by Jory Sherman
Dan thought Tyler was finished talking. His eyelids grew heavy and he felt himself drifting off to sleep.
“Dan?”
It was Tyler again.
“Yeah?”
“You ever think about dyin’?”
Dan stiffened beneath his blanket. What in hell was Tyler driving at?
“Yeah. Some.”
“I been thinkin’ about it a lot since my two pards bought the farm back there. One minute they were alive and breathing. Next minute, they were gone. Just like that.”
“It’s hard, I know,” Dan said. “Death is so final. You can’t bring ’em back.”
“But, I wonder, you know. I mean is that the end of everything? Preachers talk about Heaven, and the Injuns talk about going to the stars, or the happy hunting ground. Some say we all have a soul and that it’s like smoke or mist, but invisible, and lives on.”
“I don’t know about any of that,” Dan said, but it was disconcerting to think about such things, let alone talk about them.
“We pray over these dead folks after they’re gone, wondering if they can hear us. A lot of times I even wonder if there is a God. Especially, the God the preachers rant and rave about. All-merciful, you know, but lettin’ people kill each other and lie and cheat.”
“I don’t hold much with preachers, Vern.”
“No? Me neither. Still, some of what they say sticks in your craw. And then to have my two pards get kilt like that. I just wonder if their souls are still alive.”
“You’re really worried about yourself, Vern.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I worry about getting killed and whether or not I’ll go up to Heaven or some place, or if I’m just rubbed out. Rubbed out. That’s a term that bothers me. Like the teacher takin’ an eraser to a blackboard and swiping it over your name. You get rubbed out. No more Vern Tyler.” He laughed harshly.
Dan thought for a moment that the ranger might have gone around the bend. “It’s just an expression, Vern. It don’t mean nothin’. Not really. You ought not to worry about such things. You’ll probably live to be real old and that’s the time to wonder where you’re goin’ after you die.”
“I guess you’re right. Maybe.”
“Look, Vern, it don’t really make no difference what happens. Afterwards, I mean. After you die.”
“No? Why not?”
Dan sat up and looked over at Tyler. He couldn’t make him out. He was just a lump in the dark, a shadow lying inside his bedroll. But he wanted to look him in the eye and tell him what he thought. Because Dan had thought about death and afterwards—a lot, especially after Jason died.
“Look, Vern, if there is a heaven, some kind of life after you die, if there’s such a thing as a soul and it goes somewhere else, then you have nothing to worry about. It’s all taken care of by God. If there isn’t anything, and you just die and lose all your memory, all of what made you human, then there’s still nothing to worry about either, because whatever happened here, while you were alive, is just plain gone. Forever. And, if you can’t think or worry no more, it will be like you never lived at all.”
“I never heard it explained that way,” Tyler said.
“Well, seems to me those preachers you listen to ought to have thought it out a lot better than they did, because that’s what I think and I don’t go to no church.”
“Where’d you get all that, then? From your ma?”
Dan felt a surge of loneliness well up in him. “No, from my pa. When I was a little kid. Before he run off.”
Tyler swore under his breath and then spoke no more. Dan lay awake for a few more minutes, wondering if Vern was going to say anything else. He lay there and thought about his father. He hadn’t thought about death and what his own father had said about it for a long time. In fact, he hadn’t even remembered any of it until now. Until Tyler brought it up. He fell asleep, thinking of his father, wondering if he was still alive, and if he was, where he was.
Then, Dan became lost in his dreams, the blanket of sleep folding over him with a merciful softness as the whip-poor-will went silent and the land sank into a midnight stillness.
How long he slept, Dan did not know. Nor did he remember the dream that was shattered when he heard two quick shots, close together, and then the thunder of galloping hoofbeats.
He shot up out of his bedroll and snatched up the nearby pistol.
“Dan,” Tyler shouted. “You hear that?”
“Yeah. Somebody shot at us.”
“Not at us. You got your boots on?”
“Yeah, I slept with ’em on.”
“Those boys. I think they got shot.”
Dan saw Tyler’s dark shape rise out of the earth, stand silhouetted faintly against the tapestry of stars, the faint glow of the new moon waxing high in the sky.
The hoofbeats faded away and there was an eerie silence that rose up around Cord and Tyler. They stood there, listening. Listening to nothing but their own breathing.
Dan’s heart sank. He wondered if Raskin was dead. He wondered if Jerico Jones was also dead.
“I heard something fall,” Tyler said. “Something heavy.”
“Bodies?” Dan asked.
“Maybe. I was still half-asleep. I heard those two shots and then something fell. Then, I heard those horses running off. Let’s check the horses.”
They made their way in the darkness over to where the horses were hobbled. The horses whickered when they approached.
“I count four,” Dan said.
“Me, too.”
Then, they heard the sound of someone running. Running toward them.
“Who goes there?” Tyler called out.
“It’s me, Mr. Tyler,” Jones yelled. “Gawdamighty, come quick.”
“Where are you?”
“Over here,” Jones said.
“Where’s John?” Dan asked.
“He’s here, too. He’s struck dumb I think.”
Dan started walking toward the sound of Jerico’s voice. Tyler walked close at hand, both of them stepping warily through the darkness.
“We’re coming,” Tyler said. “Don’t shoot us by mistake.”
“You’re getting’ close,” Jones said, and then his form emerged out of the darkness.
Dan saw two dark hulks on the ground. Then he saw Pete standing just beyond one of them. Jones stood by the other.
“What you got here, Jerico?” Tyler asked.
“Horses. Come and look, Mr. Tyler. Makes me sick to my stomach.”
Tyler walked up, struck a match and bent down to examine the horse at Jones’s feet. The match went out and Tyler stood up.
“Damn,” he said.
“That ain’t the worst of it,” Raskin said.
Cord and Tyler turned to look at Pete. “You’re both goin’ to get as sick as Jerico.”
Dan started walking toward Pete, a sense of dread building in him even as the darkness seemed to be deepening until the night was as black as pitch.
Chapter Twenty-one
Pete Raskin led Tyler and Cord away from the dead horses to another place. Dan could smell the bodies before he even saw their dark shapes on the ground. There were two of them, and closer examination revealed that the men had ropes around their necks and had been dragged for some distance.
“Before they shot the two horses,” Raskin said, “they rode up, dragging these corpses and just let loose of the ropes. I got sick to my stomach when I saw what they were.”
Tyler struck another match and knelt down to look at one of the men. He gasped aloud and stood up, shaking the burning match into extinction.
He swore under his breath and walked away, holding his breath and pinching his nose shut with two fingers.
It was not until the breaking dawn seeped its light over the land that the men had to grapple with the full horror of what had happened. By then, all four of them had vomited and now wore bandannas over their faces as they examined the grisly scene.
“It’s hard to tell right off,�
� Tyler said, “but those men are Larry Earl David and Joe Willoughby, all right. They didn’t drag them all the way from where we buried them, but carried them on their horses to somewhere near us. Then they put ropes around their necks and drug ’em here for us to see. Then, they shot the horses.”
“Why?” Jones asked.
“I reckon they wanted us to know a couple of things,” Tyler said.
“What things?” Raskin asked.
“One – they’ve been on our tail ever since we lit a shuck from the ambush. And two – that we’re going to meet the same fate as these two dead Rangers.”
Pete let out a low whistle.
Dan recoiled at the sight of the dead men. Their clothes were shredded, patches of scratched skin showed through the tears in their trousers and shirts. The outlaws had removed the men’s boots and their feet were ugly, grotesque appendages that had been smashed, bruised, and twisted almost beyond recognition. Their faces were bloated and missing chunks of flesh. Their noses were bashed flat from banging over rocks. The ropes had bit in deep to their necks, tightening all the while the bodies were being dragged.
Tyler clenched his fists in anger. He swore softly as if to let the steam of the rage inside him dissipate so that he didn’t explode. But his face grew red and his neck swelled like a bull in the rut.
“Now you boys know what we’re facing,” Tyler said. “Jake Krebs is a devil.”
Tyler stalked off, back toward the dead horses, his fists still clenched. He looked like a man wading into a fistfight, just looking for something to hit.
Dan pulled Pete close to him. “Tyler knows who we are, Pete.”
“He does?”
“Yeah, but he’s not going to arrest us or turn us in.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“That makes me breathe a whole hell of a lot easier.”
“Well, don’t trust him too much. But I wanted you to know. He wants Krebs. And so do I.”
“I never saw such as this. I didn’t think any man could be so damned evil.”
“Well, Krebs is evil in spades.”
“Boy, Tyler is sure mad. Blazin’ mad.”
“I hope he comes out of it pretty quick,” Dan said. “Maybe Krebs wants us to stand around like a bunch of chickens so’s he can pick us off.”
Raskin glanced all around him as if expecting to see Krebs and his men suddenly surrounding them, rifles spitting hot lead.
“Here he comes,” Pete said.
Jones stood off several yards away from the bodies, bent over, retching with the dry heaves. His eyes were filled with water and he looked as forlorn as anyone Dan had ever seen. Bewildered. Confused.
Jerico heard Tyler walking back, though, and stood up, shaking his head as if to shed whatever was weighing him down. He gulped in air and seemed to steady himself.
“Boys, let’s give these poor men a proper buryin’ and then get the hell out of here,” Tyler said, his anger still bubbling just below the surface.
They dug holes with their knives. Tyler and Jones worked frantically. Dan and Pete carved a square into the dirt and then dug more systematically. But it was hard, sweaty work and took what seemed an eternity before the graves were deep enough to contain the frail, stiff bodies of the dead Rangers.
Tyler removed the ropes from around the dead men’s necks and the gruesome burial followed with grim dispatch. The four men covered the bodies with dirt and stones, then smoothed the graves so that they left little trace of where the men were buried.
Then the men rode off to the southeast, silent and solemn as mourners at a funeral. They did not stop to eat, but chewed on jerky as they rode, spread apart, all on the lookout for any sign of Krebs and his men. The heat bore down on them with relentless punishment, bathing them in their own sweat until they resembled penitents abandoned and admonished by an unforgiving god. They slumped in their saddles like broken men, eyes moving in their sockets as they sought an unseen enemy, an enemy that never appeared as the sun blazed along the arc of its slow and solitary journey.
They stank of death as they rode into evening and kept on going until they began to see the lamp-glow of isolated ranches, the lights like far-flung stars in a desolate universe. Then they rode through gentle hills that rose up around them like the muscles of some sleeping giant, and the hills led them to a valley where a town lay, the burnished orange lights spraying from windows like beacons on a vast dark sea.
“Kerrville,” Tyler said, and pointed his horse toward the town.
Dan’s heart quickened its pace and his stomach growled with hunger. He felt a hundred years old as they rode toward the scattered lights, the barking dogs, the muffled sound of voices, the lyrical chords of a guitar, the crystal tinkling of a rollicking piano bounding up and down the musical scales.
“I know a place where we can get grub and grog,” Tyler said. “We can wash the dust out of our throats and sniff some perfume.”
“That’s good, Mr. Tyler,” Jones said, and his voice was quavering from hunger and fatigue.
“I could eat a damned mule,” Raskin said, “hide, hair, and all.”
Ahead of them, glistening like a silver ribbon, the Guadalupe River wound through the center of town, with houses and businesses along both sides. Stars danced in its waters as they drew closer and the moon shimmered in its ripples. From somewhere, a cow bawled and dogs yipped at the men.
“We’ll ride down the street,” Tyler said, “me and Jones on one side, Dan, you and Pete take the other. Look for any horses you recognize. Check the brands if you have to.”
“Who’s Dan and Pete?” Jones asked.
“Never mind, Jerico,” Tyler said. “I’ll explain later.”
“Yes, sir.”
The four men split up and rode the length of the main street. Most of the businesses were closed and there were no saddled or unsaddled horses anywhere to be seen, except for one lone moth-eaten nag in front of the Guadalupe Hotel. A man sitting in the lobby peered out from his perch on an easy chair, but showed no interest in the shadows that passed the front window.
They rode past a couple of saloons, one where the piano player was making all the keys jump and another where they heard the mournful plaint of a harmonica and the chromatic plucking of a guitar playing some forgotten tune in a minor key, clear to the dark at the end of the street. Then Tyler rode over with Jones to join Dan and Pete.
“I didn’t see nothin’ suspicious,” he said. “How about you, boys?”
“Looks pretty quiet,” Dan said. “Except for the music.”
“Well, we’re not goin’ into either of those saloons,” Tyler said. “There’s a quiet one in the center of the next street where we can get us a steak and some watered-down whiskey, or hot beer, if you like.”
“I’ll swaller anything that’s wet,” Jones said.
The other three men laughed.
The name of the saloon where Tyler reined up was Hoot Owl Café & Bar. Dan thought the name was ironic, but he didn’t say anything. He was bone tired, so weary he knew he would have fallen asleep in the saddle if they’d ridden another half hour. When he stepped down, his legs nearly gave way and he had to lift his legs to restore circulation to his feet. The others were just as stiff, he noticed, and they all stamped their boots on the ground before tying up their horses to the rail out front. Tyler led the way inside the building, pushing inward on the batwing doors.
The Hoot Owl was more of a saloon than a café, Dan noticed. There was a long bar on the left with several tables and chairs to the right. What’s more, the place was empty, except for one man sitting in a corner beneath a lamp, playing solitaire with a worn deck of cards. The bartender got up from his chair behind the bar where he had obviously been dozing, and blinked until he was fully awake.
“Evenin’, Gents,” he said. “Table or bar? Your choice.”
“We’ll sit at the bar,” Tyler said.
“Vern?”
“Yeah, Daryl. Long time no s
ee,” Tyler said.
“I’ll say. Esmerelda’s in the kitchen, if you and your friends are hungry.”
“We’ll put on the feed bag,” Tyler said.
“Whiskey?” Daryl Briggs rattled some glasses behind the bar. He was a heavy-set man in his forties, with a waxed, handlebar moustache and long, salted sideburns that flared at his cheeks like axe-blades.
Dan, Pete, and Jerico sidled up next to Vern Tyler and nodded when he shot them all a questioning gaze.
Daryl set out four glasses and then pulled a bottle of whiskey from under the bar. Tyler made the bartop ring with silver coins he dragged from his pocket.
“I’ll tell Esmerelda to lay four beefsteaks in the skillet and rustle you up a mess of frijoles, Vern. The stove’s hot and I bet she’s got some peaches in one of them airtights.”
“Thanks, Daryl. The sooner the better. We ain’t et all day.”
“I can hear your bellies growlin’ from back here.”
“Any strangers ride through today?” Vern asked, keeping his voice low so that it wouldn’t carry to the back of the room. The man there was playing solitaire, slapping the cards down on the table so that each one snapped like a miniature whip.
“Nope. A bunch of the boys from the XR was in earlier this evenin’, ate, and left. The usual crowd during the day.”
“What about him?” Tyler asked, flicking a thumb toward the man in the back.
Daryl leaned over the bar, so that his face was close to Vern’s. “Oh, he’s just some Mexican drifted in here ’bout an hour ago. He ain’t bought but one drink all night.”
Tyler picked up his drink and turned around, facing the man at the table.
Dan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle like electrified wires.
Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the way Tyler stiffened, or the casual way he looked at the Mexican, who seemed to pay him no attention at all.
“You better go tell Esmerelda to start that grub, Daryl,” Tyler said and there was something in the tone of his voice that made Dan even more aware that something just wasn’t right.