Authors: I. J. Parnham
‘You lied,’ Kurt snapped, summing up two days of increasing frustration with his simple comment.
Nathaniel looked down at the row of railroad men who were heading out of Chancer’s Pass. He had to admit that in Kurt’s position he’d have formed the same view.
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘There’s still a high ridge for them to traverse before they reach Bear Creek.’
Kurt slapped to the ground the telescope with which he’d been surveying the scene and shook his head.
Nathaniel looked at Shackleton, hoping for support, but Shackleton’s stern gaze showed that the small amount of faith he’d had in him when he’d accepted his offer had now gone. To Nathaniel’s surprise that lack of faith hurt him.
‘I agree with Kurt,’ Shackleton said. ‘Traipsing off after these men feels like wasted effort to me.’
‘But we’ve come this far,’ Nathaniel said. ‘We need to see it through. If the payroll reaches the bank
safely, then hand us in, but not before.’
Shackleton looked at Elwood, who shook his head, then at the praying preacher who as usual appeared to be barely aware of what was happening around him, then at the sneering Kurt.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but this is where it ends for you, Nathaniel.’
Kurt grunted that he agreed. He picked up a coil of rope and waved it in Nathaniel’s his face.
‘Shackleton’s got the right idea,’ he said, ‘so give it to me one last time and convince me or these will be your last ever moments of freedom.’
Nathaniel looked down into the pass at the
receding
men, then at Kurt.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘I reckon The Preacher told me that Javier is trying to better his brother. Pablo never wanted to raid trains or steal the railroad payroll, so Javier will now do precisely that. Turner was serving life for various bank raids and his last failed ambush happened to be on a railroad payroll where he tried to blow up the pass they were going through. And two days ago a crate of dynamite got stolen from the train.’
‘And so, based on the babbling of a madman and your hunch, you reckon Javier will blow up the pass?’
‘That’s what it amounts to.’
‘That’s a long way short,’ Shackleton said, ‘of you leading us directly to Javier Rodriguez like you promised. This is over.’
Shackleton gestured to Kurt to tie Nathaniel up, but Nathaniel edged back out of his range.
‘How will you feel if you hear later that Javier did raid the payroll and you weren’t there?’
Shackleton winced, then looked at Kurt, who shook his head, leaving Elwood to make the final decision. As usual Elwood didn’t provide an
immediate
answer.
So, taking advantage of Elwood’s rumination, Nathaniel swirled round to face The Preacher. He wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him until he gave him a straight answer. Any chance of their being treated leniently depended on their working out where Javier was. He wanted to impress that upon The Preacher, but he forced himself to accept that he would have to speak to The Preacher on his terms.
‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ he said, starting with something they had always agreed upon.
‘Exodus twenty-one, verse twenty-four,’ The Preacher said.
‘The brother casts his net wide,’ Nathaniel said, uttering a few half-remembered words from one of The Preacher’s many quotes which, he had decided, referred to Javier.
‘All men lie in wait to shed blood,’ The Preacher said, looking past his shoulder into the pass. ‘Each hunts his brother with a net, Micah seven, verse two.’
‘We shouldn’t listen,’ Elwood said, ‘to any more of this nonsense.’
‘Wait!’ Nathaniel said. ‘The Preacher’s trying to tell us something. We’re lying in wait and Pablo’s
brother is out there trying to kill the memory of his brother by raiding this—’
‘I don’t know who’s worse,’ Kurt snapped. ‘Him for spouting this nonsense, or you for thinking it’s not nonsense. For a start, Javier ain’t hunting his brother and he hasn’t got a net.’
‘He’s speaking in a different way from the way we do!’ Nathaniel said, then forced himself to calm down before he spoke again to The Preacher. ‘That hunt must end one day.’
The Preacher nodded. ‘A mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, Revelation eighteen, verse twenty-one.’
‘That’s enough,’ Kurt said, slapping a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder, but Nathaniel threw him off.
‘And the ungodly deserved it,’ Nathaniel urged.
‘Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine, Samuel fifteen, verse five.’
This comment made Kurt stay his hand and look at The Preacher.
‘Is he trying to tell us something, after all?’ he asked.
Nathaniel ran all the comments through his mind, trying to think what he could say next to get
something
more meaningful from him. The Preacher had mentioned ambush, brother, ravine, boulder….
He noted that The Preacher was still staring over his shoulder. He swirled round, then sat beside the man to see what it was that he had been staring at.
And there, 500 yards away at the mouth of the pass and less than half that distance from the receding
line of men guarding the payroll was a massive
boulder
. It stood on an eroded outcrop of rock 200 feet above ground level, waiting for time and the elements to send it crashing down into the pass.
Nathaniel lunged for Kurt’s telescope and put it to his eye. After several sweeps he sighted the boulder. Magnified, it appeared to be in an even more
precarious
position than before, somehow standing there with only a few feet of rock touching the ground. He couldn’t see any sign of movement near it, but at the base he saw a flash of colour.
He strained his eyes, considering the small length of something that appeared to have been shoved beneath the boulder. Then he nodded to himself and thrust the telescope into Kurt’s hands.
‘I didn’t lie and The Preacher doesn’t babble,’ he said.
Kurt took the telescope and peered at the boulder.
‘What do you see?’ Shackleton asked.
‘Trouble,’ Kurt murmured, then slapped the
telescope
closed and leapt to his feet. ‘We have to warn everyone.’
Quickly they mounted up while Kurt told the others what he had seen. Then they headed down into the pass with Kurt leading, but he made no attempt to hide their presence.
‘We going down there openly?’ Shackleton asked.
Kurt slowed to answer. ‘I ain’t risking those men down there just to better our chances of catching Javier Rodriguez.’
Shackleton muttered that he agreed with this
sentiment. So, as they picked out their downward route, they hollered out to get the attention of the railroad men.
There were two wagons loaded down with crates with around a dozen men positioned before and behind them. The hindmost man dropped back to see who was approaching with his rifle already thrust out.
‘We ain’t trouble,’ Shackleton shouted down when he was fifty yards from him. ‘But you have to stop the wagons. The Gallows Gang are ahead.’
This revelation didn’t perturb the man.
‘We had men scouting ahead before we came through here,’ he said. ‘The Gallows Gang ain’t here.’
‘Yeah,’ Shackleton said, drawing alongside Kurt. ‘We saw how well those men searched and they didn’t see us.’
The man narrowed his eyes. ‘I recognize you. You’re the men who let Javier Rodriguez escape in the first place. So how can
you
say we ain’t good enough to do our job?’
‘We ain’t got time to argue.’ Shackleton pointed ahead at the lead wagon then at the boulder just thirty yards ahead of it. ‘There’s dynamite under that boulder and it’s going to blow at any moment.’
The man stayed staring at them for several seconds, then swirled round to look first at the wagon, then up at the boulder. He put his hands to his mouth, ready to holler ahead, but the words were drowned out when the promised explosion ripped out.
Rock and grit and smoke plumed up into the air behind the boulder before the dynamite achieved what centuries of the elements had failed to do. It toppled the boulder from its position to crash down a few feet, where it teetered, looking for a moment as if it might rock back on to its former pedestal. But the momentum from the blast was too great.
The boulder rolled, turned then went crashing down towards the wagon.
The men around the wagon shouted at each other, caught in a moment of indecision of trying to work out where the advancing boulder would come to rest. As the boulder rolled and thundered towards them they slowed then speeded, then slowed again until the wagon driver took matters into his own hands and cracked the reins sending the wagon on ahead.
This proved to be the right decision as with one last roll the boulder slammed down into the pass in an explosion of dirt and small rocks. Two men didn’t make the right decision and disappeared beneath the boulder, and the noise and commotion spooked two horses enough to unseat their riders.
Then the shooting started.
The boulder had blocked the pass and Nathaniel judged that, aside from the wagon driver, only one other man was on the other side. Worse, all the gunfire was echoing beyond the boulder. On this side the men milled around the second wagon
drawing
Shackleton, Elwood and Kurt down to join them and debate their next actions.
For the first time Nathaniel found himself unguarded. He surveyed the scene, wondering how he could help again now that he’d been proved right.
Movement up the pass caught his eye and he looked up, seeing a man slipping away from a ledge close to where the boulder had stood. It was only a brief sighting and the man wouldn’t have been
visible
from lower down in the pass, but Nathaniel had recognized Turner Jackson.
He jumped down from his horse, made his way along the side of the pass, then climbed upwards towards the ledge where he’d seen Turner. He heard shouting down below, but whether it was directed at him he didn’t know.
More shooting was echoing beyond the boulder and as he reached higher ground he could see the wagon had halted. The driver was lying slumped and holed in his seat and the other man had crouched down behind the crates on the back, firing up into the pass.
Javier’s men were moving down the pass to get closer to him. If he had a gun, Nathaniel reckoned he could pick them off, but as it was he could do nothing but seek out Turner.
He reached a point eight feet below the ledge where he stopped to consider his route. Then he scrambled up the first half. He paused for breath, then slapped a hand down on the top and moved to transfer his weight. Then a shadow loomed over him a moment before Turner came into view.
Turner stared down at him, smirking, then kicked out. With a jarring thud his boot landed squarely against Nathaniel’s cheek and sent him tumbling backwards from the ledge.
He landed on his back and lay there, momentarily stunned. He could do nothing but look up as Turner drew his gun and aimed down at him. But then gunfire roared from below, kicking up pebbles around the edge of the ledge and making Turner flinch back out of view.
Nathaniel shook his head. Regaining his senses he then jumped to his feet and made for the ledge again. He climbed, then ventured a glance over the top to see Turner hurrying away.
Nathaniel rolled himself over on to the ledge, a stone breaking off in his grasp as he clawed his way to his knees.
Turner was twenty yards ahead with his back to him, running. Anger made Nathaniel grind his jaw and, taking this as his only chance, he drew back his hand then hurled the stone at Turner.
It flew with deadly accuracy heading straight for the centre of Turner’s back, but a moment before the stone struck Turner slipped down to lower ground.
The stone still hit him with a glancing blow to the shoulder, making him reel round. Heartened now, Nathaniel scooped up another stone on the run and hurled it at Turner. The stone was smaller but this time it hit its target thudding into Turner’s jaw and making him tumble from view.
Nathaniel ran on and reached the point where he’d hit Turner just in time to see him rolling and tumbling downwards. His limbs were waving as he fought to stop himself, but he continued to roll. If the fall didn’t break his neck, Nathaniel saw that he was falling towards a point where Javier Rodriguez and the other members of the Gallows Gang were clambering over the wagon.
Javier was shouting out for everyone to leave as the railroad men were now slipping past the fallen
boulder
. Whether they’d wait for Turner, Nathaniel couldn’t tell.
He looked for a way down, but then saw something that made him grin. Turner had dropped his gun. It lay five feet below him, and fifty feet below the gun the tumbling Turner was an easy target.
Nathaniel jumped down, having already decided that as long as he managed to wound Turner, Javier would have to leave him. He reached out, his fingers touching the cold metal, when a voice rang out behind him.
‘Don’t move, Nathaniel McBain.’
Nathaniel stilled his hand, then glanced back to see that Kurt was walking towards him with his gun trained on him.
‘Turner’s down there,’ Nathaniel said. ‘He knows I’m innocent. I just want t—’
‘You don’t want to do nothing, Nathaniel. You’re a prisoner and a prisoner with a gun is a dead man.’
Javier Rodriguez had stolen half the railroad payroll.
That was the stark news that greeted Nathaniel when Kurt had escorted him down into the pass. Turner Jackson had also got away and now the
railroad
men were in pursuit, leaving Kurt and Shackleton behind.
Worse news was to follow when Shackleton reported the reason why Kurt had been so
determined
not to let Nathaniel take the gun.
‘The Preacher’s gone,’ he said.
‘He can’t have got far,’ Nathaniel said.
‘How do you know that?’ Kurt asked, sneering. ‘Did he tell you that in one of his Bible quotes when you were plotting to escape?’
Nathaniel tried to explain that this wasn’t the case but neither man would listen to him. When Elwood returned from the other side of the boulder, he confirmed the truth.
‘The Preacher,’ he said, ‘rode off after Javier Rodriguez.’
‘That’ll be to get his revenge on him like I said,’ Nathaniel said. ‘But listen to me. I can work out how to find him.’
‘We’ve seen his version of revenge back at Wilson’s Crossing,’ Kurt said, ‘and you ain’t got no way of
finding
him.’
‘Except I have,’ Nathaniel said. ‘I’ve been thinking and I reckon the reason he’ll talk to me is that he took me under the water with him. He thinks he’s baptized me and I’m now his disciple.’
That turned out to be the worst musing he could have spoken aloud as everyone curled their lips with disgust, then turned their backs on him.
For the next fifteen minutes the surviving men discussed their next actions. Half of the railroad men were in pursuit of Javier, and Kurt and Shackleton reckoned they’d let them get on with the job while they scouted around to see what else they could learn in the pass.
When they returned their mood hadn’t lightened. None of the Gallows Gang had been killed, but five railroad men were either dead or unaccounted for.
The men in Shackleton’s group were in a sombre mood when they left the railroad men to find their own route out of the pass with the second wagon. They found that Javier’s trail was an easy one to follow and was broadly towards Bear Creek.
As they rode Nathaniel tried to think what he could say to change their minds. He had correctly worked out where the raid would take place and he’d so nearly captured Turner.
But none of the men appeared interested in
viewing
his actions favourably after he’d run away from them, tried to get a gun and, most damning, after The Preacher had taken advantage of the situation to escape.
Nobody’s mood had lightened when an hour later they approached a river and Elwood reported that he could see something untoward ahead.
They dismounted to take in the surroundings, then Kurt and Shackleton moved on ahead, leaving Nathaniel with Elwood. The two men disappeared into a copse of trees, emerging two minutes later with their faces set even more grimly than before.
Elwood urged Nathaniel to move on, letting him see that they’d come across the aftermath of a pitched battle.
The wagon lay on its side, but the crates
containing
the payroll had gone. The bodies of the railroad men lay scattered around the wagon. Most had taken cover behind the wagon, not that that had done them any good, and the two who hadn’t been shot had suffered the trademark fate of the Gallows Gang.
Their bodies dangled from a tree. While Elwood cut them down Kurt and Shackleton stared at Nathaniel as if he were to blame for this atrocity.
‘Not like the sight, then, Nathaniel?’ Kurt said. ‘That’s what you’ll be getting tomorrow night.’
‘Unless you can find Javier Rodriguez first,’ Nathaniel said, reckoning this would be his last opportunity to talk them round. ‘And I can—’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Kurt said. ‘We’ve got a
trail to follow and we don’t need you no more.’
Kurt looked at Shackleton who nodded, then gestured to Elwood.
‘Elwood,’ Shackleton said, ‘take him back to Bear Creek, then try to catch up with us.’
‘Sure will and good luck,’ Elwood said, placing a hand on Nathaniel’s back to usher him back to his horse.
‘That goes for me too,’ Nathaniel said, looking at Shackleton as he judged him to be the most amenable of the men as regarded listening to him. ‘I did my best back there in the pass and if you can capture Turner alive, you’ll get to hear the truth that I’m not the man everyone reckons I am.’
Shackleton gave him a brief look that said he sympathized but that he was no longer prepared to listen. But even his attitude hardened when Kurt called him over to look at the cut-down bodies. Kurt held up a screwed-up piece of paper in one hand as he bent to remove a second piece of paper from the mouth of one of the bodies.
‘This is a change,’ Shackleton said.
‘Yeah,’ Kurt said, ‘both bodies had their mouths filled with paper and a message, courtesy of The Preacher.’
Kurt held out the sheets for Shackleton to read what had been written on them. Then both men shook their heads as Kurt screwed them up.
‘What do they say?’ Nathaniel called out but Kurt didn’t reply other than to walk over and hurl the balls of paper at him. With his hands tied behind his
back the paper rebounded from his chest and dropped to the ground.
‘More babbling from your friend.’
‘Yeah, but what do they say? It might be a clue. The Preacher might have worked out where Javier is going, or he might—’
‘Show him, Shackleton,’ Kurt said. ‘I can’t bear to talk to him no more.’
Shackleton picked up the papers, smoothed them out, then held them up before Nathaniel’s face.
‘Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart, Matthew five, verse twenty-eight,’ Nathaniel said, reading aloud. Then he moved on to the second one. ‘If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity, Leviticus twenty, verse twenty-one.’
‘You want to make one last guess what that means before Elwood takes you back to Bear Creek?’
‘Did Pablo or Javier have a wife?’
‘Nope, and that was your only guess.’
‘Wait! I can’t think what it means right now, but The Preacher wants his revenge on Javier after he left us to die. So I reckon he’s leaving us clues as to where we can find him, if we can only figure them out.’
Shackleton shook his head. ‘You’ve spent too much time with The Preacher. You’re starting to babble as much he did.’
‘You can’t go!’ Javier snapped.
‘We’ve got thousands of dollars here,’ Chester
said. ‘That’s good enough for us.’
‘Yeah,’ William said, nodding. ‘When we were heading for the gallows, this money was more than I could ever have dreamed of.’
‘Your dreams,’ Javier said, ‘are as limited as Pablo’s were. This is just the start. We can blaze a trail. We can become legend.’
‘You can do that,’ Chester said. ‘We just want the money.’
Javier glared at Chester and William in turn, his thunderous expression looking as if he was
preparing
himself to strangle both men with his bare hands. Accordingly they both backed away a pace, their hands drifting towards their holsters, but then Javier pointed over their shoulders.
‘Go if you ain’t got the guts to stay!’ he snapped, turning his back on them.
He stood, stooped and grinding his teeth, while Chester and William mounted up and left. Only when the hoofbeats had receded into the distance did he raise his head to consider what was left of the Gallows Gang.
He’d had high hopes of what they could achieve and now in less than a week only Aaron and Turner were left.
‘I can go and get the money back,’ Turner said, leaning towards him and winking.
‘No,’ Javier said. ‘We don’t need them or their money to finish what I started.’
‘That mean you’ll raid the bank?’ Turner said, rubbing his hands with glee.
‘No,’ Javier said, brightening, ‘I have something far more important than that in mind.’
‘You’ve got a visitor,’ Deputy Albright said, peering at Nathaniel through the cell bars.
‘Shackleton? Elwood? Kurt?’ Nathaniel asked, but the deputy shook his head.
‘Nope. The mayor.’ Albright headed away from the cell.
While keys rattled and a door clanged Nathaniel stared at a stretch of mildew on his cell wall as he had been doing for the last few hours, trying to work out what The Preacher had meant. He felt as if he were close to understanding it, but he couldn’t quite connect all the details together.
‘The Gallows Gang,’ Mayor Maxwell said when he reached his cell. ‘You ain’t looking so dangerous now you’re back where you belong.’
With nothing else to occupy his mind Nathaniel swung his legs down to the floor and paced across the cell to face his visitor.
‘I’m not dangerous. I never was a member of the Gallows Gang and I reckon with more time I might even be able to help you find them.’
Mayor Maxwell nodded slowly. ‘I’d heard you’d sold out the prisoners back in Beaver Ridge.’
‘That ain’t the way it was.’
‘Let’s save time by presuming it was. Governor Stuart will want to see someone hang tomorrow, but it doesn’t have to be you.’ Mayor Maxwell ran a finger down a bar. ‘Tell me where I can find Javier
Rodriguez and you won’t join him.’
Nathaniel considered blurting out his whole story, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Mayor Maxwell wanted only one thing, and he couldn’t provide it, yet.
‘I don’t know his exact location, but the men who found me are on his tail. I’m sure they’ll get him. From what I saw and heard, Javier Rodriguez ain’t as invincible as everyone reckons he is.’
Mayor Maxwell slapped a bar. ‘Him and his brother were the worst outlaws this county’s ever known.’
Nathaniel shook his head. If the story he’d pieced together from The Preacher was right, Javier was embarking on a plan to better his brother’s exploits. Yet Javier’s exploits were of the kind he’d have expected Pablo to have committed to get such a bad reputation. As far as he could tell, the Pablo Rodriguez Gang had been just a bunch of
troublemakers
and not at all like the ruthless outlaw band the Gallows Gang had become.
‘What did they do to become so hated?’ he asked.
‘They terrorized this town for nigh on a year, shooting men who got in their way, raping women who tried to stay out of their way.’
Mayor Maxwell grabbed the bars so tightly the knuckles whitened, his anger out of proportion to how Nathaniel thought he should react.
‘Did they shoot any men, or rape any women in particular?’ he asked, the hint of an idea coming to him.
‘Narcissa,’ Mayor Maxwell snapped, ‘my only daughter.’
‘Javier or Pablo?’
‘Both, either, I don’t know.’
‘You mean she’s so traumatized she can’t
remember
?’
‘Or is protecting … I don’t know. She won’t say but I want Javier to pay like Pablo did.’ Mayor Maxwell pointed a firm finger at him. ‘So do you know anything or am I wasting my time talking to you?’
Nathaniel was minded to say he could help him, but the anger in Maxwell’s eyes suggested it’d fall on deaf ears, so he shook his head.
When the mayor had taken his leave of him, Nathaniel rolled back down on to his cot and resumed his inspection of the mildew patch. This time it felt as though the extra information the mayor had imparted was enough to put the answers he was looking for all together.
The Pablo Rodriguez gang were a band of
troublemakers
who had committed the worst possible crime when they’d involved the mayor’s family, even if the mayor’s cryptic comment suggested that that crime might not have been quite what it seemed….
An hour later, when Deputy Albright brought him his evening meal, he stood up and put on his most reasonable voice.
‘I have a message for Marshal Kurt McLynn and Shackleton Frost,’ he said.
‘I ain’t no messenger,’ Albright muttered.
‘They’ll come to town before Governor Stuart arrives and I’m sure they’ll make it worth your while.’ Nathaniel raised his voice as Albright turned away. ‘Tell them – this time I know where he is, I really do.’
‘I’ll be sure to let them know,’ Albright called over his shoulder in a dismissive manner that said he’d already forgotten the message.