Fury at Troon's Ferry
Page 12
The crest of the bluff was in the form of a curve; thus, before he reached it, he was afforded a view of the area in which the campsite was hidden. Glancing across the intervening void, he got a surprise. The old Indian crate, used for storing game, was dangling, like a giant spider on its thread, over the edge of the cliff, some fifteen feet down. And by the way it was jigging around, moving joltingly back and forth, it contained something heavy and very much alive, something that clearly objected to being imprisoned therein. Then, sounding quite clearly, he heard a scornful laugh, and his eyes, drawn to the sound, seized upon the man poised on the crest of the cliff. He was brandishing a Georgius Rex knife, making a big show as if about to cut the rope – and send the dangling crate crashing into the gorge.
The sight of the knife-wielding man, with his dark skin, stocky build, silver hair and beard brought another satisfied grunt to Linus Kypp’s lips. He’d just known that Henri Duquemain would be here. But what was he up to, cutting that rope? And what, or who, was he planning to send plunging to certain death?
An image of Arabella’s face jumped into Kypp’s mind and he blasphemed. Maybe it was her in the crate. He felt sudden anger against Duquemain. If she needed to be punished, as surely she did, he would do it himself – and it wouldn’t be in the form of sending her falling to a quick death in the depths.
He lifted his Sharps into his shoulder, recalling how there was a ‘dead or alive’ reward offered for Duquemain’s head. He took careful aim, his gnarled finger tightening on the trigger. The Big Fifty’s boom caused a flurry of wing-fluttering as alarmed birds rose in clouds from their cliff-face nests.
The thock! of the great buffalo gun came like an axe thudding into a tree; it had Otto Kruger opening his eyes, seeing how powder smoke had clouded up on the edge of the cliff that curved around on his right. He tried to move and could not. He was bound to a tree about twenty yards back from the abyss. He was in intense pain from the bullet that had entered his shoulder and he had lost a deal of blood. None the less, he had been aware of events about him. He had watched, helpless to intervene, as the two outlaws had bundled the unconscious Angus Troon into the crate and tied its door firmly with rope. After this, they had lowered the laden contraption over the cliff edge.
The man called Glaswall had gone off to set some rabbit snares. Meanwhile, for maybe an hour, the dark-skinned Frenchman had had a great time taunting the entrapped Troon by pretending to cut the rope. No doubt he would eventually do so, but not before he’d driven his captive to distraction. Kruger had groaned, fearing that he might suffer the same fate, but then he took consolation in the fact that that would be impossible. The crate would no longer exist. It would be smashed to insignificant splinters on the rocks far below – and with it would be Angus Troon.
If the Frenchman had a grisly death in mind for Otto Kruger, it would have to be in a different form.
But now the sudden blast of the great buffalo gun had changed everything. The force of the bullet had struck Duquemain with such power that he had been flung forward headlong – and had vanished!
If his body was ever seen again, it would be in battered fragments on the rocks 200 feet below.
Kruger tried to wriggle free of his bonds, but failed. He felt light-headed and without strength. He was at the mercy of whoever had blasted Duquemain into eternity.
He was not kept waiting.
An old man, scarcely more than a dwarf, stomped from the trees, hastily ramming fresh cartridges into his Sharps.
At first Linus Kypp didn’t see Kruger, secured as he was to a tree. It was only when the German groaned that the old man’s eyes swung in that direction – and Kypp jumped with the shock of having overlooked such an obvious sight as a man fixed to a tree.
‘Lookin’ for my wife!’ he shouted. ‘Mexican girl. You seen her?’
The German, clearly feeling decidedly poorly, rolled his eyes. Then he gestured with his head, making an indication towards the brink of the cliff, the spot where the taut rope extended over the edge.
Linus Kypp immediately understood, remembering how that Indian meat-safe was dangling there.
‘You mean she’s … she’s in that crate?’
Kruger seemed to nod.
A look of glee spread across Kypp’s face. He glanced at the rope. He stepped across to it, gazed down at the top of crate suspended some fifteen feet below him. Whoever was inside had gone quiet.
‘Don’t worry, my pretty one,’ he called down, cupping his hands to his thin lips. ‘I’ll soon haul you up.’
But as he tested the weighted rope, he knew it was beyond his strength. He cursed. ‘You just wait there, Arabella. I’ll get my horse to pull you up. I’ll be back right soon.’
Kruger gazed at him with desperate eyes, hoping that the old man might release him before he disappeared, but Kypp scrambled off over the rocks, not sparing him a glance. Ten minutes later he was back, leading the weary mare.
Kypp worked with a feverish excitement, unfastening the rope from its rock-anchor and winding it around his saddle horn. He grunted with gratification as the old mare took up the strain, somehow establishing a footing on the slippery surface. He kicked her into moving away from the cliff edge. Yard by yard the dangling crate was hauled upward until its top was level with the crest. Striving to keep his footing, Kypp goaded the horse into a final effort and the wooden contrivance was dragged up over the brink on to the flat ground above. Kypp jumped forward, drawing his Bowie knife from the sheath on his belt. Swearing he would soon have his hands on his recalcitrant wife, he slashed through the cords fastening the door of the crate.
It was at that moment that Glaswall, drawn by the boom of the earlier shot, shouted as he appeared from the adjacent trees. ‘Leave that crate alone, damn you!’
Linus Kypp swung around to face him, snarling like a rabid wolf. He lunged for his Sharps which he’d rested on the ground while he was manipulating the rope, momentarily thankful that he’d left it charged and ready – but his hand never grasped the weapon because Glaswall’s bullet ploughed into his chest, hurling him backwards, slithering across the icy gradient and over the brink of the cliff. If he was conscious of his predicament, he made no sound as his dwarfish body plunged downward, growing smaller and smaller until eventually it was a disintegrated blob in the depths of the canyon.
Meanwhile, Angus had thrust open the door of the old crate, erupting out of it like an uncoiling spring. He struggled to force movement into his cramped limbs, battling desperately on the slippery surface to avoid following Linus Kypp over edge, but somehow his boots found a patch of stable surface and he stilled himself, panting with relief
Suddenly he became aware of Silas Glaswall pacing towards him, thumbing back the hammer of his pistol. Glaswall, his narrow, mean face contorted, his bloodshot eyes glinting and crazy.
‘No need to worry, Angus Troon,’ he grated out. ‘I’ll be dumping your body over that cliff anyway. Just as soon as I put a bullet in you. If that don’t kill you, I guess you’ll be as dead as old Linus when you hit the bottom.’
Angus ground his teeth. Sprawled on the ground as helpless as a swatted fly, death loomed before him. But there were still things he had to find out.
‘Who raped my wife, Glaswall?’
Glaswall aligned his pistol with Angus’s chest, his lips widening into a death-mask grimace.
‘Well, I’ll put your mind at rest, Mister Ferryman,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that I sampled the delights of Leah Troon’s sweet body – and I bet, while she’d never admit it, she loved every moment of it! She bit a chunk out my tongue, mind. Still hurts like hell.’
‘And Johnny Kypp?’ Angus persisted, spitting the words out through teeth clenched with hatred.
‘Johnny? He never had no designs on her. Johnny went soft after he trashed that vegetable garden. Went back on his word, wouldn’t help kill them hosses, betrayed Duquemain and betrayed me. I’ll see he pays for that after I’ve finished with you.’
�
��Arabella had a different story,’ Angus countered. ‘She reckoned Johnny raped her, the same as he did my Leah.’
Glaswall shook his head. It was growing colder and he was getting impatient.
‘Ain’t no time for conversation,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you that Arabella was real sweet on Johnny, but he didn’t want nothin’ to do with her. He reckoned she was poison. So I guess she figured she’d get her own back on him by spreading them lies.’
Anguish was rising in Angus like a tidal wave, anguish that death would prevent him from effecting retribution on this evil man.
Glaswall turned to spit, then swung back towards his victim. ‘Goodbye, Mister Ferryman.’
He fired, but Angus had lunged to the side. As the lead ploughed past his ear, his hands closed over Linus Kypp’s buffalo gun, lying in the snow where the old man had discarded it. Glaswall was thumbing back the hammer for his second shot, when Angus swung the muzzle of the big weapon in the outlaw’s direction and pulled the trigger. The gun exploded, a thunderous, ear-splitting roar.
It was not an accurate shot. It did not blow Glaswall’s head from his shoulders as intended. Instead, the heavy lead drove into his chest, hurling him back and down. But amazingly he staggered to his feet. Somehow, he raised his pistol again, but he never pressed the trigger. The weapon slipped from his grasp. His eyes flickered. His hands flailed, both fists clutched beneath his breast bone. Blue, bubbling foam drooled from the edges of his mouth. Slowly, he sank to his knees, panting for air, instinctively trying to cover the big, bloody spout pumping through the gaping hole in his coat. He reeled back, gazed at Angus for a second with incredulity stamped across his narrow face, then he plunged forward into the snow. Twice, his body quivered in its death throes. Then it became still.
Angus stumbled to him, hooked his boot beneath his belly and heaved him on to his back. Glaswall was a gory mess. He stooped over him, seeking any faint sign of life that he could club out, finding none. Instead, the smell of the man seeped into his nostrils – onions and whiskey.
He stepped back and spoke four words. That was for Leah!
Afterwards he cut Otto Kruger free. The German was weak from loss of blood, only semi-conscious – but somehow he would survive the journey back to civilization and medical care. Angus would ensure that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘I hear,’ Elizabeth said, a little coyly, making out it was fresh news to her, ‘that you’re buying back the ferry. Rebuilding it.’
It was a month later and they were in the livery.
He paused as he groomed Judas.
Working from a pail of water, Elizabeth was sponging the bullet-gash along the sorrel’s flank. It was healing well. Edmund Clayton had shown himself good at treating horses as well as humans. And his daughter had proved a caring veterinary nurse.
Angus looked at Elizabeth, noticing, for the first time, how her blue-grey eyes were luminous, like the early morning sky.
‘Ay,’ he nodded. ‘I’ve handed in my deputy’s badge and spoken to Kruger. He’s only too happy to get his money back. When he gets over his wounds, he’ll make a fresh start some place else.’
Angus didn’t mention that he was also giving the German his reward money for killing Glaswall.
For a moment his mind drifted to Johnny Kypp. He was amazed at the way he had been cut up over his father’s death. You would have thought he and old Linus had been bosom pals. Angus realized that all his suspicions, or at least most of them, over Johnny’s motives had been ill-founded. The former outlaw now seemed to be taking his duties as town marshal positively to heart, having cast aside his previous criminality.
Angus could see how Elizabeth was anxious to say something and was struggling to find the right words.
‘If you’re rebuilding the house, Angus,’ she eventually said, ‘maybe I could help you. I’d like that. I’m a good worker, you know.’
‘Elizabeth, I know that,’ he admitted, ‘but things could never be the same. Without Leah, I mean.’
She nodded. She was looking sad and intensely serious. ‘I realize things could never be the same. I could never take her place. But I just had this idea that I could help in some way.’
‘You’re only seventeen,’ he said.
‘Eighteen last week,’ she argued. ‘And there’s something else.’ A glint of anger flared in her eyes. Defiantly she said: ‘I love you, Angus.’
‘How can you be sure?’ he asked.
‘Love is like the wind,’ she answered. ‘You can’t see it, but you can feel it certain as anything. I know it’s there.’
He laughed and realized it was the first time he had done so since Leah’s death. It was if a deadening callus had been lifted from him. ‘You’re a funny lass,’ he said.
And then, very gently, he took her in his arms and kissed her, and she was trembling with all the pent-up emotion she’d displayed that night at Kelly’s Hole.
He whispered her name and instinctively she knew that she was victorious, and that he was giving her the assurance she craved.
By the Same Author
Grand Valley Feud
The Beckoning Noose
Escape to Purgatory
The Early Lynching
Renegade Rose
Man Without a Yesterday
Trail to Redemption
Comanchero Rendezvous
The Pinkerton Man
Galvanized Yankee
Railroaded!
Lust to Kill
Blind Trail
Bender’s Boot
Legacy of Lead
Copyright
© Mark Bannerman 2006
First published in Great Britain 2006
This edition 2013
ISBN 978 0 7198 0979 8 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0980 4 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0981 1 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 7882 1 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Mark Bannerman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988