And finally he saw the fire die down, saw it shrink to glowing orange embers, and he heaved a sigh of relief. He touched the extra cartridges in his pocket, within easy reach. The Sharps was a single shot, but he could load almost as fast as a man with a lever-action repeater. And he had confidence in the killing power of the .50-caliber soft lead slug. Such a bullet would tear a hole in a man big as a baby’s fist, and smash through bone as if slicing through paper.

  He got to his feet and walked downslope at an angle, careful to make no noise. He kept the dying fire in view as he traversed the hill, descended lower. He stopped every so often and listened to the deep quiet of the night. He rubbed his eyes again and again. He chewed on the plug, and bit off another. The tobacco bit into his mouth and throat, helped keep him awake and alert.

  In the distance, a wolf howled, and another picked up its crooning call. Fritz froze and listened. He was close to the sleeping men. Another hundred yards should bring him so close he could not miss, even in the dark. He could still see the glowing sparks of the coals, winking bright and fading in the surge of the restless, sniffing breeze.

  The wolves went silent, and Fritz stepped closer to the two hulks on the ground. His heart sped up, and his finger caressed the trigger of the Sharps. His thumb sweated on the hammer, oiling it with a thin film of moisture.

  “You will not see me,” Fritz whispered in the silence of his mind. “You will never know what hit you, boys. You will hear only a last explosion and then you will sleep on, forever.”

  He built up his courage with these and other bolstering phrases. He crept still closer, going more slowly, testing every footfall before he put his full weight on his boot heel.

  The aspen stood like blanched signposts, their leaves whispering in the soft caress of the steady breeze blowing down from the mountains. It was so quiet, Fritz could hear his careful breathing, could hear his heart throbbing in his temples, beating in his chest.

  Close, and ever closer, he tiptoed, his thumb on the hammer growing heavy, his finger on the trigger rubbing off its sweat until the metal was as slick as a skinned willow branch.

  He stopped, stood looking at the two blanketed mounds. Neither moved. He took another step, halted, rubbed his eyes again. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, raised it so slowly it might have been a feather. He snugged the butt into his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at the farther blanket.

  He pulled in a breath and held it. The gun barrel steadied. He pulled the hammer back quickly and fired so fast, its click was nearly drowned in the explosion. Fiery sparks and white smoke belched from the muzzle. Fritz worked the action, levering the chamber open. The spent shell ejected, flickered in the corner of his eye like some maddened insect spinning to the ground. He slid another cartridge into the chamber, levered up and swung the barrel on the nearer blanket. He fired without thinking, knowing his aim was true.

  He heard a crackle of something breaking and he did not fish another cartridge from his pocket, but stepped closer to see if both men were dead.

  He heard something else, then. At first he thought it might be a deer, startled from its bed, or rousted from a feeding place in the aspen grove. He heard the crack of small branches and then saw something dark rushing toward him. Something black and deadly, coming so fast he thoughtlessly let his rifle fall from his hands as he clawed for the pistol on his hip, knowing he would have to kill whatever it was at close range.

  And then Fritz saw something flash above the onrushing figure just before it pounced on him. Something shiny and silvery in the moonlight, like a single beam descending on him just as his fingers tightened around the grip of his pistol.

  He cried out, but it was too late.

  He knew, in that instant, that he had made a terrible mistake.

  The lump of tobacco froze in his mouth, its juices trickling down his throat, blocking off his scream of terror.

  18

  JOHN BARRELED INTO THE OUTLAW. HE SLASHED DOWNWARD with his knife, aiming at Fritz’s right arm. He felt the knifepoint strike flesh and bone even as his momentum jolted his body into Fritz’s, knocking him backward.

  Fritz screamed in pain as the knife cut into his wrist. His hand released its grip on his pistol and he drew it toward his midsection. His back slammed into an aspen with sickening force as blood streamed from his wound. Lights exploded in his brain as the back of his head slammed against the tree.

  John raised his knife to strike again. Fritz slammed a fist into John’s chest and pushed, knocking him back a half foot. John watched Fritz slide away from the tree while he grabbed for the handle of his own knife. In a half crouch, Fritz pulled his knife from its sheath, then swiped it back and forth as he stood up, then hunched over into a fighting stance.

  John crouched, too, holding his knife out in front of him, looking for an opening. The two men circled, stalking each other, as Ben emerged out of the darkness, pistol in hand.

  “Stay out of it Ben,” John husked. He was breathing hard from the excitement and exertion, but he was not winded.

  “Just in case,” Ben said laconically.

  Fritz thrust his knife out, trying to jab John in the belly. John flexed his gut, tucking it in tight, then chopped downward. His knife blade grazed Fritz’s arm as he jerked it back out of the way. A tiny trickle of blood oozed from a razor-thin cut.

  Fritz paid no attention to Ben. His gaze held on John and his knife. He weaved back and forth as if enticing John to come at him. John blew out a breath, then breathed back in as if gathering strength in him to rush the outlaw. He feinted with his knife and Fritz bobbed his head like a boxer, made a short jab toward John.

  “Watch him, Johnny,” Ben said quietly, duplicating John’s motions, feinting and dodging first one way, then the other, like a spectator at ringside.

  Fritz was like a cornered animal. He knew he was going to die. If this Johnny didn’t kill him with his knife, the old man was standing ready to shoot him with his gun. Either way, he was a dead man. But he might be able to do in the kid. A bullet was preferable to getting knifed in the gut.

  John relaxed, as if he were going to give up the fight. He took a step backward. He held the knife pointed at Fritz, as if waiting for the outlaw to make a move. Fritz held to his crouch and raked his knife back and forth as if gauging the distance for a thrust, or looking for just the right opening.

  “Well, come on, Johnny boy,” Fritz said. “You gonna fight or just stand there?”

  “Which one are you?” John asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Your name. What’s your name?”

  “Fritz. Fritz Schultz. Why? What difference does it make?”

  “I just wanted to make sure your name fit your face.”

  “You fooled me once, Johnny boy. You ain’t foolin’ me again. Come on. Make your move.”

  “Be careful, Johnny,” Ben said and took a step backward.

  “Yeah, Johnny boy, be real careful,” Fritz said.

  John looked at Fritz’s eyes. He remembered his face, the look on it when he had killed up at their claim. The man had ice for blood. He had shown no emotion as he blew Donny French’s brains out. Just a smirk of satisfaction on his weasel face.

  Fritz’s eyes shifted back and forth in their sockets. He licked his lips. John dropped his right shoulder and that drew a response from Fritz.

  Fritz bunched his muscles, leaped from his crouch, and charged straight at John. He made a low animal sound in his throat, rammed the knife toward John’s belly.

  John seemed to uncoil. One moment he seemed completely at ease, the next he was all muscle, lean as a whip, springing into action.

  He slashed high and he slashed low. Fritz stabbed at empty air. Then John stepped in with a wide swipe of his knife, cutting across Fritz’s belly with the tip and then six inches of steel blade that opened a cut so deep that blood spurted from the wound like a crimson fountain. Fritz staggered backward, unsteady on his feet.

  Ben hunched forward, eyes glittering.

  Fritz groaned and dropped his knife in the dirt. He clutched his belly with both hands. Blood painted his fingers, flowed to his wrists. There was the smell of a severed intestine. He dropped to his knees, wide-eyed, a look of surprise on his face. John stepped in, kicked Fritz’s knife away, knocked his hat off and grabbed a handful of hair, jerked the man’s head back, exposing his throat.

  John held the knife poised above Fritz’s throat. His jaw tightened as he clamped his teeth together, nearly consumed with rage and the instinct to finish off his enemy, to slaughter him as Fritz had slaughtered Donny.

  “Finish it,” Fritz rasped. “Damn you, boy, finish it.”

  “I want you to die real slow, Fritz. I want you to think about what you done to my people, to my pa and ma, my little sister.”

  “I didn’t kill that little girl. You know I didn’t.”

  “You killed her. You take the blame for all of them, you sonofabitch.”

  The wound in Fritz’s stomach widened. A bubble of intestine poked out, protruded like some hideous growth.

  John pulled hard on Fritz’s hair, jerked his head back even farther. He pushed the point of his knife into the flesh right into the Adam’s apple. A tiny drop of blood oozed out. John let out a long sigh.

  He thought of Alice and his mother. Their faces flashed in his brain and then vanished. Tears welled up in his eyes. He wanted to kill this man. He wanted to cut his throat and watch his blood spurt out like his father’s and the others’. He wanted Fritz to suffer greatly during his last seconds of life.

  Disgusted with himself, with his raging emotions, John spat and flung Fritz’s head to the side and stepped back.

  “How long do you think it’ll take you to die, Fritz?” John said in a breathy whisper. “How long?”

  Fritz keeled over to one side. He drew his legs up in agony. His belly wound opened wider and more intestine oozed out, pouring its stench into the crisp night air.

  Ben walked over, picked up Fritz’s pistol and the Sharps. He stuck the pistol inside his belt, held the Sharps up to look at it.

  “He come to do business, looks like,” Ben said.

  “Stoke up that fire, will you, Ben?”

  “Sure. Won’t take much. Coals still hot.”

  Ben brought the fire back to life. The flames scrawled liquid shadows and ochre waves across Fritz’s face. Ben warmed his hands over the fire after laying the Sharps down and holstering his pistol. John wiped the blade of his knife on his trousers and slid it back in its scabbard. He continued to watch Fritz, who opened and closed his eyes, wheezed air through his mouth that sounded like someone squeezing a toneless accordion.

  John hunkered down next to Fritz, while Ben tickled the fire with a willow stick to keep it stirred up. He sat next to it, close enough to see both Fritz and John and hear every word they said.

  “Fritz, can you talk some?” John asked, his voice strangely pitched, sounding almost kindly.

  “What about?”

  “I want to know about Rosa Delgado,” John said.

  “Rosie? What about her?”

  “She sweet on Ollie?”

  Fritz started to laugh and choked on his breath. He went into a spasm and Ben thought that might be the end of him, but he recovered and gazed up at John with red-rimmed eyes glazed over like Christmas caramel apples.

  “Ollie’s put the dally on her, if that’s what you mean,” Fritz said. “Him and Rosie are going to get married and start a new life out in Californy.”

  “That so,” John said. “They know each other a long time?”

  “A long time, yeah. Ollie staked her in the cantina business. Back in ’88. Met her in Taos, in ’87, brung her to Pueblo right about then.”

  John didn’t say anything for several moments. He appeared to be thinking about what Fritz had told him, trying to piece together why his own father had taken up with the Mexican woman.

  “Pretty, is she?” John said.

  “Who? Rosie? Yeah, she’s pretty as a flower. Wears red ones in her hair. Eyes that melt a man’s heart. Legs of a thoroughbred out of Kentucky. Yeah, she’s pretty all right. How come you want to know about her?”

  “How come she and my father, Dan Savage, got in the blankets?”

  “You’re Dan’s kid? Well, don’t that beat all.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I seen him a time or two. He was sparkin’ Rosie all right. Didn’t mean nothin’ to her. That was Ollie’s doin’.”

  “You don’t say,” John said.

  “Well, this Dan come down with all this gold and brag-gin’ about a strike up in Cripple Creek, so Ollie took notice. Hell, we all did.”

  “And so Rosa Delgado became Dan’s friend.”

  “Hell, he didn’t have no chance. Pretty woman like that breathing smoke in his ear, runnin’ her fingers through his hair. Dan was a goner the minute he walked into that cantina. Yeah, too bad. I think maybe Ollie was the one who shot your pa. Kind of paying him back for the liberties Dan took with Rosie.”

  John shook his head and drew in a deep breath as if he were trying not to cry, not to think about his father with that treacherous woman.

  “I ain’t sayin’ no more,” Fritz said, and tried to wriggle on his back so that his guts would stop falling out.

  Ben poked at the fire, kept his head down so that he wouldn’t have to look at John, see how miserable he was, hearing all that from Fritz Schultz.

  Without a word, John got to his feet and walked away, disappearing into the darkness. Ben watched him go, thinking he probably had gone to relieve himself. Then he heard a stirring in the brush, and a few moments later, John appeared on horseback, riding Gent. He rode up to Frtiz, pulled his lariat from the saddle and dismounted. As Ben watched, John built a loop and slipped it over Fritz’s boots.

  “What are you doing, John?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t want this bastard stinking up our camp. You just sit tight. I’ll be back.”

  Fritz looked up, saw his feet rise in the air as John mounted Gent and took up the slack in the rope.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Fritz said.

  “You’re going for a little ride, Fritz.”

  “You goin’ to drag me?”

  “That’s right. You can think about what you and Ollie and your brother outlaws did to my family and all the others up on Cripple Creek. You can look up at the stars and say your last prayer, you sonofabitch.”

  John ticked Gent’s flanks with his spurs and Fritz’s body jerked from where it had lain. Fritz put out his hands to stop himself, but all he did was burn his palms with rocks. John put Gent into a gallop and Fritz screamed. He kept on screaming for several moments as Ben stared after the two men, his mouth opened in abject bewilderment.

  Ben could heard the bouncing body for some time as it tore over rocks and bounced against trees. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

  After a while, John rode back, his rope coiled up neat and attached to his saddle. He rode back to where Dynamite was tethered and soon joined Ben by the fire. He sat down and stared into the fire, then looked away.

  “Johnny, you make me wonder,” Ben said.

  “Yeah? About what?”

  “About what makes your clock tick, son. What you did to that man. He was wounded bad and you dragged him. He dead?”

  “Yeah, he’s dead. That leaves only four.”

  “You get any satisfaction out of what you just done?”

  “Not in particular, no. I killed a snake, dragged him away from our camp, that’s all.”

  “You got a mean streak in you what wasn’t there before, Johnny.”

  “I guess everybody’s got one, to some degree or another.”

  “Not civilized folk.”

  “If Ollie and that bunch are examples of civilized folks, that’s mighty pitiful, Ben.”

  “You don’t have to go down to their level.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “No, Johnny. You got to get a hold of yourself. You’re turning into a savage.”

  John chuckled.

  “I was born a Savage,” he said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. What those owlhoots took away from me I can never get back. But they don’t deserve to live. I keep thinking of poor little innocent Alice. She’s gone and they took her. You try getting over something like that, Ben.”

  “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, Johnny.”

  John was silent for a long time. Beyond the last foothill, they heard a coyote yapping, followed by a chorus of others. Then the yaps changed to a melodic chorus, trilling calls that traversed up and down the scale like bright ribbons floating on the night air, unearthly, haunting, as if the hounds of hell had suddenly been unleashed upon the world.

  The sounds faded as the coyotes chased whatever they were chasing.

  It was quiet, with only the soft crackling of the flames nibbling on dry wood, to punctuate the private thoughts of Ben and John, who spoke no more that night and finally turned in, grabbing their blankets up and rolling themselves in them to stave off the chill that would descend upon them before morning.

  19

  OLLIE HOBART DIDN’T LIKE BEING ALONE. HE WAS USED TO HAVING hard men around him, men he could trust to watch his back, men he could count on when the proverbial chips were down. Now he rode within sight of Fountain Creek, the sun painting the waters with streamers of gold and silver, burnt umber, ochre, touches of viridian from the aspen leaves that shone like green fire on the limbs of the trees.

  Red Dillard was the first to ride up. Ollie saw him come down the slope of a hill, descend into a fold of land, and emerge on the flat. His horse, a bay mare, looked worn out, and when he caught up to Ollie, Red’s skin was twitching beneath his eye as if some formless inchworm was working its way across part of his face underneath the skin.

  “You get any shut-eye, Red?” Ollie asked. He had an unlit cheroot in his mouth, had chewed the end into a shapeless mass.

  “Not much. You?” His blue eyes shifted back and forth, making the twitch on his face even more pronounced.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18