Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  He landed on his back and lay there for a second, unmoving—of course, his mouth was the first thing to recover. “Damn . . .” He raised his head a little but then let it drop back. “I don’t think I’ve ever been hit like that in my life.”

  Taking a step forward, I dropped the muzzle down in line with his chest, and I had to admit that I was impressed that he was conscious, let alone able to speak. “You were right, they are making these stocks sturdier.”

  He rubbed his jaw, surprised it was still attached, and slumped up on his elbows. “I guess you felt you owed me that one for hitting you?”

  “No, that one was for Alexia—the housekeeper you abducted, the one whose nephew you killed, the one whose face you beat.”

  He thought about it. “Oh, yeah.”

  I reached down and took the S&W .357 from his shoulder holster and then poked his knee with the M16. “Now, I’m not stupid enough to believe that you don’t have a backup somewhere.”

  He dropped his hand, and I could see where the left side of his jaw was swelling up like a softball. “Small of my back.”

  “Roll over—you don’t get to reach for it.” He did as he was told, and I snatched a Glock 9mm and stuffed it in my jeans, letting him roll back and look up at me.

  His head must’ve cleared enough to give it a shot, and he kicked at the rifle with his foot, knocking it sideways, but I was able to get my free hand around his wrist before landing a knee and all two hundred and fifty-five pounds into his solar plexus. His eyes bugged out, and his ribcage attempted to not punch through his spine. I listened as the air rushed back into his lungs like a bellows, and he started coughing like he might bring up some solid organs.

  I raised a hand toward the ridge and stopped Guzmán’s sniper from scattering Culpepper’s brains across the grass. “Just for the record, I don’t think I could be more pissed off at you than I am now.” Re-aiming the M16, I asked again. “That’s it?”

  He nodded, still coughing as he lay there.

  “Other than your winning personality?” He glared up at me, not all of the fire completely gone. “I’ve got another question—who killed Vic’s brother, Michael, my son-in-law?”

  “Not me.”

  I gestured with the barrel of the automatic weapon. “Who, then?”

  “I don’t know, that was just Bidarte’s deal. I had nothing to do with that.”

  Pushing the muzzle closer, I pressed the point. “But it was his deal.”

  “All I know is I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “He never spoke about Michael Moretti in Philadelphia?”

  “Not to me; he keeps his own counsel, Sheriff.” He tried to laugh but with his damaged jaw, couldn’t. “Look, I’m not saying he doesn’t have his dick in every dirty pie on the planet, all I’m saying is that it had nothing to do with me.” I considered what he’d just said, and he did a pretty good job of reading my mind. “What are you going to do, Sheriff? I mean, you’re not gonna kill me, it’s not in your nature. We’ve established that.”

  I stared down at him and said nothing.

  “I mean if you were going to kill me you would have done it right after you hit me or when I made my play, something that you could’ve rationalized into a noble deed—but not like this, not when I’m just lying here hurt and unarmed.”

  “You mean like you were going to do to me?”

  He massaged his jaw some more and then sat up. “Different . . . You’re not a cold-blooded killer, Sheriff. Believe me, I know.” He smiled, and there was blood between his teeth. “I see the predicament. I mean you’ve got to get out of here, but you don’t want to kill me, so how ’bout we make a deal?”

  “How about I shoot you in the kneecap and just let your boss do my dirty work for me?”

  His eyes widened just a bit. “Oh, come on now, Sheriff. We’re just a couple of ol’ cowboys here . . .”

  “Try again.”

  His eyes dropped, and I like to think that he honestly did think about what it was that he was asking, and for just a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of the man he’d been or the man he should’ve become.

  “From one soldier to another?” He shook his head, and he sighed as his eyes came back up to mine. “All I want is a sporting chance.” He gestured toward the wall. “You’re gonna blow this place sky high? Gimme thirty seconds on the other side of the wall before you throw that grenade, and either way, you’ll never hear from me again.”

  My turn to think about it as I used up time I didn’t have.

  “I know I’m a piece of shit, but you’re not.”

  I glanced back at the cliffs. “Do you have any idea what that sulfur is going to do when it ignites?”

  He chuckled a laugh that would’ve curdled milk. “Gotta be better than a bullet to the head.”

  “Not necessarily.” Running out of time, I stepped back.

  He smiled, and there was a lot of blood there now. “Thanks.” He slowly gathered himself and gingerly stood.

  “You won’t be thanking me here in a minute.”

  He nodded and moved toward the wall, stumbling a little. “I’m surprisingly agile, even with twenty-four bruised ribs.”

  I watched as he hoisted himself onto the footing and then reached and took hold of the top, dragging himself up and straddling the wall as my conscience got the better of me, just as I knew it would. “Come on back down on this side, and I’ll let you go the other way, toward the monastery.”

  “No, a deal’s a deal.” This time he laughed wholeheartedly. “I know me well enough to know that if you do that I’ll change my mind, get a gun and come after you.” He looked down at the other side of the wall, no doubt at all the rotting bodies. “I deserve this, and who knows, maybe I’ll make it.”

  I said nothing but swung his rifle around, slinging it onto my shoulder as I pulled out the grenade again.

  He stretched his jaw where I’d struck him, his face completely lopsided now. “Thirty seconds?”

  “I’ll give you forty-five.”

  “How ’bout them Cowboys?” With the raising of a fist and a quick nod, he threw his other leg over the wall and was gone.

  Pulling my Illinois pocket watch from my dirty jeans, I noted the sweep hand of my grandfather’s timepiece and counted the seconds as I placed the ring of the M67 in my teeth and pulled, still holding the lever in place as I reared back.

  Against all better judgment, I gave him seventy-four.

  In honor of Bob Lilly.

  13

  Phlegethon.

  That was the only way to describe it.

  I had heard my grandfather use the word, explaining that it was one of the five rivers of Hades; he had threatened numerous times to throw me in it if I wasn’t accomplishing the ranch work up to his expectations. I couldn’t help but think of the old bird as I stood there holding his pocket watch and seeing the inferno twisting its tendrils toward the sky.

  The air had left the environs with the sudden whoosh, and I’d thought the smoke from the grenade had blown back in my face, but the truth was that the oxygen surrounding the mountain had been consumed. Like spider webs of fire, the white-blue flames had shot through the slag heaps and covered everything like a moving tide.

  There was no explosion yet, but the channels of wind that the lack of air had created spun the fire in perfect funnels that danced up the cliffs as if the laws of nature and physics need not apply.

  Throwing myself backward, I could feel the heat from the conflagration and watched as the yellow powder burned between melting and boiling temperatures, changing its composition to a lower density but a higher viscosity and forming polymers, the molten sulfur assuming a dark red color, the entire mountain bleeding.

  There was no way Culpepper could’ve made it through all that.

  I figured it was time to hotfoot it out of th
ere before the heavy poisonous gas poured over the wall or the mines exploded, sending tons of rock toppling down on me. I started running but slowed to a jog with the effort, climbing after the mule train and hoping I could get enough distance between the cliffs and me.

  Making the first switchback, I stopped, wheezing for breath, with my hands on my knees, and wishing I’d kept running with Henry. I took a few deep breaths and turned to get a good look at the strangely illuminated mountainside. A small bank of what looked like ground fog was building on the upslope of the wall and in minutes it would overrun the thing and begin seeping through the empty streets of the mountain town where I could see the eight dead men lying on the grass.

  Blowing the pungent smell from my nose, I coughed and thought about what the poisonous gas would be like down there. Looking up at the cliffside at the numerous boreholes, I started thinking that I might’ve overestimated the effects of the trapped gas in the abandoned mines and that it was possible they were better ventilated than I’d thought; but it didn’t really matter, the fire and subsequent gas would do the trick of shutting down Bidarte’s operation.

  From this perspective, I could see the taillights of the few remaining cars and trucks that were clogging the roadway, but I figured the occupants would make it to safety after moving the roadblock my friends had constructed—I silently thanked the powers that be that they and my daughter were far away.

  Winded from the exertion or from the fumes, I covered my nose and began climbing again, figuring that the sooner we all got going, the better.

  I’d just topped the ridge and was only a hundred yards from my companions when I heard the first rumble. I turned in time to see one of the lower mines explode as if by a thousand sticks of dynamite, sending rock shards and boulders cascading down the cliffs and against the wall. A credit to the builders, the structure held until three more of the holes blew out in a chain reaction of destructive power like a planned demolition.

  In a matter of seconds the rest of the mines began exploding, and the entire cliffside slumped toward the town in a tide of burning stone. The wall didn’t stand a chance against the millions of tons of fiery rock that pushed it aside and filled the streets, herding the deadly cloud of sulfur dioxide ahead of it like one of the ten plagues of Egypt.

  The sale barn was destroyed, as were the majority of the buildings to the north of the town, and I noted that the old monastery took the brunt of the landslide and was collapsing onto itself, the rubble being pushed forward and down the hillside and toward the few abandoned cars that were left on the road.

  I’d never seen anything like it.

  There was a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see Adan. “God help anyone who was still there. We have to go.”

  I followed him across the ridge where Isidro stood with the Garand hung over his shoulder. I stuck a hand out, and we shook. “Thank you.”

  Returning the fingers to his mouth, he replicated the western meadowlark—his “you’re welcome.”

  I patted Isidro’s shoulder, and we joined the others. Lowery shook his head. “You cowboys and Indians aren’t supposed to work together.”

  “Watch us.” I passed him and walked toward Alexia, who was looking on from a safe distance, and spoke after catching my breath. “How are you doing?”

  She tried to smile, her face a mess. “You did not kill him?”

  “Culpepper? No.” I glanced back at the collapsed and smoldering massif. “I think the mountain did it for me.”

  * * *

  —

  Isidro, predictably, decided to walk, trusting that he could probably go safer and farther in his tire-tread sandals than on our broken-down mules.

  The rest of us were comfortably saddled, or as comfortably as we could be, and made our way in the darkness over the ridge, across the open meadows, and toward the drop-off that led to the sounds of the river that seethed below.

  The river twisted through the canyon like a rattler intent on biting itself, and in the moonlight, I could make out the remains of a trestle bridge that the old-timers must’ve used to drive ore wagons across when mining the sulfur.

  I could see the flat rim of the canyon and the plateau that would take us back to Adan’s home and hopefully a reunion with Cady, miles away. Isidro led on foot, and I pulled up the drags, glancing over the itchy spot between my shoulder blades every minute or so, wondering if Bidarte had gotten away. Anybody who had returned to the monastery was most certainly dead, but he was an escape artist and had gotten out of dire situations before like a black cat with nine lives.

  Thinking I’d seen something on the ridge, I pivoted in the saddle and studied the skyline, but after a few moments, figuring it was my imagination, I followed the others over the edge and down the treacherous track that was only as wide as a dining room table.

  It was moderately dark, and the path was rough, but the mules were sure-footed and there were only a few slips as we got to a cornice that wrapped around the canyon wall. Personally, I was going to be happy when we had gotten far enough so that we wouldn’t be sitting ducks from above.

  I unslung the M16 from my shoulder and wondered what, exactly, the mule I was sitting on would do at the sound of automatic gunfire. There wasn’t a lot of room for mistakes on the narrow trail, and if one of them started to run, it was a surefire train wreck to the stony floor of the canyon a good quarter of a mile down.

  Past the cornice there was a wide enough overhang where the group had converged, Adan circling back and waiting for me. “I think we made it.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  Urging his own mule a little forward, he looked back up the trail. “Did you see something?”

  “No, just a feeling.”

  “We have traveled too far, too quickly.” He reached down and patted his mount’s withers. “And we have the only mode of transportation that can go this way, other than walking.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Nudging past, he joined the others as I caught up with Lowery who, on the mule, looked to be the most uncomfortable person in the world. “Hey, Sparky, I need a word.”

  He looked at me, puzzled. “What’d you call me?”

  “Sparky, it’s an old term for radio operators.”

  “Radio?”

  “It was a thing, before your time. . . . Anyway, the coordinates you gave the Feds were for the village?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  I glanced around for effect. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not in the village anymore.”

  “So?”

  “So how are they going to find us?”

  “Oh.”

  Fumbling with my shirt pocket, I took out the sat phone and looked at the cracked screen. “Well, hell . . .” Remembering the code that he’d told me, I punched it in and then dialed one of the only numbers I knew by heart.

  There was some buzzing and clicking and then a familiar voice. “Red Pony Bar and Grill and Continual Soiree.”

  “Henry.”

  There was some fumbling, and I think for one of a half dozen times in his life, he was taken aback. “Where are you?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. How is Lola?”

  “Perfectly safe. There were two men who came up on the Rez asking questions about you and your family a few days ago—specifically about your granddaughter.”

  “And?”

  “They disappeared.” There was a long and loaded pause. “No one seems to know what happened to them.”

  He said nothing more.

  “Thank you.”

  “Where is Cady?”

  “Free, and on her way back.” I adjusted the thing at my ear as the mules traipsed on. “Look, I’m in the middle of nowhere, Mexico, and I think I’m going to need some help before this is all over.”

  “What would you like m
e to do?”

  “Contact McGroder’s office in El Paso and tell them we’ve left the village and are heading west by northwest at a pretty slow pace, but that as soon as they can get here would be great.”

  “They know where this village is?”

  “They have the coordinates.”

  “Consider it done.” There was a pause. “Bidarte?”

  I held the phone there for a second. “I’ll talk to you when I get back.” Thumbing the button, I returned it to my shirt pocket.

  Slapping my mule in the ass, I headed off after the group and then turned to look up, still seeing nothing but still feeling something.

  After another twenty minutes we made it to the canyon floor and a smooth pathway that circled back about a quarter mile between the boulders, leading to the dilapidated bridge. The river was narrow, only about fifty yards across, but the water was fast moving with rapids and whitewater a tainted brown.

  The bridge had evidently been built before the use of modern cars and was about the width of a Model T or A, which figured into the life span of the sulfur mines that had been in operation after the consolidation following the Mexican Revolution. The hand-formed stone and concrete abutments held rusted cables and deadheads that had likely been there since the twenties. There was plenty of room for a mule, but we would have to pick our way carefully over the broken planks.

  Isidro stood on the bridge as Adan stopped his mount at the short incline.

  “I think maybe we should walk the mules.”

  “I’ve seen structures that have inspired more confidence, yes.”

  We all climbed off, and I went over to help Alexia dismount before turning to Adan. “Do you want to try it first, or do you want me to?”

  “I weigh less than you.”

  “Your mule doesn’t.” I smiled, handing him my lead, and then began lessening my weight by unslinging the M16 and handing that to him as well along with the .357 revolver and the Glock 9mm.

  “Jesus.”

  “Culpepper.” Pulling my own Colt from the small of my back, I handed it to him also. “But this one is mine so take especially good care of it.”