by Max McCoy
“Why was it too late?”
“By the time he gave the order, my father was dead of his wounds. Shot in the leg. Bled to death.”
“And how did she convince this Strachan?”
“How do you think?”
Anise nodded.
“I would have done the same.”
Gamble stared at her.
“It was a little more complicated than that.”
“I’m sure it was,” Anise said. “But I would have done the same.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Eliza Gamble.”
The name seemed to hang in the air between them.
“So, you are the bogeyman who scares good little German boys and girls. Is Dunbar a complete fabrication?”
“My mother’s maiden name,” Gamble said. “I used it when I joined the Rough Riders to get out of Oklahoma Territory.”
“And why did you have to flee the territory?”
“Because there was bad blood between us.”
“How bad?”
“I killed two of Jaeger’s cousins in self-defense,” Gamble said. “Of course, they had a warrant for my arrest from Kansas, where I killed the brother-in-law of the governor. But the sonuvabitch deserved killing. And then I escaped from federal custody at Guthrie.”
“Impressive record,” she said. “But you might have shared this with my uncle and me before hiring on.”
“Perhaps you misunderstand the theory behind a fugitive assuming an alias,” Gamble said.
“And the train robber?”
“In on it,” Gamble said. “I was the third man, and things went a bit sour when one of my partners killed the express messenger, killed the other partner, and tried to kill me before I beat him to it. I had nearly gotten away with the payroll when the conductor and your uncle hailed me as a hero.”
“I need a drink.”
Anise went to the packs, found the bottle of whiskey, and came back with a pair of tin cups. She uncorked the bottle and poured three fingers in each.
“This was supposed to be for snakebite or some other emergency.”
“I’d say this qualifies,” Anise said. “Cheers.”
Gamble took a sip. Anise took a deep swallow and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I know, not very ladylike,” she said. “But I’m not much of a lady. Problem is, your story doesn’t bother me all that much. What I’m most concerned about now is how badly this Dutch Jaeger wants your hide, and how it’s going to interfere with us getting the Confederate gold out of that cave. How bad do you think he wants you, Jacob?”
“It is a passion,” Gamble said. “Now that he has picked up my trail, after a year of thinking that maybe I was dead or otherwise gone for good, there will be no stopping him short of killing him. That I’m happy to do, but he is one tough sonuvabitch. And ruthless.”
She drank the rest of her whiskey, then took Gamble’s cup.
“You think he’s out there.”
“Sure of it,” Gamble said. “Oh, he had to find another crossing, and that would have cost him half a day. But he can travel faster than we can.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Gamble said. “But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll leave camp, go in some other direction. He’ll follow me and leave the both of you alone. You can make it the rest of the way, Anise. You’re plenty tough. Like my mother.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“You’d have to have known her,” he said. “I’ll gather my things.”
“You don’t have to go yet.”
“Best if I start directly.”
“This is the last time I’ll see you?”
“Probably,” he said. “I’ll never shake the damned Pinkertons. If Jaeger doesn’t succeed in killing me now, he’ll go back to the nearest railway depot and telegraph the news that I’m alive and in the territory. I’ll make a run for old Mexico, if I can, but odds are I’m going to end up full of holes on a picture postcard.”
She began to unbutton her shirt.
“Your uncle.”
“He sleeps like the dead.”
She threw the shirt to one side.
“Let me break those damned rules I hate so much,” she said. “Fuck me, Jacob Gamble, and remind me what if feels like to be alive. I know you want to from the way you look at me. Don’t fight it, just do what you want with me. Then you get to walk away. That’s what men want, isn’t it?”
He jumped on top of her, his hands on her shoulders, pinning her to the ground. She lifted her head and kissed him hard enough to draw blood.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Jacob Gamble had found a rocky point overlooking the valley where Anise and her uncle slept. It was cold that morning, and he put on the mackinaw he had bought in Engle. As soon as it was light enough to see, he began leaving easy sign as he rode the dappled gray across a meadow, through every patch of soft ground he could find, and then up a volcanic slope of hard rock where the horse left no prints.
He rode over to a pile of breakdown forty yards away and tied the gray to a dead and twisted juniper tree on the back side. It was a good place for an ambush. The rocks made a natural fortress, and if Jaeger followed the trail to the volcanic shale, he would be close enough to be blown out of the saddle by a load of buckshot from the Model 97.
Gamble placed the shotgun on the top of a flat rock, placed a box of Robin Hood shells beside it, and began to fill the pockets of the Mackinaw with ammunition. Then he settled down with his back against a rock and waited. The air smelled of pine and rain.
About seven o’clock he saw, far across the valley, Anise and her uncle riding away, each leading a pack mule. He watched as they made their way up to high ground in the southwest, and then disappeared behind a stand of cedars.
At eight o’clock he saw a lone rider on a black horse approaching from the east, at an easy but determined pace, following the path the trio had taken to the campground before. The rider disappeared behind the trees, then emerged five minutes later, following the path that Gamble had taken across the meadow and up the volcanic slope to his outcropping. Even from a quarter of a mile away, Gamble recognized the brown bowler hat.
“Good,” Gamble said. “Come on, you ruthless sonuvabitch.”
Then, halfway across the meadow, the rider stopped. He could see the bowler swivel first to the left, and then to the right. “What are you doing?” Gamble asked. “Come on, don’t you see the tracks?”
Then it seemed as if the rider stared straight up the slope to the pile of rocks where Gamble was hidden. He slowly turned the horse, riding away to the southwest.
Gamble uttered florid curses.
“Now, what?” he asked. “You’re going after them?”
Gamble took the shotgun and slipped it into the scabbard, untied the gray, and swung up into the saddle. He started down the northeastern side of the slope, out of view of the rider.
Then he stopped.
“But why would he go after them?” he asked, patting the horse’s neck. “He can’t know about the gold. Whatever the reasons, it can’t be good.”
Gamble turned the horse, crossed the slope, and made for the southwest. He caught up with the rider an hour later. The man on the black horse had just entered a slot canyon, too narrow for two horsemen to pass inside and too confined for the man’s lever-action rifle to give him much advantage.
Gamble pulled the shotgun from the scabbard and held it at the ready as he used his knees to urge the dappled gray into the canyon. Ahead, he could hear the sound of rushing water. He passed some shoulder-height petroglyphs on the canyon wall, brick red in color, circles and spirals, elk that looked like dogs, and a flute-playing medicine man with an antler headdress and an exaggerated phallus.
“You’re right,” he told the glyph.
He urged the gray ahead, the hoofbeats hidden by the sound of the water. He leaned first one way and then the next as he
rode through a serpentine section of the canyon, then rounded a turn and found Jaeger standing beside his horse, reaching beneath its belly to tighten the cinch strap. Gamble had the drop on Jaeger, but if he fired, he would gut-shoot the horse as well.
“Hello, Dutch.”
Jaeger reached for the Marlin lever-action rifle in the saddle scabbard, but the commotion had made his horse skittish, and the animal turned away from Jaeger. Seeing a couple of feet open up between Jaeger and the animal, Gamble fired, but his own horse was moving sideways now—and he missed. The report of the Model 97 rang the slot canyon like a bell and ricocheting buckshot zinged and whirred away.
“Remember this sound?” Gamble asked as he cycled another round into the chamber, ch-chink! “Kind of makes you want to wet yourself, doesn’t it?”
“Jakob Gamble,” Jaeger said. “Still hanging on to your scarecrow life, I see.”
“Put your hands up.”
“Why?”
“Just put ’em up, Dutch.”
Jaeger raised his hands.
“Where’s that nasty little pistol of yours?”
“In the saddle bag.”
Jaeger was stepping backward, toward his horse.
“Stop it right there,” Gamble said.
“To make it easier for you to kill me?”
Jaeger’s back was now against his horse’s shoulder.
“Stay away from that saddle Marlin and keep your hands where I can see them,” Gamble said. He had the shotgun trained on Jaeger, and the reins held in his right hand, beneath the pump, but the dappled gray was getting even more anxious. The horse began to shuffle and throw its head.
“Easy,” Gamble said, trying to calm the animal.
Then the gray rocked and wheeled, turning Gamble the wrong way in the passage. Gamble swung the shotgun around, attempting to keep Jaeger covered, but Jaeger had ducked beneath the belly of his horse, snatched the Marlin from the scabbard on the other side of the saddle, and was now running at top speed down the narrow canyon.
Gamble slipped down from the saddle, but couldn’t get a shot because the black horse was in the way. Jaeger half-turned and snapped off a quick shot behind him with the Marlin, missing Gamble but hitting his own horse in the neck.
The horse screamed and bolted into the canyon wall, shaking rocks loose from above, then fell, blood gushing from the wound to stain the canyon wall. The animal fell and drunkenly tried to get up, its hooves flailing, eyes wild.
“Damn it,” Gamble said.
He shouldered the Model 97 and sent a round of buckshot into the horse’s skull. He searched Jaeger’s saddlebags, but found no revolver.
He led the dappled gray over the carcass of the dead horse and down the slot canyon. High along one wall, he noticed a pair of metal pipes bolted to rock, then crossing over and disappearing out of sight.
“What the devil?”
One pipe was about eighteen inches in diameter, and the other was smaller, the thickness of a tin can. Both were stained with rust, but appeared to be still in service, because the joints were damp and water beaded on the underside of each.
He exited the canyon, past a thirty-foot waterfall that filled a pool at the base of the cliff. Above, he could see the pipes snaking down from the upper pool and heading into the canyon. Gamble guessed the water was for a mining camp far down the slope, or perhaps to run the machinery at one of the old silver mills.
The horse lowered its head and drank. Gamble glanced around, to make sure Jaeger wasn’t lying in ambush. Then he knelt by the pool, cupped some water in his left hand, and drank it. The water was snowmelt, cold and flat.
Then he noticed a reflection on the surface of the water, or a vision, he did not know which, of someone standing behind him. It was an Apache warrior of indeterminate age, carrying a Springfield carbine, wearing a faded pink shirt, buckskin leggings, a red paisley headband, and a blue scarf gathered with a silver concho.
“Don’t you know?” Gamble asked the reflection. “You’ve all been pacified.”
The image did not move.
“You ghostly types are not much for conversation, are you?” Gamble asked the reflection. “Well, when you see my father, tell him that I appreciate the favor of his company, but that I wish he could be a little more direct about whatever it is that he wants to get across to me. Unless his goal is just to haunt me, Jacob Marley fashion, and in that case, he has succeeded.”
Then Gamble rose, mounted his horse, and rode off, not bothering to look behind him.
TWENTY-NINE
“Jacob!” Anise cried as Jacob Gamble walked into the firelight, leading the dappled gray. “You nearly frightened me to death. I heard somebody approaching. Why didn’t you call out—and why have you returned?”
“Yes, old man—why?” Weathers asked.
Uncle and niece were sitting together on a log, drinking tea from enameled cups.
“I didn’t want to announce my presence, just in case you two weren’t alone,” Gamble said, lifting a stirrup onto the horn and beginning to unsaddle the horse.
“Why wouldn’t we be alone?” Anise asked.
“The maniac was Jaeger, and after we separated this morning, he followed the both of you, not me,” he said. “I met up with him in a little canyon a few miles back, and we traded shots, but he got away. He’s on foot, though—his horse was killed in the fight.”
“Are you all right?”
“No holes in me, if that’s what you mean,” Gamble said, lifting the saddle from the back of the horse and placing it on the ground.
“We’re glad of that,” Anise said. “And glad to see you, of course. But I don’t understand. If Dutch Jaeger is after you, why would he follow us instead?”
“That’s what I asked myself. I didn’t like any of the answers.”
“Here, let me do that,” Weathers said, gently taking hold of the gray’s bridle. “I’ve cared for horses all of my life—as every good English gentleman should—and at least I can make myself of some use now.”
“Obliged,” Gamble said. “Although you shouldn’t be tending after me so kindly, considering I have brought so much trouble to the both of you.”
“It’s not your fault,” Weathers said.
“I’m afraid it is,” Gamble said. “All of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We will discuss it later, Uncle,” Anise said. “Jacob is tired and undoubtedly hungry and we should feed him first.”
“Quite so,” Weathers said.
“Come sit,” Anise said.
Gamble eased himself down to the ground with his back against the log and the shotgun beside him. He was glad for the mackinaw, because it was getting colder the higher they went. Anise dipped him a plate of beans from the pot, then apologized for not having coffee.
“I’ll drink anything, as long as it’s hot.”
“Tea, then,” she said. “How do you like it?”
“I don’t know. The last time I can remember having tea was back in Missouri, with my mother. We would drink sassafras tea as a remedy.”
“Did you like the taste?”
“Yes,” he said. “It was like root beer. Of course, I put a lot of sugar in it when I was a boy.”
“Sugar, then,” Anise said.
He ate the beans and then cupped the tea in his hands and stared at the dying fire.
“So Dutch Jaeger escaped your terrible gift,” Anise said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because I should have killed him and his horse in the same shot when I had the chance, but I hesitated because of the horse,” Gamble said. “I ended up having to shoot the horse anyway, after Jaeger hit it with a stray shot.”
“The bastard,” Anise said.
“The first time I met him, he told me he had the necessary quality to become a Pinkerton operative, that he was a ruthless sonuvabitch. And he has proved it at every opportunity since.”
“Now what?”
“I take you
back,” Gamble said. “See you safely on the train at Engle, then I fend for myself, like I always have.”
“But what about the fortune?” she asked.
“No amount of gold is worth dying for,” Gamble said.
“I won’t hear of it.”
“Jaeger has a Marlin and probably a revolver and we are three people and have only a shotgun,” Gamble said. “He’s got the firepower and he has the range. All he has to do is find the campfire, lurk in the dark for the right moment, and kill us off one by one.”
“We’re only one day away.”
“Yeah, but dead is a long time.”
“I’m not going back,” Anise said. “I’ve waited thirteen years for this and I will not be denied. Don’t gulp the tea, sip it. It’s not coffee.”
“Right,” Gamble said.
Weathers came and sat down near them.
“What’s the fuss about?”
“Your lieutenant wants us to turn back,” Anise said.
“Because of the maniac, yes,” Weathers said. “And you, of course, want to press on. I understand both of your points of view completely. But in this case, as the ranking member of the family and as the lieutenant’s employer, I rather think it is I who should make the decision.”
“Of course,” Anise said.
“We are continuing,” Weathers said. “We are nearing the last chapter of the book. How cruel it would be to terminate the story now! We would be pleased if you would accompany us, Lieutenant, but you are under no obligation. Consider yourself a free agent.”
“Thank you,” Gamble said.
“Also, you have earned the five hundred dollar bonus that was promised should you get us safely to our destination by the twentieth of June. We are two days ahead of that schedule, so you have earned that bonus.”
“As a free agent,” Gamble said. “I respectfully decline.”
“You are certain?”
“I am,” Gamble said. “Also, you should know that my name is not Dunbar—it is Gamble, Jacob Gamble. While I did serve with the Rough Riders, I am also an outlaw with a very long career. When we met on the train, I was there to help rob it.”
“Of course you’re an outlaw,” Weathers said. “Do you think I’m really such an old fool to believe that you weren’t? When you’re in the market for a gunslinger, you don’t hire the aspirant with the spotless record. You hire the one that has had some experience in that line of work.”