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An arid wind whips through the mountain pass, whistling mournfully like a lonely soul trying to keep their own spirits up. The two figures on the overlook have been still and quiet for long enough that the birds and insects have resumed their droning, content that neither the hulking man or the boy beside him mean them any harm.
To be perfectly honest, Jack has started to doze a little, lulled by the warm stillness and the peace of being under the open sky. The rest of his gang gets tense and anxious in the waiting moments before a job, but Jack has always found this time to be when he becomes most at ease, his mind clear and present. The fact that this sometimes leads to a quick nap is a subject of both amusement and frustration with the others. Sunny calls him grandpa and teases him for being a tired old man. Marcid, who doesn’t know the meaning of the word relax, grumbles that if he didn’t know better, he’d think Jack wasn’t taking things seriously.
He knows better. They all do. The only reason Jack can relax now is because he’s already worked out plans A through G, with at least three variations and contingencies for each, and because his little gang is the sharpest in the territory.
All trace of drowsiness vanishes when Cheese taps his shoulder and lowers the binoculars.
Sunny gave the signal. Time to go.
Carefully, Jack and Cheese slide back down the embankment to where Jack’s horse is grazing contentedly in a low patch of wildflowers. She’s a massive charger the color of mud, and he loves her like family, not least of all because she’s the only horse he’s ever ridden that can carry his weight and still run at a decent pace. He calls her Orna. The others call her The Terror, because she bites anyone who comes near her besides Jack.
“Last chance,” he tells Cheese quietly.
Cheese looks up at him with a set jaw, still a baby-faced slip of a lad at eighteen, but with a toughness to him that would put men twice his age to shame. “Are you gonna say that every time?”
Plans D and F allow for Cheese taking this moment to back out. Plans A and B have contingencies built in if he freezes or fails once the plan is in motion. There is a variant of every plan that accounts for his death or incapacitation at some point in the process.
“Just as dangerous every time,” Jack points out. “And you can always say no.”
The hard jaw softens, and Cheese bumps his shoulder affectionately against Jack’s arm. “I’m good. Let’s go.”
Orna’s back is even with the top of Cheese’s head, so Jack has to mount up himself, then reach down to lift Cheese into the saddle behind him. The big horse snorts in protest and turns her head to eye the two riders warily.
“Don’t gimme that look. You know how this goes,” Jack warns, and she snorts again, turning to walk as he guides her toward the path.
They get into position behind an outcropping and wait. Barely a minute passes before they hear the approaching rumble of hoofbeats and carriage wheels, and Jack urges Orna into motion, gradually picking up speed as she gallops around a bend and down the slope toward the road that winds through pass.
The Pinkerton carriage is barreling over the rutted ground at a breakneck pace, harried on each side by Sunny and Marcid, with Myrtle following behind. Rifle barrels extend between the iron bars of the carriage, but the riders have done this enough times to know where the blind spots are. The driver catches sight of Jack thundering toward them and gives a shout of alarm. One of the rifles swivels in his direction, and Marcid catches it between the tines of his big blade-breaker spear, wrenching it upward before the Pinkerton can fire a shot. Another twist pulls the rifle clear through the bars and sends it flying onto the road behind them.
Marcid falls back as Jack guides Orna alongside the carriage, close enough to see the shadowed faces of the men inside and to read the surprise on the nearest face as Cheese slips a small grenade through the bars. Immediately, acrid smoke fills the carriage and billows out, trailing thick grey clouds behind it. The driver doesn’t slow, apparently hoping that his team of exhausted horses can outrun four fresh riders.
In addition to blinding the riflemen inside, the smoke is also a signal to Spaulding, waiting just ahead. A single shot rings out, and the carriage driver jerks back as bright red blood blossoms on his chest.
This is where things get tricky.
Four horses in a hard run, pulling an armored carriage on an uneven road, when suddenly deprived of a driver to direct them are likely to make bad decisions that result in damage to both carriage and horses. The best case scenario is that the horses simply decide to slow down or stop, allowing the men inside to open the doors to vent the smoke while they hold off the attackers. None of these outcomes is ideal for Jack and his gang, which is where Cheese comes in.
With deftness born of hours practicing, Cheese grips Jack’s shoulder in one hand and slowly brings his feet under him into a crouch, turning toward the carriage. Jack adjusts the horse’s speed so that they’re just ahead of the driver’s bench under its protective overhang. There’s four feet of distance from the saddle to the bench, as close as he can get without colliding with the side of the carriage.
Three.
Two.
One.
Cheese pushes off hard and launches himself into the air.
Carnival riders make this sort of thing look easy, but they’ll be the first to announce that it’s not. Anyone who claims that jumping from one moving object onto another is easy has likely never done it.
That four-foot jump feels infinite. If Cheese misses and goes under the carriage wheels, he’s dead. If he misses and hits the road, there won’t be time for Marcid to avoid trampling him, which could prove fatal for them both. If he doesn’t land right, he could wrench his arm out of its socket and have to do the rest of his part one-handed. If the driver is quick enough on the draw, Cheese could be met with a knife or a bullet to the gut. If the driver is tough enough after being shot in the chest, there could be a fight over the reins, which isn’t good for any of them.
For a full second, Cheese is suspended in the air, travelling at deadly speeds, and Jack’s heart stops.
He lands, steady on his feet, and kicks the dying driver off the bench, catching the reins firmly in both hands. Jack’s heart starts again.
Cheese slows the carriage to a safer speed, and the riders keep pace beside it. Inside, the riflemen have stopped firing, either unconscious from the smoke or waiting for the doors to open. On the far end of the mountain pass, a hidden path forks from the main road, leading into an aspen grove and a passage between two small cliffs. Spaulding is waiting with a pile of brush as the carriage and riders turn carefully onto the path, and he returns the brush to its place once they’ve passed. Sunny leads the way into the shelter of the cliffs, with Jack riding just behind the carriage and the others following. If any of the riflemen still have the wherewithal to shoot through the bars on the back door, the bullets will hit him first and give his gang a chance to react. That’s only happened once, but he still watches the smokey space between the bars with anxious caution.
At the narrowest point in the path, they stop. Cheese and Sunny climb to the top of the carriage, pistols at the ready, and Marcid gets in position to break the lock on the carriage door. Spaulding and Myrtle fall back to cover with rifle and bow, and Jack stands in the middle of the path, aiming his shotgun at the door.
He nods to Marcid. The lock breaks, and the door swings open. The limp form of a burly man tumbles from the carriage and lies crumpled in the dust.
“Check him,” Jack orders, and Marcid rolls the man onto his back, pressing two fingers to his neck to check for a pulse.
“Alive.”
“Kill him.”
Without hesitation, Marcid grips the man’s head in both hands and snaps his neck with a quick jerk.
The smoke has started to dissipate from inside the carriage, revealing the slumped bodies of two other men and a heavy iron safe. The two men are obviously dead, eyes bulging sightlessly in their ashen faces, and Marcid and Jack haul them clear with little effort. Once he’s certain there are no traps or tripwires, Jack waves for Myrtle to come and get to work.
She rides up on her little mustang, and Jack holds the horse as Marcid lifts her from the structured saddle and sets her gently next to the safe. She needs time and quiet to work, so the rest of them busy themselves elsewhere. Sunny and Cheese tend to the carriage horses while Spaulding takes care of the gang’s mounts. Orna, of course, will accept attention from no one but Jack, so he looks after her himself.
“That went about as well as it could have,” Marcid remarks.
“Not over ‘til the safe’s open,” Jack reminds him. “Danger’s passed, but there’s still plenty work to do.”
Marcid shakes his head. “Never met a man who worries more at the end of the job than the beginning.”
“I worry during the job. When it’s good and done, I’ll be back to the lazy old man you know and love.”
“Speaking of old...” Marcid says. “And speaking of love, come to that.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “Don’t start. Get enough of that from them.”
“Just saying.” Marcid holds up his hands with a shrug. “We’ve had a run of good luck, lately. Might be a good time to step back and think about the future.”
“Only future I’m thinking about right now is the hot bath and hot meal waiting for me at the Gardens,” Jack grumbles.
Marcid raises an eyebrow. “And a hot bed, no?”
“Aye, well, that too,” he admits, biting down a smile.
He doesn’t like to think about Garthy when he’s out here. Even the memory of soft skin and sweet sighs has no place amid the sand and rocks of the jagged mountains. The sound of their voice and the scent of jasmine are too sweet for his mind when it’s still ringing with gunfire and filled with the odor of acrid smoke. For him, the job will be over when he sees their beautiful face.
“Got it!” Myrtle calls out from the carriage. As Jack and Marcid approach, she says, “Yeah. So. Good news, bad news. Good news is, there’s a lot of money here.”
Jack sighs. “What’s the bad news?”
“Bad news is it’s all in gold brick.” She slides a shiny block toward the carriage door. “And it’s stamped.”
Sure enough, the small gold bar has a bank emblem pressed into the top of it. Marcid swears quietly in French. Jack doesn’t understand the words, but he agrees with the sentiment.
“Fuck. Alright. Let’s get it into bags.” Peering around the side of the carriage, though the narrow gap by the cliff wall, he calls out, “How’re those horses looking?”
“Worn out but okay,” Sunny calls back. “They need a little more rest and water, but they should be good for walking to the camp.”
“Give ‘em as much water as you can spare,” he tells her. To Myrtle and Marcid, he says, “We’ll have the Pinkerton horses carry the gold, and you two can take the lot of it to the family. They should have what they need to melt it down. Probably worth laying low with ‘em for a couple of days, just in case.”
They both nod, and the work gets underway. Once the gold and the Pinkerton’s weapons are packed and loaded onto the horses, Jack and Marcid toss the bodies of the riflemen into the carriage and push it back down the path onto the main road, the others wiping away the tracks behind them. When the Pinkertons come looking for the missing carriage, they’ll find it easily, with no trace of the cargo or who might have taken it. Next time the gang takes down a shipment, it’ll have to be in a different place, but there are plenty of mountain passes and other places to stage an ambush.
Myrtle and Marcid head north, toward the Arapaho encampment and Myrtle’s family. The younger members of the gang take off westward at a brisk pace, back to their home at the edge of town. Jack gives them an hour’s head start, enjoying the stillness and mountain air for a little while longer before he climbs on Orna and turns her into the sunset. He lets her choose her own pace, anxious to get back but not in a hurry.
Now that the gruesome work is done, he lets his thoughts drift ahead to the comforts that await him, to a bath and food and the welcoming embrace of the most beautiful lover any man has ever known. One day, maybe, he’ll put up his feet and let the younger folks carry on the work of redistributing wealth in the western territories, but there’s something to be said for the sweetness of being washed clean after he’s gotten his hands dirty. He can almost hear Garthy’s voice in his head reminding him there’s something sweeter he can have every day if he’d just fucking retire.
One day. Maybe. For now, with the sky on fire and night falling at his back, he kicks his heels and urges Orna just a little bit faster. He’s got somewhere to be, after all.