by Ben Bridges
‘An’ what ’bout Kidd? asked Henry.
‘What about Kidd? I countered. ‘Even Lem here can’t find tracks when they’re buried under two feet of snow. Besides … ’ I cleared my throat behind a screening hand. ‘We can’t go on riding together, boys. It’s not safe.’
They looked at me and I said, ‘I’ve got the small-pox.’
I watched them react. Henry muttered, ‘Oh, Jesus,’ and Saul took an involuntary pace back. It was becoming a day for shocks and surprises.
I hadn’t even wanted to admit it to myself. But I knew that I could no longer deny it, to myself or anyone else. Somewhere or other I had picked it up and now I was stuck with it. I could feel every scab and pus-filled sore on my face, around and inside my mouth, stippling my back and shoulders.
It was only by some miracle that I did not appear to have infected my companions — but if they remained with me, it was only a matter of time.
Lem said, ‘Wal, speakin’ fer myself, cap’n, I’d as soon not leave you to fend fer yourself. Not at a time like this.’
‘I appreciate that, Lem. But you men have an obligation to yourselves.’
‘We’ll get you a doctor,’ said Saul. ‘Send one out from Overton.’
I nodded, too weak to argue about it. ‘All right. If you can find one who’ll come out in this weather.’ I made a loose gesture with one hand. ‘You’d better clear out of here and leave me to it.’
They broke camp and fetched the horses in from the timber. Then they wrapped Bancroft in a blanket and tied him across his horse. I was careful to stay out of their way, all too aware now of the infectious nature of my illness. Snow started falling again, but it was a light sprinkling, and should not make their long journey back to town any more difficult than it already was.
At last they were ready to leave. I clung to the doorframe so that I could see them off.
‘We’ll fetch you a doctor, cap’n,’ Lem promised. ‘Get you well enough an’ then we’ll find that murderin’ skunk an’ string ’im up ourselfs.’
It was fighting talk, I knew. We all wanted to find Kidd and make him pay for what he had done. But how were we to find him now? Winter had finally claimed the land, and it had come with a vengeance. And though none could have wanted him more than I, I could not help wondering if we would ever manage to run him to ground again.
Chapter Eight
When they had gone, I closed the door and looked around the room. It seemed a lonely, miserable place for a man to die. With the last of my waning strength, I pushed the chair in which Bob Bancroft had died into the far corner, so that I would not have to look at it and be reminded of the man who had bled his life away upon it. Then I built up the fire and fell on to the lumpy, horsehair sofa and closed my eyes.
I slept, and woke up again sometime later in the day. I was fairly drenched with sweat. The fire had died down, so I built it up again. I stumbled into the kitchen and heaved into the sink, then crawled back on to the sofa and fell asleep once more.
My dreams were more like nightmares. I saw Ruth Buckhalter pointing one finger at me and shaking her head sorrowfully. I knew she was blaming me for Bancroft’s death. Then he was there as well, and he was also jabbing an accusing finger at me and telling me that I never should have let it happen.
I saw Kansas Bill Johnson, bleeding from the bullet wound in his hip, threshing about beneath a threadbare blanket, begging to be allowed to rest.
Snow entered the weird landscape of my dream. But it wasn’t snow that was drifting down from the heavens, it was dollar bills, ten thousand of them. That made me think of the ten thousand dollar bill in my pocket.
Kidd started pointing at me then, adding his accusing finger to all the others.
Finally I woke up. It was pitch-dark. I got up. I felt awful. A sudden gust of wind made the house creak. I dragged myself across to the window and peered outside. It was blowing a blizzard. I had never seen it snow so fiercely. Another gust of wind rocked the place. I hoped that the men were safe, that they had reached Overton by this time.
I turned around, fell down, crawled on my hands and knees to the hearth. I piled the last of the logs on to the embers and dug around with the poker to get a blaze going. Then I fell on to my side and dozed again, there on the floor.
I woke up next morning. It was still snowing. I tried to sit up but couldn’t. Eventually I climbed back on to the sofa. My nose felt blocked, and I could not breathe through my mouth because of my swollen tongue.
Somehow the day passed. It stopped snowing. Some of the blisters around my mouth and across my shoulders burst. The fire went out. I had no more wood, and did not have the energy to go outside and fetch some.
The men had quartered my mustang in the barn. I hoped he was all right. It snowed again. I slept and woke up screaming. The house was like ice. I shivered, and wondered how long it would take for me to die.
Another night. I lay upon the floor, sweating and yet freezing as well. Outside, snow piled up.
No doctor would be coming out here to tend to me now. I would die here, and that would be that.
I dozed, and somehow that night and most of the following day drifted past in a haze. Then, as afternoon was yielding to early evening, I finally felt the life ebbing out of me, and I knew with absolute certainty that I was dying.
I closed my eyes. Outside, the wind howled mournfully and pressed in on the freezing house. I heard snowflakes slapping at the windows and opened my eyes to watch the raging blizzard beyond the thick, distorted glass.
My eyelids drooped again. I felt myself beginning to drift, and I knew I was going to meet my Maker.
But then —
A footstep.
Outside.
The whicker of a cold horse.
My eyes flickered open again. I opened my mouth and tried to say, ‘In here!’ but nothing came out, just a barely audible croak.
I held my breath, waiting. The door opened with a click. Wind and snow came inside. A man filled the doorway, in silhouette only. I looked up at him through glazed, suffering eyes. He closed the door behind him and looked down at me. I tried to lift one hand and beg him for help.
He came nearer. It was now very dark in the cold, cold house. Finally he knelt beside me and shook his head. ‘Look at the state of you, Colter,’ he said in mock reproof. ‘What are we going to do with you, eh?’
I saw him clearly then for the first time, and I could not believe my eyes. Surely I was dreaming again … for the newcomer was John Kidd.
Apparently heedless of the risk to himself, he got his arms under me and lifted me up onto the sofa. Then he went back outside to put up his horse.
When next he came through the door, he was carrying a pile of logs in his arms. He built a fire, got it going, and when it began to spread its warmth through the room, he gave a satisfied nod.
Melting snow trickled down his thick pea jacket, and his well-defined face was reddened by exposure to the harsh wind. He took off his hat, which had been tied on with a scarf, threw it into a corner and ran one hand up through his flaxen hair.
It was then that I brought my .442 around on him and, with an almighty effort, thumbed back the hammer. ‘Take … take that C-Colt out and … throw it down here … beside me,’ I grunted. ‘Then … get your hands … up, you son-of-a-bitch. You … you’re under … arrest.’
He turned to look at me. There was no surprise in his blue eyes, just an easy, assured touch of humor. ‘Put that gun down before someone gets hurt,’ he said, and then turned to head into the kitchen.
Overcome by fatigue, I let the gun drop to my side. It had taken all of my energy just to hold it up for thirty seconds. I listened to him moving about in the kitchen, firing up the range, searching in the cupboards for whatever supplies he and Ella might have left behind them.
Sometime later he came back in and lit the lamp. The light hurt my eyes, and I tried to shield them. I noticed that he was holding a cup of water in his left hand. I was so thirsty by t
his time that I could hardly take my eyes off it. He came over, knelt beside me and held the cup to my lips. I gulped frantically. It was cold, and it made my teeth ache, but water, I thought, had never tasted so good.
‘Well,’ he said conversationally. ‘It’s a good thing I happened to hear of your misfortune, wasn’t it?’
When I had emptied the cup, he stood up again, fished in his pocket and tossed a small, round tin into my lap. ‘Here, I fetched you some salve to dry up all those scabs. Rub some of it on, if you’ve got the strength. Then we’ll see about getting some food inside you. We’ve got to build you up, Colter, otherwise you’re going to die.’
‘Better you should … let me die … ’ I husked. ‘For if I live, I will … by-God … kill you, Kidd.’
His face turned bleak. ‘For what happened to your man?’ he asked.
I nodded.
His lips curled, and he shook his head in a kind of disgusted wonder. ‘Well, you hypocritical son-of-a-bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You can kill as many of my men as you like, and that’s all right, because you think you’ve got justice on your side. But the minute you lose one of your men — ’
‘That’s not the way of it, and you know it,’ I snapped, suddenly finding a new surge of life and spirit.
His eyebrows arched. ‘Isn’t it, Colter? Oh, I’ll confess that my men were not good men, not in the way that you would say they were good. But neither were they all bad. Circumstances put them on the path they followed. They weren’t all as strong and high-minded as you. They gave in to temptation.’
I frowned. This was a very different john Kidd to the one I had met that night in The Mother Lode. This one was older, more bitter and troubled. But in a perverse way, it pleased me to see some of the stuffing knocked out of him. ‘Don’t presume to sit in judgment of me, Kidd,’ I warned him huskily.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t dare. But don’t go acting so aggrieved because you lost a man — and not a very good man, if you want the truth of it — and expect me to accept the same thing without complaint just because it’s one of the perils of my profession. We have feelings too, you know. We mourn our dead, just like everyone else.’
I fixed him with a stern eye, completely unmoved. ‘I’ll see that you pay for what you did to Bancroft,’ I grated. ‘My oath on it.’
His response was another shake of the head. ‘For what I did?’ he echoed. ‘Don’t leave yourself out of it, Colter. It was your plan that got him killed. It was you who sent him, of all of them. Don’t misunderstand me. He was your man, I know. But he was too sure of himself by half, that one. He had Ella fooled, I’ll grant you. But not the rest of us. Not for one minute.’
The warmth was chasing my chills away and I was beginning to revive somewhat. ‘So you … killed him. Stuck him … like a pig and let him … bleed to death.’
‘Shall I tell you something?’ he asked, kneeling beside me again. ‘I’ve only ever killed one man in my life. I detest the act of killing, much as I’ve heard that you do. I saw my first man die when I was fourteen. His name was Charley Craig and he was a friend of my granpaw’s, a rustler.
‘Well, not to beat around the bush, we were trying to lift some stock from a ranch up in Wyoming one time and the fellow who owned the place caught us in the act and let go with a scattergun. We lit out real fast, as you might imagine. But not before Charley Craig took most of that buckshot in the small of his back. I tell you, Colter, it fairly shredded his lungs.
‘I watched him spitting up blood and gasping for breath for four days until he died. To this day, I’ll never know how he lasted as long as he did. At the finish, he was begging us to put a bullet through his skull just to end his torment, but the others couldn’t bring themselves to do it. But I did, because I wanted to help him. So I took Charley’s own gun and leveled it at the side of his head and I splashed his brains all over Creation. That’s a hell of a thing for a fourteen year-old to do, isn’t it?’
He could not repress a shudder at the memory.
‘You’ve killed men,’ he said. ‘So you know what it’s like. I promised myself there and then that I would never kill another man again, if I could help it. I’ve kept that promise.’
‘Sure,’ I said sarcastically.
He shrugged. ‘You can believe what you like, Colter. I’ll stand by my record. I’m too interested in people to want to kill them. To my way of thinking, there’s no good reason why larceny can’t be civilized. Entertaining, even.’
He rose up again. ‘Now, as far as your man was concerned, I was going to send him back to you. And if he hadn’t made a damn’-fool play for his gun, I would have. But he tried to be a hero. He went for his Colt and Jim Middleton stuck him.’
He looked gray now. ‘That’s why we lit out. Why we’re going to split up. Because you can lift a man’s cattle and steal his horses, you can rob banks and trains and celerity wagons, and the public will look upon you as a hero. But the minute you start killing — everyone wants to see you hang.’
I frowned. ‘You … you’re disbanding your gang?’
He nodded. ‘Uh-huh. But don’t flatter yourself that it’s all because of you — though I will confess, you’ve given me a run for my money.’ He grinned at that. ‘No. You’re off this case now, Colter. The Cattlemen’s Association has recalled you and your posse. The pursuit, apprehension and/or killing of John Kidd has now been taken out of your hands.’
‘What?’
‘It’s true. It seems I’ve upset more people than was wise for me. The American Bankers Association and Adams Express have hired Pinkerton’s to run me to ground. And just to show that they mean business, they’ve posted a bounty of five thousand dollars on my head, and a thousand dollars each on those of my remaining men.’
‘So … so you’re getting out,’ I said. ‘While the getting’s … good.’
‘Something like that.’
I could not disguise my curiosity as I regarded him in the low, smoky lamp-light. ‘Why, Kidd?’ I asked at last. ‘Why challenge me, I mean? Look how it’s ended up.’
Another gust of wind pushed at the house. He said, ‘I regret the death of your man, Colter. Hopefully you know that now. As to the why of it … Can’t you guess?’
‘Because … to you, all of this has just been … a game? Your wits against … mine?’
‘There was more to it than that, my friend — although that was surely a part of it. And if you’re half as sharp as I think you are, you’ll work the rest of it out for yourself soon enough.’
‘Where … are you going?’ I asked.
His smile suddenly stole years from his face. ‘That would be telling.’
‘Are you taking Ella with you?’
‘Not only that. I’m going to make an honest woman of her, as well.’
‘Well … where … wherever you’re going,’ I said, suddenly weakening again, ‘you’ll need this.’ I felt in my pocket and brought out the ten thousand dollar note he had given me a lifetime before.
‘Keep it,’ he replied easily. ‘It’s of no value to me.’
Suddenly his face grew troubled once more. He glanced at the blizzard beyond the window and shivered. ‘Now, you rub some of that salve onto your face while I go fix us something to eat, man. You look a fright the way you are right now.’
He walked out into the kitchen, leaving me slumped there before the crackling fire, pondering everything he had told me.
With supplies he had fetched with him, Kidd fixed up some kind of a stew. I wish I could tell you it was good, but it wasn’t. Still, it was hot and nourishing, and to a man who could no longer recall the last time he’d eaten, and whose creased and stained clothes now fell loosely upon him because of all the weight he’d lost, it was most welcome.
In fact, that meal remains one of the strangest experiences of my life. Even now I wonder if it were but an extension of my delirium. For there we sat, pursuer and pursued, breaking bread together in companionable silence, while snow piled up around us and the Arctic w
ind swiped at the house with enough force to make the windows rattle.
We were still on opposite sides of the fence. By rights, we should be fighting each other. And yet I did not feel the animosity towards him that I had. How could I, after all he had done for me?
At length I set my clean bowl down beside me and drifted back to sleep. The next time I woke it was daylight. A stack of logs had been piled neatly beside the fire. Steam was dribbling from the spout of a coffee pot before the hearth. There was a whole pan full of stew still warm on the range. But of Kidd himself, there was no sign.
I had expected no less, of course. But still I felt lonelier for his having gone. I watched the bad weather through one of the windows and realized that my head was beginning to clear. I was not so stiff and achy. My tongue had returned to its normal size and my scabs were healing. I helped myself to some more of Kidd’s awful stew throughout the course of the day, drank all the coffee and then found the energy to boil up some more.
The following morning I knew for certain that I was not going to die after all. The snow had stopped falling. The countryside was white, the sky gray, with the odd patch of blue. I shrugged into my jacket and jammed my hat down onto my head and went outside. The air was bracing, and it blew away the last of my cobwebs. I plowed across to the barn and checked on my mustang. The horse was glad to see me. Kidd, I noted, had seen to his care.
I took my spare set of clothes from my saddlebags and hurried back to the house. There, I put a pan of water on to heat, stripped off, burned everything I had worn throughout my illness, then washed myself down. Within half an hour I was dressed again, this time in my spare white shirt and the black vest and trousers of my suit. That virtually completed the transformation in me.
I stayed at the ranch until I was sure the pox had gone. Two weeks later, there was a break in the weather and a sudden sweep of milder air up from the south thawed the worst of the snow. Seizing the opportunity, I saddled up and set off for town. I rode with much anticipation, for my self-imposed exile had been a long one. And yet a part of me had been renewed by the solitude of the ranch and the emptiness of the winter-locked land that surrounded it, and I was sorry to leave.