So there was only one thing to do and there wasn’t any point arguing with himself about it. The war was started and it had to be fought through to its finish.
He needed rest. He needed a month flat on his back. But right now he was beyond it. Time to rest now would be time to fall apart. He had to keep moving. He limped to his horse and checked the hand bombs and checked his rifle and his matches and his revolvers, and he climbed up into the saddle as if it was a high mountain and rode out toward the wagon road.
He got halfway out to the road and realized he’d made a stupid mistake. It changed his course; he rode back to the Gatling gun and made gags out of blanket strips and wads and forced the prisoners’ mouths open and inserted the gags and tied them around behind their heads. He told each one of them the same thing:
“Don’t fight this gag too hard. You make yourself sick, you could strangle to death on your own vomit. Hear?”
Then he left them. It was harder getting on the horse this time. He almost didn’t make it.
He stayed just inside the trees and went up alongside the road to the edge of the timber. From here it was just about a mile to the top of the mountain. Most of it was across a steady, open slope and then there was the high cliff that was sliced in half by the road cut.
There still wasn’t any way to approach unseen. But this time Boag wanted them to see him.
He had one gold ingot on the saddle. He had a dime novel he’d taken off Sweeney. He had a bullet. He had some coiled pieces of wire. These were all he was going to need tonight but he had festooned himself with weapons just in case.
He ripped the back jacket off the dime novel because the inside of it had no printing on it. He used a bullet for a pencil and wrote out a short message in heavy lettering. He couldn’t spell worth a damn but Mr. Pickett would be able to read it all right.
He wired the note on top of the gold bar.
Then he put his horse out of the trees and rode straight up the wagon road toward Mr. Pickett’s mountain.
He had to assume they were watching; they’d be fools not to.
They were watching him ride forward and wondering who he was, whose side he was on; they wouldn’t shoot at him and even if they did it was a hell of a shot to make because he only went as far as the foot of the road cut. He looked up at the high cliffs on either side of the cut and he couldn’t see anybody silhouetted up there but that didn’t mean anything; they’d be there all right. The sky was matted with clouds anyhow, he wasn’t too likely to see them unless they moved; they’d blend with the rocks.
He tossed the gold brick right out in the middle of the road. He turned his back to the mountain and rode back toward the forest, but he didn’t go the whole way. About two thirds across that distance he stopped and turned the horse around to face Mr. Pickett’s mountain.
It was well beyond rifle range of the mountain; well beyond rifle range of the foot of the cut where he’d dropped the ingot.
He made his seat as easy as he could on the saddle, and he sat there the rest of the night waiting.
It was daylight—a grey mottled sky—before they sent a man down into the notch to find out about the gold brick. Boag watched the rider approach it cautiously. They hadn’t been sure it wasn’t some kind of bomb; that was why they’d waited for daybreak to have a look at it.
The rider dismounted and picked up the brick and got back on his horse and rode up the cut. Boag watched him disappear over the top of it.
He sat there patiently, knowing they were watching him from the mountaintop. They’d be thinking about it. Mr. Pickett would read the note two or three times and try to make out what it meant.
MR. JED PICKETT
I GAT YOR GOLD, HEAR IS PROOF.
YO COME DOWN AND WE TAWK ABOT IT.
I AM WAITING WAR YO CAN SEE ME.
—BOAG, FRMRLY SGT USA.
They would be thinking about that and trying to estimate how big an army Boag had with him back there in the woods, and they would be trying to work out ways to get their gold back.
They had the same limitation Boag had. He couldn’t get into their fortress without being seen, but they couldn’t get out of it without Boag seeing them. They had to come straight down the road cut.
Boat waited them out. He had no place to go. He ate dry beef and took a swallow from his canteen.
He saw some of them moving around on the parapet; he could almost see the gun muzzles stir. He counted five moving figures.
He dismounted and lay down flat to ease his cramped legs; he kept the reins in one hand. He crushed his hat into a pillow so that he could keep his head propped up far enough to watch Mr. Pickett’s mountain.
One big worry he had was the sky. It was really clouding up for rain.
He saw them come down from the parapet on horseback. While they were still in the shadows of the rock gorge he rolled over onto his knees and gave his attention to the problem of getting onto the horse. He punched his hat out and put it on, and put the reins in his teeth and lifted his left leg with both hands to get his boot into the stirrup. Then he let his foot hang there in the stirrup while he wrapped both big fists around the saddle horn and hauled himself up by the strength of his arms. He let his right leg flop over the saddle and while he felt for the stirrup with his toe he kept his eyes on the mountain and counted the riders who were emerging from the bottom of the cut half a mile away from him.
Sixteen, seventeen.…
Twenty-three of them in the end. He had no trouble recognizing Ben Stryker’s big frame swaying on the saddle of the leading horse.
It was about twice as many as he’d expected but he didn’t trouble himself about it. The shape Boag was in, all it would take would be one or two of them, if they escaped the trap.
When he set it up he’d been convinced it could work. But now suddenly he was picturing all the things that could go wrong with it. He knew there was no way to win, not against twenty-three of them.
And Mr. Pickett wasn’t even with them; he’d stayed up there in his fortress.
Boag gathered the reins in his left hand. I could grab those gold horses and make a run, he thought, but he had less than a half-mile lead now and they’d ride him down in ten minutes.
It was no time to change his mind. He had no choice.
He turned his horse to the right and lashed it to a gallop, running along the flats parallel to the edge of the forest. Behind him he saw Stryker’s crowd veer left to cut across the triangle on an interception course.
He eased closer to the trees, still at a dead run; he reined in after a quarter mile and wheeled the long .40-90 out of the boot and put it to his shoulder. He wanted to sting them beyond hesitation so he put the whole magazine into their midst and he saw one horse go down; he doubted he’d hit any men but you couldn’t expect much accuracy shooting from the saddle.
He lifted the saddlebags off the horse, the saddlebags he’d packed with blasting powder. He lit the hanging fuse and dropped the saddlebags on the ground and cut back into the trees.
Low branches whipped at his face. He laid himself flat and rammed on through. He reached one of the fingers of the cutbank gully and galloped into it just as he heard the explosion behind him. He wondered if any of them had been near enough to get hit by it; it was doubtful.
He was galloping full out and the hoofs were throwing a lot of dust in the air and it would still be hanging there when Stryker reached that point. Boag wanted them to know where he was; they had to follow him.