CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
He woke to Slip retching.
The cabin was near pitch-dark. Jasper hadn’t meant to sleep so long. He hadn’t meant to sleep at all, just rest. He sat up, aching and cold from the cabin floor, and walked to the cabin’s window. From the look of the sky, he’d been asleep for hours.
Unfortunately for Slip, there was nothing much to come up, and nothing much that Jasper could do, beyond giving him a sip of water when the spell seemed to pass.
“Glad we skipped dinner,” Slip muttered after he swallowed the water. He fell back to sleep moments later.
Jasper sat in the dim predawn light, not sure what to do. There wasn’t anything he could do, was there? He’d told Slip it didn’t matter to him if he brought him down dead instead of alive. Maybe now that was how it was going to be.
But in the morning, Slip seemed a little better. His eyes focused a little more, at least, and the wound on the back of his head didn’t look infected when Jasper wrapped a length of cloth he’d found around it. Jasper headed out to look for food after bringing back some more water from the stream, leaving Tab behind, though she looked more likely to fall asleep with her head on Slip’s knee than stop him from running off.
Luckily, he was in no shape to be running off.
Near the stream, Jasper found more wild onions. He’d gathered enough to fill the makeshift sack he’d made out of his ratty blanket when he saw the tufts of fur peek up over the grass.
A rabbit.
Jasper would have laughed if it wouldn’t have scared the thing away.
He pulled his rifle around from its strap on his back and took aim. The rabbit seemed to realize it was being hunted, but Jasper shot before it could bolt. The shot sounded like thunder in the quiet of the morning. Jasper hoped he was right and there were no more men hunting them down. If he wasn’t . . .
He skinned and gutted the rabbit outside, then brought in a stack of firewood and got a fire going. Slip was asleep again, but Tab seemed mighty interested in what Jasper had brought home.
“You’ll get your share,” he told the dog. She sat back on her haunches as though she understood what he was saying.
Slip finally woke up when the stew was simmering over the fire. Jasper wasn’t anything approaching a cook, but he could cut up some onions and cook them with a rabbit. It could have been his hunger talking, and probably was, but the stew smelled delicious.
“Did you actually cook us up a rabbit?” Slip asked. His voice sounded groggy, but his words were clear enough.
“Tab and I are gonna share,” Jasper said, “since you’ve been sleeping too much to earn your keep.”
Slip sat up and stretched. “Hey, if I recall—” He stopped abruptly and looked around. “How’d . . .”
“Found the cabin when I was looking for water yesterday,” Jasper said. “It seemed like a good enough place to hole up until your head was on straight enough for you to walk.”
Slip’s eyes darted around the room like he was looking for threats. There was nowhere in the cabin to hide a threat, though, so Jasper wasn’t sure what he expected to find. “We been here a day?” he asked. Jasper nodded, and Slip seemed to relax. “Clever find.”
“Maybe your luck’s turning around.”
Slip snorted. “I doubt it.”
“Whoever lived here only left two plates and I promised one to the dog,” Jasper said. “You’ll have to eat out of the stewpot.”
Slip didn’t seem to mind the idea. Jasper had taken the stool, so Slip sat cross-legged in front of the fire. “That fall nearly did me in, I think,” he said, staring into the fire.
Jasper nodded. “Thought you might die.”
“I’ve seen it happen before,” Slip said. “A man gets knocked in the head, goes to bed like nothing’s wrong, then doesn’t wake back up again.”
“I’m glad you woke up again,” Jasper replied. “It would have been a right pain to drag your body all the way to Sonora.”
A laugh burst out of Slip’s mouth like he hadn’t expected that. “See, I knew you’d prefer alive to dead. Took you long enough to admit it.”
The stew looked done enough, and Jasper was hungry enough not to care if he was wrong. He dished out some to Slip—on a plate despite his promise to Tabitha—then to himself. He was sure he’d had better meals—he must have—but he wasn’t prepared to name one, not when he was so hungry and the rabbit was more filling than anything he’d had since the night before he left Indigo.
For a while they didn’t talk, and the only sound was spoons against metal plates and hearty chewing. Until Slip broke the silence. “I came to California to get away from my brother.”
Jasper’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He had to force himself to keep eating. Each time Slip had spoken about Alec, there’d been something off there. Jasper had thought Slip was proud of him at first, then realized that couldn’t have been it. But this?
“I’m the first Casey who robbed a bank. Our pa always said I’d grow up to be no good, and he was right. Got away clean that time, but without much to show for it. But then Alec got wind of what I’d done. Sixteen years old, he was, but it was like he’d been born to crime. The next jobs we pulled, we got a lot to show for them. But then he got a taste for killing.”
Slip put down his plate of stew, only half finished, like his brother’s taste for killing had taken away his own taste for rabbit.
“Finally, I decided to leave, get myself away from the Casey Gang. But then there he was again, moving west on my tail,” Slip said. He watched the fire as he spoke. “Alec makes you listen to him. Not with threats or violence, though he uses those too. No, there’s just something powerful about him. He’s easy to follow. And I’ve always liked to do things easy.”
He fell silent after that, even though Jasper knew there was more to the story. Why had Alec followed Slip? Or had it been a coincidence, following the gold to California? All Jasper knew was that one day the Casey Gang was gone, and then he’d decided to leave too.
Jasper didn’t even realize that he’d started to speak until the words were halfway out of his mouth. “I came to California to kill your brother.”
Slip looked over at him. Jasper had no idea what he was thinking. “I know,” he said, then picked up his stew and started eating again.
The sun was sinking low when Tabitha started to growl.
Jasper was on his feet just after she was. She padded toward the door, growl low in her throat, as though to alert them to danger, but not alert the danger they were there.
Jasper looked over to the fire dying in the hearth. Tab didn’t have to bark to alert anyone to their presence. The smoke would have done that. Or his shot at the rabbit.
“Think it’s another cougar?” Slip asked quietly. He’d moved back toward the bed after they ate, still sprawled on the ground, but with his back against the bed frame.
The odds of that were low. Jasper brought his rifle up and creaked the door open. Tabitha ran out the moment he did, and disappeared around the side of the cabin, growling. He didn’t call her back. If she wanted to chase after cougars or bears or even the men who might be tracking them, he couldn’t do anything to stop her.
Jasper walked outside, more cautiously than Tab had. He didn’t see anything outside, didn’t hear anything either. He followed Tab’s path around the cabin, walking as quiet as he could, then speeding up when he heard the dog’s sharp yelp.
Just as he rounded the corner, he saw her scrambling back onto her four legs and then launching herself at a man again.
The man standing there looked vaguely familiar in the same way Brady had before Jasper placed him as a shift boss from the mine. He was tall and rake thin, with red hair and freckles and a scar across his upper lip. Tabitha had her teeth in his leg, and he was shaking it and cursing up a storm. Jasper had his rifle up before the man clocked that he’d come around the corner. “It’s best if you stop moving,” he said.
“Why would I want to do that?” the man asked, scarred lip lifting in a sneer.
Jasper looked from his rifle to the man’s own gun, a revolver still in its holster at his belt.
“No matter that. I think it’s you who shouldn’t move,” the man said, and Jasper felt the barrel of a gun nudge at his back. “Call off the dog.” The man shook his leg, but Tabitha held on. Jasper didn’t think she was getting much skin through the heavy trousers, but he hoped he was wrong. “Now or we shoot her.”
He clicked his tongue like Valdez had. “Tabitha, stop.”
She did as he said, but she seemed grudging about it. She kept growling.
“Shoot her anyway,” the red-haired man said to the one holding a gun on Jasper.
“He shoots her, I shoot you, no mistake,” Jasper snapped quickly.
“Lawmen and their dogs,” the man said with a roll of his eyes. Jasper didn’t bother to correct him on either count. “Put that thing down, fool.”
“I didn’t think Brady had so many friends to help him with his dirty work,” Jasper said, lowering the rifle slowly.
“Don’t know who this man Brady is, but I’m certainly not here to help him with his dirty work.”
And then Jasper realized where he’d seen the man’s face before.
He had always kept up with the Casey Gang’s exploits, but rarely had he paid as much attention to its members. With the exception of Alec and Slip, well, the Casey Gang didn’t keep members too long. They had a bad habit of dying. But every few months, Jasper would see a new face on a wanted handbill, members of the Casey Gang wanted for robbery, for indecency, for murder.
Jasper had seen this man’s face printed on a handbill in Sonora.
He wasn’t working with Brady. He was a member of the Casey Gang.
Jasper almost wanted to laugh. He’d been wanting them to come, and here they were. How had they found them way out here? Was the man at his back Alec Casey? No, Jasper didn’t think he was the type to hold his gun to a man’s back. Not from any compunction about shooting it. No, he was the type to face a man and kill him with a smile.
“Why don’t you put down that gun and then we take a walk?” the first man was saying. He still hadn’t drawn his gun. “There’s a nice stand of trees over there. And you can see the sunset. As good a place and time as any to die, right?”
Jasper had no intention of dying next to that bush full of unripe berries, especially not killed by one of Alec Casey’s henchmen. These last few days he’d had far too many guns leveled at his back for his taste. He was getting mighty tired of it.
“It’s a mercy to get a moment to pray before you die. Truly,” the man said. “Now put the rifle down or you and the dog will go right here without a moment to make sure God’s expecting you.”
“No need to do that.” Jasper bent, laying his rifle on the ground next to the remnants of the woodpile. He glanced over his shoulder as he did, catching a glint of metal in the corner of his eye as he did.
“Move,” the man behind him said, shoving the barrel of the gun into the small of his back again.
Jasper twisted, moving as fast as he could to get his body away from the revolver and get control of it. The gun went off before he could grab it, the bullet splintering the side of the cabin. “Tab!” he ordered, hoping the dog would do as he wanted. The growl she let out made him hope she had.
He slammed the hand holding the gun down, once, twice, and it came loose from the man’s grip. Jasper kicked it away as hard as he could, but it left him off-balance and he toppled over. He groped for his rifle. It must have been close. His hand hit metal—but the wrong shape to be his rifle.
He glanced over at it.
The watering can.
He grabbed it from the bottom, the uneven edge of the rusted-out metal biting into the palm of his hand, and swung as hard as he could.
The metal connected with the gunman’s head and he fell back onto his rear, stunned. It lasted only a moment, but that was enough. Jasper grabbed his rifle and fired, then stood and faced the other one.
Tab had him on his back in the grass. The man’s right hand was bloody from where he’d clearly tried to grab his revolver and Tabitha had taken a finger or two. He let out a scream and shoved at the dog, throwing her off of him and into the dirt. He reached for his gun with his other hand, got his fingers on the hilt.
Jasper cocked the rifle, ready to fire again—only to realize he was out of ammunition. Jasper strode over, flipping his rifle around, and slammed its butt into the man’s head as hard as he could. The man flopped back onto the grass.
What was it they said about the Henry? Load it on Sunday and keep firing through the week? Well, it hadn’t quite lasted him seven days, but it had still gotten the job done.
Jasper slung his rifle over his shoulder, then took the gun from the man’s holster. He’d never seen one quite like it; there was a different look about the barrel and the cylinder. He’d take it with him anyway. It wasn’t as though the man could use it now anyway, not effectively, not with his hand destroyed like that.
Jasper strode back to the cabin door and shoved it open. “Slip, we—”
Jasper’s words died in his mouth.
Sitting on the lone stool in the middle of the cabin, revolver held loosely in his right hand, was Alec Casey.