‘It’s bushes.’
‘Please, Sarge. Just fire one shell.’
‘Tasker’s doing an important job for us, boy. He’ll come with the others as soon as he can. Anyway, I need that shell. And if I fire it now they’ll know where we are.’
The Skillington boy nodded without his eyes leaving the dark for a second, fear writ plainly on his face.
Nixon sighed.
‘Your uncle told me you were a reader.’
‘I spose so.’
‘What did you read?’
‘Stories. And history books. History of Britain. Histories of France and America.’
‘Revolutions?’
‘Yes.’
Tom Lawton laughed.
‘Now those must’ve been high times.’
The Skillington boy turned and stared at him.
‘I spose so. Some say the same could happen here. The workers and farmers against the government.’
Nixon shook his head.
‘I doubt it, lad. This place is too empty. The people’s heads are too empty. You see it sometimes in the Irish. Like in these boys we’re chasin. But that will soon … be gone.’
‘Please, Sarge. Can we send up that flare? Else let me ride back for the Injune officers. They’ll be more use than me.’
Nixon stared at the empty bottle in the rill at his feet. He smiled.
‘I might yet send you back for whisky. But what about girlfriends?’
‘None. Not really.’
Just then there was a howl from the west and the Skillington boy got on his haunches.
‘Get down, lad.’
He did.
‘But there must have been a girl,’ said Nixon.
The Skillington boy breathed deep.
‘There was one I liked. Molly. Molly … I can’t remember her surname.’
Nixon was watching the north.
After that howl came silence. A grinding silence.
‘Sarge?’
‘No matter, boy. What was she like? Molly?’
‘Pretty, I spose. Once when the school marm was sick I walked her home. It was a good way out of my way. Her house. But I didn’t want to leave her.’
Tom Lawton laughed.
‘Fuck me, boy. That’s your best experience with a woman? I’d be frightened of what’s over that rimrock too if that’s all the life I’d lived.’
Nixon eyed him.
‘You think we’d be more impressed by stories of your whoring?’
‘Or we could hear stories of yours.’
Nixon glared at him.
‘Boy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell me what Molly looked like.’
The Skillington boy saw King Edward staring into the dark and he squinted at the same place. At another set of bushes shaking in the wind. Now Nixon looked at shadows too.
‘Lad?’
‘Dark hair. A little curly, I guess. On her shoulders. Chestnut hair and curls that bobbed in the breeze. She wasn’t tall, but she had a comely shape. She had rosy cheeks and … Sarge, I saw that. Something glinted up there. Sarge, fire that flare. They could be amassing a fuckin army of rebels.’
‘There’s nothing anywhere near us, lad.’
But both Tom Lawton and King Edward were watching a point on the wall where a rock had fallen.
‘Rosy cheeks, you said, boy.’
‘Yes. And a lovely voice. That’s what I remember most. Soft. And a little low. Like … ah, I don’t know. Like humming.’
Nixon grabbed the boy’s arm.
‘Boy, how far away do you think those Injune officers are?’
‘Oh Lord. Maybe only hours away. They’re only just above us.’
Nixon held onto the boy’s arm and held the pistol high over the boy’s head and pulled the trigger. There was a whistling roar and the light spread out like a gentle, silver liquid. Nixon looked at the boy’s face frozen in the light in fear.
Now whatever was on the ridge had seen them.
Now it comes, thought Nixon.
Then a solitary figure stood on the rim in the last of the flare light.
‘Open up,’ The Skillington boy whispered. ‘Fire now.’
‘It’s not a good shot,’ said Nixon.
‘We might not get another chance.’
Then came a rifle report and the whine of a bullet ricocheting off the rocks just above them. The patrol’s horses screamed.
‘They can’t see us right,’ said the Skillington boy. ‘They can only hear us.’
Tom Lawton squatted low.
‘They’re not shooting at us, boy. They’re aiming at the horses.’
Nixon shuffled to where he could reach up to the rein that tethered his mare to a rock-clinging palm.
‘I’m not gonna be trapped down here. Mount up!’
They grabbed their horses and rode around an elbow of the gorge to the south and waited. They could be shot from behind or directly above, but at no other angle. They waited and there was no more fire.
Nixon’s eyes darted from one wall to the other.
Something moved ahead of him. He yanked his rein to wheel off to the left.
There was a rifle report and the Skillington boy’s horse started and slipped and panicked for footing and fell on its side and flung the boy across the rocks on his face. Nixon dismounted and took the boy on his shoulder and another shot split rocks at Nixon’s feet. He threw the boy over his horse and mounted and put his spurs into the horse’s flanks.
Tom Lawton and King Edward came behind Nixon and rode to a sheltering cave. The patrol sat sleepless through the night waiting for fire that did not come.
‘If they have men,’ said Tom Lawton, ‘they’ll have them at either side of this gorge.’
The Skillington boy sat up.
‘Meaning?’
‘We’re trapped.’
‘Fuck me.’
‘A lot of fucking good your flare did, boy. Where are your troops?’
Nixon scanned the terrain.
Here the pines were thick enough to move around a little with safety, but only a little way on the timber thinned again. There were other gorges to the west. Ways up the northwestern escarpment where the Kenniffs were. Maybe a way up to a vantage point. But he did not know how far they would have to ride exposed to whatever sat on the rimrock to get to such a place.
He lit a cigarette.
There was a thin glow above the rocks to the north. The stars were dim. Smoke, he thought. And from no small fire.
‘We wait here,’ he said. ‘We don’t move till morning.’
Tom stood up and spat.
‘And get shot tonight like fucking turkeys? No fucking thank you.’
‘Sit down, Tom.’
Tom Lawton picked up his rifle.
The Skillington boy stood up too.
‘Where are you goin?’
‘To shoot something I can stick in a fire. If I’m gonna die tonight I’m gonna die with somethin in my belly.’
The Kenniffs rode a narrow defile out of Hell Hole Gorge and up along the ridge. A belt of fire still burnt along the northwest, barring them. Jim’s kerchief had fallen to his chest and he had not re-tied it. The wind flayed his skin. The wind was icy and burning by turns as it shifted from the south to over the fires in the north. They had ridden through mud and frost but here the rock was blown bare. They rode on across stone shelves into the sun till they met a chasm they could not cross, buffered by a wall they could not climb.
The long night was ahead of them. Jim’s shoulder and leg both had pained him greatly for a day, but now the pain went away. They made camp in a cave. Curled in the dark they lit no fire. A freezing drizzle came. Wind and ice water sprayed off the top of the gorge.
Paddy looked up at the sky and prayed, God, let it kill the fire.
He shot a goat.
They sat in the cave while the rain fell. Paddy pulled meat off the thigh.
Jim watched the changing shapes of the darkness outside.
>
‘I don’t know that what I see is real, Paddy. I don’t trust my eyes anymore. Not since days.’
Paddy kept vigil at the cave mouth. The rain stopped and the wind blew cold and smoke into the cave. Jim pulled his coat hard around his shoulders.
They heard a gunshot, a thin sound in the distance to the east. Then an answering shot.
‘The police firing at shadows,’ said Paddy.
‘Or locating each other.’
The sun was near gone. Nixon walked out of a fringe of pines and marked a way up the rock that perhaps one man could take. Maybe. With a horse for a little way at least. And he marked the places where that man would be exposed and sheltered and where he would have to go on foot. Tom came out to him and guessed what he was looking at.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said.
The Skillington boy and King Edward came behind the other two.
‘Somewhere they have to come out,’ said Nixon. ‘The horses can only pick so much weed from the rocks and there can be little water. They will have to water their horses. If that fire’s keeping them from the north, then they’ll come back into the gorge. We need to ride on a way.’
‘Towards what?’ said the Skillington boy.
‘I don’t know this country as well as Jim Kenniff does. But if he’s as trapped as we are, he’ll run out of gorge.’
‘So we just ride along here in a file,’ said the Skillington boy, ‘until we achieve our aim of goin toe to toe with them in a shootout?’
Tom Lawton pointed up a defile that must go somewhere near Hell Hole.
‘You could always ride up there after them instead.’
The Skillington boy mounted his horse and shook his head.
Tom Lawton laughed.
‘Didn’t think so. Where the fuck are those policemen you were crying for last night, boy?’
The Skillington boy ignored him and turned to Nixon.
‘Sarge, please think about what I say. I know this country well enough. It’s a bloody long way before they run out of gorge.’ He looked at Tom. ‘Who knows that this one here isn’t giving them signals?’
Nixon spat.
‘I’ve been watching him.’
‘Who knows what signals he might give?’
Tom Lawton spoke at the boy’s back.
‘Shut up, coward.’
The Skillington boy spoke.
‘He asks where the officers are. I’m asking myself. What if they’re dead?’
Tom Lawton laughed.
‘How the fuck would they get across the north to kill all your police and be shootin at us at the same time?’
The Skillington boy shook his head.
‘You know what they say, Sarge. Jim Kenniff can be in two places at once.’
‘Quiet, boy.’
‘I’m scared the police aren’t coming, Sarge. And I heard you two talking at the fire the other night. The Injune police aren’t coming and we’re up here in a turkey shoot riding with the one man who can make a case against the Kenniffs. If he’s not double crossing us then we’re riding beside a fucking target. We might as well put red feathers in our hats so they can see us better.’
‘Quiet.’
But before the last light was gone the three Injune officers came. They came with a black man on a pony in tow.
‘We saw the flare,’ said Tasker. ‘But we were waylaid. There’s fire all along the range. Haven’t seen anything like it in years.’
‘Did you set the cordon?’
‘Aye, men are moving. But slowly. The fire’s through Consuelo. But look here – Sam Johnson has returned.’
Nixon stood with eyes wide and only now saw properly the face of the black man.
‘Hell, Sam! It’s good to see you. I thought you were dead.’
‘He’s been weeks in the wild. He was injured, half-starved and delirious. We found him at an empty rail siding, trying to pick his way along the line. But he made it back. And you should hear what he has to say about Doyle and Dahlke.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘I heard it,’ said Sam. ‘I was chasing down our packhorse, so I didn’t see. But I heard it.’
Nixon nodded.
‘You heard them killed?’
‘Yes. But I didn’t see what become of our men.’
‘I did.’
Night came and a belt of stars burned above the gorge.
Tasker and Scanlan stood watch at the north of the camp. Nixon looked up at Holland who was loading his rifle. God, he looks soft, Nixon thought. I don’t remember him being so soft. He looked at his own face in his hunting knife. Hell, look at you. You look about a thousand years old, and you’re not even forty. Or was he? He counted the months, the years, since he last knew for sure. He looked again at Holland who watched the northern dark but with less fear in his eyes than the Skillington boy. At last Nixon could rest a little, now the reinforcements were here, and he smiled.
‘Holland.’
‘Sergeant?’
‘You got anything to drink?’
Holland passed him a bottle. Nixon took it.
‘Rotgut?’
‘I don’t know. It’s Tasker’s.’
Scanlan and Tasker were standing watch. The Skillington boy was asleep. Tom was playing dice with King Edward, and Nixon was all alone. For this hour, just this hour, nothing and no one was depending on him. He took the bottle Holland had given him, pulled out the stopper and wiped the lip of the bottle with his sleeve and drank deep. The whisky tasted terrible, but soon a happy warmth spread through him. He drank again. He thought, I hope they open fire up there on the ridge tonight – as long as these others get out – I could die now with this in my belly and I would not be sorry. He drank again. Then again. He remembered the weight of Mrs Thurlow’s head between his shoulders on his horse riding her fence line. He remembered the beautiful little girl back in Jericho. This has been enough for me. He thought, If they opened fire now I’d stand eye to eye with Jim Kenniff and I’d draw and if he was the faster then that would be good. That would be good. He drank again. Then again …
They walked the horses to a fissure in the rock. Jim looked down at the gorge floor, squinting into the dark at the shimmering water and the shadows that moved beside it. They were a half-day’s ride off the place they thought they might escape.
‘They’re still coming after us. They’re all there.’
Paddy knelt beside him.
‘They must have got troops from Injune. There’ll be more of them if we don’t push em back out of here. And we need to get down onto the creek for water. These horses can’t keep licking moss.’
Jim nodded.
He took his Winchester and threaded his way through the rocks under starlight. Paddy ran behind him with pistol drawn and cocked. A narrow defile opened up and with it a ledge that skirted close to the main gorge. They edged along the wall until the ledge broadened into a shelf. At the edge of the shelf they looked down to where the shadows of the police moved by a low fire.
Jim got on his elbows on a flat stone.
Now Jim had Nixon in the sight of his rifle. The back of his head. Then he shifted the sight and saw Tom Lawton by the fire.
Jim looked up from his rifle sight.
‘Do you see him?’
‘Let me do it, Jim.’
‘No.’
Jim put Tom Lawton’s head in the sight.
He breathed hard and put the rifle on the rock.
‘I can’t, Paddy.’
‘Then I have to.’
‘No.’
‘You know we have to, brother. What else is there? Keep running forever? We’re gonna run out of earth to ride across!’
He was more tired than he knew it was possible to be. He was tired of hiding, tired of drawing his gun each time the wind moved the branches of trees.
He rolled onto his back and looked at the stars. He closed his eyes.
Paddy spoke.
‘Where are we going, Jim?’
He thoug
ht of the girl all alone in Jericho. The pain was returning to his leg, and it was growing stiff. He sighed.
‘We go down and ride straight for the end of this gorge, even if we have to ride exposed. There is a way out up there in the northwest, one the police won’t know, out of sight of the gorge mouth, and after a drop through stones it falls onto easy foothills. I rode it once as a boy.’
‘The first horse.’
‘Aye. It’s far enough away that when we reach it I reckon we’ll have gone past the fire. Then once we’ve beaten both fire and police we go west for a girl I want to collect. Then we go south and take ship to San Francisco. We’ll beg, borrow or steal a passage and make the newspaper stories true.’
Paddy smiled and nodded.
‘But brother,’ Jim said, ‘We need to push them back in order to get down.’
‘Yes.’
That night there was no water to drink. There were pools down lower, at the mouth of the defile, but Jim thought the police would have men in sight of them. They sucked on stones. They slept, but in the night Jim half woke and thought the police surrounded their camp. They were creeping towards him like phantoms, barely described in the belt of dark just below. They were the remnant of a dream, but he climbed up on a ledge and could see smoke rising from three places in the north below Consuelo. He climbed back down to the shooting ledge.
It was the Skillington boy’s watch now. He and Holland. Clouds drifted across the stars. The Skillington boy had his horse saddled and he held the rein.
Holland laughed.
‘You keep it saddled all night and it won’t run for you in the morning. Horses need to sleep.’
‘I know. Only …’
‘Only what?’
‘Aren’t you afraid? Afraid of what might be sitting further on there looking down at us?’
‘Yes. But not so afraid that I’m going to make myself ridiculous over it. And like I say, I’d rather be ridin a donkey tomorrow than your horse if you keep it saddled and awake all night.’
The Skillington boy looked to the rock wall where Sam Johnson was guarded by King Edward. The two black men were hidden by an elbow of stone. They had sat awake and not speaking, but now Sam lay back to sleep against the rock. King Edward remained awake.
The Skillington boy wanted to shift the topic from his cowardice.
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