Chapter 8
1122 Words
They rode sluggishly across the endless plain, all three men wearing broad-brimmed Mexican sombreros. Hunched over their scrawny mounts, whose own legs buckled under the weight of their riders, the relentless heat drained all strength and made even the most simple of physical actions an epic in determination and effort. The lead man was huge and rode a mule. Against each of the animal’s flanks banged and clanged bulging canvas bags, the noise from which reverberated across the scorching landscape, a landscape bereft of shade.
‘Soloman,’ said the second in line, his voice weak and scratchy, ‘we have to find a spot to rest, if not for us then the horses.’
Solomon rolled his huge shoulders, pulled off his hat, and dragged a sleeve across his brow. He was bald save for a few wisps of oily black hair, which he had once, some while ago, swept over his pate in an attempt to disguise his lack of anything on top. It hadn’t worked and he had given up the struggle and surrendered to the inevitable. Compared to his bulk, the head was so small people called him ‘pin-head’, but never to his face. Such a thing would be suicidal, for Soloman was a man well versed in killing. It was something he enjoyed.
He reined in his mule. The animal, when it decided it wanted to, slowed to almost stopping, but not quite. ‘I ain’t too sure where any of that shade might be, Pete.’
Pete came up alongside him. The sweat rolled down his face, cutting tiny rivulets through the grime covering every inch of him. ‘We should never have come this way. We should have taken the trail. It’s known to us and we—’
‘They’d have caught up with us.’
‘Who? Sheriff Roose? It would be hours, maybe even days before he worked out what had happened.’
Who‘Well, I wasn’t taking no chances.’
‘That was Reuben Cole,’ said the third man, bringing his horse alongside the other side of Solomon. ‘I saw the portrait of his daddy above the fireplace before I put my Bowie through it.’
‘Reuben-whoever-he-was is dead,’ said Solomon with feeling. He recalled the deep, almost s****l satisfaction he derived from slamming his boot into the man’s ribcage.
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ said Pete.
Turning in the saddle, Solomon gave Pete a withering glare. ‘I beat him real good, Pete. No one could survive the beating I gave that piece of bar-filth.’
‘Yeah, so you say, Sollo, but we don’t know that for s—’
‘I know it. I ain’t never been bettered in no fight and not many have ever got up again after taking a beating from me. He’s the same. He’s dead, I tell you – D-E-D, dead!’
Idead‘Well, that makes the case for Roose coming after us even more definite, don’t it?’ The others looked at the third man. Pencil-thin, his face, hands and any other piece of exposed flesh were burnt almost to a crisp, every patch of his clothing, both covering his torso and his legs, soaked through with sweat. ‘What?’
‘You don’t have to state the obvious, Notch.,’ said Pete, ‘we all know what Roose will do.’
‘Yeah, but like I say,’ put in Solomon, turning his eyes to the distant horizon and the mass of dry grey scree that divided them from it, ‘he won’t discover the body for days. We have plenty of time to make it to Lawrenceville and deliver this here booty to Mr Kestler. It’ll be a payday like no other.’
‘If we ever make it,’ said Notch, shaking his water canteen for grim effect. The sound of a few dregs of liquid splashed around inside. ‘I ain’t barely got a mouthful left in here.’
‘Me neither,’ said Pete, downcast.
‘Will you two stop squawking! Lawrenceville cannot be more than half a day’s ride away, so we are not going to die from thirst out here.’ He gingerly dipped his right hand under his filthy shirt to feel the pulsating wound where Cole had shot him. The bullet had gone clean through. ‘I always was lucky when it comes to getting shot, but this hurts like sin.’ He looked at his b****y fingers and licked them.
‘I hope you is right about us not dying out here, Sollo,’ groaned Pete, head hanging further down onto his chest, voice sounding defeated.
‘I am right, damn you, Pete! You ain’t been shot but all you do is moan like some old woman. Now buck up and let’s continue before we really do fry out here.’
With that, Solomon kicked the mule’s flanks several times. Eventually, it moved a little faster, but not by much. It plodded across the hard, arid ground where nothing grew, everything covered in a uniform grey dust which reflected the glare of the sun’s rays, bouncing them back into the faces of both men and beasts. Solomon pulled off his neckerchief and covered most of his face with it and, to give further relief from the brightness, pull his sombrero down as far as he could without causing it to fall off. In this way, he could protect himself from the scorching glare as much as possible. The others followed his example, set their shoulders, and continued, resigned to what they had to do. Too far to go back the way they had come, there was no other choice but to follow Soloman’s lead.
It may have been two hours later, although it probably felt like two days when Pete thought he heard something, reined in his horse and strained to listen.
daysThere! Beyond the distant crest, the sound of …
Narrowing his eyes, he saw it, stark against the white sky. A trail of grey trailing backwards from its point of origin. Not a fire. Smoke. ‘Smoke by Jiminy! Smoke!’
Smoke!The others reacted, Soloman the first to do so, jumping down from his mule when it refused to come to a total standstill. ‘Darn it, wish I had me a telescope. Smoke you say?’
‘No mistaking it,’ cried Pete, unable and unwilling to keep the triumph out of his voice.
‘Maybe it’s Injuns,’ said Notch forlornly. ‘They send smoke signals, don’t they?’
‘No it ain’t Indians, that’s the railroad,’ said Soloman, spinning around and throwing his sombrero high into the air. ‘The railroad to Lawrenceville! Boys, we is saved!’
The others gawped at him but they knew it was true.
They were saved.
- Writer
