Destined to Die (6 page)

CHAPTER SIX

THE big black dog barked at him as he rode the gelding around the side of the house and across the yard to the strip of crushed rock through the trees. Barked and lunged at him, then snarled through bared teeth each time the rope snapped taut and jerked him to a halt. He could hear the animal for several minutes after he had ridden out of sight of the two pairs of eyes which had gazed fixedly at him from the stoop-shaded threshold of the house. One pair hating him, the other filled with a strange mixture of doubt, regret and subdued excitement.

Although he did not know of these expressions was merely conscious of being watched from behind. Until he was on the trail beside the river, heading north and the fruit tree orchard hid him from the house.

He felt no hatred toward Joanne Engel or regret at having allowed himself to be led so willingly into the trap that the Gershels had closed around him. What was done was done - he was as green as spring grass in a damp climate. But he learned from each new experience in the so far harsh world outside the confines of Fairfax and Standing. Maybe the hard way, but that was probably the best way.

He smoked the cheroot down to a stub and tossed this into the Colorado River. By which time he was a mile beyond the Gershel property and riding through a stand of piny on, juniper and oaks much more extensive than that to the south, filling a broad valley that had opened out from the end of the riverside bluff that crowded the homestead back down the trail.

Deep in the timber, the foliage of which offered pleasant shade from the blazing sun that was nearing its midday peak, he reached a clearing and reined in
the gelding. The cleared area, some two acres, was man-made by the felling of trees over a number of years. The oldest stumps, many of them rotted, were closest to the river bank. And some of these first-to-be-felled trees had been used to construct a northern-style log cabin far enough back from the water’s edge to escape flooding when the river was swollen by rain.

Two shade oaks had been left growing at the front corners of the cabin. Out back of it there was a high pile of cordwood cut to even lengths and parked beside this a two-wheeled pushcart. On the eastern side of the clearing a half dozen recently-felled trees lay sprawled out from their yellow-topped stumps. Two had already been cleaned of branches, which were smouldering with a great deal of smoke on a tidily-built bonfire. While a man was working with a bucking saw and
a small broad axe to strip another, tossing the severed trimmings on to the fire.

A tall, broadly-built, muscular man wearing only a pair of denim pants and calked boots, was hatless despite the strong sunlight that poured down, unobstructed, into the clearing.

The logger had his back to Barnaby Gold and was a rather indistinct form through the lazily drifting smoke of the fire. The thud of the axe, the rasp of the saw and the crackling of the sap-moist timber on the fire acted to mask the thud of hooves on the sun-browned grass of the clearing until the mounted man had ridden through the smoke and was within twenty feet of the naked-to-the-waist man. Who whistled tunelessly while he worked.

‘Good morning to you, sir.’

Gold spoke as he reined in the gelding during a pause when the logger dropped the saw to pick up the axe.

The whistling was abruptly curtailed and for a full second the man remained in a frozen stoop. Gold delved a hand into the holed pocket on the left side of his coat and gripped the mother-of-pearl butt of the studded .45. But his green eyes were lit with a personable smile when the man whirled toward him, axe held in an aggressive, cross-body position.

‘Shit, kid, what’s the big idea?’

He was in his fifties - maybe even early sixties. He had long, greasy black hair like an Indian, framing a face stained to a darker shade of brown than his heavily haired torso, the flesh inscribed with countless deep lines where it was exposed above his thickly growing grey and black beard. There was resentful anger in his light blue eyes and the way his discoloured teeth showed between lips all but concealed by the beard and its accompanying moustache.

‘Uh?’

The logger lowered the axe and half-sat on the tree he was trimming: ran a hirsute forearm over his face to clean off most of the sweat beads hanging in the cracks of his skin.

‘One thing I can’t abide is bein’ crept up on.’

Gold maintained his grip on the gun but did not thumb back the hammer. With a jerk of his right thumb over his shoulder he indicated the half-width of the clearing behind him.

‘Rode my horse from there to here, sir. Can’t see that as creeping.’

‘And I’ve spent best part of sixty-one years listenin’ to bigger brutes than these saplings crashin’ down, kid, Which ain’t done my hearin’ any good at all.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

‘And don’t call me, sir. I ain’t been bull of the woods for a long time. Name’s John Lloyd Larkin. The hillbillies around here call me just JL. What can I do for you, kid?’

The alarm at being startled had gone and now he was peering with curiosity at his visitor, and it was obvious that his sight as well as his hearing was impaired.

‘Not a thing. I’m just passing through. Needed to be sure you wouldn’t try to stop me.’

Larkin had examined him from head to toe, then started to check on his horse and gear. ‘You’re the guy Will Gershel says might have killed the Engels and screwed that snot-nose kid of theirs?’

‘You going to try to stop me, Mr Larkin?’

The logger spat and some of the saliva did not clear his beard. ‘Shit, kid, how would I do that? You with them two pistols and that sawn-down shotgun dangling from the saddle?’

Gold nodded. ‘Okay.’

He took his hand from the coat pocket and took up the reins.

‘You have to do anythin’ to that girl and Mrs Gershel to get free?’

‘The girl may have a rope bum around her neck.’

‘If I’m gonna believe that, I have to figure you didn’t do what the girl said you did.’

‘You’re a believer in truth, Mr Larkin.’

‘Then ride away from here in any direction but north, kid. Will Gershel’s a good and honest man. If he wasn’t, he’d have took care of you himself. Seein’ as how you claim Jesse, his own son, did the killin’s. But with the crowd of other hillbillies he’s roundin’ up, he’ll take a back seat. Good and honest men, nearly all of them. But in a crowd, they’ll stick together to protect their own. Wrongs and rights of it won’t make much odds. You ride on the north trail and you’ll head slap bang into them.’

‘They told you a lot, Mr Larkin,’ Gold lit another cheroot, ‘considering you’re not one of them.’

‘No, kid, I ain’t one of them. I’m from Illinois and spent most of my workin’ life up in Montana and Oregon until I got too old to keep pace with the youngsters. And my blood got too thin to take them northern winters. But Will and me, we get on fine, us bein’ such close neighbours. And he asked me a favour. To go down the trail to his place and stand guard over you. Didn’t like the idea of leavin’ Martha to do it. But with so many men to get together over a big piece of country, it needed him and Jesse both to round them up.’

‘Why didn’t you do him the favour, Mr Larkin?’

‘Said I’d think about it, kid. Kept thikin’ instead of how I saw Jesse last night. Ridin’ south real fast. How he didn’t look sick from liquor to me. And how, if he got sick of a sudden, he was close enough to home to make it. Instead of beddin’ down in the timber.’

‘But you didn’t say anything, right?’

A shake of the head. ‘No, kid. On account of I’m an old man who likes to eat regular. And likes workin’ in the timber to earn my bread. But if the people hereabouts started to cut their own stove wood ... well...’

‘Sure, Mr Larkin.’

‘Course, kid, if I was asked right out, I wouldn’t lie about what I seen.’

‘Bye-bye, Mr Larkin.’

He clucked to the horse and tugged gently on the reins to head him across the clearing toward the point where the north trail led into the timber, called after him.

‘Appreciate it,’ Gold acknowledged, and leaned to the side, to flick the partially-smoked cheroot into the fire, a scowl on his face as if the tobacco had suddenly started to taste bad.

And felt the tug of a bullet snag at his coat sleeve. At the same instant as he heard the crack of a rifle. An instant before John Lloyd Larkin grunted and rasped: ‘Shit, some bastard shot me.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

BARNABY Gold kicked free of the left stirrup and straightened his right leg
using the leverage of his right foot in the stirrup to power a headlong leap from the saddle. The gelding, calm in the wake of the sudden gunshot, was alarmed by the abrupt actions of his rider. Reared and bolted.

Gold slammed hard to the ground and grunted with the pain of the impact.

‘Hillbilly sonsofbitches!’ Larkin shrieked.

And as Gold forced himself into a fast roll through the drifting smoke of the fire he caught a glimpse of the logger. Who had stood up and picked up his axe to carry on working as the younger man made to leave. And by so doing had placed his naked torso in the line of fire of the rifle. So that when Gold unwittingly ducked to throw away his cheroot at the moment the sniper squeezed his trigger, the bullet zeroed in on a fresh target - the centre of the hirsute chest of Larkin. Who, as Gold rolled over and over through the smoke, dropped his axe, clutched both big hands to the bloodied area beneath his beard, and twisted to the ground.

‘Gold, you lousy shithead!’ the sniper shrieked, his dismayed tone at the misplaced shot almost a perfect match for that which sounded in the dying curse of Larkin.

Another shot cracked out and the gelding skidded to a halt on the bank of the river. It was a wild one, fired in anger, that exploded chips of bark from the side of a stump. Several yards wide of where Gold traded the insubstantial cover of the smoke for the solidness of the felled tree upon which Larkin had been working.

His leap over the tree and into its cover was seen by the sniper, invited a third shot that came much closer to the intended target.

‘You ain’t gonna get away this time, Gold! Your luck’s almost run out! You wanna start countin’ your last breaths?’

The black-clad young man heard the lever action of the repeater pumped while the sniper was issuing his threat. And had bellied several feet along the trunk before the fourth shot sounded. Exploding a bullet into the trunk at the point where he had first dived into cover.

He was amongst the untrimmed foliage by then, and made a turn to edge away from it, aware that his movements might cause the lighter branches to tremble and reveal his position.

He knew exactly where the sniper was positioned - in a tree, perhaps fifteen feet above the ground to the right of where the north trail ran into the timber. Thought it likely that the man’s
elevated vantage point had only a narrow angle view of the clearing, confined by the foliage which served to hide him.

‘You were crazy to think you could ever get away with what you done, Gold! You never had a snowball’s chance in Hades, shithead! And I’ll see to it you get yours, kid! And if you run, boy, it won’t bother me none havin’ to blast a hole in your back!’

Barnaby Gold listened impassively to the string of taunts and threats. Aware that the man was not yelling to hear himself, for although his voice acted to cover the sounds of creaking branches, it also served to tell Gold that the sniper was climbing down from the tree. Each phrase vented from a position closer to the ground.

The yelling continued and Barnaby Gold took the chance that the sniper was paying more attention to keeping his footing than to whatever area of the clearing he could see. And he raised up on to all fours and went over three more felled trees. Then plunged into the prickly brush of the surrounding timber that Larkin would never get to cut down.

Thorns snagged at his clothes and tore the flesh on the back of his right hand. He protected his face with a forearm, but felt the warmth of blood on his legs as they were barbed through his pants in several places, this as he pushed deeper into the timber. Far enough to be concealed by the vicious brush, but still within earshot of the smallest sounds out on the sunlit area.

The trickling of the river, the crackling of the fire and the sounds of his gelding at the water’s edge, drinking. The sounds of his own breathing and even his heartbeats had greater volume in his ears. After the man intent upon killing him had ceased to shout.

He was standing erect now, facing the clearing that was hidden to his expressionless green eyes. Right hand raised to his mouth, gently sucking at the blood oozing from the torn skin on its back. Left fisted around the eagle-butted Peacemaker, forefinger to the unguarded trigger and thumb on the hammer. Barrel still pointed to the ground.

More than a full minute ticked into history during which the sniper made no sound - intentional or otherwise - to betray his continued presence.

There was not, in Barnaby Gold’s attitude or expression, the least sign that he did not possess the brand of patience that would enable him to stand there in unmoving silence for an infinite number of minutes.