by Cameron Judd
“All right,” Ottinger said. “That’s how I want it. And now, Kenton, you take some of that rope yonder and tie up your partner there, good and tight. Then come tie this boy.”
Kenton despised cooperating with a man he was sure would murder them all, cooperation notwithstanding, but he had no option. He obeyed.
“Now,” Ottinger said, “you’re going to go fetch me Pernell Jones back in the trading post. And you’re going to carry him out, and all of us will go off to a private area and have ourselves a score-settling party.”
“A bit of a problem there,” Kenton said. “Jones is gone.”
“He’s not gone. The man was wounded. He’s inside and you know it.”
“He’s gone, I tell you! Why do you think we were getting ready to ride out? We were going to look for him.”
“Going for a doctor, that’s what you were doing. Or maybe for a territorial marshal.”
“Both of us? Not likely. We were going to look for Jones, and that’s no lie.”
Ottinger was clearly debating whether to believe this. “It’s true,” the trussed-up Joe Rush said. “We kept watch last night in case you were still around. I fell asleep before dawn, and he slipped out. He wasn’t hurt as bad as you might think.”
“Running from me!” Ottinger declared.
“More likely coming out to find you,” Kenton said. “He was talking about doing that. He didn’t want to bring danger down on other people. It’s the same reason he disbanded his people at Confederate Ridge before you could overrun them with your soldiers…and no doubt find an excuse to massacre them.”
“You sing the same songs forevermore, eh, Kenton? Any I’ve ‘massacred,’ as you choose to put it, have been killed because they merited the fate. War is ugly, Kenton. You clearly didn’t have the stomach for what war sometimes requires.”
“There are crimes, even in wartime. And the war is long over now, Colonel. If you’d killed any at Confederate Ridge, you would have been killing citizens of a territory of your own nation, not at war against you.”
“As I understand it, Jones and his people didn’t consider themselves citizens, and for them, the war was still on.”
“They wanted only to be left alone. And whatever they considered themselves, citizens they were, and are.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I care only about Jones…and you. You should have never assassinated me in your journal, Kenton. The words you wrote, the lies, have hurt me through the years almost as much as this!” He pointed spastically at his ruined face. “I intend to see you pay for what you did to me, just like Jones!”
A shadow moved somewhere behind Ottinger; a rear door opened and sunlight spilled in.
Pernell Jones, outlined against the light, stepped inside. “Hello, Colonel,” he said. “I should have realized you’d not have gone far away. It would have saved me some searching this morning.”
“Jones! Come around here where I can see you, out of that light!”
Pernell Jones walked slowly into the shadows, where his features became visible. He moved somewhat gingerly because of his wound, and pain was in his eyes, but the brighter light in them was that of hatred for Ottinger. When Jones was beside Kenton, he stopped.
Ottinger stared at him, face-to-face. “You have a weapon hidden on you anywhere?”
Jones lifted his arms, then lowered them, slipped off his coat with much stiffness and wincing, and did a slow turn so that Ottinger could see he bore no weapon. “I dropped my rifle outside,” he said.
“You’re a damned fool, then. You could have shot me from behind and been done with it.”
“I thought about it. But I feared I’d injure one of these others. Besides, that’s not how I settle my scores. If you want to settle our longstanding differences, Ottinger, do it in a manful way. You and I will go off, together. Fight this thing out however you want it. Knives, pistols, bare fists. But leave these people alone.”
“You’ll not set the terms for my actions, Jones. But you and I will go off together, indeed. And when you die, you’ll die in the kind of suffering you’ve caused me all these years. Do you know what it is to be mangled? To have children stare at you, and women turn their heads?”
“I wasn’t trying to mangle your face when I shot you,” Jones said. “I was trying to blow your head completely off—due retaliation for the massacre you led. My aim was just a bit off.”
“Too bad,” Kenton muttered.
“Yes, it is too bad,” Jones said. “My life would have been much different through all the years afterward if I hadn’t had to spend so much of it dodging your hired assassins, Ottinger. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Do you not have the courage to fight your own fights? Do you hire out every dirty job, afraid to take it on yourself? When I shot out your eye, did I blow off your manhood, too?”
“Damn you!” Ottinger hissed. “Damn you, Jones, I’ll not hear that from you! We’ll end this right now, right here!”
He shoved the boy with the muzzle of the shotgun, pushing him down. Raising the shotgun, he aimed first at Kenton, and fired.
Kenton, though, ducked just before the blast went off, and felt only the sting of a couple of pellets barely grazing the top of his head, scraping off a little hair and flesh, but doing no real damage.
Jones, despite his prior wound, dove through a stall door beside him and out of sight. Ottinger could have easily shot him right through the wall of the stall, but he couldn’t see exactly where he was, and dared not risk expending the second barrel and leaving his shotgun empty.
Ottinger stepped forward to look into the stall. Kenton rose and lunged toward him, but the shotgun swung toward him and he was forced to stop.
“You…scar-face!”
Kenton looked up to see old Oliver Rush coming in the same rear door that had admitted Jones. The old man had his shotgun raised, aimed at Ottinger.
Ottinger swore and raised his own shotgun…
But not in time. Oliver Rush fired.
Most of the pellets missed Ottinger, but enough of them caught him on the left side of his face to blow out his only good eye and shred his flesh. He screamed and fell back, dropping his shotgun. Blind, he lay on his back, blood gushing, then pulled himself upright, feeling his ruined face.
The noises he made were terrible, and Kenton found himself, to his surprise, actually feeling a burst of pity for the terrible man. Then he reminded himself that many of those Ottinger had massacred had no doubt been just as pathetic in their last moments, and he had shown them no mercy at all. And what mercy had Callon seen? Or Milo Buckner?
Ottinger pushed himself to his knees. Bleeding and unseeing, he waved his arms around in the air, like a child playing blindman’s buff. Then he bent over, hands on the strawy floor, groping until he found the shotgun he’d dropped. Kenton feared for a moment that Ottinger was going to fire it blindly in whatever direction he thought it would do the most damage, but almost instantly it became evident that this was not his intention.
Ottinger put the muzzle of the shotgun beneath his chin, propped the butt on the stable floor, and simultaneously with giving out a terrible cry, pushed the trigger.
Kenton stared at Ottinger, too stunned to move right away. Then he broke out of it, stepped forward, reached down, and took the shotgun from the man.
Ottinger’s voice was gurgly, blood coming out of his mouth. “What happened? Why did it not fire?” he asked.
“The shotgun malfunctioned,” Kenton said. “The shell didn’t go off.”
Ottinger moaned, for a long time, making the kind of noise that surely must rise out of hell. “Kill me!” he blubbered. “I can’t live like this! Just like before…just like before…”
“Just like before, but with one difference,” Kenton said, gently. “This time I don’t think you’re going to survive, Colonel.”
The truth of this was obvious. Ottinger was losing blood rapidly.
“I’m blind…all my face is ruined now…all of it…”
&nbs
p; “That’s of no importance now,” Kenton said. “I suggest, sir, that you take these final moments to make your peace with God.”
Ottinger, though, did nothing but keep up his moaning. But it grew weaker; he slumped to the side.
Pernell Jones walked up slowly to him, looking down in horror at the man who had been his bane for years. It was hardly like looking at a man at all now.
Jones knelt, right in the spreading pool of blood. “Ottinger…you’re dying.”
“Jones? Jones…damn you, Jones…damn you…”
“Don’t talk so, Colonel. Not at this time. Make your peace; you’re a dying man.”
Ottinger groped about him, searching for a weapon. “I’ll kill you, Jones…I’ll kill you, and Kenton too…”
Jones shook his head, stunned at the persistence of this man’s hatred. He pulled away, stood, and stepped back.
Ottinger continued to moan and threaten, his voice growing weaker by the moment. Finally his strength was gone, and he lay on the barn floor, dying faster now, his voice gone.
Kenton watched Ottinger’s chest heave spastically, drawing in its final breaths now, until finally it stopped moving.
“The depths of the man’s hatred were incredible,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the like of it.”
Jones, looking solemn, nodded, turned away, and would look at Ottinger no more.
It took a long time to settle down the women.
They had not been a part of all the violence that had erupted around them, and did not for some time understand what had happened. When finally they did, they urged that someone go find a territorial lawman—a suggestion not popular with any of the men.
Joe Rush said, “We have nothing to gain by involving the law in this. No one was here to witness any of this. And I don’t want my father dragged into a bunch of trouble with the law. Not at his age. Everyone who was killed here, with the exception of Milo Buckner, was killed with perfect justification. I don’t need my father hauled off into some courtroom, in his dotage, to suffer through some kind of legal nonsense just to reach the same conclusion we already know.” He turned to Kenton. “And I don’t want to see this little adventure recounted in the pages of Gunnison’s Illustrated American, either, with all due respect.”
Kenton nodded. “Some stories can’t be told. This is one of them.” It was a hard statement for him to make, for this was a grand story indeed, from the firefall on Gomorrah through the final, ironic death of the most wicked military man Kenton had ever known. Yet to tell the tale would be to compromise the safety and reputations of good people.
“What about Ottinger?” Jones asked. “Obviously there will be some sort of attempt to track down what happened to him. A high-ranking officer disappears from his command, then never returns…it will stir a lot of questions.”
“If we bury him deeply enough and keep our mouths closed, those questions will simply remain unanswered,” Kenton said. “As for those ambushers who died, I doubt any search for them will ever be made. They were probably just lone wolves, no family, no real connections. I’ve seen plenty of the type.”
“And good riddance to them two,” Joe Rush said.
Kenton turned to Jones. “But what about Milo? I hate for his end to be in some anonymous grave.”
“We’re all anonymous in the grave, Kenton. I’ll make sure that those who need to know what happened to him, will.”
“The Confederate Ridge folks?”
“Yes. That was the only family Milo had left.”
“But they’re dispersed now to Lord only knows where.”
“Not forever. They all know about my brother. They all know where to establish communication with me. We’ll come together again, if there is anything I can do about it.”
“Ottinger is gone, and so is his threat…unless his report blaming you for the destruction of Gomorrah comes back to haunt you.”
“If he ever filed that report at all. That report, I figure, was probably a pretext he would use to justify overrunning us. When we escaped before he could do that, he may not have cared anymore about blaming that fire on us. But who can know? We’ll deal with that situation as it comes.”
“So mum’s the word on all that happened here,” Kenton said. “Is that our agreement?”
“It is,” Joe Rush said. “Now, let’s round up some shovels. We’ve got some gravedigging to do.”
Chapter 32
They rode into Pearl Town at dusk the next day.
Kenton, normally on top of almost any situation, was nothing but nerves. She might be here…or at the very least, the beginnings of a trail that would lead to her in the end.
What if he really did find her? What if he looked on her face after so many years? What would she look like? How would she respond to him?
There was another question, too, one a little too painful to dwell on: if she did prove to be alive, why had she remained apart from her own husband for so long? As high a profile as Brady Kenton possessed, it was obvious she could have reached him if she chose.
Unless something was wrong with her. If that long-ago railway accident hadn’t killed her body, perhaps it had killed her mind.
The uncertainty of it all, the big questions and fears lingering, were a torment. In the back of his mind, Kenton prayed, and prayed some more…and dared to hope.
The fence around the Johansen house would have surprised Kenton had not Pernell Jones talked at length about his brother and his esoteric wife along the way. In other circumstances. Kenton would have looked for ways to write about so unusual and eccentric a woman, but at this point he cared nothing for journalism.
He wanted only to settle the questions tumbling around in his head.
They reached the front gate. Kenton remained in the saddle, but Pernell Jones dismounted, went to the gate, and rapped.
The door opened and the same groundskeeper who had sent Gunnison on his way appeared and broke into a grin at the sight of Jones.
“I’ll be, sir!” he said cheerfully. “We weren’t expecting to see you!”
“It’s an unexpected visit,” Jones replied. “I’ve brought a friend, as you can see. But it’s all right. He already knows pretty much everything. And we believe there’s somebody here that he needs to meet.”
Kenton waited as patiently as he could while brother met brother. Pernell Jones had much to explain to Livesay Johansen, who greeted the news of the dissolution of the Confederate Ridge compound with fury, and vowed that indeed the scattered ones would be reunited.
Jones held nothing back in his recounting, telling his brother every detail, including the facts of the death of Colonel Ottinger, and that his body was now hidden and his death itself a secret all who had witnessed it had sworn never to reveal.
“Let him be forgotten—it’s fine with me,” Johansen said. “I’ll never speak a word of what you have told me to anyone, not even to Pearl.”
“Where is Pearl?” Pernell asked.
Kenton, who had been walking slowly around the library where this meeting was taking place, examining the covers of books and studying the strange, occultish paintings Pearl Johansen had hung all about the walls, turned upon hearing that question. The subject was now moving around to his own area of interest here.
“Pearl has put herself in isolation,” Livesay said. “I’m afraid she’s angry at me for having run off a certain swindler who was foisting off some self-styled backcountry preacher as a prophet of God—all in hopes of getting his hands on as much of my money as he could, a process Pearl was all too willingly going along with.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Kenton said.
“Certainly, Mr. Kenton.”
“This swindler…was he named Rankin?”
“He was.”
“And you’ve run him off?”
“I have, sir. I held him for a time, made him believe I was going to prosecute him into the very bowels of the deepest prison in the nation, but in the end I let him go. I think he’s learned his
lesson, at least so far as bothering the Johansen household again. He’ll not come back here, I don’t think.”
Kenton slumped into the nearest chair.
“Mr. Kenton!” Johansen exclaimed, rising. “Are you sick?”
Pernell Jones said, “He’s not sick, Livesay. Just very disappointed. He’d been on his way to meet Rankin in Gomorrah when the fire came, and he’s been trying to track him down ever since. Rankin claims to have information about Kenton’s wife…who he claims apparently isn’t dead, as Kenton has believed for years.”
“Oh, my,” Johansen said. “If I had had any notion of this, I’d not have let the scoundrel go. Wait a minute…might this wife of Kenton’s have been with Rankin?”
Kenton came to his feet again. “It’s possible,” he said.
“There was a woman with him, you see, when he first came here. But she left after a short time. Rankin didn’t seem to mind her leaving.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“What about the preacher…Peabody, or whoever he was?”
“Gone, too. He’s the one who finally broke down and confessed that Rankin was trying to defraud us, although I’d already figured that out from some quiet observation and eavesdropping. He left after that, and I let him.”
Kenton thought he might be ill. To have built up so many hopes, to have come this far through so much trial and danger, only to have it all vanish like smoke before him, was nearly overwhelming.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Kenton,” Johansen said. “I feel I’ve unwittingly done you a great disservice.”
Kenton forced himself to remain composed, even to smile. “You certainly had no way to know, sir. All you did, from your vantage point, was run off a confidence man preying on your wife.”
“Rankin could yet still be in town. Any of them could be, for that matter. There was another man, too, besides Rankin and the preacher. A quiet fellow named…Shafter, I think. Seemed to be sort of just along for the ride. I sent him off even before I did Rankin. Shafter seemed to get a great lot of amusement out of seeing Rankin caught in the act.”