The campfire cast a flickering ring blotted by man and horse shadows, and the lumpy shape of a rockpile a few yards away. When the men finished their supper of jerky and cold biscuits, they could no longer see the nearby pond in the darkness. The prairie was solid black beyond their circle of light, and they felt its vast emptiness. As they sipped coffee from tin cups, the night clouds barely parted to reveal a faraway moon, patchy and small yet casting silvery dim light across the plains. The tangy well-water smell saturated the hot night air, the steaming coffee made the men sweat more and their sweat cooled them a little.
Sitting with his hands locked in front of him and his ankles tied, Jessup gazed up at the moon, his gold eyes shining in the firelight. He bestirred his trim frame, and his gaze turned from the sky to rove the prairie.
Watching him, Matt decided to keep the fire burning all night. If Jessup roused himself while Matt and Chester slept, the marshal wanted more than faint moonlight to see what his prisoner was about. Matt expected another tussle when he unlocked the handcuffs and told Jessup to put his hands behind his back, but Jessup distractedly obeyed, like he had somewhat more important to mind. As on the night before, Matt knotted the end of a rope length through the link between the manacles and wrapped the rope's other end round his hand.
Jessup lay on his side, Chester on his stomach, and Matt on his back. He hoped the coffee would keep him awake, but his lids soon grew heavy. He was tired, and the smothering moist heat made him more so. Chester went to sleep at once. Matt heard no snoring from Jessup's bedroll as he had last night, which was worrisome. Matt drifted to sleep on a sticky, heat-laden wave of worry.
He dreamed Jessup was shaking his left hand so hard it hurt. Pumping his hand, Jessup laughed in his face, and Matt wanted to hit him. Any man with breeding knew to shake righthanded, but Jessup had grabbed Matt's left and wouldn't let go. "Dillon. Chester. Wake up."
Matt opened his eyes and swiftly rose, gripping his gun butt. Jessup sat yanking the rope around Matt's left hand. Chester woke and scrambled to his feet.
"Don't shoot!" Jessup yelled.
"What're you hollerin' 'bout, Jessup?" Chester said irritably.
"Gotta use the outhouse." Jessup's white teeth gleamed in the firelight as he flashed his wide smile.
"Oh forevermore."
"Can't hold it all night."
"Ah'll guard 'im whilst he goes, Mr. Dillon."
Matt hesitated. Chester habitually took prisoners out back. It was one of his duties as jailer, and he knew how to use the shotgun he held on them. Matt had taken on the task since catching Jessup, and now the marshal wondered if he was being too cautious, if he should trust Chester to do his job. Middling to light in size, the prisoner was some four inches shorter than Chester, and ten years older at forty-three. Unarmed, Jessup hardly posed a threat.
"Alright," Matt said.
Chester untied the rope knot on the restraints, and Matt handed him the key. He unlocked the handcuffs and put the key in his pocket, the prisoner held his hands out in front of him and Chester locked the manacles on his wrists, then untied Jessup's ankles.
"Don't get up yet," said Matt, when Jessup started to rise.
Chester picked up the shotgun by his bedroll. "A'right, come on." The prisoner walked ahead to the rockpile and around it while Chester waited on the other side.
His head swimming with weariness, Matt yawned and lay down. He would just shut his eyes until Chester returned with the prisoner, then watch Jessup while Chester tied his ankles, unlocked the handcuffs and locked them again his behind his back. Matt fell into a deep sleep.
Waiting by the rockpile, Chester listed to the side and shifted his boots to keep his footing. His head felt stuffed with cotton wadding, he was so tuckered. Jessup appeared round the end of the rockpile and approached him. "That's near enough, Jessup. Don't come no closer." Chester raised the shotgun. Jessup paused, then kept coming. "You dun wanna belly full a buckshot, best hold it right thar."
Jessup kept moving in, slowly treading, his trim body tensed. Chester thought of cocking the shotgun to scare the prisoner to a halt and decided against it. Jessup didn't scare easy. He was the sort to fight and take fool chances, but smart-like, figuring he'd get by with it. If Chester thumbed the hammer and the prisoner tried to wrest the gun from him, it could fire and either one of them might get hit. Too dark to risk shooting in the air near Jessup to show him Chester wasn't playing, and swinging the shotgun at his head could kill him instead of just knocking him senseless.
Wrists handcuffed in front of him, Jessup stepped to within an inch of the barrel aimed at his chest. Chester felt his breath hitch as his heart beat faster. "Sorry, Chester," Jessup said, low in his throat.
"Huh?"
Jessup hammered his shackled fists into Chester's face, punched his stomach, snatched the shotgun and swung it. The blow as the butt hit felt like an explosion inside his head, then blackness darker than the night swallowed him. He crumpled and lay unmoving. "Sorry, Chester," Jessup repeated.
He put the gun down, took the key from Chester's pocket, fumbled for the keyhole and freed himself with deft fingers. Jessup dropped the handcuffs and key in the grass, picked up the shotgun, crept to where Matt lay sleeping and stood looking at him a moment. Jessup heaved a silent sigh, then took hold of the shotgun barrel and swung the butt at Matt's head. "Sorry, Marshal."
Jessup quickly put on his hat, saddled and bridled his horse, slung his bedroll over its back and strapped on his saddlebags and hung his canteen on the pommel. Until he stole the gold, he'd worked all his life with his hands, since the tender age of three when he started choring on account of his folks said he was smarter than most little ones his age and could do the work, tater grubbing on his pa's farm. Though on the lighter side of average as a man, his neatly molded body was nimble and hard, and he moved with the litheness of a much younger man.
He strapped on his gun belt, moved with fast quiet steps to the lawman, took his silver and pearl revolver out of Matt's belt and holstered it. Jessup mounted his horse. As he kicked his heels to its sides and headed north at a gallop, the rain fell suddenly in heavy sheets, warm as fresh bathwater.
Yancey Jessup's heart soared, his body thrumming with giddiness and his head light as air. Never had he felt so alive. The plains were his for the taking, and the whole country if he wanted it. The storm would drown his tracks in mud, wash his horse's dung into the soaked earth. Yancey guffawed loud and long into the pouring rain. "Whoo-hoo! Yip-yip-yippee-yayy!"
Near the blackened, sodden remains of the campfire, the pelting rain and Matt's pounding head woke him. He wondered a moment if Chester's strong coffee caused the headache, then felt the throbbing soreness on one side of his scalp. He sat up and fingered the tender swelling, peering through the feeble moonlight at Chester's rumpled wet bedroll and hat. Jessup's hat and bedroll were gone, as were his horse and gear. Matt rose, slapped a hand to his waist and looked at his belt. Jessup's pistol was missing. Chester's shotgun was on the ground. Matt squinted through the rain at the rockpile. His friend lay sprawled in the grass.
"Chester." Matt leaned over him and patted his face. He opened his eyes and blinked at Matt, then grimaced and clutched his head. Matt pulled him upright and steadied him as he staggered.
"Legs're some wobbly," Chester mumbled.
"What happened?"
"I took Jessup ta go behind the rocks, an' when he come back t'other side he moved in on me. I warned 'im I'd shoot, but he dint pay me no mind. He socked me coupla times, then got holt the shotgun 'n busted ma head with the butt."
"Yeah, he busted mine, too. While I was sleepin'."
"Whilst you was sleepin'? My gracious, Mr. Dillon, that's a mean thing to do. That Yancey Jessup ain't no good at all."
"Well I know why he did it, Chester. He couldn't escape if I woke up, unless he shot me. He could've shot you and me both, but he didn't. And he's sharing the money he stole with his sick friend."
"That don't say much for Jessup. He's a bad 'un an' no mistake," said Chester.
"Chester, why didn't you holler for me when he came at you?"
Matt's eyes were like shadowed holes in the darkness, and his partner looked miserably into them as the rain plastered Chester's hair to his head, streamed over his lean face and soaked his clothes. "I dunno, Mr. Dillon. I shoulda been able to stop 'im myself, but I couldn't. Oughter knowed I warn't smart 'nough an' yelled for you straightaway. I jest think too slow is all."
Matt laid a hand on Chester's shoulder. "Let's saddle up and find shelter 'til the rain stops."
"We gonna go after Jessup, Mr. Dillon?"
"No. His tracks are washed away. We passed an empty cabin and barn when we were trailing 'im. Should be about five miles due southwest."
A way station for riders, the furnished cabin was stocked with provisions and kindling. Chester started a fire in the stove and fixed coffee. He and Matt put their boots near the stove, wrapped sheets around their waists and draped their wet clothing over chairs to dry in the heat. There were two bunks in the room, and they sat on the corn husk mattresses and sipped coffee.
"It's my fault Jessup got away," Chester said after a long silence. "A mercy he didn't kill us on account of me. I'm no good to you, Mr. Dillon. Maybe I oughter stay right in this 'ere cabin, take up farmin' or somewhat."
"You want to stay out here in the middle of nowhere and take up farming, do you?" said Matt, more tersely than he intended. He was bone tired and knew Chester was, too. At his best a sensitive man, Chester's tendersome nature overcame him when he grew weary. He'd come down hard on himself now, and Matt braced his own frayed feelings to respond with reassurance and sympathy.
Sure enough, Chester's soulful brown eyes shimmered. A drop slid over his cheekbone and he flicked it away.
"Chester, Jessup got the jump on you because you wouldn't shoot him. Don't blame yourself for not pulling the trigger on an unarmed man."
"But your prisoner escaped," Chester said, his voice tremulous. "You tracked 'im down 'n caught 'im, an' he got away cuz of me."
"That doesn't much bother me," said Matt. "Jessup wasn't a thief before he made off with that gold. He won't steal again now he has more than two million hid, and the State will never get its money back whether he goes to prison or not. So there's nothin' for us to be gloomy about, Chester." The marshal grinned, and not just to make his friend feel better. When Matt laid it out that way, it tickled him a little.
Chester mirrored his grin. "By golly, Mr. Dillon, I dint see it thataway 'fore ya learned me how 'twas. That Yancey Jessup is some slicker, ain't he?"
"He sure is."
"He said he was sorry right before he lit into me," said Chester. "He ain't bad as some, maybe."
"That's so. A lot of 'em are worse than Yancey Jessup."
Morning dawned to a cloudless dazzling sky and white-hot sun at the eastern edge of the prairie. Two hours after daybreak, Matt and Chester set out on the way to Dodge. After a cleansing soak in the warm rainstorm last night and a few hours sleep on the cornhusk mattresses, Matt's spirits were refreshed and Chester's free and cheerful. They had just two more days on the trail and no prisoner to tend.
Yancey Jessup had once more escaped to parts unknown, and the sacks of gold were scattered miles apart across the frontier and throughout the settled countryside. As Chester hummed a rambling tune akin with the fresh early brightness of the plains and springing from his own light heart, Matt resolved to file Jessup in a nook at the back of his mind with the ones who got away. The escaped bad ones were close to the lawman's everyday awareness, though he did not allow recollections of them to plague him with guilt or worry. The accused innocents—in a far quiet corner of his memory—who fled the shackles of the law and took back their liberty, he wished well. Those who were flawed yet not bad to the core—like Jessup—held no orderly resting place in Matt's thoughts. They drifted through his consciousness, and he pondered them at times.
END