“Oh, you mean the fella who fell off the boat with you?” Winslow asked, saving Mason the trouble of putting more words together.
“Yes.”
“He’s gone.”
“Where’d he go?”
Winslow looked up to the clear blue sky. “Now, that’s one of life’s mysteries. I can tell you I shot him, though.”
“He’s dead?” Mason asked.
“Oh, that’s for certain. It was messy.”
Mason sighed. Part of him couldn’t help thinking about how much easier things would have been if he had just taken the shot when he had it. If Bob was going to die anyway . . . but he knew better than that. Things wouldn’t have been simpler. They would have been very difficult, but just in a slightly different way. Forcing himself to clear his head a bit more, Mason asked, “What happened?”
“Well . . . that Bob fella was mighty anxious when I found the two of you. He did something he shouldn’t have and—”
“No,” Mason cut in. “I mean . . . how’d I wind up here? How is it that you’re here as well?”
“Get walkin’ and I’ll tell you the story.” When Mason didn’t move right away, Winslow thumbed back the hammer of the Remington.
Mason started walking before the inevitable threats were issued. The river was to his right, and to his left was a thick crop of weeds and trees. Gnats and mosquitoes filled the air, buzzing amid a symphony of cicadas. The more his ears cleared up, the more Mason wished for them to close again. Since there wasn’t much of a choice of places to go at the moment, he walked in the same direction the horse had been pointed before. It must have been the correct decision, because Winslow flicked his reins to get moving that way as well.
Reflexively Mason reached for his watch. It wasn’t there, so he asked, “What time is it?”
“What’s the matter?” Winslow replied. “Got somewhere to be?”
“Actually, yes.”
Coming up alongside Mason, Winslow made sure the man on foot could see when he reached into a jacket pocket to pull out Mason’s watch. He flicked it open, checked its face, and said, “Looks to be a bit after eight in the morning. This might not be accurate, seeing as how this watch of yours seems to have gotten wet.”
“Just tell me how I wound up on the back of that horse.”
“Do you recall the last time we met?” When Mason turned to glare at him, Winslow said, “You seem out of sorts.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I was escorted straight off the Jack and into the office of a man who could barely call himself a doctor. He stitched me up, wrapped half a splint onto my leg, and meant to charge me as if he’d cured me of everything that ailed me. I told him to go to hell and I left.”
“You were in a condition to walk?” Mason asked.
“Not as such, but I had a schedule to keep. You see, the Delta Jack may not be the fastest boat on the water, but I couldn’t let her get too far away if I was gonna catch up to her again.”
“You seem to be in an awful hurry to get tossed off the same boat again.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten tossed anywhere,” Winslow said. “Not after I had a word with Mr. Greeley.”
Mason laughed. It wasn’t anything that could be heard from a distance, but it still hurt his aching joints. “You were trying to sign on as an overman, right?”
“Yeah. What’s so funny about that?”
“What’s funny is the thought of you as an overman.”
“Oh, that’s right. You and them have locked horns recently, huh?”
“Yes, and any one of the overmen I saw could chew you up and spit you out just like I spat out my last couple of meals back there. And,” Mason added, “whatever was left would smell just as bad as the mess that was left behind.”
“I’ve got leverage with Mr. Greeley,” Winslow boasted while using the Remington to tap his chest. “You think just anyone is allowed to sign on as one of his men?”
“No, which means you’re definitely out of the running.”
“When I was put off the Jack, it was just to teach me a lesson and get my leg fixed. After that, I was to come on back and arrange some other way for me to prove my worth.”
“Oh, so Greeley is going to make a special stop to pick up a prospective gun hand. A gun hand, by the way,” Mason scoffed, “who’s already failed at the single job he decided to take on.”
“For your information, I wasn’t supposed to kill you. I was just supposed to . . .”
“What?” Mason asked. “What were you supposed to do?”
“Forget it.”
Mason pulled in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “All right, then. You still haven’t told me how I wound up on that horse.”
Winslow smiled, relishing the fact that he was back on friendlier ground. “The man who put me off that boat told me to come back when I was healed up, but I could tell he didn’t really expect to see my face again. I could also tell he wouldn’t have many good things to say about me the next time he spoke with Mr. Greeley.”
As much as Mason wanted to throw another smart comment or two at Winslow, he kept himself from doing so. Winslow seemed happy to keep talking, which suited Mason just fine.
“I wanted to talk to Greeley again sooner than that,” Winslow continued. “And I thought if I could meet up with the Jack when she got to her next port, I should even be able to get another crack at you. Turns out I got out of that sorry excuse of a doctor’s office quick enough to follow the river and catch sight of the Jack in no time at all!”
“I assume having the law nipping at your heels lit a fire under you as well,” Mason said while shooting a sideways glance up at the other man. “That must have made it a bit easier to choke back on the pain from that leg.”
Winslow twitched. “Law? What law?”
“You mean you stole that horse without anyone knowing?” Mason asked. “When I pictured you storming out of some doctor’s office with your leg bandaged and a scowl on your face, I imagined you just grabbing the first horse you could find.”
“That ain’t how it went,” Winslow said hesitantly.
“Really? So Mr. Greeley was kind enough to have a horse waiting for you? Or maybe you were carrying enough money to buy one?”
Scowling, Winslow said, “It wasn’t the first horse I could find. Besides, ain’t none of that will matter once I get Mr. Greeley to see what I bring to the table.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“You!” Winslow was back to being full of himself as he puffed out his chest. “I been keeping up with that boat for the better part of a day, just waiting for it to dock or make another stop or even slow down so I might try to signal the captain. Even with this leg that you ruined, I woulda swum all the way out to that boat if I had to.”
“Leg that I ruined?” Mason asked. Even though he knew nothing would come of it, he couldn’t keep himself from questioning the other man’s sorrowful words.
“You’re the one that shot me, weren’t you?” Winslow said.
“Only because you meant to kill me!”
“I wasn’t gonna kill you. Hurt you, maybe, but not kill you.”
“Oh, you’re right, then,” Mason said, sneering. “I’m a cad.”
“I guess it don’t matter none. Soon as I heard gunshots coming from the Jack, I thought for certain it wouldn’t be long before the boat stopped. Maybe to let someone off or to toss off whoever was making that trouble. At least that commotion made it easier for me to figure out how far ahead she was.
“I rode along the river,” Winslow continued, clearly enjoying telling his story to a captive audience. “There was a straight stretch and I could see the Jack up ahead. I thought maybe I might catch up to her then and there. Even though I didn’t get close enough, I gained a lot of ground. Enough ground to hear more commotion and see some
unlucky fellas fall over the rail.”
As Winslow kept talking, Mason kept his eyes open for an opportunity to make good on an escape. There might be some path that he could take on foot that would slow a man down who was riding a horse. Perhaps he could spot a thick branch or a rock that was large enough to be used as a weapon. There were bound to be things like that around, but just none of them in the immediate vicinity. Not yet anyway.
Winslow had his eye on Mason but didn’t seem overly concerned about him. The Remington was held in an easy grip as he kept right on spinning his yarn. “It wasn’t easy finding the two of you,” he said. “Something as big as the Delta Jack faded from sight in all that dark, so spotting two men in all that water wasn’t no picnic. In fact, I missed you both on my first look. After I doubled back for another, there the two of you were. Washed up like a couple of drowned rats.”
“And you just couldn’t help yourself,” Mason said.
“I didn’t know who it was at first. That other fella . . . what was his name?”
“Bob.”
“Yeah, Bob.” When Winslow spoke that name, he did so as if he were a hunter talking about the most dangerous bear in the woods. “He was hoppin’ mad when I found him. You know, I’ve heard that said plenty of times, but he truly was hoppin’ mad! He was hoppin up and down, carryin’ on like a lunatic when I pulled him off you.”
“I thought you would’ve let him finish the job,” Mason said.
“I didn’t even know you were the other man that fell over. You was lyin’ facedown like someone dropped you there.”
Now that he’d had some time to wake up, Mason was remembering more and more from what had happened with Bob. Walking helped get the blood flowing as well. As near as he could recall, he’d simply passed out from sheer exhaustion. It hadn’t been the first time that had happened. Normally, however, it was after days of sitting at a card table with nothing in his belly apart from whiskey and whatever greasy mess the saloon had cooked up that night. At those times, he wound up slumped in his chair, snoring while the other players snickered and tossed trash at his head.
This had been different. Mason had been put through the wringer a few times. He’d been beaten, chased, and then tossed off the Jack so he could swim for his life. Once he added in the fact that he’d been exhausted from lack of sleep to begin with, Mason was surprised he’d made it to dry land before his body gave out on him.
“Gettin’ the drop on ol’ Bob wasn’t exactly a challenge,” Winslow said. “All I had to do was climb down from my horse and walk over to him. He called me a gimping son of a bitch and I knocked him down with one good punch. I rolled you over, got a look at yer face, and convinced Bob to help load you on my horse.”
“You two found something in common, did you? Wanting to do me bodily harm?”
“Something like that. Bob wasn’t much in a talking mood, though. He surely didn’t take kindly to me tellin’ him to load up this horse. I changed his mind when I found your gun. He gave me some lip that I wasn’t in a mood to hear and then knocked into my bad leg, so I pulled my trigger. The powder must’ve been wet, because it didn’t fire.”
“What a shame,” Mason said.
“I hit him upside the head and kept pulling the trigger until I found one round that did what it was supposed to do. Bob actually looked surprised when it happened. Like he didn’t think anything bad could happen to him.”
“Bob wasn’t exactly a learned man.”
“Well, now he’s just a dead man. Since you were on my horse and still asleep, I started riding down the river. Shouldn’t be long before we meet up with the Jack. I think she was supposed to make a stop in Tennessee before too long.”
She sure was. Mason had hoped to be on the riverboat when that happened, but a man couldn’t get everything he wanted. Still, there was a bit of time before his meeting with Greeley. If he was going to make a move on Winslow, Mason had to make it good. As he’d learned through years of playing cards, the best way to pull off any move from a bluff to a giant raise was to preface it with a bit of groundwork.
“Any chance I can get back on that horse?” Mason asked.
“Oh, sure!” Winslow replied. “We’ll take turns. If you like, I’ll even let you hold the gun for a spell. Shut yer mouth and keep walkin’.”
Mason was a long way from healthy, but he was in good enough condition to move faster than he was doing so at the moment. He also didn’t need to limp so dramatically with every step, which he did to play up his fatigue to the highest possible degree. If he could pass himself off as weaker than he truly was, he should have an advantage when the time came to part company with Winslow for good.
Then again, since he was only escaping to meet up with Greeley, it was difficult for Mason to decide which option was more appealing. He could always run in another direction entirely and take his chances on his own. Mason quickly set that option aside. He was in too deep to just run away now, and he wasn’t in good enough condition to get very far anyhow.
Sometimes Mason wished he couldn’t see so many of the angles in front of him. There was a certain contentment that came along with shortsightedness.
Chapter 17
For the first short portion of their trip along the riverbank, there were several times when Mason considered making a run for it. He’d just be taking his chances with Winslow experiencing another couple of misfires with the Remington. No matter what happened, it would be better than staying with Winslow, who would not stop talking.
The majority of what Winslow said involved all the damage he could do once he became an overman and all the many benefits Greeley gave to his men. If half of what Winslow said was to be believed, the overmen were just a few pegs below royalty. While that might have held true on board the Delta Jack, anywhere else they were simply thugs.
But there was no reason to burst Winslow’s bubble where that was concerned. Mason let him spout off for a couple of miles, since doing that allowed him to survey his surroundings and even pick up a few rocks and a sharp stick off the ground, which could later be put to use. Mason had yet to come up with a way those things would be useful, but he wasn’t about to give up hope.
“What time is it now?” Mason asked.
“I told you already, this watch may be broke.”
“Just tell me what it says.”
Winslow sighed as if he’d just now lost the desire to keep flapping his gums about something or other. “Little after nine,” he said.
“Any way of telling if that’s accurate?”
“What appointments do you got, huh? Any schedule you’re tryin’ to keep, you can just forget about it. You wanna know why?”
“Because,” Mason said as he wearily recited the same tired threat that had already been leveled at him several times in the last half hour, “you’re the one holding the gun and I’m the one walking.”
“That’s right.”
In the distance, a shrill whistle blew. Mason’s head perked up as he looked upriver. There was a bend not too far ahead and the river past it was hidden by a thick patch of woods. In the sky above the trees, however, was a trail of smoke leading to a point that couldn’t have been very far away.
“Where’s the port you’re headed to?” Mason asked.
Winslow stood in his stirrups to get a better look. “Don’t know,” he said. “Somewhere in Tennessee is all I heard.”
“Are we in Tennessee?”
“Don’t you know that much?” Winslow grumbled.
Mason decided he didn’t need to know the answer to his question badly enough to keep begging for it. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and set his sights on the path in front of him. If he looked a bit harder, perhaps he could find the chance he’d been waiting for.
They rounded the bend, which revealed a larger stretch of river. The water rippled as if still feeling the effects of the Delta Jack
’s passage. Farther along was a welcome sight for Mason’s very sore eyes.
“There she is!” Winslow proclaimed. “I knew I’d catch up to her before long. How far do you think that is? Maybe two miles away?”
“If that,” Mason said.
“Pick up the pace so we get there before she casts off.”
“Or I could ride on that horse with you. We’d definitely make it then.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Winslow sneered.
“Yes, I would!” Mason snapped. “That’s why I said it. Get me up in that saddle so we can be sure to get back on board that boat!”
“Just so you can try to get me offa this horse? I don’t think so.”
“Then tie me up.”
“Ain’t got a rope,” Winslow said. “Wait a second. We may not need to worry about walkin’ or ridin’ out to the Jack. We can float out to it.” Scowling, he muttered, “Would that be quicker or not?”
Once again, Mason looked over to the gun in Winslow’s hand and tried to figure the odds of him being able to hit a moving target. Even though Winslow had taken everything from Mason’s pockets and holster, those items could be replaced. Not having to put up with the idiot for one more minute would be worth the cost of a few new weapons. Since Winslow’s odds only improved with every bit of time the gunpowder in those rounds took to dry, Mason didn’t have much time at his disposal.
“You’re honestly thinking of swimming upriver instead of riding?” Mason asked.
“No. I thought we’d take that boat.”
Mason looked in the same direction as Winslow. There were a few large rocks embedded in the riverbank about a hundred yards away, but he hadn’t thought much of them. Now that he took a longer look, Mason could see what could have been the pointed bow of a rowboat poking out from behind the rocks. Being higher up would have given Winslow a slightly better angle as he stared toward the rocks intently.
Of two things, Mason quickly became certain. The first was that a small boat had definitely been stashed behind those rocks. The second was that he probably wouldn’t get a much better chance to escape than when Winslow was gawking at that boat. Picking a spot on the ground in front of him, Mason dug his toe into the sandy dirt and stumbled forward.
Ralph Compton Straight to the Noose Page 11