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A Price above Eagles

Jantallian

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For Sheriff Mort, who suggested the idea,

and all fans of Stuart Randall

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"A true friend is like an eagle: you don't find them flying in flocks." Anon

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1

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Of all the danged ridiculous ways to end up, this took the cake! Mort Cory shifted cautiously from his position propped against the wall of the hut in which he had been left by his posse and instantly regretted it. Searing pain stabbed up his leg from the gunshot wound and to compound matters his hips and his back were twinging from the angle he was sitting at and he was aching all over from his unaccustomed immobility. At least, he hoped that was why he was aching! The comparison he had just made had not helped either, reminding him as it did that he had nothing to eat but a few measly strips of beef jerky and not much to drink either.

He shook the canteen beside him irritably. It was all very well for Jess Harper to say it would only be for a couple of days at the most. Jess naturally wanted to get on with the pursuit while they still had a chance of succeeding in tracking down the outlaws, but he must have been oblivious to the conditions when he decided Mort would be better off remaining in the dilapidated hut they had come across. Mort couldn't blame him for wanting to pursue the murdering thieves - that was the whole point of what they had set out to do – but on reflection he could think of several better alternatives than just dumping him here to be collected like a piece of luggage. Always supposing the posse did actually return this way. Really, sometimes Jess's single-minded focus on what he had to do was not a virtue, but a distinct flaw!

Mort was a reasonable man when he was not suffering from a gunshot wound, a sore back, a numb backside and the uneasy sensation that he was about to be crawled over by hordes of whatever insects happened to inhabit this particular excuse for a shelter. He knew leaving him here had seemed like a good idea at the time. He knew he couldn't ride all the way back to Laramie with Farley to get the doctoring they both needed. He knew it was essential to conceal the gold and give the impression that the three remaining members of the posse were being corrupted by it. He knew Jess had done his best to leave him in the safest conditions he could. He knew Jess cared about him - a wry smile twisted Mort's lips as he remembered Jess tenderly spreading the dusty, moth-ridden blanket over him, as if it would help.

But conditions were still far from ideal!

Thinking about the blanket brought Mort's attention right back to his immediate predicament. Just let one bug crawl out of that blanket! He had a perfectly good blanket in his saddle-roll. Jess must have been out of his mind to forget it when Sam Moore brought the saddle in and Jess set it up as a backrest for Mort. Now it was firmly wedged behind Mort and would require an inadvisable amount to twisting and straining in order to pull it free to use.

Mort didn't curse often. But now he cursed.

The whole enterprise had been bedeviled from the start. It wasn't like him to choose such an ill-assorted posse, with Jess as the only really reliable member of it. He cursed that he had not been able to deputize Slim Sherman as well. With Slim and Jess on your side and in your posse, you could afford to be less picky about the other members of it. He cursed that he had chosen Farley and his foreman. Although both of them were tough men, only one of them was accustomed to taking orders and he had not been long enough in the district for Mort to form an accurate opinion of his reliability. He cursed that he was a sucker for kids who needed a helping hand up the ladder of life. He knew young Sam Moore had to prove himself as a man, but was the best time to do it with a baby about to make its appearance? He cursed that he had been unable to resist the melancholy loyalty in Charlie Frost's face. He bet that was why Jess had ridden in with him to report the murder of Mr Medwick in the first place. Charlie was not strong, but he was, nonetheless, the salt of the earth. Neither Jess nor Mort had ever been able to turn down real honest faithfulness.

When he was done cursing, Mort made an almighty effort to pull himself together. He did not habitually resort to useless regrets nor to blaming others. In a bad situation, he applied his intelligence and experience to improve it. The only problem was that his head was throbbing as well as his leg, making constructive thought increasingly difficult. And there did not immediately seem to be a way he could improve the situation, so he would just have to buckle down and endure it. At least stoical endurance was well within his capabilities. It wasn't the first time he'd been on short rations and in unpleasant conditions.

His mind flicked back briefly to the war. So much of it had involved physical discomfort and deprivation, not to mention mental boredom, disgust and sometimes outright disapproval. The glamour of battles was highly over-rated and the loss of so many lives, young lives all too often, was inestimable. And now it was over, what had it achieved? From all he heard, conditions in the South still left much to be desired and the freedom for which he had fought did not seem to have benefited those bound in the slavery from which the war was intended to release them. The war had cast a shadow over the development of the young men he had led and the reverberations of hostility still continued to disrupt communities and hinder the development of law and order in much of the country. It sometimes seemed a miracle to him that, given their very different backgrounds, Slim and Jess had formed such an unshakable loyalty to each other. He just wished again that Slim …

SsSsSsS

"He did what?" Slim Sherman stared at Daisy Cooper, baffled.

"He rode into town, Slim. With Mr Frost. From Mr Medwick's ranch."

"He did?" Slim's expression hardened into a scowl. "What about the work?" Slim was not thinking very charitably about this, since he had spent the morning rounding up horses, which he disliked and Jess enjoyed immensely. Trust Jess to use some flimsy excuse to slope off into town for a little recreation. Although, on second thoughts, Charlie seemed an unlikely companion, even though he was fond enough of a drink. And on third thoughts, he knew he was being seriously unfair to his partner because Jess would not have left Daisy and Mike to run the relay station unless he had to. "Daisy, what's going on? What's Jess up to this time?"

"Oh, Slim! It's nothing like you think!" Daisy fluttered, perceiving that she had not imparted the news in the clearest manner. "Mr Medwick is dead. Murdered. Mr Frost came for help and of course Jess rode with him to tell the sheriff."

Of course! Slim knew Jess's capacity for supporting lame dogs was equaled only by his own.

"He did." Slim's scowl was merely a frown. "Well, I'd better get on and catch up with the work. It doesn't take that long to ride into town. I dare say he'll be back around noon."

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Mort's head jerked up and his eyes opened blearily. Now his neck was stiff from his awkward sleeping position. His whole body still ached. His leg still throbbed. It felt as if someone had put a vice round his head. He was sweating as if he had been lying out in the sun.

Forcing his eyes to stay open, he looked at the window. By the sun it was after noon. He wasn't sure which day. Had he slept through the night or not? His throat felt like a hoof-file had been used on it and the water in the canteen was almost gone.

He closed his eyes again and tried to think. If it was the next day, the remnant of his posse had not returned. That could mean they would be back any moment. Or they might be another twenty four hours. Or more. Could he hold out that long?

Mort forced himself to ignore his physical condition and focus on what he was supposed to be doing. He was guarding the double eagles. They were in his saddlebags. They were safe. At least for the time being. But in his heart, he was much more concerned about the safety of his men.

The death of Ed Casson was a waste, no matter the man had done. There was no need for gratuitous murder under the pretense of serving the posse, whatever the provocation and however the man had succumbed to the lure of gold. If Casson was hoping to keep the fickle favors of Farley's scheming wife, he was under one of the greatest pressures a man could endure. And so was Farley. Mort could understand Farley's feelings about his wife, even though she clearly wasn't worth it. Marriage was sacred and sometimes the joy of sharing it could be all too brief … and grief was a long-lived companion …

As for the other members of his band, he knew Charlie was still drinking. It was not going to help matters if the challenges of the pursuit drove him to the point where he was not capable of doing his duty and became instead a liability to be protected. It was a risk Mort had taken because of Charlie's loyalty and long experience. Now that decision might be putting Sam Moore and Jess in danger. Mort had chosen to allow Sam to risk his own life just at the point when he was about to become the father of new life, of a child who would need his care to thrive and find the resilience to stand up to danger. But there was no guarantee Sam would be any good under fire. Which simply increased the responsibility and the danger for Jess …

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Jess Harper was worried. He was not a natural worrier, like Slim, but he knew the posse had been fraught with problems right from the start.

Now, although he was applying all his skills and intelligence to the pursuit and ultimate capture of the outlaws, in his heart he was conscious of not having done his best for Mort. The hut was isolated. If anything – God forbid - went wrong with the posse, no-one knew that Mort was there. Mort himself was in no condition to move. They had been able to leave him only very basic supplies.

That meant sooner or later, unless he brought this business to a swift conclusion, Jess was going to have to decide between the pursuit and going back to rescue Mort. And if he gave up the pursuit, he would be letting Mort down and wasting all the painful progress they had made.

At this point, Jess gave himself a firm mental shaking, echoing the kind of physical reprimand which Slim would have given him for failing to use his common sense. It was, however, not a matter of common sense – Jess rarely acted from any such motivation. But he did act from his heart. And there was no doubt whatsoever of the place Mort Cory had in Jess's heart. Somewhere between an experienced much older brother, a beloved and trusted uncle and a father who wouldn't always beat him for his often arrogant recklessness – that was how Jess felt about Mort. More than this, even: Mort was Slim's friend, his ex-commander, his mentor and his life-long supporter. He had been a friend of Slim's parents, often acting as a surrogate father, and in many ways, the love between them was stronger for the tragedies they had both suffered.

No way was Jess going to let anything happen to Mort …

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If anything happened to the remnant of the posse, if – God forbid – the outlaws got the better of them … Mort pulled himself up abruptly from this train of thought. There was no point in speculating about what might or might not happen. The trick with a posse was to out-think the ones you were chasing. In this case, Mort had considerable misgivings about doing so.

Right from the start, whoever was leading the robbers had shown a good grasp of the way men's minds work and a willingness to make temporary sacrifices in order to achieve long-term gain. Mort was certain all along they had been baited with the prospect of gold. He was pretty sure they were being observed a lot of the time too. Certainly the decision to 'abandon' the bulk of the double eagles would not have been an easy one and there was no way those who had gone to such lengths to obtain possession of them would then simply give them up so easily. No, someone was going to be watching every moment while those bags were in the hands of the posse.

That was, of course, the whole point of Jess and the other two continuing to ride in pursuit. They would try to lure the outlaws into making an attack which would actually give the posse the advantage – if Jess was able to maneuver them all to the place he intended … if they had planned it right … if everyone played their part … if no-one lost their head … if the gang were fooled …

There were too many 'ifs' for Mort's liking, especially given a really intelligent leader of the opposition! But, all the same, he was pinning his faith on Jess – on his tenacity, his experience, his quick-thinking, his sense of justice and his sheer lack of acquaintance with the word 'defeat'! There had not been a lot of time to plan, but that was probably as well. Too rigid a plan would prevent the posse improvising as circumstances demanded.

At least the gold was not with them. Mort patted the saddlebags, hidden under the verminous blanket. They were safe, but they did not make the most comfortable of mattresses. And although the gold was safe, no-one but Jess and Mort knew it.

The posse could be injured or killed for nothing more than a couple of sacks of stones! The waste this would entail hit Mort as hard as any stone. He felt as if his stomach had turned to lead and his head to a scalding cauldron! And the waste only reminded him of Ed Casson, now resting quietly in the grave Mort had insisted they dig for him, freed both from the lure of gold and the snares of women. That grave might have seemed like a waste of time to some, but Mort was not prepared to leave a man to the coyotes and the crows without good reason. And good reason was generally a hail of lead!

As it was, the only lead had been from their own side. From Farley's jealous, angry gun. There was reason enough to excuse his emotions but not his actions. Mort was rightly angry that Farley had pretended to be saving him as an excuse to gun down Casson. And more than this, the man was a bully, picking quarrels with everyone and sneering at their fallibility, as if he had none of his own. Well, those letters to Ed from Millie put paid to his tough pose and were in a fair way to making him look a fool too. Farley needed to take a closer look at the way Jess had dealt with the situation, if he wanted to know what real toughness showed like. Jess could have killed him, but he didn't. Mort had known right from the first shoot-out he'd seen Jess in that, fast gun though he was, he never killed gratuitously.

Mort just hoped Jess's speed was going to be enough now against three men, with only the somewhat dubious help of an inexperienced farmer and a rather shaky senior cowhand.

SsSsSsS

The noon-day stage from Laramie pulled out of the Sherman Relay Station in a cloud of dust. Mose was in a hurry, having been delayed getting away from town by, as he put it, 'female goings-on'. He did not specify and Slim was too preoccupied to ask. No team changes were necessary and the whole transaction took less than five minutes.

Slim stood in the middle of the yard, gazing down the road. He was not looking after the stage. His frowning gaze was fixed in the direction of Laramie itself. It was several long minutes before he gave a slight shrug and turned back towards the barn and the horse he had been shoeing.

Daisy stood on the porch, absently twisting her apron in her hands. She too was frowning. She watched as Slim finished off the rasping and let the horse put its hoof down again. He handed the halter to Mike, who led it off to the paddock.

Slim remained where he was, still staring towards Laramie. He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice Daisy walking over to him and came back to earth with a jolt as she addressed him.

"Slim, whatever is the matter with you?"

Slim attempted to give her a reassuring smile but Daisy was not fooled. "It's Jess, isn't it? You're worried about him." Such introspection was surprising in view of the unique bond between the two of them: neither of them fussed over routine hazards of daily life, although both were utterly supportive of each other where real danger was concerned. "Why? What's bothering you so much?"

"If Mort is investigating Mr Medwick's death, Daisy, they ought to have passed us long ago on their way to his ranch. And Jess would bring Charlie home, anyway. You know how he is with underdogs and Charlie sure needs all the support he can get."

Daisy nodded, understanding, and told him briskly: "Get along then! You aren't going to find out what's happened by standing here staring at the road."

"There's no stage due till early evening," Slim admitted. "You and Mike will be all right?"

"You know we will. We'll just get on with preparing an extra large supper. You're going to bring Mort and Charlie back – that's an order! - and I know Jess will be starving whatever's happened."

Slim grinned and gave her a quick hug. In less than no time he had saddled Alamo and the road to town echoed to the beat of galloping hooves.