A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  I kept watching her face to see if she was trying to signal the men who were running past, sounding excited as hayseeds at a county fair.

  The ride, with me all curled up at her feet, was bumpy. Every time we hit a rut, she kicked me in my rib with the pointed toe of her high-button shoe. I could smell horseshit and axle grease. I wanted Gillian and Annie in my arms.

  The flickering street lamps fell away after a time, as did the sound of running feet slapping the hard dirt road. Even the high, charged shouts of the eager posse.

  After awhile I raised myself up enough to look out at the rutted road. Moonlight showed a narrow stage road with ice shining in the potholes, and all around an autumnal mountainous land touched with glowing frost. Bears would be sleeping deep in winter caves by now, and kids would be asking for extra blankets.

  I swung up from the floor and sat down next to her.

  “H-How did you know about R-Reeves?” she said, and when she stuttered, I felt ashamed of myself. I had no right to judge this woman the way I had.

  “Forget I said anything. I’m not fit to pass judgment on you, Mrs. Hollister.”

  We didn’t say anything for a time. The only sound was the crack of hooves against icy road.

  I sat and watched the frozen night go by, the jet silhouettes of mountains against the darker jet of the sky, the hoarfrost quarter moon, the silver-blue underbellies of clouds …

  “Y-You d-don’t know what my h-husband’s l-like when he d-drinks.”

  She sounded miserable and I had to stop her. “I shouldn’t have said that, Mrs. Hollister. Really. I don’t have any right to judge you.”

  She started shaking her head from side to side, reliving an old grief. “I’m a s-sinful w-woman, M-Mr. Chase. I’m a h-harlot.”

  We fell into silence again.

  Then, “I t-told him t-today that I d-don’t p-plan on s-seeing him a-anymore.”

  I reached over and touched her shoulder. “You should have respect for yourself, Mrs. Hollister. You could do a lot better than Reeves, believe me.”

  And Gillian could do a lot better than me.

  She didn’t say anything the rest of the way.

  When the road turned westward, I took the reins from her and brought the horse to a halt.

  “I hope things go right for you, Mrs. Hollister. You seem like a decent woman.”

  She smiled and leaned over. I thought she was going to kiss me. Instead she just touched my cheek with long fingers. Tenderly.

  I jumped down and started walking to the edge of the hill, from which I could look down into the valley and see our house.

  What I saw was the old farm wagon that Gillian kept in back. It was loaded down with clothes and furnishings. Gillian and Annie sat up on the seat. They’d hitched up the horse and were just now pulling out of the yard.

  The sickness was getting worse all the time, but I ran anyway, ran faster than I ever had in my life.

  “Gillian!” I cried into the night. “Gillian!”

  Part 28

  By the time I got near the wagon, it had climbed the hill and was just starting down the road.

  As I came close, out of breath, my legs threatening to crumple at any moment, I heard the clang of pots and pans as the wagon bounced along the road.

  I fell.

  I was twenty feet at most from the wagon, and I went straight down, my toe having stumbled over a pothole.

  I stayed on my hands and knees for two or three minutes, like a dog trying to regain his strength. The vast night was starry and cold; the clang of pots and pans faded in the distance; and all I could smell was the hot sweat of my sickness.

  After a time I got to my feet. But I promptly sank back down. Too weak.

  I stayed down till I lost sight of the wagon in the moonlight far ahead. It had rounded a curve and was now behind a screen of jack pines. By this time the clank of kitchen implements was almost endearing, like a memory of Annie’s smile.

  All of a sudden I was having trouble swallowing, taking saliva down in gulps. Part of the sickness, I knew.

  I started off walking and slowly began running. I had to catch the wagon. Had to.

  BY THE TIME I caught up with them, the fever was so bad I was partially blind, a darkness falling across my vision every minute or so.

  This time Annie heard me. She stood up in the wagon and turned around and saw me.

  The last thing I heard, just before I pitched forward in the sandy road, was Annie’s scream.

  Darkness.

  Squeak of wagon; clop of horse on hard-packed road; faint scent of perfume in the bed of the wagon.

  Gillian.

  “You’re going to see that doctor in the morning, and I’m going to personally take you.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “You just rest.”

  “My eyes—”

  “Rest.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Annie’s taking us back home. She convinced me to give you another chance.”

  “Gillian—”

  “And you’re going to turn that money over and you’re going to face whatever punishment you’ve got coming, and then we’re going to be a real family for the first time in our lives.”

  She leaned down. All I could smell in the darkness was her soft sweet scent. She kissed me on the forehead, a mother’s kiss.

  “Sleep, now. We’ll be home soon.”

  And so the old farm wagon tossed and squeaked down the road, the horse plodding but true, Annie talking to him most of the time, imitating the way adults talked to their wagon horses.

  After a time the darkness was gone and I could see the stars again, and I wondered what it would be like to live on one of them, so far away from human grief. But they probably had their own griefs, the people on those stars, ones just as bad as ours.

  Part 29

  She got me out of my sweat-soaked clothes, and put on water for hot tea. She put me in bed and had Annie come in and stand over me while she gathered up more blankets. By now the chills were pretty bad.

  “Mommy said that in a little while things will be all right again and you won’t be in trouble anymore.”

  The bedroom was lit by moonlight, and Annie, one half of her face silver, the other half shadow, looked like a painting.

  “That’s right, honey.”

  “She said some men would probably come after you. Chief Hollister, she said. Doesn’t he like you anymore?”

  Gillian was back with more blankets. Annie helped her spread them over me.

  Annie started talking again. I held her small hand in mine and tried to say something in return but I didn’t have the strength. My throat was raw, my head hurt, every bone in my body ached, and I was having a hard time making sense of words.

  I slept.

  AT FIRST I thought it was part of a dream, the way the horses thundered toward me from the distant hill. I often had dreams where I was being pursued by fierce men on fiercer horses.

  But then I heard Gillian saying, “They’re coming down the hill, Chase. The posse.”

  Instinct took over. In moments I was out of bed, grabbing dry clothes and a jacket and throwing them on, picking up my .45 and a fancy bone-handled knife I’d bought on a lark before going to prison.

  Gillian watched me. “I thought maybe you’d turn yourself in, instead of running away.”

  As I buttoned the fleece-lined jacket, I said “I don’t want them to take me into town tonight, Gillian. Not with everybody worked up the way they are. I’ve seen two lynchings in my life and they were both real scary.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to get the money and then wait till the posse leaves.”

  “But they’ll find you.”

  The horses were closer, closer.

  She came into my arms and we held each other. And then I took off, moving quickly to the back door. In moments I was out in the cold night again.

  I peeked around the corner of the cabin and saw them�
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  Six horses coming down the dark November wind—

  Six riders on the hill, three bearing torches with flames that crackled and flapped like pennants in the wind, and three with carbines already drawn from leather scabbards.

  Ready to make the descent, encircle the cabin, and drag me out to meet their justice.

  Part 30

  The wind was raw as I dropped to my knees up there where the desert well lay. A dark cloud passed across the moon, and for a brief time all color was blanched from the land, and the rocks and plains and mountains did not seem to be of earth at all, but some strange land from my prison nightmares.

  I jerked the lid from the well and plunged my hand down into the chilly darkness below. All I could feel was the cold, empty blackness of the grave.

  They would be coming up here looking for me, the posse would. There was only one place I could hide.

  I wound the top of the rope tight around one of the large rocks at the mouth of the well. I tugged it several times, making sure that it was strong enough to hold me. The rock must have weighed two hundred pounds. It would be fine. But the rope was frayed …

  I didn’t have any choice.

  I grabbed the rope end, climbed up over the rocks around the opening of the well and started my descent, feeding myself rope as I went.

  Dirt and small rocks from the sides of the well fell to the water below, making a hollow splashing sound when they hit.

  If I fell, nobody would ever find me. I’d hit my head or drown or I’d be trapped down there and freeze to death.

  I kept on moving down, inch by inch. I kept thinking of sad Gillian there at the last moment … wanting only the one thing I couldn’t give her … wanting to be safe from my hatred of Reeves.

  There was a sour smell just as I got so low that darkness took me entirely. Gases …

  Far up above me I saw a portion of the well opening and a piece of cold midnight sky.

  I was tightening my grip on the rope when another wave of blindness overwhelmed me. All I could do was hold on and hope it would pass.

  And it was there, blind, suspended halfway down a well, that I whispered the word to myself, the word I’d been avoiding the past few days …

  Then the voices, harsh male voices on the witch’s wind down from the mountains.

  Coming up the hill—

  Looking for me.

  “Here’s a well!” somebody shouted.

  They would find the cover off and put a torch down into the darkness and find me.

  “The hell with the well! Look over there in that stand of jack pines.”

  This was Ev Hollister’s voice. He was leading his own posse.

  I went lower and lower in case they came back and looked down the well. They wouldn’t have much trouble finding me, if they wanted to look. It was a very shallow well.

  The heels of my boots touched water.

  I stopped my descent, just hung there listening to the voices of the posse fade in and out on the wind.

  Obviously they’d given up; the voices were moving back down the hill, in the direction of the house.

  I just kept thinking of that word I’d been so afraid to say the past couple of days …

  I felt the top of the money sack.

  I grasped it and began to pull it up and—

  The rope started to give at the very top.

  Even as I hung there, I could feel it begin to fray and weaken.

  In a moment I would be dropped into the water and entombed forever … terrible fever pictures came to me. I would be prisoner down here forever, till I was only white bones for greasy black snakes to wind in and out of, and for the rats to perch on as, crimson-eyed, they surveyed the well … I felt as if I was suffocating.

  Distant starlight in the midnight sky was my only guide now.

  I stabbed my heels against the shale walls of the well. Propped up this way, I could at least keep from being pitched into the water.

  With one hand dredging up the money sack, by boot heels digging into the wall …

  I started to climb.

  All I could hope was that Hollister and his men would be gone by the time I reached the top.

  I just kept looking straight up at the bright indifferent stars above. In prison I’d read about how many worlds our stars shine on, so many that our little world hardly matters at all.

  Even with everybody on our planet screaming, nobody in the universe could hear us anyway… .

  I knew I was getting sicker all the while, my mind fixing on things like astronomy, my bones and joints aching so bad I could hardly keep a grip on the rope or the sack.

  And every few feet the rope would fray a little more and I would feel the tug and jerk as it threatened to tear apart completely …

  But I kept on climbing.

  I have no idea how long it took me.

  By the time I reached the top, I was gasping for breath.

  I threw the bag over the top of the well first. It landed on the frosty earth with a satisfying thump.

  And then I wrapped both hands in the rope and climbed the rest of the way up, cutting my hands on hemp and jagged rock alike, till hot blood flowed from my palms.

  But I didn’t care …

  I lay for long minutes on the hard cold earth. The chill air felt cool and cleansing on my fevered skin.

  I got to my feet, grabbed the money sack, and started walking back up the hill.

  Beyond the hill were Gillian and Annie …

  When I reached the other side, I swung wide eastward, so I could come up behind a copse of jack pines. From here I could see the front of the cabin clearly … yet I was so well-hidden that nobody could see me.

  Five riders with torches and horses. The wind-whipped flames made the faces of the men look like burnished masks.

  There was a sixth horse, its saddle empty, standing ground-tied. Where was its rider?

  Gillian stood in the doorway—Annie clinging to her like a very small child—talking to the men.

  Suddenly a man came from the cabin. He was toting a Winchester. He’d obviously been searching the place, seeing if I was hiding there.

  It was Hollister. He got back up on his horse.

  There was more talk between the men and Gillian, the words lost in the midnight wind.

  And then they left. Abruptly. Just turned their horses and headed westward, the light from their torches diminishing as they reached the edge of the great forest, where they likely thought I’d gone.

  Gillian and Annie stood outside the cabin for long moments watching the men disappear into the great pines.

  And then, just as I was about to call out for Gillian, I felt the darkness overwhelm me again, felt all my strength go, and my body begin to sink to the ground.

  Once again I slept …

  Part 31

  The prison dreams came again … watching the teenager drown as the old con held him under … listening to the screams of the men as whips lashed their backs … seeing a wolf silhouetted against the full golden moon as he stood on the hill overlooking the prison …

  Even in my sleep my teeth chattered from the cold of my skin and baked in the heat of my insides.

  I wanted Gillian … I wanted Annie …

  And then the scream.

  At first I counted it as part of my nightmares. Only when its intensity and pitch were sustained did I realize that it was Annie screaming.

  I crawled to my feet, covered with pine, so dry I could barely part my lips. I felt at my side for my .45. Still there.

  Annie kept on screaming.

  I staggered across the clearing.

  The cabin was dark but the front door was flung wide, and there in the doorway I saw him crouching—

  The wolf.

  His yellow eyes gleamed and across his face were dark damp streaks of—blood.

  I tried to understand what had gone on here …

  Reeves had come here to get the money and had brought his wolf along with him.

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nbsp; He growled but moved cautiously away so I could go inside.

  I went into the cabin.

  And saw Annie at the entrance to our bedroom door.

  Her flannel gown had been shredded by wolf claws, and she lay bloody and unconscious, half propped up against the door frame, her golden hair darkened by splashes of her own blood.

  I stumbled toward her, paying no attention to the snarl and growl of the wolf behind me. I reached the door and looked in on the bed and there—

  Gillian had not been so lucky. She had been eviscerated.

  The wolf had ripped most of her clothes off and had then torn open her throat and stomach.

  I struggled toward her, fell next to her on the bed, felt for a pulse I knew my fingers would never feel.

  Gillian—

  She looked like a fawn that had been attacked by a ravenous predator, and when I put my fingers to her lips … she was already getting cold. I must have been out longer than I realized.

  I took out by .45 and went over to Annie.

  Beneath her bloody flesh I felt a pulse in both neck and wrist, and I snatched her up like an infant and carried her in the crook of my left arm.

  I kept my right hand free to use the gun.

  The gray lobo still crouched in the front doorway. A growl rumbling up its chest and throat. Waiting for me.

  I raised my .45, sighted, began to squeeze the trigger, and—

  He sprang.

  He was so heavy yet so fast that he knocked my gun away before I could shoot accurately.

  Two, three shots went wild in the darkness, the flame red-yellow in the shadows.

  And then the wolf was on top of me, Annie having rolled out of my grasp as I was knocked to the floor.

  He was all muscle beneath the blood-soaked gray fur, all madness in yellow eyes and blood-dripping mouth.

  All I knew was to protect my throat. Once his teeth or claws reached it …

  I rolled left and right, right and left, trying to keep him off balance until I could roll away from him completely.

  By now I was beyond pain, he had ripped and bitten me so often, first across the forehead and then across the chest, and then across the belly, heat and saliva and urgent, pounding body slamming into me again and again.