Dead Man Walking

by Derek Rutherford

  ‘Unlike Whit, here,’ George said.

  ‘Just as long as you,’ Whit said.

  ‘That’s not what she told me.’

  ‘Boys, you had your fun. Now let’s be serious. You call me when you see him.’

  The ride this morning felt longer, hotter, and harder than the previous day. Jim knew this was because he had slid into the darkness last night and had filled his body with poison. It had felt good at the time. Or rather, it had stopped him feeling bad. But he hadn’t gone through everything in New Mexico to slip backwards into that previous way of living. He rested his hand on McRae’s gun at his hip. They hadn’t killed McRae for nothing back in the Crossing either. No, last night had been a one-off. The shock of seeing the captain again had snapped him back in time. But it wouldn’t happen again.

  He stopped at the creek, drank as much as he could, and filled his waterskin. He was still shaking. Not through fear, though he did recognise that fear was present, deep inside, like a small warm rock. The shaking was his body’s reaction to all that whiskey. He was glad that none of his friends back in Parker’s Crossing had seen him. He had lived like that for months until breaking free of that life. People had died – some at his hand – to make it happen.

  Whatever happened here, he wasn’t going back to that life.

  The sky was clear blue and cloudless. A hawk circled lazily on thermals. There was freshness in the air – the scent of grass and pine trees – and a very slight breeze that lifted the whiskey sweat from his skin.

  He circled Camp 13 and found the creek that flowed down through the camp far below. He stopped in the thick copse of trees from which the creek emerged. Down below he saw the usual guard at the gate, the kid and his dog running back and forth over by the big house. He watched the dog chase a rabbit into the trees behind the house. The creek had, in wet years, worn quite a deep channel into the clay ground. The channel, coloured with parallel lines of clay in different hues of red and brown, ran behind the huts and, although it wasn’t perfect, Jim saw that a man could probably crawl all the way up from the camp and into this copse of trees without being seen. Well, he would be seen if someone was looking carefully. But if there was something better to look at in the opposite direction, say where those massive piles of lumber were, and say it happened during the day when almost all of the guards were out in the timber fields, then that fellow would likely make it. He could even get beneath the fence where the creek flowed under the wire. Probably wouldn’t even get his head wet. And if there was a horse waiting for him in this here copse of trees and if there was somewhere for them to head towards and hide out in, some water and some food waiting, a fellow might just get clean away. It wasn’t a prison after all. It was just a lumber camp with one fence and a whole lot of fear holding men inside.

  Jim looked up at the sun and estimated it was almost midday. Down in the camp yard the whipping pole cast no shadow.

  He turned and rode in the opposite direction. In a couple of hours a man on a horse could get a fair distance in any direction. Unless they had a good tracker down there – and Jim had seen no evidence of such – then there was a good chance that they wouldn’t be found.

  All he needed now was somewhere to hide out.

  It was going to be a hot day’s riding, but he’d find somewhere and tomorrow he’d let Leon know what was coming.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Adams said, whispering, yet his voice as hard as flint. ‘Here he comes now.’

  ‘He wasn’t in town after all,’ George said.

  ‘We knew that. But how did he lose us?’ Adams said.

  By lunchtime, when Jim Jackson hadn’t emerged from the hotel, Adams had despatched Whittaker Gordon to the livery to see if Jim Jackson’s horse – the grey – was still there. It wasn’t. So they knew that Jackson had somehow evaded them: the question was whether he had done it deliberately or not. The consensus had been not – Jackson had no way of knowing that they were in town so why would he purposely sneak around? ‘He doesn’t know any of us. He never met us in Austin.’ Adams had pointed out.

  ‘Pure luck. Pure chance,’ Dubois said.

  ‘I don’t like a lucky man,’ Adams said.

  Now, seeing Jackson riding in, looking tired but happy, his blue jacket and brown hat caked in dust, he said, ‘Whit, you ride up to the lumber camp. Tell the captain up there that you’re staying with him until this thing is over. Don’t give him any choice.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘George, tomorrow you watch his horse, I’ll take the hotel. When he makes his move we’ll be there one way or another.’

  Jim had the boy at the livery give his horse a good rub down, and fresh food and water. She’d done well today. They’d covered a lot of miles and she hadn’t complained once.

  He walked back into the centre of Prairie City, pausing to buy a cup of coffee from a young lad who had set up an outside stall. He drank the coffee whilst leaning against a pole holding up a red awning outside the barber’s shop and dentist. As far as he could tell the same fellow inside covered both professions. Across the street people wandered about, seemingly aimlessly, but there must have been a pattern to their existence, if only he could see it. Dogs, horses and people, all moving and stopping and standing and scratching. The air had the faint smell of horse manure and fire hanging in it.

  He finished the coffee and gave the tin cup back to the vendor, and then he wandered over to the hardware store from where he’d bought his telescope two days before. This time he bought the large box of shotgun shells that the telescope had been resting on. He bought a cheap pen and a small bottle of ink. Across the street he bought a small rabbit from a butcher.

  He went back to the hotel, pausing to pop into the outhouse round the back to steal some paper before heading up to his room.

  Webster T. Ellington leaned against the gate and watched the sky darkening, the stars appearing one by one, the brightest first, then those that were smaller, fainter, and needing the darkness to fully form before they could be seen. He figured he was a little like those stars, the faint ones. He wasn’t always noticed, wasn’t always picked out as being the brightest or the best or the biggest. But by God when things got dark, when there was trouble around, he was a man who would be there. He smiled. Yes, sir, things were setting themselves up just nicely for him to be noticed.

  He looked over at the prisoners’ hut where Leon Winters was right now lying in his own stink, too weak to work, just waiting on each minute to pass oh so slowly before the next one came along. Probably wondering if and when he was ever going to get out. As far as Webster knew, Winters had no idea yet what his old colleague Jim Jackson was planning. Well, he soon would. Once Jackson’s plan failed, both of them would be in the system forever and it would be all down to Webster that the plan had been foiled.

  He smiled. There ought to be a posting back to a more civilised camp after this. Maybe even the penitentiary back at Huntsville or Rusk. Might even be able to persuade his wife to come back to him if he was in a place like that. But there again, did he want her back?

  On the other hand, it would be nice to stay here for just a little while – or wherever they were going to send Leon Winters and Jim Jackson after their failed escape-come-rescue attempt. Yes, he’d sure like to spend a few weeks with those two.

  The sky was darker now. The faint stars were shining brighter.

  Webster T. Ellington cracked his knuckles, spat tobacco juice on to the ground and started at the huts.

  Tomorrow, maybe? The day after?

  It didn’t matter. The feeling was so good that in one way he wanted it to last a long time.

  But not as much as he wanted to look into Jim Jackson’s eyes again.

  Red Kelly reckoned that it wasn’t until he finished his third glass of beer that he’d rid himself of all the grit that a half-day’s riding had deposited in his throat.

  ‘This place is way too dry and dusty,’ he said. ‘Once we’ve killed Jackson I want to find myself some
place cool and green again.’

  ‘We need to find Jackson first,’ Callum Short said.

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope we don’t have to spend a day riding round again,’ Ned Donovan said. His wounds still showed no signs of healing. Spending the afternoon on horseback up by the lumber camp had re-opened many of the pellet holes. By the time they’d risen and eaten breakfast it had been late morning and they’d missed the opportunity to watch the hotel for any fellow that might be Jim Jackson. So they’d taken some directions from the hotel clerk and had ridden up to the camp where this Jackson fellow was supposedly heading. They hadn’t found Jackson up there and the camp looked kind of quiet and normal – no excitement at all. So they’d wound their way back to Prairie City and a few beers to wash away the dust.

  Red said, ‘The hotel clerk says there’s a fellow he reckons might be the one. He’ll send a boy over to tell me when the fellow comes back.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s Jackson,’ Ned said.

  ‘It will be,’ Red said. ‘Sooner or later it will be.’

  Jim Jackson tried to recall something that could only be known to Leon and himself. Something Leon would read and know it was genuine and not a trap.

  He lay on the bed and thought back over the things they had done together, the train robberies and the nights drinking whiskey and counting proceeds. Sitting on porches talking about the future. The shared tales of their pasts, the people they had left behind and the ones they wanted to see again.

  He remembered one night telling Leon about Jennifer, about how rich her father was, about how he had come west to make a quick fortune in order to be able to go back to Clark County, Illinois, with enough wealth to be worthy of her.

  ‘How’s that working out?’ Leon had asked him at the time.

  ‘I’d say I’m on track,’ Jim had said.

  Leon had smiled a wide smile in the moonlight, with a bottle of wine between them on the wooden steps on which they sat.

  ‘Well, don’t stay in this game too long, my friend. Once you’ve made enough, be gone. Carpe diem, and all that.’

  ‘Carpe diem?’

  ‘Seize the day. It’s Latin. It’s Italian. I don’t know. Might be Shakespeare. What I do know is that your luck mightn’t last forever.’

  ‘You know Shakespeare?’ Jim had asked Leon that night.

  ‘Some. You? Do you read?’

  And their friendship, already strong, had become even stronger.

  Now, sitting in his darkening hotel room, Jim Jackson wrote in his neatest and clearest writing – making sure the lettering was large enough for a man to read even if his eyesight was no longer what it once was – instructions for what he wanted Leon to do the day after he had received the note. He ended with: ‘My luck – like yours – didn’t last for ever. But we have a chance to put it all right. Carpe diem.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Somebody was hammering on the door.

  They were all sleeping in the same room – although after today Red wasn’t sure where they were going to bunk down. Money was just about up. It might be that they could rob someone but he really didn’t want to risk bringing any attention to himself and the boys and it would defeat the entire purpose of being in Prairie City if they had to skip town. Maybe they’d have to bed down with the horses for a night or two. That was assuming they could afford the livery.

  ‘Who the hell’s that at this godforsaken hour?’ Ned grumbled.

  ‘It’s morning,’ Red said, untangling himself from his blanket. He ran a hand through his hair, grabbed his hat from the table at the end of the bed, and opened the door.

  It was the clerk. Red had slipped him fifty cents the day before and told him that whenever and wherever he spotted a tall fellow on his own, who was new in town, to come and tell Red.

  ‘There’s a feller eating breakfast right now. Downstairs. Reckon it might be the feller you’re looking for.’

  Red, Callum, and Ned followed the clerk down the steep creaking stairs. He led them to the door that opened on to the breakfast room and indicated a man sitting on his own, eating fried bacon and eggs, and drinking coffee.

  Red thought back to those few seconds in the carriage of the Austin-bound train. He had walked into the carriage and had seen Ringo lying on the floor, motionless, blood pouring from his head. Wes had been there too, as large as life, being held down in an armlock by some big young men. And beyond Wes was . . . this man. The tall man. Red hadn’t recalled getting a good look at him but now it all came back. This man had had bloodlust in his eyes.

  ‘It’s him,’ Red said.

  There was something in Red’s voice because the clerk said, ‘I don’t want no trouble. Not here. Not in the hotel.’

  Red said, ‘It’s too late to avoid trouble now.’ He turned to his two comrades. ‘Boys, our guns. Come on.’

  By the time Red had gone upstairs, strapped his gun on, and made it back down, Jim Jackson was on the street. But that was OK. Killing the man in the breakfast room mightn’t have been a good idea. Too many other folks around. Red had his own neck to think about, too.

  Jackson was walking slowly up Main Street. He paused once or twice to look into shop windows, and he smiled at several pretty ladies. He had a brown paper bag in his right hand and saddle-bags over his shoulder.

  ‘Livery’s where he’s headed,’ Ned said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘It’s quieter up there.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Red was thinking the same thing. The livery was on the edge of town. Whilst Jackson was sorting his horse out, saddling her up and probably sweet-talking her, they could get a few hundred yards up the trail and be ready for him. It didn’t have to take long. Shoot the horse. Walk on over, maybe put a bullet in Jackson’s leg, just to quieten him down and stop him running, and then let him know just why he was being sent to Hell. Let him think about it for a few seconds, see the fear in his eyes, and then . . . bang.

  ‘Ned: Callum and I will take care of Jackson. We’ll sneak up the trail a little. You go into the stables you get our horses ready. We’re going to need to get away quickly after we’ve killed him.’

  ‘He killed Ringo,’ Ned said. ‘I’d like to see—’

  ‘I know,’ Red said, his voice a little softer than normal. ‘And we’ll make sure he knows that’s why we’re here. But we need those horses ready. You go on ahead, Ned. Get there before Jackson if you can and make a start on those horses. Go on. Get ahead of him.’

  Ned grunted but picked up his speed, limping slightly as he pulled away from Red and Callum.

  Over on the other side of the street, Jackson stopped to say something to a young man brewing and selling coffee. The young man smiled and nodded. Jackson set off again. A short-haired brown dog stood up and followed him for a few paces. Jackson said something to the dog and its tail twitched briefly.

  Callum said, ‘Boss, it might be nothing. But. . . ‘

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There’s a fellow about twenty yards behind Jackson. Black coat with a yellow vest beneath. Bearded fellow.

  ‘I see him.’

  ‘I think he’s following Jackson, too.’

  Ben Adams was weary. That was the thing with trying to watch a man, you had to be on your wits all of the time. The fellow in question could sleep, and he could take a long leisurely breakfast, and he could drink his coffee whilst sitting down, and meanwhile you had to be up early, grabbing your food and drink on the go – if at all – and you couldn’t even take a break to relieve yourself. It was exhausting. The tiredness was making him a little short-tempered – he’d cursed the hotel clerk for no reason earlier – and it was causing him to make mistakes. Earlier he’d found his eyes closing briefly in the warm morning sun, just as Jackson emerged from the hotel, well fed and rested. At least George Dubois up at the stables would pick him up if Adams missed him. But that wasn’t the point. Adams hated making mistakes.

  Still, all the grit in his
eyes, the hunger in his belly and even the uncomfortable pressure in his bladder would be worth it in the end, when they were right there when Jackson broke his old partner out of the prison camp. To see the look in the man’s eyes – both men’s eyes – and to get the plaudits back in Austin when he brought the train robber in. Yes, it would be worth it then. It was a shame that Higgs wouldn’t be there to see it, but hell, what a negotiating position it would give him with whoever the new boss was.

  He followed Jackson at a fair distance and in his tiredness it was a few minutes before he realized that he wasn’t the only one following the train robber.

  There were two of them.

  Scruffy, dirty trail-hands by the look of them. Stubble on their faces and dust on their coats and chaps and boots.

  Adams cursed his own tiredness. He should have spotted these two right away.

  Then they both turned and looked directly at him.

  ‘Sonofabitch,’ Red said. ‘Who the hell’s that?’

  ‘Never seen him before,’ Callum said.

  ‘No way on God’s earth that fellow is taking Jackson away from me. Jackson is mine.’

  They were getting closer to the livery.

  ‘You want me to stop him?’ Callum reached down and loosened the Colt in his holster. It had been a while since he had used the gun. He wouldn’t have minded shooting someone, especially someone who was trying to prevent them getting justice for Little Joe and Ringo, and no doubt Wes and Lech too.

  ‘Let me think,’ Red said.

  ‘Up ahead,’ Callum said. ‘The livery entrance is around that corner and down a way. We’ll get there first. Jackson will be inside the livery. Ned will follow him if needs be and we’ll catch up later. You and I can wait on this feller.’

  Red looked up the street. Yes, that would work. Surprise the fellow as he came round the corner.

  ‘You got a knife?’

  ‘Nope. Just a gun.’