Brian Garfield (24 page)

Authors: Tripwire

Tags: #Westerns, #Fiction

He lowered himself onto his side and rolled his knees under him. When he sat up again he was kneeling. Mr. Pickett just watched, neither moving nor speaking.

Boag balanced himself on one knee and hauled his left leg up, knee against chest, placing the left foot flat on the ground. All his nerves twanged with taut pains. He braced his left palm against the upraised knee and pushed himself upright, dragging the right leg up under him until he was standing there precariously, bent double, one hand on his knee and the other on his rifle.

When he began to walk it was like the movement of a puppet. His legs jerked around loosely under him. He had to get balanced on one foot and then drag the other one forward a few inches, rearrange his weight onto it and repeat the process.

He made his way around Mr. Pickett and Mr. Pickett's head turned to watch him. Mr. Pickett seemed to have lost his guns. His holsters were empty; there was no rifle in sight.

His eyes were fixed on Boag with single-minded concentration; they never even blinked.

Boag reached the horse. It shied away from him and he shuffled toward it again and hooked up the trailing reins in his left hand. He turned to look at Mr. Pickett.

“If I leave you to heal, you'll come after me, won't you?”

Mr. Pickett made no response of any kind.

Boag said, “I ought to shoot you now.”

But he slid the rifle down into Mr. Pickett's saddle boot. It was not impossible getting himself aboard the horse because he used his arms to pull himself up, but swinging his right leg over was the hard part. He had to pull the leg over with his right hand. It took him a while to get his toes into the stirrups.

Mr. Pickett had laid his head back and was lying that way, looking up at Boag with the back of his head on the ground. Boag said, “You come after me I'll have to kill you next time.”

He eased the horse closer. “You hear me, Pickett? I got your gold but don't you try to do to me what I done to you. You ain't as good a fighting man as me.”

Pickett's raw eyes just stared.

Boag leaned down a little. “You hear me Jed Pickett? I'm a better man than you are. You hear?”

It was not clear whether Pickett heard or not. Somewhere in those few moments he was dying. When Boag moved out on the horse the dead man's head did not turn to follow him; the eyes kept staring at the sky where Boag had been.

Somewhere out there in the grass or the trees Gutierrez and that Mexican were still moving around but Boag was all finished here. He made a long ride along the base of the mountain and entered the trees a mile east of the road. He would go by the gully and see about the Gatling gun. If it wasn't occupied by Ben Stryker's people he'd retrieve it for Captain McQuade but he wasn't going to fight for it; he'd only told Captain McQuade he'd return it if it was possible, and fighting was no longer possible today.

Miguel and the
seÃ±ora
stood in the doorway and watched the coach come across the hills. It was a handsome brougham drawn by matched teams of greys and it stopped sedately in front of the villa. A liveried coachman climbed down from the driving seat.

Don Pablo came softly out into the sunshine and Dorotea touched his sleeve. The coachman opened the ornate door of the brougham and Dorotea lifted her chin.

Boag stepped to the ground, putting his weight on a gold-headed cane. He had a cigar in his mouth and a tailored grey suit on his back.

He said to Don Pablo, “The dowry's in the coach.”

“You are alive,
mi amigo.
”

Dorotea said, “You will stay here now?”

“I'm going up to Arizona to look for a little girl that goes by the name of Carmen.”

Don Pablo said, “Of course you will take Dorotea with you,” and turned back inside the door because it was too hot for him out here.

Boag handed his hat to Miguel. Dorotea gave him a suspicious and dubious eye. Boag said, “That would be up to the lady.”

“The lady will think about it,” Dorotea said.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

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