Brian Garfield Read Online Free PDF Page A

wouldn’t do that Boag, because if you kill Sweeney you’ll get twenty men to sit heavy on you. Now you just turn loose of him.”
    Sweeney struggled in Boag’s grip and Boag pricked the point of the knife against Sweeney’s Adam’s apple. It quieted him down. Boag backed slowly over to the rail. “Come on, John B.”
    â€œYou gon jump, Boag?”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œWithout our shares?”
    â€œHow you gonna swim with gold bricks?”
    â€œWell shit,” Wilstach complained, but he broke away from Gutierrez and came over to the rail. Gutierrez snarled a little and then cackled nervously again.
    Sweeney stirred again and Boag let him feel the point of the knife. Sweeney was big enough to make a good shield. It was the only reason they weren’t shooting at him.
    Mr. Pickett said, “Go on then, get over the side. I’m tired of looking at you.”
    Boag reached around behind him left-handed and fumbled the revolver out of his belt but as soon as it came in sight, Mr. Pickett backed away from the hurricane rail, out of sight.
    Boag glanced at Stryker at the foot of the stairs. Stryker had a gun out. Boag thought about shooting him but it wouldn’t change anything if he did. None of them cared that much about Sweeney’s hide; they’d sacrifice him. There just wasn’t any way to win this one. Finally Boag said, “Go on over, boys. Ain’t no choice.”
    There were the two Yuma Indians and there was a new white hand who called himself Frailey. And there were Wilstach and Boag. These five were the ones Mr. Pickett had no further use for.
    The white one, Frailey, climbed over the rail and Boag heard the splash when Frailey hit the water. Boag said, “Go on,” but the two Yumas shook their heads and Boag understood. They couldn’t swim.
    That was when Sweeney kicked back hard. His bootheel caught Boag in the shin. Sweeney dived away and Boag was standing there right out on the bare-ass deck and there was nothing to do but flip himself back over the rail.

6
    The guns started up before he hit the water. The pain in his shin and the shocking cold of the water made him lose his grip on the revolver; for a moment he was strangling in the foamy froth kicked up by the bucketing paddlewheels, a black swirl of panic; he kicked and heaved with his arms and none of it seemed to do any good, there wasn’t any up or down. He hadn’t got much of a breath in his chest when he went over; he didn’t even know if he’d been shot or not, but everything seemed to be in working order except his sense of direction. He was tumbling ass over teakettle in a marbled darkness of water which had no top and no bottom. Christ I don’t want to drown.
    The water was up in his nose like fire; he was strangling. He flailed in madness and there was a slow burst of white-hot agony in his chest.
    Then his boots rammed something solid: the bottom, a rock. He let his knees sag and then he made a leap, shoving himself up from the bottom.
    His head broke the surface instantly. The Colorado was a very shallow river.
    He coughed and wheezed for breath. The turbulence of the boat’s passing afterwash wheeled him around. The moon spun crookedly and then he picked up the boat with his eyes, the ruby gunflashes from along the rails. He saw it clearly when Pickett’s men shot the two Yuma Indians and threw them over the rail.
    Then he spotted Wilstach, swimming strongly toward him against the current. Bullets made spouts and creases in the water and Boag filled his lungs and coughed and finally shouted, “Get your head down!” before he dived under and fought the current toward the near bank.
    He stayed under as long as he could. Came up for air and had a look around to get his bearings. He was a little closer to shore than he had been; the riverboat was farther away, a good hundred yards downstream now. The guns were still volleying in flashes.