Rollie sighed and shifted from one foot to the other.
“I’m sorry. Am I boring you? Too bad.” Woburn continued. “I’d developed a taste for raw rat meat while in the pit, but it didn’t take me long to fatten up again—on undercooked, wormy beans and biscuits garnished with weevils.”
He let that hang in the air for a few silent moments. “That was a joke, by the way, Finnegan. Good eating all, if you don’t know any better. Problem is, Finnegan I knew better. I know you know where I’m from. It came out in my criminal trial. Yes, I was from a wealthy family back East. A shipping magnate who built a mansion in Portland, Maine. I had one sibling, a sister, who I assume is still an invalid. We had the best of everything, you see. Best food, best tutors, horses. All of it.”
“And you wanted none of it, if I recall,” said Rollie, ticked off that the man wouldn’t show himself. At least, if I keep him talking, I keep him from shooting me and leaving me to die out here. “Why did you take to a life of thievery and cruelty, Chester?”
“Cruelty? Ha, that’s a rich thought, Finnegan, from a man who sent me to hell for six years. As I remember it, you were smiling when they led me out of that courtroom. I tried to spit on you, but I think my snot landed in a woman’s feathery hat. You remember that hat? It was god-awful. Even in the deepest tropics, birds don’t exist with plumage in such colors.”
“Are you going to talk me to death, Chester, or are you going to do something to liven up the afternoon?” While he said it, Rollie shifted his weight to his right foot and scanned more of the ground close up, hoping for a glimpse of his revolver.
Chester Woburn kept on talking as if he hadn’t heard Rollie. “People deserve so little from each other and yet expect so much. But enough of that, where was I? Oh yes, I escaped a second time. It was a couple of years after the first, but I did it. And do you know what? It was simple. In the end, I waited for the perfect moment, then I clubbed a guard in the back of the head, dragged him into the shadows of a half-closed door, stripped off his clothes, took his gun, and, well, here I am.”
He raised both hands up and Rollie finally saw where the man was hidden. It looked for a second as if Woburn might actually turn slowly as if to show off. No luck.
“I recall you were a talker. See that hasn’t changed. Some of the women you left behind said the same. Right in the middle of things, they said you’d be blabbering away about yourself.”
That got him. Woburn’s bottom jaw stuck out and he poked the air with the pistol. “You’ll be laughing as I kill you slow. You’ll wish you’d kept me talking longer.”
“Spare me from that fate, please.”
“With pleasure.” Chester Woburn raised his pistol to head height and sighted along it.
Rollie lurched to his right, toward Cap’s backside, and jammed a hand under his coat. He knew it was risky, knew he’d get shot at best, and might get Cap shot as well, but he had to try. Standing and waiting to die wasn’t Rollie’s ideal way of shuffling off from the world of the living.
Woburn’s gun barked and Cap did what Rollie hoped he would. He spooked. Rollie shoved into him, pushing the big, dancing beast with his shoulder. He kept himself behind the horse. It wouldn’t be but a second before Woburn shot measured or blindly at the two of them, man and horse, gouging holes in their legs and crippling them.
In the ruckus, Rollie had retrieved his hideout gun from within his coat. It was a two-shot derringer for such occasions. He used the momentum of the horse’s wide, wild pivot to crouch low, ignoring the hot pains in his old wounds unaccustomed to the odd commotion of jerking and stretching and bending. He knew the horse would only tolerate so much, but Rollie did his best to keep Cap’s length between Woburn and himself. He smacked the beast on the backside, hoping to direct him straight at Woburn.
Cap would never go for that, but Rollie wanted every inch he could get. It turned out to be a couple of feet, for Chester sidestepped and cranked off another round, then another. How many was that since he’d begun firing? Three, if he had counted right. And that was a six-shot revolver Woburn was using, though the man had two, worn cross-draw style, a new look for him. Maybe he’d picked up skills on his killing trail northward from Dayton Valley Prison.
Rollie dropped, dove for safety behind a long, low jag of ledge no more than a foot and a half high, but long enough for him to lay out straight. He had two shots before reloading. Had to make each earn its keep.
His knee ground down on something hard, a spine of rock likely. Rollie eyed Chester, felt a fast breath of air part his hair, heard the stinging whistle of a bullet, and knew he had to keep his head lower. That was as close to dying as he wanted to come today.
“Finnegan! You are trapped and done for, old man! This dandy is about to kill you for keeps. I will leave you with one thought, though. And it’s that I can’t disagree with you. I do talk too much. You’re right. It’s a lifelong habit I can’t shake. Not so sure I want to, though. As soon as I finish with you, I aim to ride on down out of this place, visit Boar Gulch again.”
He let that statement linger but a moment. “Oh yes, I was there yesterday, availed myself of a cooling drink at your rival’s establishment, and then I inspected yours. Now doesn’t that make you feel odd? I watched you for a time, Finnegan. Then I heard your slave talking about how he rode the rough off your horse so you can go on your little ride into the hills all by yourself the very next day, which we both know is today. And that, my friend, brings us to right now.”
While he said all this, Chester Woburn had walked slowly, one careful step at a time, toward Rollie.
“What’s it going to be, old-timer? You going to stand up and take a bullet to the face like a real man, or should I shoot you in the belly while you’re cringing in the dirt?”
As soon as Woburn hove into view, Rollie pulled the trigger on the derringer. His shot went low and caught Chester in the grapes, right between his legs.
A long, high squealing sound whistled up from Chester Woburn’s wide mouth, almost as wide as his eyes. The sound was so odd that Cap stopped crashing through the trees fifty feet away and stood still to listen.
Chester’s gun hand clawed like a gnarled branch off a long-dead, stunted alpine juniper. It looked as if he were trying to peel something apart with his fingertips. The pistol dangled for a moment upside down from his pointer finger, then it dropped and fired into the thick root of a ponderosa pine. His other hand, equally clawed, cupped around his bleeding crotch.
“Sorry about that, Chester,” said Rollie, rising with a grunt, keeping the two-shot aimed at Woburn’s midsection. “I was aiming for your gut. No call to shoot a man in his seedpod.”
In response, the would-be killer released a scream that sounded like a cross between a woman giving birth and a calf being savaged by a coyote. It was not a pleasant sound.
“I do not blame you, Chester. Though you can’t say you didn’t beg for a hurting.” Rollie stepped forward, nudged something with his boot, glanced down, and saw his Schofield at his feet. He looked back up, but Woburn was holding himself, blood leaching out between his fingers.
The gun was the hard thing he’d jammed his knee on when he’d lunged down behind the ridge of ledge. Turns out it had traveled quite a distance when he’d made his spinning lunge out of the saddle. Rollie bent low, kept the derringer aimed at his visitor, and crabbed with his hand in the pine duff, sticks, and gravel until he felt the comforting walnut grip of his revolver.
He raised its reassuring heft, felt relief at the memory of reliability it gave him. He also felt something different on his palm, and knew it was a nick in the wood of the grip. He hoped the working parts of the gun itself weren’t damaged. He’d have to risk it.
“Not much I can do for you, Chester. I was heading for that cabin yonder. You don’t try anything stupid, I’ll do what I can for you. But I am going to hang you.”
The man groaned and started to walk, the first real movement he’d made since getting shot.
“But . . . my . . .”
“I know. Your huevos are fried. I don’t much care. Raise your hands.”
“I . . . can’t . . . can’t do it.” The words from Woburn came out thin, almost hissed instead of spoken.
“Raise them. Now.” Rollie advanced from the left toward the wounded man.
Woburn snatched the second gun from his belt and, though he was shaking, raised it faster than Rollie expected. Rollie thumbed back the hammer on the Schofield and triggered. The gun spat smoke and death, close up.
The bullet caught Chester Woburn in the left temple, parting the curved bone of the man’s head, then ripped through the dark place inside that skull and took away the far side as it escaped, spraying blood and bone and brain against the broad trunk of a ponderosa.
“Damn,” said Rollie as he watched Woburn wobble from his blasted pate downward, his entire body quivering as if gripped by a brief fever, before folding at the knees and collapsing in a tangle of limbs impossible to achieve by anything living.
Part of the ex-Pinkerton agent felt rotten inside about having to kill Woburn. Yes, the man was a foul beast craven enough to pursue his base pleasures above all else. Yes, he was annoying, particularly when he spoke. But he was amusing, in his way, and unlike anyone Rollie had ever met—or suspected he would ever meet.
He sighed, moved to holster the Schofield, and looked at it. There was indeed a fresh nick in the right grip, a pale, tiny canyon where a rock had gouged it in its tumble. “Damn again,” muttered Rollie. He slid the pistol into its holster and looked up, taking in the dead form of Woburn. Scanning right, he saw Cap, who had crashed through the undergrowth ringing the stand of sparse timber.
“Okay, boy. Okay.” He made his way slowly to the silly, stamping horse. The beast neighed and worked his head up and down like a pump handle. “I said take it easy.” Rollie grabbed one drooping rein, thinking it was easier than he expected, considering the horse had been dragged through a lot of strange behavior by humans in the past few minutes. And then he saw the other rein had snagged on a gnarled juniper limb.
He led Cap over to a nearby tree and tied him tight. “Don’t go anywhere.” He scanned the thin forest all around. Somewhere out there, hopefully not too far away, was a horse laden with Chester Woburn’s gear. Likely a stolen horse, but he’d need it to drag the fool’s body back to the fresh-mounded soil of Boar Gulch’s Boot Hill.
Rollie stood, listened, and watched Cap for indications that the horse heard something he didn’t. Nothing. Rollie sighed and looked around for sign left by Woburn. He knew the man had come from back there somewhere, east of where Rollie had been daydreaming the day away. That dumb man had had him dead to rights in his sight. He could have lowered that first shot a pinch and Rollie would have been dead before he dropped.
As he searched, he wondered, not for the first time, if dying might not be a bad thing. Did he really have anything in his life that was worth tugging on his boots for every morning? His folks were dead, he had no idea if he had any relations back East or in Ireland, the place of his father’s birth, or in Scotland, that of his mother.
He woke each day to throbbing pain deep in his chest, somewhere south of his shoulder, and a numb leg that felt like it was going to give him a whole lot more trouble before it was through. And Delia Holsapple was that she-devil from his past who was bent on grinding her axe all over him. If redressing her own complaints wasn’t satisfying enough for her, she invited the rest of the known world to his house for tea and bullets. Only because he’d done his job for all those years.
“Some job, ha.” He scanned the granite-studded earth for brass bullet casings. All those years, and what did he get out of it? No support from the headquarters. Nothing but a watch and a kick in the backside.
A low-swooping hawk passed over, close to the treetops. The broad reach of its wings beat a sound like tight, rapid breaths. The bird’s shadow, then the wind sounds, pulled his gaze upward. The sky was beautiful, a creamy blueness he had lost touch with these past months holed up in Boar Gulch.
He thought back to when he’d enjoyed himself the most in recent memory. His mind flickered to the trip in to the Gulch, alone with Cap on the trail, his confidence growing with each mile under his wheels that he wasn’t being tracked, wasn’t making the worst decision he’d ever made.
He wanted to feel that happiness again, every day. Why shouldn’t he? It wasn’t like he’d spent his career abusing those he rousted. He treated them no better or worse than they deserved.
“Oh, knock it off, Finnegan,” he said aloud. No sense feeling sorry for himself. That got nobody anywhere. Except maybe Delia Holsapple. It got her into a sad, stunted life of revenge and anger. He didn’t want that for himself. But neither did he want to drag Pops and Nosey and the others in town into a mire of his own making. Maybe it would be better if he moved on. At least then the diseased, warped creatures bent on revenge would leave Boar Gulch and its denizens alone and follow him instead.
Rollie pictured himself holed up deep in a box canyon. Somewhere windswept and forbidding, backed to a wall of ragged, raw, gray rock. Armed with more well-oiled weapons than he’d ever need, fresh ammunition mounded about him, he’d face down every single one who ever sought vengeance on him. They would not stand a chance. He would drop them all in a vicious, thunderous sweep. Then what? Wait for the blue smoke to part and climb over the ramparts of bodies?
Rollie shook his head at his foolishness. If all those idiots who called him Stoneface ever knew what he was thinking when his mind wandered, they’d rush to attack him a whole lot sooner than they were.
He smiled and toed a mound of pine needles behind a boulder large enough for a man to crouch behind. Nothing in the needles or in the crevice beneath the curve of the rock, but something was there, to his left, in the same wave of duff. He resisted the urge to reach for it. Sticking your fingers anyplace you couldn’t see was a quick way to get snakebit.
He eyed the thing in the needles from a different angle, and it glinted a dull sheen up at him. A nudge with the toe of his boot showed him a casing. He picked it up, and it matched what Chester Woburn was shooting.
Now that he knew where Woburn had stood, firing at him, maybe even toeing the needles beneath the boulder himself—Rollie shook his head and spoke out loud. “Okay then, Rollie. Which way?”
Town. Chester had said he’d come from town. It was doubtful he knew the route to Jed’s cabin. Heck, Rollie hadn’t been too certain of it himself, plus he’d taken plenty of odd turns and meanderings for the sake of prolonging his enjoyment of the day. That meant Woburn had followed him the entire way from Boar Gulch.
The notion zinged up Rollie’s spine like a cold finger. Why had he waited to ambush me?
Didn’t matter. He’d survived. That was all that counted. He gave up on scouting a second shell, and looked wide for the horse. He stood on the boulder and turned around on it twice. Hand low over his eyes, he saw nothing. He squinted southeastward once more and something dark moved, something he had before taken as the bark of a large ponderosa. Trees don’t move, except when persuaded by an axe or a stiff wind or a big boar grizzly.
Had to be a horse. Or a bear. Rollie stepped back to Cap and shucked the Winchester from its scabbard, cocked it, and checking to ensure the pistol was nested once more where it should be, he ambled his way, slow and low, through the trees. He paused to make certain whatever it was hadn’t drifted out of his sight. If it was a bear, and there was a good chance of it, he didn’t want to emerge from behind a tree and trip over the thing. He could afford to spend a few more minutes of caution stalking it.
Then he saw it for what it was, a gleaming black horse, well-groomed and wearing a handsome brown saddle. He advanced, offering what he hoped were soothing sounds, clucking and whispering to the horse. Unlike Cap, it stood unm
oving, watching Rollie walk toward it. Rollie reached it and ran his hand up its neck, slow and tentative. The horse leaned into it.
“Now where did Woburn find such a gentle beast, eh?” He laughed a quick snort, hooked his fingers through the ground-tied reins, and led the horse back toward Cap. “More to the point, where did he steal you from?
“Now you two best get along. We have a damn lot of effort ahead of us and I don’t want headache from backbiting, nipping horses. Remember, I’m the one with the guns.” His speech didn’t seem to have much affect on the horses. Neither did they seem inclined toward bothering each other, apart from communicating through whickers, head tosses, and snorts.
The trio threaded back toward the timbered copse and Chester’s crumpled body. He tied Cap well back from the dead man, who’d already begun to attract flies. When he led the black over to Woburn, the horse balked, but not as much as Rollie expected. Hoisting the bloody dead man up onto the horse was going to be a pain.
He planned to roll him in Woburn’s own blankets, but when pulling apart the man’s gear, he found a rain duster as well. He thought to wrap him in that first, then roll him in the blankets. He tugged the dead man’s legs straight and arranged his arms by his sides.
The oilcloth duster looked to be in good repair, near new, in fact, and Rollie thought it might fit Pops. Rollie had one he’d worn for years and it would serve him well, he expected, for as long as he might need it. In the end, he pulled Chester’s coat up over his blasted, broken head, and cinched it in a wad to prevent leaking.
He laid out the man’s blankets close beside him, and flopped Woburn on, rolled him in it, then rolled the second blanket around the first, in the opposite direction. Next he lashed the bundle head to toe and cinched that at both ends.
The entire time he nibbled on a notion that dogged him. Why should he rush back to Boar Gulch because this jackass decided to kill him and ended up with his nuggets blasted for his efforts? Nah, Rollie decided. He’d be damned if he was going to let this fool ruin his day. He’d planned on inspecting Jed’s cabin and claim—now his and Pop’s—and he was going to follow through with the plan.
By the Neck Page 13