He ignored my urging and looked past me, retreating once again into the shadows of the grizzly. “He is? He must be getting low on ammunition.”
“Virgil, get down or you’re going to get killed again.”
He seemed surprised. “I was shot?”
“Twice.”
He considered my remark and made a gratuitous movement, but not exactly one that moved him to safety. He shifted his arm around, and I could see he still had the war lance with the painted coyote skull and the rattling deer hooves, elk teeth, and wisps of horse tail. The hooves shifted as if they were running, the teeth moved as if they were gnashing, the tails swished, and the paint on the coyote skull seemed to undulate and move. “I don’t think he’s there anymore.”
“Was I asleep when you got here? How long has it been?”
“I don’t know.” He took a deep breath and exhaled, and I watched the wind hold it in front of his face like a caul before snatching it away. “You were talking to yourself.”
Maybe it was Virgil’s reappearance, maybe it was the rest I’d had, but I was feeling better. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” It was almost as if I was feeling too well and suddenly felt like I was on fire. I dropped the collar down to my chin. “Is it getting warmer?”
Virgil reared back, and again it was as if the two heads were doing the work of one. “I don’t think so, colder maybe.” He looked past, his eyes returning to the sullen darkness of the mountain, the broken terrain of the summit, ghostly and vague in the fast-traveling fog. “Very cold at the top.”
I rolled over and looked up at the boulder-covered hillside. “I guess I’m getting my second wind.”
“Maybe so.” Abruptly, with the help of the war lance that stamped the snow like a horse’s hoof, he stood. “We should get moving.”
I half expected to hear the. 223 again, but there was no sound except the returning wind. When I stood, something heavy slid from my chest and hit the rocks. I thought there would be more resistance, but my legs pushed out and steadied me as I rose.
“Perhaps you are the dead one.”
I glanced up at him. “What?”
He studied the face leading to the summit. “Maybe you’re the one who was killed.”
I started off past him. “I’m not the one that got shot, Virgil.”
He fell in behind me, unperturbed. “How do you know? You said I got shot, but I feel fine.”
“How do you explain the fact that half your face is laid open?”
I felt the hand on my shoulder, stopped, and turned to look at him as he crouched down to place his features close to mine. “I have always had this scar.”
I didn’t move at first but then dropped the goggles so that I could see better.
There was no fresh scar there; only the original one.
I reached up and touched the unmarred side of his face with my glove. “Virgil, I remember that you had two wounds, a center shot and a tumbling round that hit the paperback and climbed up your face-I had to patch it myself while you held it.”
He looked at me strangely and sniffed a laugh. “I don’t remember any of that, Lawman. Are you sure you didn’t dream it or make it up in your head?”
“It was no more than a couple of hours ago.” I pulled his cloak apart so that I could see the blood-soaked mooseskin shirt, but when I did, it was whole and unstained. I stood there staring at him. But then I remembered the paperback in my coat and drove a hand in to pull it out. “Wait a minute, there was this book; the one you were reading when you got shot.” I yanked the Inferno from my coat and held it out to him. “There.”
He took it and examined it before handing it back, turning and sheltering us from the wind. “Is there supposed to be something special about this book?”
In exasperation, I took it and flipped through the pages to show him the damage it had sustained-but there was nothing there. The pages were swollen and sullied from the dunking I’d taken in the nameless pond, but there was no bullet hole stopping at page 305. I looked up, my mouth and eyes wide.
He sighed a deep yet uncomplicated sigh. “You know what I think?”
“No.” I looked around, trying to get my bearings; I felt more and more lost and not just in a geographic sense. “And I’m not sure I want to.”
“I think that one of us was sent to guide the other one to the Beyond-Country.”
His words had a ring of truth that stung like hopeful loneliness verging on desperation. “Well… that would mean that one of us is dead.”
“Yes.”
The words hung in my throat, thick and lugubrious. “And that the other one is soon to be dead.”
“Possibly.”
I reached up and placed the goggles back over my eyes, chortling a sad laugh at the ludicrousness of the conversation we were having and where it was taking place. “Well, I remember you dying, so I think you’re the dead one.”
The grizzly reared a little in indignation, and Virgil’s words were gruff and clipped. “I remember you dying, more than once. You died under the four-wheeler, in the fire, when you walked off the cliff, and when you lay down a while ago.”
I stuffed Inferno back into my inside and damnable pocket; one more layer of insulation. “That doesn’t make any sense, Virgil. You pulled the four-wheeler off me.”
“Yes, and you were dead.”
“At the fire?”
“I found your body.” He dropped his shaggy head to look at me again. “You keep dying, but you keep coming back. It is all very strange, but I think the Old Ones have sent you back all these times to guide me.”
“No, I had a conversation with the agent, Pfaff.”
“I had a conversation with her as well, down in the overhang; I told her how you had died and that I was going after the man with the bag because it was what you would’ve wished.”
I brought my hand up and felt my forehead for a temperature as my headache attempted to come back.
“I told her how you had burned up in the fire.” His posture softened a little. “I’m sorry, it’s disrespectful to talk of these things, but I thought it was something you should know.”
“That I’m dead?”
He nodded and then was still, like a lizard on a rock; he didn’t even blink, but I swear the bear did. “Yes.”
“Thanks for enlightening me.”
He didn’t catch the sarcasm in my voice or chose not to acknowledge it. “You’re welcome.”
I guessed it wasn’t that outrageous; I was sure that Virgil had been killed, but it seemed as if he was just as certain that I had died, and numerous times. He had me, four deaths to one. “Well, whichever one of us is dead, we’d better get going. I’d hate to think that the Old Ones went to all the trouble of bringing us back and that we couldn’t get the job done.” Turning, I tacked against the wind that struck the ridge with six-pound sledgehammer blows.
“With the four-wheeler, the handlebars had driven into your chest, and your eyes were bugged out; you had frozen to death.” Over the wind, I could hear his trudging footsteps behind me along with the rattling of the teeth and hooves, striking in rhythm with the words. “I didn’t see you when you fell off the cliff and into the pass, but I heard the yelling-not very dignified.”
We were on the steep incline, following the path that Raynaud Shade had left behind, even stopping at the collection of boulders where he’d thrown the few shots to slow me down. “Uh huh.”
“When I found you on the Knife’s Edge back there you were frozen the second time, but you looked more comfortable. You know, like you had died in your sleep?”
I stopped and rested an arm on the boulder. I was feeling pretty strong, but my breath continued to remain short.
“The fire was the worst one; you were floating in the pond like barbecued chicken, only with really white teeth.”
It was silent, except for the noise of the wind and the accoutrement of Virgil’s lance. It was another couple of hundred yards to the top, but then what? What was
Shade doing up there? How many people had he killed to get here and why?
My mind, with the appearance of Virgil and his chatter, had become clear-but my body was another matter. The last reserves of energy were petering from my tank, and I didn’t know how useful I was going to be once we got to the top. Virgil, aside from the fact that he’d had bullets pass through his body and appeared to have a living lance and cloak, seemed to be in fine fettle. If it came down to a fight, which I was sure it would, Virgil might have to be our man. “Virgil?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got to tell you.” I took a few breaths just to steady my voice. “I’m not so sure how much help I’m going to be topside.”
“You will be fine.”
I leaned my head against the rock to try to steady myself in the endless, vertically sloped world. As I leaned there, I could feel my legs giving out beneath me.
I was about to crumple when two powerful hands grasped me and sat me on the lee side of the boulder. He took the Sharps from my shoulder and rested it against the granite. “You need to sit, Lawman.”
I was numb; my headache was gone, and I couldn’t feel anything, even the cold. “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” I watched as the brows on the bear headdress furrowed and narrowed as they looked down at me. “Hey Virgil, I don’t mean to sound crazy, but are you sure that that headdress and cloak you’re wearing is dead?”
The big Indian stared at me. And the bear winked.
Subconsciously, I pulled a little away. “Virgil, that damn thing is alive.”
He studied me a few moments more and then began laughing. It was like a seismic event, slow and low at first but then roaring from his mouth. “That is why they sent you, Lawman. I thought it was because you never stop; you never quit. That first time we met in the long road culvert, you fought me to a standstill and no one has ever done that. I thought that was why the Old Ones had sent you, but it is because you make me laugh. No one tickles me the way you do-you say some of the craziest shit.”
The bear winked at me again and then rolled its eyes.
“Virgil, I’m not joking.”
He shook his oversize head at me and then leaned in close. “Did I ever tell you how I killed this bear?” I started to speak, but the headdress raised an eyebrow above his face, placing the upcoming story in a dubious light. “It was a tremendous fight, epic in nature. I was very tired, but I’ll tell you how I defeated him.”
“Virgil, there’s something I have t-to tell you.”
He ignored me and with one swirling movement, the giant Crow heaved himself up from where he crouched and whirled. His cloak flew off, and the wind filled it. The billowing headdress turned of its own accord and towered over Virgil with its claws outstretched, ready to knock my friend senseless with forepaws powerful enough to break a full-grown moose’s neck. It froze there in the incline of Cloud Peak with its ferocious mouth hanging open, bellowing the wind into submission. Even the fog and snow were frightened, and everything stopped almost as if we were in a self-contained snow globe.
Virgil whipped his face back to me and spoke in a hurried whisper, as if the medicine that held the wind-bear might not last long enough. “I was busy and not paying attention when he came on me.” He raised the war lance, and I watched it dance again; this time, the teeth of the coyote skull gnashed, and the elk teeth and deer hooves clacked. The horse tails swished, and the ermines slinked up and down the elongated shaft covered with felt trading cloth and sinew.
The giant bear continued to hover over Virgil as he spoke. “I could not see him, but I could feel him there.”
I fell forward but kept my face up where I could watch the spectacle. “Virgil, you’ve got to let me tell you something.”
“I grasped the lance in two hands and then rolled it back, rotating it.” He swung the broad, obsidian spearhead toward the heavens in the opposite direction as a strange St. Elmo’s fire flickered on its edge, growing and cracking until it sparked like metal in a microwave oven. Virgil then grabbed it firmly and thrust it into the floating bear behind him. The grizzly collapsed onto the point of the spear, and all at once the wind began blowing again and the snow continued to fall.
Plucking the headdress from the end of his war lance, Virgil swung the cloak around and enveloped himself, the bear’s head once again shrouding his own. He laid the lance on the snow between us.
He stared at me, his face only inches from mine. “You must remember how I did this.”
I nodded; it seemed so important to him. “I will… but Virgil, I’m not going to make it-and I need to tell you something.” His face had a patient look, but there was no inquisitiveness there. I lowered my head so that all I could see was the spear in the snow. “The man up there, he’s the one who took your grandson-the one who killed him.” The words spilled from my mouth like broken teeth. “He took Owen’s remains, and he’s got them up there with him.”
I stopped speaking and took a few deep breaths in an attempt to regain my wind, but it didn’t seem to be working. I rolled my weight back onto the rock, slouching to the side enough to elevate my view. I’m not sure how long I leaned there like that before opening my eyes again. When I did, the lance was on the ground but Virgil was gone.
And so was the rifle.
17
I listened to myself breathing and thought about whether or not I was dead-it felt like it.
My breath was ragged, and no matter how fast I thought I was, I couldn’t catch it. When I tried to stand the first time, my kneecaps had sounded like heads of iceberg lettuce being twisted apart, and I’d fallen. This is how it ends with everyone. You fall-you don’t get back up. I wondered if Henry and Joe would find me, or if some unfortunate alpinist would stumble across me. If I was as off the main ascent routes as I thought I was, then it was possible that no one would find me for years. Like the man who disappeared into Lake Marion, I wouldn’t come home and people would say, “Hey, do you remember that sheriff of Absaroka County that up and disappeared?”
Dumb ass. Yep, that’d be me.
I crouched a little lower against the boulder and tried to concentrate, but my head was killing me again, if I wasn’t dead already. Thinking had become more and more difficult since Virgil had left.
I’d never given up on anything in my life when I was alive. I hadn’t always won, I hadn’t always been right, but I’d never given up. Not till now. Now that I was dead.
So, was that my purpose, to lead Virgil to this point? Maybe this was what it was like to be dead, going through the motions until you came to a grinding halt thinking about all the things that you still had to do. It certainly didn’t seem so different from being alive.
Who would they send for me-the same individuals who had saved me before on this mountain and who had haunted Shade throughout his lifetime? Maybe it was like Virgil’s statements about the Inferno, that all horrors are horrors of the mind. We summon up the devils we need to punish us for the things that we’ve done. If that was the case, then why had they sent me for Virgil?
Cady.
I wanted to talk to her about Virgil’s prophecy. I thought about the cell phone and what the chances were that it still had battery power- Slim to None: The Walt Longmire Story.
I moved my hand up the length of the lance and could feel the horsehair wrapping around my hands with the wind, almost as if it was gripping me back. The deer hooves clacked together like chimes and the elk teeth mimicked them. In that small darkness with my eyes closed, I thought specifically of the things that I had to do, and the order in which I had to do them. I had to move, dead or alive. I couldn’t allow Virgil to face Raynaud Shade alone. It was his responsibility, but it was my duty.
You have haunting to do.
I decided to put Virgil’s beliefs to the test. My back felt like it was going to snap, but I hoisted the ascent pack onto my shoulder and used the lance to stand, my knees once again doing the vegetable melody.
I stood there in the blowing snow
feeling like some mountain sentry, but it helped to stand, not to fall down, not to concede, not to die-not again. I readjusted the balaclava back over my face, pulled the collar of the jacket up, the Gore-Tex encrusted with iced condensation and frozen mucus from my runny nose.
I growled in my throat, just to give my body a warning, and then turned to let my eyes follow Virgil’s footprints as they angled up. I could see only two steps before they vanished into the low-flying clouds and blowing snow.
Two steps.
“Two steps.”
I smiled at my cracking voice sounding back the words of my mind like the echoes from the rock walls below. I knew they were my words because ghosts’ teeth didn’t chatter-or did they?
Just two.
“Just two.”
Swallowing what moisture there was left in my mouth, I turned and looked up the boulder field toward the summit, or where the summit should’ve been-and started up.
My right leg had become weaker than my left, probably because it was my dominant side and I had used it more strenuously. The strain on the tops of my thighs was excruciating, and my ankles moved like nineteenth-century hinges connected to my lead-encased feet. I kept my head down, dragging the snowshoes and concentrating on the rapidly disappearing prints, using the lance as a walking staff the same way the big Crow had.
I remembered that there was still a water bottle in the ascent pack, so I rested the lance against my shoulder and fumbled to get the container out. I found the thing and took no comfort in the fact that it felt like an anvil encased in plastic. I used my teeth to unscrew the top and then stuck the mouth of the bottle into my own. There was no residual water so I put the cap on as best I could and tucked the frozen bottle inside my coat next to the paperback of Inferno. The second the bottle got inside, I realized I’d made a mistake and plunged a hand in to get it away from me. My core body temperature was fighting a battle of its own, and I’d just dropped a thermal bomb on it for its trouble. I yanked the bottle from the neck opening in my coat and watched as it arced through the air like a mortar and disappeared into the darkness.
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