Free Funeral By The Sea by George G. Gilman Page A

sourly in the stable against the snorting of horses. ‘What the hell you figure I feel like? But I want outta this place.’
    Then came the thud of hooves and jingle of harness as the grey-bearded old-timer got his team out of their stalls.
    Barnaby Gold leaned close to the good-looking whore and whispered, ‘It had to be you slid the bolts?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Appreciate it, lady.’
    Now she shook her head and put her lips close to his ear. ‘Words are no good to me, sonny. I’m like that old man. I want to get away from this lousy town.’
    Her accent was far removed from her refined appearance of the previous night.
    ‘That makes three of us, lady. Do you know what they did with my stuff?’
    Again they traded places with lips and ears. The whole town was woke up when you was brought back here. That Delroy woman ordered you half stripped and strung up on the stoop right away. The horse was took to the stable. Along with the rest of your clothes, as I recall.’
    ‘Okay, we’ll wait for Harrow to get through in there.’
    ‘Maybe he’ll help us.’
    A shake of the head. ‘He’s got a free pass out and a lot of pain to remind him of what it costs to cross a Delroy. It’s just you and me, lady.’
    ‘So what we gonna do? There’ll still be guards on the way in and outta here, won’t there?’
    He gestured for her to stay where she was, then slid past her to reach the end of the barn, looked around its corner in the same way he had surveyed the street from the side of the house earlier.
    He saw that Seth Harrow was leading the team from the stable toward the parked wagon, presumably to bring the kerosene into the yard and transfer it to the barn. The old man moved gingerly as if every step awakened fresh pain in his back, which he attempted to hold rigid.
    A section of the sand ridge showed between the front corner of the stable and the rear of the house, its crest higher than the wagon, the horses and the man. Two boats were still beached there on their sides.
    Without looking at her, he beckoned for Emily to join him.
    ‘You got a plan?’ she rasped.
    ‘Sure, lady. It’s the reason I came out to the coast.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Take a boat ride.’
     

CHAPTER NINE
     
    THEY crossed the narrow gap between the barn and the stable while Seth Harrow was painfully busy with putting his team in the traces of the wagon. There was a closed door midway down the side of the stable, in the wall facing the yard. Ten windows looked menacingly out from the rear wall of the big house.
    Gold raked his deadpan eyes over them and decided that human nature reduced the initial risk he had to take - that even if the servants were engaged in their normal chores in any of the rooms beyond the windows, the part of their attention not applied to their work would be attuned to picking up the first sign that the men were returning from their hunt on the cliff top. And this would be seen or heard from the front of the house.
    So he took hold of the whore’s right hand in his left and moved out of the cover of the rear of the stable. He heard her sharp intake of breath and led her at an unhurried pace along the side.
    Seth Harrow cursed and occasionally groaned. The house remained broodingly silent in the shadow of the cliff. He did not expect the door to be locked and it was not. One of the hinges creaked when he opened it. But the sound of Emily expelling her pent-up breath was louder after he had closed it behind them.
    They crouched down between two stalls in the stable, redolent with the scents of horses and filled with light – that of the sun reflected off the almost white sand of the beach. There were six horses still enstalled there.
    ‘Wait here, lady,’ he told her softly and went in search of his gear, casting frequent glances out of the open double doorway at the front to where Seth Harrow was now working silently at hitching his team to the wagon.
    His saddle and accoutrements, bedroll, gunbelt and the rest of his