Outlaw Express

by Gillian F. Taylor

  At the sound of the gunfire up ahead, Alcott and his men drew their rifles.

  ‘Spread out,’ Alcott ordered, as they raced to the edge of the dip.

  They breasted the rise in a rough line, eyes searching the land ahead. O’Leary’s bay threw up its head and trotted away, leaving O’Leary sitting on the ground, clutching his left arm. Turner was gone.

  ‘Slow,’ called Alcott, not wanting to spook the loose horse more. ‘Hannigan, go catch O’Leary’s hoss.’

  As Hannigan moved on at a trot, calling to the bay, Alcott and the other two halted near the fallen man and dismounted. Alcott didn’t bother telling off O’Leary for his recklessness; it never made any difference.

  ‘Bastard was waiting for me,’ O’Leary complained, as Houston began examining his wounded arm. ‘Son of a bitch just sat on that slope, waiting.’

  ‘While you rode straight into his ambush,’ Houston remarked. ‘You hurt anyplace else?’

  ‘Nah,’ O’Leary said defiantly. There was snow on his fair hair and his clothes were rucked up from his fall. He sported a raw graze across the knuckles of his right hand but the rather wispy-looking man was as full of energy as a taut wire.

  ‘Hoss seems to be sound,’ announced Hannigan as he rode back, leading O’Leary’s mount.

  ‘Good. Then let’s light a shuck after them.’ O’Leary began struggling to his feet.

  Alcott put his hand on O’Leary’s shoulder and pushed him back down again. ‘That arm needs bandaging,’ he said firmly. ‘There ain’t no need to rush so. Turner can get ahead of us but he can’t lose us easily and besides, he’s got that girl riding with him. For sure, she’s going to slow him down. And you’ll be slowing us down iffen you’re bleeding like a stuck pig.’

  Leaving Houston to get on with tending to O’Leary, Alcott moved to stand by his horse, stroking its neck as he thought about Turner. The man was smart, Alcott knew that. He seemed to have given up on heading east into the Arkansas River valley and was going north, probably back to the territory he knew best to hole up. That’s what Alcott himself had been planning to do. They just had to follow him north for a while and sooner or later they’d catch up with man who’d betrayed them and killed Jacob.

  Alec and Lacey travelled steadily until almost noon, when Alec called a halt to rest. There was no sign of the bandits behind him, but he still chose a place where they could be concealed among trees, with a view a fair way back along the park. The horses were unsaddled and tended to before Alec joined Lacey to eat. She was in a small clearing where the sun was filtered through dappled shade. It was clear of snow, and when Lacey had finished her cheese and crackers, she lay back and stretched out on the grass.

  ‘This feels good,’ she said quietly, almost to herself.

  ‘You’ve done a lot of riding,’ Alec commented.

  ‘Mmmm.’ Lacey closed her eyes and relaxed.

  Alec drank some more water, then decided to stretch out also. He lay on his back, enjoying the chance to let his muscles relax. It was very quiet. He could hear the river, not far away, and the sound of the horses grazing. Birds sang extravagantly in the trees around them. Alec had just let his eyes close when a soft sound from Lacey made him roll on his side to look at her. She was asleep, a few stray tendrils of her wavy hair dancing on the light breeze. A sudden jolt of adrenaline hit Alec: he’d almost fallen asleep himself! He got to his feet before he could think about how much he wanted to lie in the sun and sleep. Once up, he made himself walk up and down. Alec stopped by the horses, talking quietly to them as he stroked them and rubbed their ears. The patient, peaceful animals were soothing and Alec let himself relax mentally as well as physically, while in their presence.

  After a little while, he moved back towards the edge of the trees and found an outcrop where he could sit and watch their backtrail. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before a group of riders came into view out of a fold in the ground. They were too far away for Alec to be quite sure of how many there were, as he knew the bandits had the two packhorses with them. They were moving at an unhurried jog, which told him something.

  As he’d said to Lacey, they were leaving a trail which Manford, at least, could follow without too much trouble. They were at the top end of the park now, where the wide, grassy valley bottom narrowed to a gulch. They’d passed another couple of side gulches, leading east and possibly to passes over the mountains that divided them from the Arkansas valley where Leadville was, but Alec hadn’t wanted to risk another dead end like the one he’d followed the day before.

  Heading north was now his only realistic option, and Alcott knew that at least. Alec reconsidered his plans. To get to Leadville, he would have to travel north east, and then south again, skirting the range of mountains that divided this valley from the one to the east, where Leadville was. If he kept going east instead of turning south, he should be able to cross the mountains and head for Georgetown and reach the Colorado Central Railroad, which would take them to Denver. There would be telegraph offices along the railroad, where he could send a wire to Lacey’s relatives too. Thinking as a lawman, Alec forgot that the bandits believed him to be an outlaw too, and didn’t expect that he would be trying to get Lacey to the safety of a big town.

  ‘Leadville’s quicker an’ easier tae get to,’ he mused. ‘They’ll expect me to go there. So I’ll do what they don’t expect. We’ll make for Georgetown.’

  Alec studied the riders for a few moments, expertly gauging their speed and distance and picked a landmark between himself and them. Moving to sit with his back against a tree trunk, he simply relaxed for a few minutes until the riders reached that landmark. Only then did he rise, and return to wake Lacey and saddle the horses.

  They continued on at a steady, economical jog, leaving the park behind. As the afternoon progressed, the soaring mountains on their right gave way to lower, more rounded peaks, scoured clear of snow in many parts. Not wanting to make things too easy, Alec waited for an area where there was plenty of bare ground, and turned up one of the valleys, heading north east. He guessed Manford would be able to follow them, but at least they weren’t leaving a trail as obvious as it would be in snow.

  They were much lower here, out of the thinner air, and able to keep up a good pace.

  ‘This looks more like New England,’ Lacey remarked as they jogged along. ‘The ground’s rockier, and the grass is sparser, drier. But there’s more deciduous trees here. The mountains aren’t . . . looming over you in the same way.’

  ‘Aye,’ Alec agreed. ‘It’s a different feel, though we’ve not travelled very far.’

  Lacey considered for a few moments, looking around. ‘I like it,’ she said decidedly. ‘It’s not as majestic as the high mountains, but it’s still scenic.’

  ‘Colorado’s a beautiful state, for sure,’ Alec said.

  ‘What are those flowers?’ Lacey asked, pointing to some low-growing plants with star-shaped white flowers that were growing near a patch of snow.

  ‘Springbeauty,’ Alec told her. He halted his horse and dismounted. Lacey stopped too, and watched as he unsheathed his knife and began digging up some of the plants. ‘The corms are edible,’ he told her. ‘We can eat them raw or cooked. It’ll make a change to have fresh food. I should have thought of it earlier.’ He gathered a number of the small roots, brushing the loose soil off before tucking them into his jacket pockets. After cleaning and sheathing his knife, Alec pulled off a few of the leaves. He popped one into his mouth and chewed it.

  ‘They’re no’ bad,’ he said to Lacey, as he approached and offered her one.

  She took it somewhat apprehensively, looked at Alec, who had started on another one, and tried hers. ‘A bit like eating lettuce,’ she decided, and held her hand out for another leaf. ‘It is nice to have something fresh.’

  The few leaves were soon eaten, and Alec transferred the corms to his saddle-bag.

  As they travelled on, Lacey asked more questions about the plants and animals of the area. Alec answer
ed as best he could, initially pleased to find something that kept her spirits up, then becoming pleasantly distracted from worry himself. He could never entirely forget the situation though; a part of him was always on alert to their surroundings.

  It was Alec who first noticed the dark clouds gathering later in the afternoon. He said nothing at first, pressing on through the hills. Within an hour, Lacey was also casting anxious glances at the sky, and the temperature had dropped. The little creek they were following flowed into a valley running roughly north west to south east. Ahead and to the east were snow topped peaks, difficult to pass at present, but impossible after the snow fall that was coming. The only realistic option was to follow the valley to the north west, where the peaks declined, and to try finding their way around to the north and east again.

  ‘We’ll set up camp earlier today,’ Alec said. ‘Get ourselves some shelter.’

  ‘How much snow will there be?’ Lacey asked quietly.

  ‘Enough.’

  They rode for another half hour, to a point where the valley was beginning to widen out into a smooth, grassy plateau. Alec picked a spot on the lee side of a small gulch on the east of the valley. Lacey watched with interest as Alec edged his horse close to the trunk of a slender pine. He had to duck slightly as the lower boughs brushed his hat, but Alec soon had his knife out and began attacking the trunk, cutting and chopping it about his shoulder level. His knife was no way big enough to cut through the trunk, but Lacey kept quiet and watched, confident that he knew what he was doing. After a few minutes hard work, Alec had made a distinct gash in the trunk. Sheathing his knife, he unfastened a short length of rope from his saddle and tied one end around the trunk, above the cut; the other end he fastened to his saddlehorn. Dismounting, he took hold of the reins near the bit and urged Moray forward. The horse started forward obediently, lowering its head and pulling until the tree suddenly cracked and bent, showering snow from its higher branches. Alec immediately halted his horse, unfastening the rope and leading it away from the broken tree.

  The top section of the pine hadn’t broken off entirely, but the tip rested on the ground, some ten feet from the base of the trunk. Alec handed his reins to Lacey and drew his knife again.

  ‘Watch this,’ he instructed, pushing in amongst the branches of the fallen part. He hacked partway through an upward pointing branch where it joined the trunk and bent it down so the end touched the ground to the side. The air was rich with the resinous scent of pine as Alec fractured a couple more branches in the same way.

  ‘Do you see what I’m doing?’ he asked. ‘We need to bring the upper branches down to form the sides of the shelter, and the branches underneath have to be cut off, to make space inside, and woven in to the sides to make them better.’

  ‘I understand,’ Lacey said brightly, cheered at the thought of having some kind of shelter to keep the snow off.

  ‘Will you work on the shelter while I see to the horses?’ Alec asked. ‘Don’t break the branches right through; just cut them enough so they bend.’

  She nodded confidently and reached for the knife. ‘I haven’t built a den since I was nine, and this is much better than those were.’

  Alec chuckled, and giving her the knife, led the horses to the creek to water them.

  When he’d settled the horses under a neighbouring tree, Alec helped Lacey finish the shelter off with a floor of small, springy branches as insulation.

  ‘We’d better hurry,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to build another one before dark, and get a fire going too.’

  ‘Another shelter?’ Alec asked, straightening his hat.

  ‘Well, you’ll need one, too . . .’ Her eyes widened, as she looked first at him, then at the small shelter. ‘You plan for us to share that?’

  Alec’s curious look turned to a glare: he’d risked his life to save this girl from men who would rape her without a second thought and yet she didn’t trust him? ‘There’s no’ enough time to build another one,’ he said tartly. ‘An’ I intend to sleep inside a shelter tonight, so you share it or you sleep outside.’

  ‘I . . . er. . . .’ Lacey wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

  Her vulnerable look pricked Alec’s conscience and the flare of indignation passed.

  ‘I’m sorry, lassie,’ he said more gently. ‘I know it’s not proper, but we’ll each be in our own bedroll, and in any case, it’ll be warmer with two people inside. I swear on my honour I’ll not touch you.’

  Lacey sucked in a deep breath. ‘Of course, Sheriff. I know you’re a good man. We have to be . . . practical, in this weather. I trust you,’ she added quietly but clearly.

  Alec nodded. ‘Good. Let’s get on.’

  Soon after they ate, Alec wriggled himself down into his bedroll and looked up at the roof of green boughs low overhead. There was barely enough space for himself and Lacey in the shelter, but with a layer of leafy branches as insulation under the bedrolls, and snow settling on the roof, it promised to be a warmer night’s rest than for the last few nights.

  ‘I feel downright comfortable,’ said Lacey, snuggling into her quilts. ‘And those roots did make a nice change in the stew, didn’t they?’

  ‘I should’ve thought of them earlier,’ Alec said mildly. He was more relaxed than he’d felt in days. Though the roof was only pine boughs woven together, it was still a roof and was keeping the snow off. The saddles and packs were tucked tight around the base of a nearby tree, where they were sheltered, and the horses were huddled beneath another. He and Lacey were both comfortably full of hot stew and coffee. With vague thoughts about the effect on morale of a full stomach and a warm bed, Alec fell quickly into a sound sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next morning, it didn’t take long to leave the valley and reach a more open area where three valleys came together.

  ‘A town!’ exclaimed Lacey happily, looking out at the collection of lumber buildings gathered together between the surrounding hills. ‘We can get help.’

  Alec studied the settlement. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lacey protested.

  ‘It’s not got the telegraph, so we canna tell anyone where we are,’ Alec explained. ‘An’ I don’t think there’ll be much in the way of law in such a small town to help us if Alcott catches up with us there.’

  Lacey sagged in her saddle.

  ‘We can go get some supplies,’ Alec said. ‘Get some sausage or beef perhaps.’

  ‘There’s bound to be a draper’s store,’ Lacey said more cheerfully. ‘I mean, I know we need food, but seeing nice things again would be a refreshment after camping out like this for three nights.’

  Alec chuckled and rode on.

  Half an hour later they were riding along the main street of the sprawling collection of buildings. Lacey gazed about in wonder, never having properly seen a frontier town before.

  ‘There’s so many bars!’ she exclaimed, looking at the saloon they were passing. ‘But I can’t see a school, or a church, I think. And it seems so noisy.’

  ‘Aye, I guess that’s a lumbermill up that way,’ Alec said, pointing to the outskirts of the small town. ‘And a quartz mill not so far away.’

  ‘I can’t see a draper’s store,’ Lacey said, halting her horse to peer across at the windows of a feed store. ‘Oh!’ she said again, seeing her reflection in the glass. She turned away and began combing her hair with her fingers. ‘I’m such a mess, and so unladylike,’ she said unhappily.

  ‘Don’t worry, lassie,’ Alec said kindly. It was true that her long braid, with wild, loose corkscrews blowing in the breeze, was unsophisticated, and her walking suit was dirt-spotted and crumpled. It would hang oddly too, when she dismounted, with the supporting hoops having been abandoned days before. ‘There’s few enough women in towns like these that any woman’s a treat for the eyes, and I canna think that anyone in this town will be in the new styles. You won’t look so badly as you think.’

  Lacey half-grimaced. ‘You�
�re very kind,’ was all she said, but she carried her head a little higher afterwards.

  They hitched their horses outside the general store and entered, Alec carrying his saddle-bags. Lacey stared around at the crowded shelves and rails.

  ‘I don’t think I ever saw so many different kinds of things in one store before,’ she exclaimed. ‘Pots and groceries and tools and a stove and oh! I can see bolts of cloth and some ribbons over there.’ She pointed to a corner half-hidden by shelves laden with tools, pots and ironmongery.

  Alec saw the hungry look on her face. ‘Why don’t you look at the furbelows while I order the supplies,’ he suggested.

  She flashed him a brilliant smile and hurried off. Alec smiled to himself, and made his way to the counter.

  Lifting the saddle-bags on the counter, Alec waited a few moments while the storekeeper finished tipping some striped candies into a glass jar. As the storekeeper put the lid back on the jar, Alec heard a man speaking elsewhere in the store.

  ‘What can I get for you-all?’ the storekeeper asked him.

  ‘Two pounds of rice, please,’ Alec replied, glancing about to see what else was available. ‘And two pounds of those beans.’

  ‘Travelling far in this weather?’ the storekeep enquired as he began scooping rice from a sack onto the brass scales.

  ‘I’m aiming for. . . .’ He broke off as the voice of the unseen man suddenly rose, and was answered by a squeal from Lacey.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  Alec spun and raced to the far side of the store. Rounding the end of a shelf unit, he saw a burly man holding Lacey with one arm pinned to her side. She was beating on his chest with her other hand and averting her face as he lowered his head towards her. The big man grabbed the back of her head with his free hand and tried to turn her head to kiss her.

  ‘Release her now!’ Alec barked, as he ran towards them.

  The miner glared at him. ‘I saw her first,’ he snarled. Dragging Lacey with him, he took a long, fast step to meet Alec, and swung a heavy fist at him.