Dismounting, he walked to theurning house. He saw the woman first.

  He removed his Stetson and knelt by her side. She was naked, and her feet and the lower part of her legs were burned black by the hungry flames that had tried to devour her.

  She was badly burned on the rest of her exposed skin, but this he knew was due to the sun.

  Turning her over, her face made him throw up on the spot.

  Her teeth had been knocked out and it looked as if her jaw was broken. One eye was completely closed and the purple-black circle had spread halfway down her cheek. The woman had been beaten.

  He looked at the ground about her. There were boot prints and bits of cloth. Her clothes had obviously been ripped from her body.

  By the shape of her breasts, which bore evidence of teeth marks and were spattered in blood and sand, the woman had been quite young, although it was impossible to tell how old she might have been.

  Henry John lowered his head and wept. He saw his own sorrow. He cried not for this nameless woman, but for the two women he’d loved and lost. He cried for himself.

  Taking out a small spade strapped to the back of his saddle, he decided the only proper thing to do was bury her and say a few words. He was not a religious man, but in his head, he had a mental picture of how the woman had died. He wasn’t a tracker, but from the marks in the sand, the blood around her private parts and the finger marks on her body, he knew she’d been raped.

  He dug a shallow grave and rolled the body into it. He covered her as best he could with the material that she had once worn and covered that with sand. Then he piled rocks on top of the sand and fashioned a crude cross and wedged that into the rocks. He knew it wouldn’t last long but it was the best he could do.

  When he’d finished, he laid the spade on the ground. He picked up his Stetson, held it in his hands, and bowed his head.

  His thoughts were racing and too random for any conventional prayer to last long in his mind, and the tightness in his chest made him pant and gulp in great gulps of hot air. But no matter how deeply he inhaled, there was never enough air. Never enough.

  He put his hat on and turned away from the grave. He’d done his best. He’d not inspected the rest of the small homestead. Was the woman alone? Did her attackers take the rest? What did they want? All these questions ran through his head with the mental pictures of his own wives and children.

  He walked across to the barn. There was evidence of hay and feed but nothing else. No more bodies. He was half pleased and half disappointed.

  He walked around to the rear of the house and found the child.

  He fell to his knees and screamed. His chest tightened, like a steel band had been wrapped around it. Having screamed, he couldn’t breathe in. It was as if his lungs were trying to escape and float off into the air.

  Eyes wide with terror, he collapsed head first onto the ground.

  The dog licked his face. Then it licked his hand. Then it sat.

  Henry John opened his eyes. He expected a coyote but what he found was a small, black mutt.

  The dog’s tail wagged, creating a small cloud of dust as it did so. The pink tongue lolled to the side of its panting mouth. The pin-point black eyes were bright and the ears erect with his head tilted slightly to one side. Henry John closed his eyes again. He’d been dreaming about a dead woman and a dead child. He was relieved to find it wasn’t true.

  Bringing his elbows up he rested on his stomach.

  The tightness in his chest had gone. The air was cooler and the night brightly lit by a full moon.

  The dog stared at him with that peculiar innocence dogs portray, waiting for the man to do or say something.

  Henry John threw a stone. It arced through the air for ten or twelve feet and crashed into the sand like a meteorite, leaving a small, indistinguishable crater.

  The dog retracted its tongue, closed its mouth and watched the stone fly through the air.

  It didn’t move.

  The mouth opened and the tongue lolled when the excitement was over. He returned his lop-sided gaze to the man.

  Henry John rolled on to his side and sat up. His head was spinning. The large circle to his left shone a preternatural blue light that bathed the area in its glow. His hands were blue. The dog’s tongue was blue.

  He stood. The effort brought the pain back but he ignored it. He breathed in deeply through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. His mother had told him to do that. When?

  ‘Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,’ she said. ‘That way, you get good, clean air in your lungs.’

  He tried it again. He felt dizzy.

  His horse was still where he’d left it. Munching at the flowers and the vegetables, pawing the ground to get at the juicier roots.

  He took out the coffee pot and the coffee beans. Lighting a fire, he noticed that his hands weren’t blue after all. They were pink. So was the dog’s tongue.

  The coffee was stale. He’d had the beans for too long. It tasted bitter. Or was the taste already in his mouth? He didn’t know. He drank the coffee anyway.

  In the distance, a coyote or a wolf howled at the moon. The moon didn’t answer. So, he picked up his spade once again and walked to the rear of the house. He wasn’t dreaming. The body was still there just as it had been in his dream.

  The child, a boy, maybe three or four years old, was lying on his back. Mouth open in a final scream. One eye was closed, the other wasn’t there. That’s where the bullet had gone in. The back of the child’s head was also not there.

  The body was fully clothed and he was relieved at that. Digging, his mind concentrated. Digging. He couldn’t think then of anything else.

  Digging.

  The grave was too deep and too long. He’d dug until his arms and back and shoulders cried out to stop. The sweat, running down his face in streams. He felt cold. He stopped.

  Straightening up, he mopped his brow with his bandanna and arched his back to relieve the strain. The band around his chest was back, so he focused on the hole again.

  It was deep, bottomless and black. He was afraid he was going to fall in it. In his mind, he did. He fell, going end over end over end. But he never reached the bottom.

  The dog sat and watched. He sniffed each spadeful of sand as the hole progressed downwards and the pile progressed upwards. Nothing there for him to eat, so he waited.

  Picking up the stiff, little body, Henry John placed it carefully in the hole. He expected it to drop out of sight, but it rested, gently, peacefully, on the bottom.

  He began to shovel the sand back into the hole, covering the boy’s head first; the eye was staring at him. In gratitude? He didn’t think so. But at least the vultures wouldn’t be able to rip them to shreds.

  He gazed at the moon. The moon looked back and seemed to be laughing at him – or was it with him? Except, he wasn’t laughing. He doubted he would laugh again.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered the moon, and the hole, and the dog. But he didn’t remember the sleep. It was dreamless.

  The sun’s rays were crawling across the rangeland like a giant, fiery spider. They reached him and he winced, part of him actually thought it was a spider.

  He heard crying.

  Was he crying? He didn’t think so. He listened.

  The crying stopped.

  A gust of wind whipped up the ashes of the house and blew them in a weird shape right before his eyes. A tall man in a black coat with no face.

  The crying started again.

  He sat up and cocked his ear. The dog imitated him.

  Had the dog heard the crying?

  He stood, as did the dog. The crying continued.

  The dog waddled off on his little legs towards the ruin of the house. It stopped and looked back at Henry John. Then turned away and waddled further before stopping once more to look back.

  Henry John followed. The tightness in his chest returned.

  The crying stopped once again. But the dog was pawing the ground. Digging. Digging in the centre of the old house.

  Henry John licked his lips and shivered. He shivered with that early morning coldness that always greets the sleeper. He realized he was thirsty. The dog! He should have watered the dog!

  Forgetting for a moment that the dog was digging, he grabbed a tin plate and one of the canteens. He placed the tin plate on the floor and poured water into it.

  Sunlight reflected off the water like a torch and he even turned to see if there was a beam of light shooting into the air.

  The dog smelled the water and ran across, its legs working like crazy sending plumes of sand in every direction. The dog lapped up the water, tail wagging. When he’d finished he stood by the plate and raised his head to gaze at Henry John. A whole sentence of words passed between them in that gaze as the dog asked for more.

  Henry John poured more water in the plate, sealed the canteen bottle and dropped it on the ground.

  Then he walked across to where the dog had started digging. The ground was charcoal black. He saw blackened plates and mugs and a coffee pot. The log burner that had stood in the front of the stone fire-place glared at him with one large, black eye.

  Under the ash his foot hit something smooth. Wood. It hadn’t burned. A trap-door. The crying started again.

  Brushing the ash and dust and soot out of the way, Henry John found the latch and lifted the door.

  It was even blacker down there, the light unable to penetrate the dust-laden air in the root cellar.

  The crying intensified.

  Henry John descended the steps into the cellar and was engulfed in the blackness.

  The crying was ringing in his ears, it reverberated off the walls and reverberated off his head. Then he saw the baby, or rather, one flaying arm.

  The child had been placed in a crib and wedged under a wooden pillar. The top had been covered over, obviously the dead woman had hoped that her child would escape the horror and would possibly be rescued at a later time – or die of starvation.

  The father? The thought had not struck him before. Where was the body of the father? Had he been here?

  Bending, he removed the cover and pulled the crib out. The baby’s face was dirty with soot but unharmed. He carried it out into the bright sunlight and the baby stopped crying, too intent on shielding its eyes from the brilliance.

  What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  The dog sat at his feet and the baby crib rested in his powerful arms. He stared around, a bemused expression on his face.

  There had to be other homesteads nearby, he thought. Yeah. There had to be. All I gotta do is find one.

  Placing the crib on the ground, Henry John opened one of the saddle-bag flaps and put the dog in it. Then, carefully lifting the crib, he mounted the horse and balanced the crib precariously across the pommel of his saddle. Holding it with one hand, and the reins with the other, he set off to look for a woman who could feed and, judging by the smell, maybe clean the baby up. William Henry John was not a baby man in truth. He felt uncomfortable having the infant with him. It wouldn’t stop crying. He knew there was no point in trying to feed it with beans or water it with coffee.

  He stopped and opened the canteen. Pouring some water into the small cap, he tried to get the baby to drink. All it would do was suck. So he poured the small droplets of water into the baby’s mouth. The baby started coughing as it choked on the unexpected liquid.

  Jumping off the saddle, Henry John took the baby out of the crib and placed it on his shoulder, gently tapping its back.

  That’s when he heard the gun cock behind him.

  ‘Hold it right there, mister.’

  Henry John stood exactly where he was. He heard the man dismount and walk up behind him.

  ‘I got a baby here, mister,’ Henry John said.

  ‘Turn, real slow.’

  Henry John turned. As soon as the man saw the baby he went white.

  ‘What the hell d’ you think you’re doin?’ he said.

  ‘I found this little mite in the root cellar of a burned-out house, five six miles back. I’m a lookin’ for a place to look after him.’

  ‘That’s my son!’

  Henry John was speechless. He mutely handed over the small bundle.

  ‘What about my wife and, and my other son?’

  Henry John looked at the ground. He didn’t have to say anything.

  The man fell to his knees, clutching his precious child.

  ‘I’m truly sorry, mister. I buried ’em both an’ said a few words. There was nothing more I could do. It was the dog that showed me where the baby was.’

  ‘You have Sally’s dog?’ the man asked.

  ‘Sure do, in my saddle-bag.’

  Henry John went to fetch the dog.

  ‘Were you involved in their killin’?’ the man asked.

  ‘No, sir. I was not. If’n I were, I’d’ve killed the boy there, too.’

  The man was trying to pull himself together.

  ‘Was it Injuns?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Henry John was about to mention rape, but decided against it. ‘There were no arrows, an’ as far as I know, Injuns don’t wear boots.’

  ‘I gotta go back there,’ the man said.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Henry John said. ‘There’s nothin’ you can do fer them, you got your boy to look after, an’ unless I’m mistaken, he’s a mite hungry.’

  The man thought about it for a couple of minutes.

  Henry John added: ‘We can always go back later.’

  ‘You’re right, mister, I wanna thank you fer, well, you know.’

  Henry John nodded.

  ‘There’s a house over the next hill. The Smiths own it. We’ll take Sean there.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my son. My name’s Pete, Pete Hollander.’

  The two men shook hands. ‘Name’s John, William Henry John.’

  ‘Mighty pleased to meet, William.’

  ‘Folks call me Henry John.’

  ‘Henry John.’

  Remounting their horses, Henry John followed Pete along the trail. The two men rode in silence. Pretty soon the house came into view. It was how he’d imaged Hollander’s house would have looked before—

  The tightness in his chest returned with a vengeance. Leaning forward in the saddle, his chin dropped on his chest and he panted, the rasping sound cutting through the air like a knife.

  Pete Hollander heard nothing of this as he was too busy trying to soothe his crying son.

  Long before they reached the house, a man came into view holding a rifle. It was levelled and Henry John knew it was loaded.

  Pete called out to the man, ‘Ben! It’s me, Pete.’ The rifle was lowered and the two men rode on up to the house.

  It took Henry John less than ten minutes to describe to both men and Ben’s wife, Rose, what he’d discovered.

  They were numb. Rose, because she’d lost her best friend, Ben because of the thought it could’ve been them.

  ‘I’m goin’ after them,’ Pete said.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Ben answered.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Henry John put in. ‘You got a wife an’ kid o’ your own here, now you got another kid and a mutt. You ain’t goin’ nowheres. I’ll go with Pete.’

  ‘This ain’t your fight, mister,’ Pete said.

  ‘I’m makin’ it mine,’ was all Henry John said. Rose took baby Sean to the back of the house and pretty soon he quit his bellyaching as she fed him fresh cow’s milk.

  ‘We’d best be leavin’,’ Henry John said. ‘They’ve already got at least a day an’ a half on us.’

  ‘You’re right, Henry John,’ Pete said. ‘I’ll jus’ say g’bye to my son.’

  The two men, slightly refreshed and with plenty of water and food supplied by Ben and Rose King, set off to return to the Hollander place. Pete turned once, waved, and then never looked back again.

  Henry John didn’t even turn.

  Four hours later, they reached the site of the killings. Pete dismounted and knelt by the side of his wife and son’s graves. He bowed his head and, even from where Henry John stood at what he thought to be a respectful distance, he heard the racking sobs.

  Henry John watched for a full minute, then he concentrated on the ground about him.

  He walked a full circle around the charred remains of the house and barn until he came across the tracks he was hoping to find. They headed off into the mountains. He tried to count the horses, got to five and couldn’t work out any more. But he could tell the direction.

  Pete stood and walked back to his horse. Wiping the tears, he mounted and followed Henry John.

  The two men exchanged life stories along the trail until sundown, then set about camp, lighting the fire and cooking. Pete was a dab hand at the bacon and eggs, the smell making their mouths water. They had enough eggs for another meal in the morning, then it was on to beans, bacon or the pot of stew Rose had included.

  The two settled down to sleep. Pete didn’t sleep a wink; it seemed as soon as he dropped off he woke again.

  Henry John closed his eyes. His breathing was coming in laboured gulps, panting, he again tried to suck in the cooling air, but it was never enough. He slept.

  Next morning, Pete had already stoked up the fire before Henry John woke up. It was still dark, but to the east the sky was a deep red, heralding dawn. Birds sang and flew around looking for food to feed their young before the heat of the day arrived.

  Eggs and bacon was served up, fresh coffee poured. To Henry John, the coffee was nectar. He’d forgotten how good fresh coffee tasted.

  They saddled up and in the early-morning watery light they followed the tracks. Within an hour, they found a camp-site. The fire was still smouldering, they hadn’t even bothered to put it out.

  Pete dismounted and walked around, looking for signs as to how many men were involved. As far as he was concerned, it could have been a hundred and he’d still chase them down.

  To inexperienced trackers, as the two men were, it was impossible to tell how many men there were. Henry John thought six, Pete thought more. They rode on.

  The tracks they followed showed that, in fact, there were six riders. And they weren’t in any hurry.

 

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