The Wolves of Seven Pines

by E. L. Ripley

  PART THREE

  THE WOLVES OF SEVEN PINES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Burying his wife hadn’t been the hardest thing Carpenter had ever done. The hardest thing had been living with the knowledge that one day he would have to. He’d wasted so much time being afraid of things he couldn’t change, and letting himself be bested by the things that he might have. He wasn’t afraid to go to sleep anymore, and he suspected that if he lived long enough for it to matter, he never would be again.

  He and Silva weren’t inclined much to sleep in any case. A journey of twenty miles, even as the crow flies, would have been a task. The mountain tripled the weight of the grueling trek, and there was no comfort to be found in the absolute certainty that Carpenter never would have made it half a day with Yates on his back.

  There wasn’t any respite to be found anywhere, least of all in Antelope Valley. Wolves no longer howled behind them, but neither mistook that for their absence. That wasn’t a mistake that either of them would make again.

  Mr. Karr’s property told a story, though it was nothing Carpenter hadn’t been able to guess. The house, built of fresh, pungent pine, was well-made, with details, glass windows, and everything a man settling into a position of prosperity could want. Mr. Karr and Silva had come here with money in their pockets and a good expectation of getting more.

  High hopes.

  Karr himself was out in front of the house, splitting firewood. A figure moved behind the windows, and that could only have been his wife. Their two young daughters were out in the dusk chasing fireflies, trailed stubbornly by a pup still young enough to trip and tumble with every third step.

  There was no sign of anyone else, and Carpenter had been careful to make certain the farm wasn’t being watched. The dark was coming on, and it was Silva’s play to make, only he wasn’t. He just watched, and there was no hiding it: he’d fallen into the very trap that Carpenter had spent his whole life trying to climb out of. Once you started to think about what might have been, it was like a deep pool. It didn’t take any effort at all to sink, but when the time came to swim out, suddenly things weren’t so easy.

  He put his hand on Silva’s shoulder to wake him up, and the other man scowled at him. Then he sighed and rose from his crouch to step out of the shadows.

  Karr didn’t notice them at first. He was intent on his work, the expression of intense concentration on his face at odds with the practiced motion of his swings. He wasn’t happy, but who was? The fine home that stood behind him, and the even finer family that lived in it—they weren’t what was on his mind. Or if they were, it was for all the wrong reasons. Was he worried about Hale?

  He brought the ax down and looked up. For a moment he was still; then he leaned his weight on the handle and watched them cross the grass, leaving the trees behind to stroll onto the property like any other visitors, however disheveled.

  Silva stopped ten paces off, his hand on his pistol, which he’d taken from Murphy’s things before rescuing Carpenter from Al. Karr wore no gun, though a rifle leaned against the fence post nearby. He hadn’t even glanced at it, and why would he? It wasn’t an enemy in front of him. It was his partner, and Silva wasn’t a difficult man to get along with.

  They must have been friendly, at least before.

  One of the girls let out a shriek, and Karr glanced over, but she’d just tripped and fallen onto the grass. Laughter rose up, and he turned back to the two of them.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I have not gone into town,” he said, stepping back from the ax, “for five days. Sheriff Fisher rode out yesterday, asking after you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What did they do?” Karr asked sadly.

  Silva shrugged. “All the things I didn’t believe they would.”

  “We were wrong.” They watched Karr take his kerchief and mop his face, then twist it in his hands. “My time in the city went too well, Raf. I was so accustomed to it. Not to this.” He gestured at the vast sky, rippling with endless bars of clouds, all streaked red. “This quiet. And I thought that we had laws, and that a bandit would . . .” He stopped there, searching for words. Then he snorted and tossed his bandanna aside. “That a wolf would at least have the decency to look like a wolf, I guess.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Is it settled?”

  Silva shook his head, stepping past Karr and making for the well. “No,” he said over his shoulder. “I hid the patent.”

  Now the girls had noticed them and were watching.

  “Hello, Mr. Silva!” one of them called out.

  “Hello, Annabelle,” he called back, quite pleasantly.

  “You must be Bill Carpenter,” Karr said quietly. “Mr. Fisher mentioned you.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Carpenter picked up Karr’s rifle and worked the lever several times to empty it. He put it back down when all the cartridges were out. “I apologize for the imposition, Mr. Karr.”

  Silva was pulling up a bucket and sipping from the ladle. Carpenter joined him and took a drink. The cool water and the cooler breeze felt about as good as anything could.

  “Might think of building a fence,” Carpenter warned Karr as he approached. “Wolves in these mountains.” He glanced at the girls. “More than you’d expect.”

  Karr’s expression told them that wasn’t lost on him.

  “I’m going to buy two horses from you,” Silva told him bluntly. “On credit.”

  Karr grimaced, but he looked neither surprised nor inclined to argue.

  “All right,” he said, with all the strength and vigor of a wilted brown weed. He wasn’t alone in his misery, but it still stood in stark contrast to the evening.

  The sun was down, the clouds weren’t going to let the stars out, and the air was cooling with every passing minute. Karr just watched his girls stumbling around in the grass, surrounded by fireflies.

  “It’s about time to eat,” he said finally, taking off his hat and running his hand through his thinning hair. “Are you hungry?”

  * * *

  * * *

  Fortune had always been nimble. One moment Carpenter was riding west with a comfortable if melancholy future stretching out ahead of him. He wasn’t a young man, so perhaps not a long future. But something worth looking forward to, something to hold on to.

  Then he’d been standing over his horse, watching Oceana’s flanks heave as she tried to get air, and he tried not to see it, or himself in it, alone in a bed when the end came. There was nothing between; he seemed to close his eyes on one moment and open them to another.

  He had sat at Hale’s table, surrounded by his friends and their families, fighting tooth and nail with his own mind to just take it for what it appeared to be, as something good. He might even have tried to wrestle it further, to twist it into a shape where he really could see things from Hale’s side, where Silva was a scoundrel who deserved to be brought low.

  Carpenter was amenable to fantasy, but he drew the line at delusion.

  Then Joe had been there, standing in the hallway, a knife on his belt where there hadn’t been one before. He could say he hadn’t meant to really do it. He could say whatever he pleased, and why not? Hale certainly did. Hale had told Carpenter to his face there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his family. There was truth in that; the man really did want to provide.

  And Carpenter had trudged through the wilderness with nothing but a handful of berries, wolves creeping along behind, and now he opened his eyes to baked chicken and potatoes, served on good plates at a good table in a warm house.

  Silva was charitably spinning the tale to the curious Mrs. Karr, who it appeared was entirely in the dark as to why the factory was not yet built. It sounded as though her husband hadn’t exactly lied to her yet, but he hadn’t told her the truth, clearly.

  “Where wil
l you go?” she asked Silva, pouring him a glass of wine.

  “That, I have not decided.”

  Anyone could see the conversation was causing her some anxiety. The Karr family was like everyone else in that they had come to this place for a reason. In Karr’s case, the reason was the factory.

  “I want to wait awhile yet and see how the gold shapes up,” Karr said, bringing out a show of ease and confidence that he couldn’t possibly feel. He spoke as though his proposition carried no risk, a mere whimsy. But a single look at Mrs. Karr was enough to know she wasn’t convinced they had the means to linger idly with no source of income.

  The girls, at least, were more interested in food than in conversation.

  Carpenter still couldn’t be sure if Karr had taken money from Hale or if he’d simply acquiesced out of a desire not to make an enemy. Either way, he had made an enemy. Silva was being careful not to punish Karr’s family because of it, but there was a tension in him that hadn’t been there even when they had faced the bounty hunters.

  There was nothing Carpenter could say or do that would ease Silva’s anger. There was nothing he could tell the other man that he didn’t already know.

  Like everything else, his memories had faded with time, but he hadn’t quite forgotten what it was like to be angry.

  So he just ate, keeping quiet. This was Silva’s business, not his. Karr and his family were perfectly polite to him, and he was perfectly polite as well, but nothing could change the detail that towered a head over nearly everyone, and there was something menacing about that, whether he intended it or not.

  Menacing. The last thing Carpenter had ever wanted to do was menace anyone.

  Mrs. Karr generously invited them to stay the night, and Silva generously declined.

  “As always, Mrs. Karr, you are very kind. I think it would be best if we went on directly. I will accept this bottle, though. And any provisions you could part with.”

  It wasn’t a robbery, not exactly, even if it felt a bit like one.

  Carpenter followed Silva out behind the house, where he eyed the stable.

  “I don’t blame him,” Silva confided, offering Carpenter the bottle.

  “Hale must have threatened him.” Carpenter took it and drank. “Look how miserable they are.”

  “We both used more or less every dime we had to make this real.” Silva rubbed his face. “How could it fail? The Army requested it of us. If the federal government isn’t a dependable patron, who is? Surely no one would interfere.”

  “I suppose if you spend all your time behaving like a civilized man, you fall in danger of starting to think like one.”

  “A mistake I will never make again.” Silva took the bottle back, finished it, and tossed it away. “I’ll ride directly to the lodge.”

  “He’ll have a man there. A man,” Carpenter added. “Not his boy this time. Someone with a rifle, and likely enough wits left to remember what it’s like to be a soldier. You’d best hope it isn’t Fred.”

  “Why is that? Is he an unseemly sort of fellow?”

  “He’s about the most loyal man to walk this earth. The best friend anyone could ask for.” Carpenter shrugged. “But if Hale asks him to, he’ll gut you as soon as shake your hand. Or do whatever awful thing they think of to convince you to give up that patent.” Silva looked taken aback, but Carpenter went on. “And he’ll enjoy doing it. He’s not right. But he’s the right man. If it were me, in Hale’s place.”

  “Is that something you think about? Being in his place?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Only by riding from the lodge will I find the place where we camped and where my things are,” Silva explained simply. “I don’t know that I would recognize the place coming from the other direction.”

  “And if you’re seen at the lodge?” Carpenter pressed impatiently. “His rider will either take you or take word of you, and we won’t get away again. I never saw someone get lucky twice.”

  “His rider will not ride,” Silva pointed out, “with my bullet in his brain. I’ll see to him before I ever take to the trail.”

  “There is no need,” Carpenter hissed, lowering his voice and moving closer to him. He glanced at the house, where the windows were aglow, but the night was still and quiet. “I can find our camp without us ever going near the lodge.”

  “This is not about the camp,” Silva said through gritted teeth. “It has come to nothing, Mr. Carpenter. My endeavor and that of Mr. Hale. And he will know. He will not run me out of Antelope Valley. He is the one who will have to go, and this will be his prompting. He will sit in his fine house, waiting while his men search for me and what belongs to me, and he will sweat and fret and worry every second of every day until word reaches him that his man at the lodge was killed, and he will know that I and my property are already far beyond his reach. I don’t know which weighs more in the accounting: my dreams or the life of one of his men. But it is the reckoning that we will have,” he growled. “And as he knows that his plans have not come to fruition, as he finally knows that though I have lost, so has he, and he has no prospects left to him, he will go. He’ll have no choice, because now I am convinced, properly convinced, that he is indebted to men less compassionate even than he, and he will have no recourse but to flee.”

  His eyes were on the stable, but he was seeing something else entirely. “And I’ll return,” he added absently.

  “Think,” Carpenter told him, though it was futile. Silva wasn’t thinking. He was feeling, and it was difficult to fault him for it. Difficult but not impossible. “Even if all that were to come true, how could you be certain they would all go? Or that any would stay?” he added, because surely Silva’s mind was on the girl, O’Doul’s daughter. “Would you be able to close your eyes in a town where even one of those men was still living?”

  “They are a flock,” Silva replied, a hint of smugness in his voice. “When Hale goes, the rest will follow.”

  “It ain’t that simple, though you are if you think that’s your course,” Carpenter snapped, feeling the stirrings of something like temper. “You don’t take a risk just to cause a man suffering, even if he’s done you wrong. There’s no money in it.” Carpenter put his finger in Silva’s face. “You haven’t been hit in the head. You’ve been hit in the pride. Use your damn wits before you get yourself killed. And for what?”

  “For what?” Silva echoed, swatting his hand away. “For who I am, Mr. Carpenter. Am I not a man like anyone else? May I not pursue my business? Your friends—your friends, Mr. Carpenter—say no. To them, I’m not worthy. I don’t know what they believe I am. Something less than them, clearly. That’s a dangerous misapprehension to linger under, Mr. Carpenter, one that I will relieve them of presently.”

  Carpenter didn’t know what to say. Silva seethed in front of him, the rage that he’d hidden so well these past few days on full display.

  “Temper’s always easier than sense, I guess,” Carpenter said finally.

  “You have my gratitude, Mr. Carpenter. You don’t require it, but you have it.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “And I appreciate your company.” Silva took a step back. “But I don’t require it. If my course doesn’t suit you, by all means, ride elsewhere.”

  Carpenter sighed and smiled. He’d been about to ask if Silva would reconsider. Had anyone ever asked that to any good result? No. It was a waste of time.

  And he wasn’t getting any younger.

  “I understand,” he said, taking a breath. He put his hand out. “So long, then.”

  Silva opened his mouth, no doubt to say something very gentlemanly, but he did not. As quickly as the lightning could light up the night, his anger left him, replaced by a genuine bafflement, and it suited him better. Anything suited him better than anger, but anger didn’t look good on anyone.

  Silva’s hand stopped sho
rt of Carpenter’s.

  They both looked toward the corner of the house, because that was where the hoofbeats were coming from.

  “I’ll be damned,” Carpenter muttered.

  “How?” Silva said, frowning. “How did he get word to them?”

  It was a good question. But it didn’t matter; having the answer wouldn’t change anything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A line had to be drawn somewhere. A man born blind didn’t have a choice in the matter, but Carpenter did. Until now he had chosen not to see the truth, but there was no more time for that. In his mind he’d tried to find excuses for what Hale was doing, ones that would hold up. He hadn’t stopped hoping, even when Joe Fisher had showed up with that knife at the hotel.

  It was time to hang it up.

  Karr and his family weren’t miserable because their prospects were poor. The truth was that Mr. Karr was the same as Silva. All either of them could do was search for a way to find something like a victory in the midst of everything gone wrong. It seemed no one wanted to leave Antelope Valley: not Karr, not Silva, and not Hale.

  But there wasn’t room for all of them.

  Maybe Hale could get his hands on Silva’s patent and plans, and bully his way to a semblance of legitimacy, but that wouldn’t suddenly make him competent to make rifles or run a factory. He would still need someone to handle the business, so why not the man who’d been planning to do it all along?

  Karr was just trading one partner for another. Whatever he felt for doing wrong by Silva would have been justified as providing for his family, just as Hale was doing. It was no comfort that Karr’s conscience was all swelled up and weeping with what he felt he had to do; that might assuage his guilt or do something for whatever stood between him and God, but tears and a conscience wouldn’t be any use at all between Silva and a bullet.

  It was all just as clear as the sound of someone riding up in front of the house, but Silva didn’t so much as begin to inch toward the stable before a twig snapped in the dark trees.