Stryker was bawling: “Hobble it! Hobble it!” in his twanging voice but nobody paid him any mind. A high reckless joy filled Boag’s chest and he waded in toward Gutierrez but then two of Pickett’s rawhiders were right in front of him with knives.
“Carve them up,” Pickett bellowed.
Boag knocked one of them aside backhanded and grabbed the second one and got the knife away and stuck it against the man’s throat.
Boag threw his head back. “Mr. Pickett.”
“What?”
“You want this little ballet to continue, Mr. Pickett, I’m going to have to kill this man here.”
“Well I wouldn’t do that Boag, because if you kill Sweeney you’ll get twenty men to sit heavy on you. Now you just turn loose of him.”
Sweeney struggled in Boag’s grip and Boag pricked the point of the knife against Sweeney’s Adam’s apple. It quieted him down. Boag backed slowly over to the rail. “Come on, John B.”
“You gon jump, Boag?”
“I am.”
“Without our shares?”
“How you gonna swim with gold bricks?”
“Well shit,” Wilstach complained, but he broke away from Gutierrez and came over to the rail. Gutierrez snarled a little and then cackled nervously again.
Sweeney stirred again and Boag let him feel the point of the knife. Sweeney was big enough to make a good shield. It was the only reason they weren’t shooting at him.
Mr. Pickett said, “Go on then, get over the side. I’m tired of looking at you.”
Boag reached around behind him left-handed and fumbled the revolver out of his belt but as soon as it came in sight, Mr. Pickett backed away from the hurricane rail, out of sight.
Boag glanced at Stryker at the foot of the stairs. Stryker had a gun out. Boag thought about shooting him but it wouldn’t change anything if he did. None of them cared that much about Sweeney’s hide; they’d sacrifice him. There just wasn’t any way to win this one. Finally Boag said, “Go on over, boys. Ain’t no choice.”
There were the two Yuma Indians and there was a new white hand who called himself Frailey. And there were Wilstach and Boag. These five were the ones Mr. Pickett had no further use for.
The white one, Frailey, climbed over the rail and Boag heard the splash when Frailey hit the water. Boag said, “Go on,” but the two Yumas shook their heads and Boag understood. They couldn’t swim.
That was when Sweeney kicked back hard. His bootheel caught Boag in the shin. Sweeney dived away and Boag was standing there right out on the bare-ass deck and there was nothing to do but flip himself back over the rail.
The guns started up before he hit the water. The pain in his shin and the shocking cold of the water made him lose his grip on the revolver; for a moment he was strangling in the foamy froth kicked up by the bucketing paddlewheels, a black swirl of panic; he kicked and heaved with his arms and none of it seemed to do any good, there wasn’t any up or down. He hadn’t got much of a breath in his chest when he went over; he didn’t even know if he’d been shot or not, but everything seemed to be in working order except his sense of direction. He was tumbling ass over teakettle in a marbled darkness of water which had no top and no bottom. Christ I don’t want to drown.
The water was up in his nose like fire; he was strangling. He flailed in madness and there was a slow burst of white-hot agony in his chest.
Then his boots rammed something solid: the bottom, a rock. He let his knees sag and then he made a leap, shoving himself up from the bottom.
His head broke the surface instantly. The Colorado was a very shallow river.
He coughed and wheezed for breath. The turbulence of the boat’s passing afterwash wheeled him around. The moon spun crookedly and then he picked up the boat with his eyes, the ruby gunflashes from along the rails. He saw it clearly when Pickett’s men shot the two Yuma Indians and threw them over the rail.
Then he spotted Wilstach, swimming strongly toward him against the current. Bullets made spouts and creases in the water and Boag filled his lungs and coughed and finally shouted, “Get your head down!” before he dived under and fought the current toward the near bank.
He stayed under as long as he could. Came up for air and had a look around to get his bearings. He was a little closer to shore than he had been; the riverboat was farther away, a good hundred yards downstream now. The guns were still volleying in flashes. Wilstach’s knobby head broke water between Boag and the Uncle Sam; Boag shouted something and went back under.
His hand touched bottom and he started dragging himself along the sand bottom. The current skidded him along. He would get a fist into the sand and propel himself sideways across the current and then the river would push him downstream ten feet.
It was shallow enough to walk it now, but if he did that they’d target him against the pale clay of the sloping banks. He stayed under and crawled until his lungs caught fire.
When he put his head up for air he saw them shoot their last volley. Uncle Sam was disappearing around the bend. Boag got his feet under him and stood angled back against the current, and searched for Wilstach.
He saw arms flail the surface. It was Wilstach but he wasn’t swimming strongly any longer; he was batting the water weakly. It was due downstream and Boag just kicked his feet loose and let the current carry him along, breasting with his arms to add speed. But before he reached Wilstach the arms and head disappeared under.
Boag swam harder.
They must have put a bullet into Wilstach and if Wilstach let the current carry him around the bend they’d have him in sight again from the high deck; the moon was plenty good enough for shooting. Boag had to find him first.
Then he saw Wilstach come up for air, one arm flopping up. Boag reached him and grabbed the arm and dragged him in to shore.
But John B. was dead.
He sat on the ground dripping, filled with agonies, out of breath. He was too spent to think, but when he heard footsteps in the brush he levered himself to his feet ready to face the next challenge.
It was Frailey, the one who had jumped overboard ahead of them. He was walking downstream, his feet squelching in his wet boots.
“Well then,” Frailey said. He seemed too tired to say anything else for a while. He sat down and put his eyes on John B. Wilstach who lay where Boag had dropped him on the bank. The river rushed by with a steady racket and bugs whined around Boag’s ears but he had no strength to bat them away.
“What happened to him?” Frailey asked stupidly. Boag didn’t bother to make any answer. Finally Frailey said, “You ain’t talking?”
What was there to talk about?
Frailey said, “Never knew a coon didn’t go stupid-ass silent when it was convenient.”
“Shut your mouth.” Boag felt in his pockets. “You got a couple of copper pennies on you?”
“What for?”
“Put on his eyelids.”
“If I did I wouldn’t give them to no dead coon.”
“If I had a Book I’d read over him. You know the words?”
“No. If I did I might have to read over both of you.”
“What?”
Frailey said, “You caught one or two yourself, I see.”
Boag looked down where Frailey was looking. Against the matted wet darkness of his pants a couple of darker spots were starting to show up.
He’d thought it was just the lingering pain from where Sweeney had kicked him.