Free Long Road to Cheyenne by Charles G. West Page B

surprised to find the pit Raymond had dug for his protection. It had all been fornaught when the crucial time came, however, for she found him lying on the floor of the pit with three bullet holes, all high on his chest. She glanced around the earthen enclosure, lingering for a few moments on the one bunk with no blankets. It struck her that this was where Warren had slept, so many miles away from her, and she felt the tears begin to well up in her eyes. She had reached up to brush a tear from her cheek when she was distracted by a low moan from the body she had thought to be dead.
    “Cam!” she cried out. “He’s alive!” She looked back to see if he was coming; then when he started walking toward her, she dropped down inside the tent. Raymond was alive, but just barely. “Pull that flap away, so we can see in this dark hole,” she told Cam. Raymond’s eyelids fluttered weakly as he tried to tell her something, but he could scarcely make a noise. Knowing that he was rapidly dying, he forced himself to make a sound. “What is it you’re trying to say?” Mary asked.
    “Sorry,” he whispered, his voice rasping from the effort it took for him to speak. “I’m sorry.” Cam pulled back the flap and part of the front of the tent, and stood looking down into the hole. Raymond’s eyes opened wide for a moment and he moaned. “Warren! I’m sorry, Warren. Forgive me.” His voice trailed off then and he made no further sound, although he still stared up at Cam.
    After a long moment, Cam stepped down beside Mary, placed his fingers on Raymond’s eyelids, and closed them. “He’s gone,” he told Mary. “He was tryin’ to make his peace.”
    “He thought you were Warren,” she said, then looked up at him, a question in her eyes.
    Understanding, he answered the unspoken question. “I reckon that’s the truth of it, what you’re thinkin’. It all adds up to it.”
    She slowly nodded. He didn’t have to spell it out. Raymond had paid Rafer to kill her husband, his own brother. That explained why Warren’s killer was not interested in his watch or his money. It was a planned assassination. She got to her feet and stood over him, staring down at the lifeless body of her brother-in-law, the brother that Warren had so looked up to. Finally she spoke softly. “I hope you go to hell.” She turned away and started to climb up the front of the pit. “Help me out of this damn hole,” she said to Cam, completely dry-eyed now. When he took her arm and gave her a boost, she said, “Take that other sack of gold. I promised I’d pay you for coming with me.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he replied politely, “but I don’t believe we agreed on as much as there is in that sack.” Being of a more practical nature, he looked around the hole under the tent for anything else that might be of use to them. There wasn’t much of anything that they didn’t already have, so he picked up the sack of dust and climbed out behind her.
    While Mary tried to comfort her two daughters, Cam pulled up the tent pegs and moved the canvas away, leaving only a square hole in the ground with Raymond’s body lying at the bottom. Mary glanced at him, refrained from questioning his actions, but asked, “When are you going to get out of those wet clothes?”
    “When I’m done with buryin’ ’em,” he answered.
    “I guess we should dig a grave for his brother,” she said.
    “Grave’s already dug,” he replied. “All I’ve gotta do is fill it in.” He walked over then and grabbed Rafer’s body by the heels of his Spanish boots and dragged it over to the pit. He parked it at the edge of the hole, then rolled it over to drop in beside Raymond. “I think it’ll be easier on the girls when these bodies are in the ground,” he remarked as he picked up a spade and started shoveling dirt into the hole from the large mound behind it. “I think what we’ll need is a big pot of coffee after I get this done, and maybe some of that