Death Wears a Star by Andrew McBride

Author:Andrew McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719823800
Publisher: Robert Hale Fiction

ELEVEN

It was a small adobe building, a square room maybe six yards by six. There was a steerhide door. Against the far wall, chains had been hammered into the wall, the chains ending in metal cuffs clamped around Calvin Taylor’s wrists. Taylor pulled on the chains, but he couldn’t find any strength; the pain in his head was too fierce, draining him. He sat back against the wall.

The steerhide door swung open and a man stood in the entrance. He was a dark shape against the harsh outside glare. Taylor blinked against it. He recognised Ash Wilson.

Wilson said, ‘Surprised?’

Taylor said, ‘No.’ He could barely hear his own voice over the noise in his head, the sound of pain.

‘Oh?’

‘For a while Wells Fargo thought you might be tipping off road agents about which stages to hit. Maybe you got word about me coming down here through to them. After all, it was me they were after.’

Wilson said, ‘They shouldn’t have shot. They shouldn’t have shot. They should’ve seen it was Pike up there, and not you.’

‘Why didn’t they?’

‘Nobody should’ve shot Pike. That wasn’t part of the plan.’

‘Something to think about, Wilson, when they put the rope around your neck.’

Wilson frowned. ‘Maybe.’ He gazed around the bare interior of the adobe. ‘Get used to this place. You’ll be here for a few days.’

‘And then what?’

‘Don’t know who they used to chain up here. Might’ve been a military establishment, some sort of army camp; this is where they chained up their prisoners.’

Taylor wondered how far they were from Coffin Creek. If he hadn’t been unconscious, he’d been on the edge of it, in a grey delirium. He had no idea how many hours, or even days, he’d been in that state. The bullet had grooved a trough above his right ear; his skull could even be fractured. He had no idea where he was. There were no window-holes in the adobe, so he couldn’t even tell the time of day.

He said, ‘If you let me go, Wilson, before this goes any further.…’

Wilson smiled bitterly. ‘Not a chance. Maybe you’re right, Taylor. Could be this is all going bad, and the end of it’ll be a rope around my neck. On the other hand maybe it won’t, and I’ll have a lot of things to help me forget about poor old Pike and his widow and kids.’

Taylor decided the pain in his head was so bad he was going to vomit, and maybe faint too. Unconsciousness would be a mercy, at least. He said, ‘Lots of money, you mean?’

‘Sure. What do you kill for, Taylor? Like you killed Luther Perkins? ’Cos you want to make this country a safer place?’ Wilson sneered, ‘You pull a trigger ’cos you like doing it. And the money. Ain’t that the truth?’

‘Which son of a bitch shot me? Alva?’

Wilson stood by the doorway, chewing one thick thumbnail. ‘You’ll be here a couple of days, I figger.’

‘Why? You keeping me out of the way of something? What?’

The reinsman began chewing on his other thumbnail; he started a low, tuneless whistling.

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