CHAPTER TEN
Tabitha had the man down, and Jasper thought he could hear her snarls even from a distance. He wanted to go help her. Pull Hatch and Valdez out from whatever cover they’d taken and drag them along with them.
He couldn’t.
“We have to go,” Jasper said, turning around to face Slip Casey. “Help me.” Slip bent down to help him shoulder Westin’s weight without arguing. As they hoisted him up, the man gave another groan, but this time opened his eyes a little.
“Mr. Westin, we gotta run.”
“I do not think running is—” From the road, Jasper heard a dog’s pained yelp and a gunshot. Westin bit back whatever he was going to say, and the three of them started to move.
Calling it running was generous. They stumbled across clumps of dirt and between tall trees, and Jasper lost all sense of direction. The sun seemed to flare and wane as they went, but Jasper knew that was only because they were passing in and out of the cover of trees. They hadn’t been running long enough to lose the light, had they? What he did know was they hadn’t heard gunshots since they started running. Jasper cautiously hoped that meant they’d lost any pursuers they might have had.
“Stop,” Slip said when they reached a craggy spot in the forest, boulders rising up like squat stony trees among the taller pines. A cliff rose up on one side of them, the slope steep enough that climbing wasn’t an option either for them or for those hunting them. “Stop. We have to stop.”
Slip slid out from under Westin’s arm. This time Jasper was ready for it, took the rest of the man’s weight, and lowered him to the ground. Slip staggered forward to press his uninjured arm against a boulder. His breathing came hard and uneven. Jasper wondered if that wound on his shoulder was worse than he’d said.
“I ain’t cut out for running,” Slip wheezed.
“Then you shouldn’t have become an outlaw,” Jasper said, and turned his attention to Westin. He’d propped the other man against a smaller boulder, and his head lolled to the side.
Slip chuckled breathlessly. “I’ve been an outlaw a dozen years, and I never ran so much as I have today. Besides, don’t pretend you don’t know that ain’t about me.”
Jasper couldn’t pretend not to know that. Those men hadn’t been after Slip. But he did ask, “Then what is it about?”
“Hell if I know,” Slip replied. He took a step toward Jasper. “How is he?”
Jasper didn’t reply. Slip could see for himself the answer wasn’t good. Westin was still breathing, but shallowly. Jasper didn’t know when he’d fallen back into unconsciousness, but he hadn’t even let out a groan when he was placed on the ground this time.
Jasper took a deep breath and took stock of the situation. He hadn’t had time to grab anything from the stage; his bag was still at the driver’s box, and most of his supplies had been in the boot anyway. He had his father’s rifle, of course, and he had his knife, its holster strapped to his belt. He had a flint for starting fires, and his canteen, a little more than half full.
And that was it.
He wished he hadn’t left his vest behind when they ran. Slip Casey’s fault, he thought angrily. It always came back to a Casey.
“We need to find shelter,” he said instead.
If Slip noticed the heat in his voice, he didn’t say anything about it. “Probably could find a cave,” Slip replied, gesturing to the rocks all around them. “Hear tell these mountains are full of them.”
These mountains would be full of mine shafts before the century was over, but sometimes nature gave them a head start with a small cave of her own.
“Let’s go, then.” Getting to his feet was a task Jasper didn’t relish, but better to move now before the fatigue set in.
“You want the three of us to go stumbling around, looking for shelter? Wouldn’t it be better to send me to scout for one?”
Jasper was shaking his head before Slip finished the sentence. “I might trust you not to run off alone when armed men are in sight, but certainly not when they’re nowhere to be seen.”
“A suspicious one.” Slip snorted. “Sure you’re not also a lawman?”
For one day, long ago, he had been. Jasper didn’t share that bit of information. Instead he said, “We’ll leave Westin here, come back once we find shelter.”
Slip looked like he might argue that too, but swallowed down whatever protest he might have, and nodded.
Jasper adjusted his grip on his rifle and gestured forward. “Lead the way.”
Slip Casey was blessedly quiet as they searched for shelter, and he’d been right about a cave. They came upon one after very little searching. It was shallow, and they both had to duck down to enter, but there was more than enough room for the three men. It went back far enough that they should be able to light a fire without worrying too much that it might be seen, but not so far that they couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the home of any sleeping animal.
They made it back to Westin quickly, and Jasper was relieved to find him still breathing and not injured further. Slip made a crack about worrying he’d have been eaten by a bear or wolf that Jasper didn’t want to admit had lingered in his mind too. Leaving a bloody, unconscious man in the middle of this wild forest? Jasper wouldn’t have done it if he’d seen another way.
But they got Westin back to the cave they’d found quickly, though Slip was panting and complaining about his arm by the time they settled the man down. Jasper stripped off his coat again, this time using it to cover Westin up as best he could. The man felt cold, and that couldn’t be a good sign. He was still breathing, Jasper thought. Focus on that.
“I’d give him my jacket as a pillow, except . . .” Slip trailed off and raised his hands, his cuffs clanking again.
“I’d give him my vest for one, but you left it on the ground.”
Slip shrugged, conceding his point, then winced. “I may be regretting that right now, as I could use the binding.”
Jasper ignored that. “Let’s make a fire, then see to Westin.”
There were enough drying kindling and broken branches on the forest floor for it to be short work to find enough for a fire. Jasper used his flint stone, glad he kept it with him almost always, and soon they had a small, warm fire flaring to life in the cave. And then it was time to see to Westin.
The shot Westin had taken in the chest probably looked worse in the clear light of the sun than it did in their fire’s flickering flame, but it was bad enough. Jasper swallowed hard after he moved his coat and the makeshift dressing Slip had put over the wound back at the road. He had to force himself not to look away. Westin had been hit well below the heart, but not in a spot that gave Jasper very much hope to keep him alive.
He didn’t have much to help—some water in his canteen, and Westin’s own handkerchief he could use for part of a makeshift bandage. He did it as quick and gentle as possible, cleaning the wound as best he could—wincing himself when Westin moaned and flinched in pain, eyes open but not seeming to see anything—and doubling up the kerchief and pressing it against the gash. Not enough, he thought, and reached for his coat. He stripped out a piece of the lining.
“He’s not going to make it,” Slip said beside him. His voice was softer than Jasper had expected.
“You don’t know that,” Jasper said, finishing his bandaging of the wound best he could without making Westin move any more than he already had.
Slip didn’t argue, just continued like he hadn’t heard Jasper speak at all. “He won’t last the night.”
“And what? You think we should just leave him here? Let him die alone while we run some more?”
The set of Slip’s jaw almost made it look as though that had insulted him. “You know, this is why my brother always bests your lawmen.” His voice was still soft. “He doesn’t care about leaving people to die.”
“Doesn’t care about leaving people to die?” Jasper snorted out a laugh that sounded more a snarl even to his own ears. “Don’t you mean he makes sure to leave them that way?”
Something flickered across Slip’s face. Jasper wasn’t sure what it was. “Alec Casey leaves a lot of folk dead. You’re right about that. Some he makes that way. Some he just doesn’t care to save. If Alec were here, he’d take one look at your banker man and walk right away.”
If Alec were here, Jasper didn’t say, he’d be dead.
“Well, let me express my happiness that your brother is not here, Mr. Casey.”
Jasper’s eyes darted down to Westin. The man’s eyes were only half open, but they were open and looking up at Slip’s face. Jasper hadn’t been sure what the man was seeing when he’d cleaned his wound, but he looked better now. No, not better. Clearer.
“I won’t argue with that,” Slip said, sitting back on his haunches.
“Mr. Duncan, I need you to do something for me,” Westin said.
His voice cracked as he spoke, and Jasper grabbed for his canteen. There wasn’t much left, but he poured a little into Westin’s mouth. Some of it dribbled out of the side, pinkish from the blood still on his lips, but the man swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was a little stronger.
“Inside my jacket.”
He made to reach for something, but Jasper stilled him with a hand, then reached inside himself. There was a leather folio tucked inside a large pocket on the inside of the jacket. It looked too large for a slim man like Westin to be carrying under his jacket. The leather was finely tooled and a brass latch held it closed. The leather was stained with blood, but the pages inside were not.
“I need you to get this back to my office,” Westin said. “The mine office in Sonora.”
Jasper paged through the papers: two maps, clearly of the mine and its vicinity; a schedule that looked like it involved payroll; other information penned in the same neat, sloping hand Jasper had seen in Westin’s ledger. Jasper didn’t take the time to read through it all before he closed the folio.
“Why?” Jasper asked.
“Because I think . . .” Westin swallowed. “I think someone wants that badly enough to kill.” He let out a rough-sounding cough. “Kill me, to be precise.”
“That? Someone wanted that?” It was Slip’s voice, saying exactly the thought Jasper had just been forming. Slip huffed a laugh. “I’m not even the most important passenger on the very stagecoach bringing me to the executioner. My brother would get a kick out of that.”
“Shut up,” Jasper snapped. He leaned forward. “Are you sure? This was about you?”
Westin’s voice sounded as though a cold had settled in his chest, like he had to force the words out around some sort of water in his lungs. “I know you thought about it. The accident the other day coming into Indigo. Didn’t seem like an accident, did it?”
Jasper thought about the bullet he’d found out on the road, right near where that horse had spooked. “It did not. You think someone wanted to stop you from getting there.”
Westin’s chin dipped in a bare nod. “And now . . .”
“They want to stop you from getting back.” Jasper looked down at the leather folio. Because of this? What meaning did any of this have to be worth not just Westin’s life but those of anyone else riding along with him?
By the time he brought his attention back to Westin, the man had already fallen asleep again. Or Jasper hoped it was sleep anyway and not something worse.
“You have to admit, it’s pretty funny that the outlaw isn’t the one drawing down the danger,” Slip said instead of keeping his mouth shut.
Jasper didn’t think getting shot at was funny at all. He laid the folio down beside Westin, then realized what he hadn’t come upon while digging around inside Westin’s jacket.
“You have that pistol?” Jasper asked.
“What pistol?”
“Westin’s.”
Slip looked over at the unconscious man, then back up to Jasper. “You really believe that man carried a pistol? Pens, maybe, but pistols?”
“The one Hatch gave him,” Jasper ground out. “To guard you in the stage.”
Slip shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to it. The dog did most of the guarding.” Jasper clearly didn’t look convinced, because Slip lifted his arms and turned in a slow circle. “No pistol. See?”
Jasper still wasn’t convinced. He shuffled forward, his head bumping against the cave’s roof a couple of times on his way to Slip’s side; then he patted down the man as best he could. He found nothing.
Slip snorted and said, “I told you.”
Jasper gave him a shove away and Slip’s breath hissed out. His arm. Jasper had forgotten he was wounded too.
“Sit down,” Jasper ordered. If he jerked Slip’s sleeve down his arm rougher than necessary, well, there was no one to tell him he was being a lousy doctor, was there?
The wound really was just a graze. It seemed to have bled quite a bit, dribbling down Slip’s arm and staining the gray of his shirt, but it wasn’t deep. They didn’t have much to bind it, so Jasper stripped out another piece of his coat lining. It was awkward to tie with Slip’s hands bound. Jasper was more than a little surprised that he didn’t make another plea to have his hands uncuffed. But Slip stayed mostly silent while Jasper did his doctoring.
When Jasper was done, Slip said a quiet “My thanks.”
Jasper didn’t reply and retreated to the other side of the cave. He checked Westin’s breathing again—just as even as it had been, though still rattling a little in his lungs. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, at least. Jasper wondered if it would be enough to save him, or if Slip was right and he wouldn’t last the night. He tucked his jacket around Westin and tried not to think of Valdez’s quiet voice. Running us all right into a trap would get someone killed.
“Can I have some of that water?”
Jasper looked down at the canteen at Westin’s side, then lifted it to his lips, and took a drink. Then he corked it right back up again and tucked it down at his side.
Slip snorted, then lay down on the hard dirt floor of the cave. “What’d I ever do to you?” he muttered.
Jasper swirled the warm, tinny-tasting water around his mouth and swallowed. Despite the water, his mouth was dry.