‘If your friend works there it might be OK. If he’s a prisoner, then . . .’ The bartender shook his head. ‘I’ve heard it’s a pretty cruel place.’
‘Can you point me in the right direction?’
‘Sure. Follow the creek north. After about an hour’s ride the creek splits. Follow the right-hand water. There’s a trail there. It goes uphill – well, the water’s coming down – and it splits again. Keep following the right-hand trail and there’s Camp 13.’
‘Much obliged.’
‘My pleasure. Another beer?’
Between the saloon and the hotel was a hardware shop. In the window display were spades and picks and hammers, a bag of nails, a set of spurs artfully positioned on a box of shotgun shells, several leather belts hanging from a bent wire, two hats, a water canteen and, stretched out to its full length, a four-section telescope made from brass and mahogany.
Jim paused. Money wasn’t an issue, but he did have to be careful. He wasn’t making any at the moment and he did seem to be spending it rather quickly. He’d given a fortune away back in Parker’s Crossing, New Mexico. Blood money. They were buying a bell for the church. Most folks couldn’t understand why he’d given it all away. But the money – proceeds from all those train robberies – had brought nothing but pain and death. He was better rid of it. All he’d kept was enough to see him through what he needed to do.
The telescope was a dollar. He haggled and got it for seventy-five cents.
He booked a room at the hotel and then bedded his horse down at the livery.
Tomorrow he’d follow the creek up into the hills.
The next day, late morning, he rode the trail into the hills. It felt good to be far away from Austin. He hadn’t realized how oppressive the city had been – all those buildings, all those people. It was strange; such things had been his life once. He’d always assumed that one day he’d return to city life but something had changed. Nowadays, he preferred the freedom of the open spaces. He liked the solitude, too – albeit even as the thought crossed his mind he found himself thinking of Rosalie. There was solitude and there was loneliness. He enjoyed the first and didn’t suffer from the second. But there was something – just a small space that was no longer filled. That was another thing: for years, for all that time when he was imprisoned and suffering, for those long nights when he tried desperately to keep thoughts and memories locked up because it hurt too much otherwise, it was always Jennifer whom he thought of when he weakened. Jennifer, back in Illinois, with the wide streets and tall buildings and bright lights. Jennifer, for whom he had ventured west. Yet now it was Rosalie he was thinking of. Rosalie and the open spaces and freedom.
He left his horse in the tree line and, crouching low, worked his way forward to the long dark grass on the edge of a deforested slope. He looked down upon Prison Leasing Camp 13.
A high fence encircled the camp. A creek flowed beneath the fence and ran within spitting distance of a series of wooden huts. Behind the huts there was a smaller hut constructed on a platform overhanging the creek. The privy, Jim guessed. In front of the huts was an open area. There were water troughs and there was a pole. Jim shivered when he saw the pole. It was a whipping pole. The yard had no shelter. Even if they weren’t planning on whipping a feller they could simply tie him up and let the sun roast him. There was a gate in the fence and beyond the gate a track led up to a large brick house. Hell, it was bigger than large. It was a mansion. It would have fitted right on to Capitol Avenue back in Austin. Outside the fence there were a couple of guard posts. They were raised up but not very high, and they were empty. On the far side of the camp, maybe a half a mile outside the wire, there were stacks and stacks of lumber, piled neatly. A wide track led from the lumber yard up into the hills, and another stretched southwards out of sight behind a low rise.
Jim turned the telescope back on the camp. It looked deserted. He scanned it inch by inch. A movement caught his eye. Someone was coming out of one of the privies, hitching up his trousers, a rifle lodged between his arm and his torso as he wrestled with his belt. A young man. A guard. Jim watched the man walk towards the far hut and open the door. He said something to someone inside, closed the door, and walked over to the gate. He opened the gate, walked through, and took up station on the other side.
A few minutes later an old man emerged from the hut. He was hunched over and walked with a cane. In his free hand he carried a jug. The man shuffled over to one of the washing troughs, filled the jug up with water, and then turned and retraced his steps. As he turned the man looked up at the sky and Jim caught his face full on in the telescope. The man wasn’t old after all. Probably wasn’t even as old as Jim. But he was so thin his face looked like nothing but skin stretched over bones. His eyes were dark holes. His shirt was soiled and torn and it hung on his thin shoulders like a wretched flag blown by the wind and caught on autumn tree branches. The man edged back towards the hut, spilling much of the water he had taken so long to fetch. Jim watched until he went back inside the hut. As the door opened Jim caught sight of another man inside.
The sick hut.
That’s why there was only one guard. If you were sick enough not to be working you would be in no fit state to make a run for freedom.
He continued to scan the camp. There were no hound dogs. That was good. He didn’t have a plan yet, but not having bloodhounds on your trail would be a positive thing. A couple of times he saw a young boy, couldn’t have been no more than six, run down to the gate and talk to the guard. The kid was smiling. And actually there was a dog, a little terrier of some sort that was close to that kid’s heels almost all of the time. But it was no bloodhound. At one point the kid ran down to the privy with a handful of paper squares. When he came out he ran over to the gate and held his nose and pulled a face. The guard laughed. The kid ran off to the big house.
Jim crawled back to his horse, drank water and ate some beef jerky he’d bought in town. He circled the camp and looked at the place from as many different angles as he could. Mid-afternoon, things became interesting briefly when a group of three riders arrived at the camp, talked to the young guard, then headed off to the mansion house. They didn’t stay long and they didn’t look like guards or lawmen.
Just before dusk, over on the far hillside, Jim Jackson noticed a dust cloud rising up. It was created by the feet of a couple of dozen prisoners and guards on horses. Jim Jackson lay in the long grass and watched as the gang came closer. He scanned their faces, one by one, looking for his old friend.
Leon wasn’t there.
He checked every face a second time.
A feeling of disappointment rose inside him. Had he been given poor information?
He checked a third time and still he couldn’t find Leon.
He watched the prisoners being counted in through the gate. Once inside the first thing they all did was to walk over and cup their hands in the warm trough water and drink and pour it over their dusty heads. One wandered over to the sick hut, opened the door and said something. And, just for a second, there was Leon Winters. His old buddy came to the door and handed out the same jug that Jim had watched the other sick man fill up earlier. Leon, as tall as ever and still standing straight but now as thin as the whipping pole in the yard and as pale as the dust that caked the prisoners. Then Leon was gone, back inside the sick hut.
But he was there.
And he was alive.
Jim put down the telescope and balled his fists in delight.
He looked down at the camp again; the shadows were long now and he saw a different guard walking over towards the gate. There was something about the way the guard walked, about the way he moved.
The hairs on Jim’s neck bristled.
He raised the telescope. He focused on the new guard.
A fear wrapped itself around his spine as real as if a field surgeon with ice-cold hands had opened his flesh and taken hold of his bones. He actually felt his bowels and bladder weaken and had to clench his musc
les to control himself. Memories came flooding back so fast and strong, so hard and real, that his hands began shaking and he dropped the glass. He realized once more why he’d spent so long drunk when he’d finally been released from his own prison camp. It had been to forget about Captain Ellington, a man whom, for years, Jim Jackson had considered the Devil on Earth. The man who had caused him more suffering than any other. A man who had told him that if he ever set foot in Texas again, what had come before would be nothing compared to what would come next.
That man was down there guarding Leon.
Chapter Twelve
Ben Adams, alongside George Dubois and Whittaker Gordon – another of Adams’ Houston and Texas Central Railroad guards – sat at a window table in the Prairie Creek Saloon. It was dark outside, but moonlight shone through the window. An oil lamp burned on their table, as one did on every table. More lights were suspended from the ceiling. The room smelled of fire and sweat, of beer and whiskey.
‘Do we need to go back to Austin?’ Dubois said. He was young, lean and full of energy. Like a dog that had been given a scent to follow he was itching to follow the trail, itching to catch this fellow, Jim Jackson, who had brought them to Prairie City.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Adams said quietly.
‘He never heard nothing,’ Gordon said. ‘He’s too drunk.’
Over at the bar the man they had come for was drinking beer and whiskey as if the entire Texas supply was liable to run out soon.
‘It doesn’t do any harm to keep things to ourselves,’ Adams said.
‘So?’ Dubois whispered.
A couple of hours earlier they’d ridden up to the camp to introduce themselves to the captain and discovered a message waiting for them. Maxwell Higgs was dead. His wife, too. There’d been a fire at their house back in Austin.
‘Charlie Entwhistle has got things covered, I’m sure. We do what we came to do. We wait until he—’ Adams nodded towards the man drinking at the bar ‘—makes his move. Then we catch him in the act.’
Adams didn’t know if the fire at Higgs’ house was related. He didn’t think so. How could it be? It was most probably a terrible coincidence. It was a shame, too. He’d liked Higgs and they’d had a good working relationship. Still, when they took Jim Jackson back, one-time train robber and now about to break another train robber out of prison, whoever was in charge would have to be impressed.
‘Perhaps we could have a drink?’ Whit said. ‘He sure ain’t going to be making his move this evening.’ Whit was just a kid, like Dubois. They were both restless and full of energy.
Adams was about to say that they were on duty, that it always paid to keep a clear head. But he paused. He’d driven the boys hard on the ride up here and they’d been out riding all day. And Whit was right. This Jim Jackson fellow was going to be good for nothing for a long time.
‘Yeah, why not? Just keep away from this place in case you start talking too loud again.’ He smiled. ‘You boys head across the street and have your fill.’
‘You’re a good man, boss,’ George Dubois said.
He knew he had to stop. He could feel himself sliding back down into darkness that not so long ago he had thought he would never escape. That he had escaped, that he had somehow crawled back up into the daylight, was a miracle that he didn’t think he could manage twice. Yet he couldn’t stop. Seeing the captain in close up through the glass had brought it all back to him in one massive hit. It was like the man had appeared, not hundreds of yards away, but actually inside his head. Jim didn’t recall much of the ride back to town, only that he was shaking as if it was winter and they had stripped him naked and tied him to a whipping post – which had happened. It had been the captain that had instigated it.
Back in Prairie City with his horse stabled, he recalled ordering that first beer and that first whiskey, and then a second. When those drinks hadn’t stopped the shaking he had ordered more – just like the old days – and had kept going until now, whenever now was, and he could at last feel his heart slowing down, and his nerves settling. But he’d drank so much he’d had to sit down on a bar stool instead if standing, and that fellow behind the counter with no hair and the dirty white shirt was giving him a look as if to say I don’t want any trouble. Jim figured he’d reassure the bartender but forming the words seemed too much trouble, so he simply pushed the glass forward for one more drink.
Across the street, in the Echo Valley Bar, Red Kelly asked the bartender if there was anyone new in town.
‘Funnily enough, those two fellows there are new.’
‘Those two young fellows? Both of them?’
‘Yep,’ the bartender said. ‘Never seen either of them before.’
‘I was expecting just one fellow.’
The barman shrugged. ‘It’s not a big town. But we ain’t the only bar. You’d be better off asking at the hotel. There’s only one hotel.’
Red nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s not a bad idea.’
He took three drinks back to the table where Ned Donovan and Callum Short were sitting.
‘Any luck?’ Ned said. He fidgeted on the hard seat. The ride up here hadn’t done the wounds in his legs and buttocks any favours.
‘Those two fellows talking to the girls are both new in town.’
‘Thought this Jim Jackson was riding alone?’ Callum said.
‘Red, I thought you’d seen him,” Ned said. ‘On the train.’
‘Yes and no. I didn’t see his face. There was a boy with wide shoulders in the way. Jackson was tall, though. I know that much. Taller than either of those fellers over there.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Callum said.
‘In the morning we’ll watch the hotel,’ Red said. ‘Or maybe I’ll just sweet-talk the clerk.’
‘And when you find Jackson?’
‘I’ll kill him,’ Red said. ‘Once I’ve told him why I’m killing him.’
He woke up unsure of where he was. Pale curtains hung over a small window. He could see the shape of the moon through the thin material. His head hurt. It felt as if someone had let loose an unbroken stallion in there. He felt nauseous. His insides twisted and turned and gurgled. He was still dressed, lying on the bed fully clothed, even his gun belt on.
He began to remember. A shiver of fear tried to form inside and he gritted his teeth and through force of will refused to let the fear harden and take shape. It would be easy to walk away, the easiest thing in the world. The most sensible thing, too. Maybe he should. Maybe what he was planning – no matter how vaguely – was just too ambitious, too unlikely, and too stupid. Why not simply head over to the livery, saddle up, and leave? He could be back across the border in a day or two. Never to step foot in Texas again. Never to risk his own skin and sanity again. Never to feel so much pain again. It would be easy. It would be sensible.
He sat up. The room rolled one way and then the other. The nausea rose inside him like a wave. But like a wave it settled.
He stood up, and again had to wait for the room to stop spinning.
There was a jug of water and a tin cup on a small table in the corner. He didn’t feel like drinking water but he did anyway. Three cups was all he could manage and then, for a long time, it felt like the sickness wasn’t going to settle. When it did, he drank a fourth cup of water. He felt sick again and prudence took him outside where the cool night air dried the sweat on his face.
Prairie City was silent. The sky was cloudless and a million stars sparkled. He found himself wondering if Rosalie was looking at those same stars. No, she’d be tucked up asleep in her sister’s neat little Austin house and tomorrow she’d be going to work at her new job making up lists of people or whatever it was she did. He felt a sense of loss inside and this time his guts refused to settle and he vomited in the alleyway behind the hotel, bringing up water and not much else, but feeling better afterwards.
There was a faint glow in the sky over the eastern hills. It was pointless to return to his room now.
He
walked towards the livery.
The sooner he did this thing the better. He had the inklings of a plan. Actually, he had two plans. One was brazen and upfront and involved simply marching into the camp with a gun in his hand. The fact that Leon was in the sick hut made this plan a whole lot more feasible than it might have been. If the only guard was that one he’d been watching yesterday then the plan would probably work. The trouble was it might involve killing the guard and it would certainly involve him and Leon needing to race across country long and hard to escape the chase. He wasn’t sure that Leon would be up to that. He also wasn’t sure that he could kill the guard in cold blood. But it was there as a plan if his other idea didn’t work. The other idea wasn’t much better. In fact it wasn’t much of anything at all.
He needed to watch and learn a bit more before deciding. He also had to scout out the land around the camp. One more day, maybe two, and then he’d just have to do it, whichever way that turned out to be.
Adams said, ‘He’s not come out yet.’
The three railroad men, Adams, Dubois and Gordon, were standing on the plank-walk across from the hotel, drinking strong coffee from tin cups. A young fellow just along the street had a fire going and was brewing up the coffee and selling it to passers-by. ‘They don’t like me over at the café or at the hotel,’ the coffee seller said. ‘But a man’s got to make a living. I’m going to start frying bread soon. Wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t get shot then.’ The young man had laughed as if he didn’t care, but there had been nervousness to his laughter.
The coffee was bitter, smoky, and good, but after they’d downed two cups, Adams said, ‘He mightn’t come out till lunchtime. You two stay here and one of you come and get me if anything happens.’
‘Where you going, boss?’
‘To get some sleep and some breakfast. I’m not sure in what order. Whilst you two were drinking and whoring last night, I stayed up watching our man drink himself into oblivion. He lasted a long time.’
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