Hell Is Empty wl-7

by Craig Johnson

  Virgil’s voice lulled me into a stupor, and I found myself trudging along allowing the cold and snow to envelop me like cotton ticking. I was asleep on my feet, and the boy’s dreams once again became my own.

  The almost-man stops the truck near an old wagon with a rounded top alongside a creek bed, high in the mountains. He flings the door open and yanks the boy out by his arm.

  Skidding in the gravel as he falls, the boy looks around but there is no one else there. He stays without moving, judging the distance between them and thinking of what he should do, but his mind is like an empty sack-the only thing he can think of is a joke another boy told him on the playground. What is it when an Indian kills another Indian? Natural selection.

  He had made up his mind to not give him the satisfaction of his tears; instead, he will be a warrior-what is the worst this almost-man can do to him?

  I ran into Virgil’s back again.

  I straightened my hat and, coming back from walking sleep, fumbled for my words. “Why’d you stop?”

  We were in the shelter of a large crevasse, the blowing snow having arched a bridge over us, providing sanctuary in a false cave. “Someone is up ahead.”

  In both a physical and metaphorical sense, I froze in my tracks. I tried to look around the White Buffalo, but visibility was limited and I couldn’t see anything, not even shadows. “How far?”

  His voice was quieter than it had been. “Not far.”

  I slipped the binoculars up and scanned the area ahead as he leaned against one of the rock walls. After a moment, I tracked something a couple of hundred yards ahead, something darker within the white. It disappeared, so I kept the binoculars on the area and waited. After a moment the fog and snow thinned a bit, and the outline reappeared; I quickly readjusted the power on the Zeisses.

  “It’s a cairn.”

  “A what?”

  “One of these piles of rocks we’ve been following that mark the trail.”

  He looked back at the scree field that tilted upward to the right. “No, there’s something else.”

  I squinted across the incline with its thousands of pebbles, stones, and boulders. I was looking for a shape, a shape different from the ones I was seeing. I continued to pan my way up the sides of the cliff and across the horizon, dipped down along the valley that led toward the east face and the Wilderness Basin, and lowered the binoculars again. “I don’t see anything human.”

  “Huh.”

  “Virgil, there’s nowhere else for him to go. He’s boxed himself in on all sides.” I slung the rifle farther onto my shoulder and jammed my hands into my pockets for extra insulation. “Any other direction is a drop-off of a couple of thousand feet.” I could feel the bone in my pocket, and the burden of it was as great as the conditions. Here I was risking Virgil’s life, and he didn’t know that there was any connection with my chase and his family.

  I’d just about committed myself to telling him the truth when he spoke. “My grandson.”

  I didn’t look at him. “What?”

  From the direction of his voice, I knew he was staring down at the side of my face. “I had a grandson, the son of my boy.”

  The women in my life have told me that I am the singularly worst liar ever. They also say that this is one of the reasons that they love me. I suppose it was that and the fact that I owed the man that I decided to do what I normally did in situations when I had cataclysmically bad news for somebody I cared about-I dissembled. “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The crusted snow had built up to where I was feeling like a living, breathing snowman. I coughed and could feel something liquid in my chest. In need of some type of movement, and because I wasn’t willing to take my word over his, I brought the binoculars up to my eyes again, even going so far as to lift my goggles onto my forehead and to pull the balaclava down around my throat. “What was his name?”

  The muffled quiet surrounded us. “Owen, his name was Owen White Buffalo.”

  I concentrated on the aperture and stayed as still as I ever have in my life. “Did you ever meet him?”

  I could feel the steady vapor of his breath on the side of my face. “Yes.”

  “When…” I tucked my chapped lips into my mouth. “When was that?”

  “I was taking care of him many years ago. I had periods when I wasn’t in prison or in the hospitals.” He chuckled. “Sometimes even when I escaped.”

  “Uh huh.” The scree field was more visible now, and rather than face him, I continued to look through the binoculars; it was safer there.

  He shifted his weight, and I could feel the bear fur brush against my shoulder; it was almost like having a grizzly for a spotter. “I was caring for him on a Sunday afternoon. His mother and father went to Billings, and I took him fishing; we had a deal, and I made him play chess with me the night before. It was one of those warm days at the end of the Hunter’s Moon when the leaves have turned but before the first snowfall-a day that seems to make the promise that winter will never come.”

  “Indian Summer.”

  “Yes.” He paused for a moment and then continued speaking into my ear. “He was tenderhearted-didn’t like putting the hook through the worms. We’d used up all the bait because he had set the worms free, and he didn’t want to go back to the bar at the landing to get more. I made him go with me in the truck, but he wouldn’t go in.”

  I swallowed and lowered the binoculars.

  “When I came back to the truck, he was gone. I remember the seat cover; it was one of those saddle blanket ones that you can buy anywhere.”

  He wasn’t looking at me any longer but had his eyes focused on the snow.

  “I remember the weave of the fabric-what it looked like with him not there, the depression in the seat.” The great bear head lifted. “It was the last time I ever saw him.”

  It seemed like time was holding its breath; I could feel the pressure on my lungs and against my eyes, and it was almost as if I was back underwater.

  “I don’t know why they didn’t send him. I know that he’s dead. Maybe it’s because he’s not with my people; perhaps his spirit is uneasy and they can’t find him-maybe he can’t find me.” I couldn’t see his eyes under the maw of the grizzly mantle, and the only part of his head that was truly visible was his jaw and the scar that dissected the side of his face like an erosion in an emotionless desert. “If that’s the case, then his body will have to be returned to my people, so that someday I might see him again.”

  It was at that moment that the Crow turned and stepped outside the safety of the crevasse, and I heard the only other steady sounds I’d been able to hear besides the voices since I’d crawled out of the pond-two three-thousand-feet-per-second rounds passing through Virgil’s body.

  Thwup.

  Thwup.

  It took a second for my dulled wits to understand what was happening, but when I did, I threw myself into him in a behind and to the side body block, forcing him onto the snowbank to our left. “Damn it to hell!” I yanked the rifle up as I lay over Virgil and, closing my finger around the trigger, trained the sights on the overhang and the ridge.

  I played the Sharps along the horizon and could make out just the slightest aberration on top of the outcropping-the outline of something that just didn’t look right. I waited and hoped he would shoot again and miss so that I could be sure that he was where I thought he was. I saw the muted muzzle flash along with the spectacular illumination of the snowflakes between us as another round buried itself into the snow alongside Virgil.

  I aimed at the exact spot where I’d seen the four-point flare, squeezed the trigger, and the big-bore kicked. I was certain that if I didn’t kill him, I hit part of him. I jacked the lever action, replaced the round from the butt stock, and slammed it home, placing another round at the ready.

  I held the sights on the exact spot where I’d fired. If he was still alive, he might try for another, but if he was smart and ambulatory, he’d move.
There hadn’t been much of him revealed, but even a fragment shot off the edge of the rocks would’ve done the trick.

  I lifted my head a little and became aware of the beer-barrel chest of the giant Crow rising and lowering. “Virgil?”

  He coughed, grunted, and then strangled out a laugh. “I told you I saw something.”

  “How bad are you hit?” I adjusted my weight so that I wasn’t lying on him, then reacquired my target as much as the whiteout would allow.

  His voice was strange. “Bad enough-don’t let him shoot me again.”

  “I promise.” I kept my eyes on the rimrock.

  I noticed that my shivering had stopped and that my mind was now relatively clear, evidently the side effect of every bit of adrenaline in my body being dumped into my nervous system. I wondered abjectly how long the high octane would last.

  His words were slurred. “Did you get him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  There was a pause. “I would like to think that you got him.”

  “Me, too.” There was no more movement on the granite shelf, and if I hadn’t gotten him, he’d moved to another spot or retreated. I thought again about the old maxim that had crossed my mind when Raynaud Shade had fired on me back at Deer Haven Lodge: “The first one to move is the first one to die.” Shade held the advantage in that I wanted to check Virgil’s wounds and possibly move him to the overhang ahead, but I had to be sure that we weren’t drawing fire while I did it.

  So, I waited.

  “How do you feel, buddy?”

  He grunted again. “Not so bad; I think only one got me good. The other one deflected and climbed up my chest and face.”

  The original 55-grain lead-core round had a propensity to fragment at the cannelure at certain ranges, but that was crazy. “A tumble round? I haven’t seen that since Vietnam-they haven’t made those since ’67. You must be imagining things.”

  “It climbed over my face, so I think I would know.”

  I suppressed a smile. “Sit tight, and I’ll take a look at you.”

  He was breathing regularly, talking, and even joking, so I figured our situation must not be too bad. Trying to carry the monster to the overhang was going to be the hard part; as near as I could estimate, Virgil White Buffalo probably tipped the scale at almost four hundred pounds.

  I hoped his legs worked.

  I growled in my throat, knowing every passing minute wasn’t doing the big Indian any good. “Virgil, I’m going to check you and then try and move us to that overhang.”

  “I would like to sit up.”

  “Okay, here we go.” I lowered our only defense into my lap and turned, watching in amazement as the giant pushed off with one arm and rolled up to a sitting position. He turned to look at me, and the effects of the. 223 round were evident. The bullet had ripped up over the surface of his jawbone, had continued across his cheek, and deflected from the ridge of his brow toward his hairline. The wound was deeper at the side of his face where the distended tissue was opened like a flap, and the majority of the blood was coming from there. The socket was already swollen but appeared operable. “Can you see out of that eye?”

  “Yes. I have a matching set of scars now?”

  “Like train tracks.” I yanked off a stiffened glove and attempted to lay the flesh back together on his cheek, but it wouldn’t stay. “Virgil, I need to see where the other round went, so I realize this is a pretty absurd situation, but can you hold your face?”

  He gently nodded, and one of his enormous hands came up to press the skin back in place. I pulled the cloak open, revealing the moosehide shirt underneath, and could see two small marks where the slug must’ve fractured and split away into three separate pieces. I felt the spot where the round had hit and had to laugh. It was like a cliche from an old pulp western-the slug had struck the thick paperback. The book hadn’t stopped the bullet, but it had deflected it enough so that it hadn’t killed the behemoth-maybe it hadn’t been a tumble round after all.

  I started laughing. “Jesus, Virgil, Dante saved your life.”

  For obvious reasons, he didn’t smile but grunted.

  I yanked at the shirt, even going so far as to pull the book from underneath, noticing the. 223 had gone as far as page 305. I tossed the book aside and gently peeled the hide shirt back-it was then that I saw where the second round had gone. Dead center, but with the angle of deflection and the big Indian’s response, it must’ve traveled down and not into the heart or lungs. Where the hell did it go? Virgil had the unfortunate disadvantage of having the larger silhouette, thus being Shade’s primary target, but he also had the advantage of having more room for bullets.

  The only thing left to do was check his back for an exit wound, so I leaned him forward against my shoulder. It was like bulldogging a steer, but I could hear his breathing and it was steady. I pulled at the bear fur cloak that fortunately wasn’t trapped underneath him, and then pulled the shirt and a thermal top away from his vast back. “Virgil, you may be the luckiest son of…”

  The words caught in my throat when I saw the exit wound at his lower back.

  The pack was lying next to him, so I snagged the first-aid kit that Omar had included from the bottom cavity. I put a number of pads over the wound, and then used the packaging as a seal to keep air out of the cavitated tissue. I tore open rolls of medicated gauze, which I wrapped around his chest and closed off in the front. “How are you feeling?”

  He nodded.

  “Breathing no problem?” He nodded, and I was pretty sure we weren’t looking at a sucking chest wound or any sort of lung damage. I pulled the thermal, shirt, and cloak back down; with the loss of blood, he’d be facing hypothermic symptoms soon enough without keeping him exposed. I concentrated on his face and packed snow on the wound to try to stop the bleeding. It worked, and I was able to get a gauze pad and medical tape to stick. “Can you move?”

  He swallowed, and I could see that he didn’t like the idea.

  “I wouldn’t ask, but there’s cover up ahead and I want to get you to it.”

  His legs shifted, indicating that his core was intact, but he didn’t seem to be able to get them underneath himself.

  “How about if I try and help?”

  He nodded, but even between the two of us we didn’t get much lift. He looked at me, and there was something I’d never seen in the giant’s face before-just that little bit of panic.

  “Virgil, can you move?”

  He shook his head and slumped a little.

  “Virgil?” Air escaped from between his lips, and more than a little panic now shot through me. “Virgil…” I placed a hand against his throat but couldn’t feel a pulse, which wasn’t unusual with the conditions. I moved my hand and felt along the side of his heavily muscled neck, still finding nothing.

  “Lawman.” I glanced up and could see one large eye, the other now completely closed. “You must go ahead.”

  “No.” I tried pulling at his arm, but he didn’t move; it was like trying to lift a grain mill. “C’mon, Virgil. I’m not going to leave you here.”

  I pulled on his arm again, but his eye just stayed there, passive-almost as if I wasn’t there with him at all. Finally, he spoke in a soft but insistent voice. “You must go. The others are just ahead and you must save them-innocent people…”

  “Shut up.”

  He sighed a laugh. “Go. I will follow you very soon. Just let me sit here for a few moments and catch my breath.”

  My voice broke as I lifted at his shoulders again. “Virgil, you’re going to die out here.”

  He laughed again, softer this time. “Go, Lawman. I will follow, I promise.”

  I stood and looked down at him and at the snow that had collected on the bear head. I tore into the pack, pulled out the sleeping bag, jerked it from the stuff sack, and then wrapped it around him.

  As I started to leave, his hand came up and rested in his lap. He was holding the battered copy of Inferno. I looked at him, and he fumbled
with the book. “This book… You know who the lowest ring of hell is reserved for?”

  I kneeled back down. “Virgil, I don’t think you should be talking.”

  “Traitors.”

  I didn’t say anything at first, but the words were in my mouth, looking for a place to go. “I thought you said you hadn’t read this book?”

  He tried to smile with a bunching of one of his cheek muscles. It must have hurt.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Virgil?”

  He didn’t say anything more, but the smile faded and he looked sad. I glanced up the trail and then back to him. “I’m going to go up there and finish killing that son of a bitch, and then I’m going to come back with the others and get you under that overhang. Understand?”

  He didn’t move, and his eye returned to the snow.

  I tucked the bag around him a little closer and stood. “I’ll be back, you understand?”

  15

  I cradled the rifle in my arms Indian-style as I walked, a fresh round in place and my underlying finger on the trigger.

  We had been closer to the overhang than I thought, and it seemed to move toward me like some devilishly open mouth yawning from the snow, the frozen stalactites looking like teeth.

  I continued to follow the tracks that Shade and the two hostages had made, Virgil’s words echoing in my head. Traitors. Was it a confession? An indictment?

  My eyes kept drifting to the rim overhead. The spot where I’d tagged Shade was disturbed, and there was no snow there. The closer I got, the less chance there was that he could hit me from above, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t waiting in the relative gloom of the shelter straight ahead.

  There were a few dislodged boulders that had fallen in front of the overhang a long time ago; I stepped between them, and it was like a curtain parting. A few flakes floated like fireflies following me in, but other than a drift that had sealed the western side, it was bare underneath the granite precipice.

  From the light of a battery-powered lantern, I could see there were two of them toward the back, and the man jumped when he saw me. The FBI agent, Pfaff, was tied with nylon zip cords and a bandana tight around her mouth. She was leaning against the back wall with a sleeping bag underneath her and was evidently unconscious.