The blacksmith took a long step forward as he swung the handle of his hammer. If the handle had been attached to the iron head, it would have killed Wilson right then and there. As it was, Wilson was able to lean back just enough to only get clipped by the end of the handle.
With the sound of wood meeting jawbone still rolling through the air, Boris ran into the shop and took a swing at Ross. He was still a bit slow on his feet after the fall from the train, however, and couldn’t reach Ross before the blacksmith set his sights on him.
Ross and Boris ran at each other like a couple of rams that were about to lock horns. Rather than butt heads, however, the two men put their own weapons to use. Boris drew his gun and pulled his trigger, but not before Ross got to him and slammed his handle against Boris’s ribs.
The pistol barked once, filling the shop with thunder and causing Eclipse to test the strength of the gate of his stall. Boris let out a pained groan that came all the way up from the bottom of his lungs.
Although Ross had no way of knowing the punishment Boris had taken recently, he could tell the man was hurting from a lot more than a single blow to the ribs. The blacksmith wasn’t about to take the time to diagnose Boris’s ills, so he sent another quick punch to the other man’s ribs and turned back around to face Wilson.
By this time, Wilson was on his feet and getting ready to put Ross down the same way he’d sent Clint to the floor. Wilson had already gotten behind Ross, and would have introduced his club to the back of the blacksmith’s head in another second. Ross’s reflexes were just good enough for him to raise his arm and block Wilson’s club with his handle.
Wood knocked against wood with a sound that wasn’t nearly as loud as the gunshot from a few moments ago. That gunshot had punched a new hole in the floor, while Wilson’s club was doing a whole lot more to turn the tide of the fight.
“Shoulda done what I told you to,” Wilson snarled as he leaned into the blacksmith and put some muscle behind his club. “Now you’re gonna have to pay just like this asshole here. Only difference is that I don’t care if you wake up.”
As he spoke, Wilson ground his club along the hammer’s handle until he met up with Ross’s fingers. From there, Wilson applied more pressure until he could see the other man wincing in pain.
At first, Ross thought he could grit his teeth through the pain of his fingers being squashed under Wilson’s club. But soon, it felt as if his bones were being ground beneath a pestle. He knew it wouldn’t be long before one of those bones snapped under the pressure.
Ross let out a scream as he brought his knee up and pulled his arms to one side. He didn’t know where he hit Wilson, but the impact caused the club to swing away from his fingers.
“Are you gonna help me?” Wilson growled as he took a step back and swung at Ross’s head.
The end of his club connected with the blacksmith’s face, but that was only enough to stoke the fire in Ross’s belly. Blood trickled from his mouth as Ross gripped his makeshift weapon in both hands the way an executioner wielded an ax.
Tossing his club to his left hand, Wilson gripped his pistol with his right.
“No!” Boris hissed. “Put that gun away!”
Wilson took his eyes off Ross to face his brother with a look of pure disbelief etched into his face.
“Someone’s coming,” Boris said through gritted teeth.
Shaking his head, Wilson shifted his eyes back to the blacksmith so he could take his shot. He’d missed his opportunity, however, because Ross swung his handle to connect solidly with Wilson’s gun hand.
The pistol went off on impact, but Wilson held onto it through sheer force of will. Before he could fire again, he was being dragged from the shop by his brother.
“Let go of me, God damn you!” Wilson snapped.
Boris tossed Wilson outside and shoved him toward the street. “Too much noise! That’s why we didn’t go in shooting in the first place!”
Now that he was outside the shop, Wilson could see the figures in the street. Some of them were simply craning their necks to get a look at what had happened, but a few were walking toward the blacksmith’s shop.
“Everything all right over there?” one of the people asked.
Wilson put on a smile that looked more unnerving than anything else. “We’re just fine. Honest mistake.”
“Was that a gunshot?”
“My brother just knocked some things over,” Wilson insisted. “No problem.”
“Need any help?”
But the brothers were already hurrying down the street. By the time anyone got close enough to get a look inside the shop, the Nagles were rounding a corner.
TWENTY-SIX
Clint felt like he was falling through open air.
Soon, he felt like he was also rolling and spinning while still falling like a rock. Those elements combined to bring Clint’s most recent meal up to his throat and then out of his mouth.
“There you go,” Ross said. “Let it all out.”
Clint coughed and spat the rest of the bitter fluid from his mouth. He peeled his eyes open enough to see he wasn’t falling, but that didn’t stop the sensation from working its way through his system. “What the…?” he groaned.
“You took a knock on the back of the head,” Ross explained.
“Where am I?”
“You’re on my floor right now. I was about to get you to someplace a little more comfortable when you gave this spot a new coat of paint.”
Wiping the rest of that “paint” from his mouth, Clint said, “Sorry about that.”
“Think nothing of it. There’s been worse. I keep horses in here, remember?”
That was enough to remind Clint of where he was. He sat up, wavered slightly, and would have fallen over again if Ross hadn’t been there to prop him up. “How long have I been here?”
“Not too long at all,” Ross replied. “In fact, I was about to fetch the law.”
“Don’t.”
“Pardon me?”
“Don’t get the law,” Clint insisted. “Unless they’ve already caught those two, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”
“They might be caught once I get the law to help,” Ross insisted.
“And then those brothers will probably pay their fine and get out. Once they’re out, I’ll be gone and they’ll head over to…let’s just say they’ll pester a very nice woman to find out where I am. No,” Clint said as he shook his head. The motion made him feel as if he’d just spun in a circle for a solid hour. “No law.”
“All right then,” Ross grumbled. “What would you do in your condition? Chase after them? I’d like to see you walk a straight line first.”
Clint tried to get to his feet, but failed miserably. With a helping hand from the blacksmith, he was able to get his legs under him and then find his way to the milking stool Ross had used earlier. After placing his head in his hands, Clint pressed his palms to his eyes and forced the spinning to stop.
“You feeling steady enough for me to let go?” Ross asked.
It wasn’t until that moment that Clint even realized the blacksmith had his hand on his shoulder. “Yeah,” Clint said. “Let’s give it a shot.”
Ross took his hand away, but kept it close by in case it was needed. “You still all right?” he asked.
“Sure. Now I can feel every bit of the crack running through my skull.”
“It ain’t that bad,” Ross said. “The bleeding’s even stopped. You must have a hard head.”
“Did you see me get knocked out?” Clint asked.
“Not quite. By the time I walked in here, you were down and one of them others was standing over you.”
Keeping his head hanging low, Clint reached up with both hands to pat his pockets. He made the rounds from his shirt to his jeans and back again. When he placed his hands on his knees, Clint looked up with a pained grin. “Did you notice if that fellow took anything from me?”
Ross thought it over and then snapped his fin
gers. “Yeah! That fellow had his hand in your shirt pocket. Did he steal something?”
“Yep, but that’s not exactly a bad thing.” Clint started to get up, wobbled a bit, and then forced himself to his feet. “Can you do me a favor and get Eclipse ready to ride?”
Ross crossed his arms, chuckled, and looked at Clint in disbelief. “First of all, that stallion should be going easy for a while. Secondly, you should be going even easier. Maybe that fellow knocked your head a little harder than I thought.”
Straightening his back, Clint pulled all of his concentration together so he could stand tall without wavering. “Eclipse needs to get moving, but he’ll be loaded onto a train. We’re headed south and once we’re there, I’ll be sure to go easy on him.”
“All right,” the blacksmith said. “What about you?”
“I’m going on the train, too. Whether I’m sitting there or here, it doesn’t really matter. Besides,” Clint added as he walked slowly to Eclipse’s stall, “when did you become a doctor?”
Ross threw up his hands. “Just trying to look out for my fellow man is all. Forget I said a word.”
Clint turned around and pulled in a breath to fight the dizziness that caused. “You may have saved my life,” he said earnestly. “Believe me when I tell you I won’t forget that. If there’s anything I can do…”
“Just don’t get yourself killed in my shop,” Ross replied. “It’d be bad for business.”
“Agreed.”
“By the way, what did those assholes steal from you?”
“It wasn’t much, but it should be enough to get those men out of Dallas for a while.”
“Then maybe you should rest up. At the very least,” Ross added, “your horse could do with some more time to heal.”
Clint was at Eclipse’s stall and rubbing the Darley Arabian’s nose. Already, Eclipse seemed less willing to accept the attention and was more anxious to get out from within those walls. “I know you mean well,” Clint said, “but Eclipse needs to get some wind in his face. For that matter, so do I.”
“He’ll be ready in an hour,” Ross said grudgingly. “That quick enough for ya?”
“Should be just fine.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Clint still felt like he was spinning. He also felt like he was in the bottom of a sifter and being jostled along with the rest of the rocks and dirt as someone else looked for gold. The main difference between now and when Clint had first opened his eyes after being knocked out was that he really was being jostled. The spinning, on the other hand, was still in his head.
Olivia sat next to him on the train, tending to him by dabbing a cloth on the slick wound on his head. “That looks terrible, Clint,” she said. “How does it feel?”
“It’d feel a lot better if you’d stop poking it,” he snapped.
Pulling her hand back, Olivia dropped into her seat and looked at him quietly. That lasted for a few seconds before she extended her arm to dab at him some more. “Let me just clean you up a bit,” she said.
Although Clint wanted to move her hand away, he knew that would only cause more discomfort than it prevented. “You’ve been cleaning me up since we got on board. I’m about as clean as I’m going to be.”
She dropped back against her own seat and looked around. Rather than the bench their last tickets had purchased, they now rode in a small compartment that they had all to themselves. The compartment didn’t give them much more than a few seats and their own window, but the door separating them from the rest of the passengers went a long way for Clint’s peace of mind.
“I don’t think we should have gotten on this train,” Olivia said. “If Wilson stole the ticket we bought earlier, that means they know where we’re headed.” Lowering her voice as if the walls around her were made of paper, she added, “They could be on this train.”
“I know,” Clint replied in a whisper that matched hers. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
“But after what happened…”
“What happened,” Clint told her, “was a big mistake on Wilson’s part. If they were going to bushwhack me like cowards, they should have killed me. Now, they’ve tipped their hand and I know what to expect from them. They won’t be able to sneak up on me like that again.”
“You can’t be sure about that,” Olivia said.
Clint reached back to touch the wound on his head. Although it looked gruesome and had bled enough to soak through to the collar of his shirt, it was more a source of headaches than anything else. “Yeah,” he said intently. “I’m real sure about that.”
“So what happens if the Nagles find out you’re on this train?” she asked. “Do you think they’ll give you the chance to throw them off again?”
“Considering they took a hell of a good run at me not too long ago, I’d say they’ll keep their heads down and pray I don’t find them.”
“But…” Olivia said cautiously, “they got the drop on you and got away with it.”
“And after all of that, I’m still up and about. What’s more, I haven’t even changed my itinerary. That lets them know their best isn’t good enough. Believe me, it’ll send a message.”
Olivia looked over at the urn, which rested in its own spot on the seat across from her. The clay jar had dried up so the seal could barely be seen. It now looked like it had been made as one piece, and even the sounds of Abner McKay rattling around inside it could barely be heard.
“You don’t think they’ll stop coming at you, do you?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“We’ve still got to ride the rest of the way on horseback. Even if they’re not on this train, we’ll all be starting from that train station. Whether the Nagles get there before or after we do, it won’t take much for them to catch up to us. It’s open country out there, Clint.”
“I know. I’ve ridden it plenty of times myself.”
“So you intend on letting them find you? If you keep giving them the first shot at you, one of these times they’ll get lucky. I’ve played enough poker to know that everyone gets lucky some time or another.”
Clint looked over at her and rubbed Olivia’s cheek. There were no tears on her face, but he ran his finger over her skin just to savor the smooth texture of her. “I don’t intend on getting either of us hurt. All that open country will work to our advantage because there won’t be many places for them to hide. They already got lucky, but now I know what to expect. So long as they know where to go and we’re there to lead them for a ways, it’ll keep those two occupied so they won’t be able to hurt us or anyone else.”
“Do you think they’re on this train?”
“Maybe,” Clint said as he got up and went to the door. “But they won’t be able to get us in here. Besides, all they got from me was that ticket. They’re not stupid enough to make their move until they have something more to tell them where to go for whatever they’re after.”
“So we just wait?”
“Yeah,” Clint said with a smirk.
“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.
The latch on the door to their compartment wasn’t very strong. In fact, even after Clint had fitted the latch into place, the door still rattled within its frame as the train kept rumbling over the tracks.
“I’m locking us in,” he replied.
Smiling carefully, Olivia adjusted her position in her seat so she had her back to the window and was facing Clint. “You want to keep us safe?”
Clint shrugged. “That, too.”
“What other reason would you have?”
“I didn’t want to get in trouble with Jenny, but now we’re alone.”
“And on the run,” she reminded him. “You’re still hurt.”
“Of course I am and I’m healing up nicely. In the meantime, I believe I still need to collect on winning that race to those telegraph wires.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Boris Nagle sat on the end of a rickety bench bolted to the floor of the train’s third passenger car. He kept
his arms crossed and his hand within easy reach of his pistol. His eyes constantly darted from one spot to another, glancing nervously from the window to the other passengers to the doors at the front and back of the car.
When the door connecting the third to the second passenger car opened, Boris made a reflexive grab for his gun. He let out the breath he’d been holding when he saw who’d stepped into the car.
Although Wilson didn’t look happy, he didn’t go for his pistol when he spotted his brother. He slid along the bench facing Boris and glared at the preacher sitting there until the meek little man stood and moved to another spot.
“You seen either of them yet?” Boris asked.
“No, so you can take your hand away from your gun.”
Boris nodded, but didn’t move his hand. “Did you check out the rest of the train?”
“No.”
“Then maybe I should.”
“You should just sit here and keep your damn mouth shut,” Wilson snapped. “And take a few breaths. You look like you’re about to piss yourself.”
Chuckling unconvincingly, Boris took his hand away from his holster and rested it under the window. “Yeah,” he said. “That gunman Olivia hired is the one that’s probably about to piss himself right about now.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s not just some hired gun,” Wilson replied.
“How do you know?” Glancing around at the passengers one more time, Boris leaned forward and whispered, “Did you hear something back in Dallas?”
“Yeah, when I was getting settled in at that blacksmith’s shop. I heard him mention a name.”
“What name?”
Wilson clenched his jaw and took a look around for himself. When he saw the same batch of uninterested faces pointing in other directions, he said, “Clint Adams.”
Boris was dead quiet. He then furrowed his brow and asked, “Who?”
Dying Wish Page 9