The Mexicans had second-guessed them. Though they probably knew there were reinforcements somewhere around the isolated valley, there was no way of knowing for certain when they’d appear.
So three of the band had chosen, maybe fortified by tequila or cheap whiskey, to try a night-time raid. There had to be another crossing-place, ways up the river, for they hadn’t come over where Ben had been watching.
The first he knew was a disturbance near the rig. Horses stamping. Crow’s stallion kicking out at somebody skulking in the blackness.
“I fired over there and heard Spangel yell out.” Crow had arrived, sprinting out of the dark, diving in the sand near Ford. His scattergun ready in his fist. Listening intently to the ramrod’s hurried explanation. After that single shot there’d been silence.
“Sure there’s three?”
“Yeah. Reverend’s got ears on him. Shouted there was three men movin’ by the rig. That’s all.”
It’s a stand-off. We can’t get to them. They won’t move from cover.”
Ford nodded. Slipping another round into the Winchester, cradling the butt back against his shoulder. They’ll take us easy if more of them come over there.”
The shootist drew in a deep breath. “Then I’ll shift them from by the wagon.”
But it wasn’t necessary. The Mexicans made their move first.
“Hey!” Spangel. “Hey, what’s happening here?”
“That the old man?” said Ford.
“Yeah.”
“With them bandits back, I never asked you.”
“Daniel, you mean?”
“Sure. You find him, Crow?”
“I found him.”
The flatness was unmistakable. Ford whistled. “He’d done for himself?”
“Yeah. Hanged on a tree by his belt.”
“Poor bastard.”
“Maybe. Maybe better that way.”
There was silence from by the wagon. Crow didn’t call out to the old man to find out what was happening. There was no point. It would just give away their position to the Mexicans.
Nothing happened for better than a half hour. Except that the first glimmering of the false dawn appeared, washing the deepest blackness from the corners of the sky.
“We’ll soon be able to see ’em, Crow,” hissed Ford.
“Sure. And they’ll be able to see us.”
Crow stared into the pits of shadow behind the wagon. There was a flicker of movement and he put down the Purdey, hefting the Winchester. Bringing it to his shoulder and squinting along the barrel. Like all great marksmen Crow fired with an open, two-eyed stance.
“See one?”
“Yeah. But not clear enough. Close by the front where those stones are braking the wheels.”
“Hell. If’n they move them, Crow, the whole wagon could roll on down that slope there and clean into the river. And that’d be the end of the rig.”
“And the money.”
“And the Reverend Spangel.”
“Be the end of my contract.”
There was a moment of stillness before Ben Ford spoke again. “And me, Crow. And me.”
“You can’t sit a horse at all?”
“Not even to save my life. And this sure as Hell would be to do that. Nope. Can’t do nothin’ but lie here.”
“A travois?”
“Sure. Where’s the wood, Crow? And with a hornet’s nest of greasers shootin’ at you. Come on …”
The shootist was saved from trying to reply to the unanswerable by another shout from Spangel. Revealing that their worst fears were happening.
“I’m moving! Holy Christ, save me! I’m moving!”
“They’ve moved the fuckin’ stones, Crow!” called Ben, firing three rapid shots into the dim pool of darkness below the wheels of the Conestoga. He was rewarded with a yelp of pain. A figure jumped from the ground onto the seat of the rolling wagon, seeking cover.
Crow lay still where he was, not prepared to take the chance of exposing himself to a sniper’s fire from among the boulders.
“It’s goin’ to …” began Ford, stopping when he realized how trite and obvious the thought was.
The wagon was clearly going into the river, gathering speed under its own weight, creaking and rattling. Whatever Crow had tried to do it would have been much too little and much too late.
It hit the edge of the water with surprisingly little splash, only a burst of white foam, tinged pink by the rising light, splattering up around the wheels. The bottom of the river shelved steeply and there was sufficient impetus to the rig to carry it out into the middle, where it immediately began to float. Turning like a majestic state barge in the swift current.
“Could you get a rope on it?”
Crow didn’t answer for a moment. Realizing that if there was any chance, no matter how remote, it might be worth taking a risk to try and save the wagon.
Not the wagon.
Not the Reverend Charles Spangel.
But the money. Those chests filled with money. In less than a minute the rig would reach the beginning of the steep, jagged rapids, where the waters would boil and tip it over. Rolling it and smashing it open, carrying the shards of wood and everything in it way deep under the ground, where it would be lost forever.
“Nothin’s worth gettin’ killed for. Except your own life, Ben,” said Crow, remaining where he was.
“You could, maybe. Hell, guess you’re right, Crow. Only takes one man with a rifle behind there and he can hit you easier than stealin’ wool off an old woman’s needles.”
Together they watched the closing seconds of the Conestoga. To their surprise they suddenly saw the unmistakable figure of Spangel appear at the rear of the wagon, tearing back the canvas cover. His giant body was huge and black against the whiteness. And he was holding one of the Mexicans in his arms.
“Jesus,” breathed Ford. “Will you look at that man!”
“Perish in the waters, you damnable cur!” roared the old preacher, hurling the body out into the foaming river. The bandit sank for a moment, then reappeared, arms flailing helplessly. They saw him battered against one of the first jagged tips of the rapids and then he vanished and didn’t reappear.
“Vengeance is mine, saith …” began the echoing bellow of the Reverend Spangel, above the screams of the drowning man and the raging of the falls. Then Ford and Crow heard the muffled crack of a shot.
Another.
A third.
They saw him stagger, the arms reaching out to the heavens. The head turned to look into the wagon, the blind eyes seeking his assailant. Lurching out of sight of the two watchers.
They heard a fourth shot.
“Pistol,” said Crow, laconically.
“Must be another in there.”
“There,” said Crow.
Spangel reappeared a last time. Holding a struggling Mexican in his arms as though the bandit was a fractious child. They could see the first light gleaming off the polished frame of a Colt. There was another shot, barely audible as the barrel of the pistol was pressed deep into Spangel’s barrel chest.
“That’s five bullets in him,” whispered Ford, with something close to religious awe in his voice. “Man just won’t go down.”
The old preacher must have been dying on his feet, fighting for his balance against the rocking of the wagon. The rig trembled on the brink of the first sharp descent into the maelstrom.
“Goin’,” said the shootist, and he might have been speaking about the wagon. Or about the minister.
With an inarticulate cry that could have been pain or anger or anything in between, Spangel deliberately leaped from the tumbling rig into the cold waters of the river, gripping the Mexican to his chest like a mother with her first-born.
For a moment they both seemed to hang in space, suspended between the air and the water. Then they vanished and the waters closed immediately over both of them. Though Ford and Crow watched for some seconds, neither man came to the surface again.
The wagon rolled and they could hear the crash as its side struck a monstrous boulder, splitting it from seam to seam. A wheel was torn clean off and thrown high in the air by the awesome force of the pounding river. Then, like a falling tree, the rig rolled on its side, showing the bottom to the dawn. It hit another rock sideways on, breaking off another strip of white wood.
Spinning, the pieces smaller and smaller as the waters swallowed them. The canvas top splitting across the top and flapping over the river like a great manta ray, until it snagged on rocks and was torn immediately to a hundred rags and tatters of dull grey material.
The light wasn’t good enough to make out a lot of the details, but Crow watched, imagining that he could see the chests filled with money as the rolling breakers took them, like child’s toys, throwing them into the saw-toothed rocks, splintering them and emptying their riches into the battering waves.
A fortune vanishing before his eyes, and he was powerless to do anything to save any of it. But Crow wasn’t the sort of man to shed tears over anything or anybody. That would have been an empty exercise.
“Sweet Jesus,” said Ford. That’s the end of the biggest dream I ever did hear of.”
Crow eased the hammer down on the Winchester. “When it comes right on down to it, Ben, there’s not a lot of difference between big dreams and little ones. None of them’s real.”
“No. Guess that’s right. None of them.”
It was fast becoming full light.