Funeral By The Sea
FUNERAL BY THE SEA
Oceanville, California nestled by the wide blue waters of the Pacific but it was no vacation resort. More like a retirement home. Leastways, strangers who stumbled on it never came out again alive and mostly never had time to say hi to the folks before they were dead. Unless they were kept around just long enough to pleasure Miss Eve. It was her brother who ran the vicious bunch of hoodlums and Mexican whores who made up the citizenry. So it looked like the end of the road for Barnaby Gold when he came into town, just aiming to buy a horse. But, sure as hell, he didn’t reckon on paying with his life.
THE UNDERTAKER,
FUNERAL BY THE SEA by George G. Gilman
Copyright © 2014 George G. Gilman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers.
First Amazon Edition June 2014
Conditions of sale, This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For Tom T. Hall
One story in appreciation of so many.
CHAPTER ONE
BARNABY Gold had been riding into a gentle west wind ever since he started out at dawn and from mid-morning the hot, slow-moving air currents were permeated with the saline smell of the ocean. But he knew he was several hundred miles south of San Francisco so there was no temptation to ask the black gelding for greater speed.
He would see the great expanse of the Pacific in due course of time and it would inevitably recall memories of his early youth, times when he had stood on the very tip of Manhattan Island, peering out across New York Harbor at the Atlantic, daydreaming of the distant countries which lay on the far side.
But the days for dreaming of what might be were over now for he was engaged in making hopes become reality, and although he was eager to fulfill a lifelong ambition, his feelings upon detecting the scents of the ocean again after so many years of being enclosed by the mountains and deserts of south-eastern Arizona fell far short of reckless excitement.
He simply expressed a smile of quiet satisfaction that he had survived for long enough to reach this early stage of the journey which was planned all those years ago in New York City. Smiled then lit a cheroot and continued to allow his mount to move at an energy-conserving walk through the mountains beyond which was the ocean, used the reins only to keep the gelding on the trail that wound among the rearing rocks and sparse clumps of desert plants.
Then at noon, when the promise of the Pacific was still no more than a subtle and elusive fragrance on the breeze, he veered his mount off the trail and into the hot shade of a rock overhang. Where he swung down from the saddle and stretched, easing the stiffness of the morning ride from his muscles. Then hand-brushed his clothes free of trail dust, took off his hat and shook it before he poured canteen water into it and gave the gelding a drink.
Cleaned of dust, all his clothing was jet black. From the rolled brim hat to the shiny riding boots which he wore outside his pants.
Between was a knee-length Ulster coat with a velvet collared cape hanging down to just below his elbows, only the top two brass buttons fastened. A silk scarf was loosely tied at his throat and all but concealed the shirt which would otherwise have shown between the plunging lapels of the coat. He did not wear a jacket or a vest. Nor a necktie.
Even his gunbelt was black, relieved by the metal buckle and bullets in the loops.
Slung low from the right of the belt was a holster in which nestled a wood-butted Colt .45 Peacemaker. On the left was another Peacemaker. This was an eagle-butted model with a mother-of-pearl grip and a cutaway trigger guard, fixed to the belt by a stud in a slot, a swivel rig designed for fast shooting.
All his clothes were relatively new. The gunbelt and guns were well used.
The man who wore this clothing so unsuitable for the climate of southern California was twenty-six years of age and looked younger. He was six feet tall and leanly built, giving the impression of being lanky and gangling and lacking in physical strength. He had a face that was youthfully good-looking, clean-shaven and evenly tanned, the skin uncrinkled except at the sides of the eyes and mouth. The eyes were green and surveyed the world with a supreme confidence which was easy to mistake for arrogance. The mouth was full lipped and firm-lined in repose. The forehead, nose and cheeks were all regular on the foundation of a good bone structure. The neatly trimmed hair with a parting slightly left of centre was the color of wheat ready for harvest.
Barnaby Gold presented an incongruous sight as he sat on his haunches in the hot shade after watering his horse, resting his back against the rock below the overhang, chewing jerked beef
and washing it down with canteen water. A fresh-faced young man - looking younger than he actually was - dressed in the somber-toned, heavyweight garments better suited for withstanding weather far colder than ever struck this part of the country. And packing a pair of Peacemakers in the manner of a fast draw gunslinger. Then taking a cheroot from a tin box and smoking it, expressing no pleasure in what occupied him, but neither did he show any sign of being discomforted by the situation.
Until he heard the rattle of the diamondback. When, for an instant, he froze in the act of raising a hand to take the cheroot from his mouth. In the next instant got a bearing on the sound and realized the snake was no immediate threat to him.
He snapped his head around then, as the gelding vented a snort of pain and reared high, with forelegs flailing.
The horse had wandered some twenty feet along the base of the shade rock, nose to the ground in a vain search for grass that was not scorched by the blazing sun. Had found, instead, the lair of the diamondback.
Gold caught a glimpse of the head of the snake - venomous fangs still exposed in the gaping mouth - just before it was withdrawn into the dark hole at the angle of rock and ground. He was already halfway up from his haunches by then, right hand streaking toward his holster, fingers curled to draw the Colt. But the snake was back in its lair before he had even closed a fist around the butt of the gun.
Next the gelding became four-footed and made to wheel, intent upon bolting away from the cause of his pain. But then the horse turned his head to the side and began frenetically to toss it up and down as his equine brain demanded relief instead of escape. And so, with the lips curled back from the yellow teeth, the gelding scoured his muzzle on the rock face, rubbing off the skin and drawing blood from the area between the nostrils where the fangs had punctured him.
The diamondback continued to give sound to his anger with the rattle in his tail, the cadence of the menacing noise increasing as Gold’s running footfalls came closer.
The black-clad young man had abandoned the move to draw a Colt. Now lunged toward the suffering animal with both hands outstretched, reaching for a double-barrel sawn-off Murcott shotgun that hung from the saddlehorn.
He skidded to a halt and wrenched the gun free. Then, as he swung around to fix his green-eyed gaze on the dark hole in which the rattler lurked, he broke the gun to cock the internal hammers and had his finger curled to the forward trigger when the gun was snapped closed.
The pain-maddened horse was snorting and scraping at the dusty ground with both forehooves. The motes billowed across the entrance to the diamondback’s lair.
Gold went down on to his haunches again and thrust the Murcott forward in a one-handed grip. When the twin muzzles entered the hole, he felt the impact as the snake struck at the barrels.
He squeezed the trigger.
Was rocked back hard on to his rump by the recoil as the muzzle blast of the discharged shot was strangely muted by the confines of the snake’s refuge.
The rattling was abruptly curtailed and for a stretched second there was a solid silence in the wake of the report. But then the gelding gave a snicker and collapsed on to his knees, struggled vainly to get up and rolled on to his side, legs flailing weakly.
Gold allowed pent-up breath to hiss out between clenched teeth and came erect.
There was no sign in the vicinity of the hole at the base of the rock to indicate that it had ever been disturbed. A few feet above and to the left, the sandstone was stained with drying blood to
which horsehair adhered. Below this the gelding lay on his side in the dust, the visible flank rising and falling shallowly. It was not possible to see where the fangs of the snake had injected their venom amid the area of bloody pulp on the animal’s muzzle. There seemed to be apology rather than pleading in back of the helplessness and pain that showed in the eye that blinked up at the black-clad man, who tracked the Murcott toward a fresh target.
He had a double-handed grip on the shotgun now and stooped down to aim it from the hip, so that the undischarged muzzle came within a fraction of an inch of resting between the eyes of the doomed animal.
The horse made a small sound of disapproval as his nostrils flared to the stink of burnt powder. Then, in the moments following the second shot, there were just the involuntary sounds of instantaneous death. Which were finished before Gold had slowly uttered,
‘Goddamnit to hell.’
He spoke for his own ears only to give vent to whatever emotion he felt in the wake of having to put down his horse. But the soft tones in which he spoke and the implacable set of his face did not reveal what brand of emotion he was experiencing.
Then he leaned the Murcott against the rock and set about salvaging what he could from the situation, without making any conscious effort to avoid looking at the shot-shattered head of the gelding.
First he unfastened the cinch from under the belly of the horse. Next removed the bedroll and the bloodstained bridle and reins. From the centre of the bedroll drew three sections of a dismantled, long-shafted shovel which he fitted together with two brass screw pieces.
He did not take off his caped coat or even the scarf before he began to dig a tunnel under the carcass. Just deep and broad enough so that he was able, after an hour of hard and sweating work, to drag the saddle and accoutrements free. He swung the shovel with practiced ease and a strength that was not apparent in his lanky and gangling frame - and did not rest and take a drink until the chore was completed.