Rib Bone Jack: The last dispatch by John Williamson

Author:John Williamson [Williamson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-19T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Jack and Barley had purchased two fresh horses with money discretely passed to them by Captain Reins. The three of them had decided that between the shipwrights, the town’s folk and the crew of the Thorn, Jack would undoubtedly be betrayed. With this in mind they formulated a plan that would allow them a head start, quietly riding out of town on a fresh pair of horses, only minuted before the Thorn set sail.

Fresh horses or not, they weren’t far into the evening when their horses began to flag. The stench of horse sweat and the heavy, exaggerated breaths of the animals made it clear that they needed to be rested.

The night had started brightly enough, but cloud was moving in, making the large, potentially dangerous potholes in the road, hard to see. Only then did they slow to a gentle trot, and in the process, relieve some of the pressure on the horses. Even so, it was clear the animals weren’t the riding horses they were sold to them as.

“We’ll be carrying them before much longer,” Barley grumbled, those being the most words he had spoken since King’s Lynn. “I told you we should have taken the bay.”

“Star blaze… Bad luck,” Jack replied in all seriousness.

“So’s getting shot by soldiers!”

“We’ll have a change of animals, next place we see,” Jack assured him, patting his horse on the neck as if his words might have offended it.

“Do you have any coin?”

“Enough!” Jack said with a grin.

Barley huffed to himself, knowing from that one word, Jack planned to steel the horses.

“Can I ask you a question?” Barley said, after a minutes deep thought. “As you’re most likely going to get me killed, only seems right I know.”

“Go on.”

“The famous outlaw, with his two scary pistols, that you carted halfway around the world and back. Why’d you give em away?”

“I told you, they identify me. Every man woman and child from here to the South coast would be taking a pop at us.”

“That’s what you told me, but I don’t believe it. You could hide them, or get something smaller, the Captain even offered you one of his.”

Jack smiled. “You won’t like it!”

“Tell me anyway,” Barley insisted, his tone being that of foreboding.

“I travelled for a while along the Carolina coast, with a family of gypsies. I’d have stayed for much, would have been the best for all concerned,” he began, before pausing, his mind fascinated by the notion; by how much better it would have been for those he cared for if he had never returned.

Barley stared back, anticipating the rest of the story, while Jack dismounted to walk the deadly stretch of poorly kept road, the darkness becoming more intense with the building cloud.

“Mother Ivy, they called her. One hundred and forty years old, they reckoned she was, with all the wisdom that went with it.”

Barley huffed and grinned at the idea. “Nobody gets that old.”

“She was older than anyone I’ve ever seen... Anyway, we all sat around the fire, the night before I left, and she grabbed my hand.

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