Dang.…
He batted his eyes and cleared them enough to look down the front of himself. Dirt and dark blood had caked thick over the bullet holes in his chest, his shoulders, his leg. The thick black paste had slowed his loss of blood almost to a stop. He considered the fact that he was still alive in amazement, and scratched his bloody, swollen head.
Where’s Pres…? he asked himself dreamily. Where’s Rock…?
Ahead of him where the wagon had gone off the trail, he heard the sounds of Grolin, Spiller and Penta gathering gold ingots on the rocky hillside. Broken crates and pieces of busted wagon frame lay everywhere. At the edge of the trail above them, Bobby Kane leaned back against a rock, still looking dazed and half conscious from the hard backhanded slap the Giant had planted on the side of his head.
Steadying himself with both hands against the rock, the Giant collected his addled senses and staggered from rock to rock along the edge of the trail, back in the direction of the depot—the same direction Casings had ridden off in. Fifteen yards down the trail, he looked up and came to a sudden startled halt, seeing Lambert Kane hanging impaled on a thick branch of the tall pine.
The stub of the broken tree limb stuck from Lambert’s chest covered with black blood and ripped pieces of the outlaw’s heart. Lambert wore a wide-eyed look of shock on his pale blue face. His bloody mouth formed a large O.
“Sorry, Lamb…,” the Giant murmured to Kane’s grisly corpse.
Summoning his waned strength, the Giant staggered on along the trail until the sound of the gold gatherers fell away behind him. As silver morning light rose slowly in his wake, he half walked, half stumbled his way for another two hundred yards, until he couldn’t go on any longer. He stopped and leaned against another large rock to collect his strength.
Fresh blood had begun to trickle from his wounds. The Giant had no idea how much blood had been inside his monstrous body to begin with, but judging from the thick pool he’d awakened in, he was certain he’d lost a large portion of it. He bowed his head, feeling spent and weak, when he heard Casings’ voice from a few feet farther along the trail.
“Giant… help me,” Casings called out in a shallow voice.
“Huh…?” The Giant snapped his head up and stared toward the sound of Casings’ voice. “Pres…? Is that you?”
“It’s me… Pres,” Casings managed to say. “Over here.”
The Giant saw Casings lying across the trail, a leg pinned beneath his dead horse.
“Dang! Hang on, Pres… I’m coming,” said the Giant, pushing himself upright. His strength began to surge as he saw Casings in need of help.
“Garth Oliver… Stillwater Giant…,” Casings murmured weakly. He managed a thin smile of relief and laid his face back on the cold, bloody ground.
“You’re… damn right it’s me,” the Giant said, stooping down, lifting the dead horse up enough to free Casings’ leg from beneath it. “You just take it easy now. Don’t worry about nothing. I’ve got… you covered, Pres,” he said. He did his best to hide his own pain and weakened condition.
Dragging Casings a few feet, he propped him up against a boulder and limped back to the dead horse, reached for a canteen and limped back with it. More fresh red blood seeped from beneath the layer of dirt and black blood covering him. He uncapped the canteen and shook the water around.
“Here… drink this,” he said, collapsing beside Casings, sticking the canteen into his blood-caked hands.
Casings sipped water and looked up at the Giant sitting beside him in the dirt. His eye went from wound to wound as he saw the fresh blood trickle freely now.
“Jesus, Giant…,” he said, already sounding better. “You’re shot all to pieces.”
“This… ain’t nothing,” Giant said haltingly. “I’m not hurt… you’re the one hurt.” He looked at the bloody bullet hole in Casings’ side, and the bloody graze along the side of his head. As he spoke, he jerked the bandannas from around his neck, wadded them and pressed them against Casings’ wounded side. Then he placed Casings’ hand on top. “Hold this here,” he said.
Casings looked down at the bandannas and chuffed with a weak smile.
“Whoever heard of… a head so big… it takes two of these to go around it?”
The Giant grinned in spite of his wounds.
“Just me… the Stillwater Giant,” he said. “Nobody else.”
Casings handed the canteen back to him and collapsed back against the rock.
“Now… I’m going to go to sleep… for a while,” he said dreamily.
“No, you’re not!” the Giant growled. “I’m not… letting you die on me!” He reached a huge hand over and shook Casings roughly. “Wake the hell up! I’m taking you back to the depot.”
“Why, Giant?” Casings asked. “There’s… nothing back that way but the law by now,” Casings said. “Let me sleep.”
The Giant shook him again, roughly.
“I said… stay awake!” he growled, keeping his deep voice down in case Grolin and the others might hear him.
He struggled to his feet, stooped down and scooped Casings up in his huge arms like a rag doll. Then he staggered in place for a moment until he found his balance.
“See?” he said. “Nothing to it.…”
“Put me down, Giant,” Casings said.
But the Giant would have none of it. He staggered off along the trail leading back to the abandoned rail depot.
“You’ll be all right… you’ll see,” he said, sounding stronger. “Rock is back there. He’ll know what to do.”
The Giant struggled along the trail, Casings cradled in his huge arms, as morning rose around them. Two miles down the trail, just as the Giant felt his strength leaving him, he spotted the team of wagon horses, the broken wagon tongue, reins and rigging still on them. The horses stared at the Giant with apprehension, as if remembering him from the night before.
“Easy, horses…,” he purred in his deep but weakened voice. “How about giving the Giant… and his pal here a ride?”
The two horses chuffed and grumbled under their breath.
On the hillside, Grolin and the others had emptied everything from their saddlebags and stuffed them full of the gold ingots. They’d also stuffed ingots into their coats, their trouser pockets, boot wells and hats. When Bobby Kane’s head had cleared enough for him to know what was going on around him, he located the big Belgium the Stillwater Giant had been riding and led it to the side of the trail.
With the help of the other three men, Bobby tied six undamaged gold crates over the big horse’s back with lengths of rope from a coil Penta carried on his saddle horn. With their hats full of gold and tucked up under their arms, the gunmen struggled under their weight and climbed up into their saddles. What gold they couldn’t carry, they had gathered and stuffed under rocks and beneath dried brush.
“I hate leaving this much gold behind,” Grolin said, taking one last look down the hillside. “As soon as we meet Swank and his men, we’ll get a wagon and return for it.”
Spiller and Penta looked at each other from their saddles.
“That posse from the train is going to be coming down this trail with blood in their eyes,” Penta said. “They didn’t just give up and go home because we stole their horses with the freight car.”
“Tough knuckles,” said Grolin, red-faced. “We’re not leaving that gold here any longer than it takes to get a wagon and haul it out.”