Wild Cards and Iron Horses (23 page)

Jon looked up into the night sky. A few days ago he had been stepping onto a train car, the stars bright overhead and sparkling with the possibility of finally finishing his quest. Now all he could see were dim discs, light blots set against the smoggy darkness.

Prosperity Ridge, for all its claims on industrialization and modernization, still acted like a small medieval town when the sun went down. While the streetlights revealed scattered groups of men and women scuttling through alleys and back doors, probably on missions and errands that would be better suited to darkness, the majority of the residents seemed to move indoors where the safety of the electric lights and gas lamps offered protection from the night terrors that existed everywhere. The similarity with the larger cities back East and of London tugged at his heart, along with the memories of his family and friends. A sharp shake of his head cleared the fumes from his lungs and reminded him of the task at hand.

“Victor took the last horse and wagon.” Jon let out a snort, scaring a dog sitting on the nearby sidewalk. A visit to the nearest livery had been pointless. The owner had mumbled that he had just sold his last wagon and horse to some man who needed a ride right away and had taken the remaining wares without question. The man had matched Victor’s description and had paid in cash without even inspecting the wagon or horse, tossing the money at the businessman before dashing off with the buckboard and horse.

Jon had nodded to the man once before heading off for the town limits, Gil keeping him from making a wrong turn with a subtle nudge of his shoulder every now and then against his side.

Gil continued talking, despite their fast pace. “More the fool, buying from Lldyellen. He don’t sell good anything, including horses. Besides, getting us a wagon would only slow us down.”

“How do you figure that?” Jon nodded politely to a pair of women who shuffled through a door into a private residence. His heart was pounding as if he’d run a mile, and they hadn’t even left the town yet.

“A wagon makes more noise and we’d have to stick to the road with a horse. This way we’ll be able to track them in silence,” Gil recited, his tone that of a teacher to a pupil.

“But they left in a wagon. They’re not going to go off the trail,” Jon answered. A stray cat hissed before ducking back into an overturned garbage can.

“He’s a city man. He’s not going to go off the trail, not at first. And when he does go off, we’ll be able to see it right fast.”

Jon looked up at the full moon, the lit orb’s rays desperately fighting to break through the haze and smog. “I hope you’re right. I’m not sure that Sam has until morning, if Victor’s gone mad.” He shuddered inwardly, thinking of the men he’d seen in the military hospitals, driven insane by seeing their friends blown apart in battle. One had started chewing at his fingernails, moving so far as to begin ripping his own flesh away. Another had refused to go out in daylight, fearing that he’d be burned alive.

Gil stopped, looking over his shoulder. “We’ll get ’er back, sir. Just you watch. We’re gonna bring her back to ’er dad and to you.”

Jon smiled, feeling the youthful enthusiasm wash over him and wipe out some of the pain.

“There’s the outside.” Gil pointed at a gap between two buildings, barely large enough to fit two wagons through. “The town map says ‘gates’, but there ain’t no such things.”

The edge of the town had no discernible signs, just a sudden lack of buildings. The last two structures consisted of a saloon that seemed to be the first stop for many incoming visitors, judging by the amount of abandoned horses standing in the road, and a general store with the doors closed and locked for the evening, the owner obviously staying out of his neighbor’s business. The dirt road spread out in front of them, the dim moonlight turning the landscape into a dreamscape of different hues of black and white. Jon took a deep breath, feeling the fresher air sting his nose and throat.

“Yep.” Gil’s face lit up as if he’d been handed another pastry. “Lot better out here.” He crouched and poked the soil. His index finger sank down maybe half an inch into the mangled dirt. Standing up, he brushed it against his shirtfront. “Stay close. I’ll see where he left the road.” The young boy trotted ahead of Jon, almost sprinting down the single lane into the wilderness stretching out around them.

Jon shuddered, trying to banish images of what Victor could be doing to Sam at this very moment. He picked up the pace, forcing himself to walk faster and dwell less on the possibilities. His shoes, once stained with tobacco juice, now eagerly sopped up the dust and dirt, turning the fine leather into an unidentifiable muddy mess. He took off his jacket and tossed it over his shoulder. The cool night air was a welcome change from the town’s thick atmosphere, erasing the sweat from his brow with little effort.

Jon did a quick check to see if the derringer was still in his waistcoat pocket, mentally agreeing with his previous decision to not seek more firepower. Victor wasn’t a man given to actual physical violence, at least in the past, and if Jon showed up with a rifle or a revolver, it was more likely than not that they would be in a shootout before either man knew what was going on. He only hoped that his logic was true.

Sam studied the man in front of her. Proud, arrogant and more than a little insane, but still just a man.

Pushing herself up against the rock at her back, she began to speak, choosing her words to appeal to his ego.

“I’m losing the circulation in my arms.” She shrugged, rolling her shoulders forward with a soft cry.

“Could you untie my hands for a few minutes?”

Victor turned around from the rock he had been sitting on. He had ignored her for the last half-hour, staring into the night sky. “Pardon me?”

“I said I need to move my arms.” She moaned as helplessly as she could, grimacing inside at having to play the helpless female. “Please untie me and let me stretch out.”

“Do you take me for some sort of fool?” The older man let out a sharp laugh. “You’ll run.”

She sighed. “My feet are tied together, you know that.” The sharp rock was now wedged against the base of her spine, partially hidden under her leather coat.

“Hmph.” Victor walked over to the wagon. A minute later he returned, brandishing a large hunting knife, the bare blade catching bits of moonlight.

“And if you have any ideas about trying to escape…” He pointed the knife at the rifle propped against the rock. “I will have no qualms about shooting you in the foot, Miss Weatherly. You are more valuable to me alive, but I don’t have to make it a pleasant stay.”

“Thank you, sir.” She shuffled around, offering her hands. “I do appreciate this.”

“You could make this all so much easier on yourself, you know,” Morton snarled, going down on one knee beside her. “All you need to do is give me what I need.”

The sharp blade dug into the coarse rope, slicing cleanly through the bindings.

“Just tell me what I want to know. That’s all I want.”

The rope fell away, the sudden rush of sensation to her wrists and hands blinding her with the pain for a second.

“I can make you a very rich woman. You’d never have a problem finding a man.” The whiskey-laden breath soured the air around her.

Her right hand fell limp to the ground, fingers curling around the loose rock.

Victor leaned in, dangerously near her face. “Just give me what I want.”

“I will,” Sam whispered back.

The large rock slammed into the man’s left temple. He pitched forward into the dirt, mumbling incoherently for a second before falling silent. Blood gushed from the open wound, seeping down over his face and dripping into the soil.

Grabbing the knife, Sam quickly sliced through the rope around her ankles and tossed the rope to the side. The knife went flying end over end into the dense brush to her right. She didn’t know how to fight with a knife and keeping it from both of them was an acceptable compromise.

She got up, unsteady on her feet, and staggered to the wagon. The horse lifted his head, whinnying softly as she grabbed the sides of the buckboard, fighting for balance. Sam looked over the edge of the thin wood. Sure enough, there was another coil of rope tucked inside the wagon, the original source of her bindings. She stomped her feet on the ground, forcing the circulation back into the cramped limbs.

Grabbing the remainder of the rope, she staggered back to where she had left Victor.

She knelt by the unconscious man, taking one hand and wrapping the rope around it, pulling the first knot tight on the thick wrist. The inch-long gouge on his temple continued to ooze blood. The sticky liquid had started dribbling down into his beard and moustache, matting the thin hairs.

Suddenly the bound hand twisted up, grabbing her wrist and pulling her down to the ground beside him. Her strength still sapped from the prolonged bindings, Sam fell easily into the dirt, moaning as she hit the ground.

“Did you think I’d be that easy to kill?” Victor snarled, rising from the desert floor to straddle her and snatching the rope out of her fingers. “Did you?” His wild eyes locked with hers, wide with excitement and anger. “Did you?” he roared again, the yell echoing into the night. Hovering over her, he pulled the rope tight between his hands, snapping it twice in the air.

Sam drew in a deep breath, preparing for the madman’s rage. Victor grinned, the smile made even more dastardly by the light of the full moon overhead.

The moonlight transformed the world around Jon and Gil, changing the common into the uncommon and reviving every bad dream Jon had ever had. He had been out in the night before, taken stagecoaches from small town to small town through dreary rainstorms, sailed the waters aboard one of Her Majesty’s ships in sleet and hail, but the world had never seemed so alien as it did right now. Every shadow, every stone, every bush seemed to be warning of impending doom, waving them farther and farther into possible danger.

Gil stepped off the trail, breaking the fast trot that had carried them so far. The young boy crouched, touching the fine soil. He dragged his fingers through the furrowed dirt. “The wagon pulled off here.”

“How do you know?”

“The tracks are the last ones on top. He’d be the last one out of town, since no one travels at night.”

He waved a hand over the deep ruts. “And the horseshoes show the horse was going out of town, not back.

At a pretty high pace too—you can see by the prints that he was galloping along. Pretty dangerous going off the road at any time at that speed, more dangerous at night.” Gil turned towards him with a smile.

“We’re getting closer.”

Jon looked around, scanning the horizon. “If Victor built a fire, it’d be easy to make out.”

“Not necessarily.” Gil stood up. “There’s plenty of gullies and dips around here. He could have a fire going and we wouldn’t see it until we fell onto it.” The boy gestured into the darkness. “Heck, he could have run right off into a ravine, crashed, and we’d never find ’em until morning. ’Less the horse did a lot of screaming.”

Jon winced, trying to avoid the mental image of Sam trapped under a dying horse and buckboard.

“Gil, you are a never-ending source of interesting, if not at times depressing facts.” He motioned him onwards. “But I’ll keep looking for a campfire, if you don’t mind.”

The young boy frowned, stopping again. He leaned over and studied the indentations in the dirt. “He was running the horse hard. Not good, not with that horse. Guy sold him a horse with only three horseshoes. Easy as pie to track.”

“Well, that’s some good news at least. I’ll assume that the rescue party will be as adept at finding it as you have been.” Jon walked on. He undid the buttons at the top of his white shirt, inhaling the clean night air. The black gloves were next, tucked into his back pocket as he kept moving. Looking down at his right hand, Jon curled his fingers into a fist. The metal bands sparkled in the moonlight. He held up his hand, studying the little finger and the spot where the spring had disappeared from, now sealed. Something so small, and yet the lack of it had created so much trouble.

Gil ignored him, moving along the trail. Jon found his eyes adjusting to the dim light. He could pick out the boulders scattered haphazardly around them, the sagebrush no longer a set of threatening fingers pointed at him.

“It is lovely out here.”

“Aye.” Gil smiled. “I come out here once in a while, sleep away from all the noise.” He stopped and looked back towards the lit skyline, the only sign of civilization diminishing with each step they took farther into the wilderness. “The gangs, they don’t like you staying in any spot for too long without joining up with them. So I sleep out here and stay safe.”

“With all the snakes and that?” Jon replied. “I’d feel safer in a proper brick house, thank you very much.”

Gil cocked his head to one side, a smile touching the young boy’s lips. “And that is why you’re not an Injun, sir. We’re of the land, not trying to conquer it like you is.”

He nodded. “Yes, Gil, but don’t forget how technology can serve mankind. It’s done a lot of good which I hope outweighs the bad.”

The youngster shrugged. “I ain’t that much of a thinker.” He stopped abruptly and grinned, lifting his right hand to point at the distant horizon to their left. “But I am a damned good tracker. Over there.”

Jon frowned, staring into the darkness. “I don’t see anything.”

“That’s ’cause you’re not looking. Look, sir.” The young hand waved in front of his face, flashing light and dark in the shadows. “Look.” The commanding voice startled Jon, the words of experience forcing him to concentrate.

Squinting hard, he stared into the desert night sky, focusing on where the boy’s hand led. There, a faint flicker against the darkness, a flame. If he blinked he’d lose sight of it; if he’d looked a few inches to each side, it would have been impossible for him to see the dim illumination.

“Good Lord,” Jon whispered.

“No, Good Gil.” Gil thumped his chest with a fist. “Now we’re going to save Miss Sam.” He turned around. “You brought a gun, right?”