Endsville

by Harlan Finchley

  In response, she raised her rifle to aim at him, making Bodie stop while Cresswell rolled his shoulders as he prepared to reach for his gun. Figuring that getting an answer himself would be the best way of letting them leave without an exchange of gunfire, Jesmond moved on into the stable.

  The only other door led into the smithy, so he headed that way, and he was halfway there when a thud sounded followed by a scraping sound. Jesmond drew his gun. He couldn’t work out where the noise had come from so he moved on slowly until the interior of the smithy came into view.

  Then Flynn appeared. He was walking with an uncertain gait and he regarded Jesmond without any apparent recognition. Then he stumbled and dropped to his knees before keeling over on to his chest.

  Jesmond hurried on and went to one knee beside him. In the poor light it wasn’t clear where Flynn had been injured, but when he laid a hand on his shoulder Flynn groaned. Judging that he hadn’t been seriously hurt, Jesmond moved on to the side of the door.

  The blacksmith Hoyt wasn’t visible. The flickering flames in the firebox lit up the room, although the workplace was cluttered enough for even a large man to hide, if Hoyt had been responsible for Flynn’s state.

  A second door was at the back of the building and there was enough room around the side of the smithy for someone to have led the horses outside. With this being a potential answer to one mystery, Jesmond slipped inside and stood with his back to the wall.

  Then, walking sideways, he made his way around the smithy. He reached the door without incident and side-stepped outside. The backs of the other buildings were on one side and he faced open ground leading on to the hill.

  There was no sign of Yardleigh or of the horses. So he struggled to work out where their steeds could have been taken leading him to conclude they had been run off secretly some time ago.

  He started to move on, but then another thud sounded behind him followed by a scraping sound. He darted his head back through the door and glimpsed something moving beyond the firebox.

  The firelight dazzled him and before he could work out what had moved, the scene returned to being still, although the scraping sound came again. Jesmond thought about heading around the outside of the stable back to the main drag, but Cresswell and Bodie had been confronting Rosemarie in a tense stand-off for a while and he didn’t want to return without learning everything he could.

  With his gun thrust out he walked back into the smithy. This time he went around the opposite side of the room to the way he had used previously. Then the scraping sound restarted and this time it didn’t stop.

  So he moved quietly while trying to work out where the noise was coming from. The noise sounded in time with every step and after five paces he decided it came from metal being dragged over metal, and that the noise was coming from a point to the side of the other door.

  In this area firewood had been piled up to create an alcove, and he would have to walk past the fire before he could solve this mystery. He slowed down and stayed several paces away from the fire.

  When he reached a point where the light was no longer shining into his eyes, the alcove was clearly visible and an object that glistened darkly was suspended on the end of a chain that had been looped over a hook in the ceiling. It was swinging from side to side making the chain that held it up grate against the hook.

  Jesmond moved closer and he worked out that the object was an animal carcass. Blood still dripped suggesting the creature had been killed only recently. The terrible thought hit him that it could one of their horses and he moved forward quickly.

  He had been mistaken. The carcass was too small to be a horse, but as it was in shadow, he wasn’t sure what the animal was. A screech sounded above him. He raised his head, finding that the chain that suspended the carcass led back along the length of the ceiling and it was being drawn along.

  With a lurch the carcass swung out from the alcove giving him a full sighting of it, and with the proof of what it was Jesmond couldn’t help but cry out. The carcass wasn’t an animal, but a gutted man.

  By then the body was hurtling across the smithy toward him, but the discovery had shocked him so much he couldn’t move. Then his gaze moved up to the victim’s face.

  “Yardleigh!” Jesmond exclaimed, the realization of the fate of his colleague breaking him out of his torpor.

  He swung away to avoid the approaching body only to find that Hoyt was creeping up on him from behind with surprising stealth for such a large man. The moment Jesmond faced him, Hoyt gave up on being furtive and he whipped out his right arm.

  Clutched in Hoyt’s hand was a huge spike and with only a moment to react, Jesmond jerked up his gun arm while flinching away. As he fired, the spike caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head and he went down.

  He landed on his back with his vision swirling. Above him to one side loomed Hoyt while to the other side Yardleigh’s gutted body swung back and forth. Jesmond reckoned that his gunshot had been wild so he tried to tense his gun arm, but he failed and the gun fell from his numb fingers.

  Then his vision darkened. As he struggled to stay conscious, he could still hear the steady screech of the chain along with a deep rumbling sound, which after a moment he recalled was the sound Hoyt made when he laughed.

  Chapter Seven

  HOYT WRAPPED A LARGE hand around Jesmond’s ankle. Then he tugged him along on his back through the smithy and into the stable. Jesmond groaned and a thudding pain across his forehead accompanied by a darkness at the edges of his vision made him think he must have passed out for a short while.

  Then the pressure on his leg increased making his progress speed up before he was released. He skidded along until he crunched into an obstacle. Someone groaned and that helped him to work out that he’d knocked into Flynn.

  He lay on his back gathering his senses and then raised his head. Hoyt was standing beside him and Flynn, and he was facing the stable doorway. A few moments later Bodie came in with his hands raised followed by Rosemarie, who held her rifle on him.

  Wickham then arrived and he was clutching both saddlebags, which he threw into the center of the stable, suggesting Cresswell had been defeated, too. Jesmond tried to catch Bodie’s eye, but Bodie moved on stiffly and the sight of him and Flynn lying on the ground made him wince.

  “Get back to work, Hoyt,” Rosemarie said. “We have everything under control now.”

  Without comment Hoyt turned away and lumbered back into the smithy, while Wickham drew a gun and leveled it on Jesmond and Flynn. Bodie joined them and to Rosemarie’s directions, he sat on the ground beside them. Wickham and Rosemarie then engaged in a murmured conversation, so Jesmond edged closer to Bodie.

  “Cresswell?” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

  “When we heard a gunshot we moved quickly,” Bodie said, making no attempt to talk quietly. He flexed his injured side. “Wickham came outside, so I took on Rosemarie. I wasn’t fit enough to prevail and I didn’t see what happened between Cresswell and Wickham, but I reckon Wickham overcame him and then took him into the saloon.”

  “As Wickham’s here and he looks unharmed, I’d guess Cresswell fared as well as Yardleigh did.”

  When Jesmond gave Bodie a pained look conveying Yardleigh’s fate, Bodie closed his eyes for a moment and then shuffled around toward Flynn, who hadn’t stirred since Jesmond had knocked into him.

  “For the last two hours we’ve worried about Marcel selling us out and the marshal finding us, but we should have worried about these people instead.”

  Jesmond couldn’t argue with that, but he didn’t get the chance to offer any more thoughts as Wickham and Rosemarie ended their discussion and then came over to stand in front of them.

  “Quit with the chatter,” Wickham said. “It’s time for us to find out how much you want to live.”

  “We’re not doing nothing you say,” Jesmond said. “If you want to steal our money, do it, but you won’t get to live for long enough to enjoy it.”
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  “Those are defiant words, but they show you haven’t understood yet.” Wickham walked over to the nearest saddlebag and kicked it aside. “This has nothing to do with the money.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t, but I notice you’ve stopped claiming it’s fake.”

  Wickham chuckled so Jesmond firmed his jaw, showing he wouldn’t comply with any demands Wickham might make, leaving Bodie to speak up.

  “Just get to it,” he said. “I’ve had enough of Endsville and I’m ready to leave.”

  Wickham licked his lips and then turned away to head into the smithy. He must have agreed his actions with Rosemarie beforehand as at the same time she moved in the opposite direction to stand by the wall.

  Loud clangs sounded in the smithy. Then Wickham gave Hoyt an order, although he spoke too quietly for Jesmond to hear what he asked him to do. Whatever the action was, it required plenty of shuffling around and rustling.

  Jesmond resisted the urge to turn around. Instead, he faced Rosemarie. She stood ten paces away and was holding the rifle on them with confidence. As Bodie was sitting hunched over with his injured side held awkwardly, Jesmond reckoned he would have to take the lead in fighting back.

  He rubbed his forehead while flexing his neck as he checked that he had now recovered from the blow to the head. Then he settled down on his haunches ready to take any opportunity that came their way.

  Presently, Wickham came out of the smithy. He held one hand behind his back and he had holstered his gun so that he could carry a steaming cooking pot, which he set down before them. The pot was smaller and more rounded than the one that Wickham had used when he had served them a meal earlier.

  “As Bodie told you, we’re ready to leave and that means we don’t need to eat again,” Jesmond said.

  Wickham grinned. “You don’t need to, but that’s not the question we’re going to answer now.”

  Wickham sneered at each man in turn. Then, with a quick motion, he whipped out the hand that he’d held behind his back. Jesmond flinched, expecting the worst, but Wickham was only holding a hat, which he tossed on to the pot so that it covered the top. As wisps of steam rose up around the sides of the hat, Wickham kneeled down on the opposite side of the pot.

  “So what is the question?” Jesmond asked when it became apparent that Wickham wasn’t going to explain without a prompt.

  “It concerns the matter of how we knew what you’d been doing and that you were coming here.”

  Jesmond narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying you’ve met Marcel Renaud, after all?”

  “We sure have.”

  Wickham raised his eyebrows and then reached forward to the turn the pot around. On the other side he’d plastered dirt against the metal to form lines and circles. The dirt was in sticky clumps suggesting Wickham had put something on the metal, perhaps tar, and then thrown dirt at it to make the shapes.

  It took Jesmond a few moments to work out that the lines presented a crude depiction of a face with round eyes, small nostrils and an open mouth. The hat on the top of the pot completed the image, and Wickham’s smirk along with the grin that broke out on Rosemarie’s face suggested this piece of work was important to them.

  Bodie was ignoring the pot, so Jesmond examined Wickham’s artwork again. He started to shake his head, but then he noticed something. He must have shown a reaction to the horrible thought that hit him, as Wickham leaned forward in anticipation.

  “That’s Marcel Renaud’s hat,” Jesmond said with a gulp, making Bodie turn his head to the pot. “And I guess those round eyes look a bit like Marcel’s.”

  “As they should,” Wickham said.

  “Why?”

  Wickham raised the hat to let a waft of steam envelop his face.

  “Because this is Marcel’s pot,” Wickham said as the aroma of a stew reached Jesmond. “Or to be more precise, Marcel’s in the pot.”

  Bodie murmured something under his breath while Jesmond searched Wickham’s eyes, hoping he had just made a bad joke. Then he recalled Yardleigh’s body strung up in the smithy like an animal carcass waiting to be butchered.

  “You killed Marcel and . . . and you cooked some of his body in there?”

  Wickham’s only answer was a raised eyebrow and a throaty chuckle, but that was enough for Jesmond. With a snarl of anger he leaped to his feet and hurled himself at Wickham with his hands thrust out.

  Wickham was still smiling when Jesmond wrapped his hands around his throat. Wickham fell backward and both men went down with Wickham lying on his back and Jesmond pressing down on him.

  Jesmond tightened his grip and jabbed his fingers into Wickham’s skin, his determination to choke the life out of his opponent growing with every moment. Wickham started to gurgle in distress and batter his hands against Jesmond’s arms, but then heavy footfalls sounded behind him.

  Jesmond assumed Bodie was taking what could be their only chance to fight back, but then a hand slapped down on his back. He was drawn upward and his hands came away from Wickham’s neck.

  Only when he was dangling several feet above the ground did he work out that Hoyt must have returned and dragged him off his opponent. Then Hoyt hurled him aside. Jesmond suffered the disorientating sight of the stable seeming to revolve around him until he crashed down on his back, after which he rolled twice and then fetched up against the stable wall.

  He shook himself and got to his feet groggily to find Hoyt had already dismissed him as a threat and was looming over Bodie, who was still staring at the depiction of Marcel’s face. Bodie’s face then twisted with a mixture of contempt and horror.

  He kicked off from the ground and threw himself at Hoyt’s legs. His injury hampered his movement and he stumbled before he reached Hoyt, but Jesmond doubted he’d have succeeded even if he’d been fully fit as Hoyt battered him aside with a casual gesture, as if swatting a fly.

  Bodie went rolling away before coming to a halt on his back where he lay groaning and holding his side. Hoyt turned on the spot, noting the fallen. With a brief shrug he headed back toward the smithy.

  Jesmond reckoned Hoyt’s disdain was a valid assessment of their attempt to fight back and he put a hand to the wall to steady himself, but then, to his surprise, Flynn leaped to his feet. He must have been pretending to be more injured than he was while he waited for a chance to surprise everyone.

  Even better, clutched in Flynn’s right hand was a knife. Flynn had covered two paces toward the receding Hoyt before Rosemarie reacted by swinging her rifle toward him so Jesmond ran toward her, forcing her to aim at him instead.

  Jesmond didn’t mind if it gave Flynn a chance to complete his plan, but as it turned out his hopes died quickly. Flynn got to within a pace of Hoyt and he was drawing back his arm ready to plunge the knife into Hoyt’s back, but then with alarming speed Hoyt spun around on a heel.

  Hoyt grabbed Flynn’s arm, stilling it with such speed that Flynn cried out. Then Hoyt twisted Flynn’s wrist producing a sickening crack and swung the hand holding the knife back toward Flynn’s chest.

  The knife sliced into him and the force of the blow raised Flynn off the ground before he slumped forward over Hoyt’s arm. As Jesmond stomped to a halt and raised his hands, Hoyt stood poised with the knife thrust deep into Flynn’s chest.

  With a long swing of the arm he ripped out the knife freeing a fountain of blood that showered over his boots. Then, without ceremony, Hoyt tucked the knife in his belt, hoisted Flynn up over a shoulder and carried him into the smithy.

  “As you can see, it’ll save you a lot of pain if you don’t fight us,” Wickham said while getting up.

  “We’ll never give in,” Bodie said.

  “That’s good to hear, but it’s yet to be decided which side of the pot we’ll put you on.”

  Bodie furrowed his brow, but he didn’t ask for an explanation. Jesmond said nothing, too, figuring that whatever Wickham had planned for them, it was unlikely to be something they’d enjoy. When it became clear they wouldn’t reply, Rosemarie
gestured with her rifle toward the smithy.

  “Now it’s time to head in there,” she said. “Then we’ll see how badly you want to live.”

  Chapter Eight

  WHEN JESMOND AND BODIE were escorted back into the smithy, Hoyt dumped Flynn’s body on the bench where a few hours ago he had cauterized Bodie’s wound. Hoyt then returned to the task that he’d been carrying out when they had first arrived.

  He bent over the anvil and with strong swipes of his arm he hammered the curved pieces of metal. Wickham and Rosemarie leaned forward in anticipation and when Hoyt had cooled the finished objects, he turned to them with a curved strip of metal held aloft revealing why they were interested in his work.

  By then, Jesmond could do nothing about it. While Rosemarie stepped back to cover them with her rifle, Wickham moved behind Jesmond and held his arms behind his back. Hoyt stepped up to him and, as he had done with Bodie when he had pressed the hot metal against his skin, he held the object up before Jesmond’s face.

  Hoyt had now connected the two metal strips to create a band with a hinge on one side and a clasp and hoop on the other side. Hoyt moved the band toward Jesmond’s neck making him flinch away, but Wickham was holding him securely and he couldn’t move his head for more than a few inches.

  At the last moment he registered that Hoyt was holding the metal band with his bare hands so it couldn’t be as hot as he’d feared. He stopped struggling and let Hoyt secure the band around his neck.

  As Hoyt moved on to Bodie, the band warmed Jesmond’s neck, the heat growing by the moment so he squirmed, which let the band rest with less of the metal touching his skin. When they had both been secured, Hoyt brought out a chain, which he connected to the hoop beneath Jesmond’s chin.

  Then he wrapped the middle of the chain around the chain that ran along the length of the ceiling. He accomplished a task that any normal-sized person would have struggled to complete unaided by simply reaching up until his hand touched the ceiling.