He’d got to within ten yards of him when he saw Elwood and Barney bearing down on their target from behind. Elwood shook a fist in triumph, signifying he had a clear view of the man.
Shackleton gestured at them to wait for him to get closer. When he’d taken another five paces the man stood again, aiming to blast gunfire at Kurt below. So Shackleton stopped, sighted the man’s chest and fired.
Elwood and Barney loosed off shots a moment later. The gunfire slammed into the man’s chest and side and made him stand up straight before he keeled over, to lie sprawled over the boulder behind which he’d been hiding.
Shackleton ran, reaching him just as Elwood and Barney leapt down. Shackleton and Elwood kept guns trained on the sprawled man while Barney skirted around the body, then slowly knelt on the boulder.
Barney drew the gun from the body’s outstretched and limp hand, the motion dragging a pained grunt from the body. He tossed the gun aside, then he turned the body over.
Shackleton’s only sighting of Pablo Rodriguez had been on a wanted poster, but this man was clearly him, and he was still alive.
‘Who’d have thought,’ Barney said, making to jump down, ‘that us three would catch the outlaw Pablo Rodriguez?’
‘That ain’t our job, Barney,’ Elwood said.
‘I know, but—’
A gunshot blasted, making Barney cry out, then keel over. He hit the boulder on his side, then slid to the ground.
‘Stop that. It’s us!’ Shackleton shouted, judging that the other side of the pass was too far away to have delivered such an accurate and deadly shot. ‘We have Pablo.’
He ventured to look down at Kurt’s position and sure enough Kurt was looking up at them with a gun brandished. Then he dismissed Kurt from his thoughts and dropped down to find that Elwood had drawn Barney away from Pablo and was now holding him upright by leaning him against his chest.
The dark, blood-soaked hand that Elwood withdrew showed the wound was serious, and with the wounded Pablo to guard, both men agreed to take no further part in the battle in the pass below.
Ten minutes later Kurt had mopped up Pablo’s remaining men, each man fighting until he drew his last breath, but that matter didn’t concern Shackleton and Elwood. Barney was dead.
For three years they’d worked together as a team, doing their duty with diligence and skill, then getting into scrapes when they’d unwound between jobs.
Always they’d looked out for each other, but somehow Shackleton had never expected this to happen.
By the time Kurt joined them, he was in no mood to join in his gloating.
‘How’s Barney?’ Kurt asked as he kicked the wounded Pablo over.
‘Dead,’ Shackleton reported, making no attempt to keep the bitterness from his voice.
‘I lost four others down there.’
‘Only four of your men followed us here!’
Kurt shrugged. ‘That’s what happens when you take on outlaws like Pablo Rodriguez.’
‘Except they died at Pablo’s hand. Barney got shot by his own men.’
‘That happens too.’ Kurt looked down at the sprawling Pablo. ‘And it was worth it to get this one.’
‘By whose judgement?’ Shackleton spluttered.
‘By mine.’ Kurt drew his gun, aimed down at Pablo’s chest, and fired, the shot dragging a pained bleat from Pablo as his body rose, then fell.
‘What you doing?’ Shackleton snapped, getting to his feet, but Kurt ignored him as he blasted round after round into Pablo’s body.
‘I’m ensuring that this is one man,’ he said as he planted a final bullet in him, ‘who doesn’t get to have no politician fawning over him.’
The mention of their prime duty shook some of the shock from Shackleton’s mind and he turned away from Kurt to tap Elwood’s shoulder.
‘We’re leaving,’ he said. ‘We’ve got some live prisoners to guard.’
‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ The Preacher intoned, ‘I will fear no evil, Psalm twenty-three, verse four.’
‘For God’s sake stop preaching and help me get this off,’ Nathaniel shouted, tearing at the laces to remove his boot.
The prisoners had left them to their fate, but Nathaniel reckoned that if he could knock the dynamite out of the cage that fate might not be the one Turner had wanted.
The stick lay fifteen feet away and beyond his reach, but it was only four feet from the edge of the cage, spluttering through the last inch of fuse.
He slipped his boot off then drew back his arm, but The Preacher grabbed that arm.
‘Anyone,’ he muttered, his voice shaking with righteous indignation, ‘who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death, Leviticus twenty-four, verse sixteen.’
‘And you’ll join me,’ Nathaniel snapped, tearing his hand away. Then he hurled the boot at the stick.
But the act of getting his arm away from The Preacher’s grip had veered his aim. The boot flew two feet wide and thudded into the bars.
Nathaniel grunted with irritation and uttered another blasphemy, this time with an added oath, but, as if in answer to his plea, the boot rebounded from the bars, skittered across the base of the cage and nudged the stick.
The force with which it collided was minimal but it was enough to send the stick spinning diagonally across the cage. It came to rest three feet closer to Nathaniel but only a foot from the edge of the cage.
The Preacher provided another appropriate quote predicting that Nathaniel’s repeated blasphemies meant he wouldn’t enjoy the afterlife, but Nathaniel didn’t plan on finding out whether he was right just yet.
‘Be quiet,’ he muttered.
‘In the beginning,’ The Preacher said, ‘God created the heavens and the earth.’
Nathaniel removed his other boot. He ignored The Preacher and his ramblings to avoid him causing his aim to veer again as he took careful aim at the stick.
The Preacher continued speaking. ‘The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.’
The flame spluttered into the stick itself. Only seconds remained….
‘The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.’
Nathaniel drew back his arm then threw the boot.
‘And God said …’ The Preacher said, raising his voice.
The boot flew across the cage and hit the dynamite square on.
‘… “Let there be light” …’
The stick bounded away, hit a bar, bobbed up, looking for a moment as if it would rebound into the cage, but then it sank from view outside.
‘But there wasn’t light,’ Nathaniel shouted, ‘Nathaniel one, verse one.’
Then he turned away, curling himself into a ball.
The dynamite exploded, kicking the cage up and sending it tumbling over to land on its side.
The force peppered Nathaniel’s back with debris and knocked him into the bars. When the cage came to rest, he and The Preacher lay entangled. His ears were ringing and his limbs were shaking, but he felt more alive than he’d expected to be.
He looked over his shoulder. The dynamite had blown a hole in the base of the cage; its edges were peeling upwards like the petals of a flower.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he appraised the wrecked cage. The dynamite had blown the roof off and left the bars broken and twisted enough to let him slip the manacles away. Then they would be able to get away, provided he could gain The Preacher’s co-operation.
‘We survived,’ he murmured, turning to him and smiling in the hope of finding some common ground. ‘Will you help me … help us get away?’
But The Preacher’s deep-set eyes were staring beyond Nathaniel’s shoulder, his hands rising to point.
‘And they begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the abyss, Luke eight, verse thirty-one.’
Nathaniel swung round to see what had shocked The Preacher and saw that the yawning chasm of the canyon was ahead, the force of the blast having thr
own them perilously close to the edge.
As he watched the cage tipped, then slid forward a foot. Then, having built up momentum, it inexorably speeded up, rocking back on to its base, then sending them down the slope and into Devil’s Canyon.
Within moments all that Nathaniel could see ahead was blackness.
CHAPTER 6
Shackleton and Elwood maintained a steady pace back towards the cage. The horse with Barney’s body splayed over the back ensured their mood remained sombre.
Kurt had stayed behind to clear up the aftermath of the gun-battle in the pass, his pleasure in finally getting the second Rodriguez brother in no way diminished by his own losses or his accidental shooting of Barney.
Neither Shackleton nor Elwood gained any such pleasure out of his success.
As they closed on the cage, Elwood veered his horse in to speak to Shackleton for the first time since they’d left the pass.
‘I may be wrong,’ he said, shrugging as if he were debating whether to mention what was on his mind. ‘But back when Barney got shot, I thought I heard gunfire and a loud noise, and it wasn’t coming from inside the pass.’
Shackleton hadn’t heard anything, but Elwood had keen ears as well as keen eyes, so he hurried his horse on.
He expected that the fire would mean he would be able to see the cage from some distance away, but they skirted along the edge of Devil’s Canyon without seeing it or any lightness ahead, adding to his anxiety.
So it was with some surprise and trepidation that when he at last saw light ahead they were within a hundred yards of the low camp-fire.
Hiram could have let the fire die down but the nervous glances Elwood was casting around continued to make Shackleton uneasy. Accordingly they gave the fire a wide berth, heading for the rill where they’d first encountered Pablo’s men.
When they could see the full extent of the area where the boulder had separated the dying fire and the prisoners, they stopped.
All was quiet, with no sign of people or horses or movement.
Worse, the cage wasn’t there.
‘Whoever flees from the terror,’ The Preacher shouted, ‘will fall into a pit, Jeremiah forty-eight, verse forty-four.’
Nathaniel gripped hold of the sides of the cage as they slid down into the canyon, peering ahead into the blackness beyond. His memory of the canyon in the daylight was of a long slope leading to a distant river. So far the cage had slid down that slope on its base.
But Nathaniel didn’t reckon their luck in getting a smooth ride would hold out for much longer. They were speeding up and the cage was rattling so loudly it sounded as if could collapse or tip over at any moment.
With so many bars now broken that event was sure to crush them.
That thought led Nathaniel to look at the bar that secured him to The Preacher. His heart leapt when he saw that it was broken six feet off the base of the cage.
So he raised his arm and the manacles, dragging The Preacher’s clutched hands with him, aiming to tip the manacles over the top. He got the chain to within two feet of the top but then The Preacher yanked his arm downwards.
‘Remove your scourge from me,’ he demanded. ‘I am overcome by the blow of your hand, Psalm thirty-nine, verse ten.’
‘Talk sense or be quiet,’ Nathaniel shouted.
He grabbed The Preacher’s hands with both of his own, then twisted him round and dragged him to his feet. He thrust his hands high. The Preacher continued to shout biblical comments at him, but he ignored his protests and with one last lunge he pushed the manacles over the top of the bar.
But as they swung free the cage rocked back and forth, sending them rolling into the bars on the other side and making Nathaniel wish they were still being held securely.
Then the inevitable happened. The sliding cage hit a rock in its path, which caused it to tip over. Nathaniel felt himself thrown forward to leave the base and he hurtled head first into the darkness.
He waved his arms, frantically searching for something to hold on to but he’d left the cage and he couldn’t even see the ground.
All around him was blackness. Wind buffeted his face as he fell, his tumbling motion letting him catch a glimpse of the falling cage above and The Preacher falling with him.
Then the bright sheen of something large and foreboding below came into view, appearing to rush towards him at a rapidly accelerating pace.
After a brief debate Shackleton and Elwood left Barney’s horse, then separated to come at the fire and boulder from two different directions. Shackleton chose the side on which the cage had stood.
When he’d moved close enough to the canyon to let the fire slip out of his view he slowed to let his night vision adjust. After pacing his horse forward for another minute he saw the signs of the fight that had taken place here.
Bodies lay beside the boulder and there was a hole in the ground near the edge of the canyon. Deep gouges in the earth and short lengths of bar and torn metal suggested an explosion had taken place; perhaps that had been the noise Elwood had heard.
He dismounted and paced close to the edge to look down into the void. From the scraping indentations near the edge he judged that the cage had tipped over the side.
Whether the prisoners were still inside, he didn’t know, but he guessed that one of them hadn’t been.
Then he checked on the guards, finding there were four of them, and that they had all been shot repeatedly.
He was aware of Elwood coming closer. After checking the last body, he looked up.
‘That accounts for the four guards,’ he said, ‘but not one of them is Hiram Deeds. I reckon that means some, perhaps all, of the prisoners got away. I wonder what happened, though, to …’
Shackleton trailed off when he saw Elwood’s grim expression, then he followed him round the boulder. On the other side, bathed in the dying fire’s sallow light, was the body of Hiram Deeds, also shot, except the prisoners had given him his own particular end.
The boulder had a sharp overhang and his hanging body dangled from that overhang, swinging in the light breeze as the makeshift gallows provided him with a fate that had awaited Javier Rodriguez and the other prisoners.
‘Cut him down,’ Shackleton said.
‘I guess you can’t blame them for doing that to Hiram,’ Elwood said as he looked for a way up the boulder.
‘In his case, you’re right. His double-crossing got him exactly what he deserved.’
By the time Kurt arrived Shackleton had laid out the bodies of the guards in a row and Elwood had picked up the trails of a group of riders who had headed off southwards along the top of Devil’s Canyon. The escaped prisoners would have had at most a thirty-minute lead on them, but Shackleton was in no mood for beginning that pursuit until he’d confronted Kurt.
He and Elwood stood beside the boulder, watching Kurt approach. The poor light meant that he went through the same process as they had, of being at first unsure what he could see, followed by a dawning realization of what had happened here.
But Shackleton didn’t let Kurt’s realization be as slow as his had been.
‘Javier Rodriguez has escaped,’ he shouted.
Kurt drew his horse to a halt, casting a quick glance across the scene, then looked around as if he might catch sight of Javier hiding close by.
‘How do you know that? It looks to me as if the cage got blown up, then fell over the side.’
‘It did, but the guards are dead and whoever killed them then made off. We saw several separate prints so even if some prisoners went over the side, most escaped.’
Kurt edged his horse nearer to the edge and peered down into the darkness before approaching Shackleton.
‘Someone will have to go down there and check.’
‘Someone will, but I’ll tell you one thing first. You made some big mistakes—’
‘I don’t need to hear you questioning my orders no more,’ Kurt roared, edging his horse forward to tower over Shackleton. ‘All I need to hear is
suggestions on where Javier will go if he’s still alive. Then I’ll get him, and this time I ain’t leaving it to no judge to give him a second chance.’
‘The only person who gave Javier a second chance was you.’
Kurt drew his horse back, shaking his head.
‘That’s the difference between you and me, Shackleton,’ he said. ‘I get things done, then worry about the consequences later. You stand around whining while prisoners you were supposed to be guarding get away.’
Shackleton opened his mouth to snap back a retort, but by then Kurt had already ripped his reins to the side to turn his horse away and was galloping off into the night. Shackleton glared at his receding back until Elwood came over and patted his back.
‘That man’s a fool,’ he said, ‘but he was right about one thing. We can argue about this once we have Javier Rodriguez back where he belongs.’
Shackleton stayed staring at Kurt until his form had disappeared into the darkness, then he gave a begrudging nod. Then they went to their horses.
With their sombre mood returning they collected Barney’s horse. Then they turned their backs on the direction Kurt had gone and made their way towards the ridge.
CHAPTER 7
Nathaniel coughed and spluttered, sending water out of his mouth in a seemingly endless torrent. His stomach was so bloated he felt as if he’d swallowed the entire river, and he reckoned the flow would never end.
But when the spasms did, at last, end he found he was lying on his belly on dry ground. He tried to push himself up to a sitting position, but his limbs wouldn’t obey him and he stumbled down again to lie on his back.
The sudden motion made his stomach go into spasm again and he coughed up another explosive burst of water. So this time when the spasms ended he lay still, catching his breath. Only when he felt composed enough to move and didn’t feel as if he’d vomit again, did he cautiously look around.
The Gallows Gang Page 4