The Terrible Escape Of Chester McGuinnel

The Wells Fargo carriage rocked on its axles as it picked up speed on its way out of Fort Monroe. The springs squeaked and the wood clunked, and before long things settled into that easy rhythm that you can tune out as you travel. Jared Gossler looked about. He was in for a full night of travel atop a miserable rickety stool that was already gnawing at the bones of his considerable rear. Three months now he’d been moonlighting on this security detail, and within two weeks he’d requested a cushion or a more comfortable chair. “Discomfort’s good for this job,” the boss had said. “Comfortable guards fall asleep.” With that, he would hear no more. Jared was getting close to bringing a cushion in from home. Marybeth would throw a fit if he did and forgot to bring it back, but the hell he’d catch would be worth it. This stool could grind an ass to powder.

These Tuesday night trips were usually an armed currency transport, but tonight the carriage was carrying two types of cargo. One, the sum of monies from the week’s dealings at the bank, was in a set of locked strongboxes stacked against the wall of the room to his right. The other was in the iron cell to his left. The only door to the carriage was between the two, on the far wall.

Jared lay his rifle across his lap and took out a silver cigarette case. He put a cigarette between his lips and struck a match against the leg of the stool, which at least was good for that much.

As he raised the fire to the tobacco, a voice spoke from the cage. “Got another one of those for an old soldier?”

Jared puffed the cigarette to life and shook out the match. “No.”

“What’s your name?”

“None of your damned business.”

“Don’t want to talk?”

Jared took the rifle into his hands again to help make his point. “We got nothin’ to say to each other, now, so shut your mouth.”

“It’s a day’s ride to Rosewater. Gonna be a long night without a spot of conversation.”

“Well, I ain’t interested.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Sure I do. You’re the son of a bitch held up the Worthings General Store. Chester McGuinnel.”

Seated in the locked five by five cage at the corner of the carriage was a lean man, shackled at the wrists and ankles. He had the dirty tan and lined face of a man in his forties who spent most of his days outdoors. The light was dim, as the hanging lantern cast swinging bars of shadow into the cage that swayed and looped, but the man’s eyes picked up that light and glittered. He smiled. “That’s right.”

Jared spat on the carriage floor. “Pretty small time job, y’ask me, someone wanted in seven states taking the time to hold up a trader for... what was it... thirty-one dollars?”

“And eighteen bits.”

“Then you killed the shopkeep and shot your way out of town. Got a mile, too, before your horse expired of a gunshot wound. You fell against a rock and when they found you you were knocked right out.” Jared laughed. “Thirty-one bucks. Shit money to die for.”

“Lucky me, then, getting caught out here in your fine state of Arizona, huh?”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m wanted dead or alive in four of the seven states I got a warrant in. Arizona ain’t one of ‘em.”

Jared furrowed his eyebrows. “So the hell what? They gonna hang you in Rosewater just the same.”

Chester shrugged. “Well, the wait suits me just fine. Gives us time to sit here and have a smoke and talk. Sure you don’t want to give me a cigarette, there?”

“I’m sure.”

“I reckon I can’t blame you.” Chester sighed. They rode in silence for a moment before he spoke up again. “I held up one of these cars once.”

“Is that so.”

“Yep. Back when I was with a gang.” He chuckled fondly. “I remember we shot the guards and grabbed the coffers. Couldn’t open ‘em, though. Small cases like those over there, locked together in a stack, very strong. Couldn’t find the key in any of the guards’ pockets. We were real worked up.”

Jared barked a hoarse laugh. “I bet.”

“Had to blow the damned things open, in the end. Destroyed most of the folding money in the process. Damned shame... never did find that key.”

Jared smirked and stood, stooping as he did to avoid being struck by the swaying lantern. He reached up into the ornate filigree ironwork of the lantern’s cowling and, with some effort, detached a piece of it. He held it up.

“The key.” Chester stared at it, plain and black in Jared’s grasp. “Well, if that... Huh. Ain’t that clever.”

“I thought so, first time they showed me.” Jared snapped the key back into its housing and sat down. “No-account bastard like you rides out of the hills, shoots working men making an honest living and has the stones to ask for one of my cigarettes.” He fixed his eyes on Chester and spat again. “I may just stay the night in Rosewater. Wait for the next morning so I can watch you dance at the gallows like the widowmaking son of a whore you are.”

Chester smiled sadly at that. He looked up and watched the shadow of the lantern’s filigree turn against the ceiling for a time.

“Now... by your look,” Chester said, “I’d guess you’re a rancher or at least an able farmhand when not transporting money and widowmaking sons of whores. I imagine you’ve had to shoot a few coyotes or a horse that’s gone lame in your day.”

Jared sneered and aimed his rifle at Chester’s face. “I’m sure as hell ready to shoot you right now.”

“No you’re not, you need me alive to collect that bounty. What I’m getting at is that you’ve likely done a share of killing. Now... me, I come at things a different way. Let me tell you about the day I robbed that store and you boys nabbed me.”

The carriage jerked a bit, picking up speed. The sounds of men shouting outside came faintly to Jared, and he cocked an ear at the door.

Chester gestured with his arms and his manacles clinked. “I left my gang and rode into town on Dale’s horse. When I got there, I walked into the general store and tipped my hat to the mom and pop running the place, then pulled my pistol and aimed it right at the old man.” He held his right hand out, fingers formed into a gun. “‘Empty your cash box,’ I say. He didn’t move right away, so you know what I did?”

The carriage was now moving at a great pace and the wheels banged and clattered along the ruts of the dirt road. The stool threatened to dislodge Jared with every jostle but for his planted feet holding him upright. Gunfire began to pop and puff boomingly through the wooden walls. Jared dropped his cigarette butt and gripped his rifle more tightly, aiming it at the door. “Good God...”

Chester went on, happy pantomiming the story as he spoke. “I smiled real wide and grabbed his wife, yanked her head back by her hair and smashed her in the mouth four, five times with the butt of my gun. He starts hollerin’ and cryin’. She’s gurgling on blood and broken teeth. I look up and he still ain’t moving so I hit her again, busted her nose like a grape.” Softly, he added “pop.”

At this, Jared’s head turned back to Chester. Buttons of sweat were growing along the plains of his sunburned pate and his eyes were wide. His mind flitted from the situation at hand to Chester’s story to Marybeth and the baby and back. He blinked hard and very rapidly.

“So,” Chester said, “he digs out the money, he’s sobbin’ ‘please stop hurting her’ and he throws it in a sack. Hands it over and I say ‘thank you kindly” and shoot him in the kneecaps. The gunshots get people out on the street running for the sheriff, but that’s fine. It takes a moment for the old man to open his eyes again but when he does I stick his wife in the throat with the dagger. The kind of cut that doesn’t let you bleed to death, mind you, it’s the kind of cut that makes it bleed so bad down your own throat that you can’t even breathe. ‘Drowning on your own blood’ I once heard it called.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jared hissed. “Shut your mouth.”

A bullet hit the carriage, filling the cargo space with a muffled, wooden thwop. The grunts and screams of dying men could be heard from all around the vehicle. The gunfire cracked and thundered.

“As she dies, I’m watching the old timer’s face. Through the tears he’s looking at her and he’s... well, he’s just beside himself.” Chester giggled. “Once the dyin’s done it’s time for me to get moving so I shot him in the belly and walked out the door, then blasted my way out of town. Killed a good number of people. Missed the sheriff, mind you. That part’s important.”

“You shut up, you shut the fuck UP!” Jared screamed. His rifle shook with tremors as it pointed toward the door and spit shot from his lips.

“If I’d killed the sheriff no one would be around to stop the townspeople from just killing me when they found me. I make it a good distance out of town, decide I’m at a fine spot. Do you know what I did then?”

The sounds outside had begun to wane. Jared was breathing rapidly and his shirt was darkening with sweat. Chester winked. “I shot Dale’s horse, that’s what I did.”

Comprehension and a greater horror dawned in Jared’s eyes, circled as they were by frantic whites. Slowly, he swung the gun toward Chester, who took no notice. “That’s why I took his horse and not mine. I like my own horse too much, you see. Then I tossed the gun aside, lay down against a rock and waited. The sheriff found and arrested me, and now here we are. Easiest thing in the world.

“So... what I’m sayin’ is that we’ve both done some killing, sure. But you ain’t done my kind of killing. I enjoy killing. I like killing at the end of a long road of hurting. And when my boys open that door, we ain’t gonna kill you fast.”

The gunshots had died off outside and the carriage had slowed to a stop. A loud KUNG on the door just outside made Jared jump. Someone was bashing at the door’s lock. KUNG! KUNG!

“No sir,” Chester said, holding up a hand as if to say that this was the real truth, honest injun. “We’ve got hours out here, maybe days. We can make you sing to the moon. Have you ever sung a scream to the moon?” He shook his head.

“At least I can take you with me, you rotten cur,” Jared hissed. He leveled and aimed the gun. McGuinnel’s men kept hammering at the lock. KUNG!

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. We’re just going to kill you... but my men have orders. If they find me dead they’re going to kill you all the same, but they’re going to make you watch your family die real slow, in all manner of unseemly ways.”

“Bullshit,” Jared spat. “You don’t know who I am. You asked my name!”

“Of course we know your name. We know Marybeth’s name, too, and little William.” The gleam in Chester’s eyes was bright and awful, like those of a wolf seen at the very edge of a lantern’s clearing, staring inward. “I asked your name to see if we could get along. To see if you could join us, or at the very least be a pleasant fellow I couldn’t stand to kill. I’m afraid...” KUNG! KUNG! “...you have failed that test.”

Chester shook his head in mock sympathy. “And to think, all you had to do was give a condemned man a cigarette.”

Jared breathed several very rapid breaths, sweat pouring from his temples. He swung the rifle up under his chin and pulled the trigger. His body slumped off the stool and onto the floor. Chester laced his fingers and waited.

The door’s lock was shot open and a crack of dusty Arizona daylight filled the carriage. A man squinted in, holding a pistol. “Anyone in there, best throw your guns and come out with your hands high!” Behind him, other men with guns milled about, stripping the dead of cash and ammunition.

Chester clearned his throat and called out. “All clear, Mitch. Keys to the jail are on this fella’s belt.”

Mitch stepped inside and looked around. He whistled through his teeth and holstered his weapon. He bent and found Jared’s keyring, then set to freeing Chester from the holding cell. “How’d it go?”

“Smooth as butter,” Chester said, rubbing his wrists as he stood. “The key to the coffers is concealed in the ironwork of this lantern right here. Look, it snaps right out.” He reached up and removed the key.

Mitch squinted into the ironwork. “Well now... that’s clever.”

“That’s what I thought.” He tossed the key to Mitch. “Here. Unlock the coffers and get all the money loaded up.”

“Will do.” He started to turn and paused. “Hey, boss,” he said. “Why’d the plan have to go off like this? There had to be a safer way to find out where this key was. A better way.”

“No. There were safer ways, simpler ways. There weren’t no better way. We got the money, yes, but money’s easy. This, though... people will pay attention. This story will grow in the telling and become our legend.”

“I reckon.” Mitch jerked his head at the body on the ground. “You do that?”

“Yes I did.” Chester McGuinnel stepped out into the open air and mounted his horse.