by Robert Knott
“You see something?” I whispered.
“No,” Virgil said.
“Thought I did,” I said. “Thought I saw something, some movement.”
I peeked out and looked around the pillar, then moved back.
“What is it, Everett?”
“Somebody,” I said very quietly.
Then we heard some sound. It was a voice, but it was quiet and hard to make out clearly. Especially difficult to hear what was being said, but it was unmistakably a voice we were hearing.
I leaned out and looked past the pillar again, but now I saw nothing. Then I saw movement again. There was someone there in the darkness. They were slowly moving toward us between the rails. I was still protected behind the pillar but was peeking out around the side of it so I could see. Virgil was still next to me and Cotton was next to him.
“What is it, Everett?” he said. “What do you see?”
I raised the lantern up so the light would have a farther reach, and then I saw who it was.
“It’s the Indian,” I said. “Stringer’s Kiowa tracker . . . Locky.”
Virgil moved out from behind the pillar to have a look and Cotton did the same.
Locky moved slowly toward us, barely staying on his feet. His face was covered in blood.
We walked toward him. He was mumbling in Kiowa as he stumbled between the tracks. The whites of his eyes showed through his bloody face. When he saw that it was Virgil and me, he fell to his knees and said in a raspy voice, “Madre María . . .”
57
When Driggs and Allie got close to her house she stopped and turned to him.
“Thank you,” she said.
“This is you?” he said as he kept moving toward the house.
“It is.”
Driggs sensed Allie wanted to call it a night right here, but he continued moving toward the gate as he looked to the house. Driggs knew the difference between want and desire.
“A white picket fence, no less,” he said.
Allie hesitated to follow as she looked around a bit, then lingered after him as he continued toward the house. Driggs stopped at the gate and gazed up at the house for a long moment. When Allie moved up he turned to her a little, then looked back to the house.
“Lovely home,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said as she looked toward the house, then glanced to him. “I appreciate you seeing me home safely.”
“My pleasure.”
He lifted the gate latch.
“After you,” he said.
Allie stuttered a bit as she said with a nervous laugh, “Oh, I can see my way from here.”
“I’m taking you all the way,” he said as he removed his hat and pointed toward the front door.
Allie looked at him without moving, then back at the house, and moved up the rock path toward the door. She could feel Driggs’s formidable presence just behind her as she climbed the steps to the dark porch.
When she got to the door she paused slightly, then turned. He was still holding his hat in his hand.
“You’ve been so kind,” she said as she retrieved the door key from her clutch.
“I aim to please,” he said.
“Well, then,” she said as she held out her hand. “Again, thank you for a lovely evening.”
He took her hand and held it, then brought it up to his lips and kissed it. He then pulled her gently toward him. He leaned and kissed her on the cheek . . . and just as quickly as he had pulled her out of her world and into his, he released her.
“You are okay from here on, I take it?” he said.
“Yes, yes, of course,” she said as she turned and fumbled, trying to get the key into the lock.
“Allow me,” he said.
Driggs took the key from her and slid it into the hole, turned it, and opened the door. It swung into the room slowly and freely as it offered a long, eerie creak.
She looked up to him and smiled. Then he held up the key. She reached for it, but he held it back slightly.
“Do you want me to come inside?” he said. “Make sure everything feels right?”
“No, I believe I can make it from here, and if I can’t, then I guess they might as well put me under.”
“Let’s not go that far,” he said with a laugh.
She stepped inside and turned to him. He put his hat to his chest, bowed, and said, “Good night . . . and sweet dreams.”
“Good night,” she said and closed the door.
He put on his hat, turned, and walked down the steps. He opened the gate, shut it behind him, and moved off. Then he looked back just as he passed behind the adjacent building for one last look at the house. He could see Allie’s silhouette as she looked out the front door.
As Driggs moved on, he thought about what it might have been like if he’d gone ahead and got inside that house and did what it was that he did so well. But there were more pressing things churning up now, far more important happenings for him to be concerned with. The fire that he’d felt earlier when he was looking at himself in the mirror in Allie’s dress shop was getting hotter by the hour. He was beginning to feel the full heat all over his body now. It was no longer just in his loins but was spreading like a wildfire through his body.
“Fear not,” he said quietly as he walked on. “I am the first and the last. I am the one that lives. I was dead but behold I am alive for evermore. And I hold the keys of hell and death. I saw heaven open and I behold a white horse and he who sat upon him was called faithful and true. And in righteousness he doth judge and make war. This is the second death. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan which deceived the world was cast down to earth. Behold I come quickly, my reward is with me to give every man according to his deed. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”
—
Back in the room, Driggs drank some whiskey and smoked cigarettes as he thought about the evening, about Margie, about the princess, about what he needed to do, and about Allie. He liked her, the way she moved, the way she smelled. Once everything was said and done he figured he’d take good care of her, like he knew she needed, wanted . . . but currently he had those more significant thoughts that were occupying his head.
Around three in the morning he crawled into bed, and when he did the princess stirred and for the next few hours he toiled and procured before his mind eased and he eventually drifted off to sleep.
58
Locky was caked in dried blood and new blood and very badly wounded. It was obvious by his appearance that he was suffering from injuries caused by an explosion. His shirt and trousers were ripped and he was bleeding from cuts and scrapes along one entire side of his body.
Virgil, Cotton, and I quickly gathered up the young Indian tracker and carried him back toward the mine’s portal.
“Snap to, fellas,” Cotton called out across the stack of rubble to the men outside. “I need four of you, now. We have a badly injured man in here.”
Cotton looked back to us then called out again, “Let’s everyone be alert here, might be more to come. Get our medical supplies ready, everything, no telling what we might need.”
Within moments, there were four miners including Jeff crawling over the rocks to get to us.
Locky was weak and seemed close to death but kept talking as if he desperately needed to be heard. His garbled words were a mixture of Spanish and Kiowa. He kept trying to point to the opposite end of the shaft as we laid him down near the mine entrance.
“Can you understand anything that he is saying, Everett?”
Locky held my arm tight. His eyes were wide as he stared at me, speaking intently. His words were jumbled and it was difficult to make out the language combinations.
“No,” I said. “Not really . . .”
Then Locky spoke clearly.
“Querido Dios el único . . .” he said through his clenched teeth as he was fighting off pain. “Diablo escapado.”
“Escaped?” Virgil said. “That much I got.”
I nodded.
Then Locky said, “Sorprendido de explosión . . . mucho sorprendido.”
“Surprised by explosion,” I said.
The miners wasted no time getting to us.
“Get him out,” Cotton said. “Do what you can to keep him alive.”
Locky squeezed my arm and with eyes wide he mumbled a string of Kiowa then ended with, “Esperó Diablo . . . para nosotros . . . todos . . . todos.”
I looked to Virgil.
“The Devil waited for them . . .”
The four men lifted Locky and started making their way out. Virgil, Cotton, and I moved on to the opposite end of the tunnel. We could hear Locky mumbling as we moved away. After a moment the only sound we could hear was the sound of our own footsteps.
Judging by the sight of Locky, I was not feeling good about what we might find at the opposite end of the shaft. We walked past where we found Locky and the smell of death intensified with each step.
Then Cotton stopped.
“It’s closed off on the east end for certain,” Cotton said. “There is usually a breeze. Didn’t say nothing before about that, wasn’t real sure. I thought the air was just stacking and not coming through because there is such a small opening at the portal but there should be, would be, moving air through here . . . And the dead smell I was talking about? Well, this is not that, not what I was talking about, this is something much worse.”
We walked on a ways, then we came across loose rock scattered about the shaft floor. As we continued walking there was more and more rubble and the smell got stronger and stronger.
“That is where the opening was,” Cotton said. “He closed off both ends.”
Then Cotton stopped, raised his lantern some, and pointed.
“My God,” Cotton said.
Lodged in a crevasse of the rock wall was the bloody chunk of a posse member’s head. There was bone, hair, beard, and a single ear visible.
Virgil looked to me and shook his head.
“He got them to this opening, then somehow blew them up,” Virgil said.
We walked on a ways, and as we did we began to see more and more blood and pieces of the dead men. Two bodies we came across were badly mangled but still intact. They’d been blown back and wedged, upright, one man atop the other between a pillar and the wall. Virgil, Cotton, and I moved closer to the rubble with our lanterns raised. When we got next to the blockage at the tunnel’s end there was an arm sticking out of the rocks still clutching a pistol.
“My God,” Cotton said again.
The portal on this east end of the shaft was lower but wider than the opening on the west. It was at least twenty feet across. Virgil moved off to his left and I went toward the right. Within a moment I spotted something that put a lump in my throat.
“Virgil,” I said.
He looked to me as I leaned down, picked up Sheriff Stringer’s badge, and held it up for Virgil to see.
59
Locky was the only survivor from the blast that closed off the east end of forty-two and killed Sheriff Stringer and three of his deputies. The Kiowa tracker was taken down to the village of Bridgewater in the buckboard and taken into the care of Cotton’s wife and daughters. It was hard to understand just how he could have come out of that blast in one piece, but he did. According to Cotton’s wife, who was the resident self-made town doctor with a background of medicine and helping miners, Locky would survive.
Virgil and I took a short rest, got some food, then rode out of Bridgewater for the east side of forty-two. We rode south on the road and just as the sun was coming up we found the pass over the mountain; the trail switchbacked going up on the west side, as well as traversing down on the east side.
Once we arrived at the eastern portal there was no one in sight and no immediate evidence that provided us any details as to the direction of Ed Degraw.
There was a spectacular view of the valley below from where we sat our horses for a long moment.
“Unless the sonofabitch found a burro on the other side that we don’t know about,” I said, “he had to walk away from here.”
We both looked down at the ground and moved our horses away from one another to see if we might find any evidence of track. There was a flat piece of land around the portal and we moved a little bit at a time around the perimeter.
“Nothing over here,” I said. “Nothing obvious, anyway.”
Virgil shook his head.
“Here neither.”
We rode back toward one another and stopped directly in front of the portal entrance.
“One thing is,” Virgil said. “He more than likely figures there’s no one left to be on his ass.”
“No,” I said. “He shouldn’t.”
“Which way would you go?” Virgil said.
I turned my horse around and faced the same way Virgil was facing, again looking out at the open vista below. I looked around for a moment and pointed the direction that looked like the natural fall and the easiest walking.
“There,” I said. “Toward that meadow with those spring flowers.”
Virgil nodded.
“Looks inviting,” he said.
“Pretty fertile over here,” I said. “Much more so than the other side.”
“Is,” Virgil said.
“Awful nice country to have a monster like this no-good fucker moving around in.”
“That, too,” Virgil said.
“He’ll stay with the green as long as there is green,” I said.
We rode for an hour down through the pines, fremonts, spruce, and hackberry. There was a decent-sized brook that came from the mountains behind us that we crossed back and forth a few times. Virgil rode up a hill to a clearing just above the water, and when he got to the top he held up his hand and stopped. I stayed in the stream, where my horse was drinking.
“What?” I said.
“Smoke,” he said, pointing.
I moved up out of the creek and rode up next to him. I could see a narrow line of smoke rising up in the distance.
“Half-mile, maybe,” Virgil said.
I pulled out my scope and took a look.
“Can’t see anything, really,” I said. “The source is behind a rise in the foreground.”
We were at a slight elevation above the smoke’s source and it was clear that it was rising up in the cradle of the belt of green that followed the water.
“Reckon we best have a look,” Virgil said.
Virgil rode on and I followed right behind him. We traveled within the creek’s green belt, and when we got close to the source of the smoke we dismounted. We tied our horses, readied our Winchesters, and continued on by foot.
When we got close we slipped down to the creek’s edge and eased our way through the low-growing grasses and thickets until we could see the smoke’s source.
“Good goddamn,” Virgil said.
Even from the distance away we could tell we were looking at the leftovers of a group of wagon settlers who had been slaughtered. We saw no one moving about, but we could see bodies on the ground as we neared.
Once we had the whole scene in clear view, it was obvious to us that we were most certainly witnessing the bloody and brutal craftsmanship of the notorious Ed Degraw.
We walked slowly and cautiously into the camp to find two men, a woman, and a boy all dead on the ground.
We heard something flutter in the bushes. Virgil and I both turned quickly with our rifles to see that it was one of their chickens. We watched the chicken walk among the dead for a moment.
“A no-good sight,” Virgil said.
“It is,” I said.
Each person had been shot more than once. From the way the woman was lying with her legs spread and her nakedness showing from her waist down, it was obvious the miserable no-good took the time to rape her.
“The Kiowa was right,” I said. ”Diablo.”
“He damn sure is,” Virgil said.
“Look,” I said.
Across the creek there were two mules grazing.
“They had at least four animals pulling the wagon,” I said. “Could have had more.”
“’Spect Degraw took one, maybe two,” Virgil said.
“That he did,” I said.
Virgil looked at the dead boy and shook his head.
“Damn sure no longer on foot,” I said.
Virgil nodded.
“No, he’s not,” he said.
60
Driggs was generally an early riser, but he woke up much later than usual, perhaps because he was awake most of the night taking care of business, but also because it was so dark outside. Driggs lay in bed, looking out the window. He heard a low roll of thunder. He looked over to the princess, who was still sound asleep. He watched her for a long moment, then he looked to his pocket watch on the nightstand.
“One-thirty in the afternoon,” Driggs whispered. Then he said even quieter, as if he were humoring himself, “One-thirty in the fucking afternoon . . .”
Driggs anticipated that the rest of the day would be good and he would accomplish much of what he was looking forward to achieving. This was the day he’d been waiting for. He was not yet going to complete what he came here to do, not today, but this was the beginning of the end. He was in fact A-okay with the time of day. Though he had no comparison, he considered time was always on the side of the living.
He started the day like most of the recent free daytime beginnings he’d spent, with a refreshing tip or two of fine whiskey and a cigarette. He would not get to see the morning regulars he normally watched, but that was okay. He would get to see a whole other group. He thought perhaps he would get to witness the non-workers who went this way and that carrying out their self-important duties and responsibilities and obligations.
When he moved to the window he was pleased with just how incredibly dark the day was. He marveled at the stark contrast of colors between the beiges and browns and whites of the buildings lining the street and the foreboding dark gray blanket that covered Appaloosa. It was not raining, but that seemed inevitable. The dark had a weight to it, as if it could produce a tornado that might just tear all of Appaloosa off the earth. The darkness, the encroaching doom, did not prevent the civilized from going about their business, but it did prevent them from moving slowly. Most everyone moved at a brisk pace.