‘Fool bastards!’ Lamar sighted along his rifle, watching for movement at the door.
Anger burnt into Hart’s face; now the thing had started up it wasn’t going to finish until all the ammunition had been spent or whoever was inside the shack came tumbling out.
Fragments of wood spurted up from the logs alongside the windows, shells looped through the air as bullets winged their way aimlessly forward to bury themselves in the front of the building or ricochet harmlessly away. Ollie fired his pistol three times, twisting his arm round as far as he could to vary the angle. The noise was so great he had no way of knowing if he had hit any of the occupants or not. One of the ricochets whined close past his head and he pulled his head hard into his shoulders. Another spurted sod into his eyes and blinded him for several seconds. He knew that if he stayed where he was much longer his chances of getting off the roof alive were slim. He sent two more hasty shots down the chimney hole and thought he might have heard someone below roar with pain but he couldn’t be certain. Hurriedly, he scrambled to the rear of the roof and jumped down into the narrow space between the back of the shack and the trees.
The front of the building seemed to shake under the onslaught of gunfire.
The door sagged back and was about to collapse.
Lamar squinted along the rifle and aimed at an arm which poked round one side of the door, attempting to set it to rights. His bearded face showed a moment’s satisfaction as he saw the arm jerk and twist. More shots volleyed into the door and it tottered wildly, then sank backwards.
The shape of a man moved quickly through the space where the door had been and half a dozen bullets sought him out.
The sound of someone shouting from inside the shack pierced the racket of gunfire and excited shouting, but it was impossible to hear the words, to know if whoever it was was offering threat or submission. Both Hart and Lamar yelled for quiet, for a ceasefire, but it was no good.
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Lamar. ‘What a mess!’
The mess was made worse by one, then two more of the bounty hunters forsaking their positions and making a dash towards the besieged building.
Hart tightened his mouth and watched as one of them shuddered under a hail of fire from the cover of the shack. He seemed to be hit in the chest and belly, through both arms and in one of the legs. For seconds the force of the impact held him aloft, his body twisting as his face grimaced in pain. The other two hesitated, unmoving. As the dead man collapsed to the open ground, one of them decided to continue, the other attempted to regain the low ridge of land and safety.
Neither of them made it.
The one who ran back got within ten yards of his goal before a bullet drove through the back of his thigh and hurled him to the ground. Arm and head rolled and came up and as he pushed himself into a crouch another lucky bullet took the front of his skull away like it was paper caught in the wind. Skin and flesh flapped for a few urgent seconds, while blood and bone fragmented from beneath them.
Covering fire gave the third man the chance of making it to the shack. He zigzagged most of the way, only sprinting straight when he was within close distance. He must have seen the open doorway like the end of his race for glory and a fat reward. Behind him shouts sang out as he leapt through the gaping space and swung his gun across the inside. , The stock of an empty rifle drove hard between his legs and made him trip, gasp and fall. Tears blinded his eyes and he fumbled with his pistol as the jarring landing sought to knock it from his hand. The rifle swung through a high arc and broke his forearm immediately below the elbow, the wooden stock splitting away from the metal of the rifle at the same time. The man screamed and pushed himself round with his other hand; he blinked his eyes open and through a pain-ridden blur saw a pistol thrusting towards his face. The gun exploded and the face was blown apart.
‘What the hell’s Ollie doin’?’ said Lamar.
‘Keepin’ himself from gettin’ killed,’ answered Hart.
‘Great!’
‘What would you do?’ Hart snapped back.
Lamar bristled. ‘If that was me, I’d bust in there an’...’
‘Get shot! ’Hart finished for him.
Lamar didn’t waste time arguing. He just glowered at Hart a moment or two and then fixed his attention back on the cabin. ‘Those bastards’ve got it sewn up now. No one else is goin’ to risk his life rushin’ ’em and they can stay holed up in there for days, door or no door.’
‘Unless they run out of shells.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Lamar grudgingly. ‘Or they maybe get bored with the scenery.’
Perhaps they did both. For whatever reason there was a sudden rush through the door, three men hurling themselves out that way and another two jumping through the windows. All five ran for the back of the place as fast as they could. It wasn’t easy to figure out why, unless they thought they could make their escape through the trees and somehow leave the posse behind.
Maybe they had run down to their last few rounds of ammunition.
Maybe they couldn’t take being cooped up there any longer.
Then again they could have been plain foolish.
Three of them went for the left side, two for the right. Those that went left ran into Ollie Halverton first. He was standing back of a couple of trees with his pistol resting over a low branch and he shot two of the men before they’d had time to figure out he was there. Lamar stopped one of the others from even getting past the front of the building by placing a slug from his Winchester plumb in the small of his back.
The rustler to have escaped Ollie’s gun had little alternative but to try and make it back to the shack. It wasn’t far to the door, but the window was closer. He hurled himself at the space, arms, head and chest diving through and his legs and behind waving in the air behind him.
Within seconds, they were riddled with bullets. The legs jerked hard enough to shake one of the boots almost off. They jerked some more and then they were still, blood and urine dripping down between them to the ground.
Disappointed to have missed him, Ollie moved to his left and intercepted the remaining man. For a split second they stared at one another in surprise. Both brought up their guns and fired and Ollie was the slower of the two. That didn’t matter on account of he was the more accurate. A chunk of bark was clipped off an adjacent tree and sped away to the side. The man Ollie had shot clutched at his ribs, already feeling the blood begin to well through the torn skin, the sweat-stained and ridged clothing. His knees hammered down and he swallowed blood and bile and vomit, threatening to choke it back down his throat. His eyes were open but they could no longer see anything. Ollie thumbed back the hammer of the gun and watched, waited. The rest of the shooting seemed to have petered out. Men were running, shouting; he heard the voices of both Hart and Lamar above the rest. He watched as the wounded man’s head jolted forward again and again, fingers splayed across his face and blood squirting through, brighter than it had any right to be. Bright and almost gleaming in the strong light of the sun. Ollie leveled his arm and squeezed deliberately back on the trigger.
~*~
They found branding equipment inside the shack, fitted up for half a dozen different brands. A bill of sale for a hundred head of cattle that almost certainly had not been theirs to sell. One of the men answered a description in the Rangers’ other Bible close enough. One was a big man, bald head splattered with blood, eye patch torn from over a blind, purple-scarred socket. No one recognized him at all. The deputy swore that two of the others had been arrested for horse thieving six months back and managed to make their escape while they were being transferred from jail to court house. It might have been true and it might not. What was certain was that none of the men was John Wesley Hardin, nor looked remotely like him. When they were questioned, none of the posse could exactly recall who it was had first said that Hardin was amongst the bunch they were chasing.
Lamar eased the hefty dead man’s body over with his boot so that the blind eye was no longer staring up at hi
m. ‘Reckon any of these could’ve been them as done for Lefty?’
Hart shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
Lamar shook his head. ‘I’d sure like to think so.’
The three of them walked back along to where their mounts were tethered. Ollie tried a little boasting of his own about how many men he’d put paid to, but it sounded too much like bragging about bringing down one-legged quail. Soon he shut up and their wasn’t anything left to say. The place behind them stank of gunsmoke and loosed bowels and a lot of death.
None of them wanted to look back at the way the rest were dividing up the spoils, such as they were. Fingers cut off because rings refused to slip over swollen knuckles. Ears that would be sewn on to a length of rawhide and worn for good luck. A gold tooth hammered hard and brutally out of a mouth with the barrel end of a gun.
‘Never did reckon Hardin was in there anyhow,’ said Lamar.
The others glanced at him without replying.
A mile down the line, Ollie leaned over in the saddle and said to Hart: ‘You think Hardin’s still in the county?’
‘He’s got friends enough to keep him hid,’ put in Lamar.
Hart shook his head. ‘In the county,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he weren’t in the state.’
Chapter Ten
Alabama, winter 1876
The woman who counted the change into her purse, smiled briefly at the store keeper and lifted her purchases from the counter had once been a fine-looking creature. Would have been still if it hadn’t been for the worn thinness of her face, the traces of tiredness under her eyes, the lines that etched themselves away from the corners of her mouth. Something, someone was wearing her out. Draining all the vitality from her.
The store keeper watched her, those thoughts running through his head, as she caught the young girl with her left hand, parcels swinging lightly from the right.
He’d seen it time enough - girls he’d watched growing up pretty as pictures, fresh as the blooms on a Black-Eyed Susan. One day they’d be flushed and excited on account of some man had asked to marry them and if not the next then soon enough afterwards, they began to change. The strain ate into them like woodworm into best oak. Oh, they survived it, most of them. If they noticed the change that had come over them he supposed they either reconciled themselves to it as inevitable or else found some way of blotting it out. But they survived because, by and large, they were stronger than men. There was a resilience there which kept them living, working, bearing children: a strength that was like steel inside them. Those that came to the frontier and stayed.
‘Good day, Mrs. Swain.’
She half-turned her head in the doorway and gave him a sense of a smile. Then the small bell rang as the door was closed and he could see her step off the sidewalk and deposit her things in the back of the carriage.
Her husband reached down from the driver’s seat and lifted up the girl. Another child, younger, slept fitfully in a cot in the rear of the carriage. Mrs. Swain leaned over it for a few moments before her husband called her to get in. The whip was already in his hand.
The store keeper thought about his own wife, his late wife, her memory slipping into his mind like the wind, keen and unbidden underneath the door. Fourteen years ago she had died giving birth to what would have been their first child.
‘If I have to make a choice ...?’the doctor had asked.
In the event it hadn’t mattered; neither had survived.
He tried to think about something else, watched the carriage draw away and considered Mrs. Swain’s husband instead. On their regular trips to town this past four months, he had shown little of himself. Generally he seemed to have been content to let his wife do the marketing, waiting with the wagon or carriage, whichever they had driven. From time to time he would take a walk up to the livery stable and talk horse flesh with the owner there; occasionally he would stop in one of the main street saloons for a glass of whiskey. Before he had sent for his wife it had been different. The visits to the saloon had been more frequent and had lasted longer. Swain had indulged what was clearly a strong interest in gambling; it was rumored that on one or two occasions he had spent part of his winnings in one of the small rooms set back on the upper floor.
The store keeper was not surprised that Swain took his pleasures less openly since his wife had joined him. Vaguely he wondered where he took them now, but then since Swain travelled a good deal buying and selling cattle and horses there would be plenty of opportunities.
His final thought on the subject was whether his wife knew about his other interests and if so how much that contributed to the drawn expression which seemed now to be permanent on her face. At least, he consoled himself, he had remained faithful to his own wife while she had been alive - and, largely, since. A customer came in through the door and the bell jangled his head back to business.
~*~
‘Put the child to bed.’
‘She isn’t tired now. She slept in the carriage driving back.’
‘I said, put her to bed.’
‘But, John …’She turned away from him, aware that arguing further was useless. More and more quickly they approached the point where words were no longer adequate for him and he had no alternative other than to show his frustration with blows. Once it had been enough to bang his fist on the table, strike the wall, the back of a chair. No longer. The first time he had struck her she had been too shocked to react; the second she had cried for the better part of an hour - not through pain, nor even fear. Rather a realization that this was what it had come down to and how it would remain. Why argue for what you want when you can get it with strength?
She picked up the little girl and carried her into the other room, settling her down close by the baby, wiping her mouth, her forehead, kissing her lightly on the cheek, whispering for her to hush and rest and later they would make the meal together.
‘Jane!’
She sighed, straightened up, one hand to the small of her back. Her monthly had not come and it grieved her to think she might be with child again. She turned towards the door and his call, wondering why he insisted upon child after child when all they seemed to be most of the time for him was a nuisance. Something to be packed away from sight and kept quiet. Something to keep her occupied at home when he was away on business.
No – she glanced at her face in the mirror, pulled a few strands of hair into place – she doubted if he ever thought about it at all. It was simply natural to him; it was what married couples did; what wives were for-being mothers. Less and less did any of it have anything to do with pleasure.
‘Jane!’
‘I’m coming!’
Hardin was sitting in the deep rocker, tapping the slender fingers of his right hand against the polished wood of the arm. It caught at her - the realization that what had attracted her first about him had been his hands. The sight of them had stirred her inside the way nothing had before and little since. Mutual friends had described him long before they met. A brave young man, fighting against reconstruction and all that it stands for. She had wanted to meet him, this brave man. Brave and handsome. She had seen the slender hands, the handsome face with its fine moustache and she had believed the tales. Now she only knew that he liked excitement, courted it as once he had courted her. Gambling, horse racing, women, guns. She had slept alongside him only hours after he had emptied his pistol into a man’s head.
Tomorrow, I’m going to Florida. On business.’
Jane scarcely paused on her way to the stove.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’
‘Of course.’ She set one hand on the tea pot, swung her head. ‘Don’t you want some tea? My throat’s dry after that ride.’
His hand came down on the chair arm with a loud slap and it rocked back violently as he stood up and started towards her. ‘It don’t mean a thing to you that I’m goin’ away, is that it?’
‘No, I …’
‘Is it?’
‘No!’
/>
Instantly, she flinched at the sound of her own raised voice; watched and waited for his raised hand. Instead a smile curled about his mouth and when he next spoke his tone was soft and sarcastic.
‘I expect you’ll be glad to receive your callers.’
She fumbled with the pot, the top falling off with a small clatter. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ His eyes were smiling, but coldly, the way a man might look down on some animal he had trapped.
‘John! What are you talking about – callers? I never—’
‘No?’ He was almost triumphant.
‘You can’t mean …?’
‘Can’t I?’
‘Not that … that Ranger?’
Hardin slipped his hand down into his jacket pocket. From the next room came the sound of soft whimpering but it was soon fading again and lost in the crackle of the fire.
‘How many times is it so far? Three or four?’
Tears pushed unbidden to the back of Jane’s eyes. ‘Two!’ she almost shouted, spittle spraying from her lips. ‘You know it was twice.’ She turned her back to him. ‘You know he came looking for you.’
‘Sure. And found you. Both times.’ Hardin paused long enough for her to think he was going to say nothing further before adding. ‘Both times you told me about, that is.’
She screwed up her hands tight against her belly and at that moment wished more than anything else in the world that it was not a child she was carrying there. His child.
‘You know I’m telling the truth,’ she said, close to sobbing now and with her shoulders hunched away from him.
‘Yes.’ He set his fingers against her neck, under the dark ends of her hair and she shivered. ‘I know. And I know I should have killed him when I had the chance.’
Jane shook her head and he moved his hand away. She stood there waiting for him to move away but, stubborn, enjoying her discomfort and fear, he remained close.
Jane had a picture of Hart then, clear in her mind. Tall and lean and angular, those faded blue eyes searching her through narrowed lids. She wondered if he had a woman, a wife. If he had children. She realized it was not the first time she had wondered these things.
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