Opposite Numbers

Note to Reader: This episode contains a violent scene.

Shortly after Teaspoon brought the news that the bank had been robbed, two searching parties set out from Rock Creek. The one consisted of Noah, Cody, and Buck who rode down the trail into the grasslands, while the other team, Teaspoon, Jimmy, Kid and Gwendoline, tried to reach the rocky and desolated high land before the outlaws might have time to make their disappearance in the wilderness. The robbers had been seen heading west but there was no clue to where they went after getting out sight from the town.

Rushing out of Rock Creek as they had, Teaspoon and his accompanying riders had completely neglected to take any notice of the weather. And now, some miles out of town, an icy wind chilled Jimmy from the root of his hair to the heel of his feet. Not letting go of the reins, he turned in the saddle and looked back.

The sight meeting him from behind him was definitely not a pleasant one. Even though it was not even midday, darkness was approaching from the east, in the shape of black and grey storm clouds. They were gathering in the horizon from all sides, lined in dark blue and almost orange and advancing in an ominous speed.

"Oh, take a look at that!" he said and pointed with a gloved hand back at the brewing storm.

For a moment, all the riders halted, uneasily watching the sinister formation of ragged clouds shrouding the sky. Though the storm was still far away, the group saw how showers of rain swept over the land behind them and once in a while, lightning split the dismal sky, soon followed by a noisy thunderclap.

Despite the troubling presage of the heavens opening and furious winds howling, the spectacle had something mesmerizing in it. It seemed as if the heavy leaden clouds absorbed the daylight and spread a gloomy atmosphere over the land. It consumed every bright color of the landscape and instead stained it in a palette of dun and grayish colors covered with the darkening sky. The birds had stopped their twitter and not an animal was in sight. It was like nature anxiously was holding her breath for the upcoming storm.

"Not looking good, is it?" Jimmy said, not really anticipating any answer. All the riders exchanged dark looks but they proceeded nonetheless their hunt in a staggering speed. The tempest drew nearer and would be over them shortly; they might as well get as far away as they could before it happened.

The horizon bumped up and down before Gwendoline’s eyes and she was not far from getting nausea. She had done very little riding in her life and only on slow draught horses that were steady as houses and had backs as broad as dining tables. They would never have dreamed of moving in a breakneck speed like these rapid Express horses. For every move this slender mount made, Gwen feared falling down and being trampled underfoot. Only by clinging firmly to the reins as well as wrapping her hands deeply into the mane, she remained in the saddle. Not wanting any of the others to realize her troubles, she stubbornly forced her lips tightly together and prevented any sound of discomfort to be heard.

Fortunately, the horse she rode was a close friend of both Katy and Lightning, and he had no intentions of letting her fall off. He just followed the other three riders and even though the speed was like the wind he carefully avoided the biggest humps in their way.

"Look, somebody has been here!" Kid suddenly exclaimed when they came to a path crossing the stony landscape. He pointed at a trail of horseshoes in the light brown dust before them. "I sure hope it’s those bank robbers!"

Teaspoon shrugged and dismounted for a closer study of the horse prints. "Who else would be stupid enough to be out a day like this, with that storm coming up?" He threw his head in the direction of the sombre horizon - the darkness was closing in on them and they heard a loud thunderclash not far away.

"Yeah, who would be stupid enough? The Pony Express maybe," Jimmy sarcastically said but only got a reproving look from Teaspoon. Then the rider turned at Gwendoline who sat stiff in the saddle, looking straight ahead and still holding a tight grip on the reins. Her face was white as a sheet and sharply contrasted by the curls of Tizian hair surrounding it.

"You awright, Gwen?" Jimmy moved his horse next to her and studied her pale features.

She nodded briefly and let a short "Aye" escape her lips. After a long time, she managed to pull forth a few more words. "I’m not so familiar with horses, ye know. I feel a little…dizzy in me head, Jim, " the last words she almost swallowed.

"Never been riding with the Pony Express, have yah?" He smiled and patted her horse’s muzzle.

She couldn’t help giggling; it was a soft sweet sound. "No, I suppose not…"

"Well, you’ll get used to it, just wait and see," he said with an encouraging smile and felt his heart beat stronger when she returned the smile. "I thought you Irish folks were crazy ‘bout horses?" he continued, eager to get a conversation going while Teaspoon with the nose in the dirt examined the hoof prints.

"Me family never could afford any but rented work horses. Big solid horses they were, not fine specimens like these, not so swift." Her hair was windblown and a lot messier than when they began their odyssey. She pushed a stray ringlet behind the ear and continued.

"But the landlord in our county, he had stables and stables full of the finest thoroughbreds– oh, the finest horses I ever saw! Ebony black and ivory white and every brown and grey shade in between…oh, they were the daintiest horses in all of ol’ Ireland" With love in her emerald eyes, she gently stroked the horse’s white-blazed muzzle. It whinnied softly under her touch and looked up at her with an eye as brown and shiny as molasses. "But never would let anybody ride them, would he," she ended the sentence with bitterness.

For a short second, Mortimer Brighton’s fattish features and shiny face flashed before her eyes as he walked down through the stables inspecting his precious horses. He had loved these animals more than he had loved anything else in the world, even his own brother Jack, his only living family. But he hadn't loved them for their magnificence nor their beauty but because they were his investments, his prizewinning racehorses, and his prestige-filled toys. He could impress the neighboring landlords with their pride and pedigree and that was all he longed for in the end, admiration and power; that had given him control and status. And control and status made others fear him. A cold shiver ran down Gwendoline's spine as he turned around in front of her mind’s eye and focused on her with his glazed stare.

"What is it? Are you going to be sick, Gwen?" A soft voice broke her line of thoughts and she realized that the eyes piercing her were not the glassy ones of Mortimer Brighton, but of clear and concerned ones of Jimmy Hickock.

"Oh, no. I’ll be fine." She forced the dark thoughts away and smiled again at him. Thank God, that she had left no traces behind her, in case Mortimer got the idea of tracking her down here in America. Her would never find her here…She pushed the memories back to the depths of her mind and concentrated on the present.

A strange feeling began to tingle in her heart, as she looked into Jimmy’s eyes, soft and friendly but with depths impossible to see the bottom of. "Who is this man really?" she thought and with interest watched him feed her horse a piece of sugar from his pocket. His black hat shaded half his face and his long hair hang loosely over his shoulders, some of it twisted around the chin strap of his hat. His looks was nice, that was for sure, but looks seldom speak truly of the person inside.

Jimmy Hickock was probably a kind and gentle man, Gwendoline judged from his concern about her well being right now. But, the intensity and determination in his eyes yesterday when he came running to her rescue (although she hadn’t really needed it!) revealed both hot temperament and spirit in him. "Why had he so willingly risked his life for me sake?" she thought. She had seen too much fighting and bloodshed in Ireland to believe in pure blue-eyed heroism. People rarely take risks just because of the goodness of their hearts, there is always a motive behind, a driving force that leads them to action, be it like heroes or fools, there is always something behind. Most men would have turned around the way they came from, but Jimmy hadn't.

Judging from the way the muggers had fled in panic after his arrival, he must have quite a reputation. "What had they called him? Wild Bill or something?" Reputation can label a man and cage him, hold him back when he wants to fight it or drive him to carelessness when he tries to live up to it. She had not idea whether this reputation he had was well earned or not, she just knew that the bare sound of his name had a certain effect on people around here and she was interested in finding out how he had made it. There was a great difference between the Jimmy Hickock who had been a fearless gunfighter yesterday and today's Jimmy with the concerned expression and caring voice. The difference intrigued her and she felt a wish for knowing what lay behind the contrasts.

"C’mon now. We’re going" Teaspoon finally got up from the traces and interrupted her thoughts. "When that rain comes our way, the trails will be washed away. Hurry up!" Teaspoon mounted his horse again and spurred it.

"But, weren’t we supposed to meet with Cody, Buck and Noah?" Kid cried after him in objection.

"We have to go on our own; the marks will be gone soon and so will the robbers. Let’s go," the white-haired marshal yelled back and obeying him, the rest of the small posse continued their quest over the hills and across the valleys.

For several hours, they followed the vague horse prints in the ground but there was still no sign of the outlaws. They rode fast and for some time it seemed like they had a fair chance to outride the approaching storm. But eventually it hit them with all of its power; the floodgates of the heavens broke open and tremendous amounts of water streamed out. It seemed like the rainwater had been collected through centuries and was now finally released. It fell heavily and violently on the terrain and turned the before so dusty ground into a slippery muddy carpet, instantly creating pools and floods and giving the wind a sour smell of dirt.

The riders kept striding through the foul weather, even though the downpour made the air dark and opaque and drenched their clothes. The raindrops hit the ground, the horses, the riders, and every available surface with a hard impact and jumped a little up again. No matter how many times Gwen tried to wipe the rain off her face, she could barely see out of her eyes and her hair hang dripping over her shoulders. Even when she breathed, she was sure that raindrops ended up in her lungs. The air was filled with wet and the storm never seemed to stop.

"Teaspoon, we can’t go on like this. We’ll drown out here!" Jimmy cried out and stopped his horse. He tried to lean in over its head, shading its head for the rain, but it was no use. The rain was everywhere.

"Nobody ever drowned from a little rain, son. We’ll keep going," Teaspoon, ever the optimist, or at least made it look that way, moved on. He led them down from the ridge to the lower land. The tracks they followed had been washed away almost instantly and they were once more riding in blindness. But he was strongly convinced that the criminals might be around there somewhere, sheltering for the storm. They just had to find the exact location.

A lightning illuminated the whole scene, dividing somewhere in the black sky and arriving at the ground in three luminous threads, loading the air with crackling electricity. Seconds later, an ear-splitting thunderclash boomed and made the earth shake.

"But the horses might tremble. It’s slippery down here, for heaven’s sake! And I don’t want to end up roasted on a lightning!" Jimmy tried to make the elder man understand what he was too stubborn to see; that nothing good would come of this hunt. If they couldn’t go any further, nor could the outlaws. The best thing to do would be to take shelter somewhere and proceed once the storm had moved on.

"Oh, who brought this whimpering baby out here!" Teaspoon shouted back, almost irritated. He was as determined as ever to get catch the law-breakers. After all, that was the marshal’s job and he was the marshal. "We’ll just cross that small creek here, then there are some threes, where you can have you diapers changed, you big baby!"

But the small creek was not a creek after all. The rising waters had already dramatically transformed it into a broad river and brown muddy waves came rushing from up the stream, yelling and laughing a deep evil laughter.

They waded into the river, dragging the reluctant horses after them, Teaspoon first, then the Kid, then Gwendoline and finally Jimmy. He was a bit worried about how the young woman walking in front of him would handle the situation. He knew that she had nerves of steel when it came to face-to-face confrontations with people, but he was not sure how she would react confronted with nature’s powers.

And she didn’t do well. She struggled with her skirts, which soaked and heavy clung around her legs. She struggled to keep standing erect in the foaming river, and she struggled to hold the reins of the terrified horse, which unfortunately didn’t have the fearlessness of Katy or Lightning. The roaring waves bulging under his feet stroke him with panic, and he neighed in terror. Gwen had to use all her powers to hold him down but several times he reared highly and kicked with the forelegs in the air. The sweet words she whispered in his ears were lost in the howling of the river and he was impossible to calm down.

Halfway over, the horse suddenly yanked his head and the reins slipped through Gwen’s fingers and he was loose. Having lost his head, he galloped in the direction of the safety of other shore, where Teaspoon and Kid already stood, dripping. But they could do nothing to help the horse when he came galloping towards them, in a state of total panic, and fell. The sight of the large horse falling, all four legs slipping on the rocky river bottom at the same time, was surreal and grotesque, and a shriek, more terrifying than anything they had ever heard, filled the air as the horse tumbled to the ground.

"Oh, me God!" Gwendoline screamed, horrified, trying to run in the rumbling water to the horse’s rescue. She, too, fell but unlike the horse she was up in an instant, continuing her frantic run. There was only one concern in her heart this moment and that was that of the horse. Gone were the worries of whether Mortimer would come after her or not. Gone was the sorrow of loosing her family and the frustrations of how to make a living and some day restore her family name as an honest name. Gone was the concern for the little girl depending upon her. Gone was everything but the condition of this horse that had carried her for hours across barren landscapes and this ferocious storm. "Let him live" she pleaded again and again as she ran.

When she reached the horse she stumbled once more and fell in the water next to its large form. Jimmy was right behind her, something she first noticed now, and he knelt down beside her in the roaring water masses.

The mount was alive, breathing heavily, but he had taken a bad fall. Blood streamed out of his ribcage and the left hind leg lay in a twisted angle. His soft brown eyes spoke a thousand words, knowing the situation. His entire body shook, partly from the encounter with the cold water, partly from the dreadful wounds. He was in shock, no doubt, but completely aware of the inevitable.

"Oh, lad, how could ye do such a foolish thing? Let me have a look at ye, me love, ye’ll be fine, I’m sure. Just wait and see, me heart, ye’ll be fine," Gwen rambled an endless row of reassuring words in his ear, tears mixing on her face with water from the rain and the river. She caressed his flanks, trying in vain to wash the pumping blood away from his cold skin. "God, save him!"

"Gwen, he’ll die – there is nothing you can do" Jimmy said quietly, knowing what the most merciful thing to do was. His voice reached her through a haze. "We’ll have to…to" the words stuck in his mouth, "to make an end to it."

"NO!" she turned furiously at him; her rage-filled expression sent a shiver down his spine, not knowing that it was humanly possible to look that angry. In fact, there was more than mere anger in her voice and face; it was the deepest of all sorts of dark feelings, hatred, mistrust, and abhorrence, all combined with a powerlessness she denied to acknowledge. He caught her fist right before it punched him in the face.

"No, I’m not going’o let ye kill him, ye monster! Ye’ll have to step across me dead and rotten body before, I’ll tell ye that!" she cried and desperately wrestled to get free of his grab.

Since Jimmy was much stronger than she was, even though she had the raving powers of rage to her assistance, she didn’t have much of a chance against him. Instead, using the effect of a surprise attack, she pushed him backward with all her might so he landed in the water. It was quite a dangerous thing to do in a river that was still rising but she was past the point of rational thinking. Her main concern was the life of the horse, and she would defend him with her life.

Coughing and spitting muddy water out of his mouth, Jimmy returned to the surface with an expression that under other conditions would have cracked the others up with laughter. It was total confusion, a strong wonder how he had suddenly ended up under water and an urge to give her a taste of her own medicine. Grabbing a branch and getting back on his feet, he almost made up his mind to set aside the fact that she was a lady and should be treated thereafter. He reached out for her arm for dragging her underwater just for a short while, just until she learned never to do it again.

"Whoa, kids!" Teaspoon’s dry voice cut through the stormy air and his stern hands dragged them both out of the water.

"What’s gotten into the both of yah? Fighting in the middle of a rebellious river, next to a dead horse?"

"Dead?" Gwendoline whirled around, facing the form of her trusty steed. Teaspoon was right; the horse had died in the meantime, mercifully being lifted from his suffering. He lay still in the water, a dark brown shadow in the foaming waves.

"But I would've cared for him," she said in a childish way that made Jimmy’s heart break. "I would’ve carried him back and tended him till he was well again," she continued, not realizing the absurdity of her suggestion to carry the horse miles and miles back to Rock Creek. Kneeling down next to the large body, she would have given in to the tears if she had been alone. But she couldn’t bear the humility of being seen crying so she pressed her lips tightly together and swallowed the weeping. She bit her lips till her cheeks ached and her lip turned red with blood, but not a single tear left her green eyes.

Jimmy felt his heart bleed for the unhappy woman kneeling by the horse’s body. The bottomless pain drawn in her face revealed that it was more than the death of the horse that fought for tears. It was great horse, indeed, and he would be truly missed in the stables of the Pony Express, but watching her stunned features and paralyzed expression, Jimmy knew her sorrow went deeper. He knew that she was not grieving the horse as much as something else and he recalled her telling about the recent killing of her entire family in arson. If only there was something he could do help her through all this sorrow and pain.

"It’s awright, Gwen. He’s at a better place, and not in any pain anymore," he said and placed an arm over her shoulders, almost expecting her to push it away.

And, indeed, that was what her first intent was, to get rid of his arm as quickly as possible and get on with the ride. But the kindness in his voice and the soft, yet strong, feeling of his arm around her touched a frozen spot in her heart and melted it. When her throat almost closed and her eyes welled, she knew that there was no way back. Humiliation or not, she had to cry and head in hand, she surrendered herself to the tears.

If Jimmy hadn’t felt his heart bleed before he certainly did now. He wrapped his arms around the weeping girl and let her cry, not saying a word of consult, just holding her. He knew that if he started talking she might be aware of the situation and withdraw herself. Normally, the tears of a woman embarrassed him, since he never knew what to do or what to say. He always felt rather clumsy and shy, but this time it was different. Her tears made her human and he instinctively knew that all she needed was a shoulder to cry on, then it mattered less that it was only his rain-drenched coat. For a short while, the outer world disappeared to him, only sensing the slim girl in his arms and her shoulders shaking as she sobbed.

Teaspoon and Kid had politely stepped aside, Teaspoon not so determined to pursue the robbers anymore. It had cost him a horse and with the weather not improving, he couldn’t afford to go any further, he finally realized.

Jimmy bent his head and smelled the sweet scent of her red hair, flattened by the rain. She calmed down and gradually stopped crying and she lifted her face for sending him a slight smile. Her face was streaked with tears and rain; it was impossible to tell which was which and her eyes were puffy and red. But to Jimmy, he could as well have embraced an angel.

"It’s alright, Gwen," he gently said and removed his arms from her.

"Well, we better get going…" Teaspoon said, hesitatingly. The storm seemed to have passed and the rain was not pouring down as violently as before. "We better head on home. Those robbers are probably long gone by now. I guess there is no use in-" he stopped in the middle of the sentence and sniffed deeply, looking around with a searching glance in his eyes.

"Is that smoke I smell?" he asked, looking at the others.

Kid also sniffed and nodded. "If they are around here somewhere and have made a fire, then they really are stupid!"

Teaspoon took a look around in the small circle of riders. "Should we go a little further?" he asked, already knowing the answer and mounting his horse.

They rode on again. Gwendoline sat in the saddle of Jimmy’s palomino, and he himself was seated behind her. Not once did she turn her head and look at the dead horse they left behind, knowing that when turning back for one last look makes it almost impossible to leave. She had experienced the same thing on the ship sailing out of the Irish harbor. For hours, she had been standing in the sternpost, gazing at the Irish coast till her eyes hurt. There, with the disappearing cliffs, she promised herself that she would never looking back at anything again. Never.

To be continued…

Copyright 1998-This work is not to be reproduced without the permission of the author

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Campfire Tales

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