[March 2012] 

Word Count: 1409  

 

Chapters: 1 

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MAKING THE LEAP

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by

Eleanor Ward

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Pursued by a posse the boys find their escape route cut off.

Will this be the end of the line?

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The two horses snorted noisily as their riders pushed them up the steep, rocky incline, their hooves clattering loudly on the hard rock.  They had been running almost non stop for the last twenty four hours and but for the pedigree of their breeding would long since have keeled over with exhaustion.

As they reached a crest, affording an open view of the surrounding landscape, Kid Curry glanced anxiously back over his shoulder.

“Any sign?” Hannibal Heyes asked, gruffly, as he guided his horse around a boulder and turned it ninety degrees towards the next upward incline.

Curry squinted as he scanned the landscape, doing a double take when his gaze spotted a thin plume of dust below them, at the base of the rocky ridge they were now ascending.

“Yeah.” growled Curry,  “Closer than before.”

“Well, we had to slow down to climb. They’ll have to as well.”

“I guess.” muttered Curry, unconvinced.  They had been trying to outrun the posse sent out by the Sheriff of the last town they’d visited - after he’d recognized them – for the last day and a half.  Twice they’d believed they’d lost them, only to realize the men were still on their trail.

With little opportunity to sleep and time only for very brief stops, for water and to give their horses a breather, both men were as weary as their mounts and becoming increasingly frustrated by their inability to shake off the posse.

“How can such a backwood town as that one we just passed through turn out a posse as relentless as those guys?”  Curry growled at Heyes as he turned his horse to follow his up the ridge.

“I hear tell the James’  were active around these parts a few years ago.” Heyes replied, breathlessly, “I guess the posses needed to be on the ball to deal with the likes of them.”

Curry grunted, irritably, before they fell into silence as they pressed onwards and upwards.

Half an hour later, they pulled up their horses and dismounted, going to the edge of the trail they were on and peering anxiously down for a sign of their pursuers.

For the moment they could see none, but both knew that it was only because they posse was out of sight further back around the ridge. But at least they didn’t appear to have gained on them any further since beginning the climb.

Curry turned to look up towards the top of the ridge.

“Do you have any idea where this is going to take us?” he asked.

Heyes lifted his eyes from the trail below them, to follow his partner’s gaze upwards.

“I don’t even know where the hell we are, let alone where we might be going.”

“Aww, Heyes...”  Curry shook his head disparagingly,  “What if—“

“Don’t!” Heyes cut him off, swinging back into the saddle and turning the horse to continue upwards, knowing what Curry was thinking; what if they found there was no escape route when they got to the top? Heyes didn’t want to think about that.

They pressed on and presently the trail levelled out as it wound between trees that clung precariously to the rocks.

Heyes suddenly pulled his horse to an abrupt halt, Curry’s horse almost riding into the back of it. Moving alongside his partner’s horse, Curry’s jaw fell open when he saw the reason for Heyes’ abrupt stop. A few yards in front of them, a deep cleft in the rockface, carved by the river that now ran through it hundreds of feet below them, prevented further progress.

Curry looked left and right. The chasm extended as far as he could see in either direction, with no obvious way to ride around it.

“Now what?” he questioned, a faint note of panic in his voice.  The posse couldn’t be far behind them, there was no going back – and no going forward either. They were trapped.

When Heyes didn’t reply, Curry turned to look at him.  Heyes was staring at the rocky ledge on the opposite side of the chasm.

“What are we gonna do, Heyes?” Curry asked again.

“Jump.”

“Wha--?” Curry looked dumbfounded, peering over the edge to the river way below them,  “Are you crazy? We’d never survive a jump from this height even if the water was deep enough to land in – and it  looks like its full of rocks.”

“Not down.  Across.”

Curry lifted his gaze to look at the opposite side of the ridge.

“Impossible. That gap has to be fifteen, maybe eighteen feet.”

“More like twenty.” Heyes acknowledged.

“We’d never make it. It’s too far for the horses to jump even if they were fresh, and they’re nigh on exhausted.”

Heyes turned his gaze to the Kid’s,  “What choice do we have, Kid?  You think that posse is just gonna turn us in to serve our twenty year jail sentences?  The reward is the same dead or alive.  After trailing us so determinedly for the last day and half they’re not going to be in any mood for niceties when they catch up with us.  If we don’t make that jump we’re dead anyway. Or as good as.” he added in reference to the prospect of spending the next twenty years in prison.

Curry looked back over his shoulder as he pictured the posse looming closer, then turned again to look at the gaping chasm, calculating the odds on the jump succeeding.

“We don’t have enough of a run up.” he pointed out,  “They’ll fall short.”

Heyes put a hand on his shoulder.  Curry turned to look at him. His dark eyes showed apprehension, but at the same time, in their depths, Curry saw determination mixed with something else – faith.  Heyes had always had an unshakeable belief in his ability for self preservation, a kind of inner sense that whatever choices he made to preserve/prolong his life would succeed because it was destined to be so. Curry thought they were about to commit suicide in spectacular fashion, but he held Heyes’ gaze and, calmed by his apparent faith in success, nodded a silent consent.

Heyes smiled, a mischievous twinkle coming to his eyes at the prospect of challenging fate.

Turning away, Heyes turned his horse and rode it as far back as the trail allowed before turning it to face the chasm.  Curry  did the same.

They turned to look at each other one last time before, in unison, they spurred their horses into a run.

At the last second the horses tried to veer away but they forced them on and the animals launched themselves off the edge.

For what seemed like endless seconds a strange silence seemed to engulf them as they flew through the air, expecting any second to plunge down to the river below. Then, hooves hit rock, and the horses were frantically scrambling onto the trail on the opposite side.

Once safely away from the edge, Heyes and Curry dismounted and petted their horses to calm both them and themselves.  It was many minutes before either felt able to speak.

Curry was first to break the silence.

“Do you think they’ll follow us?” he asked, glancing back across the chasm for a sign of the posse.

Heyes, who’d had his forehead pressed to his horse’s neck as he’d gently stroked the animal to calm it, now lifted his head to meet Curry’s gaze.  There was a slightly disbelieving expression in his eyes, as though he could scarcely believe they’d actually pulled it off, combined with a glint of righteousness, as though he’d always known that they would.

“Would you, if you didn’t have to?” he raised a questioning eyebrow.

Curry smiled. Heyes smiled back.

Once the horses had recovered, they remounted and set off down the other side of the ridge. They rode in companionable silence, each alone with their thoughts of what they’d risked - and won.

An hour later, the posse arrived at the chasm. After riding up and down the trail for a while, looking for a sign that their quarry had turned around and headed back down by a different route, they decided that the two men must have come unexpectedly upon the chasm, failed to stop and had fallen over the edge to their deaths in the river below.  That they had jumped the gap to freedom never occurred to them. After all, a jump like that was impossible – wasn’t it?

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--ooOOoo--

 

 

Authors Note:

This tale was inspired by an account of Jesse James allegedly

making a similar jump, in 1876,  across Devil's Gulch canyon,

South Dakota (pictured opposite), as detailed at  
https://www.southdakotamagazine.com/devils-gulch

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