by Blake Banner
I took some hot, sweet coffee, stood, and began to walk. It became a strange, surreal sensation: as though I were not really the man in the canyon, walking among the dark slopes and the trees, following that luminous, blue-white path, down into the dark bowels of Independence, where a child lay dead. It was as though I were up, in the crystal clear, freezing cosmos, beside the leering moon who rained frozen light down on that dark, luminous path. And through it all, there was the relentless rhythm of one foot before another, one foot after another, another step, just one more step.
I knew I was in a kind of delirium and wondered if delirium was one of nature’s many ways of helping us to survive the unendurable. And, as I thought that, I saw ahead of me, death, mounted on a black horse, come to fetch me. I looked death in his eyes—those black, hollow caverns—squared my shoulders and told him I would not go until I had exacted my revenge. And death swung down from his horse, and as his black boot touched the blue-white snow, black wings enfolded me.
And then there was nothing.
Ten
I was cold. I was very cold and uncomfortable. I wanted to turn over and cover myself, but I couldn’t find the bedclothes. I tried to reach for them but my arms and hands were sluggish and found only cold, wet sludge. Then something was forcing itself into my mouth. I tried to fight it, but I was too weak. Whatever it was was sweet, like honey.
I opened my eyes and groaned. I saw the vastness of space spread out above me, and a billion brilliant, distant stars winking. Ice-cold air touched my face. There was somebody leaning over me, A spoon touched my lips. More honey. I took it hungrily and felt better. I blinked and tried to focus. Somewhere, a horse snorted and pawed the snow. My sight cleared.
“Sean…?”
He smiled at me.
“Can you sit up? We have to get you out of the snow. Take some more honey. It’s good for exhaustion, and hypothermia.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Sean?”
“Not now, Mr. Walker. Take it.”
I struggled to a sitting position. I was still trembling, and everything hurt. I took the honey. It was thick and waxy and sweet. It helped.
“Where…?”
“We’re at the dogleg. I saw the man you shot, and the trucks further down. Can you get up? Can you get on a horse?”
“You brought horses?”
He grinned. “I borrowed a couple from the Wrights. They won’t mind. Come on, Mr. Walker, we really need to get you back. Are there more men?”
I shook my head. He stood and helped me to my feet. The trembling was easing. I said, “I can ride.”
He led me a few paces to where two horses were waiting, breathing great billows of condensation into the night. As I climbed into the saddle, he pulled the blankets from my kit bag and handed them up to me. Then he handed me one of the flasks.
“Coffee. I added more honey to it. Just keep sipping as we go. I’ll lead the horse.”
I nodded and took it. He hung the kit bag from the saddle. Then he swung up onto his own horse and we turned and headed back down the track. It was freezing cold and the horses knew they were going home, so the pace was brisk.
“It won’t be long, Mr. Walker. It seems like a million miles when you’re on foot in the blizzard, but it ain’t far on a horse, when it’s clear.”
“What are you doing here, Sean? Do you realize the risk you took?”
He nodded. “Mom is going to be real mad, but I don’t see I had much choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“My room is at the front of the house, which was how I saw you with my binoculars beating up those guys at the depot. Well, I was in my room, and next thing I hear trucks. Sometimes I see trucks going to the depot and leaving it, and sometimes trucks come to the saloon, but you don’t often see them coming up into the canyon. So I looked out the window and those two trucks I just saw down the road drove up and stopped outside the doctor’s house. Then I saw Earl and three other men go inside. They were there maybe ten minutes, then they come out and I saw them take off up into the canyon. I knew they were coming after you, and I knew you had nothing but a bow and arrows. I figured they’d have handguns and rifles.” He shrugged. “After what you were trying to do for poor Peggy, I figured I had to help you somehow. I brought you one of your guns.”
I nodded. “That was very brave of you, Sean. Your mother will be mad at you, but ignore her. What you did took guts. Thank you.”
He grinned. “I borrowed a couple of horses from the Wrights, and when I saw the clouds clearing, I was glad I did. When the clouds break up, that means one thing. The temperature is going to drop, and I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Walker. You would have froze to death out there tonight.”
“I know.”
Up ahead, I saw the body of the first guy I had shot. He was partially covered in snow, but clearly visible in the moonlight. I wondered how long he would sit there before he was found; he and his friends. As we passed him, Sean reached behind his back, pulled something, and handed it over to me. It was one of my Sigs.
“My mom put them in a drawer and locked it. Prim picked the lock and gave me one for you.”
I took it, smiled, and shook my head. Some people are born to be victims. They can’t help themselves. It was my lucky break that Sean and Primrose were not among them. He frowned at me. “What about the other three?”
I held his eye a moment, wondering if he was too young. I decided he was, but I also decided that life didn’t give a damn how old he was, or how old Peggy was. Bad things happened, and either you fought back, or you went down. I shrugged. “They won’t be raping any more girls.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Less than an hour later, we rode past the Martins’ house, dark and silent, and into the small square. I swung down and told Sean, “You take care of the horses. I’m going to see if the doc is OK.”
He nodded and rode away, down a side ally by the guesthouse. I tramped across the snow, still wrapped in my blankets, and hammered on the doc’s front door. The moon was casting an eerie light over the luminous plain. Far off, a dog was barking and was answered by a coyote. Other than that, there was only silence.
I pulled my Swiss Army knife from my pocket, selected the small screwdriver, rammed it in the lock, and opened the door. He was on the floor, on his back. I switched on the light and knelt beside him. His face was swollen and badly bruised, but he was alive. I picked him up and carried him into his living room. There I laid him on the sofa and ran up the stairs to Peggy’s room.
The bed was empty.
The room seemed to rock from side to side. I gripped the doorjamb to stop myself from falling. What had they done with her? Taken the body to dispose of it? That was what they were about, wasn’t it? Trying to eliminate evidence.
I made it down the stairs and stepped back out into the snow. Somehow, in some kind of trance, I made it across the square and through the gate to the guesthouse. There I hammered on the door. It was wrenched open a moment later by Primrose. Abi was behind her, watching anxiously, and behind her was Sean, still in his coat. I pointed back, toward the doc’s house.
“The doc, he needs help. And Peggy. Peggy’s gone…”
And for the second time that night, I passed out.
* * *
The first thing I was aware of was clean, warm, fresh linen. It wasn’t a sudden sensation, but I gradually became aware that I had been feeling it for some time. It was a luxurious feeling and made me smile. I rolled over and reached for Marni, found she wasn’t there, and then the memories started seeping in. I groaned and opened my eyes.
There was sunlight lying warped across the foot of my bed. The fire was lit and I had an extra patchwork quilt laid over me. I levered myself onto one elbow and realized that I had been undressed and put to bed. My clothes were folded over the back of a chair, near the fire.
I swung my legs out from under the covers. Everything hurt. I noticed I had a big, ugly bruise on my ribs, a couple of inch
es below my left armpit. It had a large piece of gauze on it, held in place with sticking plasters. I remembered Earl’s shot and guessed he must have got closer than I’d thought.
I walked stiffly to the en suite and stood for ten minutes under the hot water until I started to feel half-human again. I toweled myself dry and while I was dressing, the door opened and Abi stepped in. I had my jeans on but no shirt. She hesitated. I smiled. “I haven’t grown anything you didn’t see last night. Come in.”
She flushed. “I heard the shower. How is your injury?”
“It’s just a graze.”
She stepped in and closed the door. “You lost blood. It looked like a bullet wound.”
I put my shirt on and started to button it. “Earl came after me with some pals of his. He tried to shoot me. I guess he succeeded. How’s the doc?”
“Bruised, concussed…”
I pulled on my socks and my boots and sat looking at her. “Do you know what happened to Peggy-Sue?”
She shook her head.
I said, “Earl told me Vasco ordered them to kill Peggy and then come after me. But when I got to her room last night, she was gone.”
“They want to say a service for her at the church today.”
I frowned. “A service?”
“They took her to the chapel…”
“She is dead, then.”
“They want to hold a service for her.”
I curled my lip. “It’s a shame they weren’t so concerned about her while she was still alive.”
“Lacklan, don’t… The reverend wondered if you would attend the service.”
“Why?”
She looked down at her hands, as though she was holding something invisible in them. She looked embarrassed. “He wanted to thank you for what you’d done.”
I stood. “Tell him he’s welcome.”
She sighed, still staring at her fingers. “He also wanted to talk to you.”
“To warn me off? To tell me to leave it alone? To politely ask me to leave town?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about you, Abi? You also want me to leave town?”
Now she looked up me, held my eye, and spoke softly. “I don’t know…”
She turned, yanked open the door, and left. I went out onto the landing and watched her hurry down the stairs. After a moment, I went back into my room. On the dressing table I found both my pistols. Neither had been cocked and the chambers were empty. I put one of them in my bedside drawer and slipped the other in my waistband. Then I put my jacket on and went downstairs.
I found the three of them in the kitchen. Sean and Primrose smiled at me, but Abi wouldn’t meet my eye. I said, “What time is the service?”
She spoke to the table top. “In half an hour.”
“I’m guessing the doc won’t be going.”
“He said he was going to stay in bed and recover.”
“You looking after him?”
She nodded.
“You got a key?”
She looked up. “Yes. Why?”
“He gave me a pint of whiskey. I didn’t drink it. I wanted to return it to him. I also wanted to see how he was. He’s a good man, like your son.”
Sean went puce and smiled at his sister. Abi’s cheeks colored, but she didn’t know whether to be pleased or mad.
“Sean is just a boy.”
“With the heart of a man. May I borrow your key?”
She reached in her pocket and pulled it out.
I went over and took it. “I’ll bring it to the church.”
I turned to leave, but as I stepped through the kitchen door she said, “Lacklan…”
I looked back. “Yeah?”
“Not everyone in this town appreciates what you tried to do.”
“I get that.”
“I want you to know, in case you are in any doubt, that I do.”
I gave her a lopsided smile. “Thanks.”
eleven
The sky was a brilliant blue, like it had just been washed and polished. The air was brittle, sharp, like walking through ice. I pulled up my collar, pulled my jacket tight, and loped across the square, doing a careful balancing act and trying not to slip and fall. At his door, I slipped the key in the lock and went in quietly. I figured if he was sleeping, I’d let him rest.
I climbed the stairs and stood on the landing for a moment, looking at the closed door of the room where Peggy-Sue had lain. I felt a twist of grief and anger at the death of the child I had gathered up from the roadside, broken and freezing, whom I had tried to save; who should have lived.
I moved then to the doc’s door, quietly turned the handle, and pushed it open. Like Peggy’s the night before, the bed was empty. For half a second, my mind was paralyzed. Whatever angle I looked at it from, it didn’t make any sense. Then I heard the hammer click, too far away to strike at, and a voice, quiet, calm and steady, that said, “All right, mister, turn around nice and slow, so I can see your face before I blow your head off.”
I sighed, raised my hands and turned.
“Doc, put the gun away. I came to see how you were, and to return your whiskey. I thought maybe you could use it.”
He looked like a train wreck. Worse. It would have looked bad on a man half his age. On him, it was an outrage. My big regret was that I had already killed the men who’d done this to him. Most of the left side of his face was purple. His left eye was closed and his mouth was swollen. He was holding an old Colt .45 revolver in both hands, and he was wearing his pajamas and a robe. It wasn’t so much pathetic as tragic. The gun wavered and he lowered it, releasing the hammer as he did so.
“Oh, it’s you. Abi said you found me.”
I nodded. “Back to bed, Doc.”
“I’m hungry. I don’t need bed, I need food.”
“Stay in bed, I’ll bring it up to you.”
He ignored me, turned, and I followed him down the stairs to the kitchen. Once there, he sat at the table and said, “You can cook, but don’t fuss over me.”
I fried some bacon, mushrooms, and eggs and put it all on two slices of toast. I made some coffee, too, and laced it with the whiskey. Then I sat opposite him and we ate in silence for a while. When he was almost finished, he leaned back in his chair, drained his cup, and said, “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
I nodded. “Sooner or later, I guess that’s true.”
He studied my face through his one good eye. “But you don’t figure that’s going to happen any time soon.”
I shrugged and chewed, watching him back. “It’ll happen when it happens, Doc. I’m not easy to kill, but tomorrow a cow might fall on me out of a clear blue sky.”
He snorted. “That likely, huh?”
“It happens. Joao Maria de Souza. Google it. Thing is, Doc, nobody gets out of here alive, and trying to is a waste of time. Meanwhile, I may as well do something useful.”
He made a ‘that’s one way of looking at it’ face and said, “You didn’t get to Lovelock, though.”
“Earl and his friends caught up with me.”
He frowned. “What happened?”
“I killed them.”
He blinked, one-eyed, and sighed. “Just like that. Can’t say I’ll miss them.”
“What happened to Peggy?”
He watched me but didn’t answer.
I said, “Before he died, Earl told me Vasco sent them to kill Peggy before they killed me.”
He nodded, refilled our cups, and added some whiskey. “Yeah, they hammered at the door, when I opened it, they pushed it, demanding to see her. I told them to go to hell. He punched me a few times and they stormed upstairs.”
“When I got here she wasn’t in her bed, but her bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in.”
He took a drink, then sighed. “By the time they got here, we’d moved her to the church.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “In the blizzard?”
He raised his voice, not quite shouting, but mad. �
��When I heard your dumb-ass plan, I knew it would get back to them, and I didn’t want those goddamn animals defiling her! So I went and called the preacher and between us, we moved her.”
I stared at him a long while. “So they didn’t kill her?”
“Not last night, no. But you tell me, Lacklan, if they didn’t kill her, who did?”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
He shook his head. “Who beat her? Who tried to strangle her? Who dumped her by the side of the road?”
I nodded. “I hear you.”
“You going to the service?”
I nodded.
“They’re going to tell you to butt out and leave town, you know that, right.”
“You want me to do that too?”
He shook his head. “No. And if you do, Abi and her kids will pay. You started, now you have to finish.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
He raised his cup. I raised mine back. He said, “I hope you get them before they get you.”
I shrugged. “Everybody has a cow waiting for them somewhere.”
* * *
The church was at the back of Main Street, where the Pioneer Guesthouse and the saloon were located, up a short track, on the southern slope of the canyon, with the pine woods spread out above and to the right of it. It was small and unassuming. The doors were closed, but I could hear the sound of singing. I crunched up the path and pushed through the heavy wooden door, stepped inside, and closed out the cold, bright sunshine behind me.
It was as plain on the inside as it was outside. The walls were whitewashed and there was a minimum of decoration of any kind. The congregation was a little less than three dozen people, including Abi, Primrose, and Sean. Most of them turned to look at me when I came in, and most of them bore expressions of resentment and hostility. I saw the Martins in the front row. Below the altar, at the end of the central aisle, there was the coffin.
The preacher ignored me and carried on with the service. He was a small, middle-aged man who was definitely more New Testament than Old. There was very little fire or brimstone going down, and he was more concerned with forgiveness and Peggy being received into the bosom of Christ than with her killer giving up an eye or a tooth for what he’d done.