Funeral By The Sea (11 page)

Equine cries of agony and terror sounded above the din of the wagon doomed by opposing forces,

Other traces snapped. And the two horses on the left galloped toward the top of the ravine, still linked together but free of their burden.

One dead animal with another suffering broken legs struggling atop it was an insurmountable obstacle for the mountain wagon which still had sufficient momentum to free-wheel at speed on the incline.

The front right wheel slammed into horseflesh and forced it and the left wheel to turn. And the entire wagon to shudder its unwillingness to grind to such an abrupt halt. Then the rear wheels ceased to turn. But they did slide, in an arc across the trail to slew the wagon around.

Too fast for its centre of gravity to hold it stable. So that it canted violently to the left and its right rear wheel came clear of the ground and began to spin again.

The slide came to an end and for part of a second the wagon teetered.

Barnaby Gold launched himself off the sloping tops of the barrels. Aware he could be crushed if they broke free of their ropes and he was tipped among them should the wagon roll on to its side. Knowing, too, that if the wagon slammed back down on to all four wheels, he would be another pefect target. Probably stunned and sprawled out on top of the freight, in the sights of the rifleman among the pines who was even now waiting to trigger a second killing shot from his rifle.

He hit the ground, and fought against submitting to the comforting darkness that offered to
enclose him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HE fell face down into thick brush that bent and snapped under his weight, compressing so that the impact was only slightly less than if he had crashed to the hard-packed trail.

The futile thought that it would have been less painful to be thrown on to the fine sand of the beach flashed through his mind.

But then he forced himself to disregard any notion that was not connected with completing his escape from the men of Oceanville. The one up among the trees on the other side of the toppling wagon. And the group who would soon race their horses around the slab of rock and into the ravine.

And the next step to achieving this was to fight against the almost overwhelming demands of his mind to embrace unconsciousness as a means of defeating the fresh waves of pain wracking his punished body.

He lay utterly still with his eyes tightly closed and forced himself to breathe rhythmically. Sucking in the hot, pungent air through his nostrils and expelling it between his bared, clenched teeth.

He could hear the rasping sounds of his own breathing, which to him had a higher volume than the cacophony of the mountain wagon wreck.

The sides of the rig slammed to the ground and the overstrained ropes finally parted to hurl the barrels along the trail, forcefully enough to split open some of them. And it was the welter of kerosene spilling from the shattered barrels that made the morning air so pungent to breathe.

The wagon completed its roll to finish upside-down, one front wheel buckled and smashed and the others spinning.

The groaning horse with the fractured bones gave up his struggle and became still except for the movement of flesh as he breathed.

Barnaby Gold felt something in his right fist and opened his eyes to see what it was.

The Murcott. And he was struck by another futile thought - a regret that he had left his three-piece shovel in the stable of the big house. He was very proud of that shovel. The first exercise in cabinet-making with which he had been completely satisfied.

A long time ago. He had made many caskets since then. Relieving the workaday monotony of constructing such stock in trade by building reproduction furniture in his spare time in the workshop behind the funeral parlor in Fairfax.

Then there had been that final order for a casket. Using the best materials money could buy. He already considered himself out of the undertaking business when Floyd Channon rode into Fairfax to ask for such a casket, was on the point of leaving for Europe.

But the big Texan promised a hefty fee for the job and Barnaby Gold needed the money to finance the trip. He had waited so long and was prepared to delay the start for a few more days. The time it took to fashion the expensive casket. And the time it took for Floyd Channon to go kill its potential occupant.

Who turned out to be a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, beautiful woman named Emily Jane Gold - runaway wife of Barnaby Gold Junior.

The young Fairfax undertaker had once been very much in love with Emily Jane and there was no question but that he felt compelled to kill her murderer, who had been as badly treated by her as Gold was before him.

Which made Barnaby Gold Junior a hunted man. For the Channons of San Antonio, Texas, were a close knit family. And a very wealthy one, able to hire the best gunslingers available to hunt down the killer of Floyd and kill him.

It was one such hired gunslinger who had sniped a killing shot at Eve Delroy after she yelled his name and the threat to beat him to death. Then shot down two men in front of the big house to aid his headlong escape bid aboard the wagon.

One of that type who was determined to kill the prey personally - so as to accept Channon dollars with a clear conscience.

Gold growled, ‘Goddamnit to hell,’ through his gritted teeth. And shook his head violently to rid his mind of this line of thought.

Right now, the motives of the man who was such an expert rifle shot did not matter. Hal Delroy and his men were a known and very real threat. And if he just continued to lay sprawled out in the bush, a hand fisted around a shotgun with both barrels already discharged, he was living on borrowed time.

He moved his limbs tentatively, young face crinkling with a grimace of pain. But none of it felt sharp enough to signal broken bone.

He rolled on to his side and eased his knees up to his belly. Saw his dislodged hat and reached a hand toward it. Heard the thud of many horses at the gallop beyond the slab of rock some hundred and fifty yards down the slope.

Then heard the crack of a rifle. And snatched his hand, clutched to the hat brim, back to his side, as the bullet snagged through the brush and became buried in the dirt beneath. Just a fraction of an inch from where the hat had rested.

A cackle of laughter came from out of the trees on the other side of the ravine to where Barnaby Gold lay, temporarily in the cover of the overturned wagon.

‘Get on your feet, stud! With your hands raised way up above your head! Because you ain’t got no chance at all of...’

His voice trailed away, then he vented a scream, which competed with the thunder of galloping hooves and then for an instant with the familiar crack of another rifle shot.

Gold risked raising himself up on to his knees to look across the underside of the wrecked wagon. In time to see the man on the far side of the ravine crash down through the foliage of the tree in which he had been stationed.

Then a fast volley of rifle fire drew the gaze of his pain-filled green eyes to the high ground at one side of the ravine’s narrow entrance. Where a man, still in dark silhouette, stood on the skyline beside his horse. Aiming a repeater rifle from his shoulder and directing fire down the slope of the trail.

The stream of bullets cracked through the air high and wide of where Gold knelt. And he wrenched his head around to locate the target - saw the billowing cloud of dust raised by abruptly halted horses and men leaping to the ground.

With only seconds to go before the man providing the covering fire emptied his gun, Gold had no time to test if his hurting legs would bear his weight. And he did not even try to use the Murcott as a crutch in staggering to his feet. Then turned, almost fell, and forced himself to start for the trees on the ravine side, moving at a fast and clumsy walk - certain that if he tried to run the brush would trip him and send him pitching on to his face again.

The fusillade of rifle fire came to a sudden end while he was still in the open and in full view of the cursing men at the foot of the ravine.

He glanced in the other direction and was in time to see the lone rifleman back out of sight, his horse following him.

And when he swung his gaze toward his pursuers not one was to be seen. Just snorting and ground-scraping horses, their riders having scrambled into cover.

Only the shotgun-blasted Steve and, further up the trail, the man with no lower legs, were sprawled out inert in the morning sunlight.

Gold did not pause in his painful progress up the brush-covered slope as he made this fast survey of the situation. And slammed into a pine trunk through not looking where he was going.

He bounced off it and went down on to his back. An instant before a burst of rifle fire from below peppered the bark with bullets.

This time there was no temptation to give in to his mental and physical demands for respite.

The trio of sentries in the ravine were all dead and Hal Delroy and his men were concentrated down at the lower end of the slope.

The marksman at the top end might or might not give him further help for whatever reason. But as he rolled over on to his belly and turned to crawl through the brush and into the high timber, Gold decided to discount the mystery man for now. He was no longer out in the open and no more of Delroy’s men stood between him and the way out of Oceanville. He was quite capable of dealing with this situation himself.

Another burst of gunfire sent bullets thudding into the tree trunk as he hauled himself around it, spraying him with pieces of bark.

Then he could go no further. Spread-eagled on the pine-needled floor of the timber stand, shaded from the sun by the overhead foliage, his punished and exhausted body made a demand for rest that could not be denied.

He tried. Summoned every ounce of willpower he could muster to force his muscles to respond to the commands of his mind. But he was in the tenacious grip of a paralysis and came within a hairbreadth of giving shrill vent to the fear that this aroused within him.

He controlled the urge. And began to talk softly to himself.

‘You’re a cold-hearted sonofabitch who never wanted help and never asked for it. You’re all conceited self-confidence. Have been since you were a kid. Nothing ever phases you, you snot-nose Barnaby Gold Junior. You got everyone’s back up being the way you are. You never gave a damn for anybody and never cared that they didn’t give a damn for you. So where the hell do you get off figuring to yell uncle. Just because you’re in a spot. You’ve been in a spot ever since you paid no attention to the old-timer and had him drive you into this ravine. And you just told yourself you’re almost free and clear. Goddamnit to hell, you’re going to get to Europe. And no hired gunslingers or bunch of outlaws are going to stop you.’

He became quiet, face beaded with sweat and clothing sticking to him. Began to consciously breathe regularly again.

All around him was silence. Except for the faint thud of combers on the beach in the distance.

He flexed his muscles, one at a time. Starting with his fingers and toes. The unasked for idea that he must have given a damn about Emily Jane entered his mind. And as he almost cursed aloud at wasting time on this side issue, the memory of another Emily came to the forefront of his consciousness,

Delroy’s whore. She was in a worse spot than he was. Old Seth Harrow too, maybe. It would not take too much irrational thought in the twisted mind of the top man of Oceanville for the wagon driver to be allocated blame for the lethal trouble Barnaby Gold had brought to the community on the beach. And the hapless Mexicans who had been ordered to lock the prisoner in the basement.

All his muscles could function in isolation now and he tested his ability to make them work in
concert. Discovered they could, provided his nervous system could stand the barrage of pain.

He rose on to all fours, careful to check that he could not be seen above the brush that fringed the timber line.

It had been quiet for a long time and when he looked down at the shotgun which lay between his splayed hands he rejected an impulse to reload it. The metallic sounds of the gun being broken open to eject the spent cartridges and cock the hammers would ring out loud and clear in the tensely silent ravine, reveal to the Oceanville men he was still close to the point where he went from sight around the bullet-scarred pine tree.

Out on the trail directly opposite him, the kerosene had ceased to run from the split-open barrels scattered about the overturned wagon. The horse with the broken legs was still breathing, but no longer gave sound to his pain. Up at the top of the ravine the runaway pair from the team had bolted out of sight and the high ground from which the stranger had provided covering fire was now a static blot of rock and vegetation against the blue brilliance of the morning sky. Peering down on the trail below the wreckage and the dying horse, Gold had the opportunity for the first time to see the extent of the injuries that had killed two men - the gory double amputation caused by the wagon wheels and the ghastly wounds which the shotgun blast had torn in the flesh of the man named Steve.