Authors: Michael McLellan
It was about three hours before sundown when Zack realized that it would be completely impossible for him to sneak up and watch the gang out in the grasslands. He could almost make out shapes in the distance along with the dust cloud. “You are one stupid-ass Zackary Lane Mcqueen,” Zack said to himself aloud. “What in the hell were you thinking? They’d spot you miles away during the day, and you couldn’t ride Grace up on ‘em at night. You’d have to leave Grace out here and walk a couple of miles, and if they have campfires and lanterns and lookouts….” he trailed off, no longer feeling like a man but a fifteen-year-old kid. He was still resolved to the rescue but he realized at that moment that he needed to think everything through a lot better if he wanted to succeed at anything but getting himself and his loved ones killed.
He didn’t travel any further that day and was glad because the dust-cloud disappeared not long after he stopped. He didn’t want to be any closer to the gang than he was already. At his best guess they would reach the foothills at mid-morning the following day and the beginning of the pass that night. Sitting at his cold camp after rubbing down Grace he pondered his options, coming up with ideas and then discarding them when he discovered some flaw or another. He thought about traveling by night and circling around the gang’s camp and heading into the hills ahead of them, which would be a good plan if he could be reasonably sure of where they were going to camp the following night, but he would only be able to guess, and if he was wrong…. On top of that there was currently no moon and he was a mediocre horseman at best. The last thing that he needed was to lame up Grace, or have her trip and throw him, leaving him lying in the grass with a broken spine. He also thought about trying to join the gang, thinking that if he was able to infiltrate the group and gain their trust that it may be easier to stage the rescue. In the end he thought that the best idea was to wait until they got into the mountain pass where there would be plenty of cover that he could use to assess the situation and aid in his escape.
When the sun started going down Zack could see smoke from campfires at the base of the foothills. He wasn’t very hungry but decided to eat something before it got so dark that he couldn’t see anything. Leaning over and taking some of the pork out of the saddlebag he caught some movement out of the corner of his eye. He slowly reached over the saddlebags to where his pack was lying in the grass and with his right hand (his left still holding the piece of pork) pulled the drawstring on the pack, reached in and removed the pistol. Raising the pistol while lowering himself to his knees he turned toward the movement. It was the wolf. Zack exhaled, only then becoming aware that he had been holding his breath, and said, “Damn dog, you scared the hell out of me, good way to get shot sneaking up like that. And where were you, Grace?” he said, turning and looking for the mare, who was currently grazing some yards in the opposite direction of the wolf. He turned back to the wolf who was just standing in the grass watching him like before. “I guess you went back for that piece of pork and wanted some more huh? Can’t say as I blame you, Toby Martin smokes some fine meat. Either that or you’re looking to eat Grace here and you’re worried about me interfering. Well you’re right to, if that’s the case. I’d hate to have to test out this pistol on you.” Zack, who always had a soft spot for animals, even the ones he hunted, made an awkward left-handed throw to the wolf. This time the wolf held his ground but would have to come several yards toward Zack if it wanted the pork. Still on his knees Zack simply watched the wolf, his troubles forgotten, at least for the moment. After several minutes the wolf moved warily to the place where the meat had landed, watching Zack the whole time. When it reached the spot it stopped and stared at Zack as if gauging the possible dangers of taking its eyes off of the boy. Desire for the pork won out and the wolf finally lowered it’s head, grabbed up the meat, turned, and ran off. Zack laughed to himself shaking his head and returned the pistol to the backpack. After that, he got himself a new piece of pork from the dwindling supply and sat down to eat.
Zack sat at the base of a tree in the foothills chewing on a piece of the gum that he had found in the cave. He had eventually swallowed the first piece that he’d tried but now thought that maybe you were supposed to spit it out like tobacco when all of the flavor was gone.
Once the gang had reached the foothills their travel had slowed appreciably. Zack lagged back taking frequent breaks. He still hoped that the gang would reach the treeline by dusk but was doubtful. He was growing more apprehensive every moment, wishing that he could just make his move and get it over with. The waiting was difficult.
The next morning he awoke shivering, it was getting colder the farther up that they traveled. He was camped about three-quarters of the way up the foothills and was guessing that the gang had camped at the beginning of the mountain pass. He could see a little of their campfire smoke the previous night but with the terrain no longer being level and the gang being a good distance uphill from him their location was difficult to gauge. He did not risk a fire again the previous night and wished longingly for a cup of hot coffee. Instead he stood with his single wool blanket wrapped around him thinking of the leather jacket that he had left in the cave. Was that really less than a week ago? It seemed like a lifetime to Zack.
He saddled up Grace and looked briefly around for the wolf who had not showed up the night before. He knew that he shouldn’t waste it but he retrieved one of the two pieces of the pork that remained and dropped it on the ground before mounting the mare and riding off.
4
Zack was near the very top of a large oak tree overlooking the gang’s camp. They were only about three miles into the mountain pass because the road through was not only narrow but steep as well. The camp was set up on a natural shelf that was both large enough and flat enough for the wagons, horses and people. The road itself hugged the mountain on the east side, where Zack was currently perched in a tree looking down upon them. The shelf was located to the west side of the road and was basically a big half moon shape with most of the entire radius dropping off of a cliff. There was a small copse of trees on the south end of the shelf where the horses were tethered, otherwise the shelf was barren rock.
Earlier, after Zack had entered the pass, he exited the road to the west and climbed the mountain keeping Grace parallel to the road. By mid-afternoon he had overtaken the gang. Their voices carried well up to where Zack was keeping pace well out of site. They were a surly lot; their vocabulary riddled with swears and angry declarations. Zack was now deeply afraid but kept his thoughts focused on his mother, and on Emily.
The gang made camp late in the afternoon. Zack tethered Grace to a tree and fed her some oats out of the small store that the Martins had supplied. When dusk was near he left her with some gentle whispers and climbed down the mountainside above the camp. He saw the oak and thought that it would be a perfect place to observe as he would have a full view of the shelf and be hidden by the tree’s foliage. He was currently well hidden on the thickly wooded mountainside but would be briefly exposed if he made for the oak. Gathering his courage he shifted the pistol which he had stuck in the waistband of his pants, crouched, and made for the tree.
Now, high above the camp but close enough to clearly hear some of the conversation, he immediately saw where captives were being held. There were two wagons, one made of rusty metal appeared to be loaded with supplies, the other, wooden, was a cage on wheels. Small trees maybe as thick as Zacks arm had been cut, de-barked and lashed together to make a rolling jail cell out of the wagon. There looked to Zack to be ten people in the wagon, all women.
With the distance and the fading light, it was difficult to make out faces. It was impossible to tell who was in the cage-wagon, but Zack was hoping to catch a glimpse of Santiago and Michael in one of the scattered groups of men in the camp. The place was a hive of activity, everyone seeming to have a job—there were men skinning pigs, maybe his pigs he thought bitterly—hanging from a tree, others were gathering wood from the copse of trees. He gave it up and began looking at a way to rescue the women in the wagon.
The cage-wagon was next to the tethered horses and closest to the road, the other wagon was in the center of the camp and several men were removing things from it. Zack thought that if he walked back up the mountain until he was well out of sight, then walked parallel with the road back the way that they all had come and circled around the bottom side of the shelf, that he could come up unseen behind the tethered horses. He could then use the horses to obscure himself from view while he moved to the wagon.
Zack stayed in the tree and watched the camp. A woman in the wagon started calling out shortly after dark, begging someone to help her mother. “Please help her!” she shouted. “She’s sick, I think she is dying, for the love of god, someone please!” At first she was responded to with mocking insults and “Shut up, bitch, or I will give you something to cry about.” Then, after it was apparent that the woman was not going to “shut up” three men got up from their place around one of the campfires and walked over to the wagon. He could hear the three men talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying over the woman’s cries. One of the men then broke away and walked over to a giant of a man who was standing alone next to the other wagon. The two spoke briefly, the second man towering over the first. Then the first man walked back to the cage-wagon while the other retrieved something hanging from the rusty one that he had been standing by. The second man then joined the three at the cage-wagon, and after doing what was apparent to Zack as unlocking the cage, the man opened it.
What happened next happened very quickly. The giant man who had unlocked the cage reached inside and pulled out a woman as if she were a bag of feathers, and let her drop to the ground behind the wagon. The woman who had begged for help was now in hysterics. The four men stood over the woman on the ground, it looked to Zack like she was not moving. The giant then reached under the serape that he was wearing and produced a pistol, aimed it at the prone woman and shot her. Making the pistol disappear back under his serape, he walked back to his place by the other wagon. The hysterical woman was no longer screaming but Zack could hear sobbing from the cage, the animated conversation and bustling of the campsite temporarily silenced by the pistol shot. One of the remaining men took the woman’s arms, the other two her legs, and they carried her to the cliff edge and unceremoniously tossed her over.
Zack was aghast and seething with hate. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to walk down to the camp and put a bullet in the giant man’s giant skull. He wanted to kill every single one of those men, he wanted to tie them up and burn them alive like they burned up the people at Payne’s Station.
After awhile he cooled down some and focused on the puzzle of the lock. How was he going to get the key from the place where it was hung from the rusty wagon. That is if the murdering giant put the key back he thought to himself. He wished that he would have paid attention to that detail after the man shot the sick woman.
Zack let another hour pass and the camp was like a drunken harvest party. He had gone back and forth between waiting until everyone was asleep and making his move while the gang was eating and drinking; which would provide cover for any noise that he might make freeing the women. His plan hinged on whether or not the giant man hung the key back on the rusty supply wagon. If he didn’t then Zack was in serious trouble. He just had to hope for the best. The plan was simple and the way that things were lit down there gave Zack a good deal of hope. While most of the camp was well lit with lanterns and campfires, the tethered horses and the cage-wagon were in shadow. There were also no lanterns or campfires on the cliff side of the rusty wagon, which Zack now thought of as the
key- wagon
. The main part of the camp was all set up on the road side of the key wagon. The problem, provided that the keys were even there at all was that they would be hanging from the road side, and not the cliff side of the wagon. There was a campfire set up about ten feet from where the key should be hanging. Zack would have to try to climb into the wagon on the cliff side and worm his way to the other side and reach over for the keys without being seen. If he was spotted then he would pull out the pistol and start shooting.
He climbed out of the tree, backtracked up the mountain about two hundred yards and then turned right and started down. It took less than an hour to circle around to the bottom side of the shelf where he now crouched behind the group of tethered horses on the cliff side of the camp. He moved before he could lose his nerve and ran, keeping low, to the key-wagon. The wagon was only a head shorter than Zack who peered over the top before pulling himself up and into the wagon as quietly as he could. He lay there quietly for a moment catching pieces of the conversation at the nearest campfire.
“…. Ya cain’t read anyway, Charlie, ya might as well use it for fire starter or ass-wipe.”
“You can’t read neither, side’s, betcha one of them whores over there could read it.”
“Or one of them new fellas,” another voice spoke up, “that we picked up in that last town, the youngins.” Zack thought of Santiago and Michael but knew that there was nothing that he could do for them at the moment. Keeping flat and picking his way over the jumble of rick rack in the wagon he reached the other side at roughly the place where he had watched the man take the keys from. He lifted his head slightly to look over the side of the wagon and could see the group of men that he’d heard talking sitting around a fire. They seemed intent on their conversation and were passing a bottle that Zack recognized as Brodie Hodgkins sour mash whiskey. Mr. Hodgkins kept a small still behind the trade and people came all the way from Auburn to get it. Seeing the bottle only re-kindled Zacks anger and he wondered how much of what he had just crawled over in the wagon came from Payne’s Station. Zack reached his hand over the wagon’s edge and felt along for the keys. He started to panic when he felt an empty hook on the other side but kept moving along anyway. When he was almost at the full length of his reach he felt it; a small key on a short tether. He lifted the key off of the hook and inched his way back to the other side of the wagon. Throwing one leg over, then the other, he plopped down on the ground, the wagon giving an audible creak at the loss of his weight. He hunkered down pulling the pistol from his waistband and waited for the shouts and the sound of footsteps. When he was confident that the sound had gone unnoticed he ran back the way he had come and once again crouched behind the horses.