Ash thought of his vow and scowled. “It’ll be a few minutes yet,” he said harshly.
“That’s fine. That’s fine.” The man smiled. “I’m Matthew, by the way. Matthew Waller. I’m on my way to Leadville. The town is booming, folks say, and there are plenty of jobs to be had.”
“Denver has plenty of jobs too.”
“Leadville is higher and I need high.”
“Why?”
Before Waller could answer he broke into a fit of coughing and couldn’t stop. Doubling over, he fumbled at a pocket and drew out a handkerchief. Pressing it to his mouth, he suffered a violent coughing fit. When at last the fit subsided and he moved the handkerchief, both it and his mouth were bright red with fresh blood. He wiped it off his lips.
“Consumption?” Ash guessed.
Waller weakly nodded. “Afraid so. That’s why I need the high, dry air so much.”
“That’s what I thought,” Ash said, and drew his Remington.
Chapter 13
Matthew Waller recoiled in fear and thrust out his hands. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I can end it for you,” Ash said.
Waller cocked his head. “End what?”
“The suffering. The pain. The coughing. The blood. One shot and it’s over. One shot and you have peace.”
Shaking his head, Waller slowly stood. “I’m leaving. I’m sorry I troubled you.”
“I’m serious,” Ash said.
“You’re insane. I have a wife. We have a baby. I don’t want to end it. I want to get a good job so I can provide for them as best I’m able until the end comes.”
Ash let his arm dip. “How long do the doctors give you?”
“There’s no telling. It could be six months; it could be six years. I’m hoping for the six years. I love my family, Mister, love them a lot.” He took a step back. “I aim to go on breathing for as long as I can.”
“It doesn’t bother you that you’re dying?”
“Of course it does. But we all start to die the moment we’re born. Our first breath sets us on the road to our last. Me, I’ll die sooner than I would have if I hadn’t come down with consumption, but the dying is the same whether I’m forty or a hundred.” Waller backed to the edge of the clearing and stopped. “The important thing is the living. Long life or short, we shouldn’t squander it.”
Ash holstered the Remington. “You can come back. I won’t shoot you. I promise.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll go find coffee elsewhere.” With that, Waller wheeled and hastened away.
“Well,” Ash said. He opened his saddlebag and took out the morphine kit.
After a few seconds he put it back. From an inside pocket he drew a silver flask, uncorked it and swallowed. The whiskey exploded in his gut with welcome warmth. “Ahhh,” he said, and tucked his knees to his chest. He had been sipping all day.
Ash grew drowsy. His stomach growled, but he was in no mood for food. He would turn in early, get plenty of rest and head out before first light. It would be the end of the week before he reached Kester. Not that he was in any great hurry. Time was, he always had a sense of urgency, always felt the need to get things done as quickly as he could. Not anymore.
Ash put a hand to his chest. He was grateful the attacks had stopped. For a while there he never knew but the next day would be his last. He sank back against his saddle and took another swig. “Damn, I’m lonely,” he said out loud.
About half an hour had gone by and Ash was on the verge of drifting off when the tramp of feet brought him up on his own. He swooped his right hand to the Remington as half a dozen figures materialized out of the darkness. He was set to draw when he recognized one of them as Matthew Waller. The others wore overalls and flannel and boots and impressed him as being farmers. All except for the man in the lead. Spare and white-haired, the leader wore black save for a white collar, and carried a large book.
“Oh hell,” Ash said.
They halted in the circle of light and the parson pointed at Ash. “Is this him, Mr. Waller?”
“It is,” Matthew Waller confirmed.
The parson’s back stiffened and he raised his voice as if about to launch into a sermon. “Brother, I would have words with you.”
“What about?” Ash asked. As if he couldn’t guess.
“This man”—the parson jabbed his finger at Waller—“came to our camp asking for coffee. We were happy to show him true Christian charity and offered a bite to eat as well.”
“This wasn’t my idea,” Waller said to Ash.
“Imagine my horror, sir,” the parson went on, “when he proceeded to tell us of his encounter with you.”
“Go away.”
The parson squared his spindly shoulders. “I will do no such thing. I came here to take you to task.”
A stocky farmer stirred and wagged a rifle. “We came with him to see that you don’t do to him as you threatened to do to Mr. Waller.”
Ash sank back down and treated himself to another swallow of coffin varnish. “Life is too ridiculous for words.”
“I beg your pardon?” The parson came over to the fire. “I’ll thank you to stand and pay attention when I’m talking to you.”
“I won’t tell you again to go away.”
“I’m Reverend Peabody. My flock and I are on our way to the San Luis Valley. Now that the Utes have been tamed, the land they let grow wild can be put to better use.”
Ash took the longest swallow yet.
“But that’s neither here nor there. I came to ask how dare you treat your fellow man as you treated Mr. Waller? It’s obscene, your cavalier disregard for life.”
“It seems to me the Almighty has a disregard for it too.”
Reverend Peabody was shocked. “Rank blasphemy, sir. Haven’t you heard how the good Lord marks the passage of every sparrow? How can you make light of the love he bestows on each and every one of us?”
“Does he bestow pain too? How about Waller’s consumption? Did the good Lord bestow that?”
“Have a care, sir.”
Ash tried to control his temper, without success. “How dare you. You march in here all high and mighty and preach to me about love and my fellow man. What the hell do you know?”
The stocky farmer came closer. “Here, now. We won’t have that kind of talk to a man of the cloth.”
Ash didn’t take his eyes off the parson. “You say God loves us. Then why does he let us suffer? Where’s the love in that?”
“You don’t understand.”
“I want to, Reverend. So help me, I do.” A seething cauldron of emotion washed over Ash. “Explain it to me. Help me to see.”
Peabody gestured at the farmers to stay where they were, and squatted. “I don’t claim to have all the answers. I used to wrestle with the same issue. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there so much suffering on this earth? The Book of Job would have it that suffering is a test of faith. Others say that through suffering we are sanctified in the blood of Christ—”
“Say it plain, Parson. Say it so it makes some kind of sense.” Ash desperately yearned to comprehend. He truly did.
“I’m trying,” Reverend Peabody replied. “My own belief is that life is like a blacksmith’s forge. Just as a blacksmith tempers metal in the heat of his furnace, so does our Maker temper us through our sufferings.”
“Hell,” Ash said.
“Please be civil. I’m trying the best I know how.” Peabody paused. “I sense this is important to you.”
“You have no idea.”
“The thing to remember is that for all our suffering we also have God’s love. He is with us in our afflictions. He suffers as we do.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Scripture says as much, yes,” the parson confirmed. “It warms the heart, doesn’t it, to know that our Maker suffers as we do?”
“I can’t feel the warmth for the pain,” Ash said.
“How’s that
again?”
“Parson, you sit there and tell me that God sticks a knife in our gut and feels the hurt we feel and somehow that makes it right? You call that love? I don’t. I call it sticking a knife in our gut.”
“We’re only human, brother. We can’t expect it all to be clear to our small minds.”
“So now we’re dumb.”
Reverend Peabody shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I’m only saying that we can’t be expected to fully comprehend all there is. There is much about God I don’t understand. But there’s one thing I’m sure about and that’s his love.”
“I envy you,” Ash said sincerely, and a slight shudder passed through him. “Now I want you to take your farmers and your charity case and get the hell out of here.”
“There was no call for that.”
“You’re not listening, Parson.” Ash put the cork in his flask and slid it into his pocket. Rising, he placed his hand on the smooth butt of the Remington. “I won’t tell you again. I don’t want you here. I don’t want the reminder.”
“Of what, may I ask?”
“Of what I used to be. Of what I used to believe.” Ash shuddered again. “Go, damn it. Or so help me, I’ll gun you where you hunker.”
Incredibly, Reverend Peabody didn’t move. “Surely you wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man? A man of God, no less?”
The Remington flashed in the firelight. At the blast, a geyser of dirt spewed an inch from Peabody’s foot. The stocky farmer took a step and started to raise his rifle, but froze when the Remington swung toward him.
“I wouldn’t.”
Reverend Peabody straightened. “Very well. If this is how you want it, we’ll leave you in peace.”
Ash grunted.
“But before I go I’d like to leave you with a bit of wisdom that might help you in whatever trial you’re enduring. Namely, that life is made up of light and dark. Sometimes we get so caught up in the dark we forget there is any light at all.”
“Go.”
“I’m leaving.” Peabody turned and looked over his shoulder. “I’ll pray for you, brother. I’ll pray tonight and every night that you come to realize the joy of God’s love for us.”
“God’s idea of love is a forty-five caliber slug and pain. Mine is perfect health and a long happy life.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“Good night to you, Parson.”
The reverend melted into the night and the rest drifted after them. Matthew Waller was the last to go and he said as he departed, “I told them to leave you be but the parson wouldn’t listen.”
“You’re welcome to that coffee if you want.”
Waller stopped, his eyebrows nearly meeting over his nose. “You’re a strange one. I don’t know what to make of you.”
“I won’t harm you. I promise.”
Waller shook his head. “Thanks just the same.” He smiled, and the darkness swallowed him.
Ash stared at his Remington. “Just the two of us, eh?” He replaced the spent cartridge and slid the revolver into his holster. Easing onto his back, his saddle for a pillow, he gazed up at the multitude of sparkling stars. “There’s some sense to this, is there?” he said, and bitterly laughed.
Ash glanced at his saddlebags. The alcohol hadn’t done enough to numb him. He wasn’t having an attack but it would sure feel nice to forget for a while.
He reached over and brought out the morphine kit and set it next to him.
One injection was all it would take. He could forget about the parson and the feelings the parson provoked. There would just be the bliss. He opened the kit and took out the hypodermic needle.
“I was mistaken. There’s just the three of us.”
Ash closed his eyes and groaned. When he opened them they were moist. He swallowed and hastily replaced the needle. Closing the kit, he shoved it back into his saddlebag. “I’m not that far gone yet,” he whispered.
Ash rolled onto his side. He drew the Remington and placed it next to his face. “If I had any grit I’d put you in my mouth and end this nightmare once and for all.”
For a while Ash lay quiet while his mind raced in inner chaos. The crackling of the fire and the howl of a distant wolf were the only sounds. He held his hand close to the flames to feel the warmth.
“That parson and all his talk about love. He’s got a book for blinders and all he sees is what’s written on its pages. He doesn’t see the real world.”
Resentment flooded through him. Not at the parson, at the parson’s unshakable faith.
“The man’s a fool.”
Ash put his hand on the Remington and tried to drift off to sleep. His mind wouldn’t let him. He relived being shot, relived the torment, and swore. “If this is the Almighty’s notion of love, then God is crazier than I am.” He laughed at that, laughed too long and too hard.
Finally, rest came.
Ash awoke feeling different. Not physically, but something inside him had changed, something he couldn’t put his finger on. He heated the coffeepot and after a couple of cups broke camp and was in the saddle when the golden crown of the sun set the eastern horizon ablaze.
“From now on I just don’t give a damn,” Ash said to the lightening sky. “It’s plain as the nose on my face that you sure don’t.”
He gigged the roan and pulled on the lead rope.
Flowers bordered the road. A butterfly flitted from one to another on gossamer wings. In the trees a robin warbled. A doe and her fawn watched him go by.
Ash barely noticed any of it. Once he would have. Once he would have breathed deep of the mountain air and been happy to be alive. Now he was thinking of the killing he intended to do. He looked skyward again and chuckled at the irony.
“I’m just like you, God. I just never realized it.”
Chapter 14
Kester wasn’t much of a town. It wasn’t much of anything save a collection of shacks and cabins and a paltry few frame houses. It also had the usual saloon and livery, and a small general store that once served as a trading post.
Ash tied off at the hitch rail in front of the saloon. He was in good spirits, all things considered. He still hadn’t suffered another attack and was half convinced he was on the road to recovery.
The batwings creaked loudly. Ash walked to the bar and a man smelling of lilac water, a toothpick jutting from his mouth, asked his poison. Ash told him and slapped down an extra two bits.
“What’s that for?”
“Information. I hear tell there’s a Ute around here by the name of Broken Nose.”
The bartender pushed the two bits at Ash. “You don’t need to pay me. Just go to the end of the street and head toward the hill to the southwest. On the other side is Broken Nose’s place. You can’t miss it.” He pulled the two bits back again. “On second thought, you might want to give me this and more. Enough for a bottle.”
“I’m not that thirsty.”
“Not for you. For Broken Nose.”
With many Indians on reservations or keeping away from whites so they wouldn’t be put on reservations, it was rare to see a teepee. But after Ash followed the bartender’s directions and rounded the hill, there one stood. A lodge showing its age by the cracks in the hide and the faded symbols painted on the hide. A pinto was tied to a stake out in front.
Ash drew rein and dismounted. He was about to call out when he heard a peculiar whistling. The flap was open, and he quietly went over and stooped down.
Inside, flat on his back on a bearskin spread out on bare dirt lay an Indian with more wrinkles than Methuselah. His buckskins were as faded and worn as the teepee. The whistling came from his hooked beak of a nose.
Ash entered and nearly tripped over an empty whiskey bottle. More empties were piled to one side, enough to keep a man drunk for months. The reek was worse than a saloon’s. Ash nudged the sleeping warrior with his toe but all the Ute did was mutter and smack his lips. “Broken Nose?”
More whistling ensued.
Bending, Ash
gave him a shake. “Broken Nose? Wake up. I need to talk to you.” He noticed that the old man’s nose was in fact not hooked but had once been broken in the middle and when it healed the tip of the nose pointed inward. “Can you hear me?” Ash gave him another shake.
The Ute muttered louder. An eyelid cracked and a dark eye appraised Ash from boots to hat. “Slit your throat.”
“How’s that?” Ash wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“I was dreaming of a young maiden and you woke me. For that you should slit your throat.”
“You speak good English.”
Broken Nose closed his eye. “Go away, white man, so I can finish taking her dress off.”
“We need to talk.”
“You need to talk. I need to dream.”
Ash stepped out to the roan and slid from his bedroll the whiskey bottle he had brought. He went back into the teepee and poked the prone Ute with the bottle. “Would some firewater loosen your tongue?”
The right eye cracked open again. “Firewater, hell. That’s good whiskey. Congratulations.”
“For what?”
Broken Nose took the bottle. “You have loosened my tongue to where it might fall out.” He sat up and patted the bottle. “I ran out this morning. This is an omen.”
Ash sat cross-legged. He propped his elbows on his knees and held his chin in his hand. “I’m told no one alive knows these mountains better than you.”
“Whoever told you spoke with a straight tongue.” Broken Nose set to opening his gift. “I was born in what you whites call South Park. I have lived among these mountains all my long life. So yes, I do not boast when I say I know them well.”
“Well enough to help me track down the Frazier brothers?”
Broken Nose stopped prying. “What is the word you whites and the Mexicans use? Ah yes. Are you lobo? They are bad medicine.”
“It’s ‘loco,’ not ‘lobo.’ A lobo is a wolf. ‘Loco’ means ‘crazy.’ ”
“You are crazy, then.” Broken Nose snickered and raised the bottle to his mouth. Pausing, he took a deep breath, as if about to plunge into a river or lake.
“I hate you for this.”
Fatal Justice Page 10