Now he was approaching the town and so far there were no signs of life ahead. On the edge of town he veered away and made his way around the backs of the buildings to reach the stables.

  A quick search inside revealed several horses and, even better, he located a length of rope and a hammer. As he also wanted to return with a weapon that was more substantial than the knife, he was putting his mind to how he might obtain a gun when Dean piped up behind him.

  “What are you doing in here?” he said.

  Nick turned around to face the one man he had hoped he might meet when he returned.

  “I’ve come back for you,” he said, setting his hands on his hips.

  Dean paled, looking as if he’d seen a ghost, which he might well have done based on what he must think had happened to Nick. It took him several seconds to find his voice and then he could manage only a bleat. He shuffled inside the building and approached him cautiously.

  “Is that you, Nick?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “It sure is.” Nick folded his arms. “Why are you so shocked? You didn’t expect that something bad would happen to me, did you?”

  “I’m . . .” Dean spread his hands. “I’m pleased to see you . . . escaped.”

  His comment sounded honest, but Nick still sneered.

  “Why would a double-crosser like you be pleased?”

  “Because I didn’t want to turn on you, but I had no choice. We weren’t going to win that battle.”

  Nick sneered. “The townsfolk were making headway, Montgomery had captured Arnold and we’d pinned his men down. If everyone had done what they were supposed to do, we’d have prevailed.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, but we couldn’t risk it.” Dean kicked at the ground. “They must have told you Arnold’s rule. If we’d killed any of them, he’d have made us all pay.”

  Nick nodded. “So your options were to see it through and wipe out all his men, or back out quickly?”

  “That’s what we agreed. We thought you and Montgomery might win through, but you weren’t doing that and. . . .” Dean’s voice faded to a croak and he lowered his head, perhaps accepting how bad his excuses had sounded.

  “You’ll only prevail if you all stand together, but not one of you has got the guts to do that, so one day soon this town will die, and that’s what you deserve.”

  “You’re right,” Dean said. “I’m sorry for what we did.”

  “You will be. Montgomery escaped, too, and the last we heard Arnold was still determined to seek retribution, only from another two people.”

  Dean gulped. “Then we need help.”

  “You do, but you’re not getting it from me.” Nick walked up to Dean and held out a hand. “I need a gun. Give me yours and I won’t make your problems any worse.”

  Dean opened his mouth to retort. Then, with a sigh, he closed it. He unlooped his gunbelt and held it out.

  “I hope you get away,” he said, and then stood aside.

  If Dean had said or done anything other than provide complete contrition Nick would have led a horse from the stables and then ridden back to the fort, but his ashamed-sounding tone couldn’t let him do that.

  “I don’t have to go,” he said.

  Hope lit Dean’s eyes. “You mean you’ll help us?”

  “Maybe I will, but only if you’ll help me. I didn’t tell you the whole story. Montgomery is still a prisoner back at the fort. I intend to rescue him and if you’re to avoid reprisals, this time you have to face up to Arnold.”

  Dean nodded and stood tall, seemingly pleased that the matter would come to a head.

  “We need to talk James around and then he’ll work on the rest before Pike and Snyder can sow doubt.”

  Nick nodded. Then he gestured ahead for Dean to lead on to the saloon. On the way they said nothing more and, as he expected, when he walked into the saloon, like Dean, the few customers registered his presence with open-mouthed surprise and he received everyone’s undivided attention.

  “I might as well be dead after all the help you provided,” Nick said with his hands on his hips.

  His comment generated a long silence. At last a customer sitting at one of the tables spoke up.

  “So Arnold let you go, did he?”

  Several men moved backward to reveal that Pike had spoken. Snyder was sitting beside him. Nick had thought they’d stayed at the fort, and from the surprised looks everyone was giving him, clearly they hadn’t reported on the events there. This gave further credence to Dean’s explanation that these two men were the main obstacles he faced in persuading everyone to take on Arnold.

  “He doesn’t know I’ve gone,” Nick said. “When he finds out, you know what he’ll want. For some reason you haven’t told anyone about it.”

  Pike narrowed his eyes. Then Snyder, with a coordinated movement, joined him in rising. Both men’s hands strayed toward their holsters.

  “We’ll be dealing with that matter just as soon as we’ve disposed of you,” Snyder said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So is your young friend coming back?” Lomax asked. This was the first thing he’d said since last night’s fight.

  “He will,” Montgomery said. “What we do then is up to you.”

  Lomax frowned, acknowledging the trickiness of their situation. Since Nick had escaped last night the two men had sat facing each other on either side of the armory. The almost complete darkness meant that Lomax could have approached him undetected.

  So for many hours Montgomery had clutched his only weapon, the length of wood Nick had knocked from the roof, but Lomax hadn’t attacked him and after a while Montgomery had relaxed enough to fall into a fitful sleep. Daylight had brought confirmation that Lomax hadn’t moved.

  Since then his occasional fingering of his bruised head had been his only movement. They had both drawn in their breath several times when they’d heard movement outside, but the door had remained closed.

  “I don’t reckon he’ll get back before his escape is discovered,” Lomax said. “So everyone is doomed – you, me, the townsfolk.”

  Montgomery acknowledged this was his own main concern with a nod. If the guards discovered only two men were inside the armory it was unlikely anything they could say would save them.

  “I guess so. If we escape, more of the townsfolk will die, and despite everything they did I wouldn’t wish that on them. If we don’t, there’s still the matter of our differences to sort out.” Montgomery raised his plank. “Perhaps we should sort them out now.”

  “I can’t tell you about the gold.” Lomax’s jutting jaw conveyed that he was thinking about whether he should continue. Then, with a resigned frown, he spoke. “Because there never was any.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Montgomery thought back, searching his memory for the facts. “I know people who saw the shipment.”

  “It sure did exist.” Lomax frowned. “I mean it never went missing in the way we thought it had. Those wretches raided the convoy, but you saw them. They were so weak they barely had the strength to stand up, neither mind take on thirty heavily armed men.”

  Montgomery narrowed his eyes. “But the gold did go missing.”

  “It did, but they didn’t take it. Sometimes the people on your side are worse than the enemy.” Lomax paused while Montgomery gave a rueful snort. “Some officers probably stole it and then blamed it on the raiders.”

  “Is that what they claimed before you took them apart?”

  “They said plenty.” Lomax shrugged. “Not that I believe anything anyone says in that situation.”

  “You’ve had more experience of that than I’ve had, so I can’t argue with you.”

  Lomax pointed at him. “Don’t start whining about the plight of those poor souls. We saw what they did to their victims. I showed them the same mercy.”

  “And twenty years later you’re still doing it.”

  “You’ve got me wrong.” Lomax sighed and when he spoke his tone was wistful. “After I fled your company I roamed around, first to escape the men who were after me, and then to try to find somewhere to fit in.”

  “I can imagine that would have been hard for you.”

  Lomax shrugged. “It took many years, but eventually I fetched up in Sunrise. I decided it was a good place and I settled down. I found me a good woman and for a while life was good.”

  Montgomery raised his eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Lomax licked his lips, clearly relishing his next comment.

  “Do you find it that hard to believe that a woman like Elizabeth would like a man like me?”

  Montgomery couldn’t stop his mouth falling open, providing his answer.

  “I assume she doesn’t know about your appetites?”

  “I have no appetites. I do what is necessary to survive. I had my revenge on those men twenty years ago, but I’ve done nothing like that since. Then one day Arnold rode into town and he tried to take it all away. Since then I’ve done what I had to do.”

  “I might have believed you if I hadn’t have seen how much you were enjoying yourself when you had me and Nick pinned out.”

  Lomax sneered. “You see what you want to see.”

  “I do, and that means I’ll make my own judgment on your punishment. That won’t matter none if Arnold just drags us out of here and kills us, so have you got any ideas on how we can stop that happening?”

  “Are you saying we should work together like we used to do twenty years ago?”

  Montgomery snorted. “I didn’t say that, but we do need to work out what we’ll do, or we’ll die.”

  Lomax shrugged. “Then we die.”

  “At least you two are being open now,” Nick said, facing the gun-toting Pike and Snyder.

  The two men edged apart. Snyder stayed before the table at which they’d been sitting while Pike moved over to stand beside the bar.

  “Everyone knows what we do,” Pike said. “We keep this town safe.”

  “You do, and at the same time you’re taking away its only chance of living.” Nick turned to the customers, searching their eyes for signs of support, but finding none, so he ended his perusal with the most likely candidates, Dean and James. “Do you accept what they’re doing here?”

  James furrowed his brow making Dean try to catch his eye while the rest of the customers gave each other shamefaced looks.

  “They leave us to deal with things,” Pike said settling his stance and drawing Nick’s attention back to him.

  The urgency of that comment helped Nick to work out what was happening here. The townsfolk had turned a blind eye to what these men and Lomax were doing, but they didn’t know all the details.

  They presumed that the people they’d picked had been taken away to be executed, but not that they had died in such a horrendous manner. So the moment he tried to reveal this secret the two men would go for their guns. Nick was confident he could prevail against one of them, but not both.

  “Then perhaps nobody need know the truth,” he said as his heart thudded and nervous sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Pike narrowed his eyes, clearly expecting deception. He turned to Snyder, but before he received an answer Dean stepped forward.

  “What truth?” he asked.

  This hint that the situation might turn for the worst panicked Snyder into scrambling for his gun. With Pike being half-turned away from him Nick turned on Snyder first. He threw his hand to his holster, his gun coming to hand in a moment.

  Crouching he aimed and fired catching Snyder with a shot to the belly that sent him staggering backward into a table. He didn’t wait to check he’d overcome him and turned to Pike. He didn’t reckon he’d be able to dispose of Pike, too.

  Sure enough, when he swung back Pike had already turned his gun on him. A gunshot tore out, but to Nick’s relief Pike staggered an uncertain pace to the side, his gun falling from his hand, the fingers of his left hand rising to touch the spreading bloom on his chest.

  Then he keeled over. Nick turned to the bar, finding that James had drawn a rifle up from under the bar and had shot him. Then in short order Nick stepped past the prone Pike to check on Snyder.

  He found that he, too, was breathing his last. Nick gulped, the feeling overcoming him that this was the first time he’d shot another man. He’d had no choice, but that didn’t make him feel any better about the situation.

  He didn’t get time to dwell on the matter; Dean bade him to join him at the bar where he poured him a large whiskey. When Nick downed it, he gave him an encouraging pat on the back. Nick murmured that he would be fine, and when James returned from dragging Pike and Snyder into a back room, he, too, offered his support with a wide smile.

  “I’m obliged,” Nick said. “You took what I was saying in good faith, and you did the right thing.”

  “Before you say things like that you need to know the full truth,” James said. “Most people here didn’t know what they were doing, but some of us did.”

  “You?”

  Nick received a nod. Then Dean gave a curt nod while gnawing at his bottom lip.

  “I went out to the outcrop,” James said. “I saw what they’d done to Wallace and told Dean. That persuaded us to fight back.”

  “But not to see it through?”

  James winced and lowered his head. “We don’t feel good about any of this.”

  Nick sighed. “The important thing is that you’ve now made the right choice.”

  James gave an uncertain nod, which suggested that although he had helped him he still hadn’t committed himself. Nick turned to Dean to ask him how he felt about the situation, but to his surprise Dean grabbed his shoulders and shoved him along the bar.

  Then he clamped a hand over his mouth, bent him double and bundled him to the floor. Nick struggled, while still being amazed that Dean had turned on him, but he couldn’t free himself from Dean’s firm hold.

  When Dean had stopped pushing him he found he was lying behind the bar. Dean bent down to whisper in his ear.

  “Be quiet,” he urged.

  Nick gave his answer when he tried to buck Dean away, but Dean bore down on him and held him immobile. Nick gathered his strength aiming to put all he had behind his next attempt. Then heavy footfalls clumped into the saloon and Herman spoke up.

  “I’ve been coming here too often these days for my liking,” he said.

  “Then do us all a favor and stay away,” James said.

  An aggrieved grunt sounded. Then footfalls approached the bar. Nick gave up struggling, now accepting Dean had helped him.

  “I can’t when I have people to collect.”

  “We decide who Arnold takes.”

  “You did, but you’ve wriggled your way out of a difficult situation twice now, so this time I’m choosing.” Herman gave a hollow laugh. “I’m taking Dean and Elizabeth.”

  Dean tensed. Then, with a pat on the shoulder that urged Nick to stay down, he released his hold and stood up. His appearance made Herman shuffle his feet as he moved around to face him.

  “I’m not going with you and neither is Elizabeth or anyone else,” Dean announced.

  “You will,” Herman said with quiet menace. “Your only other option is to fight Arnold, and you people haven’t got the guts to do that.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Montgomery judged that it was around noon when the armory door rattled and murmuring sounded, heralding their release. There had been more than enough time for Nick to return and help them, even if he’d had to go back to Sunrise.

  So it was likely he’d taken up Montgomery’s offer and made good his escape. Whatever had happened, he wished him well. After their brief conversation earlier he and Lomax hadn’t spoken again and as the door swung open flooding the inside with light he sneered at Montgomery.

  “Is anyone still alive in there?” one guard asked with laughter in his tone, giving Montgomery further hope that Nick hadn’t been recaptured.

  The guard stayed outside while holding a hand to his brow, which made Montgomery realize that he wouldn’t be able to see into the darker interior easily.

  “Most of us are, but not the young one,” Montgomery said standing and holding his hands up.

  Then, trying to preserve his subterfuge, he headed outside. Lomax must have caught on to what Montgomery was trying to do as he hurried on and slipped outside.

  “We still don’t have an answer for Arnold,” he said.

  The guard checked inside, suspicion narrowing his eyes, but then with a shrug he slammed the door shut and barred it.

  “The young one can rot in there, then,” he said. “Unless Arnold gets some answers, you’ll both join him.”

  They were led across the parade ground to stand before Arnold, who was sitting in the same place as he had been in yesterday: under a porch outside the officers’ quarters in the shade. He was eating with his men, which he continued to do with relish while not acknowledging they’d arrived, adding to their discomfiture.

  Then the men passed around a full water-skin. Montgomery and Lomax hadn’t been fed or watered in the best part of a day. So now that he was out of the relative cool of the armory, the sun was beating down on Montgomery’s head and reminding him of his hunger and thirst.

  As they drank, the men spilled most of the water on the ground, and then grinned when their captives licked their lips. Several minutes passed before Arnold turned to them. He gnawed on a bone and when he’d stripped the meat he tossed it over a shoulder, wiped his greasy hands on his vest and stood up.

  He took a pace forward to stand on the edge of the shade and held out a hand, inviting them to talk. Accordingly, the guards shoved them forward. Montgomery said nothing, figuring that he’d let Lomax have the first word, but Lomax must have had the same idea as he kept his mouth clamped shut.

  Arnold snorted a laugh that made his men join in, suggesting that they’d been discussed beforehand. Dollars changed hands as a bet was decided. Then, with muttered comments and much laughter, further bills were passed around on a new wager. Arnold paraded back and forth twice, and then turned to Lomax.

 

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