THE GUV’ AS Jack Hawkins had learned to refer to the mastermind of the gold theft, was at that particular moment engaged in a grim conversation with someone in York.
There were debts, gaming debts he had accumulated and they were hanging over his head. A gentleman of honor discharged these debts before all others for the code had always been play and pay and he had always counted himself a gentleman when it came to gaming.
Marriage to Amanda Sherborne was a need born of desperation. He wanted to continue to enjoy the lifestyle he cherished. His debts had accumulated to the point where he had gone to a moneylender and now, the interest was suffocating him.
He needed a month before he could put the gold into circulation and restore his credit. It was what he was trying to explain to the small bearded man with the ledger and no heart.
He put down his diamond stick pin and sneered, “There that should keep you for awhile.” He gritted his teeth as he turned and slammed the door as he left.
Crossing the cobbled street, he thought about the stick pin. It had been a gift from his mother, a family heirloom, but it was only an object…he would soon have many more.
As he entered the stables and looked for a livery boy to fetch his horse, he heard the raised voices of two men and curiously stood still to listen.
“Bless me, Mr. Fowler, it weren’t my fault. Didn’t know there was anything wrong with the coin…after all, it was gold…I run a livery here…not a bank.”
“Right, so ye haven’t heard that a coach carrying the new gold coins had been robbed?” Fowler demanded.
“No, there hasn’t been any talk at all,” returned the man in shocked accents.
The guv’ as he was known to Hawkins purposely made a sound and called out, “Hallo…I need my horse, please.”
A livery lad came shuffling from in from the courtyard and grinned, “I’ll fetch him, sir…”
He nodded to the boy and flipped him a coin, his mind reeling with Hawkins’ stupidity. He had taken some of the gold coins and had spent them…right here in Harrowgate! The bloody fool.
He had put up with Jack because he thought he might still need him, and he hoped Jack would lead him to Elly Bonner, but this, this was unforgivable. The man had proved himself a liability and he would deal with him at once!
* * *
Jack had waited for the sun to start its journey into night before he left the quarry cave he and his Elly had been calling home. She hadn’t wanted him to go, but he had told her, he needed to make one last trip.
He had with him two burlap bags and a horsehair blanket. He cut through the Old Track and, heedless of Witch’s Elbow and its demons, though it was still not quite more than dusk, he made his way through the moors and headed for a portion of Wharfe River he knew well.
Some minutes later and on foot, he led his mount through the tangle of trees and brush, along the river bank, up a steep incline until a waterfall some ten feet in width and a hundred feet in height came into sight. The rushing water made enough noise to cover any other sound. Its foaming cascade fell into the semi-enclosed pool at its base before the river current met and swept away what it had to offer.
Here Jack tethered his horse behind some evergreens and climbed down over the boulders to a niche beside the falls. An observer would have been astounded, for at that moment he seemed to vanish. Actually, he had slipped behind the waterfall to a limestone crevice which extended back some fifty yards under the river and behind the falls. It narrowed to a point where only the very thinnest of men could slide through. He saw the three wooden trunks trimmed with metal and bearing some kind of official seals, housed there, untouched by any save himself and the guv’.
Hawkins made his way to one of these and flung open the lid, licking his lips as the coins glittered at him.
He had watched his employer make the blokes guarding this treasure and the drivers carry the trunks here and it had been no easy job. It had taken the coach horses to drag it along the trail, where they had placed each trunk on a length of burlap and dragged it into the waterfall cave.
He had turned and told those men to take some gold and keep mum, but his employer had other notions.
It happened so quickly that all he had done was stand by in shock, as the guv’ had shot them, quickly, one by one. “Are ye that greedy, man? Why…why did ye do that?” He had screamed.
The guv’ had laughed and said it wasn’t greed, but self preservation. In the end, he had helped dump the bodies and the river and set the coach on fire in the woods.
They had taken the horses and set them free far away…
He sighed over it all now.
Killing a man like that didn’t sit well with him, but he hadn’t known, hadn’t expected it. He reached for the gold with a shrug, for he had told Elly the truth when he had told her he had exchanged it with a man willing to hold onto it for a time, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few on hand as well. After all, in America, they would know nothing about it being new or old… would they?
“Well, well Jack!” said a voice at his back.
Jack straightened and immediately went for the gun tucked into his belt, but a shot rang out at his boots and that voice in the dim light clucked his tongue and said, “Drop it and kick it to me, for I have both my guns out and one of them now pointed at your heart.”
Jack knew better than to try and get off a shot. He was a simple man, he had often swung a pistol when he rode the highway, but he wasn’t skilled. He had seen the guv’ in action and knew that the damned bloke was quite able to shoot him in the heart. He took out his horse pistol dropped and kicked it away, just as he was told.