“You know, girl. I am not in my right mind after all. Have not been for a while. Just like Boone here stepped out of his self with shooting that boy. And the Snowman? Hell.” I turn to LaForge. “You might be the scariest sumbitch in the territory, but you are, by nature, a smash-and-grab man.”
“Blast-and-grab would be more accurate,” he says.
“A score this big,” I continue, “what with all the planning and forethought, not your standard procedure. And this whole business of playing the gambler, well, you would have fared better leaving the playactin’ to them minstrels what come through town every summer. Which leaves me thinking, by golly, what’s the only thing that could get three grown men to completely lose their minds? Sure enough, that would be a woman.”
“You just have all the answers, don’t you, boy?” Boone says. “Had us all fooled, playin’ the idiot. You’re a real smart crackerjack. Well, bully for you. Ain’t no way in hell we’re letting you walk out of here.”
“Put the gun down, Walter.” Her voice is firm, but there is a woman’s sweetness to it that warms a heart even as steely and soulless as Boone’s. “He brought us our money. He didn’t have to do that.”
“She’s got a point, Walter,” LaForge says. “Two-Trees here has a streak in him.” LaForge turns to me, his eyebrow arched above a devilish grin. “Damn, boy. You wanted in, you shoulda just asked me.”
“Talking ain’t my strong suit.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
“We’d still have to trust him,” Boone growls.
“Being an outlaw is all about trust,” LaForge says. “How the hell you think I’ve stayed alive so long? I had men I could trust. Good men.” He trails off, the loss hitting home yet again.
Seeing him grapple with the blow, she offers words of comfort with her own fiendish bent. “The boys didn’t die for nothing. . . . It means there’s more for the two of us.”
“That it does, darlin’.”
“She was talking to me,” Boone says. The finality in his voice—primal, greedy, born from the fiery bowels of hell—follows a quick turn in his pistol hand that levels the barrel square at the Snowman’s chest. “Drop it, LaForge.”
Garrison LaForge shakes his head, stunned. He lets his gun fall. The snow envelops it. “Well,” the Snowman says, “Look who found his calling.”
“Step away from the gun,” Boone says. “It’s over.”
“Boone, didn’t you hear what I just said? About trust?”
“Now you’re the one who’s new to the game,” Boone says. He points toward the mules. “Go on, darlin’. Bring them mules over this way. They won’t bite you.”
“I’m scared, Walter,” she says, all at once the little girl again.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s going to be fine, just like we talked about.”
“I . . . Garrison . . .” she says.
LaForge turns back to her, the disappointment peeking though his cold, blue eyes. “I guess you better do what he says, darling. If that’s what you want.”
She exhales and scurries across the snow toward the mules. “Sorry to surprise you like this, LaForge,” Boone says. “But she and I have other plans for the loot. And they don’t include the two of you.” He juts his head in my direction as he says the last.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Boone. You think I didn’t know? She was about as subtle flirting with you as she was with Two-Trees.” LaForge finds pause to turn toward me. “Yes, Harlan. I know about you two as well. I know everything.” And turning back in Boone’s direction, he adds, “I am the goddamn Snowman! I know everything. Just like I know you don’t have the sand to shoot me. Now give me that gun.”
“Oh, let it go, Garrison,” she says, leading the first of the mules by a rope over toward the mayor. “It’s over.”
“That’s right,” Boone adds. “Your time is up, LaForge. I ain’t afraid to kill you. I’m afraid to let you live. So I ain’t gonna. You got bested. I get the loot. I get the girl. Sometimes life ain’t fair.”
The woman walks the mule up to Boone, facing him, and then stops. Her eyes narrow and then go wide. I see the movement behind Boone, but by then his fate is sealed. The arrow zings from the darkness. Boone shrieks as the razor-sharp tip slams into the small of his back and punctures clean through his belly. His gun flails uselessly to the side before cascading from his fingertips and down into the snow.
Three Dineh warriors, lead by Ahiga, emerge from the blackness, clubs raised, and descend upon the mayor. His womanly, desperate cries scar the air as they beat him to the ground. Ahiga kicks Boone in the teeth, stifling his yelps to pained, muffled gurgles. The warrior snatches up the fallen pistol and spins it upon LaForge and myself—a menacing display—in case either of us be entertaining thoughts of intervention. Our empty palms extend toward him, cementing our submission.
Ahiga thrusts the pistol toward the Snowman, snarling. “Your life you owe to him.” He jabs a finger my way to confirm my involvement. I drop my hands and address Ahiga.
“You sure took your sweet time, didn’t you?” I say. Ahiga growls at me and turns back toward his captive. Hog-tied and gagged in seconds, Boone finds himself hoisted up through the air and deposited roughly onto the bareback haunch of the palomino for a speedy transport to a slow and miserable death. The woman blows past me and meets the begging eyes of Walter Boone.
“I’d sooner die than lay with you again,” she hisses. “I hope they string you up and use you for target practice.”
“No,” I say, edging up to have my final words with the condemned. “The arrow missed your vitals. That was on purpose. They are going to eat your skin while you burn at the stake.” He strains beneath his gag, imploring, in his godless manner, for mercy. But there is none I have for him.
“LaForge asked me how I enlisted the Navajo,” I say. “I told him I made them an offer. I gave them what they wanted. And what they wanted was you. You never should have shot that boy.” Ahiga throws himself atop the horse and kicks it up. The other scouts mount horses that seem to appear out of thin air. There is some shouting, a cry of victory, and then, as quickly as they came, the Dineh vanish.
The woman stands next to me, both of us staring after Ahiga and his companions as they ride off into the night. “Well, that makes it easy for us,” she says.
“How do you figure?” I say.
“This time,” LaForge says, “she was talking to me.” The gun clicks behind me and I know then and there that he was never going to surrender a penny of his fortune, or his woman, to me. She turns her head partly toward me, but not enough to catch my eye.
“I’m sorry,” she says. I lift my hands yet again, but this time believing it is the end. She breaks from me and goes to him.
“You had me going, darling. I’ll admit it,” he says.
“Oh, honey. How could you ever doubt me?” She touches his shoulder and moves past him to retrieve the second mule.
“You were never going to cut me in,” I say.
“What can I say? It is my nature.”
“I am the fool for thinking you would do otherwise.”
“Just think of it as another snatch-and-grab job. But you did right by me, Two-Trees. I’ll make this quick. Get down on your knees and I’ll put a blindfold on you.” In his eyes I see the steely detachment that served as the last image on earth for many a dead man. I think about asking her to intervene, but then I let the idea go. I drop down into the cold, wet snow that seeps through my denim as if it were paper. I think about the Spirits and how I will soon get to hear their music with my own ears, as true as morning birdsong. “Darlin’,” he says. “Bring me one of your scarves.”
She lets go of the mule rope and walks over to him, her hands lost inside the inner regions of her coat. “Here you go,” she says.
The Snowman turns to take it from her. She reaches up with her hand and a little pop explodes from her fist. The smoky barrel of the derringer—the best friend of women and gamblers—se
nds a gray, wispy trail up into the frigid night.
Garrison LaForge stares down in utter amazement at the tiny, black hole in the center of his topcoat. As the hole turns from charcoal back to glistening, liquid red, his legs desert him. The Snowman drops to his knees and, finding the strength to look at me, says, “Damn, Two-Trees. She must really like you.” His final breath issues forth from his lips, which manage a thin, defeated smile. Then the Snowman falls forward, dead in the frozen powder that bears his name.
“Thank God,” she says. “Thank God he’s dead.” From the corner of my eye I pick up the pearly handle of the Colt peeking from the crystalline blanket of white, maybe ten feet from where I stand. I fancy my odds with the Colt against the stubby barrel and lone remaining bullet of the derringer, but I stand motionless, uninterested in the idea. “Let’s go, darling. Let’s get out of here.”
When I stay put, she turns back to me, her voice pitched with urgency. “Harlan, get your head about you. We have to go. It’ll be light soon. Now tie off that mule. We can get a good jump by dawn.”
“Look who the real gambler is—playing whatever hand you’re dealt right up to the last.”
“What are you talking about? Nothing’s changed. Let’s go.”
“You could find the angles on a circle, that’s for sure. What’s your real name, girl?”
“For Christ’s sake, Harlan. Not now.”
“All that talk of running off together . . . Hell, you had me believing it. But all you really needed out of me was someone to get you over the Sangres. Come the first thaw, what, you put that last bullet in my head while I’m sleeping?”
“How dare you say that. I love you. Now, please!”
“What brothel he pull you out of?”
“What does any of that matter? I’m just a girl who had a plan. One thing led to another. Nothing more. Are you going to tie off that mule or not?”
“No.”
“I wasn’t playacting with you. We can do all those things we talked about.”
“Boone had plans with you too. So did LaForge. Now look at them. One is dead and the other wishes he was.”
“I do not love them.”
“That much is quite clear.”
“We don’t have time for this. Are you coming with me or not?”
“I am not.”
“Why not?”
“That money don’t belong to us.”
“Like hell it don’t. I stole it fair and square.”
“That’s people’s lives you got rolled up in there.”
“Oh please, don’t act like you care about them. Those people sure as shit don’t care about you. They hate you. They burnt your house down.”
“That don’t make me a thief.”
“Who you trying to impress? Me?”
“No.”
“Oh, why can’t you just get on that horse and let’s get out of here? It would be so easy.”
“Because that’s not how I was raised.”
“You smug son of a bitch. I’m asking you for the last time. Are you coming with me?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.” She raises the gun and points it at me. Her hand quivers, but not enough to miss. “You’re leaving here with me, or not at all.”
“You going to shoot me?”
“I don’t want to. But if I have to, I will. I’ve worked too hard for this. Years! And nobody’s going to stop me. Not you or anybody.”
“Then you better do it and get it over with.”
“Ain’t you going to come at me? Try to take if from me?”
“No.”
“I pegged you for more of a man. I guess I was wrong.”
“I have no more fight left in me. Not today.”
“Have it your way.” She steadies the gun, her lips pursed with deep concentration. She takes dead aim. Then she lowers it. “I cannot shoot you. Dammit! I wish I could. I really do! But Harlan, I swear to God, if you come after me I will shoot you dead. Do you understand me?”
“I will not follow you.”
“I still can’t risk it. You’ll go get help.”
“No. I won’t do that either. If you want to go, you go. I’ll stay here till morning so you get a proper jump.”
“You would do that for me?”
“When I get to town, I’ll tell them you went east. Anybody goes after you, they’ll be going in the wrong direction.”
She drops the gun and comes to me. I know what is coming and I do not fight it. With a tear dripping from her eye, she kisses me. The kiss is short, final. “Thank you, Harlan. Thank you.”
She starts to turn back from me and I grab her, spinning her face to mine. I bury my lips into hers for what seems like eternity, the electricity racing between us, a reminder of what will not be. I break from her. She wipes the tear from her face.
“Mabel,” she says. “Mabel Pitts. Of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Nice to meet you, Harlan.” She turns from me and sails up onto her horse, the mule rope tied off to her saddle. She leads her horse to the other mule and fastens that rope to hers as well.
“It’s cold in the Bloods. You’ll need to find wood before you get too far in.” She waves me off, as if she has already thought of this.
“I’ll burn money. I’ve sure got enough of it.” She guides her horse out of the rocks, the two mules in tow. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” I say, watching her disappear into the snow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
An hour past sunrise, I pull into the Bend and find Merle taking his morning coffee on the back porch of the Jewel. Big Jack is with him, mug in hand. Rico, under Merle’s watchful eye, sweeps off the steps. The boy comes over to untie the travois from Storm, who is more than happy to be rid of it.
“What’s the matter, Rico,” Merle says, “you never seen the way the Navajo wrap their bodies?”
“No, sir. I no like it.”
The piss puddle has nearly dried, the stench a mere nuisance. Order seems almost restored. Life, as it does, goes on. The silver star pinned to Big Jack’s shirt shimmers in the early light. It is a heavy, proper badge, not the cheap tin he garnered off the mayor.
Jack sees me eyeing it and humbly taps it with his thumb. “Town voted,” he says. “It all happened so fast, I guess I never got around to saying no.”
“Every town needs a sheriff,” I say. “Will be needing a new mayor too, I reckon. How ’bout it, Merle?”
“Not a chance in hell.” Merle climbs down off the steps to get a closer look at LaForge. The Snowman’s reentry to town, draped over Storm’s haunches, is a far cry from the elegant carriage that brought us Avery Willis. Merle pokes him with a finger. “To think this son of a bitch was right under our noses the whole time.”
I give Merle, Big Jack, and Rico the whole story of what happened out there in the desert, down to the details of how I watched Genevieve disappear into the snow on her horse, pulling the two well-laden mules behind her.
Rico walks solemnly over to the tightly wrapped remains of the Pinkerton men. He gives one of them a shy poke and immediately startles back. “¡Dios mío!” he shouts. He looks down at his hand, dumbfounded by what he discovers there—a solid-gold dollar-piece.
Big Jack bounds over excitedly. “That must be one of them spirit things . . . you need a dollar to pay the ferryman what to take you over to the other side. Like the Pharaohs done.”
“This look like ancient Egypt to you?” Merle says, bellying up to the foot of what, by the shape of it, appears to be Delmer. He begins to unravel the sackcloth. After a few turns, the hint of a human form collapses beneath his fingers and a river of gold and silver cascades to the ground around his boots. Merle turns to me. “You son of a bitch. You glorious, fantastic son of a bitch!”
As if the plain truth of what he is seeing is still, somehow, a mystery, Big Jack draws his knife and, approaching the broad chest of the largest mummified corpse, plunges the blade into the center of it. He slices toward himself, the steel ti
nkling against metal and paper. Only when Big Jack thrusts his hands into the cavity and opens it wide, revealing the untapped fortune, does the new lawman allow his brain to understand. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
“¡Dios mío! Santa Maria!”
“Rico,” Merle says, “go get the bottle. The good shit, from my office!”
“Jack,” I say, “You will need to get some fellas out to the salt flats straightaway to collect the bodies. You got a few hours till the coyotes find ’em.”
“But Harlan . . .” Jack says, “if the loot is all here, then what’s the girl got with her?”
“Well, one thing never in short supply around here is sand and rocks. But I would not want to try to make a fire out of them.”
Rico hustles down the steps with the bottle and a trio of foggy glasses, which Merle takes from him and lines up on the railing. Big Jack counts out a stack of paper currency and walks it over to me.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A bounty’s a bounty. Dead or alive. Ten thousand for this here body,” he says, jabbing an elbow toward LaForge. “My first official act. Merle can be witness.”
“Hear, hear!” Merle says.
“You keep it, give it them what need it more.”
“You sure? You earned it.”
“I got the sale of my land. That will be enough.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“San Francisco, maybe. Look up this fella what I heard about. Maybe get work on one of them ships passing through.”
“A ship? What you know about shippin’?”
“Bout as much as you know about sheriffin’.”
“He’s got you there.”
“You leaving right now?”
“Another storm coming in. Best I get a jump on it.” Merle hands me the shot. The three of us clink glasses and drink. Warm whiskey spreads through my body. I feel good, better than I have in weeks.
“How about a beer for the road?”
“No thanks.” I pat Storm on his neck. The Spencer rubs against my shoulder. “I got everything I need.”
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