Brannigan said nothing. But for the first time, his eyes shifted. They looked at Jack’s right hand as it rested on his revolver, then moved over to the sword hanging on his left hip. ‘I don’t know another man that wears a sword these days.’ The statement was made in a laconic tone.
‘I find it useful.’ Jack had relied on the sword for as long as he had fought. He had killed more men than he could remember with a blade. Once he had owned a beautiful talwar, a gift from a grateful maharajah. That weapon had been lost, but he had never been without a sword, carried in a leather scabbard that would not blunt its edge, that habit acquired in India. He could not imagine not wearing one in battle.
‘You won’t find it useful down here. You fight me and get close enough to use that thing, then I deserve to die.’ Brannigan’s gaze had returned to Jack’s face. ‘So are you travelling alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘None of your concern.’
‘That’s fair enough, unless, of course, you want me to give you a place here. If you do, that makes it my concern. So I suggest you start answering my goddam questions.’ The pithy instruction was delivered without emotion. ‘Tell me why you want to work for me.’
Jack paused. He knew why he was there, but he could not reveal it, not to this man he did not know. He certainly needed the money, just as he needed ammunition, food and fodder for his horse. The notion of working as a hired gun did not concern him. He had sold himself before. He could do so again. But that was not all there was to it. The truth was, he wanted something more. He wanted to be something more. He reckoned taking a place in Brannigan’s gang would allow that to happen.
‘I need money.’ He delivered what he thought would be the expected answer.
Brannigan’s expression did not change. ‘That’s not enough.’
Jack drew in a slow breath. ‘I need work.’
‘Then buy a goddam shovel and start digging. There’s plenty of work round these parts, what with everyone being off at the war, trying to make themselves heroes.’
Jack offered a thin smile. ‘I’m a soldier. Least I was. I can do more than dig.’
‘Then go back to the army. I don’t want soldiers.’ Brannigan shook his head, then looked away. The conversation, the interview, was done.
‘Is that it?’ Jack tried to hold the other man in place.
‘I reckon so. Have a drink; take a whole goddam bottle if you want. Then you can be on your way.’
‘You’re going to let me go?’ Jack could not help the surprise creeping into his tone.
‘I don’t need you.’
‘Are you sure about that? Looks to me like you could do with my help.’
Brannigan turned to look at him. His stare was withering. ‘We’re done here,’ he said, and walked away, leaving Jack to stare at his back.
Jack stood where he was, quite unable to understand the surge of emotion that rushed through him as he was rejected. They were new, these raw feelings. Once, his skills had been sought out, men forced to convince him to serve them. He had not contemplated that a man like Brannigan could turn him away. That rejection revealed a truth that he could hardly bear to contemplate.
He was alone for one reason and one reason only.
He was alone because no one wanted him.
Brannigan stopped walking. He rested a shoulder against the door frame and leaned there, looking outside.
‘Can you shoot?’ He spoke without turning to face Jack.
‘Yes.’ Jack had to force himself to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry.
‘Can you kill?’
He noticed Brannigan’s hand move towards the revolver on his right hip. There it hovered, the fingers moving slowly as Brannigan stretched them out then closed his fist.
When he moved again, he did so with the speed of a striking snake.
In one movement, he turned on a sixpence, the revolver drawn and raised. As he twisted around, his body coiled as if he were about to leap into motion. The revolver was lifted so that it was held just about hip high, its muzzle pointed straight at Jack, whilst his left hand hovered over the top of it, ready to snatch back the hammer. He held the pose, not a muscle moving, so that he looked like he had been frozen in time.
‘You’re pretty quick.’ Jack forced the firmness into his words as he broke the silence that had followed the dramatic display.
Brannigan said nothing. He did not so much as twitch, and for a second, Jack thought he might actually fire. He kept his own revolver stock still. He had snatched the weapon from its holster the moment he had seen Brannigan’s hand move and was pointing it directly at the man he wanted to employ him.
Brannigan smiled and relaxed. He spun the revolver around his finger, then returned it to its holster in a single smooth, practised movement. ‘And you’re slow,’ he remarked. He smiled. ‘But it ain’t speed that matters, not down here. Anyone who tells you that is a damn fool. Anyone who wants to can pull out a gun. It’s being prepared to use it that matters. Killing a man, without pause, without hesitation, that’s what keeps you alive. Can you do that, Jack? Can you look a man dead in the eye, then shoot him down?’
‘Yes.’ The single word left Jack’s mouth shrouded in ice.
‘You’ll have to. You don’t get a second chance. Well, not usually.’ Brannigan gave a half-smile. ‘Are you lying to me, Jack? Are you feeding me a line of horseshit?’
‘I don’t lie. Not any more.’ Jack offered the qualifying statement with a wry smile. He was a thief who had stolen a life that was not his own. Much of the life that had followed had been held up by a foundation of lies. But that was not the case any longer. Now he had no lies left.
Brannigan walked towards the dresser. He said nothing as he opened a fresh bottle of whiskey and took two clean glasses from a shelf. He poured two measures, not spilling a drop in the process, then approached Jack.
‘I’ve got work.’ He held out one of the glasses.
‘What sort of work?’ Jack holstered his own revolver and took the whiskey. He did not drink it.
‘I’m taking a wagon train of cotton down to Mexico, to a place called Matamoros on the far side of the Rio Grande. When we get it there, we’ll sell it, then use the funds to buy guns that we bring back up here to sell to the Confederates.’
‘Sounds simple.’
‘It won’t be. The cotton is worth a goddam fortune, the guns we buy even more so. That’s why the owners pay me so much to keep it all safe.’ Brannigan raised his glass of whiskey to his lips, then drank the measure down in one go.
‘Cotton is that valuable?’
‘It’s worth a few cents a pound here, that’s if you can find a buyer. It’s worth twenty or maybe more once we get it down to Mexico.’
‘Why?’ Jack could not help the question. The desire to know more was genuine.
‘The Union navy has shut all the Confederate ports. That Anaconda Plan of theirs.’ Brannigan turned to refill his glass. ‘That stops the plantation owners from selling their cotton. They’re strangling the Confederacy good and tight. There’re a few blockade runners out there, but they can’t carry much, not if they don’t want to get caught. The North is starving the South of the money it needs to fight this war.’
‘Because the South has lost the tax it puts on sales of the cotton?’
‘That’s right. But of course there are some folk who think this is a great idea. They reckon if they stop selling cotton, then people like you English fellas will have no choice but to come in and fight for the Confederacy.’
‘And are we?’
‘I ain’t seen any lobsterbacks around here, have you?’ Brannigan drained his second whiskey, then poured himself another one. ‘You English, you recognised the South all right. Said they have the right to fight and all. But that cotton of theirs, well, it ain’t so important to you all that you want to fight the Yankees over it.’
Jack thought on the notion of forcing his homeland to side with the South by starving
it of the cotton that its mills relied upon. He could easily imagine the possibility of British troops being sent to reinforce the Confederacy. The British government was not shy about dispatching its soldiers to some distant land to pursue a violent resolution to a situation where diplomacy had failed. He could only presume that the men in London who governed the gargantuan British Empire saw no need to involve themselves in this bitter struggle in its former colony. He considered it likely that they had found alternative sources of supply that meant they were no longer reliant on the cotton farmers of the Southern states.
He wondered how he would feel if Britain’s policy changed and he saw men in red coats marching in the ranks of the Confederate army. Would he feel compelled to join his countrymen? Would he want to do so? Would the lure of once again wearing a red coat be too strong? He shook his head, dismissing such thoughts. He had long ago learned not to waste effort on idle ifs and buts. The here and now was all that mattered. The future would take care of itself, with or without his intervention.
‘So this idea of forcing you boys to fight, well, it ain’t working so well.’ Brannigan knocked back another measure of whiskey as he continued to talk. ‘And last time I checked, ideas don’t buy muskets and carbines. So now those fine fellows in Richmond don’t have any choice but to tax anything they can think of. Now that they can’t tax cotton, they charge duties on everything else they can find, including duty to buy a licence to take the cotton south. And the plantation owners, they’re only allowed to take the cotton south if they agree to buy the stuff the sechers need to fight the Yankees.
‘Of course if they do that, they’ll only get paid in eight per cent bonds that ain’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but they don’t have much of a choice. They can sell the cotton direct to the government, who’ll stash it away in warehouses, but the price the government pays don’t give them enough money to pay their taxes, or to buy the food and goods they need to survive. The biggest buyer, why that’s you English. Down in Mexico, there’s hundreds of ships waiting for the cotton. And there ain’t enough of it to go round. That forces prices up, and makes it worthwhile to have fellas like me take it all the way down there.’
‘So your job is to make sure the cotton arrives safely.’ Jack took a first sip of his whiskey. The bitter liquid burned as he swallowed.
‘That’s right. The plantation fellas, they’ve got no choice but to send it south or sell it to the Yankees.’
‘They sell it to the Union?’
‘If they can. That’s getting a hell of a sight easier now the Yankees are pushing south. Things might get better when they win, but I doubt it.’
‘You think the North will win?’ Jack had never heard the sentiment once in all his time in the South.
‘It’s only a matter of time. The Confederacy is doomed. Always was.’
‘Is that why you aren’t fighting?’
‘No.’
‘But you’re helping the South’s cause?’ Jack wanted to understand more.
‘No.’ Brannigan refilled his glass yet again. ‘I work for myself.’
‘What about the man who owns the cotton? Aren’t you working for him?’
‘You’ve sure got a hell of a lot of questions for someone looking for work.’ The remark was delivered with a hint of irony.
‘I want to know what I’m getting myself into.’
‘What you’re getting yourself into is some hard goddam work. You ready for that?’
‘I’m not afraid to work.’
‘You sure about that?’ Brannigan’s gaze bored into Jack.
‘I am. I’ll help you get your cotton wherever it needs to go.’
‘That’s mighty generous of you, Jack.’ Brannigan acknowledged the statement by raising his glass. ‘We take it along El Camino Real de los Tejas all the way to Brownsville, in Texas. We get it over the Rio Grande and into Mexico, then to a place called Matamoros. That’s as far as we take it. From there it goes to a small village on the coast called Bagdad, from where they freighter it down the coast to Veracruz. That’s where your countrymen are waiting to buy it up. We pay the people we have to pay along the way, then bring as many guns and as much ammunition as we can back up here. And we fight any son of a bitch who tries to stop us.’
‘Sons of bitches like this Sinclair chap.’
‘You learn fast, Jack.’ There was not even a hint of a smile on Brannigan’s face as he gave the praise. He turned to place his empty glass on the table. ‘But it’s not just men like Sinclair we have to worry about.’
‘Who else is there?’
‘Well, there’s the army boys in Texas. They might want to have some of the cotton for themselves, or at least they’ll impound it and conscript any of my boys they fancy if we don’t pay ’em off. Then there are plenty of other men like Sinclair and his renegades who will do just about anything to stop us getting where we’re going. And if it ain’t white men like Sinclair, then it’s the bandoleros like Cobos, or that vicious son of a gun Zapata. Then there’s the worst of the bunch, Ángel Santiago.’
Brannigan paused, as if the name had left a foul taste in his mouth. ‘I could tell you some tales about that fella. The locals say he’s nearly seven foot tall and can kill a man with a single stare. Not that anyone has ever seen him, or at least, no one who has lived to tell the tale. That man is a demon all right, a killer if ever there was one. His boys even call themselves Los Ángeles de la Muerte.’
‘Which means?’
‘The Angels of Death. And they’ve sure earned the title. Santiago has about three hundred men now. They’ve been attacking the cotton trains for months, and there ain’t much the Confederate cavalry boys stationed down there can do to stop ’em. And those bandoleros fellas, they don’t stop at the border. They ain’t shy about striking right up into Texas.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Jack was trying to remember all the names Brannigan was throwing at him. ‘It’s a wonder you get there at all.’
‘I ain’t finished yet. If none of those varmints get in our way, then there’s still the French and the Mexicans to worry about.’
‘The French?’
‘You not heard about the war in Mexico?’
‘No, nothing.’ Jack could not help himself. He was lapping up the news like a thirsty dog.
‘There was a civil war back in fifty-five. A fellow called Juarez won, only he bankrupted the country in the process. So he stopped paying all the countries that had lent him money. Well, you fellows, along with the French and the Spanish, you didn’t much like that approach. So you sent over some men and captured Veracruz, Mexico’s most important port. That should’ve been enough, but those Frenchies, they wanted more, and they’ve invaded proper. Now they’re fighting the whole damn country, and you and the Spanish have left them to it.’
‘Blow me tight.’ Jack shook his head as he began to understand the enormous challenge Brannigan and his men faced.
‘So I’m damn sure the Frenchies will be only too happy to take the cotton if they can. But then again, so will Juarez and his Juaristas. They’re short of money as it is, and they need as much as they can get to buy weapons to fight the French.’
Jack noted all the information Brannigan was giving. He knew nothing of the struggle going on in Mexico. But he did know one thing. He had fought with the French army, serving with the Foreign Legion at Solferino. They were amongst the best troops he had ever encountered, and he was sure that if they had been brought to Mexico, then the Mexicans were in for a bad time of it.
‘So it sounds like every man and his dog will want to stop you taking this cotton of yours to the ports,’ he observed wryly.
‘They’ll want to try. It’s our job to persuade them that it’s not worth the effort. If they do try it, then we kill ’em.’
‘It sounds like you do need my help then.’ Jack held Brannigan’s gaze as he repeated his earlier claim. He tried to sound convincing.
For the first time, there was just a hint of a smile on Brann
igan’s lips. ‘I’ll take you as far as San Antonio. There should be no trouble between here and there, if the tale Sinclair fed Kat is true. Keep out of my way, do as you’re told and we’ll see from there. If I let you stay, I’ll pay you two hundred and fifty dollars when we get back to Natchitoches, same as my other boys. That’s a year’s money for a couple of months’ work. That two fifty is all yours. When you work for me, I pay for everything: food, drink, women, whatever you want.’
Jack tallied the deal on offer. It was more than fair. He’d known men who would kill for little more than a bottle of gin. ‘What about ammunition?’
‘For that?’ Brannigan nodded towards Jack’s repeating rifle. He had not remarked on it, but he was savvy enough to guess Jack’s predicament.
‘I’ve got bugger all left. I’ve no idea where to get more.’
‘I know a man in San Antonio. He might be able to help.’
‘That would be kind.’
‘Kind? No, I ain’t ever kind.’ Brannigan shook his head at Jack’s choice of words. ‘But if you accept my offer, then you’re one of us. And we look after our own. We’ll get you what you need.’
Jack heard the message behind the words. There were two types of people in Brannigan’s world, those with him, and those against him.
‘So do you accept?’ Brannigan asked the inevitable question.
Jack didn’t hesitate. He had known what he would say from the moment he had agreed to go with Kat and Adam. ‘Yes. I accept.’
With those three words, his wandering was over. For better or worse, he would be in Brannigan’s gang.
Jack let his mare come to a halt, then looked back at the wagon train that stretched out along the trail behind him. The sight still astonished him.
Thirty flatbed wagons followed each other nose to tail, each carrying twenty five-hundred-pound bales of cotton, stacked in two layers. Over the top of the cotton, the teamsters had stretched tarpaulins marked with the wagon’s number. Each wagon was pulled by a team of ten mules, with at least half a dozen spare teams spread throughout the train, which were used when they had to haul the heavily loaded wagons uphill or across bad ground. Following the first thirty wagons were another ten that carried the fodder and supplies.
The Lost Outlaw Page 8