Despite the pain tearing up Jack’s sword arm, he parried the blow before it could reach his face. He stepped back then, spitting the blood from his lips and gathering his strength.
But Brannigan had other plans. The moment Jack broke from the combat, he turned and ran. For a big man, he moved fast.
Jack saw what he planned and set off after him. But he was hurting. And he was slow.
Brannigan skidded to a halt near his fallen revolver. He snatched the weapon from the ground and twisted around, gun already levelled.
Jack came to a stumbling halt five yards away from the barrel of the revolver. He stayed there, blowing hard, his sword held low in his right hand, blood running down his arm and on to the hand that gripped the blade.
Brannigan’s chest heaved with exertion, yet he held his pose, the barrel aimed squarely at Jack’s chest. He had the power of his revolver. He held Jack’s life in his hands.
‘You really don’t know when to die, do you, Jack?’ The words were delivered breathlessly.
Jack said nothing. He stared at the barrel of the gun. He was just a couple of yards away. He could still strike.
‘You know I’ll shoot you down.’ Brannigan was bringing his breathing under control. A laconic smile spread slowly across his face. ‘You so much as twitch and I’ll put a bullet in you.’
Still Jack refused to speak. He had seen Brannigan shoot enough times to know the man would not miss. He would kill without hesitation.
‘Put that goddam sword down.’ Brannigan spoke calmly now.
Jack hefted the blade in his right hand, checking his grip. The blood ran across his hand, but he could still wield the blade one last time.
‘I told you what would happen if you came at me with that thing. So put it down.’ Brannigan paused, waiting for a reaction. When none came, he shook his head slowly. ‘You not going to do what you’re damn well told?’ He raised an eyebrow. He was in complete control now. ‘Well then, I guess that’s the end of it.’ The revolver lifted a fraction of an inch as his thumb pulled back the hammer.
Jack saw the movement. He knew Brannigan was about to shoot, just as he knew he was a moment away from death. So he did the only thing he could think of.
He charged.
Brannigan saw Jack coming and laughed. At such close range, he could not miss.
The first gunshot was loud. A second followed close behind it, then a third and a fourth, coming so fast they blurred together.
Jack cried out, the sound torn from his lips. Every muscle quivered in expectation of a bullet’s impact.
An impact that never came.
More shots roared out, one after the other, the explosions of sound shocking and loud.
Jack stumbled forward, confusion filling his mind.
Brannigan still stood with his revolver raised. Then his mouth opened wide to release a cascade of blood. He stood there a moment longer, staring at Jack as the blood ran over his chin, before he fell forward, hitting the ground face first.
Jack staggered to a halt. He had expected to die. Yet somehow he still lived. He did not know how or why.
He lifted his gaze to see Kat standing no more than two or three yards from where Brannigan’s body lay, the Volcanic pistol cradled in both hands, a cloud of black smoke pouring from the barrel.
He searched her face, looking for a sign that she was going to draw the Remington that was holstered on her hip to shoot him too, but he could read nothing in her expression. All understanding of her was far beyond him.
Brannigan groaned. He was still alive. Blood poured from the wounds to his back. It ran into the dust, staining the thirsty earth black.
Jack walked forward. It was time to end it.
Brannigan looked up as he approached. Somehow he found the strength to hold his head up. His eyes bored into Jack.
Jack lifted his sword so that it pointed towards the wagon master, letting the man it would kill see it coming for him.
He paused when he was within an arm’s length. At the last, Brannigan’s head lolled forward, his strength failing him. Jack was grateful for it. There was little pleasure in this moment. No sense of righteousness, or of satisfaction. He took a last step forward, then plunged the sword down, pushing hard so that the blade cut deep through muscle and sinew. He worked it between bones, tearing and ripping the organs deep inside until he was sure he had done enough. Only then did he twist the blade and tear it from the flesh.
It was done. Brannigan was dead. The irony of the moment was not lost on Jack as he stood there hauling down deep breaths. In this world of revolvers and repeating rifles, it was a sword that had ended Brannigan’s life. Jack’s sword. One that Brannigan had mocked as an anachronism, and a reminder of a dying age.
Gruesome task complete, Jack looked at Kat. She had not moved.
‘It’s over.’ He felt the need to speak and so break the silence.
Kat’s expression did not change. She stared back at him coldly.
‘You shot him down.’ He took a step towards her. ‘After everything that happened, you shot him now?’ He was struggling to understand. He had believed that Kat and Brannigan had been working together, that they had been in collusion since before Vaughan’s death, and had stayed together through the massacre of first Brannigan’s men and then Dawson’s. Yet now she had killed Brannigan. And she had saved Jack’s life.
‘You don’t get it?’ Kat shook her head as she replied. ‘I thought you were cleverer than that, Jack.’ She looked down as she holstered the still smoking Volcanic, taking care to make sure it was secure in the long holster on her left hip.
He took another step towards her. His mind was racing now. She was right. He didn’t get it.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘You tell me.’ Kat’s reply was sharp.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied honestly.
‘You think I did it for you?’
He took another step, then stopped. She had saved him. He thought back to the times they had kissed, the times he had held her in his arms. Was that enough? Was that the reason he had been spared?
‘Did you?’ He took another step, moving quickly now, his instinct pushing him towards her.
Finally her expression changed, a wan, sad-looking smile creeping across her face. Then she drew the Remington.
‘No.’
‘Then why?’ He came closer.
‘Take another step and I’ll kill you.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ The Remington was held still.
He was confused, yet he obeyed, stumbling to a halt.
‘I’ve planned this for a long, long time, Jack. Did you think it all happened by chance?’ There was a mocking tone to her voice now. ‘Did you really think I was just here for decoration?’
‘No.’ He watched her carefully as emotions played across her face. ‘I never thought that.’
‘No?’ Her expression twisted, as if he had forced something sour between her lips. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes.’ He watched the Remington. It did not so much as twitch.
‘Horseshit.’ Her smile widened. ‘I saw the way you looked at me. I saw it back in the dining room when I first came to sit at your table, and I can see it even here and now.’
For the first time, she moved forward, coming towards him with slow, even steps. ‘I know you want me, Jack.’ She spoke quietly. ‘And I like you, I really do.’ She kept walking. ‘But you men, you’re all the same. You think with your dicks.’ She laughed then, the sound coming easily. ‘I’m grateful for it. It makes it so much simpler for me.’
She was closing the distance between them, her eyes locked on to Jack’s. ‘You see, all this,’ she waved her free hand, ‘it all happened the way I planned it. Well, except for one thing. I’d have kept Brannigan alive if it hadn’t been for you, I’ll tell you that much. I’d have kept the evil son of a bitch alive at least until we’d reached Veracruz. I needed him until then, to keep me safe and to
get this specie where it needs to go. Now I suppose I’ll have to make my way there all on my lonesome.’
‘You planned all this?’
‘I sure did.’ She smiled and shook her head, as if amused by something she heard in his tone. ‘The day they told me my brother was dead, I knew I had to do something. So I waited. It sure took a long time to come to this, but here we are.’ She paused, her head tipped to one side as she contemplated the man standing in front of her. ‘Does that surprise you, Jack?’
‘Yes.’ He watched her as she came closer. He focused everything on this one person, this one woman.
‘Good. I like that.’ She was close now, standing within arm’s reach. She looked at him, her eyes searching his face one last time. Then she stepped forward and kissed him. When she pulled away, she was smiling. ‘You’re a goddam fool, Jack Lark. But you’re a good fool, and I meant what I said. I really do like you.’
He stared back at her. He never saw the Remington that she raised then smashed violently into the side of his head.
Kat, the world and everything in it disappeared, and he fell.
When Jack awoke, he was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. The pain swamped him at first. It was so bad that he was sure his skull had been split open. He did not try to move, and slowly it faded away until it was no more than a dull pounding. It still hurt, but it no longer felt as if his brains were spilling out of his head.
He moved slowly and carefully until he was sitting up. He took in his surroundings. He was alone.
Brannigan’s corpse lay next to him on earth darkened by the blood that had been spilled across it. There was no sign of Kat, or the wagon with its precious cargo.
He moved gingerly, keeping his head as still as he could, getting slowly to his feet. It was only when he was standing that he noticed the items that had been left for him. They lay in a neat row in the centre of the trail. His repeating rifle, with two packets of one hundred rounds at its side. Next to that, his Navy Colt, the metal polished and the ivory grips clean and bright. Then there was his sword, the blade wiped clear of blood and gore. Beside that lay a haversack and two canteens. The final item in the line was a small cloth sack of the same type and size that he had seen Vaughan give to Dawson back in Brownsville. It sat on a single scrap of paper.
Still moving carefully, he walked to the sack. It chinked as he picked it up, and it was heavy. Yet he did not bother to open it to inspect its contents. Instead, he picked up the note that had lain beneath it.
It was short and to the point: I said I’d pay you back. It was signed with a simple letter K.
With a sigh, he crumpled the paper and tossed it to the ground. He took his time gathering what had been left for him. He discovered that the haversack was filled with rations and both canteens were full. Kat had left him all he needed to survive.
And that was what he would do. He would survive. He had believed himself to be Fate’s vengeance, yet it turned out that she had not needed him at all. Her vengeance had been a young woman called Kat.
Jack started to walk south. He did not know where his path would take him, and at that moment he did not care. He had what he needed to survive.
And once again, he was alone.
Veracruz, Mexico
Jack stood outside the ticket office, studying the broadsides and sailing schedules that had been pinned to a noticeboard there. They promised fast transit times to a hundred different destinations, and he ran his eyes over the list, trying to decide where he should go. He had enough money to buy a ticket to any one of them, thanks to Kat’s generous payment, but for now, he put the decision to one side. It could wait.
He turned and walked away. He had no plans for that day, or for those that would follow. There was a big world out there.
The Lost Outlaw is the third Jack Lark novel set against the backdrop of the American Civil War. I was keen to take Jack somewhere other than the battlefield, and I thought long and hard about the novel’s location. My original plan was to use a cotton train simply as a vehicle to take Jack down into Mexico, where he could then find his way into the war being fought between the invading French and the Mexicans. However, the more I read of the effort to get the Confederacy’s cotton to Mexico, the greater the temptation to base the whole novel around the trade.
There is no doubt that the cotton trade was of vital importance to both the Confederate government and the plantation owners who grew the valuable crop. It was this that made the Union’s Anaconda Plan such a powerful weapon, one that starved the Confederacy of the income it derived from taxing the exported cotton. With their seaports blockaded, the plantation owners had few options left, one of which was to take the cotton south to the Mexican ports that were still open to the European trade.
One of the trails that the wagon trains took, El Camino Real de los Tejas, still exists in part, and there is a fantastic guide available on the website of the National Park Service, a valuable resource for armchair-bound (well, train-seat-bound) authors like myself. However, some parts of the trail, such as the village of Bagdad, no longer exist. Bagdad has been swept away under the changing course of the Rio Grande and today is just a beach.
The task of getting the valuable cotton all the way to Mexico was a difficult and dangerous one. There are many gruesome tales of the vicious fighting between the men charged with guarding the cotton and the many bushwhackers and bandoleros who tried to steal it away.
Despite the violence and the risk, or perhaps because of it, the trade attracted men of every country, creed and colour. Many made their fortunes, by fair means or foul. I like to think that men like Brannigan and Vaughan were there, although neither is based on a real person. There were certainly many renegades and bandoleros waiting to prey on the wagon trains, the most famous being José María Cobos and Octaviano Zapata. Ángel Santiago and his Ángeles de la Muerte are inventions, as are Dawson’s cavalry. As ever, I try to tread as lightly as possible over the history of the real men and units that fought in the years I am covering, whilst still trying to bring their stories and adventures to life as best I can.
As you might expect by now, the fights in this novel are based on nothing more than my own imagination. The battle at the hacienda was inspired by the Battle of Camarón, the most famous action ever fought by the French Foreign Legion. I gave a great deal of thought to trying to include Camarón in the novel, but it just didn’t fit. However, I was still fascinated by the idea of a small group of defenders holding out against far superior numbers (blame my love of the film Zulu for this), and so the idea for the fight at the hacienda was born.
There are not a great number of resources for those wishing to learn more of the cotton times. The Matamoros Trade by James W. Daddyman is the best book I have found. A long-term favourite of mine, the website of the National Park Service, www.nps.gov, is invaluable for those like me who cannot travel to the places they are writing about, and I recommend it wholeheartedly once again.
As to what is next for Jack, well, this time I am not sure. He has come a long way from that gin palace in Whitechapel, and so much time has passed since he took Captain Sloames’s officer’s scarlet for his own. Now he finds himself in a deep-sea port with money in his pocket and no one to tell him where he should go next. He really can go anywhere.
Let’s see where he turns up, shall we?
Want to know where it all began for Jack Lark?
1854: The banks of the Alma River, Crimean Peninsula. The men of the King’s Royal Fusiliers are in terrible trouble. Officer Jack Lark has to act immediately and decisively. His life and the success of the campaign depend on it. But does he have the mettle, the officer qualities that are the life blood of the British Army?
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You can also follow Jack Lark’s adventures as
Jack Lark barely survived the Battle of the Alma. As the brutal fight raged, he discovered the true duty that came with the officer’s commission he’d taken. He grasps a chance to prove himself a
leader once more. Jack will travel to a new regiment in India, under a new name . . .
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Meet a darker side of Jack in
Jack Lark is living precariously as an officer in Bombay when his past is discovered by the Devil – Major Ballard, the army’s intelligence officer. Ballard is gathering a web of information to defend the British Empire, and he needs a man like Jack on his side. As the British march to war, Jack learns that secrets crucial to the campaign’s success are leaking into their enemies’ hands. But who is the traitor?
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Catch up with Jack as
Bombay, 1857. India is simmering with discontent, and Jack Lark, honourably discharged from the British Army, aims to take the first ship back to England. But before he leaves, he cannot resist the adventure of helping a young woman escape imprisonment in a gaming house. He promises to escort Aamira home, but they arrive in Delhi just as the Indian Mutiny explodes.
As both sides commit horrific slaughter and the siege of Delhi begins, Jack realises that despite the danger he cannot stand by and watch. At heart, he is still a soldier . . .
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And experience Jack’s biggest battle yet in
London, 1859. After years fighting for Queen and country, Jack Lark returns to London a changed man. But everything has altered almost beyond recognition, and Jack cannot see a place for himself there.
He tried to deny being a soldier once. He won’t make the same mistake again. The great powers of Europe are about to go to war. Jack Lark will march with them.
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Jack Lark journeys to America in
The Lost Outlaw Page 35