He knew that when she did finally turn to him everything would be all right. Like it had been that time long before: like it had never been. The wind across his eyes made them smart.
‘Rebecca,’ he said.
He was close behind her. His hand reached out, fingers at her hair, touching lightly against her shoulder, her neck.
‘Rebecca.’
He felt her body begin to turn and began to smile his welcome. Swish of black hair. The blade slid into his flesh below the jaw and cut. Aram jerked back, stumbling. Her eyes, dark, over him. The knife lovingly honed. He was on his back on the hard, ridged ground and Rebecca was standing over him, her arms stretched out but not in greeting.
Aram’s body twisted like an animal caught in a trap, drowning.
The red mouth below the harsh stubble of his beard buckled wide.
Chapter Seventeen
Hart saw the stage from the ridge of land he was riding west. It was moving at a steady pace along the main trail that would see it into Fallon by the middle of the day. A few desultory flakes of snow turned on the air as he watched. He guessed it would be one of the last making the journey that side of winter. His breath was like fine gray cloud. He pulled at the reins and moved the mare along the ridge, dipping down into the tree line some quarter mile further. By then he could see the thin spiral of smoke that came from the Batt farm.
They had already come from town for Rebecca. Found her hunched by the far side of the creek, ice clinging to her eyelashes, the ends of her hair. She looked at them when they spoke to her and never seemed to hear a thing. Zack Moses and the three men he’d deputized stood by helplessly while the boy, Ben, struggled across the yard with his mother.
They stared at one another, Rachel and Rebecca, mother and daughter, and neither seemed to recognize the other. Rebecca’s empty staring eyes and her mother’s empty womb.
Rachel held out her hands and the girl took them and allowed herself to be lifted from the ground. She shivered with the exposure to the cold, but never seemed to notice. Zack Moses hung his head and damned and cursed and told Rachel there wasn’t anything they could do but take her into the jail and lock her away until they could arrange some kind of trial. With the weather closing in hard the way it was, they might not see the circuit judge until the thaw.
Rachel looked at the mayor and allowed that she understood. She didn’t seem to know the girl any more, hold any claim on her.
‘Mind, you can come into town an’ visit whenever you want,’ he called when they were all mounted.
Rachel nodded slowly and turned her back.
In his heart, Zack was already wishing that the girl had turned her knife on herself after killing her uncle. He was to wish that all through that long winter. And Rebecca was to remain in her cell, eating little yet enough, a stony rebuke to something Zack Moses never understood.
Hart had seen the slow procession down the town’s main street before he had left, folk lining the sidewalk to point at her and stare, calling out the vilest names they could bring to their tongues. Rebecca had not seemed to have heard or seen a thing. Now he was riding in the wake of the preacher, set to make a farewell to the man he tracked down and persuaded to come back with him into what some folk, were pleased to call civilization.
The ceremony was in progress by the time Hart arrived. Rachel Batt stood close by the foot of the long opening her sons had labored long to hew from the frozen ground. The rough wooden coffin rested to the side, resting at an awkward angle against the loose clods of earth that were already fringed and blotched with white.
Ben Batt glanced up at Hart as he walked over from the creek and seemed about to move towards him. The preacher’s words rose and fell. At the head of the coffin lay a skimpy bunch of winter flowers. Hart stood, bare-headed and bowed, keeping his distance.
It was soon over.
Hart walked to the graveside and reached for one of the shovels, intent upon taking his share of throwing the heavy earth down over the man he’d ridden with and begun to think of as a friend. His gloved hand had no sooner touched the shaft of the shovel before Ben snatched it from him and began furiously to work, clods raining down upon Aram’s coffin like hammers.
Hart gave the family – what remained of it – a final, slow look. He guessed that with Aram dead, even with no papers signed, their father’s hidden wealth would find its way eventually to them. He knew he had no claim to any of it now; he could never ask Rachel for the price of bringing Aram home.
He turned on his heel and walked to where the gray was biting at the bark of the alder. No one as much as watched him go. The faint sound of his spurs, a small metallic ringing, was almost the only one to accompany him on the trail back to Fallon.
Zack Moses was waiting for him at the edge of town. From the expression on the mayor’s face, Hart knew that Zack was waiting to intercept him and he knew that the news wasn’t good. His immediate thought was that something had happened to Rebecca; he, too, reckoned she’d take her own life.
But it wasn’t that.
Zack’s face made clear that he’d had enough of what this fall had already brought and the winter was going to be hard as cold hell on earth.
He spoke to Hart without ever managing to look at him straight. ‘Couple of men got in on the stage.’
Hart let out a long, slow breath and knew the rest before he asked.
‘Lookin’ for me?’
Zack Moses found a reason for examining the cuff of his coat. ‘Yeah.’
‘One around the same age as me, same height. Got an odd patch of skin on his face here.’ Hart gestured towards his own left cheek. ‘Other one’s younger, smaller, Mexican.’
‘That’s them.’
Hart nodded, gave a short sigh, let the mare walk around through a half-circle.
‘You know ’em?’
‘We met.’
‘They ain’t friends?’
Hart shook his head. ‘No, they ain’t no friends of mine.’
‘Trouble then?’
‘Seems that way.’
Zack scratched at his belly, shifted the weight of his body from one foot to the other, fidgeted with the buckle of his belt.
‘What’s gripin’ you?’ Hart asked.
‘Town’s had more’n its share of killin’. Don’t seem—’
Hart jabbed a finger at him fast. ‘You think that, you go tell ’em. Ask ’em to climb back on the stage and ride out of town. Explain to ’em the cemetery’s full and besides there’s a town ordinance about blood on the streets.’
‘Hey, now! I didn’t mean—’
‘Like hell you didn’t!’ The gray tossed her head at the anger in Hart’s voice. ‘I didn’t notice you objectin’ to a little shootin’ in the streets when I stopped that bunch from takin’ everythin’ as was in the bank. Not when I brought in Jacob Batt neither.’
‘I know, I—’
‘You just want me to face up to ’em somewhere’s else.’
The mayor’s hat was in his hands and he moved the brim through his fingers, looking down. There’s another alternative.’
‘Spell it out!’
‘You could turn around. Ride off an’ —’
‘And have ’em come chasin’ after me.’
‘They wouldn’t have to find you.’
‘Bullshit! They found me here an’ they’d find me again. They both reckon they owe me an’ there won’t be no restin’ till that debt gets paid, one way or another. It don’t happen here then it’s some other street, some other town, some other mayor champin’ at the bit and runnin’ off at the mouth ’bout how his precious town’s bein’ driven back into the dirt by gunslingers and roughnecks both.’
‘Wes, I …’ Zack fiddled with his hat a little more and ground a heel into the dirt. ‘You know I’m grateful for what you done. Know you could have been sheriff here an’ welcome. The town ain’t about to forget about the bank, nor the Batt boy neither. That other stuff, the old man and the girl, they weren’t down
to you.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Hart without believing it.
‘But if you ride into town now and they’re laid up waitin’ for you, there’s innocent folk might get hurt.’
‘Damn it, Zack! Where the hell d’you think you are? Innocent folk always get hurt!’
The mayor turned away, set his hat back on his head and shrugged his coat collar up to his neck. The snow was still holding off but it wouldn’t be long now. The wind was keen as a knife edge.
‘I just wanted to save what I could.’ His voice was low and resigned.
‘I know. I know these two ain’t worth a two-cent damn either. But they ain’t goin’ to go away. Their guns ain’t about to disappear.’ He leaned down from the saddle and gripped the mayor by the arm. ‘I’ll do what I can to make sure no one else gets involved. You see if you can keep folk off the streets until it’s done.’
Zack Moses nodded his thanks and stood aside as Hart set his horse in motion.
‘They went by the saloon,’ he called after Hart.
‘Yeah,’ Hart said back, ‘they always do.’
~*~
Oklahoma was leaning his right elbow against the bar counter, leaving his left hand free to tease the butt of the Smith and Wesson holstered by his left hip. There was a sizeable butcher knife held in a sheath on the opposite side of his gunbelt. His fingers drummed unevenly on the counter and from time to time he glanced towards the batwing doors, as if expecting some kind of signal.
His shirt was worn and creased and fraying at the collar and cuffs and the wool vest was patched and torn at the back. His boots were scuffed and needed mending. There wasn’t above five dollars in his pants.
Since Hart and Fowler had put him and the Mex temporarily out of business over in Monterey, work had come hard and pickings had been slim. News like that traveled pretty damn fast where it mattered and when folk wanted their killing done they went elsewhere first. Jobs that didn’t involve using a gun were the kind Oklahoma didn’t take to and he had Hart to thank for making his kind of work more difficult to get. Hart and that blasted bourbon-soaked detective with the fat belly and beard! Shot him twice, shoulder and knee. The one had healed up pretty good but the knee gave him trouble when he walked, when he climbed on to a horse, when he turned over on his bed roll - whenever he did any damned thing.
Killing Hart wouldn’t make the knee any less trouble, but it would make Oklahoma feel a whole lot better otherwise.
Angel Montero, he felt the same. Hart had sliced the middle finger of his right hand close to the bone and that was Angel’s gun hand - his working hand. It was still stiffer than it ought to have been, the flesh that had regrown around the knuckle was more or less devoid of feeling and that kind of numbness didn’t help him with the speed or accuracy of his gunplay. His thin and handsome face turned this way along the street, then the other. He was sitting outside the saloon on a rocker someone had left there, feet pushed out against one of the posts that held the balcony in place over the sidewalk. His pistol was close to his injured hand, the hammer all but touching his palm. The palm itched. Itched to kill Wes Hart. The nastier, the slower and bloodier the better.
That done, he could ride back west with an easy conscience and pick up things where he’d left them off.
There wasn’t a soul on the street save for a woman hauling two sacks of flour from one of the stores over to her buckboard and a couple of men leaning against an empty hitching rail a hundred yards off, swopping yarns about who knew what.
Angel Montero wondered what a gunfighter like Hart found to do in a place like this. He’d heard some gossip about a girl over in the jail who’d cut the throat of some older feller Hart had brought back to town, but that didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.
He shifted in the chair and angled the brim of his sombrero more steeply over his narrow eyes.
Inside, Oklahoma slid his tongue round his cracked lips and downed what had remained of his whisky. He banged the empty glass down on the counter and called for another. He was still glancing from time to time at the door, still waiting for a signal from outside.
The barkeep’s hand shook just fractionally when he poured the drink and bit by bit the saloon cleared itself until Oklahoma and the bartender shared it with a sleeping cat and a one-eyed miner whose drunken stupor kept him from realizing what was about to go down.
Hart had seen the Mexican keeping watch outside the saloon and taken his horse around the back of the town, coming in near the livery. He left Clay there and walked easily, carefully down to the rear of Zack Moses’ store. His sawn-off Remington was resting on the makeshift bed. Cartridges were in his saddle bag. He loaded the gun, checked his Colt .45, took off his flat-crowned hat and set it back on again. The shotgun disappeared beneath the folds of his Indian blanket, gripped tight in his left hand. The right hand swung free, the fingers curled. The thong that held the bottom of the holster to his leg was secure, the safety loop pushed clear from the pistol hammer.
Hart had one final glance around the room and left the way he’d come. He’d remember the back door into the saloon, the one he hadn’t been able to use the time Jacob Batt had put a slug clean through the sheriffs brainpan.
Likely this time he could.
His feet were quiet as he approached the rear of the building. He was hoping that if it spread out on to the street, Zack Moses would have had time to clear folk out of danger.
As he neared the saloon he remembered what he’d said to the mayor about innocent people; he remembered the look of anticipation that had lit up the trapper’s face before Aram had made that final ride out to meet up with his brother’s wife and kin. He recalled the ugly rictus of death that had stared up at him from the coffin before it was nailed shut and loaded onto the wagon ready to take back out to the farm for burial.
He didn’t want to think about the girl across the street in the jailhouse but he did.
His fingers closed on the rounded handle of the rear door.
He leaned his ear to the wood but couldn’t hear the least sound from inside. Oklahoma might not still be inside; he could have guessed wrong and he might never have been there – that might not have been what Angel Montero’s presence outside meant.
He wasn’t going to find out by standing where he was.
His hand turned against the catch and at the last moment he threw the door open wide and went in fast. He saw the gunman slumped against the bar, saw him jerk upright and start to spin round, saw his hand drive for his gun.
To Hart it all seemed to happen very slow.
He was making his own draw, waiting, wanting to see Oklahoma’s face. He wanted Oklahoma to see him. He didn’t mind getting rid of trash but he wanted them to see what was going down. Oklahoma’s mouth hung open and the Smith and Wesson seemed to jump into the palm of his left hand.
Hart narrowed his faded blue eyes into the narrowest of slits and squeezed back on the trigger.
Two shots cannoned out across the almost deserted saloon.
Oklahoma was thrown back against the bar, his arms jolted wide, the pistol tumbling through his fingers. His eyes had jammed shut and his mouth was still open, though wider now.
Hart heard a sharp scraping from outside, feet on the boards, running.
Blood looped out of Oklahoma’s open mouth.
He shucked the blanket from the barrels of the shotgun.
Angel Montero slammed one half of the batwing doors inwards and leaped in, firing. He got off two shots while Hart stood his ground and adjusted the angle of the gun. The Mexican skidded on the sawdust-strewn floor and tried to duck, or turn, Hart would never be certain which. A volley of ten-gauge shot hurtled into Angel’s thigh and ribs and face and sent him crashing against the wall alongside the door. He hung there for a couple of seconds before his body slammed down hard and his nose broke with the force of landing.
Hart put up the shotgun and swung around the Colt.
The Mexican’s body jerked and convulsed, arms
and legs working like a swimmer trapped way beyond his depth.
There was a shout from the street, then another.
Oklahoma was huddled close to the bar and the cat, delicate on white feet, was sniffing suspiciously at the blood that puddled about his head.
Angel’s body was not yet still, his boots dancing some strange fandango, toes rattling the wood of the floor.
Hart levered back the hammer of the Colt and put a bullet through the side of the Mexican’s brain. Gray and pinkish red squelched against the wall and Angel’s right boot clattered a last time. Zack Moses’ face, anxious, appeared over the center of the doors. Back of the bar, the barkeep was helping himself to the stock. Hart slid his Colt back into its holster, slipped the safety thong in place. He let the blanket fall back over the Remington. For a moment he held Zack’s gaze.
There was little to do: less to say.
He didn’t think he’d see Fallon or its mayor again, not after today. In time he’d stop thinking about the dark haired girl locked in the jail and the trapper who’d trusted him and ridden back to civilization and the bosom of what family he had. As for the two men he’d just killed, Hart had all but forgotten their names already. It was time for moving on.
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