by Scott Connor
The brothers would risk either coming through the saloon door or around the sides, but from whichever angle they came Lincoln would now be able to see them first. He roved his gun back and forth, biding his time.
A minute passed during which time the brothers shouted instructions to each other. Lincoln couldn’t hear all those instructions, but he gathered they’d secured his and Rufus’s horses and so had ensured they wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Then a volley of gunshots rang out, all coming from the left of the saloon. A single shot came from the right.
Lincoln presumed they were trying to confuse him as to the direction from which they’d make their move. He instructed Rufus to keep down and awaited developments.
Another volley of shots rang out, followed by an agonized cry and then a thud.
‘Show yourself!’ Karl shouted from the other side of the saloon wall, the angry demand making Lincoln glance at Rufus to see he’d raised his head.
‘Help’s arrived?’ Rufus asked.
‘It certainly sounds like it.’ Lincoln shrugged. ‘Then again maybe that’s what it was supposed to sound like.’
Lincoln heard another shout followed by a burst of gunfire and then shuffling, which sounded to Lincoln like the brothers mounting their horses. Then those horses thundered out of town.
Through the skeletal remains of the standing buildings Lincoln caught fleeting glimpses of the horses hurrying away and the trail dust billowed up.
‘If they’re trying to distract us by making it sound like they’re fleeing, they’re sure doing it well,’ Rufus said.
Lincoln acknowledged Rufus’s comment with a smile and then jumped to his feet. He told Rufus to stay down and made his cautious way to the front of the saloon.
He still wasn’t convinced that what he thought had happened had in fact happened. Nobody who might be inclined to help him should have been aware of where he was, and it was just as likely that two of the brothers had left town noisily, leaving one behind to ambush him.
Accordingly, he glanced out the door at the fleeing riders. They were too far away for Lincoln to see anything other than a cloud of dust.
Lincoln waited until the town descended into quiet. Then he waited another five minutes.
Still he heard nothing, so he accepted that if this were a trap, he would have to make a move to spring it or he’d never get to leave town.
He moved into the saloon doorway, slipped outside and pressed his back to the wall. The scene was deserted.
He paced along, keeping the plains where the brothers had hidden themselves earlier ahead, the scrubby bushes with the graves to his left and the buildings to his right.
He had passed the saloon when a slight sound gave him the first inkling that his cautious approach was the right thing to do. The sound came from the trading post beside the saloon, and was just a rustling.
Lincoln avoided reacting to it, watching the post from the corner of his eye while walking onwards. Then he saw the splatter of blood on the ground outside the post and the blood smeared down the doorframe and he stopped believing this was a trap.
He hurried along and pressed himself to the wall beside the door. Then he darted inside, his gun thrust out. He homed in on the huddled form lying beside the door.
Lincoln went over and rolled the person on to his back with the toe of his boot to see that it was Wilhelm, the youngest brother after Alex’s demise. A reddened hole in his chest confirmed that Heinrich would soon be the youngest surviving brother.
‘Who?’ Lincoln asked.
Wilhelm moved for his gun, his action slow, letting Lincoln kick his hand away long before it reached the gun. Then Wilhelm sneered up at him, a bubble of blood on his lips.
‘I’m not talking.’
‘I’m the only one who can hear your last words. Your brothers didn’t stay around for you.’
Wilhelm twitched, his action perhaps being an attempt at a shrug.
‘I don’t know no name.’ A spasm contorted Wilhelm’s face and his body racked backwards.
Then his head lolled to the side.
Lincoln climbed out of the shallow grave and stretched his back. The ground was so hard it’d taken him three hours to scrape out a few feet of earth for Lenox’s grave.
Sarah had piled rocks beside the hole. Then she stood back with an odd expression on her face that Lincoln thought might be sadness, or perhaps guilt because she didn’t feel sad.
‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve said all the curses I want to say. Let’s just get him in the hole and get this over with.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Lincoln slipped his hands under the coffin preparing to drag it to the hole. It wasn’t heavy but it was unwieldy and to retain some dignity for the deceased man he hoped she’d help him.
Instead, she just stared at the coffin. So Lincoln shifted his weight and prepared to move it on his own, but she raised a hand.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Open the coffin first.’
Lincoln lowered the coffin. He stood back and shook his head.
‘I wouldn’t advise that. He’d been in the water for a week.’
‘I know that, but I have to see.’
Lincoln understood the need some people have to see that a person is dead before they’re prepared to accept it, so he asked her to stand further back and then slipped the spade beneath the lid and prized it open.
Only two nails were holding the lid down and when he’d dragged them away he flipped the lid to the ground. He noted that the undertaker had wrapped the shrunken body in cloth before he looked at her with his eyebrows raised.
She produced a knife and then wrapped her shawl over her nose and mouth before she went to her knees beside the coffin.
Lincoln expected her to slit open the cloth around the face so that she could see what was left of Lenox’s features, but instead she felt along the side of the body to locate the arm. Then she traced along to the right hand, which the undertaker had placed on the body’s chest.
She cut through the cloth and peeled it away to reveal a blackened and bloated hand, predators having eaten away stretches of skin to leave protruding bones.
A sob escaped her lips and she jumped to her feet, tearing the shawl away. She swirled round looking away from the body with her knuckles pressed to her lips.
Lincoln assumed she had now seen what she’d wanted to see, so he placed the lid back on the coffin and then joined her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tried to hug her, but she pushed herself away from him.
‘Why did you look at his hand?’ he asked.
She didn’t reply immediately and when she did speak there was sorrow and perhaps even fear in her voice.
‘Five years ago Lenox got into a fight with a man from Black Point, Brian Wheeler. Lenox tried to stab him, but Brian turned the knife back on him and cut off the top of the smallest finger of his right hand.’
Lincoln nodded and asked the obvious question.
‘Does that corpse have part of a finger missing?’
‘No. All its fingers are whole.’ She turned to him with her watering eyes opened wide. ‘It must be Sheckley’s body.’
Lincoln nodded. ‘And that means Lenox is still out there, somewhere.’
Chapter Thirteen
During his time as a lawman Lincoln had been on numerous manhunts and had sometimes covered vast distances, but he’d found that not all hunts required the hunter to travel. Sometimes it was just a matter of staying where he was and waiting for his quarry to find him.
This was just such an occasion.
Four days passed without incident until on the fifth night after discovering Lenox was still alive Lincoln heard a noise outside.
Sarah was lying in bed and Lincoln was sitting up in a chair as he had done since burying Sheckley. A solitary lamp turned down low provided more shadow than light.
A traveler looking to use the trading
post could have made the noise, but it was long past midnight and this possibility was less likely than the more worrying one.
Lincoln told Sarah to stay in bed and then went to the window and listened. The horses in the corral were shifting around, something clearly having spooked them.
He gestured to Sarah to extinguish the light and offered her a comforting word. Then he quietly opened the shutters and climbed out of the window.
The low half-moon provided enough light for Lincoln to see the corral. He confirmed that the horses were restless, so he took the long route around the post to the front, venturing a glance around every corner before moving on.
He had traversed three sides of the building and was preparing to look around the last corner when he heard a noise.
It was just a pebble skittering across the ground ahead, but it was rare for anything to make that sound naturally. In Lincoln’s experience that sort of noise only came when someone threw a stone to attract another’s attention, and usually the person who had thrown the stone was nowhere near the actual sound.
Lincoln doubled back, keeping his back to the wall and walking sideways. He glanced around the corner of the building.
He saw nothing ahead, so he slipped around and hurried on to the next corner.
A thud sounded ahead, but despite this noise possibly being another distraction, Lincoln looked round the corner to see a sack of corn lying on the ground, dust rising around it.
Lincoln raised his head and found himself looking up into a man’s face. Darkness shrouded his features and before Lincoln could turn his gun on him, the man jumped down and dropped on him, flattening him to the ground.
Lincoln squirmed, aiming to throw the man away, but solid metal thudded into the side of his head with a sickening jar. Lincoln tried to struggle but found that his limbs had no strength and they wouldn’t obey him.
Then the night sky appeared to swim around him before unconsciousness overcame him.
A timeless period passed in which uneasy dreams flitted across Lincoln’s mind until with a start he awoke from his unconscious slumber.
It was light. He was lying on his side. He groggily orientated himself while recalling what had happened to him.
A man, possibly Lenox, had knocked him out. Then he had kidnapped him and taken him away from the post.
Now he was lying on the ground. He was in a rocky hollow and perhaps some distance from the trading post.
Without moving, to avoid alerting Lenox if he was watching him, he looked around, but he failed to see anyone in his limited field of vision. He thought it was unlikely that he had been left alone, but in case that was what had happened he tried to sit up and discovered that his hands were tied together.
When he tugged his hands didn’t move. A glance over his shoulder confirmed what had been done to him.
Behind him and hammered into the ground was a thick stake. His hands were bound and a rope secured him to the stake.
Lincoln stood up and shook the rope, discovering it was about twenty feet long, but he also discovered something more worrying – his captor was still here.
The man was sitting on the side of the hollow watching him, twenty yards away. In the shadow beneath the man’s hat Lincoln saw some of the man’s face, and it was a cold and white visage that resembled a skull – surely a mask.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ Lincoln said, holding his hands as wide apart as his tight bonds would let him.
Lincoln waited, but he didn’t get an answer from the silent and enigmatic figure.
‘Are you Lenox Devere?’
No answer.
‘Then who are you?’ Lincoln persisted.
No answer.
‘What are you planning to do?’
Lincoln took a deep breath after a few seconds of silence.
‘What did you do to Sarah?’
He still didn’t get an answer, so he raised his voice.
‘I reckon it could only have been you who saved me from the Humboldt brothers back in Destitution. So why have you captured me now?’
The masked man didn’t answer this either, but he did get to his feet. He faced Lincoln with the blank mask of his face staring down at him. Then he turned and paced up the side of the hollow.
Lincoln shouted taunts and threats at his receding back, but the man didn’t react and he disappeared from view over the rim, leaving Lincoln alone in the hollow.
Lincoln wasted no time in turning his thoughts to how he could escape before the masked man returned. Both the stake and the rope were thick and when Lincoln headed over to the stake and kicked it, the wood returned a solid sound.
Lincoln played the rope out to its utmost and then walked in a circle around the stake, but from all angles he couldn’t see beyond the hollow and so couldn’t tell where he was.
It was possible that the masked man had secured him here and then left him to meet a lingering end. Despite this possibility, Lincoln decided to keep his strength by not shouting out to attract the attention of anyone who happened to be nearby, especially as he viewed that possibility as being remote.
So he lay on the ground before the stake and alternated between using the only two possible ways he had to free himself.
He braced himself and kicked the stake with both heels. When his legs began to ache, he rolled on his side and scraped the rope around his wrists across the stony ground.
For the first hour neither act had any noticeable effect, but after the second hour the constant wearing on the rope started to fray the twine.
The stake was as resolutely solid as ever, but if he had in fact been abandoned here, he felt that he would be able to wear through the rope before his hunger and thirst killed him.
The sun reached its highest point and then headed for Lincoln’s limited horizon. All the time Lincoln measured his success in working through the rope in hair’s breadths.
Long shadows were creeping across the hollow when he stopped trying to dislodge the stake and put all his efforts into wearing through the rope. He even found a stone with a sharp edge, which accelerated the fraying.
Then from the corner of his eye he saw a shadow moving beyond the stake. He avoided reacting to it and kept himself hunched over to hide his sharp stone.
The shadow resolved into the forms of two men leading their horses. They were behind him and walking along the edge of the hollow while looking down at him.
They wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing, but a consideration of his progress through the rope convinced him that he couldn’t break through before they came down to him.
So he sought to pretend that he hadn’t been trying to escape and turned his head to the shadows, flinched as if he’d seen them for the first time.
He had to narrow his eyes against the lowering sun, but he could still only make out their outlines. He shuffled backwards to place his back to the stake and watched them make their way down the side of the hollow.
The first man was the masked man and he stopped half-way down and held on to both horses.
The second man was taller and brawnier and he continued walking until he reached the bottom of the hollow where he stomped to a halt and glared at Lincoln.
Although Lincoln had never met him before, he resembled a man he’d seen in a photograph.
It was Lenox Devere.
This also meant he couldn’t be the masked man, but that thought wasn’t uppermost in Lincoln’s mind as Lenox glared down at him with wild eyes.
‘Are you ready to die, Lincoln?’ he grunted.
Chapter Fourteen
Lincoln contented himself with returning Lenox’s glare until Lenox snorted with derision and advanced on him. With his arms held wide apart to grab his bound target, Lenox took steady paces towards him.
Lincoln backed away but then quickly had to circle round the stake when the rope tugged him to the side. Lenox grinned when he saw how Lincoln’s predicament was hampering him.
As they continued to circle, Lincoln
accepted that his current circling motion would only bind him to the stake, eventually. He stopped, doubled back and moved between Lenox and the stake.
Unfortunately, Lenox had been looking into his eyes and had anticipated his action. He darted to the left and then with a large fist delivered a stinging blow to Lincoln’s cheek that sent him reeling.
Lincoln rolled once and then came to his feet facing Lenox. He continued to back away while flexing his jaw.
Lenox followed him, but that gave Lincoln an idea. The rope was playing out on the ground as he walked backwards and Lenox’s feet were traipsing along beside the rope.
So Lincoln took a significant glance at the watching masked man. This glance drew Lenox’s attention away from him for a moment and let Lincoln swirl his arms to make the rope lie in a large circle on the ground.
Then he slowed the speed of his pacing, letting Lenox close on him. He reached the maximum extent of his range from the stake that he could achieve while still leaving the loop on the ground and then stopped.
Lenox continued to advance until he obligingly stepped into the loop.
Lincoln yanked back on the rope tightening it around Lenox’s ankle. Then he tugged with all his might tumbling Lenox over.
Before Lenox could right himself Lincoln was on him.
He swirled the rope again and succeeded in looping a coil of rope around Lenox’s neck. Then he pulled back as he dropped to his knees behind him.
He grasped a length of rope in both hands and strained, aiming to throttle Lenox. For several moments the rope bit into Lenox’s neck, making him gag and squirm, but then Lenox grabbed the rope and he also began to strain.
Inch by inch Lenox dragged the rope away from his neck.
Lincoln’s bound hands were unable to resist Lenox’s superior strength and slowly Lenox opened up a loop. Then he shook it away from his head.
When the rope was clear of his head Lenox bent at the waist, reached back to grab Lincoln’s arms and hurled him over his shoulders. Lincoln somersaulted and landed flat on his back on the hard ground, the force blasting the air from his lungs.