by John Long
Rand’s hands had not moved. They still seemed to be hooked in his waistcoat; and yet, he held his guns. Miraculous guns; guns that darted to him like living things; and guns whose flaming shots pounded like bolts from hell. Bullets twittered by his legs as, emptying every chamber, his victim fell firing to earth. Symes’ face showed disbelief – horror – sadness. He strove to grin; but no, it was true. He was dying; being sucked down into terrifying blackness. Rand had beaten Symes by a flash, a mere flash, by one precious life-saving second.
Jeff Rand was scarcely less shocked than Symes. That dying figure, by all his reckoning, should be his own. Symes shuddered and died.
Good God, did nothing more than a second separate a fellow from eternity? Rand, quaking within, dazedly turned aside and approached his horse, left sheltered between nearby buildings. Giddily he mounted, and for a long while he stood gazing down at the body, round where the sand played and rifted uncaringly. Symes, the fastest man in the south-west, was dead.
Meanwhile, appearing on the street from all directions, came a wild-looking horde of miners, hidden witnesses to that final gunfight. Their worn faces described what suffering they had endured during their long search for the bank-raiding gang; and on passing by Rand, their expressions were of profound awe. They seemed afraid to look at him directly, or to be caught stealing a glimpse at those hands folded on the saddle-horn. Far less dare they take the liberty of uttering one friendly word. To them, it seemed, Rand was a differently formed, dangerous yet superior creature. Such was the heartrending, friendless and outcasting fame of a gunfighter.
Jeff turned his collar high with one hand, like a person hiding pain; and, wearily flicking the reins, he moved on in silence, plodding steadily down the dead street of Sweetwater.
‘Rand! Stop!’ called out Mister Sturdy, running across the street and catching hold of the bridle. ‘Where are you heading for, Rand?’
Silence answered him; the lonely rider rode on.
‘Hopes you ain’t sore at my actions, Rand. I’m a US marshal. I’ve hunted this gang for months. Look here, Jeff. I couldn’t prevent Miller’s death. I want you to know that. Nor could I stop the killing of Merrick. Smily was my buddy; he was a state man too.’ Sturdy paused for breath and began to tug at the bridle. ‘Please stop and talk, Rand, won’t you?’
The answer was still silence. Rand rode steadily onward, looking directly to the horizon.
‘Things should have worked out different to this; I never meant you to get a raw deal.’ The grey-headed marshal, beating his thighs with his hat, looked with mournful impatience from side to side. ‘When I persuaded you to join us, Rand, I knew you were a clean fighter. I wanted a quick-shooting ally in case my plan went adrift. And it did, when the storm broke up the sheriff’s ambush. The sheriff got my message too late to capture the gang in town.’ Once again Sturdy started to tug at the bridle. ‘Stop, Rand, you must stop!’
Rand kept on riding, appearing to have neither seen nor heard a thing.
‘How about your gold?’ Mister Sturdy was now flushed and gasping painfully for breath as he floundered through the deeper sand. ‘There’s a load of your gold back there, it’s on the veranda; some more is in Flintstone bank; the remainder is buried in Grapevine Gulch.’
‘Give it to Ma Keller.’
It was a husky, emotion-choked reply, yet Sturdy heard it and found his breathlessness suddenly throttling him. Rand halted, and turning he regarded the US marshal’s troubled countenance.
‘Give me Jim’s watch, Bill,’ he whispered.
Mister William Sturdy, in a great fluster of eagerness, dived a hand inside a vest pocket, unchained Miller’s watch, getting himself unbelievably tangled, and finally handed it up, his smile coming and going uncertainly. Rand took it tenderly, peered at it lengthily, and ultimately concealed it under his coat.
‘I’ll be taking it out to him,’ he murmured simply. ‘Goodbye to yuh, Bill.’
‘Thanks, Rand, and good luck to you,’ Sturdy whispered; he was still striving to maintain a smile as he now released the bridle. ‘I’ll strike out for the Kellers’ place with your gold. Lord, but they’ll be mighty pleased! You’re saving the old homestead. You’re all man, Jeff, all man!’
Rand jerked at the reins and grunted, then broke into a rapid canter, his collar still hiding his expression. Not once did Rand look back. Sometimes there are feelings a man cannot expose, dare not share, but must keep locked up real tight in his soul and speak of them to God.
The lonesome rider, as if heading straight home, drifted towards the sun across the running desert.
Copyright
© John Long 2009
First published in Great Britain 2009
This edition 2011
ISBN 978 0 7090 9423 4 (ebook)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9424 1 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9425 8 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8787 8 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of John Long to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988