpected success. The guards were looking at Decker as they awaited their orders while Quincy was doing his best to spread confusion by jumping on the spot and gesticulating. As they hurried past, Nathan heard him speak.
‘Hey, Decker, I claim my two-hundred-dollar bounty,’ he shouted.
Nathan swung round to face the front as Quincy at last did what he’d promised and extricated himself from their actions.
‘Fast as possible through the gates, Jeff,’ he said.
‘That was my plan.’ Jeff glanced over his shoulder. ‘But we need more speed. Throw those saddles over the back and lose us some weight.’
Nathan moved to head into the back, but he saw that they were probably already too late. To Decker’s orders, riders were pouring out of the stables and heading for the gates, aiming to cut them off.
These men issued forth as the guards gathered their horses and joined in the chase. None of them had drawn their guns, but they didn’t need to as the riders from the stables surged in to keep them in the fort.
The wagon was thirty yards from the gates, but the riders were just a few yards further away.
‘Keep a hold of that seat,’ Jeff shouted, shaking the reins with a loud crack. ‘This’ll be close.’
They speeded, closing on the gates, but the riders drew level then hurtled into the gateway. They dragged their horses to a halt, their steeds rearing, then swung them round to face them.
Five horses stood between the wagon and the freedom of the open plains. Jeff set his jaw firm and prepared to force his way through, but then several men drew and leveled guns on them.
At the last moment Jeff tore the reins to the side.
He was too late. The horse balked at the impossible demand. Wheels skidded, then left the ground. Then, uttering a dreadful creak and snap, the wagon rolled, hurling them through the air.
Nathan hit the ground, coming to rest beside the wall, then rolled away from the tumbling wagon before it crashed into the wall. The debris missed him but a saddle landed on his legs, so when he gained his feet, his numb legs forced him to hobble.
He saw that Jeff had landed safely but also in the midst of several saddles, from which he was fighting his way out. Decker’s guards had joined the other riders from the stables to form an arc around the gates, cutting them off from leaving the fort.
Nathan and Jeff turned to run back to the tower, aiming to use their previous escape route.
To a barked order from Decker, every guard turned a gun on them. One man fired a warning shot over their heads. With no choice left to them, they paced to a halt.
They placed their hands on their knees, taking deep breaths. Then, with resigned shrugs they swung round to face a row of drawn guns. They thrust their hands high.
With Buckhorn at his side and with Quincy dawdling behind, Decker walked towards them while ordering his guards to search through the wreckage for Frank.
Within moments two men dragged him out. He was shaken but conscious and uninjured. He flashed a glare of pure contempt at Nathan, and for a reason he couldn’t identify, Nathan reckoned it wasn’t because their escape attempt had failed.
He avoided meeting Quincy’s eye after wrecking his wagon. Instead, he watched Decker parade around, enjoying his success as he ordered his guards to take them to the tower.
‘Wait, Decker!’ Buckthorn said.
‘Leave this, Buckthorn,’ Decker said. ‘I’ll deal with these prisoners. After all, we don’t want them escaping like last time, do we?’
Buckthorn gulped. ‘They won’t escape this time and you’ve got no right keeping prisoners. They’re my responsibility and I’ll decide if they’ve done wrong.’
‘Decide what you will, but I promised these men a firing-squad if they returned. I never disappoint.’
‘I will deal with them,’ Buckthorn grunted.
Over twenty yards of the parade-ground the two men faced each other and although Nathan would never have wanted to put his fate in Buckthorn’s hands, he willed him to win this confrontation.
Decker smirked, his flared eyes registering only contempt for the lawman and no suggestion he’d relent.
‘I tell you what – do you want me to carry out my promise of giving you as much whiskey as you want, or do you want to look after my prisoners?’
‘Both,’ Buckthorn said, still with a surprising amount of conviction. ‘Like you said, you never disappoint and you promised me whiskey. And I look after prisoners.’
Decker snorted. ‘You are not having Nathan and Jeff and you are not having Frank Reed.’
‘I don’t want Frank , but I do want Nathan and Jeff.’
Nathan heard Buckthorn’s emphasis on Frank’s name and Decker must have heard it, too, because he stomped forward to stand before Buckthorn.
‘What are you getting at?’
Buckthorn set his hands on his hips, smiling and relishing his moment.
‘You may treat me with contempt, but you’ve forgotten I worked this town long before you came along and drove me to drink.’ Buckthorn chuckled. ‘Your problem is you don’t know the people here like I do.’
Decker narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you saying?’
Buckthorn licked his lips then paced around Decker to face the prisoners. He walked by Nathan then Jeff, looking them up and down. He stopped beside Frank and placed a hand on his shoulder, the action making Frank lower his head.
‘I’m saying you’ve kept this man locked up somewhere and even had me arrest Kenton Taylor for his murder.’
‘Frank wasn’t my prisoner,’ Decker said, sneering. ‘He was my guest.’
‘At least you accept prisoners are my responsibility, but that wasn’t what I meant.’ Buckthorn laughed and raised his hand from Frank’s shoulder. ‘You see, this man isn’t Frank Reed.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘Hey, Buckthorn,’ Quincy shouted through the bars, ‘I can see why you’re holding those two outlaws, but why me?’
Quincy caught Nathan’s eye and provided an apologetic shrug.
‘I’m holding you because the mayor asked me to,’ Buckthorn said.
‘Do you do everything Decker asks?’
‘I do when he asks, not orders.’ Buckthorn licked his lips. ‘And when he’s promised me more whiskey than even I can drink.’
Quincy sighed and turned his back on the sheriff.
An hour earlier Decker had taken the prisoner who’d they’d thought was Frank Reed away to interrogate him. The determined expression the prisoner sported as he led him away suggested he wouldn’t explain himself no matter what Decker did.
As a reward for his information, Decker had let Buckthorn lock Nathan and Jeff in the jailhouse and, as an afterthought, he’d asked him to detain Quincy, too.
Now the three men were locked in separate cells while Buckthorn paraded up and down, grinning and whistling at his sudden, unexpected change in fortunes.
But as if the mention of liquor had reminded Buckthorn of Decker’s promise, he quieted and, with his actions becoming more animated, shuffled around, frequently rubbing his unshaven chin with a shaking hand. After wandering for several minutes and then embarking on an unsuccessful search for liquor, he left the jailhouse, grumbling about unfulfilled promises.