The night was too starbright for my liking; fortunately, we had a late-rising moon just then, and it was dark enough yet for me to be only a shadow among the shadows.
I nearly blundered into the camp before I had seen it beyond the screen of brush. I pulled back, heart racing, both hands on the Winchester. I heard one voice and then the other. Again I crept forward in an uneasy crouch.
And saw Bull Mosely, blanket across his big shoulders, talking to Eva Pierce.
NINE
Bull had a small tin cup of coffee in his big hand. Eva, her shoulders also covered by a blanket, sat huddled near the fire, her eyes turned down, her head hanging. One of the horses across the camp was suddenly alerted by my presence and it lifted its head, backing uneasily away from the unidentified intruder. For all it knew I was a prowling predator. And, it seemed, that was exactly what I was.
I was angry, a fierce determination rising in me. Bull Mosely spoke again, and although I could not hear his words clearly, I did not like them. He was bulking large over Eva, hovering in a menacing attitude. He tossed his coffee away and lifted her chin with his thumb. You cannot hear a silent cry for help, but I seemed to at that moment.
I did not see Andy, nor Marly, did not know if Andy’s guns were waiting for me in the dark of night, but there is a time for rashness, and as Bull bent lower over Eva, I decided that the time had come. I stepped into the clearing.
‘Back off or die, Bull!’ I said too loudly.
The big man rose, spun recognized me by the flickering firelight.
‘You! Andy warned me—’
At the same time his right hand dipped into his holster and came up with his revolver. There was an angry glitter in his eye, a frustrated look on his face. He had been so near to his goal.
I lifted the Winchester to my shoulder and shot him with no more compunction than I would have had for a cougar preying on a new-born calf. Mosely’s eyes went blank. The pistol dropped from his outflung hand and he staggered away, falling on his back against the tiny campfire, extinguishing it. He did not move again.
I walked into the camp circle cautiously, still not knowing where Andy Givens might be. Eva had drawn herself up even tighter, into a pathetic, blanket-covered ball. I could see her shaking beneath it.
‘It’s me, Eva,’ I said as gently as I could. I started to bend, to touch her, but I did not think she wanted that sort of physical reassurance just then. ‘It’s Corey Keogh, Eva,’ I told her. ‘Get up, pull yourself together. We’re not out of this yet.’
‘Is he—?’ she murmured.
‘Quite,’ I assured her. ‘He’ll never bother you again. For now,’ I said more roughly, ‘get up. I need your help.’
‘What do you want me to do, Corey?’ she asked, opening her hands and looking at me for the first time. I crouched down beside her.
‘In a minute. Eva, I have to know – where is Marly? Where did Andy take her?’
‘Into the town. Andy wanted to buy fresh horses.’ Eva’s voice was muffled and uncertain.
‘Why didn’t you all go together?’ I asked her.
‘Andy told Mosely that with both of us there – Marly and me – we might decide to try asking the townspeople for help. With me being held out here, Marly would never jeopardize my well-being.’
‘I see. All right, then, Mosely was left here to watch you – which must have suited him fine.’
‘It did, he, Mosely, was to guard me and the rest of the gold. Andy could hardly have gone into a stable with thousands of dollars in stolen gold in his saddlebags. Even unloading them from his appaloosa’s back would have been a give-away.’
‘You mean that the gold is here!’
‘It’s under those rocks across the camp,’ she said, lifting her chin in that direction. ‘Take it; no one cares.’
‘I don’t either, Eva. I only care about Marly, can’t you understand?’
‘You know I didn’t—’ Her words were still broken as she shivered beneath her blanket. ‘I didn’t really know that it was like that between you two. I guess I have been so concerned with my own wants and needs—’
‘That doesn’t matter, Eva. Tell it all to Marly when you see her again.’
‘If I see her again,’ she said weakly.
‘You will,’ I promised with a confidence I did not feel. ‘For now, get up and do what I tell you. I still need your help.’
‘All right,’ Eva said with a resoluteness I had never heard in her voice before. Perhaps all that had gone before was strengthening her. Or maybe she had at last come to realize how much of a burden she had been laying on her younger sister while she dithered, sighed and felt sorry for herself. Eva got unsteadily to her feet, keeping her eyes turned away from the dead man sprawled across the still-smoking fire.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Eva asked.
‘I need you to saddle those two ponies, yours and Mosely’s. I still can’t handle the job with my right hand broken up like it is. Can you manage?’
‘If needs be,’ she said, with a sort of frail determination.
‘Good. I need a manageable horse to ride. And you,’ I said without joy, ‘need a mount to carry you away from here.’
‘I have to go with you!’ Eva said, astonished.
‘No. You can’t, Eva. That’s that. If you are safely away, I will have a better chance of it with Marly. Andy won’t be able to hold the threat of harming you over her head as he has been.’
‘But, Corey—’ Eva looked around her at the cold, star-shadowed endless plains, ‘I don’t know where to ride. I have no idea how to do it on my own!’
‘Eva,’ I told her, partly to convince her, partly to convince myself. ‘You are a stronger woman than you have been willing to be up until now. I know this. Marly has told me something about your past. It has made you willing to be weak. Well, now is the time to shed that. Copperfield may find you some day and again bundle you in security. But for now, for tonight, be the woman you can be.
‘Strike out toward the North Star and keep riding until you can find someone to help you. Marly needs me now more than you do.’
She was clumsy and inefficient at it, but she managed to get the two ponies saddled. Swinging awkwardly into the saddle on Mosely’s sturdy dun pony I felt more at home than I had for a long while. The horse was weary, but we would not be riding far.
Eva, meanwhile, had gotten into leather aboard the bay horse she had been riding, her skirts spread. I could almost see her blush in the night – she was unused to riding astraddle. I repeated the instructions I had given her. They were the best I could do: walk the pony toward the Polar Star and hope for dawn. I also gave her Bull Mosely’s handgun. She did not like having the dead man’s pistol, but it did give her some sense of security. As she turned the horse to depart, I briefly held its bridle and promised her:
‘I’ll bring Marly to you soon. Denver if not before there. Trust me, Eva.’
‘Corey – I am beginning to trust you more than any man I have ever known.’
Then she heeled the horse and was gone into the night, vanished across the land. Her words echoed in my mind, and I wondered what had caused her to speak them. Wondered if I could live up to such praise.
I started the dun pony toward the distant town.
I did not find the piebald along the road, and figured that he had gotten tired of my company and decided to choose his own way. I couldn’t blame him a lot. I didn’t worry about the big horse. He would manage to toss that hackamore in no time and either find some less demanding human companions or return to free graze.
The dun was sluggish, but well-mannered. As we drew nearer to the town, however, he became high-stepping, anxious. Ahead of him now were those man-places where new hay and oats, fresh water were held in abundance. He sensed this and I had to draw in the reins just a little to control his eagerness.
If the town had a name, I never learned what it was.
Sleepy, wind-swept, forlorn, it was about half the size of Tulip. M
ore shabby, weather-beaten wooden buildings, a line of low adobes, a single elm tree which must have been the civic pride standing alone in a deserted plaza in the center of town. I wasn’t there to criticize or sightsee. I needed to begin by finding the local stables. Andy would have seen to the business of obtaining fresh horses first.
There might have been several scattered around town, but I did what any stranger would have done and halted at the first I happened to see. I swung down heavily from my horse and entered the dank interior of the barnlike structure. There was no one around. I let my eyes run over the horses that stood watching me curiously from over the gates to their stalls.
And there stood Andy’s appaloosa. The animal seemed to recognize me, and I strode that way to stroke his neck, noting that he was badly gaunted after his long run.
‘Help you?’ an unfriendly voice from behind me asked, and I turned to see a round ball of a man with a red face watching me.
‘The appy belongs to a friend of mine. I was looking for him – we got separated on the trail.’
‘Is that so?’ the round man asked me with skepticism. Considering the way I looked, maybe he took me for a runaway outlaw – which I was – or a horse thief.
I took a few steps toward him, trying to force a smile. ‘True, friend. You happen to know where he went? Curly-headed, sort of cocky gent.’
‘My only business is horses,’ the stableman told me. ‘Now, is there anything I can do for you in that line.’
I considered. ‘Maybe. I have no cash money, but I’ve a dun pony out front with a lot of leg and a deep chest. Trouble is, he’s weary and I have to keep travelling. If you’d consider a straight-across swap for a fresh horse, I’d be willing.’
All of that seemed only to deepen the man’s suspicions, to cause him to be more certain that I was a man on the run, otherwise what was my hurry? The light of profit was in his eyes, however, and he said: ‘Let me take a look at him.’
He examined Mosely’s dun, giving out a little grunt now and then as he felt its legs for heat, bent his head to listen to its chest. Straightening, he said, ‘We can talk if you are willing to kick in twenty dollars or so.’
‘Haven’t got it,’ I said.
He shook his head, scratched it and muttered to himself. Still he was interested, I could see. I knew I would get the worst of any bargain he offered – experience had taught me that – but a fresh pony might make the difference, Andy now being mounted on a well-rested animal himself. ‘If you don’t much care about bloodlines or looks,’ the round man said with practiced hesitancy, ‘I got a chuckle-headed, dumpy little sorrel some broke-down cowboy left here a few weeks ago. I’m tired of feeding the damn thing, to tell you the truth, and I’ll never sell it. I’ll trade you straight across for the dun.’
‘If it’s fresh, I’ll take it,’ I answered, and I was shown the sorriest-looking, stumpy sorrel I had ever seen. Shaggy and wall-eyed it looked at me lethargically as we entered the stall. No wonder its last owner had abandoned it. Nevertheless, I shifted my saddle to the sorry little horse and left the stable, considering that after all I had lost nothing, the dun having belonged to Bull Mosely.
The stableman, after getting the better of me in the swap, and knowing it, had loosened up enough to give me a description of the horses he had sold to Andy Givens: a blue roan with a white tail, a chestnut with a blaze. On my dumpy sorrel, I began to scour the town for them.
Where, I asked myself, would Andy be? Not at a hotel – he wouldn’t wish to sleep a night away with Mosely guarding all that gold. The nearest general store, for provisions, then maybe a hasty meal at a restaurant if he was sure enough of Marly that he felt confident she would not try to break away and run?
Which she would not, believing that Bull Mosely still held Eva captive.
I passed two restaurants, both shuttered – it was only a few hours before dawn – and one general store, also closed down. I frowned. It had been after midnight when Andy had decided to come into the town to exchange horses; had he just shifted saddles and hit the return trail, pausing for nothing else?
No, I decided. No matter what, if Andy was to make a run for it, he would have to have some sort of provisions with him. A man doesn’t run far or fast on an empty stomach. I sat the woolly little sorrel and pondered, trying to put myself in Andy Givens’s frame of mind. It was so simple an explanation that I wondered at my own stupidity, not for the first time.
Whatever Andy wanted, he took. He cared nothing for locks. If the general stores were closed, he would simply find a back door and break into it. I guided the placid sorrel through an alley and emerged behind the town’s main street where all was dark. A grove of cottonwoods cast star-shadows across the littered back yards of the businesses there. I could make out the hint of the rising sun, only a pale arc of light above the eastern horizon, like beaten copper.
Behind the general store I saw two horses standing patiently in the shadows.
A tall blue roan with a white tail and a leggy chestnut with a white blaze on its nose.
TEN
The back door to the store stood open, and I saw hurried, shadowy movement within. I silently levered a round into the breech of my Winchester, swung carefully down from the sorrel and started that way through the night shadows. I had the element of surprise on my side, and I thought, stealth to aid me, but Andy Givens had the eyes of a cat, and instincts to match. Before I had gotten within thirty feet of the back door, Andy leaped from the interior of the building, went into a crouch and fanned three rapid shots through his Colt’s barrel.
The light was bad, otherwise I knew that Andy would have had me. He does not miss. I dropped to one knee and fired a single shot from my Winchester. I saw Andy stagger and twist away. The sack of provisions he had been carrying was left abandoned as he dashed toward the blue roan, throwing two more wild shots across his body at me, causing me to dive to the ground.
He turned his big horse’s head, and the roan reared up, making another clean shot impossible. One last pistol report from Andy’s Colt let me know that he still had teeth. Then he was gone, spurring the blue roan through the stand of cottonwood trees, racing toward open country. Across town, lanterns were lit and a few people wandered forward to see what had happened.
Marly stood in the doorway, small and bewildered, and I walked to her.
I did not plan it, but I took her in my arms and kissed the top of her head. I could feel her shivering in my arms, and when she looked up at me her cheeks were damp with tears.
‘I knew you would come, Corey. I just kept telling myself that you would come for me.’
I had to force myself to release her, but I did. With a sternness I did not feel, I said: ‘Marly, you must stay here. Do not leave town, no matter what.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, her eyes searching mine in the poor dawn light.
‘I’m going after Andy. He’s gone bad, Marly. He’ll do this again and again to other people if I don’t stop him now.’
‘I have to go with you!’ Marly said, clutching at my shirt front. ‘Eva is—’
‘Eva is all right,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Believe me. I sent her away, back toward the Denver stage line. She should be just about there by now. She will be fine, Marly. You,’ I repeated roughly, ‘you stay here! It will be all right.’
Would it? I did not know as I pulled away from her and returned to my sorrel. Swinging into the saddle I saw her watching me, forlorn and confused. I forced my eyes away and turned the sorrel eastward. What I had told Marly was true – I had to finish off Andy Givens. He would kill and kill again, given the chance, and here, now, I was the only man who could stop him before he did.
I rode steadily toward the rising sun, without a hope of keeping up with Andy on his fresh, leggy blue roan, but confident that I knew where to find him, certain that he would still be there when I arrived, searching wildly for the gold which I had taken a minute to move to a new place of concealment.
&n
bsp; Frustrated in his quest, what would Andy do? I knew him too well. He would know what had happened, and figured who had done it to him. I was the only one foolish enough to continue this mad pursuit. He would know who had done it, would know that I was following still. And he would lay a trap to kill me.
First, of course, he would have to extract the gold’s location from me, by any means necessary. He no longer had the women captive to use as leverage, and so he would have to resort to torture of some kind, although the thought made me smile grimly. My body had been so broken and battered over the last few days that I wondered if I hadn’t grown immune to pain. But no man is.
I tried to put myself in Andy’s place again. Returning to the camp he finds Mosely dead, Eva gone. Keogh, he thinks instantly, as he searches desperately for the stolen gold. Then, realizing that I have not yet done with him, he needs to come up with a scheme for ambushing me while taking me alive so that I can reveal the location of the gold.
That was as far as my reckoning went. Andy was devious enough to come up with any number of plans. I could only wait and see and be ready – to gun him down at first sight. Like the rabid lobo wolf he was.
The sun was brightening, piercing through my eyes into my brain. I needed sleep, rest, food. Marly was waiting for me. Why not just let Andy go, forget this mad pursuit? I was crazy. I had been told that before, and now I was beginning to believe it. I was no lawman, no angel of retribution, only a half-smart cowboy, broken and battered.
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