“How bad?” he asked as he led the two animals into the cover of rock and brush.
“I told you to drop that rifle, Smith!” Lukens shouted suddenly, trying to take charge. He looked all around, frightened.
“Well, I’m not going to, Trooper,” said Rock, “so shut up about it and let’s see about the captain. How bad is he?” he repeated.
“As bad as ever I’ve seen, Smith,” Lukens said, swallowing a knot in his throat.
“You know there’s a doctor in Dunbar,” Rochenbach said, gesturing the young soldier in front and following him down the hillside.
“I’m thinking he’s past doctoring, to be honest with you,” Lukens said.
Rochenbach winced again.
In the small clearing where the soldiers’ horses stood, the wounded captain raised his head and looked up from where he lay slumped back against a tree. The center of his chest was covered with dark blood. His right hand held a blood-soaked bandanna against the wound. An open canteen rested against the side of his leg.
“A soldier… should not die… out of uniform,” he rasped, seeing Rochenbach walk toward him.
Rochenbach stooped down beside him. He lifted his hand and the bandanna a little and examined the wound closely, seeing the severity of it.
“You’re a soldier, Captain, uniform or not,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
“I—I saw you,” Captain Boone said, clutching his forearm with his other bloody hand. “You were up there… shooting at them. You were on our side.”
“Don’t tell anybody,” Rochenbach said. “You’ll ruin my reputation.”
“Who are you, Smith?” the captain said. “I know there’s more to you… than you told me.”
Rochenbach saw the man was dying. He tossed a glance up toward Lukens. Captain Boone caught the look.
“Trooper… go look the wagon over good,” he told Lukens. “We’ve got… to load the gold when the others arrive.”
Lukens looked hesitantly at Rochenbach.
“Go on, Trooper,” urged the captain. “This man is no longer a prisoner.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lukens, looking a little relieved. Turning on his heel, he hurried away through the brush and toward the trail.
“You’re hauling that gilded junk out of here, are you, Captain?” Rochenbach asked as soon as Lukens was out of sight.
“Of course… we are,” said the wounded captain with a crooked, bloody smile. “That’s the mission.” He coughed and looked back at Rochenbach. “Now, who are you, Smith? I don’t want to die wondering.”
“Remember the identity code you asked me for? I told you I’d forgotten the four numbers?”
Boone nodded his head weakly, a knowing look coming upon his pale face—a look of satisfaction.
Here goes…, Rock told himself.
“My name is Avrial Rochenbach, Captain,” he said in a low voice. He glanced around, then leaned in closer and whispered the four numbers into the captain’s ear.
Boone gave a smile of recognition. “I knew it. I was right… you’re the government man.”
“Shhh,” said Rochenbach. “My reputation.”
“Yes, of course, your reputation…” Boone managed another bloody smile. “Tell me, Avrial Rochenbach. Did we do… this right, all of us, together?” Boone asked, his voice fading fast.
“We did it all the best we could, Captain, under the circumstances,” said Rochenbach. “We always do, folks like you and me. We’re fellow countrymen.”
“Fellow countrymen. That’s good… to hear,” said Boone. His grin turned to a faint smile as more blood seeped from his trembling lips. “I’m going on now…,” he whispered.
“Captain?” Rochenbach started to shake him a little, but he stopped himself, seeing it would do no good.
Captain Boone’s eyes glazed over. His hand fell away from Rochenbach’s forearm.
Adios, Captain.…
Rochenbach wasn’t about to tell the dying captain how foolish he thought this had been, men dying over worthless plated gold. All this just so he could ferret out the name of one man—a man in a position of public trust, who used his position to steal from the very people who had bestowed that trust upon him.
Shame on you, Inman S. Walker.
He reached out and closed the captain’s eyes.
“He was felled by the last shot fired from up on the ridgeline,” Trooper Lukens said, walking up quietly behind Rochenbach.
Rochenbach considered it, picturing Spiller running to his horse, his rifle in hand. He reached down and pulled his Remington from the captain’s belt and stood up, letting the gun hang down his right side. In his left hand he held his rifle.
“I’m leaving,” he said flatly, giving Lukens a flat, determined stare.
“Go on, then,” said Lukens. “Captain Boone said you’re not a prisoner anymore. That’s good enough for me.”
Rochenbach turned to get his horses.
“You best hurry on, Smith,” said Lukens. He gestured a nod upward toward the trail. “I saw Sergeant Goodrich and a couple others limping along the trail, headed this way. They’re chewed up, but they might shoot you on sight.”
“Obliged, Trooper,” Rochenbach said. He walked back through the brush to where the two horses stood waiting. He left the blaze-faced chestnut where it stood, stepped up atop the big dun and rode away, down through the trees toward the trail leading to Dunbar.
Pres Casings lay on a gurney in the surgery room of the doctor’s office in Dunbar. Afternoon sunlight spread slantwise across the floor through an open window. The Stillwater Giant, being too large for a gurney, was stretched out on two dinner-sized tables standing along the wall to keep from blocking the whole room. The doctor stood over his massive chest with a pair of long, tapered surgery tongs.
“My goodness,” the bald, middle-aged doctor said, staring at the round stone he’d pulled out of the Giant’s chest with the tongs. “This is most unusual.” A long, dark strand of congealed blood hung from the stone.
“What is, Doc?” the Giant asked, raising his head a little and staring along with the doctor.
“I probed for a bullet, but I pulled this stone from between your ribs.
“Oh, that…,” said the Giant, laying his head back down. “I stuck it there.”
“You stuck a stone in your chest wound?” the doctor asked in disbelief.
“I just wanted to see if it would stop the bleeding,” the Giant said with a big-toothed grin. “It stopped it, huh?”
“Well… yes, it appears that it did,” the doctor said. He dropped the stone into a pan.
From his gurney, Casings listened and smiled to himself.
“Doc, he stuck rocks in his wounds when we stopped to water our horses at a creek. That’s why he wanted you to attend to me first. Right, Giant?”
“Yep,” the Giant said proudly. “I was in no hurry once the bleeding stopped.”
The doctor looked at the Giant’s other wounds, bullet holes crusted over with dried blood.
“So, am I to believe I’ll be finding more of these stones inside you, Mr. Garth?”
“Yep,” the Giant said. “There’s one stone per bullet hole. I didn’t stick them in too deep, but riding might’ve stuck them deeper.” He grinned. “I thought about sticking more than one in a couple of the holes. But I was afraid it might be harmful.”
“Harmful…? Yes, I understand why,” the doctor said. “Good thinking, sir.” He shook his bald head a little and wiped crusted blood from another wound with a wet cloth.
“Ready, Doc?” the Giant asked.
“Yes, hold on to the table edge, Mr. Garth,” the doctor said. “Here we go again.”
The Giant’s huge hands gripped the tables’ edges tightly. He took a deep breath as the probe went inside the nearly bloodless bullet hole and slid deeper until the doctor felt it clink against a stone.