Then, just like that, Robins was gone.
He sprang into the mist. There was no second glance. No hesitation. No final word. He simply jogged away from the boulder, becoming a specter, then nothing. Even the crunch of his boots went quiet.
Elizabeth was alone.
She suppressed her panic, but she knew what this meant. Every man for himself. No escape. No prisoners. No exchange of diplomatic words. No time for ultimata. They were all faceless killers stalking through oblivion. Even the air was toxic, now. A single unprotected breath would be their last.
Gunshots. The pecks of revolvers.
Another gunshot—the blast of a shotgun.
Someone screamed. The scream morphed into a wail of pain.
A second blast of the shotgun.
The voice went silent.
Robins’ shotgun, thought Elizabeth, her weapon quivering in her hands. One down.
More shots. Five, six.
Then she heard a grunt. The sound of an old man, accustomed to pain. She heard a figure collapse.
Robins. He’s hit. He’s down.
Elizabeth rose to her feet, balancing against the boulder. But she knew it was too late, even before she heard the voice.
“I found one!” a man squealed. “Over here!”
A voice like helium. One of the Twins. Standing over Robins.
“Is he dead?” came a distant voice.
“Not yet.” The Twin laughed giddily. “I got his gun! Not so brave now, are ya, old man?”
All movement stopped. An inquisitive silence.
“What’s that there?” wheezed the Twin. “A candle? You hear me, old man? What do you have a candle f—?”
A blast.
The explosion of dynamite.
Elizabeth couldn’t see it, but she felt it. A wave of force. The mist swirled in its wake. And then, before Elizabeth could register what was happening, something struck her mask. A wet, pulpy substance. A glop of human flesh. It stuck to her eyelet. It ran down the side of her rubber-coated cheek.
Robins was gone. The second Twin was gone. Two mortals, blown to pieces with a stick of nitroglycerin. No casket. No burial. Nothing to mark their final resting place, except for the gory splash of their bodies. Not even a prayer to commemorate their passing. Two whole lives, as gone as they could be.
Elizabeth choked back tears. She wiped the sludge from her face. She looked up, whimpering, breathless. And then she saw another figure.
A trim man. Standing alone. Stationary. Shocked beyond sound or movement. His head moved slowly from side to side, as if to deny the truth of his brothers’ annihilation. A silence passed between them, too stunned to be called grief.
Slowly, the man sensed Elizabeth. He turned his head. His gun didn’t move. It just hung in his limp fingers.
Elizabeth raised her shotgun. She pulled the trigger.
The man flew backward. His chest burst open, a buttercup of rent fabric. He landed flatly on his back, arms and legs spread out, as if to make angels in the dust.
Nothing followed. No sound. No vision. Elizabeth stood there, gun in both hands, huffing into the confines of her mask. The train was gone. The boulders were gone. There was only the mist. Elizabeth wondered if this was what the afterlife was like—a monochromatic abyss, extending forever.
Then she heard a voice.
“I reckon,” called the woman, “we have ourselves a stalemate.”
The voice was strangely clear, even through both masks. Husky and firm.
“I believe I’m out of brothers,” the woman continued. “No sense denying it. A sister knows when her kin have passed.”
Elizabeth felt exposed. She dropped quietly to her knees, then spread herself across the ground. She waited.
Holly laughed. A mournful cackle. A laugh like Elizabeth had never heard before. There was nothing funny about that laugh.
“Seeing as how I have nothing to lose,” Holly Haynes went on, “I’ll be square with you, whoever y’all are. There’s only me. Ain’t a soul aboard that train. I have one more brother. He’s nowhere near here, so he’ll cause you no harm. So humor me. How many have you got?”
For the rest of her days, Elizabeth would never be able to explain why she answered. Maybe it was the woman’s honest tone, or her matronly presence, or the evenness of her voice, so accustomed to loss that even her three dead siblings couldn’t cause a ripple. Whatever the reason, Elizabeth answered.
“Just me.”
“Ah,” Holly called. “A female, no less. Then let’s you and me talk, corset to corset.”
Smoke still seeped from the barrel of Elizabeth’s gun. She thought to load a cartridge into the empty carbine, but she feared the sound would give away her position.
“That gold ain’t nothing to me,” Holly declared. “And now, it’s no good to anybody, just sitting here. Just pretty yellow bricks. Junk inside more junk. But I think you feel the same way. If you wanted that gold, you’d have blown that train sky high. No need to trap us. Could’ve turned that train to toothpicks and sorted it out later. So I wager you ain’t here to rob the robbers. You’re here for justice. Ain’t that right?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer. She cradled the weapon against her shoulder. The mask felt heavier with each staccato breath.
“If you know a lick about me, Missie, you know I’m a vengeful sort. Can never get enough vengeance. But seeing as why you’re here—the things I done, the folks I’ve wronged—no justice will ever satisfy you, either. After awhile, justice, revenge—they all add up the same way, don’t they?”
Elizabeth thought she could see something. A dark form, somewhere in the red. She pressed her masked cheek against the butt of the gun. She closed one eye. But was it real, or just a figment? She had shot left. A possible target. Amorphous. Distance too far to gauge. Could she?
“Well, I’ll tell you a secret,” said Holly Haynes. “The man who hanged my daddy is lying in that car, dead as a doornail. I’ve hurt them tycoons. I’ve hurt ’em bad. Felt good, to tell the truth. Felt real good. But maybe it’s time to leave it be. I don’t say that easy. I could keep on punishing them bastards till hell boils over, and still I’d thirst for more.”
Holly sniffed thoughtfully. “Then again, they’ll still be out there, doing what they do. The men who truly did this, they’re sitting pretty in their clubs and mansions, a thousand miles away. We’ll never even know who they are. They wiggle a finger, and our lives turn to mud. What have I got? One brother to spare. Just one. A good man, all things considered. A man who could live an honest life.”
Elizabeth felt the shotgun go loose in her hand. She felt her eyes mist over, her lips curl.
“This here track goes two ways,” said Holly. “What do you say we each take one. And we’ll call it even?”
Now Elizabeth lay on her stomach, forehead pressed against the ground. She no longer held the gun at all.
“So what do you say, stranger? You go your way, and I’ll go mine. We leave this business to the crows.”
Elizabeth raised her head.
“No more innocents!” she cried. “No more bank tellers! Nobody who hasn’t done you wrong!”
A long silence followed. The vista was still empty. Yet Elizabeth felt a tremor in the air. She felt like she could read the outlaw’s thoughts.
At last Holly called out. “From one stubborn woman to another, you have my word.”
Deep inside, Elizabeth wanted to regret her long walk back. Shotgun strung over her shoulder, satchel crossing her bosom, Elizabeth felt an anguish settle over her.
But soon she was clear of the deadly cloud. She pulled away the mask. She took a draught of arid Arizona air. She felt relief.
Elizabeth followed the tracks for miles. With every step, she felt lighter. She expected the heartache to start, to ravage her with doubt and remorse. But that feeling never came. She had mourned the loss of so many friends, but Robins was different. He’d kept his vow. And hadn’t Elizabeth done everything she could? Hadn
’t the lawman died with honor, exactly as he wished?
This sensation was so strange—something like melancholy, something like peace, the uncanniest thing she had ever felt.
Hours passed. After some leagues, her ill will fell away. Elizabeth spotted the rooftops of Pickleburg. She saw the smoke rising from its foundry. Her heart was empty, purified. All she felt were the comforting rays of the sun.
Epilogue
T o Jeremiah MacAuley, every day was the same, now. Asleep or awake, he felt only pain and more pain. Conquered by darkness, MacAuley wished he could forget what it was like to see. Every little sound taunted him; he instinctively turned his ears toward each tinkle and scrape. The bachelor who had once cooked his own suppers now hankered for his skillet and stove. The agile rider yearned for the feel of a saddle, or even the breeze through a car’s open window. He resented every spoonful of stew that the nurses insisted on feeding him. Each time the orderlies rolled him over to befoul the bedpan, he wanted to scream. Only his manhood dictated silence.
But today was different. He woke to an unexpected scent, which wafted into his nostrils. It was bready and inviting. He tried to roll sideways, to get a closer sniff. After so much oatmeal and soup, MacAuley had yearned for fresh tortillas, and now, out of nowhere, they were here.
“Morning, Sheriff,” came a voice. “Care for some breakfast?”
MacAuley recognized the voice, but just barely. He couldn’t remember her name; he’d been too delirious to understand who she was or why they should meet. Maxwell had brought her, hadn’t he? But what was her business here? He’d clean forgotten. The details were lost in the fog of delirium.
He struggled to sit up. Small hands reached under his arms and back. They were the nurses’, he could tell; he’d memorized their touch. He groaned, but the burns no longer plagued him as much as his muscles, which had atrophied from lack of use. When MacAuley was propped against his pillows, he murmured, “I’m sorry, miss, but I…”
“Never mind,” said the woman sharply. “It doesn’t matter who I am. I’m not one you want to talk to, anyway.”
MacAuley wasn’t sure what to say. What was she doing here, then? Who else would think to visit him?
Then he heard a second voice: “Buenos días, Señor.”
MacAuley’s heart throbbed. He gulped back his shock. “Rosita,” he moaned.
“She has something to tell you,” said the first voice. “I’ll translate.”
The woman spoke. A series of long and unbroken sentences, articulated in the lilt of a songbird. MacAuley listened intently, though he could not recognize a single word. He felt his own pained expression, as if not understanding meant he would lose that voice forever. But then the first woman spoke as well, their languages overlapping.
“She wants to thank you,” the translation began. “Every day that passes, she remembers the bandits who rode into town and hurt those innocent people. But more than that, she remembers how courageous you were, standing alone in the middle of the road. She would have come here sooner, but she heard that you were not yet awake. When you did wake, she felt unworthy of your attention in such a trying time. But every day she made a tortilla, she cried into the pan, because she missed your visits. No stranger had ever tried to learn her language. And no man has ever treated her so kindly.”
MacAuley sniffed, and his face contorted with emotion. “I—I wish she wouldn’t see me like this. Like a—a damned invalid…”
The women exchanged a few words in Spanish, and then Rosita continued her monologue.
“Not an invalid,” said the woman. “A hero, noble with scars. If you cannot now see the world, it’s because the world is unworthy of such eyes.”
MacAuley felt the tears bleed through his bandages. In all the months he had watched Rosita, smiled to her, eaten her food, he had never dreamed of hearing her thoughts in his own tongue. He felt her small hand grasp his, their fingers interlaced. For the first time, MacAuley did not register the pain. All he felt was gratitude for the chance to be alive.
On her way out the door, Elizabeth drew an envelope from her bag and approached one of the orderlies.
“Make sure the Sheriff receives this, will you?” she said. “You’ll have to read it aloud, of course.”
The nurse bowed her head neutrally, as if she received such requests all the time.
Elizabeth stepped into the morning light. A breeze swept across the yards and side-streets of Ezra, and bits of straw whirled across the flats like miniature cyclones. Maude sat on a bench with their two suitcases; a newspaper was unfolded in her lap. Elizabeth had never seen Maude with a paper, and the sight made her grin. Maude looked up from the headlines, and when she saw Elizabeth approaching, she stood.
“All well?”
“Let’s hope so,” said Elizabeth soberly. “It won’t be easy. Not a lot going for a blind man. He’s got a hard life ahead. But maybe he’ll at least have some good company.”
“How…” Maude clasped her hands behind her back. “That is, what did you say in the letter?”
“I told him what happened to Robins,” said Elizabeth. “Give or take some liberties. I was vague about his fate. The news is bad enough, no need for gory details. And I didn’t say much about Holly Haynes, either. After all he’s been through, the last thing that man needs is the truth.”
They sipped from the same canteen, then listened to the dull hubbub of Main Street. Somewhere in town, a housewife was ringing a triangle. A dog barked. The sounds were simple and repetitive; there was no conversation to overhear. Elizabeth was ready to leave Ezra, to ride away and never come back. But as little as she cared for the town, she was satisfied to know that its weary denizens were safe—at least from the likes of the Haynes Gang.
Elizabeth lifted her luggage. It felt good in her hand, like an old friend. She turned to Maude. She saw the dressings that still covered her assistant’s hand. She blushed.
“I’ll bet you can’t wait to leave the desert,” remarked Elizabeth.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Maude, her head wobbling indecisively. “I think it may be growing on me.”
Elizabeth beamed. For all the tension and violence of the past week, Maude had fought her way through. She looked so solid on her feet, so imperturbable, like someone who had learned an unspeakable secret, and was wiser for it.
“We needn’t rush back, you know,” said Elizabeth. A coy look crossed her face. “I mean, Pittsburgh’s not going anywhere.”
“Why, Elizabeth!” said Maude. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, while we’re out this way…” The uncannologist shrugged. “Seems to me we should see Hollywood, don’t you think?”
Maude clapped her hands together, ignoring the pain in her palm. “Oh, Elizabeth! Can we?”
Elizabeth winked. She ushered Maude forward, and they walked side-by-side, suitcases swinging, into the wide horizon.
Ghost Bandits of Sonora (Elizabeth Crowne) Page 14