The Killing at Circle C Read online

O’Brien chuckled at Weiss’s crude attempt at humour, came away from the window and put the field-glasses on the table.

  ‘Maybe they will, maybe they won’t,’ he said. ‘But my argument still holds good: why bring in a man who’s been on the right side of the law for a dozen years? A mile up the creek there’s the finest owlhoot guns, the Wild Bunch: Robert Leroy Parker, Harvey Logan, Elza Lay—’

  ‘No!’ The fire in Cajun Pride’s eyes had turned to fury as he hitched at the worn six-gun on his hip, and that fury was directed at Weiss. ‘I don’t give a damn for those fellers, under any name. Call them Butch Cassidy, Kid Curry, call ’em what you like and it makes no damn difference. It’s me wants the Union Pacific’s Overland Flyer. We’ll take it together, just like old times, the Utah Kid and Cold Hand Sagger, one last job—’

  ‘With help from me and O’Brien?’ Weiss said.

  ‘Sure. Of course. You know this, you rode out a week ago, talked to those fellers up in Buffalo, they’ll be here any day now.’

  ‘And together we’ll get this job done?’ O’Brien said. ‘Never mind those others, they’re cavalry makin’ up the numbers, here to pick up the scraps we leave – because this is the big pay day, right, the pot of gold we snatch before you die?’

  ‘Sure, and maybe we’ll both die, me and Daniel Sagger. But what a way to go out, a blaze of glory, the Adams Express car taken by two old timers – by the best.’

  O’Brien sat down, shifted greasy tin plates, toyed with the field-glasses. ‘Maybe Sagger, if and when he gets here, will figure that glory ain’t worth dyin’ for.’

  ‘Too many maybes,’ Pride said dismissively. ‘Maybe this, maybe that. Hell, of course we don’t know. So we wait and see what happens, what the man decides when he gets here, listens to what I have to say. But it’s when, not if. He’ll get here, today, tomorrow, and I have this dream, this vision, and I know Daniel Sagger and he’ll want in and you two, you can be a part of it—’

  ‘I was up there last night,’ Weiss cut in, ‘with the Wild Bunch. We had a few drinks, played some hands of poker, but the talk was mostly about a fortune in bonds and cash carried by the Union Pacific. Butch Cassidy’s got his eyes afixed on that train, mentioned the town of Wilcox.’

  ‘So we move fast, beat them to it.’

  ‘Stop the train where?’

  ‘The name Wilcox came up, you say, and that sounds about right.’

  ‘Same train, same place? You know what Cassidy will do to me?’

  Pride’s smile was cold and distant. ‘With all that cash in your saddle-bags, you won’t be coming back, Karl.’

  For a long moment there was a tense silence in the small cabin. Karl Weiss knew Cajun Pride had a death wish, and he was pretty damn certain he knew why. But what Pride yearned for was his business. Other men were not prepared to die – would do anything to avoid that fate. Weiss had teamed up with Fergel O’Brien because they were caught cold by the Rurales and had ridden out of Mexico spurring their horses and ducking their heads in the same hail of gunfire. They were lucky to be alive. A spell with the outlaws holed up in Robber’s Roost had seen them splash across Green River and ride north to Wyoming and Hole In The Wall, and they’d moved into Cajun Pride’s cabin down-slope from the Wild Bunch’s headquarters to gather strength for the long push to the Canadian border.

  It hadn’t worked out that way. Cajun Pride was silver-tongued, persuasive. His ideas were big, but to see them to fruition he needed alongside him hungry, reckless men with fire in their bellies and, as Weiss pointed out when discussing it with O’Brien, it would make a sweet end to their owlhoot days if they could cross the border into Canada with saddle-bags stuffed with cash.

  But that had been three months ago, and since then everything had turned sour. Pride had begun wasting away before their eyes, his mind kept flipping backwards to the old days, he spent more and more time on his own and suddenly he was obsessed with the idea of one final job with Daniel ‘Cold Hand’ Sagger riding stirrup.

  And that was where his thoughts tailed off. There had never been any mention of the aftermath, of what they would do when the job was finished. Until now. ‘With all that money, you won’t be coming back’, he’d said to Weiss; but when he said it there was a wistful, almost painful look in his eyes, and Weiss was intelligent enough to know that there was more than one way of not coming back and the one Pride was contemplating was something Weiss wanted no part of.

  ‘Rider coming!’

  O’Brien was back at the window, his shout cutting though Weiss’s thoughts and sending him lunging for the door. His eyes snapped towards the distant entrance to the gorge, squinted through the heat haze – and he saw him. A single rider. Out in the open, the distance cutting his movement to a beetle’s crawl as he came down from the gloomy notch in the rocky walls that made Hole In The Wall an impregnable stronghold, and out into bright sunlight.

  ‘It ain’t Skillin,’ O’Brien said. ‘I’d know that filthy bastard anywhere.’ He had the glasses to his eyes. He lowered them, turned as Weiss came back inside. ‘Just the one feller, I ain’t seen him before – so how the hell did he get past the lookout?’

  They both looked at Cajun Pride. Stiffly upright on the hard wooden chair, not bothering to look towards the window, there was a fierce light burning in his black eyes and on his bony knees his thin hands were clenched into fists.

  ‘Daniel “Cold Hand” Sagger,’ he said. ‘He’s come, like I knew he would. I don’t give a damn about Amos Skillin; he was the last chance, the last throw of the dice, but whatever happened back there in Ten Mile Halt, it’s brought Sagger running – and now we can get down to planning the robbery of the Union Pacific: one, brilliant, audacious robbery that’ll make our names known all over the West and set Daniel and you two fellers up for life.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘There’ll be lookouts, eagle eyed, with long rifles to pick us off at a distance,’ Slim Gillo said. ‘So either we look for another way in – and as far as I know there ain’t none – or you’ve got a white flag handy, a long stick to tie it on, and one hell of a plausible tale to tell.’

  ‘The way I see it,’ Jake Cree said, ‘there’ll be one man perched up on the rocks and he’ll be hungry and thirsty and so damn peeved settin’ out there starin’ into the sun he’ll welcome the sight of anything that moves.’

  Will Sagger grinned, discarded the wet piece of grass he’d been absently chewing, and said, ‘So we’ll say the truth lies somewhere down the middle. One sentry, alert because he knows he’s a dead man if anyone slips past him, but not prepared to shoot until he establishes identity. He’ll have glasses, and he’ll use them from time to time. But he’ll be relying on a trail of dust to pinpoint intruders, and seein’ as we got here under cover of darkness and kept our heads down. . . .’

  The three men were off the trail, their grazing horses loosely hobbled, the low north-south ridge on the western side of their overnight resting place giving them cover from that distant lookout while providing them with a clear view of the outlaw stronghold if they inched up to the crest. All three were on that crest, down on their bellies and squinting through the tall grass that nodded in gentle waves before the warm breeze. Now, as one, they wriggled backwards then climbed to their feet, the gangling deputy leading the way down to where saddles and bedrolls were scattered around the blackened rocks encircling the ashes of the dead fire.

  ‘We still ain’t decided,’ Jake Cree said, ‘why Daniel didn’t turn back when he’d plugged the man who murdered his wife.’

  ‘Or even,’ Slim Gillo said, ‘if he did turn back and rode straight past us when we were bedded down snorin’ our heads off. In which case, we’re goin’ to be walkin’ into the lion’s den and maybe gettin’ our fool heads blown off for no damn reason.’

  Will Sagger said nothing. He busied himself tying his bedroll, saddling up, scattering rocks and kicking dirt over the remains of the fire, but all the time his mind was active as he recalled stumbling across a
pile of rocks fifty miles back, the remains of a man lying stinking beneath it with blackened blood staining his shirt front and wild eyes rolled backwards in their sockets to stare whitely at the searing skies.

  Even now the memory of that discovery filled him with perverse pleasure, and his heart swelled with emotion as he imagined his father with the killer in his sights, his finger squeezing the trigger, the dazzling muzzle-flash and the soggy thud of the bullet slamming into Amos Skillin’s grimy throat.

  But that pleasure came and went. It was something he savoured when he was rocking to his horse’s gait and dozing in the saddle, or rolled in his blankets savouring a last cigarette as he gazed up at the timeless stars. And it was something apart, a son’s appreciation of an execution carried out by his father, Daniel Sagger, and done – Will was convinced – with complete justification and as casually as a man would swat a fly. Sagger had removed Amos Skillin without compunction but, unless the killer had talked before he died, Daniel Sagger would be no nearer to understanding the reasons behind his murderous actions. He had done no more than kill the messenger, and so Will Sagger was convinced that his father had not turned back, but had ridden on to confront whatever awaited him at Hole In The Wall.

  ‘All right, looks like that’s us ready to go,’ Jake Cree said, the little gunsmith’s familiar, resonant voice cutting through Will Sagger’s thoughts. ‘We’re all saddled up, those high cliffs guarding Hole In The Wall are no more than a mile to the west, and there’s a sentry settin’ up there just waitin’ for something to happen.’

  Having deliberately planted those disturbing thoughts, Cree looked hard at Slim Gillo, hunkered down picking his teeth; at Will Sagger, standing by his patiently waiting horse cradling his father’s gleaming Winchester ’73. That rifle rarely left his hands. When it did, it was either tucked into the soft leather saddle boot under his right thigh where he could feel it constantly, or deep inside his blankets where the heat of his body warmed the glistening metal and kept its oiled mechanism in smooth working order – ready for instant action.

  ‘So what’s it to be?’ Cree said, as the silence stretched without drawing any comments. ‘Three goddamned musketeers riding in as one to scare the living daylights out of that lonely owlhoot up there, or one of us riding in alone to test the water? – and, though it might have been said in jest, if you think about it that white flag on a stick isn’t such a bad idea.’

  ‘It has to be me,’ Will said. ‘It’s my pa we’re trailing, it’s only right when the time comes it’s me sticks his neck out.’

  ‘What’s the thinking behind that offer?’ Slim Gillo said. ‘You figure your pa knows you’ll come after him, maybe handed out tin-types so those trigger-happy outlaws don’t shoot you on sight?’

  ‘I think he’ll have said something, yes.’

  ‘Yeah, but as the lawman sent along to make sure you don’t do nothing foolish,’ Gillo said, ‘I’m forced to oppose that plan of campaign. In any case, pure common sense tells me it won’t work. If you make it through that notch, me and Jake could be sittin’ out here until winter without knowing if you’re alive or dead. An’ iffen you don’t make it, what the hell am I going to say to Cliff McClure?’

  Standing with both forearms resting on his saddle, looking across the patient horse at the other two men, Sagger grinned mirthlessly. ‘That last sounds like you’re considering your safety, not mine,’ he said, and drew an appreciative chuckle from Jake Cree. But while the morbid jesting could lighten the tension, it could do nothing to solve the dilemma Sagger faced. They’d pushed their horses hard for a hundred miles, rarely discussing what lay ahead but sticking blindly to some unspoken agreement about getting there fast and riding straight into the outlaw stronghold. When faced with the awesome rock barrier and the narrow cleft that could all too easily be guarded by one man with a rifle, the lack of planning suddenly looked stupid, and dangerous.

  Sagger lifted his hands, spread them in a gesture of helplessness and came away from his horse.

  ‘Common sense tells me to wait for nightfall. But knowing my pa’s ahead of us by two clear days and already in there with those hellions screams at me to push ahead, whatever the risk.’

  ‘If darkness gives us the best chance,’ Cree said, ‘we should have gone in last night.’

  Gillo shook his head. ‘About the only thing we’ve agreed on since leaving Circle C is that last night we were too bone weary to risk a confrontation with this Utah Kid.’

  ‘Sad, but true,’ Jake Cree said. ‘We’d mulled over the idea Daniel Sagger might once have been a lawman. Then we halfway decided if he wasn’t a lawman he was an outlaw riding with the Kid. If the first’s right, then maybe the Kid’s got some notion of revenge. But if he was an owlhoot. . . ?’

  He spread his hands, looked from Gillo to Sagger.

  ‘There’s no answer that’s entirely right or wrong,’ Will Sagger said, ‘and anyway we’re wasting time. I’m going in.’

  ‘All right,’ Slim Gillo said uneasily, ‘but listen hard to this. We’re kinda bogged down here, no place to go in daylight without bein’ seen, but we’ve got an option. This ridge gets higher a little ways to the north, and there’s a scattering of trees giving better cover. So me and Jake’ll move up there, wait around. But if we ain’t heard from you in twenty-four hours’ – he looked at Cree for approval, got it, turned back to Sagger – ‘we’ll come after you – so if you do find your pa and maybe come across this Utah hombre, you make damn sure things’re sorted out one way or another.’

  ‘Cliff McClure couldn’t have put it any clearer,’ Will Sagger said, ‘and knowing you two are backing me up makes the ride in that much easier.’ He saw the glint of pride in the deputy’s eyes, the almost imperceptible straightening of his lanky frame, and grinned. ‘Heck, by the time I finish telling them about the posse that’s waiting on the plain to pull me out of there, every owlhoot at Hole In The Wall will be eager to throw down his guns.’

  With a final glance at the two older men who were both gamely trying to hide their misgivings, he returned to his horse, swung quickly into the saddle and rode away at an angle across and up the ridge. When he went over the top he looked back once, caught the quick farewell flick of Jake Cree’s hand and swallowed hard as he pointed his horse towards the open plain and the daunting barrier of high cliffs.

  It was still early, the sun bright but not yet hot enough to disperse the pockets of mist that lay untouched by the mild breeze in shallow basins and sharply defined rocky clefts. It was through this scarred, barren landscape that Will Sagger rode, not hurrying, keeping his horse to an easy trot and all the while scanning the cliffs that lay ahead of him and in particular the break in them that gave the outlaw hideout its name.

  The rock faces and summits on either side of that infamous notch appeared so naked that it was difficult to see where a man with a rifle could hide. But Will Sagger had done enough riding in his ranch work at Circle C to know that sun and distance smoothed out contours and turned the deepest gullies and ravines into insignificant smudges of light and shade. Sure enough, as his horse carried him nearer to the awesome barrier, his keen eye picked out the shadows high up on those rock faces that indicated cuts, ledges and overhangs in the apparent smoothness – and when he was within 500 yards of the notch, climbing steadily through a wide canyon that narrowed suddenly not too far ahead of him to lead directly into that forbidding break in the cliffs, he caught a bright flash high up on the sheer wall of rock that was there and gone in an instant and could only have been the reflection of sunlight on metal.

  Suddenly, his heart was thumping, his mouth dry even as the cold sweat broke out on his brow. Forcing himself to keep his horse moving up the slope, he guided it with the hard muscles of his thighs and a light touch on the reins and leaned forward to stroke its neck. Under cover of that most natural of movements – and the wide brim of his hat – his eyes were darting, combing the crevices in the rocks above him, searching for the slightest movement, h
is hands ready to flash in an instant to the stock of the gleaming rifle that nestled so reassuringly beneath his right thigh.

  In that manner, using the steepness and severity of the climb to sway his body one way then another so that he was never still in the saddle, he advanced twenty yards, fifty yards – then a hundred yards, and still with nothing to alarm him, nothing to break the heavy silence that lay like a warm and oppressive blanket all around the lonely clatter of his horse’s hooves and the increasingly hard rasping of its breathing.

  Then, as he moved out of the sunlight and into the cold shadows that marked the entrance to Hole In The Wall, from the heights above him a stone came rattling. It bounced from ledge to ledge, arced high, then clattered on to the trail not ten yards in front of his mount sending gravel flying like buckshot. The horse whinnied, jerked its head wildly and lurched sideways. Caught off balance, Sagger grabbed for the horn with one hand while his other tried in vain to reach the butt of the Winchester ’73. But he had been thrown the wrong way. He cursed, used his knees to right the startled animal, let go of the horn and leaned down to his right.

  As he did so – as his right hand touched the smooth, polished wood and he began to withdraw the rifle – a mighty blow slammed into his shoulder. There was no time to react, no time to think, no strength left in his body to do either. He felt himself toppling from the saddle before the crack of the rifle high above him had reached ears that could no longer hear, and fell and went on falling into a blackness that was bottomless and without end.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘A day and a half,’ Daniel Sagger said. ‘That’s how long I’ve been here in this godforsaken hole. Most of it’s been spent sleeping, smoking, lazing around in the sun or watching you and your partners do the same – and I still don’t know what the hell’s going on. Why did you bring me here, Cajun? More to the point, why are you keepin’ on with this crazy law-breaking when it’s obvious you’re a sick man?’