Ralph Compton Face of a Snake

by Bernard Schaffer

  He spit and spit, and then the coughing began. It filled his throat with bile and blocked his airway. In between each cough, he tried to breathe, but it was like he could not get any air into his lungs. The air was sucked directly into his stomach, and he could not get it to rise into his chest. It filled his stomach until it left him bent forward and dry heaving.

  Something inside his chest clenched. It felt like someone had reached deep inside of him and wrapped their fingers around his heart and begun to squeeze. The pain shot down his left arm and Sinclair grasped his shoulder and sank to his knees. Bent forward, he found, was the only way he could breathe. He stayed there until the pain withdrew from his arm and the hand crushing his heart relaxed.

  Sinclair groaned and got to his feet. Chuck Woolworth was lying dead on his stomach only a few feet away. Sinclair had shot him in the head. Not too much of the blood had splattered onto the dead man’s shirt.

  Sinclair bent down and wiped his face with it. He retrieved his right gun from where he’d dropped it and went back to search the ground near Ulai’s body for the other. Fortunately, there were pistols scattered all over the porch. Sinclair emptied them of their bullets and reloaded the snakes.

  He squinted and searched the trees for any sign of Escalante and his wagon. He spotted the wagon, but there was no one sitting in it.

  “All right, old friend,” Sinclair said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Inside the house, Sinclair heard an enormous crash on the second floor and what sounded like an animal roaring. He could also hear Nelson Granger begging for his life from the back room. Sinclair drew his pistol and hurried forward. He braced himself against the wall and was about to enter when he heard Jesse say, “I choose funeral,” and a gun went off.

  Sinclair went to go through the parlor door when Jesse spun around and cried out in surprise and shot again. The bullet exploded the doorframe next to Sinclair’s head, and he shouted, “Hold your fire! It’s me!”

  The gun was shaking in Jesse’s hand, and her eyes were so wide, Sinclair could see white all the way around the colored circles inside them. He waited for her to lower her pistol, and he went into the parlor. Nelson Granger was dead in a heap on the ground. The wall behind him was covered in blood.

  “Anybody else shot in here?” Sinclair asked.

  “We’re fine, Ashford. Thanks to Jesse, we’re both fine,” Odell said.

  Jesse tried to push past Sinclair. “Mirta’s upstairs. That giant’s on a rampage after her.”

  Sinclair blocked her. “As long as we can hear him and not her, he hasn’t found her yet. That girl’s crafty as they come. Let him move away from the steps so we don’t catch a bookcase going up after him.”

  Sinclair saw that Connor and Odell were tied up, and he picked Jesse’s knife up off the floor. He grabbed Odell and spun him around and sliced the ropes that were holding Odell’s elbows and wrists together. He pushed Odell out of the way and turned Connor around next. “You all right, boy?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” Connor said.

  Sinclair cut the ropes binding Connor’s wrists. “Lots of people went through lots of trouble on account of you doing what you did. I hope you know that. Lots of people got killed.”

  “I know that, sir,” Connor said. He gasped when his wrists came free and looked at them. They were red and bleeding from the ropes.

  Henry Odell put his arm around Jesse and helped her sit down.

  Her eyes were fixed on Granger’s body. “He’s dead,” she whispered.

  “It was him or us,” Odell said. He took the gun out of his daughter’s hand and laid it on the table. “It’s all right.”

  Connor Sinclair glanced upward at the old man standing next to him. “Who are you, mister? Have we met?”

  Sinclair squinted at him. “You don’t know me, boy?”

  “No, sir. Should I?”

  “That’s your grandfather,” Odell said. “Your other one.”

  “You were my pa’s pa?” Connor asked.

  Sinclair nodded. “That’s right.”

  “The one who hates us?”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “He said you hated Odells.”

  “Well,” Sinclair said. He looked at Henry Odell and Jesse. “I reckon things change.”

  Sinclair took a deep breath. Odell’s nose was split wide open and bleeding. Jesse was as white as a sheet, and she had not moved since she sat down.

  Sinclair put his hand on Connor’s shoulder and said, “All right. You see that your ma and your other grandpa get home. Take them directly back to the ranch and don’t stop for nothing. You understand me?”

  “What about you?” Connor asked.

  “I’m going upstairs to get Mirta,” Sinclair said.

  “Then I’m coming with you,” Connor said.

  “The hell you are.”

  Connor picked the gun up from the table and said, “The hell I’m not!”

  “Listen to me, son,” Sinclair said. He pushed the barrel of Connor’s pistol away. “I made a promise to that girl’s father to see her home. It’s something I swore to do and I intend to do it. But I won’t be able to if I have to worry about my family being safe.”

  Connor did not move. He looked at Sinclair and studied his face. There was something familiar that he found there. Something he decided he would listen to. He stuck the pistol in his waistband and held his hand out toward his mother. “Come on, Ma. Let’s get you and Grandpa Hank home.”

  Sinclair squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “You know, your father was right about one thing.”

  “About what?” Connor asked.

  “You do look just like him.” Sinclair ruffled the top of Connor’s curly blond hair and said, “You take care of them now.”

  When he headed toward the staircase, Odell called out to him, “Ashford?”

  Sinclair looked back. “What?”

  “You said me and you were family.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did,” Odell said. “I heard it.”

  “Shut up, Henry,” Sinclair said and then he went upstairs.

  * * *

  * * *

  The staircase extended far up into the darkness. All of the lights on the second floor were off. Sinclair stood on the steps and listened. Nothing moved above him. The only sound he heard was the wind battering the second-floor windows. He continued upward and the stairs beneath him squeaked under his weight. There would be no secret that he was coming. He drew both his guns.

  He advanced up the steps slowly, constantly checking the hallway above in every direction. He expected to see a wooden dresser or a trunk or even a bed being hurled down at him by the giant, and there would be no room to get out of the way. His only hope was that Mirta did not appear out of the darkness and get accidentally shot.

  By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he heard the mansion’s front door open. Connor was telling his mother to wait on the porch while he found horses.

  That was done, then, Sinclair thought. Now only one thing remained.

  Light came in through the upstairs windows, dark and blue. He could make out the wide hallway past the staircase railing. There were overturned cabinets and broken porcelain animals and shattered photograph frames strewn across the floor. Both sides of the hallway were lined with doors. Some of them had been broken inward or ripped off their hinges. Sinclair stood searching when a deep voice spoke from the darkness.

  “What did you do to my brother?”

  Sinclair backed into the shadows. He worked his way around the staircase toward where he thought the voice had come from. “When did you learn to talk?” Sinclair said.

  “I could always talk. Ulai couldn’t. I didn’t want him to feel like even more of a freak.”

  “Well, I�
�m sure he appreciated that,” Sinclair said. He slid his boot against the edge of a broken plate to get it out of his way without stepping on it.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Me? Nothing,” Sinclair said. “Unfortunately, one of Granger’s men killed him.”

  Sinclair stopped moving and listened. There was nothing. “I saw the whole thing,” Sinclair said. “Your brother was out there doing his best and one of the fools Granger hired shot him by accident. I should tell you that they’re all dead now and Granger is too. There’s no reason left for us to fight. How about I take the girl and we’ll leave and you can go on back to wherever the land of giants is, and we’ll never have to bother with one another again? What do you think?”

  Something moved inside one of the bedrooms with a broken door. The room’s floorboards groaned beneath the weight of it. “I think you are a liar,” the voice said.

  Sinclair backed against the wall.

  Igal’s breath quickened and his deep voice strained. “I think I will tear off your skin with my bare fingers. I think I will eat your heart!”

  The floor shook and the broken pieces of glass scattered across it rattled as the giant ran forward. Sinclair was a man standing on train tracks, too mesmerized by the sight of the train’s oncoming lights to move.

  Igal smashed the gun out of Sinclair’s hand and sent him sprawling. He felt like his shoulder had been torn out of its socket. Igal stood above him, snorting like a bull. He arched his back and raised both fists to the ceiling to send them hurtling down toward Sinclair. Sinclair rolled to get out of the way just before the wooden floor next to his head shattered.

  Shards of broken glass gouged the palms of Sinclair’s hands and knees as he scrambled to get free. When he tried to lean on his right hand, arcs of pain shot down through his dislocated shoulder. Igal was only a few feet behind him. The giant smashed his right fist against the hallway’s wall and the ceiling rattled.

  There were doors on either side of the stairwell, but they all led to bedrooms. The hallway ended in a large window with no escape. Past the window was the porch roof and, beyond that, the dead bodies of the guards and Ulai. Sinclair ran for the window anyway.

  Igal stopped halfway down the hall. “Nowhere left to run, old fool.”

  Sinclair slumped forward. His right arm was dangling at the shoulder, out of place. The pain in his chest was back again. He felt it creep down his left arm toward his wrist. He reached for his left gun and could not get his fingers tight enough around the handle to draw it.

  Igal came forward. “You’re going to die slow.”

  “I’ve been dying for a long time,” Sinclair panted.

  “When I am finished with you, you will beg for it,” Igal said.

  Sinclair retreated until he felt the cold glass window against his back. The giant stepped into the moonlight and glared down at him. “Instead of letting you die, I will torment the girl and make you watch. Then I will go and kill your pathetic little family the same way you killed my brother.”

  Igal growled as he cocked his right fist back and smashed it into Sinclair’s chest. The force of the blow sent Sinclair crashing through the window. He felt the window’s glass shatter against his body. He landed hard on his back on the porch’s roof. He could not breathe. He could not pull his gun. He could not even move. The giant’s punch to his heart had momentarily stopped it from beating.

  Igal flicked the rest of the broken glass away from the window and climbed through. He stood on the porch overlooking the carnage below and spied his brother. “Poor Ulai,” Igal said. “He was a gentle soul. It was men like you who made him into a monster.”

  The giant looked down at Sinclair. Sinclair’s mouth opened and he gasped like a fish tossed out of water onto a riverbank.

  “Don’t die on me yet, old fool,” Igal said.

  Igal reached down and swept Sinclair up into his arms. He wrapped one hand around Sinclair’s throat and the other around Sinclair’s waist and hoisted him high into the air.

  Wind swept through Sinclair’s hair as he hung suspended over the ground. The giant held him firm. Sinclair’s head lolled toward the broken window.

  “Your time is finished!” Igal shouted.

  Sinclair caught sight of a figure creeping toward the window down the dark hall. He watched Mirta climb through the window frame with an arrow clenched in either hand.

  Igal shook Sinclair in the air and roared, “I was going to kill Granger myself, and Ulai and I would have ruled the land like kings! No more hiding! No more serving! Men like you would have cowered before our strength and your women would have been ours for the taking!”

  Mirta leapt forth with both arrows extended. She drove one into Igal’s lower back and the other into the side of his collarbone. Only the size of the giant’s muscles had saved him from being struck in the neck. The arrows sunk deep into Igal’s flesh and he bellowed in pain from being speared. His arms buckled and Sinclair came slamming down across the back of the giant’s shoulders.

  Mirta jumped high into the air and shouted, “Die!” She kicked Igal in the center of his back with a blow that sent him sprawling over the edge of the roof with Sinclair still on top of him.

  Sinclair felt a brief gush of wind and then the sudden impact of the ground.

  He slammed down on top of Igal and neither of them moved. Everything inside of Sinclair felt broken. He’d felt the bones in his hips break when they landed and thought his back was probably broken too. All he could do was lie there and wait to perish. He rested his head against the giant’s back and waited for it to be over.

  Instead, Igal groaned beneath him. A deep, rumbling groan, and he began to move. Igal reached over his shoulders and grabbed Sinclair by the scruff of his shirt and yanked Sinclair off. Sinclair flopped over onto the grass next to Igal and watched in disbelief as the giant struggled to get up.

  Mirta was standing above them on the porch’s roof looking down at Igal in disbelief.

  Of course he’s not dead, Sinclair thought. Now he’s going to get up and kill her and make me watch.

  Sinclair raised his arm to try to wave for Mirta to run. He couldn’t get it high enough to wave, but he could move it somewhat, he realized.

  Igal was on his hands and knees, shaking his massive head. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth. He reached behind his waist and snapped off the arrow in his back. He reached around his neck for the second arrow and yanked it free with a triumphant yell.

  Sinclair commanded his arm to go down toward his side and forced his hand to work enough to free his pistol. One last time, he thought. One last ride. His fingers found the pistol’s handle, the silver etching that formed the body of the snake engraved there, and he slid the weapon free. He raised his gun and tried to center it on Igal’s chest.

  Igal heard the gun’s hammer click into place and looked up. Sinclair’s gun swayed and tilted and he did not seem able to hold it steady. He was panting and obviously dying. His legs were at bizarre angles and his entire body looked broken. Igal grinned through bloody teeth and opened his mouth to speak when the snake gun fired.

  The center of Igal’s throat erupted in red mist. He clutched at the wound as blood spurted through his fingers. He squeezed, trying to stem the blood, but it would not stop. He writhed in place and gurgled.

  Sinclair’s arm dropped to the ground. The gun had gone off on its own, he thought. He hadn’t felt himself pull the trigger.

  What had he said to William all those years ago?

  Let it be a surprise to you. That was it.

  He felt the ground shake as Igal crashed. The girl was no longer standing on the porch roof.

  She’s on her way to get me, Sinclair thought. I won’t be here when she comes.

  Sinclair laid his head back against the cool grass. There was a fire burning in the distance and he could see it with his eyes
closed. It had a good stew cooking on it and he could smell it if he tried. There were people there. Voices he recognized but had not heard in a long time.

  He smelled the logs burning and the stew cooking and he heard all those voices and thought he’d like to go closer to that place and stay there as long as he could. He headed toward the fire and the rest of the world turned black behind him, but by the time it was gone, he no longer noticed it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sheriff Elliot Reuben Jr. rode toward Sinclair Ranch in a cloud of dust. His horse skidded to a halt in front of the main house and he leapt down and snatched his rifle out of his saddle and cocked it. “This is Sheriff Elliot Reuben Jr. and I’m here on official business!” he hollered. “Come out with your hands up!”

  Reuben Jr. watched the front door and all the windows for signs of movement, but the door did not open and the windows remained empty. He leaned sideways to inspect the horses hitched next to the house and counted three. The rest of the ranch seemed empty of any signs of other people. He’d expected to ride in and find a small army of hired guns camped there. He looked back at the door.

  “Anybody home?”

  The front door opened and Jesse Sinclair emerged. She was dressed in a fine blue dress with a long skirt and her hair was freshly washed and tied in a bun. She looked radiant in the sunlight and she smiled at him and held up her hands.

  “Can I help you with something, Sheriff?”

  Reuben Jr. took off his hat and said, “Actually, ma’am, I’m conducting an inquiry into what happened at Mr. Granger’s ranch last night.”

  “Is Mr. Granger all right?” Jesse asked.

  “He’s very far from all right,” Reuben Jr. said. “He’s dead, and so are all his men. We didn’t find a single living soul there. One of the big fellas that worked for him—you know who I mean, one of the giants—he looked like he’d been shot, stabbed, and thrown off the dang roof.”

  Jesse’s eyes widened. “Someone threw a giant off a roof?”