Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  Alonzo frowned. “What about you?”

  I handed him the bag. “I’ve got other plans.”

  He stared into the satchel. “You didn’t take any of the guns.”

  Handing Bianca the .38 she’d loaned me, I shook my head. “I won’t be needing them.”

  * * *

  —

  There wasn’t much room as I peered past the guard that I’d knocked cold.

  Carefully sitting him on the bench beside the sales barn door, I pulled his cowboy hat over his face and laid his rifle in his lap. Taking a few sideways steps, I sidled my way through the doorway, and since I was about a head taller than everybody else, I had a clear view into the arena.

  Most of the auction sales weren’t as violent as the one I’d witnessed, the saddened merchandise prodded forward and then after a few bids, led away by the gunmen. Keeping an eye out, I watched as Culpepper entered from one of the side exits and approached the sales platform where he whispered something in Bidarte’s ear.

  I ducked my face as he immediately glanced around the building but then turned to Culpepper and dismissed him. Bidarte moved back to the platform, stood there for a moment, and then slowly raised his hand. In the hubbub of the moment, no one saw him, and after a bit he pulled the long-barreled revolver from the holster at his hip and fired it in the air.

  The entire building went still, like they were posing for a picture postcard.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I have become aware that a unique opportunity has presented itself. . . .”

  I was pretty sure he’d switched to English for my benefit.

  “Tonight, we have a very special opportunity, an opportunity which presents itself only once in many lifetimes. Some of you are aware of the troubles I have had in the north, and why it is that I have embraced this place as my home.” He paused but then looked around and continued. “But there is a man, an individual who pursues me even here in his attempt to destroy me.” There was general grumbling, but he raised his hand. “No, please . . . He is a brave man, but I have given him few choices and tonight I give him only one.” He nodded toward the gunmen and they pulled the doors open.

  Cady’s hands were tied like the others, but unlike them, she held her head high, the nickel-plated eyes flashing around the arena as she stared the hooting crowd down.

  One of the gunmen made a move to step toward her, but she backed him off with a look and took three more steps toward the center of the arena. She stood there, turning her head to take the place in before stopping with her attention on Bidarte.

  She was wearing my badge, and she looked bored. “Let’s get on with this.”

  The crowd cheered again, and Bidarte looked unmoved. The auctioneer took a step toward him, but he shook his head and held the mic to his lips. “Very well . . .” He glanced around. “Here we have the daughter of my enemy. She is a United States Assistant District Attorney—once again exhibiting the lengths of my vengeance.” The smile returned to his lips. “What am I bid for this lovely example of—”

  “Four million, two hundred and eighty-two thousand, four hundred American dollars.” My voice echoed off the stone walls, and the crowd swiveled their heads as one. “And sixty-two cents.”

  Pushing my way through the crowd, I kept my hands in my pockets, took the steps to my right, and climbed onto the walkway, opposite but now level with Bidarte.

  Cady looked at me, and I couldn’t help but wink, to which she responded by rolling her eyes with a ferocious smile—if we were going to die, we were going to die with attitude.

  “What, my money’s no good?”

  Before Bidarte could speak, one of the well-dressed individuals raised a hand. “Four million, two hundred and eighty-two thousand, and five hundred American dollars.”

  Calmly, the drug dealer raised the revolver and shot the man in the head, spraying his brains across the attendees sitting beside him, before he slumped into the lap of the adjacent woman who pushed him forward onto the floor as if dislodging a cat.

  Bidarte turned back to the audience at large to smile broadly. “Any more bids?”

  There was silence.

  He gestured with his palms up in mock exasperation, still holding the revolver. “No one?”

  More silence.

  He raised the pistol toward my daughter, and I was about to go over the railing when he raised it even further, again firing it into the rough-hewn rafters. “Sold!”

  The crowd cheered, and I moved to the edge and threw a leg over the railing, Cady running to me as I stepped down onto the sandy surface of the arena. I caught her and then slipped a hand into my back pocket to pull out a rusty pocketknife I’d procured from the gym bag to cut her free. “You all right?”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Turning back to Bidarte, I waited until the noise died down, and he raised his voice. “She is free to go.”

  He said nothing more, but after a moment he gestured toward the gate behind us and two of his men pushed it open. The crowd moved back, making way as I spoke to Bidarte again. “No tricks.”

  He shrugged and then gestured with his chin as we started backing away. “But not you.”

  I nodded and dropped my head in order to speak out of the side of my mouth. “Get out of here, Cady. There’s a car waiting for you on the main road—get in it and get the hell out of here.”

  She gripped me harder. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Oh God, no . . . Please?”

  “You’re overwhelming me with your enthusiasm.” I lowered my head to hers. “Get to that car—you won’t be able to miss it.” I nudged her, but she stood there looking at me as I mouthed the word. “Go.”

  She slowly backed away, the tears lining her face as she moved through the crowd to the gate. She stared at me one last time as if memorizing my face, and then she was gone.

  After any great challenge or crisis, the moment comes when your nerves stop twitching and you settle down to the new condition of things because you feel that any possibility of fresh horrors is used up. You have little choice but to stand back and take in the whole picture. When it’s finally too late and you acclimate yourself to that’s it and there’s nothing left to do, except maybe one thing.

  Buy time.

  I turned back to face Bidarte. “All right, here I am.”

  He played with the pistol, even going so far as to try and twirl it. “Yes, you are.”

  “So do whatever it is you’re going to do, abuse me, torture me, or kill me but be done with it, because I’m tired of you and your immorality, brutality, and insanity—you bore me.”

  Looking down at me, he smiled and holstered the revolver. “No, I am not going to abuse you, torture you, or kill you—you see, Sheriff, I am going to sell you.”

  The crowd began cheering again, and I took the opportunity to move to the center of the arena, and when the noise died down, I scratched my neck in my best Will Rogers and looked up at him. “I don’t think you’ll get very much.”

  “You underestimate your value.” He gestured toward the well-heeled ringside, minus the leaking one that his henchmen had hauled away. “Any one of these fine individuals will be happy to purchase your fate, along with a number of others on the phones over here.”

  I glanced toward the electronic banks, and at the young people now seated there. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “No, not at all . . . You’ve made a number of enemies in your long tenure as a lawman, some of them very powerful people with very long memories and uh . . . deep pockets.” Rearing back, he roared into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived, somewhat abruptly, at this evening’s main event—the auctioning of Sheriff Walter Longmire.”

  The crowd roared again, but for the life of me I couldn’t
hear them anymore; like the whirring of tires on an endless highway, the sound was there, but I could no longer hear it.

  I watched as Bidarte drummed them up and even watched as the bidding began. I mildly wondered who were these people who wanted my life so badly. I think some of them even looked vaguely familiar—the swarthy one on the end who might’ve been related to the drug dealer I’d killed in Philadelphia, the stalwart-looking one who might’ve been connected to the intelligence officer I’d caused to be killed in Vietnam, the woman who bore a striking resemblance to the rich man who’d faked his own death on the Powder River—any of them could’ve been connected to the Dead Center Association or to other individuals who had crossed paths with me that had unfortunately cost them their lives.

  Backing toward the platform where Bidarte stood, I glanced up at all of them and at the earnest young people on the phones and listened to the bidding rise on my miserable carcass. It had moved so fast that Bidarte had been forced to hand the mic over to the auctioneer.

  “Seis millones cuatrocientos mil!”

  Thrusting my hands back in my pockets, I turned and looked at the screaming people and wondered what could’ve brought them here in the first place. Some were, no doubt, innocents drawn by the titular attractions of money and power, but the others?

  “Seis millones quinientos mil!”

  It was a pity, really, and when you considered the beauty of the place, it was almost heartbreaking. I glanced around at the structure of the sale barn and thought about the monks and laborers who must’ve built it and the monastery.

  “Seis millones seiscientos mil!”

  I thought about the things I always thought of when confronted with such spectacular structures. I knew they were built as monuments to God, but I could never help but marvel at the men who had built such things.

  “Seis millones setecientos mil!”

  Ninety-six men died building the Hoover Dam, but contrary to popular belief, none were buried in the concrete. Ninety-six men, and that was with relatively modern construction techniques.

  “Seis millones ochocientos mil!”

  How many lives had been lost constructing the Great Wall of China, the pyramids at Giza, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, the Bagan temples, Angkor Wat, or Notre-Dame Cathedral?

  “Seis millones novecientos mil!”

  I guess there were worse things to which you could sacrifice your life, something that would live forever as a testament not only to God but also to the beauty of the human mind and its ability to imagine, design, and construct such things.

  “Siete millones!”

  It is consistently amazing to me that people could disavow the one thing that separated us from so much of the natural world—the ability to think, the responsibility of asking why and what if.

  “Siete millones cien mil!”

  Never a big one for dogma, I believe that there’s more divinity in an idea than in all the prayers in the world.

  “Siete millones doscientos mil!”

  But here I was, giving thanks for the fact that my granddaughter was safe and that my daughter was climbing into a pink ’59 Cadillac convertible and speeding to safety.

  “Siete millones trescientos mil!”

  Pulling my fists from the pockets of my canvas jacket, I held them up to my mouth, biting on the two pins in my hand, slipping one on my little finger and spitting the other into the sand. It was with a mild sense of satisfaction that I was thankful for those large hands, and more than anything else for what I lifted up in full display.

  “Siete millones cuatrocientos mil!”

  Two ready-to-explode hand grenades.

  12

  It had grown remarkably quiet in the sale barn arena as I slowly turned, showing the crowd what was in my hands. Some of them realized what I held, the majority didn’t, but all were very aware of the change of tone in the room.

  I smiled up at Bidarte.

  He shook his head. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “Raising the bid.” I stared at him. “These look to be two M67 fragmentation grenades. Now, the average man can throw these things about a hundred feet, which means I can pretty much land them anywhere in this building.”

  He continued to shake his head and gestured toward the gunmen who were now aiming at me. “And if we shoot you?”

  “It would have to be a very good shot, and besides, I’d still get at least one thrown. With all this Composition B, these things have an injury radius of about fifty feet and a kill radius of over fifteen with steel fragments going out some eighty feet—so if these things in my hands go off . . .” I glanced around. “Everybody in this building is going to get a taste.”

  “Including you.”

  “Yep, but that’s the thing—I don’t care. Everything I care about is out of your hands now. You no longer have any control over me.” I took a few steps toward him. “Do you really think that I wouldn’t give up my life to make sure that you and all these other people that wish me and mine harm were permanently removed?”

  He placed his hands on the railing. “I don’t think you will do it, not with all these innocent people in this arena.”

  I glanced around. “You know, I’m having a hard time finding the innocent in this place.”

  He shook his head some more and looked around at his men, probably searching for Culpepper as his go-to guy, but I didn’t see him and that was either very good or very bad.

  I took a deep breath. “Well, for lack of anything else, I suppose I’ll save my own life.”

  “And walk out of here? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  He smiled. “You won’t get very far, out there in the open.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” I looked behind me and was relieved to see that Culpepper was still missing. “Have your men open the gates, and I’ll just back out—what happens from there is between me and you.”

  He gave me a good long stare, but without his chief crazy I guess he wasn’t willing to take the chance; he’d courted death when he had dragged himself out of the Powder River country with a chest full of lead, and I suppose he wasn’t wild about the thought of rekindling the relationship. He made a barely perceptible gesture with his chin, and I listened as the gates squealed open.

  Careful not to trip over my own feet, I began backing out, still keeping a wary eye on the gunmen, strategically placed near all the exits. Some of them looked a little squirrelly, but I didn’t figure they’d do anything without Bidarte’s say-so.

  Everyone stayed clear, and I was about even with the doorway when I pitched one of the grenades back into the center of the arena.

  Erupting, the crowd started rushing in all directions and even the gunmen seemed intent on saving their lives by vacating the place as quickly as possible.

  With a loud pop, having reached the limit of its four-second M213 fuse, the grenade began filling the arena with a thick, white smoke, making it impossible to see anything. Pulling the remaining ring from my little finger, I threaded it back in the lever and deposited the remaining M67 back in my jacket pocket, truly thankful that Culpepper had been MIA since any veteran of the recent wars would’ve immediately spotted the blue color on the handle of the smoke grenades.

  A majority of the people coughed and stumbled through the thick vapor, and I reached over and took the AK from the guard who still sat slumped on the bench where I’d left him. I had a few more tricks up my sleeves, but I was going to have to meter them out if I was going to survive the night.

  Flipping the safety off, I fired a long burst above the building, which caused even more chaos as a lot of the audience fell back inside, thinking the war had begun.

  Taking off at a jog, I traced the layout of the tiny village in my mind and set out to the right, circling along the wall toward the monastery where I had more work to do before seeing
if I could get out with my hide intact.

  I ducked into the plaza and edged behind the giant puppets that had been used for the Day of the Dead parade while three more gunmen ran from the monastery toward the sale barn and all the noise.

  Leading with the barrel of the Kalashnikov, I turned into the main entryway and looked down the halls, but there was nobody there. I thought briefly of returning to the radio room but figured with my limited knowledge, it would be a waste of time that I didn’t have.

  Alexia was on my mind—I wasn’t going to leave this place without her, not after the way she’d taken care of Cady, never mind the prisoners who were in the same position as I had been and had just as good of a reason to get out and cause a little mayhem.

  I took the steps to the area below and threw open the first set of doors, but there was no one inside. I was beginning to think that anyone who had been down here must’ve been hauled away to the sale barn for the human auction until I heard a couple of people yelling farther down the hall. I flung the door open to the first cell, but it was empty. I had turned to go when something struck me in the back of the head.

  I almost lost the grip on my weapon but managed to re-aim. I stared at my assailant. “Adan?”

  He gawked at me, his face attached and perfectly fine. “You!?” He reached out and grabbed my shoulders. “I thought for sure you were dead, my friend!”

  “I thought they cut off your face.”

  He looked confused. “No, they brought a man into the cell and skinned his face to show me what they were going to do if I didn’t talk.” He thought about it. “He had a goatee not unlike my own.”