by John McNally
He remembered the satisfaction he felt when he filled two sacks with rocks and dust, tied them to a mule and brought them out with the horses for the others. He left the gold in his horse stall covered in straw. He knew they’d believe him when he said his horse was lame and he could have laughed out loud when they made it obvious that they just wanted rid of him. He was so close then, all he had to do was let the townsfolk chase them out of town while he hid until dark and then he could load up the gold and ride away.
Then that fool Chris Stover found him a ride and he had to leave with them, eating their trail dust and following a mule loaded with stone and dirt. He smiled, it all came right in the end. They were all dead and he was free, he just needed to find a horse, ride back and get the gold from where he hid it at the livery. His headache eased.
He walked down a dry gulch, careless of the noise he made; the gravel crunched under his boots. As he looked back over his shoulder a man stepped out of the shadows and spoke, startling Mooney.
‘Hold it right there, mister,’ he said. He held an old Remington Mississippi rifle pointed at Mooney’s stomach. He was a tall, stooped miner with a square chin, big bones in his cheeks, the skin stretched tight across them. He wore his hat on the side of his head and long strings of lank hair hung over his face. Mooney saw his chest rise and fall as he stood in front of him. They could hear shots on the hill above them as the man stepped forward.
‘What’s going on up there?’ He clearly thought that Mooney was one of the vigilantes.
Mooney stepped across, grabbed the gun barrel and wrenched the gun away from the miner. He put both hands on the barrel and smashed the rifle stock into the vigilante’s stomach. As he fell to his knees, Mooney brought his knee up into the side of his face then picked a hunk of rock up and crushed his head.
He pulled the dead man’s gun out of his belt and straightened up. He heard a horse snort and a man cough. He grabbed the dead body and carried it behind a high wedge of rock. A creek ran out behind the rocks, the cool air in the glade felt damp and smelled of wet earth. He saw a half submerged dead tree with a thick green trunk shining in the light through the canopy of trees. He tossed the body into the undergrowth behind it, wiped a streak of mud down his cheek to hide his scar, pulled his hat down and edged back around the rock. As he stepped out, he surprised two vigilantes who walked past leading their horses. They saw Mooney and swung their guns up and eyed him with suspicion.
Mooney glanced at them, confident he could kill them both even though he had not drawn his gun, but he had a better, quieter idea. He put his finger to his lips for silence and nodded hello. He waved them away from the rocks and whispered, ‘I think there’s one of them behind those rocks. I reckon he’s trying to make a run for it. I’m going to take a look, you two wait here and cover me. You hear me on that, I need you to watch my back. Stay put.’
The two men looked at each other and one of them shrugged and nodded. Mooney disappeared from sight, ran to the creek bed and yanked the dead miner out. He carried the body back over his shoulder to the waiting vigilantes. He kept his gun in his hand in case they recognized the dead miner but his luck held; they barely glanced at the body. Mooney said, ‘I saved some lead and stove his head in.’
One of them clapped Mooney on the shoulders while the other stomped on the dead man’s legs when Mooney tossed the body onto the ground.
‘Right, partners,’ said Mooney, ‘you get this one up top with the others. I’ll get my horse and follow you.’ He walked off without giving them the chance to reply or consider what had happened. He passed their horses, the Dun swished her tail and the chestnut next to it shivered across the flanks, he resisted the temptation to take them and run for it. He turned to see the two men watching him so he ran a hand down the chestnut’s flank and patted the rump as he moved out of sight.
A couple of minutes later he found a mule that stood belly deep in the grass tethered to a bush. The mule stopped eating and looked up.
‘Time to move out, I’ve got my gold to collect,’ said Mooney. He moved off at walking pace, guessing that a walking mule attracted less attention than a galloping one. He was glad that the rest of the gang were dead.
He was wrong on that count.
CHAPTER 8
Fred Cooper was still going. His right thumb had been shot clean away but he dragged the bandana from his neck and bound his hand, knotting it at the wrist and pulling the cloth tight with his teeth.
He’d been hurt before and made it out. He reckoned he still had a lick of life left in him yet. He recalled the last time he’d been hurt bad he rode with Warren Allen. Back then they lived in an old house in Dimmit County. About ten of them, vicious work that suited him, they stole ranch horses or cattle and robbed corn cribs. They killed if they could get away with it. One morning they’d stolen a herd of cattle from six Mexican vaqueros near Eagle Pass and killed them all. When they got back, they sat playing poker under a shed-like extension in front of their cabin when twenty or so Texas Rangers rode in hard. They’d all jumped up and started for the house to get their guns but the rangers killed half of them before they got inside the door. Cooper ran through the cabin, dived through a back window and ran hell for leather across to the woods. They shot him twice in the back. He rolled down a wide arroyo but no-one followed him, they left him for dead. He dragged himself away and lived off sour berries and squirrel, when he was lucky. But he’d come through it right enough and sworn then that whatever he’d done bad before was nothing to what he would do next. He reckoned he’d lived up to that promise.
He looked down at his mangled hand and tried not to think about the agony that flared up his arm, he told himself that pain was just the other side of feeling good and almost believed it. He figured if he made it to the rocks behind him he could get clean away. He never made the rocks though.
Don Plunkett, a tough looking miner with a wild beard, big meaty shoulders and a good natured face that normally shone as warm as a sunny day dragged Cooper into the centre of the plateau like a sack of feed. He could barely contain his anger, he had broad hands laced with scars and he gripped Cooper by his throat and, one handed, lifted him to his feet and slammed his back against a tree trunk.
‘One of you shot my brother back there, there’s going to be a reckoning. You’re a coward and men like you are ten a cent, you ain’t worth spit.’
‘I hear that a lot, it don’t bother me none,’ said Cooper, his face purple with lack of air. ‘I ain’t afraid of dying neither.’
‘No,’ said Plunkett, ‘it’s living that the likes of you cain’t handle.’
Don Plunkett was the son of a god fearing revivalist preacher who could see a sin forming in young Don’s mind and would whip the wickedness from his soul to save him from an eternity of everlasting fire. Don left home at thirteen, his brother went with him. At fifteen, Don beat a champion free-for-all wrestler from out East who tried bullying him in a store. After that he just seemed to get tougher.
The vigilantes gathered the dead bodies together, dragged them to a level sandy clearing just off to the side of where Cooper stood pinned to the tree. Tension gripped them, they worked closely together in silence but all of them knew that the killing had not finished yet, they eyed Cooper and let their anger build. They picked a big old thick trunked oak, it stood like black metal against the sun with piles of dead leaves like graves around the base and among the widespread roots.
Someone called across to Don Plunkett.
‘Don, you ease off on his throat now, we don’t want you choking the life out of him before we swing him proper.’
Cooper felt the stranglehold ease but the blood still sang in his ears and he could hear his own hoarse breathing. Well, he thought, this is it. Still and all, I bet if they’d seen what I’ve seen and lived the life I’ve had they wouldn’t be no different to me. I’ll be damned if I don’t go down hard, whatever they do to me.
The vigilantes gathered around Cooper like a fist, a red-haire
d man who looked as thin and rough skinned as a yellow-legged frog stepped forward, looking hard at Cooper. He paused and glanced around the group. He scowled and then the scowl turned into a hollow smile.
‘My name’s Melvin Priddy. I work for the man you stole the gold from, he’s called Mr Crick and he wants his gold back. Most of these others lost family or friends back there. You killed upwards of seventeen decent folk. What in the hell did you do that for?’
Fred Cooper looked him in the eye, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I reckon because killing people’s easier than it should be. I don’t know why you’re surprised about it, that’s why we all carry guns, ain’t it? Killing makes me feel good, there ain’t nothing complicated about it. Even if you kill me it don’t mean I’m going to change.’
‘Come on,’ someone called out to the red-haired man, ‘let’s get to it.’
‘What’s your name?’ said Priddy to Cooper.
‘I’m Fred Cooper,’ Cooper spoke with pride. ‘Maybe you heard of me.’ He turned his head as far as he could with the hand still gripping his throat and he looked down at the bodies. ‘The skinny feller you shot up good is Chris Stover, the one with the moustache is Flem Mooney and the ugly one next to him is Miles Horn.’ Suddenly Cooper’s face flushed with rage and he banged his own head back against the tree, an evil light in his eyes and said, ‘Goddamn it, God damn you, Dave Mooney.’ His hoarse voice grated like a shovel across stone. ‘You stupid fools. There’s one of us missing and it’s the only one I wanted dead. Dave Mooney.’
The vigilantes all looked from Cooper to the bodies laid in the dirt.
‘So who’s the other body we’ve got here then?’ said Priddy. His confusion building into fury, he looked around at the other miners and people from the settlement. ‘Maybe there was more than five of them?’
Cooper called out, flecks of spit on his lips and strings of saliva running down his chin, ‘That other body ain’t one of us, you idiot. You’re looking for Dave Mooney, a big man with a scarred, torn face.’
A small man stepped forward and looked down at the last body.
‘You know I think I recognize that feller, he’s one of us right enough. I don’t know his name but he’s a placer, I think he’s up on that far ridge that looks down onto Esterly Lakes. He must have rode out with us to help out.’
Priddy whirled around and stood with his hands on his hips.
‘Which durned fool brought that body up?’ he said.
A man stepped forward, he hawked a gob of tobacco juice into the dust.
‘We did,’ he nodded to a second man beside him, ‘and I don’t take kindly to being called a fool. Especially not by a jumped up runt like you, Melvin “Yes Mr Crick’ Priddy or whatever your name was.’ He moved forward, stood up close, stared at Priddy and forced him to look away.
Priddy’s jaw tightened, he swallowed and in a quiet voice he said, ‘Well, what the heck happened?’
‘We was at the bottom of the hill over yonder when a feller said he’d seen one of the gang behind a rock. He went over and he came back out and said he’d like as stove his head in. We collected the body and brought it up here.’ He looked at the body then up at his friend, shrugged and said, ‘How was we to know? We don’t know half the folk riding with us, none of us do I guess. The feller who shot him was a big man with a dark muddy beard and a ripped face for sure.’
Priddy made to say something but he saw the man in front of him clench his fist and stare at him with a look that could burn paint off wood. Priddy thought better of it and looked around. He ran his fingers up his throat and across his chin.
‘Right, we need to find this Mooney. First off we need to round up their horses. We got the mule and the sacks tethered back there, we’d best take the bodies back and start over. Fetch a rope somebody,’ said Priddy, turning back to look at Fred Cooper. ‘Let’s string this one up and get back to Sailors Diggings.’
Don Plunkett, the big miner holding Cooper by the throat, turned and scowled at Priddy.
‘Hey, Priddy, you’re riling me right quick. Don’t you go telling us how to do this, you’re only here because your boss Crick lost his gold. We’re here to get justice for the folks who was shot. So you take your peckerwood face and your shiny suit and you back off a mite.’
Priddy fiddled with the belt buckle on his trousers, his gaze fixed on the ground at his feet, his sullen face seemed to say that he knew tomorrow would only be worse than today.
‘Have it your way, Plunkett, you know I’ve got a job to do is all. And quit going on about my suit, at least I don’t look like I was rope drug through brambles like you do.’ Before Plunkett could react Priddy said, ‘Let’s get to the hanging.’
Everyone started to move. In an angry surge of noise they crowded in, a vigilante flicked a rope over a high branch and two men picked up the trailing end. Priddy moved forward, holding the noose ready to loop over Cooper’s head. Cooper wriggled and began to snap his teeth and spit like a cornered lynx. Plunkett still held Cooper pinned to the tree, he backhanded him across the face, forcing Cooper’s head sideways and drawing blood across his cheek. Plunkett took the rope off Priddy, looped it over Cooper’s head and drew it tight.
‘Lift,’ he said and two men hauled on the rope, stretching Cooper’s neck until his toes barely touched the ground.
‘Hey, Priddy,’ someone called. ‘Lookit. The bags on this mule are filled with trail dirt, rock and horse dung, there ain’t no gold.’
The two men heaved on the rope and lifted Cooper off his feet and his last thoughts were that not only had Dave Mooney escaped but he’d got the gold away as well. The idea hit him like a nail in the skull as they choked the life out of him. The thought that Mooney got away with it hurt him more than the hanging.
Cooper fought them like a wild cat, he bucked and twisted as they dragged the breath out of him, they yanked his writhing body up and down a few times, jiggling him in the air and hauling on his feet until, finally, he stopped moving. He dangled from the bough of the tree on a green-leafed gallows like an old puppet made of rags. They let him drop and ran over to the mule to see what all the commotion was about. Plunkett and a couple of others showed less interest in the gold than the rest. He checked Cooper was dead, he saw his face streaked with blood and his neck as stiff as a chunk of pipe. He looked like he had been shot out of a cannon, maybe more than once. Plunkett spat in Cooper’s face.
‘That’s for my brother. This world’s a better place without you and your kind.’ He hefted him onto his shoulder like a side of beef and walked over to the others.
CHAPTER 9
Above them in the rocks Eddie Carter opened his eyes. He lay on his back, looked up at the sky and for a moment he could not think where he was. He felt light headed and weak and as the pain from his side seeped up across his back, he remembered. He pushed himself to his feet and leaned against a rock while his head cleared. He heard raised voices and saw the vigilantes grouped on the plateau down below him. A movement in the corner of his eye made him turn and he saw a lone rider walking a mule across country in the direction of Sailors Diggings. Carter realized that apart from the lone rider, all of the vigilantes had gathered on the top of the hill. He saw five bodies laid across the backs of horses and the vigilantes stood around a mule. A red-haired man shouted above the others and waved his arms about, Carter heard him talk to the group.
‘Listen, will you? Stop kicking, this arguing ain’t getting us anywhere. The gold ain’t here. Like as not they’ve hidden it, buried maybe and filled the sacks with rubbish to fool us.’
‘Well, Priddy, we cain’t ask them seeing as how they’re all dead,’ said a thin man, sweeping his arm behind him to the bodies on the horses.
‘No, you heard what that hayseed called Cooper said before we hanged him, he said that Dave Mooney is still alive. We’ve got to find him, he’ll know where the gold is.’
‘When we saw him he was at the bottom of the hill, he could be anywhere by now.’
Priddy held his hands up for quiet and said, ‘It’s getting on for dusk. We need to search the top of this hill before dark and make sure that the gold ain’t buried or hidden in the rocks. Remember the reward. I say we spread out in a line and walk across north to south, we’re looking for fresh dirt or sacks wedged in the gaps between rocks. I don’t reckon they had time to hide it while we was chasing them, it must be up here. We’ll have a look before we go back and tell the others what’s happened.’ He turned and shouted, ‘Henderson, mount up and ride to Sailors Diggings, you tell them we lost four men but killed four of them. At least one got away. He’s called Dave Mooney, he’s big and ugly with a scarred face.’
A placer mounted up.
‘You’d better tell them the gold ain’t here. We’re staying until dark looking for Mooney and the gold. Tell them to get more folk out here to help us.’
They did not notice Carter up in the rocks and he decided to leave them to it. He slipped away back down the hill to find his horse. He had no interest in the gold but he saw and heard that four of them were dead and that thought pleased him, especially Fred Cooper dying. He had to find Dave Mooney though. He mounted up, confident the rider he saw calmly walking off earlier must be Mooney, who else could it be? He reckoned Mooney would risk everything for the gold and the only reason that Mooney headed back towards Sailors Diggings was because the gold was there, maybe it had never left the settlement.
While the vigilantes searched the hill outside of O’Brien, Eddie Carter followed Dave Mooney back to Sailors Diggings.
Mooney had a head start. He did not know that Carter saw him making his solitary way back to Sailors Diggings; all that Mooney thought about was the gold. All Carter could think about was his friend Nate Hollingsworth and about bringing justice head on to Dave Mooney. He rode with his hand on his gun, determined to face him down and see who walked away.