CHAPTER 21
Riding Alone
Dance In An Alley
A Town Without Calamity
THE pre-dawn air made the pine needles and good earth all the more fragrant, but Gideon had no time for pleasantries. Keeping an eye on his back trail already consumed what was left of his attention. Guiding his roan with care, he wove around trees so close together a snake couldn’t slither through, let alone a horse as broad in the shoulder as Henry.
Gideon was running and knew it for running. If he had tried to tell himself why, whatever he said would have been a lie. Another place, another time. . . maybe it could have been different. But not now, nor ever again. He was alone and that was the way it should be– or rather, that’s the way it was even though it shouldn’t have been. That much Gideon could say and, if it was not precisely the whole truth, it was at least not entirely a lie.
The nightmare stepped forward and presented its credentials. Gideon had lost some peace of mind over that night and he really hadn’t any to spare. But the nightmare hadn’t made him run. There was no point in running from that because, no matter where he went, the dream came along for the ride.
How long had it been since someone had known his secrets— and kept them? Gideon knew exactly how long and exactly how faithfully. He had said words over the man who had kept them. Over him, and everyone else at the Harris place.
Now Aspen knew things Gideon preferred no one knew. That was a lot of leverage for a man to have and it would not do, not by half. Somehow, the very fact that Aspen hadn’t told anyone about the nightmare only made things worse. An unnamable anxiety had built up, making Gideon feel like a pot of water edging towards boiling.
Court allotted do-gooder, that’s what he is. Him an’ his whole family with ‘im. Best you keep that front an’ center, boyo.
Gideon clung to the thought— and then another presented itself. What else did Aspen know? Suppose Gideon had said something in his disturbed sleep. What if he had gone so far as to confess his guilt?
All that mattered now was getting away from the ranch, because the men of the Harris ranch deserved justice. Was that what drove the nightmares? Not the people themselves as if their spirits haunted him, though Gideon sometimes wondered, but perhaps it was that unfulfilled promise of justice begging to be satisfied. When the day came and he had finally fulfilled his promise, then what? Would the dreams stop? And, if they did, what would be left?
A dead branch snagged on Gideon’s arm. The resulting crack echoed through the trees, unnaturally loud.
Hey, boyo! Pay ‘tention to what’s in front-a ya. This ain’t no time to drift.
He was right there. The sky had already begun to blush at the approach of morning. Great scattered clouds lit up in the most incredible pinks and oranges. Some other day, Gideon might have drawn up to appreciate the sight; today he saw only the passage of time and hurried on.
Shy of noon, he slowed to give Henry a breather. The country had become more barren with fewer pines and more craggy, red rocks. Well below and to his right, Gideon could see a stage rolling along the wheel ruts that stood for a road, a billow of dust tagging along behind.
Something shimmered in the corner of his vision and he hit the ground before he even knew why. Sunlight had glinted off metal. Who would have cause to be up in the rocks? Gideon thought of Tarlston’s men and he surely wondered. The world was full of fish bigger than Gideon Fletcher though which, in a way, offered some comfort. He gave it another think. Anyone tucked up in those rocks would have perfect cover, with a wide field of fire, right above the path of the stage.
He led Henry around to a patch of scrub brush and looped the reins around a branch. A rifle sure would have been welcome, but a handgun would have to do. Gideon cursed floridly and the sentiment lost nothing for being muttered under his breath. He may have gotten shut of the Rivers, but he had done so at the cost of his weapons.
Ya know, if’n life were the least bit fair, there wouldn’t be no Rivers.
Well it ain’t, so I reckon as you got it to do.
There was no arguing with that, not coming or going, so Gideon got on with it. He scanned every surface, every crevice. Somewhere was something that did not belong. Step by step he worked his way closer to that glint. About to move again, he saw it. Barely visible behind the edge of a boulder lay a patch of brown fabric. An instant later the color was gone. Had he been seen? There was no shout, no shot. Gideon let out his breath and scouted for a place to get a decent look at the owner of that fabric.
A collection of squared off boulders, thrown down long ago from higher up the mountain, lay some sixty feet away. Gideon shimmied over, nestled himself in the cover they provided, and peered out.
Slightly down slope, a man of average build stretched out on his stomach. Everything he wore was brown, even his paisley shirt, which made him mighty hard to spot. More interesting than clothing was the rifle cradled in his hands and pointing at the road below. The gunman did not shift restlessly nor even twitch, this was a man entirely at his ease. A professional.
Gideon was so close, were he to sneezed, it would be the last thing he did. The rattle of the stage and beating of hooves grew nearer. He had to do something.
Wouldn’t it be nice if’n these things happened at more convenient times? Like when we were armed?
Gideon leaned forward and his hand pressed against a rock. Thoughtfully, he measured its weight. The gunman moved, bracing the rifle against his shoulder, and Gideon’s body took over. He tossed a pebble to the left and leapt straight ahead. Before the gunman could bring the rifle around, the rock came up and he went down, out cold. The whole thing took a matter of seconds. From below, a shotgun roared.
“‘Scuse me, friend, won’t be a minute,” Gideon said, snatching up the rifle.
A pistol fired. Kneeling in the gunman’s place, Gideon saw two men were already down. He ignored them in favor of the two still riding. The rifle’s report mixed with another and both riders were hit, one falling headlong from the saddle. The stage slowed and came to a stop.
Gideon regarded the unconscious man beside him with a twist of irony.
“Well, mister,” he said, “I do thank ya kindly for your patience. Reckon it’s your turn now.”
Happily, the gunman owned a handkerchief and Gideon pressed this into service. Amazing really, the many functions of a plain square of cotton cloth, and yet so often of late it seemed to be doing fulltime duty as handcuffs.
“Better you than me,” Gideon opinioned, snugging his own kerchief around his captive’s ankles. He took the man’s six-gun, pocketed the spare cylinder and picked up the rifle. “It’s my fig’rin’ you’re gonna pack you a grudge, friend. Seein’ as how that there’s burden ‘nough on any man, ya might say I’m a-doin’ ya a favor by light’nin’ your load.”
Life’s a mighty notional dance partner. Most of the time she doesn’t take much notice until everything train-wrecks. The little stuff, more or less, usually does not matter– but sometimes it does. Had Gideon turned that gunman over, the next few days might have gone differently. He might have raised dust for Mexico. He might have ducked down a hole and disappeared. But he didn’t and such are the pebbles that cause a landslide.
Gideon skipped and skittered his way back to Henry and, one foot in the stirrup and the future waiting, he paused. The last thing he needed was to be seen, yet how could he leave a man, unconscious and unarmed, to whatever might befall him and not a soul so much as knowing he was there? Then again, that gent had bought his own ticket and no two ways about it.
What kind-a gent are you?
I s’pose. . . there might could be some argument for a-usin’ the stage as cover.
The driver and shotgun rider were nigh on to rolling out by the time Gideon reached them. The only surviving robber had been secured to his horse and tethered behind the stage. He was gagged and bound, a make-shift bandage wrapped around his shoulder. The bodies of his compadres were also behind the stage, lashed to their
saddles.
“Hello, gen’l’mun!” Gideon sang out, neighborly like.
“That you shootin’ from the rocks?” the driver asked.
He was somewhere in his forties, a touch round in the belly, with more than a day’s worth of scraggly whiskers and a bottom lip full of chew. Beside him stood a younger man, broad shouldered and plenty salty looking. His thick hair was so blond as to be nearly white. He came off as the type who would start a brawl just to fill a Saturday night and then buy everyone a drink after having his fun.
“Yep, that were me,” Gideon answered, unabashedly radiating satisfaction.
“Glad you were a friend.”
“’Pears ya could-a done alright your ownselves.”
“Mebbe,” the older man grinned broadly at his partner, who had a handkerchief tied around his leg.
“Don’t you start, Bill, or so help me—”
“Aw, button yer lip. You’re the one—”
“I’m the one gonna bust your lip, you old—”
“Go soak your shirt,” said the driver. “You ain’t old enough to take me ‘n you know it.”
“Mister,” Gideon interrupted what looked to be building to a one-upping contest he plain did not have the time for. “I left one of ‘em up in them rocks. Ya wanna fetch ‘im down?”
The older mister held a silent parlay with the younger mister. After a slow second, the younger shrugged and the elder answered.
“He breathin’?”
“Yep,” Gideon nodded.
“Bleedin’?”
“Not to mention.”
“Leave ‘im. We’re already behind schedule. Sheriff can come an’ get ‘im if’n he’s inclined. Lem, if’n you can mind your manners, whyn’t you ride inside?”
“Just gimme a hand up,” the shotgun rider said, unwilling to abandon his duties.
Gideon strongly suspected the other reason was the pretty young gal they had riding passenger. No mistaking her, she was an eastern woman and Lem’s manners might not stack up that high. The blond lifted a foot to climb up, but Bill put a restraining hand on his arm.
“S’pose you pass out ‘n fall on your thick head? Get yourself inside, boy.”
“I’ll get myself on that seat where I belong, old man.”
“Now see here—”
“I’d be willin’ to ride along a spell,” Gideon jumped into the middle of their bickering, “if’n it’d be no use to y’all.”
The driver looked Gideon over from faded hat to tattered boots and back again.
“You’re just a kid,” he said.
Gideon had the feeling the comment was not so much a sneer as a test.
“Folks do keep a-sayin’ that,” he acknowledged, whimsy in his eye, rifle in hand, and half a smile playing happily on his lips.
“Bill,” said the blond, “he’s a kid who can shoot.”
“You got a point, Lem. Now, get inside an’ don’t bleed on comp’ny prop’ty. Boy, climb on up.”
Gideon thanked him for the invitation, but declined on the grounds that Henry wouldn’t care to be associated with the company he would have to keep behind the stage. Horses can get jittery around some men, especially the bleeding kind. He went up front instead, a point rider whose tracks would be obliterated by those of the coach.
Outside the stage office in Caswell Crossing, Bill drew up and sent a runner for the sheriff and the doctor. Both arrived quickly and each did their job efficiently, seeing the living to a cell and the deceased to the undertaker.
“Thanks, Bill,” Sheriff Gandy said, having listened attentively to the driver’s report of the incident. “You sure you’re alright, Lem?”
The blond leaned out of the stage window. “Right as rain and ready to roll. Get your carcass up there, Bill.”
“I ought to leave you here.”
“Try it and I’ll fill your backside full of buckshot.”
“See what I have to put up with mile after mile?” Bill climbed up to the seat, lamenting his fate to the sheriff. “Ya think they pay me enough for this?”
“Aw, quit yammering and get them horses movin’, you old coot,” said Lem.
They pulled out and their squabbling could still be heard as they rounded the last timber building. How many miles had those two traveled with no one to talk to but each other? Thousands probably. And each relying on the other to watch his back. That could drive a man to distraction, or to whatever you wanted to call their bickering camaraderie.
Gandy spun around, far too late to do any good.
It was that dratted council meeting. His brain was so full of desk talk and paperwork there was no room left for his real job. Blast! It could have been someone else, by all rights Gideon Fletcher should have been out at the Rolling Rivers. Still. . . a young man right smack in the middle of trouble brought an indelible image to mind.
The lawman in him niggled away at the idea as Luke Gandy returned to his office. The doctor had finished with the prisoner, given a few instructions to Deputy Wilson, and was already on his way out.
“You’ll be at Eddie’s for Sunday supper?” Gandy reminded his friend. “I hear she’s making that mushroom soup of hers.”
“Is she now?” the doctor replied. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be missing that.”
“The day you turn down Eddie’s cooking, Tadhg Connell, I’ll eat my badge,” said Gandy, pronouncing the doctor’s name properly as Tige instead of Tad as some did.
He saw the man to the door and turned to find his deputy kitting up.
“If it’s that other gunman that has you worried,” Deputy Wilson said, plucking his hat from a peg, “I thought I’d go up there right now.”
“Am I that obvious?” Gandy wondered.
His deputy smiled broadly. “Let’s say it’s a good thing you’re not being interrogated. So what is it?”
It was awfully useful having a deputy who could read him so well. There were times and places such familiarity made the difference between breathing and pushing up daisies. All the same, Gandy was thankful not everyone could figure him so aptly; a sheriff who couldn’t keep his own secrets was a man short for the job.
“Thought I wasn’t being interrogated,” he said, helping himself to the ever-present coffee pot.
“Alright, I’ll get gone,” Wilson said, one hand raised in false submission and the other lifting a rifle from the rack.
“I’d appreciate it,” Gandy returned, and then added more seriously, “Only get Mark to go. I know it’s his day off. Tell him. . . tell him I’ll throw in those disgusting candies he likes along with my undying gratitude.”
“He only gets them so we won’t eat any. You want I should accompany him?”
“No. My gut tells me you better swing north.”
Wilson read the contemplative look he wasn’t supposed to see and thoughtfully did not comment.
“Sure thing,” he agreed. “Mind telling me what, or who, I’m supposed to be hunting?”
“A boy, one folks wouldn’t give a second glance and no lawman worth his star would forget.”
“Gideon Fletcher,” Wilson translated accurately. “You think he’s flown the coop?”
“Could be. Bill said he had some help out there. And he’d never have guessed it, but the kid shaped up pretty well. Said he’d seen grown men do less. You be gentle, but if it is Gideon, you get him back here.”
“Yes, sir,” Wilson agreed, wondering some at his boss’s unique interest in Gideon Fletcher.